MIDDLEMARCH
PART 40
BOOK VIII.
SUNSET AND SUNRISE.
CHAPTER LXXII.
Full souls are double mirrors, making
still
An endless vista of fair things before,
Repeating things behind.
Dorothea's
impetuous generosity, which would have leaped at once to the vindication of
Lydgate from the suspicion of having accepted money as a bribe, underwent a
melancholy check when she came to consider all the circumstances of the case by
the light of Mr. Farebrother's experience.
"It
is a delicate matter to touch," he said. "How can we begin to inquire
into it? It must be either publicly by setting the magistrate and coroner to
work, or privately by questioning Lydgate. As to the first proceeding there is
no solid ground to go upon, else Hawley would have adopted it; and as to
opening the subject with Lydgate, I confess I should shrink from it. He would
probably take it as a deadly insult. I have more than once experienced the
difficulty of speaking to him on personal matters. And—one should know the
truth about his conduct beforehand, to feel very confident of a good
result."
"I
feel convinced that his conduct has not been guilty: I believe that people are
almost always better than their neighbors think they are," said Dorothea.
Some of her intensest experience in the last two years had set her mind
strongly in opposition to any unfavorable construction of others; and for the
first time she felt rather discontented with Mr. Farebrother. She disliked this
cautious weighing of consequences, instead of an ardent faith in efforts of
justice and mercy, which would conquer by their emotional force. Two days
afterwards, he was dining at the Manor with her uncle and the Chettams, and
when the dessert was standing uneaten, the servants were out of the room, and
Mr. Brooke was nodding in a nap, she returned to the subject with renewed
vivacity.
"Mr.
Lydgate would understand that if his friends hear a calumny about him their
first wish must be to justify him. What do we live for, if it is not to make
life less difficult to each other? I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a
man who advised me in my trouble, and attended me in my illness."
Dorothea's
tone and manner were not more energetic than they had been when she was at the
head of her uncle's table nearly three years before, and her experience since
had given her more right to express a decided opinion. But Sir James Chettam
was no longer the diffident and acquiescent suitor: he was the anxious
brother-in-law, with a devout admiration for his sister, but with a constant
alarm lest she should fall under some new illusion almost as bad as marrying
Casaubon. He smiled much less; when he said "Exactly" it was more
often an introduction to a dissentient opinion than in those submissive
bachelor days; and Dorothea found to her surprise that she had to resolve not
to be afraid of him—all the more because he was really her best friend. He
disagreed with her now.
"But,
Dorothea," he said, remonstrantly, "you can't undertake to manage a
man's life for him in that way. Lydgate must know—at least he will soon come to
know how he stands. If he can clear himself, he will. He must act for
himself."
"I
think his friends must wait till they find an opportunity," added Mr.
Farebrother. "It is possible—I have often felt so much weakness in myself
that I can conceive even a man of honourable disposition, such as I have always
believed Lydgate to be, succumbing to such a temptation as that of accepting
money which was offered more or less indirectly as a bribe to insure his
silence about scandalous facts long gone by. I say, I can conceive this, if he
were under the pressure of hard circumstances—if he had been harassed as I feel
sure Lydgate has been. I would not believe anything worse of him except under
stringent proof. But there is the terrible Nemesis following on some errors,
that it is always possible for those who like it to interpret them into a crime:
there is no proof in favour of the man outside his own consciousness and
assertion."
"Oh,
how cruel!" said Dorothea, clasping her hands. "And would you not
like to be the one person who believed in that man's innocence, if the rest of
the world belied him? Besides, there is a man's character beforehand to speak
for him."
"But,
my dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling gently at her
ardour, "character is not cut in marble—it is not something solid and
unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as
our bodies do."
"Then
it may be rescued and healed," said Dorothea "I should not be afraid
of asking Mr. Lydgate to tell me the truth, that I might help him. Why should I
be afraid? Now that I am not to have the land, James, I might do as Mr.
