MIDDLEMARCH
PART 33
CHAPTER
LXI.
"Inconsistencies,"
answered Imlac, "cannot both be right, but imputed to man they may both be
true."—Rasselas.
The same
night, when Mr. Bulstrode returned from a journey to Brassing on business, his
good wife met him in the entrance-hall and drew him into his private
sitting-room.
"Nicholas,"
she said, fixing her honest eyes upon him anxiously, "there has been such
a disagreeable man here asking for you—it has made me quite uncomfortable."
"What
kind of man, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, dreadfully certain of the
answer.
"A
red-faced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in his manner. He declared
he was an old friend of yours, and said you would be sorry not to see him. He
wanted to wait for you here, but I told him he could see you at the Bank
to-morrow morning. Most impudent he was!—stared at me, and said his friend Nick
had luck in wives. I don't believe he would have gone away, if Blucher had not
happened to break his chain and come running round on the gravel—for I was in
the garden; so I said, 'You'd better go away—the dog is very fierce, and I
can't hold him.' Do you really know anything of such a man?"
"I
believe I know who he is, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, in his usual
subdued voice, "an unfortunate dissolute wretch, whom I helped too much in
days gone by. However, I presume you will not be troubled by him again. He will
probably come to the Bank—to beg, doubtless."
No more
was said on the subject until the next day, when Mr. Bulstrode had returned
from the town and was dressing for dinner. His wife, not sure that he was come
home, looked into his dressing-room and saw him with his coat and cravat off,
leaning one arm on a chest of drawers and staring absently at the ground. He
started nervously and looked up as she entered.
"You
look very ill, Nicholas. Is there anything the matter?"
"I
have a good deal of pain in my head," said Mr. Bulstrode, who was so
frequently ailing that his wife was always ready to believe in this cause of
depression.
"Sit
down and let me sponge it with vinegar."
Physically
Mr. Bulstrode did not want the vinegar, but morally the affectionate attention
soothed him. Though always polite, it was his habit to receive such services
with marital coolness, as his wife's duty. But to-day, while she was bending
over him, he said, "You are very good, Harriet," in a tone which had
something new in it to her ear; she did not know exactly what the novelty was,
but her woman's solicitude shaped itself into a darting thought that he might
be going to have an illness.
"Has
anything worried you?" she said. "Did that man come to you at the
Bank?"
"Yes;
it was as I had supposed. He is a man who at one time might have done better.
But he has sunk into a drunken debauched creature."
"Is
he quite gone away?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, anxiously but for certain reasons
she refrained from adding, "It was very disagreeable to hear him calling
himself a friend of yours." At that moment she would not have liked to say
anything which implied her habitual consciousness that her husband's earlier
connections were not quite on a level with her own. Not that she knew much
about them. That her husband had at first been employed in a bank, that he had
afterwards entered into what he called city business and gained a fortune
before he was three-and-thirty, that he had married a widow who was much older
than himself—a Dissenter, and in other ways probably of that disadvantageous
quality usually perceptible in a first wife if inquired into with the
dispassionate judgment of a second—was almost as much as she had cared to learn
beyond the glimpses which Mr. Bulstrode's narrative occasionally gave of his
early bent towards religion, his inclination to be a preacher, and his
association with missionary and philanthropic efforts. She believed in him as
an excellent man whose piety carried a peculiar eminence in belonging to a
layman, whose influence had turned her own mind toward seriousness, and whose
share of perishable good had been the means of raising her own position. But
she also liked to think that it was well in every sense for Mr. Bulstrode to
have won the hand of Harriet Vincy; whose family was undeniable in a
Middlemarch light—a better light surely than any thrown in London thoroughfares
or dissenting chapel-yards. The unreformed provincial mind distrusted London;
and while true religion was everywhere saving, honest Mrs. Bulstrode was
convinced that to be saved in the Church was more respectable. She so much
wished to ignore towards others that her husband had ever been a London
Dissenter, that she liked to keep it out of sight even in talking to him. He
was quite aware of this; indeed in some respects he was rather afraid of this
ingenuous wife, whose imitative piety and native worldliness were equally
sincere, who had nothing to be ashamed of, and whom he had married out of a
thorough inclination still subsisting. But his fears were such as belong to a
man who cares to maintain his recognized supremacy: the loss of high
consideration from his wife, as from every one else who did not clearly hate
him out of enmity to the truth, would be as the beginning of death to him. When
she said—
"Is
he quite gone away?"
