MIDDLEMARCH
PART 34
CHAPTER LXII.
"He was a squyer of lowe degre,
That loved the king's daughter of
Hungrie.
—Old
Romance.
Will
Ladislaw's mind was now wholly bent on seeing Dorothea again, and forthwith
quitting Middlemarch. The morning after his agitating scene with Bulstrode he
wrote a brief letter to her, saying that various causes had detained him in the
neighborhood longer than he had expected, and asking her permission to call
again at Lowick at some hour which she would mention on the earliest possible
day, he being anxious to depart, but unwilling to do so until she had granted
him an interview. He left the letter at the office, ordering the messenger to
carry it to Lowick Manor, and wait for an answer.
Ladislaw
felt the awkwardness of asking for more last words. His former farewell had
been made in the hearing of Sir James Chettam, and had been announced as final
even to the butler. It is certainly trying to a man's dignity to reappear when
he is not expected to do so: a first farewell has pathos in it, but to come
back for a second lends an opening to comedy, and it was possible even that
there might be bitter sneers afloat about Will's motives for lingering. Still
it was on the whole more satisfactory to his feeling to take the directest
means of seeing Dorothea, than to use any device which might give an air of
chance to a meeting of which he wished her to understand that it was what he
earnestly sought. When he had parted from her before, he had been in ignorance
of facts which gave a new aspect to the relation between them, and made a more
absolute severance than he had then believed in. He knew nothing of Dorothea's
private fortune, and being little used to reflect on such matters, took it for
granted that according to Mr. Casaubon's arrangement marriage to him, Will
Ladislaw, would mean that she consented to be penniless. That was not what he
could wish for even in his secret heart, or even if she had been ready to meet
such hard contrast for his sake. And then, too, there was the fresh smart of
that disclosure about his mother's family, which if known would be an added
reason why Dorothea's friends should look down upon him as utterly below her.
The secret hope that after some years he might come back with the sense that he
had at least a personal value equal to her wealth, seemed now the dreamy
continuation of a dream. This change would surely justify him in asking
Dorothea to receive him once more.
But
Dorothea on that morning was not at home to receive Will's note. In consequence
of a letter from her uncle announcing his intention to be at home in a week,
she had driven first to Freshitt to carry the news, meaning to go on to the
Grange to deliver some orders with which her uncle had intrusted her—thinking,
as he said, "a little mental occupation of this sort good for a
widow."
If Will
Ladislaw could have overheard some of the talk at Freshitt that morning, he
would have felt all his suppositions confirmed as to the readiness of certain
people to sneer at his lingering in the neighborhood. Sir James, indeed, though
much relieved concerning Dorothea, had been on the watch to learn Ladislaw's
movements, and had an instructed informant in Mr. Standish, who was necessarily
in his confidence on this matter. That Ladislaw had stayed in Middlemarch
nearly two months after he had declared that he was going immediately, was a
fact to embitter Sir James's suspicions, or at least to justify his aversion to
a "young fellow" whom he represented to himself as slight, volatile,
and likely enough to show such recklessness as naturally went along with a
position unriveted by family ties or a strict profession. But he had just heard
something from Standish which, while it justified these surmises about Will,
offered a means of nullifying all danger with regard to Dorothea.
Unwonted
circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions
under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are
liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner. Good Sir James was this
morning so far unlike himself that he was irritably anxious to say something to
Dorothea on a subject which he usually avoided as if it had been a matter of
shame to them both. He could not use Celia as a medium, because he did not
choose that she should know the kind of gossip he had in his mind; and before
Dorothea happened to arrive he had been trying to imagine how, with his shyness
and unready tongue, he could ever manage to introduce his communication. Her
unexpected presence brought him to utter hopelessness in his own power of
saying anything unpleasant; but desperation suggested a resource; he sent the
groom on an unsaddled horse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs.
Cadwallader, who already knew the gossip, and would think it no compromise of
herself to repeat it as often as required.
Dorothea
was detained on the good pretext that Mr. Garth, whom she wanted to see, was
expected at the hall within the hour, and she was still talking to Caleb on the
gravel when Sir James, on the watch for the rector's wife, saw her coming and
met her with the needful hints.