Bulstrode proposed, and take his place in providing for the Hospital; and I
have to consult Mr. Lydgate, to know thoroughly what are the prospects of doing
good by keeping up the present plans. There is the best opportunity in the
world for me to ask for his confidence; and he would be able to tell me things
which might make all the circumstances clear. Then we would all stand by him
and bring him out of his trouble. People glorify all sorts of bravery except
the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors."
Dorothea's eyes had a moist brightness in them, and the changed tones of her
voice roused her uncle, who began to listen.
"It
is true that a woman may venture on some efforts of sympathy which would hardly
succeed if we men undertook them," said Mr. Farebrother, almost converted
by Dorothea's ardour.
"Surely,
a woman is bound to be cautious and listen to those who know the world better
than she does." said Sir James, with his little frown. "Whatever you
do in the end, Dorothea, you should really keep back at present, and not
volunteer any meddling with this Bulstrode business. We don't know yet what may
turn up. You must agree with me?" he ended, looking at Mr. Farebrother.
"I
do think it would be better to wait," said the latter.
"Yes,
yes, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, not quite knowing at what point the
discussion had arrived, but coming up to it with a contribution which was
generally appropriate. "It is easy to go too far, you know. You must not
let your ideas run away with you. And as to being in a hurry to put money into
schemes—it won't do, you know. Garth has drawn me in uncommonly with repairs,
draining, that sort of thing: I'm uncommonly out of pocket with one thing or
another. I must pull up. As for you, Chettam, you are spending a fortune on
those oak fences round your demesne."
Dorothea,
submitting uneasily to this discouragement, went with Celia into the library,
which was her usual drawing-room.
"Now,
Dodo, do listen to what James says," said Celia, "else you will be
getting into a scrape. You always did, and you always will, when you set about
doing as you please. And I think it is a mercy now after all that you have got
James to think for you. He lets you have your plans, only he hinders you from
being taken in. And that is the good of having a brother instead of a husband.
A husband would not let you have your plans."
"As
if I wanted a husband!" said Dorothea. "I only want not to have my
feelings checked at every turn." Mrs. Casaubon was still undisciplined
enough to burst into angry tears.
"Now,
really, Dodo," said Celia, with rather a deeper guttural than usual,
"you are contradictory: first one thing and then another. You used
to submit to Mr. Casaubon quite shamefully: I think you would have given up
ever coming to see me if he had asked you."
"Of
course I submitted to him, because it was my duty; it was my feeling for
him," said Dorothea, looking through the prism of her tears.
"Then
why can't you think it your duty to submit a little to what James wishes?"
said Celia, with a sense of stringency in her argument. "Because he only
wishes what is for your own good. And, of course, men know best about
everything, except what women know better." Dorothea laughed and forgot
her tears.
"Well,
I mean about babies and those things," explained Celia. "I should not
give up to James when I knew he was wrong, as you used to do to Mr.
Casaubon."
CHAPTER LXXIII.
Pity the laden one; this wandering woe
May visit you and me.
When
Lydgate had allayed Mrs. Bulstrode's anxiety by telling her that her husband
had been seized with faintness at the meeting, but that he trusted soon to see
him better and would call again the next day, unless she sent for him earlier,
he went directly home, got on his horse, and rode three miles out of the town
for the sake of being out of reach.
He felt
himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if raging under the pain of
stings: he was ready to curse the day on which he had come to Middlemarch.
Everything that bad happened to him there seemed a mere preparation for this
hateful fatality, which had come as a blight on his honourable ambition, and
must make even people who had only vulgar standards regard his reputation as
irrevocably damaged. In such moments a man can hardly escape being unloving.
Lydgate thought of himself as the sufferer, and of others as the agents who had
injured his lot. He had meant everything to turn out differently; and others
had thrust themselves into his life and thwarted his purposes. His marriage
seemed an unmitigated calamity; and he was afraid of going to Rosamond before
he had vented himself in this solitary rage, lest the mere sight of her should
exasperate him and make him behave unwarrantably. There are episodes in most
men's lives in which their highest qualities can only cast a deterring shadow
over the objects that fill their inward vision: Lydgate's tenderheartedness was
present just then only as a dread lest he should offend against it, not as an
emotion that swayed him to tenderness. For he was very miserable. Only those
who know the supremacy of the intellectual life—the life which has a seed of
ennobling thought and purpose within it—can understand the grief of one who
falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly
annoyances.