"Oh,
I trust so," he answered, with an effort to throw as much sober unconcern
into his tone as possible!
But in
truth Mr. Bulstrode was very far from a state of quiet trust. In the interview
at the Bank, Raffles had made it evident that his eagerness to torment was
almost as strong in him as any other greed. He had frankly said that he had
turned out of the way to come to Middlemarch, just to look about him and see whether
the neighborhood would suit him to live in. He had certainly had a few debts to
pay more than he expected, but the two hundred pounds were not gone yet: a cool
five-and-twenty would suffice him to go away with for the present. What he had
wanted chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family, and know all about the
prosperity of a man to whom he was so much attached. By-and-by he might come
back for a longer stay. This time Raffles declined to be "seen off the
premises," as he expressed it—declined to quit Middlemarch under
Bulstrode's eyes. He meant to go by coach the next day—if he chose.
Bulstrode
felt himself helpless. Neither threats nor coaxing could avail: he could not
count on any persistent fear nor on any promise. On the contrary, he felt a
cold certainty at his heart that Raffles—unless providence sent death to hinder
him—would come back to Middlemarch before long. And that certainty was a
terror.
It was
not that he was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary: he was in danger
only of seeing disclosed to the judgment of his neighbors and the mournful
perception of his wife certain facts of his past life which would render him an
object of scorn and an opprobrium of the religion with which he had diligently
associated himself. The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an
inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually
recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into
one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a
man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened
wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the
present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering
part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a
merited shame.
Into this
second life Bulstrode's past had now risen, only the pleasures of it seeming to
have lost their quality. Night and day, without interruption save of brief
sleep which only wove retrospect and fear into a fantastic present, he felt the
scenes of his earlier life coming between him and everything else, as
obstinately as when we look through the window from a lighted room, the objects
we turn our backs on are still before us, instead of the grass and the trees.
The successive events inward and outward were there in one view: though each
might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still kept their hold in the consciousness.
Once more
he saw himself the young banker's clerk, with an agreeable person, as clever in
figures as he was fluent in speech and fond of theological definition: an
eminent though young member of a Calvinistic dissenting church at Highbury,
having had striking experience in conviction of sin and sense of pardon. Again
he heard himself called for as Brother Bulstrode in prayer meetings, speaking
on religious platforms, preaching in private houses. Again he felt himself
thinking of the ministry as possibly his vocation, and inclined towards missionary
labor. That was the happiest time of his life: that was the spot he would have
chosen now to awake in and find the rest a dream. The people among whom Brother
Bulstrode was distinguished were very few, but they were very near to him, and
stirred his satisfaction the more; his power stretched through a narrow space,
but he felt its effect the more intensely. He believed without effort in the
peculiar work of grace within him, and in the signs that God intended him for
special instrumentality.
Then came
the moment of transition; it was with the sense of promotion he had when he, an
orphan educated at a commercial charity-school, was invited to a fine villa
belonging to Mr. Dunkirk, the richest man in the congregation. Soon he became
an intimate there, honoured for his piety by the wife, marked out for his
ability by the husband, whose wealth was due to a flourishing city and west-end
trade. That was the setting-in of a new current for his ambition, directing his
prospects of "instrumentality" towards the uniting of distinguished
religious gifts with successful business.
By-and-by
came a decided external leading: a confidential subordinate partner died, and
nobody seemed to the principal so well fitted to fill the severely felt vacancy
as his young friend Bulstrode, if he would become confidential accountant. The
offer was accepted. The business was a pawnbroker's, of the most magnificent
sort both in extent and profits; and on a short acquaintance with it Bulstrode
became aware that one source of magnificent profit was the easy reception of
any goods offered, without strict inquiry as to where they came from. But there
was a branch house at the west end, and no pettiness or dinginess to give
suggestions of shame.