"Enough!
I understand,"—said Mrs. Cadwallader. "You shall be innocent. I am
such a blackamoor that I cannot smirch myself."
"I
don't mean that it's of any consequence," said Sir James, disliking that
Mrs. Cadwallader should understand too much. "Only it is desirable that
Dorothea should know there are reasons why she should not receive him again;
and I really can't say so to her. It will come lightly from you."
It came
very lightly indeed. When Dorothea quitted Caleb and turned to meet them, it
appeared that Mrs. Cadwallader had stepped across the park by the merest chance
in the world, just to chat with Celia in a matronly way about the baby. And so
Mr. Brooke was coming back? Delightful!—coming back, it was to be hoped, quite
cured of Parliamentary fever and pioneering. Apropos of the
"Pioneer"—somebody had prophesied that it would soon be like a dying
dolphin, and turn all colors for want of knowing how to help itself, because
Mr. Brooke's protege, the brilliant young Ladislaw, was gone or going. Had Sir
James heard that?
The three
were walking along the gravel slowly, and Sir James, turning aside to whip a
shrub, said he had heard something of that sort.
"All
false!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "He is not gone, or going, apparently;
the 'Pioneer' keeps its color, and Mr. Orlando Ladislaw is making a sad
dark-blue scandal by warbling continually with your Mr. Lydgate's wife, who
they tell me is as pretty as pretty can be. It seems nobody ever goes into the
house without finding this young gentleman lying on the rug or warbling at the
piano. But the people in manufacturing towns are always disreputable."
"You
began by saying that one report was false, Mrs. Cadwallader, and I believe this
is false too," said Dorothea, with indignant energy; "at least, I
feel sure it is a misrepresentation. I will not hear any evil spoken of Mr.
Ladislaw; he has already suffered too much injustice."
Dorothea
when thoroughly moved cared little what any one thought of her feelings; and
even if she had been able to reflect, she would have held it petty to keep
silence at injurious words about Will from fear of being herself misunderstood.
Her face was flushed and her lip trembled.
Sir
James, glancing at her, repented of his stratagem; but Mrs. Cadwallader, equal
to all occasions, spread the palms of her hands outward and said—"Heaven
grant it, my dear!—I mean that all bad tales about anybody may be false. But it
is a pity that young Lydgate should have married one of these Middlemarch
girls. Considering he's a son of somebody, he might have got a woman with good
blood in her veins, and not too young, who would have put up with his
profession. There's Clara Harfager, for instance, whose friends don't know what
to do with her; and she has a portion. Then we might have had her among us.
However!—it's no use being wise for other people. Where is Celia? Pray let us
go in."
"I
am going on immediately to Tipton," said Dorothea, rather haughtily.
"Good-by."
Sir James
could say nothing as he accompanied her to the carriage. He was altogether
discontented with the result of a contrivance which had cost him some secret
humiliation beforehand.
Dorothea
drove along between the berried hedgerows and the shorn corn-fields, not seeing
or hearing anything around. The tears came and rolled down her cheeks, but she
did not know it. The world, it seemed, was turning ugly and hateful, and there
was no place for her trustfulness. "It is not true—it is not true!"
was the voice within her that she listened to; but all the while a remembrance
to which there had always clung a vague uneasiness would thrust itself on her
attention—the remembrance of that day when she had found Will Ladislaw with
Mrs. Lydgate, and had heard his voice accompanied by the piano.
"He
said he would never do anything that I disapproved—I wish I could have told him
that I disapproved of that," said poor Dorothea, inwardly, feeling a
strange alternation between anger with Will and the passionate defence of him.
"They all try to blacken him before me; but I will care for no pain, if he
is not to blame. I always believed he was good."—These were her last
thoughts before she felt that the carriage was passing under the archway of the
lodge-gate at the Grange, when she hurriedly pressed her handkerchief to her
face and began to think of her errands. The coachman begged leave to take out
the horses for half an hour as there was something wrong with a shoe; and
Dorothea, having the sense that she was going to rest, took off her gloves and
bonnet, while she was leaning against a statue in the entrance-hall, and
talking to the housekeeper. At last she said—
"I
must stay here a little, Mrs. Kell. I will go into the library and write you
some memoranda from my uncle's letter, if you will open the shutters for
me."