How was
he to live on without vindicating himself among people who suspected him of
baseness? How could he go silently away from Middlemarch as if he were
retreating before a just condemnation? And yet how was he to set about
vindicating himself?
For that
scene at the meeting, which he had just witnessed, although it had told him no
particulars, had been enough to make his own situation thoroughly clear to him.
Bulstrode had been in dread of scandalous disclosures on the part of Raffles.
Lydgate could now construct all the probabilities of the case. "He was
afraid of some betrayal in my hearing: all he wanted was to bind me to him by a
strong obligation: that was why he passed on a sudden from hardness to
liberality. And he may have tampered with the patient—he may have disobeyed my
orders. I fear he did. But whether he did or not, the world believes that he
somehow or other poisoned the man and that I winked at the crime, if I didn't
help in it. And yet—and yet he may not be guilty of the last offence; and it is
just possible that the change towards me may have been a genuine relenting—the
effect of second thoughts such as he alleged. What we call the 'just possible'
is sometimes true and the thing we find it easier to believe is grossly false.
In his last dealings with this man Bulstrode may have kept his hands pure, in
spite of my suspicion to the contrary."
There was
a benumbing cruelty in his position. Even if he renounced every other
consideration than that of justifying himself—if he met shrugs, cold glances,
and avoidance as an accusation, and made a public statement of all the facts as
he knew them, who would be convinced? It would be playing the part of a fool to
offer his own testimony on behalf of himself, and say, "I did not take the
money as a bribe." The circumstances would always be stronger than his
assertion. And besides, to come forward and tell everything about himself must
include declarations about Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions of
others against him. He must tell that he had not known of Raffles's existence
when he first mentioned his pressing need of money to Bulstrode, and that he
took the money innocently as a result of that communication, not knowing that a
new motive for the loan might have arisen on his being called in to this man.
And after all, the suspicion of Bulstrode's motives might be unjust.
But then
came the question whether he should have acted in precisely the same way if he
had not taken the money? Certainly, if Raffles had continued alive and
susceptible of further treatment when he arrived, and he had then imagined any
disobedience to his orders on the part of Bulstrode, he would have made a
strict inquiry, and if his conjecture had been verified he would have thrown up
the case, in spite of his recent heavy obligation. But if he had not received
any money—if Bulstrode had never revoked his cold recommendation of
bankruptcy—would he, Lydgate, have abstained from all inquiry even on finding
the man dead?—would the shrinking from an insult to Bulstrode—would the
dubiousness of all medical treatment and the argument that his own treatment
would pass for the wrong with most members of his profession—have had just the
same force or significance with him?
That was
the uneasy corner of Lydgate's consciousness while he was reviewing the facts
and resisting all reproach. If he had been independent, this matter of a
patient's treatment and the distinct rule that he must do or see done that
which he believed best for the life committed to him, would have been the point
on which he would have been the sturdiest. As it was, he had rested in the
consideration that disobedience to his orders, however it might have arisen,
could not be considered a crime, that in the dominant opinion obedience to his orders
was just as likely to be fatal, and that the affair was simply one of
etiquette. Whereas, again and again, in his time of freedom, he had denounced
the perversion of pathological doubt into moral doubt and had said—"the
purest experiment in treatment may still be conscientious: my business is to
take care of life, and to do the best I can think of for it. Science is
properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the
very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience
alive." Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company
of money obligation and selfish respects.
"Is
there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who would question himself as I
do?" said poor Lydgate, with a renewed outburst of rebellion against the
oppression of his lot. "And yet they will all feel warranted in making a
wide space between me and them, as if I were a leper! My practice and my
reputation are utterly damned—I can see that. Even if I could be cleared by
valid evidence, it would make little difference to the blessed world here. I
have been set down as tainted and should be cheapened to them all the
same."