He
remembered his first moments of shrinking. They were private, and were filled
with arguments; some of these taking the form of prayer. The business was
established and had old roots; is it not one thing to set up a new gin-palace
and another to accept an investment in an old one? The profits made out of lost
souls—where can the line be drawn at which they begin in human transactions?
Was it not even God's way of saving His chosen? "Thou knowest,"—the
young Bulstrode had said then, as the older Bulstrode was saying now—"Thou
knowest how loose my soul sits from these things—how I view them all as
implements for tilling Thy garden rescued here and there from the
wilderness."
Metaphors
and precedents were not wanting; peculiar spiritual experiences were not
wanting which at last made the retention of his position seem a service
demanded of him: the vista of a fortune had already opened itself, and
Bulstrode's shrinking remained private. Mr. Dunkirk had never expected that
there would be any shrinking at all: he had never conceived that trade had
anything to do with the scheme of salvation. And it was true that Bulstrode
found himself carrying on two distinct lives; his religious activity could not
be incompatible with his business as soon as he had argued himself into not
feeling it incompatible.
Mentally
surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode had the same pleas—indeed, the years
had been perpetually spinning them into intricate thickness, like masses of
spider-web, padding the moral sensibility; nay, as age made egoism more eager
but less enjoying, his soul had become more saturated with the belief that he
did everything for God's sake, being indifferent to it for his own. And yet—if
he could be back in that far-off spot with his youthful poverty—why, then he would
choose to be a missionary.
But the
train of causes in which he had locked himself went on. There was trouble in
the fine villa at Highbury. Years before, the only daughter had run away,
defied her parents, and gone on the stage; and now the only boy died, and after
a short time Mr. Dunkirk died also. The wife, a simple pious woman, left with
all the wealth in and out of the magnificent trade, of which she never knew the
precise nature, had come to believe in Bulstrode, and innocently adore him as
women often adore their priest or "man-made" minister. It was natural
that after a time marriage should have been thought of between them. But Mrs.
Dunkirk had qualms and yearnings about her daughter, who had long been regarded
as lost both to God and her parents. It was known that the daughter had
married, but she was utterly gone out of sight. The mother, having lost her
boy, imagined a grandson, and wished in a double sense to reclaim her daughter.
If she were found, there would be a channel for property—perhaps a wide one—in
the provision for several grandchildren. Efforts to find her must be made
before Mrs. Dunkirk would marry again. Bulstrode concurred; but after
advertisement as well as other modes of inquiry had been tried, the mother
believed that her daughter was not to be found, and consented to marry without
reservation of property.
The
daughter had been found; but only one man besides Bulstrode knew it, and he was
paid for keeping silence and carrying himself away.
That was
the bare fact which Bulstrode was now forced to see in the rigid outline with
which acts present themselves onlookers. But for himself at that distant time,
and even now in burning memory, the fact was broken into little sequences, each
justified as it came by reasonings which seemed to prove it righteous.
Bulstrode's course up to that time had, he thought, been sanctioned by
remarkable providences, appearing to point the way for him to be the agent in
making the best use of a large property and withdrawing it from perversion. Death
and other striking dispositions, such as feminine trustfulness, had come; and
Bulstrode would have adopted Cromwell's words—"Do you call these bare
events? The Lord pity you!" The events were comparatively small, but the
essential condition was there—namely, that they were in favour of his own ends.
It was easy for him to settle what was due from him to others by inquiring what
were God's intentions with regard to himself. Could it be for God's service
that this fortune should in any considerable proportion go to a young woman and
her husband who were given up to the lightest pursuits, and might scatter it
abroad in triviality—people who seemed to lie outside the path of remarkable
providences? Bulstrode had never said to himself beforehand, "The daughter
shall not be found"—nevertheless when the moment came he kept her
existence hidden; and when other moments followed, he soothed the mother with
consolation in the probability that the unhappy young woman might be no more.