"The
shutters are open, madam," said Mrs. Kell, following Dorothea, who had
walked along as she spoke. "Mr. Ladislaw is there, looking for
something."
(Will had
come to fetch a portfolio of his own sketches which he had missed in the act of
packing his movables, and did not choose to leave behind.)
Dorothea's
heart seemed to turn over as if it had had a blow, but she was not perceptibly
checked: in truth, the sense that Will was there was for the moment
all-satisfying to her, like the sight of something precious that one has lost.
When she reached the door she said to Mrs. Kell—
"Go
in first, and tell him that I am here."
Will had
found his portfolio, and had laid it on the table at the far end of the room,
to turn over the sketches and please himself by looking at the memorable piece
of art which had a relation to nature too mysterious for Dorothea. He was
smiling at it still, and shaking the sketches into order with the thought that
he might find a letter from her awaiting him at Middlemarch, when Mrs. Kell
close to his elbow said—
"Mrs.
Casaubon is coming in, sir."
Will
turned round quickly, and the next moment Dorothea was entering. As Mrs. Kell
closed the door behind her they met: each was looking at the other, and
consciousness was overflowed by something that suppressed utterance. It was not
confusion that kept them silent, for they both felt that parting was near, and
there is no shamefacedness in a sad parting.
She moved
automatically towards her uncle's chair against the writing-table, and Will,
after drawing it out a little for her, went a few paces off and stood opposite
to her.
"Pray
sit down," said Dorothea, crossing her hands on her lap; "I am very
glad you were here." Will thought that her face looked just as it did when
she first shook hands with him in Rome; for her widow's cap, fixed in her
bonnet, had gone off with it, and he could see that she had lately been
shedding tears. But the mixture of anger in her agitation had vanished at the
sight of him; she had been used, when they were face to face, always to feel
confidence and the happy freedom which comes with mutual understanding, and how
could other people's words hinder that effect on a sudden? Let the music which
can take possession of our frame and fill the air with joy for us, sound once
more—what does it signify that we heard it found fault with in its absence?
"I
have sent a letter to Lowick Manor to-day, asking leave to see you," said
Will, seating himself opposite to her. "I am going away immediately, and I
could not go without speaking to you again."
"I
thought we had parted when you came to Lowick many weeks ago—you thought you
were going then," said Dorothea, her voice trembling a little.
"Yes;
but I was in ignorance then of things which I know now—things which have
altered my feelings about the future. When I saw you before, I was dreaming
that I might come back some day. I don't think I ever shall—now." Will
paused here.
"You
wished me to know the reasons?" said Dorothea, timidly.
"Yes,"
said Will, impetuously, shaking his head backward, and looking away from her
with irritation in his face. "Of course I must wish it. I have been
grossly insulted in your eyes and in the eyes of others. There has been a mean
implication against my character. I wish you to know that under no
circumstances would I have lowered myself by—under no circumstances would I
have given men the chance of saying that I sought money under the pretext of
seeking—something else. There was no need of other safeguard against me—the
safeguard of wealth was enough."
Will rose
from his chair with the last word and went—he hardly knew where; but it was to
the projecting window nearest him, which had been open as now about the same
season a year ago, when he and Dorothea had stood within it and talked
together. Her whole heart was going out at this moment in sympathy with Will's
indignation: she only wanted to convince him that she had never done him
injustice, and he seemed to have turned away from her as if she too had been
part of the unfriendly world.
"It
would be very unkind of you to suppose that I ever attributed any meanness to
you," she began. Then in her ardent way, wanting to plead with him, she
moved from her chair and went in front of him to her old place in the window,
saying, "Do you suppose that I ever disbelieved in you?"