Already
there had been abundant signs which had hitherto puzzled him, that just when he
had been paying off his debts and getting cheerfully on his feet, the townsmen
were avoiding him or looking strangely at him, and in two instances it came to
his knowledge that patients of his had called in another practitioner. The
reasons were too plain now. The general black-balling had begun.
No wonder
that in Lydgate's energetic nature the sense of a hopeless misconstruction
easily turned into a dogged resistance. The scowl which occasionally showed
itself on his square brow was not a meaningless accident. Already when he was
re-entering the town after that ride taken in the first hours of stinging pain,
he was setting his mind on remaining in Middlemarch in spite of the worst that
could be done against him. He would not retreat before calumny, as if he
submitted to it. He would face it to the utmost, and no act of his should show
that he was afraid. It belonged to the generosity as well as defiant force of
his nature that he resolved not to shrink from showing to the full his sense of
obligation to Bulstrode. It was true that the association with this man had
been fatal to him—true that if he had had the thousand pounds still in his
hands with all his debts unpaid he would have returned the money to Bulstrode,
and taken beggary rather than the rescue which had been sullied with the
suspicion of a bribe (for, remember, he was one of the proudest among the sons
of men)—nevertheless, he would not turn away from this crushed fellow-mortal
whose aid he had used, and make a pitiful effort to get acquittal for himself
by howling against another. "I shall do as I think right, and explain to
nobody. They will try to starve me out, but—" he was going on with an obstinate
resolve, but he was getting near home, and the thought of Rosamond urged itself
again into that chief place from which it had been thrust by the agonized
struggles of wounded honour and pride.
How would
Rosamond take it all? Here was another weight of chain to drag, and poor
Lydgate was in a bad mood for bearing her dumb mastery. He had no impulse to
tell her the trouble which must soon be common to them both. He preferred
waiting for the incidental disclosure which events must soon bring about.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
"Mercifully grant that we may grow
aged together."
—BOOK OF
TOBIT: Marriage Prayer.
In
Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant that the town held a bad
opinion of her husband. No feminine intimate might carry her friendship so far
as to make a plain statement to the wife of the unpleasant fact known or
believed about her husband; but when a woman with her thoughts much at leisure
got them suddenly employed on something grievously disadvantageous to her
neighbors, various moral impulses were called into play which tended to
stimulate utterance. Candour was one. To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology,
meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did
not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position;
and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion. Then, again,
there was the love of truth—a wide phrase, but meaning in this relation, a
lively objection to seeing a wife look happier than her husband's character
warranted, or manifest too much satisfaction in her lot—the poor thing should
have some hint given her that if she knew the truth she would have less
complacency in her bonnet, and in light dishes for a supper-party. Stronger than
all, there was the regard for a friend's moral improvement, sometimes called
her soul, which was likely to be benefited by remarks tending to gloom, uttered
with the accompaniment of pensive staring at the furniture and a manner
implying that the speaker would not tell what was on her mind, from regard to
the feelings of her hearer. On the whole, one might say that an ardent charity
was at work setting the virtuous mind to make a neighbour unhappy for her good.
There
were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose matrimonial misfortunes would in
different ways be likely to call forth more of this moral activity than
Rosamond and her aunt Bulstrode. Mrs. Bulstrode was not an object of dislike,
and had never consciously injured any human being. Men had always thought her a
handsome comfortable woman, and had reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode's
hypocrisy that he had chosen a red-blooded Vincy, instead of a ghastly and
melancholy person suited to his low esteem for earthly pleasure. When the
scandal about her husband was disclosed they remarked of her—"Ah, poor
woman! She's as honest as the day—she never suspected anything wrong in
him, you may depend on it." Women, who were intimate with her, talked
together much of "poor Harriet," imagined what her feelings must be
when she came to know everything, and conjectured how much she had already come
to know. There was no spiteful disposition towards her; rather, there was a
busy benevolence anxious to ascertain what it would be well for her to feel and
do under the circumstances, which of course kept the imagination occupied with
her character and history from the times when she was Harriet Vincy till now.