There
were hours in which Bulstrode felt that his action was unrighteous; but how
could he go back? He had mental exercises, called himself nought, laid hold on
redemption, and went on in his course of instrumentality. And after five years
Death again came to widen his path, by taking away his wife. He did gradually
withdraw his capital, but he did not make the sacrifices requisite to put an
end to the business, which was carried on for thirteen years afterwards before
it finally collapsed. Meanwhile Nicholas Bulstrode had used his hundred
thousand discreetly, and was become provincially, solidly important—a banker, a
Churchman, a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in trading concerns, in
which his ability was directed to economy in the raw material, as in the case
of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy's silk. And now, when this respectability
had lasted undisturbed for nearly thirty years—when all that preceded it had
long lain benumbed in the consciousness—that past had risen and immersed his
thought as if with the terrible irruption of a new sense overburthening the
feeble being.
Meanwhile,
in his conversation with Raffles, he had learned something momentous, something
which entered actively into the struggle of his longings and terrors. There, he
thought, lay an opening towards spiritual, perhaps towards material rescue.
The
spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There may be coarse
hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling
the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires
had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained
the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those
beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally
in us all, to whatever confession we belong, and whether we believe in the
future perfection of our race or in the nearest date fixed for the end of the
world; whether we regard the earth as a putrefying nidus for a saved remnant,
including ourselves, or have a passionate belief in the solidarity of mankind.
The
service he could do to the cause of religion had been through life the ground
he alleged to himself for his choice of action: it had been the motive which he
had poured out in his prayers. Who would use money and position better than he
meant to use them? Who could surpass him in self-abhorrence and exaltation of
God's cause? And to Mr. Bulstrode God's cause was something distinct from his
own rectitude of conduct: it enforced a discrimination of God's enemies, who
were to be used merely as instruments, and whom it would be as well if possible
to keep out of money and consequent influence. Also, profitable investments in
trades where the power of the prince of this world showed its most active
devices, became sanctified by a right application of the profits in the hands
of God's servant.
This
implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical belief than
the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar to Englishmen. There is
no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if
unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual
fellow-men.
But a man
who believes in something else than his own greed, has necessarily a conscience
or standard to which he more or less adapts himself. Bulstrode's standard had
been his serviceableness to God's cause: "I am sinful and nought—a vessel
to be consecrated by use—but use me!"—had been the mould into which he had
constrained his immense need of being something important and predominating. And
now had come a moment in which that mould seemed in danger of being broken and
utterly cast away.
What if
the acts he had reconciled himself to because they made him a stronger
instrument of the divine glory, were to become the pretext of the scoffer, and
a darkening of that glory? If this were to be the ruling of Providence, he was
cast out from the temple as one who had brought unclean offerings.
He had
long poured out utterances of repentance. But today a repentance had come which
was of a bitterer flavor, and a threatening Providence urged him to a kind of
propitiation which was not simply a doctrinal transaction. The divine tribunal
had changed its aspect for him; self-prostration was no longer enough, and he
must bring restitution in his hand. It was really before his God that Bulstrode
was about to attempt such restitution as seemed possible: a great dread had
seized his susceptible frame, and the scorching approach of shame wrought in
him a new spiritual need. Night and day, while the resurgent threatening past
was making a conscience within him, he was thinking by what means he could
recover peace and trust—by what sacrifice he could stay the rod. His belief in
these moments of dread was, that if he spontaneously did something right, God
would save him from the consequences of wrong-doing. For religion can only
change when the emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of
personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.
He had
seen Raffles actually going away on the Brassing coach, and this was a
temporary relief; it removed the pressure of an immediate dread, but did not
put an end to the spiritual conflict and the need to win protection. At last he
came to a difficult resolve, and wrote a letter to Will Ladislaw, begging him
to be at the Shrubs that evening for a private interview at nine o'clock. Will
had felt no particular surprise at the request, and connected it with some new
notions about the "Pioneer;" but when he was shown into Mr.
Bulstrode's private room, he was struck with the painfully worn look on the
banker's face, and was going to say, "Are you ill?" when, checking
himself in that abruptness, he only inquired after Mrs. Bulstrode, and her
satisfaction with the picture bought for her.