When Will
saw her there, he gave a start and moved backward out of the window, without
meeting her glance. Dorothea was hurt by this movement following up the
previous anger of his tone. She was ready to say that it was as hard on her as
on him, and that she was helpless; but those strange particulars of their
relation which neither of them could explicitly mention kept her always in
dread of saying too much. At this moment she had no belief that Will would in
any case have wanted to marry her, and she feared using words which might imply
such a belief. She only said earnestly, recurring to his last word—
"I
am sure no safeguard was ever needed against you."
Will did
not answer. In the stormy fluctuation of his feelings these words of hers
seemed to him cruelly neutral, and he looked pale and miserable after his angry
outburst. He went to the table and fastened up his portfolio, while Dorothea
looked at him from the distance. They were wasting these last moments together
in wretched silence. What could he say, since what had got obstinately
uppermost in his mind was the passionate love for her which he forbade himself
to utter? What could she say, since she might offer him no help—since she was
forced to keep the money that ought to have been his?—since to-day he seemed
not to respond as he used to do to her thorough trust and liking?
But Will
at last turned away from his portfolio and approached the window again.
"I
must go," he said, with that peculiar look of the eyes which sometimes
accompanies bitter feeling, as if they had been tired and burned with gazing
too close at a light.
"What
shall you do in life?" said Dorothea, timidly. "Have your intentions
remained just the same as when we said good-by before?"
"Yes,"
said Will, in a tone that seemed to waive the subject as uninteresting. "I
shall work away at the first thing that offers. I suppose one gets a habit of
doing without happiness or hope."
"Oh,
what sad words!" said Dorothea, with a dangerous tendency to sob. Then
trying to smile, she added, "We used to agree that we were alike in
speaking too strongly."
"I
have not spoken too strongly now," said Will, leaning back against the
angle of the wall. "There are certain things which a man can only go
through once in his life; and he must know some time or other that the best is
over with him. This experience has happened to me while I am very young—that is
all. What I care more for than I can ever care for anything else is absolutely
forbidden to me—I don't mean merely by being out of my reach, but forbidden me,
even if it were within my reach, by my own pride and honour—by everything I
respect myself for. Of course I shall go on living as a man might do who had
seen heaven in a trance."
Will
paused, imagining that it would be impossible for Dorothea to misunderstand
this; indeed he felt that he was contradicting himself and offending against
his self-approval in speaking to her so plainly; but still—it could not be
fairly called wooing a woman to tell her that he would never woo her. It must
be admitted to be a ghostly kind of wooing.
But
Dorothea's mind was rapidly going over the past with quite another vision than
his. The thought that she herself might be what Will most cared for did throb
through her an instant, but then came doubt: the memory of the little they had
lived through together turned pale and shrank before the memory which suggested
how much fuller might have been the intercourse between Will and some one else
with whom he had had constant companionship. Everything he had said might refer
to that other relation, and whatever had passed between him and herself was
thoroughly explained by what she had always regarded as their simple friendship
and the cruel obstruction thrust upon it by her husband's injurious act.
Dorothea stood silent, with her eyes cast down dreamily, while images crowded
upon her which left the sickening certainty that Will was referring to Mrs.
Lydgate. But why sickening? He wanted her to know that here too his conduct
should be above suspicion.
Will was
not surprised at her silence. His mind also was tumultuously busy while he
watched her, and he was feeling rather wildly that something must happen to
hinder their parting—some miracle, clearly nothing in their own deliberate
speech. Yet, after all, had she any love for him?—he could not pretend to himself
that he would rather believe her to be without that pain. He could not deny
that a secret longing for the assurance that she loved him was at the root of
all his words.
Neither
of them knew how long they stood in that way. Dorothea was raising her eyes,
and was about to speak, when the door opened and her footman came to say—
"The
horses are ready, madam, whenever you like to start."
"Presently,"
said Dorothea. Then turning to Will, she said, "I have some memoranda to
write for the housekeeper."
"I
must go," said Will, when the door had closed again—advancing towards her.
"The day after to-morrow I shall leave Middlemarch."
"You
have acted in every way rightly," said Dorothea, in a low tone, feeling a
pressure at her heart which made it difficult to speak.