With the review of Mrs. Bulstrode and her position it was inevitable to
associate Rosamond, whose prospects were under the same blight with her aunt's.
Rosamond was more severely criticised and less pitied, though she too, as one
of the good old Vincy family who had always been known in Middlemarch, was
regarded as a victim to marriage with an interloper. The Vincys had their
weaknesses, but then they lay on the surface: there was never anything bad to
be "found out" concerning them. Mrs. Bulstrode was vindicated from
any resemblance to her husband. Harriet's faults were her own.
"She
has always been showy," said Mrs. Hackbutt, making tea for a small party,
"though she has got into the way of putting her religion forward, to
conform to her husband; she has tried to hold her head up above Middlemarch by
making it known that she invites clergymen and heaven-knows-who from Riverston
and those places."
"We
can hardly blame her for that," said Mrs. Sprague; "because few of
the best people in the town cared to associate with Bulstrode, and she must
have somebody to sit down at her table."
"Mr.
Thesiger has always countenanced him," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "I think
he must be sorry now."
"But
he was never fond of him in his heart—that every one knows," said Mrs. Tom
Toller. "Mr. Thesiger never goes into extremes. He keeps to the truth in what
is evangelical. It is only clergymen like Mr. Tyke, who want to use Dissenting
hymn-books and that low kind of religion, who ever found Bulstrode to their
taste."
"I
understand, Mr. Tyke is in great distress about him," said Mrs. Hackbutt.
"And well he may be: they say the Bulstrodes have half kept the Tyke
family."
"And
of course it is a discredit to his doctrines," said Mrs. Sprague, who was
elderly, and old-fashioned in her opinions.
"People
will not make a boast of being methodistical in Middlemarch for a good while to
come."
"I
think we must not set down people's bad actions to their religion," said
falcon-faced Mrs. Plymdale, who had been listening hitherto.
"Oh,
my dear, we are forgetting," said Mrs. Sprague. "We ought not to be
talking of this before you."
"I
am sure I have no reason to be partial," said Mrs. Plymdale, coloring.
"It's true Mr. Plymdale has always been on good terms with Mr. Bulstrode,
and Harriet Vincy was my friend long before she married him. But I have always
kept my own opinions and told her where she was wrong, poor thing. Still, in
point of religion, I must say, Mr. Bulstrode might have done what he has, and
worse, and yet have been a man of no religion. I don't say that there has not
been a little too much of that—I like moderation myself. But truth is truth.
The men tried at the assizes are not all over-religious, I suppose."
"Well,"
said Mrs. Hackbutt, wheeling adroitly, "all I can say is, that I think she
ought to separate from him."
"I
can't say that," said Mrs. Sprague. "She took him for better or
worse, you know."
"But
'worse' can never mean finding out that your husband is fit for Newgate,"
said Mrs. Hackbutt. "Fancy living with such a man! I should expect to be
poisoned."
"Yes,
I think myself it is an encouragement to crime if such men are to be taken care
of and waited on by good wives," said Mrs. Tom Toller.
"And
a good wife poor Harriet has been," said Mrs. Plymdale. "She thinks
her husband the first of men. It's true he has never denied her anything."
"Well,
we shall see what she will do," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "I suppose she
knows nothing yet, poor creature. I do hope and trust I shall not see her, for
I should be frightened to death lest I should say anything about her husband.
Do you think any hint has reached her?"
"I
should hardly think so," said Mrs. Tom Toller. "We hear that he is
ill, and has never stirred out of the house since the meeting on Thursday; but
she was with her girls at church yesterday, and they had new Tuscan bonnets.
Her own had a feather in it. I have never seen that her religion made any
difference in her dress."
"She
wears very neat patterns always," said Mrs. Plymdale, a little stung.
"And that feather I know she got dyed a pale lavender on purpose to be
consistent. I must say it of Harriet that she wishes to do right."
"As
to her knowing what has happened, it can't be kept from her long," said
Mrs. Hackbutt. "The Vincys know, for Mr. Vincy was at the meeting. It will
be a great blow to him. There is his daughter as well as his sister."