"Thank
you, she is quite satisfied; she has gone out with her daughters this evening.
I begged you to come, Mr. Ladislaw, because I have a communication of a very
private—indeed, I will say, of a sacredly confidential nature, which I desire
to make to you. Nothing, I dare say, has been farther from your thoughts than
that there had been important ties in the past which could connect your history
with mine."
Will felt
something like an electric shock. He was already in a state of keen
sensitiveness and hardly allayed agitation on the subject of ties in the past,
and his presentiments were not agreeable. It seemed like the fluctuations of a
dream—as if the action begun by that loud bloated stranger were being carried
on by this pale-eyed sickly looking piece of respectability, whose subdued tone
and glib formality of speech were at this moment almost as repulsive to him as
their remembered contrast. He answered, with a marked change of color—
"No,
indeed, nothing."
"You
see before you, Mr. Ladislaw, a man who is deeply stricken. But for the urgency
of conscience and the knowledge that I am before the bar of One who seeth not
as man seeth, I should be under no compulsion to make the disclosure which has
been my object in asking you to come here to-night. So far as human laws go,
you have no claim on me whatever."
Will was
even more uncomfortable than wondering. Mr. Bulstrode had paused, leaning his
head on his hand, and looking at the floor. But he now fixed his examining
glance on Will and said—
"I
am told that your mother's name was Sarah Dunkirk, and that she ran away from
her friends to go on the stage. Also, that your father was at one time much
emaciated by illness. May I ask if you can confirm these statements?"
"Yes,
they are all true," said Will, struck with the order in which an inquiry
had come, that might have been expected to be preliminary to the banker's
previous hints. But Mr. Bulstrode had to-night followed the order of his
emotions; he entertained no doubt that the opportunity for restitution had
come, and he had an overpowering impulse towards the penitential expression by
which he was deprecating chastisement.
"Do
you know any particulars of your mother's family?" he continued.
"No;
she never liked to speak of them. She was a very generous, honourable
woman," said Will, almost angrily.
"I
do not wish to allege anything against her. Did she never mention her mother to
you at all?"
"I
have heard her say that she thought her mother did not know the reason of her
running away. She said 'poor mother' in a pitying tone."
"That
mother became my wife," said Bulstrode, and then paused a moment before he
added, "you have a claim on me, Mr. Ladislaw: as I said before, not a
legal claim, but one which my conscience recognizes. I was enriched by that
marriage—a result which would probably not have taken place—certainly not to
the same extent—if your grandmother could have discovered her daughter. That
daughter, I gather, is no longer living!"
"No,"
said Will, feeling suspicion and repugnance rising so strongly within him, that
without quite knowing what he did, he took his hat from the floor and stood up.
The impulse within him was to reject the disclosed connection.
"Pray
be seated, Mr. Ladislaw," said Bulstrode, anxiously. "Doubtless you
are startled by the suddenness of this discovery. But I entreat your patience
with one who is already bowed down by inward trial."
Will
reseated himself, feeling some pity which was half contempt for this voluntary
self-abasement of an elderly man.
"It
is my wish, Mr. Ladislaw, to make amends for the deprivation which befell your
mother. I know that you are without fortune, and I wish to supply you
adequately from a store which would have probably already been yours had your
grandmother been certain of your mother's existence and been able to find
her."
Mr.
Bulstrode paused. He felt that he was performing a striking piece of
scrupulosity in the judgment of his auditor, and a penitential act in the eyes
of God. He had no clew to the state of Will Ladislaw's mind, smarting as it was
from the clear hints of Raffles, and with its natural quickness in construction
stimulated by the expectation of discoveries which he would have been glad to
conjure back into darkness. Will made no answer for several moments, till Mr.
Bulstrode, who at the end of his speech had cast his eyes on the floor, now
raised them with an examining glance, which Will met fully, saying—
"I
suppose you did know of my mother's existence, and knew where she might have
been found."