She put
out her hand, and Will took it for an instant without speaking, for her words
had seemed to him cruelly cold and unlike herself. Their eyes met, but there
was discontent in his, and in hers there was only sadness. He turned away and took
his portfolio under his arm.
"I
have never done you injustice. Please remember me," said Dorothea,
repressing a rising sob.
"Why
should you say that?" said Will, with irritation. "As if I were not
in danger of forgetting everything else."
He had
really a movement of anger against her at that moment, and it impelled him to
go away without pause. It was all one flash to Dorothea—his last words—his
distant bow to her as he reached the door—the sense that he was no longer
there. She sank into the chair, and for a few moments sat like a statue, while
images and emotions were hurrying upon her. Joy came first, in spite of the
threatening train behind it—joy in the impression that it was really herself
whom Will loved and was renouncing, that there was really no other love less
permissible, more blameworthy, which honour was hurrying him away from. They
were parted all the same, but—Dorothea drew a deep breath and felt her strength
return—she could think of him unrestrainedly. At that moment the parting was
easy to bear: the first sense of loving and being loved excluded sorrow. It was
as if some hard icy pressure had melted, and her consciousness had room to
expand: her past was come back to her with larger interpretation. The joy was
not the less—perhaps it was the more complete just then—because of the
irrevocable parting; for there was no reproach, no contemptuous wonder to
imagine in any eye or from any lips. He had acted so as to defy reproach, and
make wonder respectful.
Any one
watching her might have seen that there was a fortifying thought within her.
Just as when inventive power is working with glad ease some small claim on the
attention is fully met as if it were only a cranny opened to the sunlight, it
was easy now for Dorothea to write her memoranda. She spoke her last words to
the housekeeper in cheerful tones, and when she seated herself in the carriage
her eyes were bright and her cheeks blooming under the dismal bonnet. She threw
back the heavy "weepers," and looked before her, wondering which road
Will had taken. It was in her nature to be proud that he was blameless, and
through all her feelings there ran this vein—"I was right to defend
him."
The
coachman was used to drive his grays at a good pace, Mr. Casaubon being
unenjoying and impatient in everything away from his desk, and wanting to get
to the end of all journeys; and Dorothea was now bowled along quickly. Driving
was pleasant, for rain in the night had laid the dust, and the blue sky looked
far off, away from the region of the great clouds that sailed in masses. The
earth looked like a happy place under the vast heavens, and Dorothea was
wishing that she might overtake Will and see him once more.
After a
turn of the road, there he was with the portfolio under his arm; but the next
moment she was passing him while he raised his hat, and she felt a pang at
being seated there in a sort of exaltation, leaving him behind. She could not
look back at him. It was as if a crowd of indifferent objects had thrust them
asunder, and forced them along different paths, taking them farther and farther
away from each other, and making it useless to look back. She could no more
make any sign that would seem to say, "Need we part?" than she could
stop the carriage to wait for him. Nay, what a world of reasons crowded upon
her against any movement of her thought towards a future that might reverse the
decision of this day!
"I
only wish I had known before—I wish he knew—then we could be quite happy in
thinking of each other, though we are forever parted. And if I could but have
given him the money, and made things easier for him!"—were the longings
that came back the most persistently. And yet, so heavily did the world weigh
on her in spite of her independent energy, that with this idea of Will as in
need of such help and at a disadvantage with the world, there came always the
vision of that unfittingness of any closer relation between them which lay in
the opinion of every one connected with her. She felt to the full all the
imperativeness of the motives which urged Will's conduct. How could he dream of
her defying the barrier that her husband had placed between them?—how could she
ever say to herself that she would defy it?
Will's
certainty as the carriage grew smaller in the distance, had much more
bitterness in it. Very slight matters were enough to gall him in his sensitive
mood, and the sight of Dorothea driving past him while he felt himself plodding
along as a poor devil seeking a position in a world which in his present temper
offered him little that he coveted, made his conduct seem a mere matter of
necessity, and took away the sustainment of resolve. After all, he had no
assurance that she loved him: could any man pretend that he was simply glad in
such a case to have the suffering all on his own side?
That
evening Will spent with the Lydgates; the next evening he was gone.
To be
continued