Bulstrode
shrank—there was a visible quivering in his face and hands. He was totally
unprepared to have his advances met in this way, or to find himself urged into
more revelation than he had beforehand set down as needful. But at that moment
he dared not tell a lie, and he felt suddenly uncertain of his ground which he
had trodden with some confidence before.
"I
will not deny that you conjecture rightly," he answered, with a faltering
in his tone. "And I wish to make atonement to you as the one still remaining
who has suffered a loss through me. You enter, I trust, into my purpose, Mr.
Ladislaw, which has a reference to higher than merely human claims, and as I
have already said, is entirely independent of any legal compulsion. I am ready
to narrow my own resources and the prospects of my family by binding myself to
allow you five hundred pounds yearly during my life, and to leave you a
proportional capital at my death—nay, to do still more, if more should be
definitely necessary to any laudable project on your part." Mr. Bulstrode
had gone on to particulars in the expectation that these would work strongly on
Ladislaw, and merge other feelings in grateful acceptance.
But Will
was looking as stubborn as possible, with his lip pouting and his fingers in
his side-pockets. He was not in the least touched, and said firmly,—
"Before
I make any reply to your proposition, Mr. Bulstrode, I must beg you to answer a
question or two. Were you connected with the business by which that fortune you
speak of was originally made?"
Mr.
Bulstrode's thought was, "Raffles has told him." How could he refuse
to answer when he had volunteered what drew forth the question? He answered,
"Yes."
"And
was that business—or was it not—a thoroughly dishonourable one—nay, one that,
if its nature had been made public, might have ranked those concerned in it
with thieves and convicts?"
Will's
tone had a cutting bitterness: he was moved to put his question as nakedly as
he could.
Bulstrode
reddened with irrepressible anger. He had been prepared for a scene of
self-abasement, but his intense pride and his habit of supremacy overpowered
penitence, and even dread, when this young man, whom he had meant to benefit,
turned on him with the air of a judge.
"The
business was established before I became connected with it, sir; nor is it for
you to institute an inquiry of that kind," he answered, not raising his
voice, but speaking with quick defiantness.
"Yes,
it is," said Will, starting up again with his hat in his hand. "It is
eminently mine to ask such questions, when I have to decide whether I will have
transactions with you and accept your money. My unblemished honour is important
to me. It is important to me to have no stain on my birth and connections. And
now I find there is a stain which I can't help. My mother felt it, and tried to
keep as clear of it as she could, and so will I. You shall keep your ill-gotten
money. If I had any fortune of my own, I would willingly pay it to any one who
could disprove what you have told me. What I have to thank you for is that you
kept the money till now, when I can refuse it. It ought to lie with a man's
self that he is a gentleman. Good-night, sir."
Bulstrode
was going to speak, but Will, with determined quickness, was out of the room in
an instant, and in another the hall-door had closed behind him. He was too
strongly possessed with passionate rebellion against this inherited blot which
had been thrust on his knowledge to reflect at present whether he had not been
too hard on Bulstrode—too arrogantly merciless towards a man of sixty, who was
making efforts at retrieval when time had rendered them vain.
No third
person listening could have thoroughly understood the impetuosity of Will's
repulse or the bitterness of his words. No one but himself then knew how
everything connected with the sentiment of his own dignity had an immediate
bearing for him on his relation to Dorothea and to Mr. Casaubon's treatment of
him. And in the rush of impulses by which he flung back that offer of
Bulstrode's there was mingled the sense that it would have been impossible for
him ever to tell Dorothea that he had accepted it.
As for
Bulstrode—when Will was gone he suffered a violent reaction, and wept like a
woman. It was the first time he had encountered an open expression of scorn
from any man higher than Raffles; and with that scorn hurrying like venom
through his system, there was no sensibility left to consolations. But the
relief of weeping had to be checked. His wife and daughters soon came home from
hearing the address of an Oriental missionary, and were full of regret that
papa had not heard, in the first instance, the interesting things which they
tried to repeat to him.
Perhaps,
through all other hidden thoughts, the one that breathed most comfort was, that
Will Ladislaw at least was not likely to publish what had taken place that
evening.
To be
continued