"Yes,
indeed," said Mrs. Sprague. "Nobody supposes that Mr. Lydgate can go
on holding up his head in Middlemarch, things look so black about the thousand
pounds he took just at that man's death. It really makes one shudder."
"Pride
must have a fall," said Mrs. Hackbutt.
"I
am not so sorry for Rosamond Vincy that was as I am for her aunt," said
Mrs. Plymdale. "She needed a lesson."
"I
suppose the Bulstrodes will go and live abroad somewhere," said Mrs.
Sprague. "That is what is generally done when there is anything
disgraceful in a family."
"And
a most deadly blow it will be to Harriet," said Mrs. Plymdale. "If
ever a woman was crushed, she will be. I pity her from my heart. And with all
her faults, few women are better. From a girl she had the neatest ways, and was
always good-hearted, and as open as the day. You might look into her drawers
when you would—always the same. And so she has brought up Kate and Ellen. You
may think how hard it will be for her to go among foreigners."
"The
doctor says that is what he should recommend the Lydgates to do," said
Mrs. Sprague. "He says Lydgate ought to have kept among the French."
"That
would suit her well enough, I dare say," said Mrs. Plymdale;
"there is that kind of lightness about her. But she got that from her
mother; she never got it from her aunt Bulstrode, who always gave her good
advice, and to my knowledge would rather have had her marry elsewhere."
Mrs.
Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some complication of feeling.
There had been not only her intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode, but also a profitable
business relation of the great Plymdale dyeing house with Mr. Bulstrode, which
on the one hand would have inclined her to desire that the mildest view of his
character should be the true one, but on the other, made her the more afraid of
seeming to palliate his culpability. Again, the late alliance of her family
with the Tollers had brought her in connection with the best circle, which
gratified her in every direction except in the inclination to those serious
views which she believed to be the best in another sense. The sharp little
woman's conscience was somewhat troubled in the adjustment of these opposing
"bests," and of her griefs and satisfactions under late events, which
were likely to humble those who needed humbling, but also to fall heavily on
her old friend whose faults she would have preferred seeing on a background of
prosperity.
Poor Mrs.
Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further shaken by the oncoming tread of
calamity than in the busier stirring of that secret uneasiness which had always
been present in her since the last visit of Raffles to The Shrubs. That the
hateful man had come ill to Stone Court, and that her husband had chosen to
remain there and watch over him, she allowed to be explained by the fact that
Raffles had been employed and aided in earlier-days, and that this made a tie
of benevolence towards him in his degraded helplessness; and she had been since
then innocently cheered by her husband's more hopeful speech about his own
health and ability to continue his attention to business. The calm was
disturbed when Lydgate had brought him home ill from the meeting, and in spite
of comforting assurances during the next few days, she cried in private from
the conviction that her husband was not suffering from bodily illness merely,
but from something that afflicted his mind. He would not allow her to read to
him, and scarcely to sit with him, alleging nervous susceptibility to sounds
and movements; yet she suspected that in shutting himself up in his private
room he wanted to be busy with his papers. Something, she felt sure, had
happened. Perhaps it was some great loss of money; and she was kept in the
dark. Not daring to question her husband, she said to Lydgate, on the fifth day
after the meeting, when she had not left home except to go to church—
"Mr.
Lydgate, pray be open with me: I like to know the truth. Has anything happened
to Mr. Bulstrode?"
"Some
little nervous shock," said Lydgate, evasively. He felt that it was not
for him to make the painful revelation.
"But
what brought it on?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking directly at him with her
large dark eyes.
"There
is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms," said Lydgate.
"Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people in proportion to the
delicacy of their systems. It is often impossible to account for the precise
moment of an attack—or rather, to say why the strength gives way at a
particular moment."
Mrs.
Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer. There remained in her the belief
that some calamity had befallen her husband, of which she was to be kept in
ignorance; and it was in her nature strongly to object to such concealment. She
begged leave for her daughters to sit with their father, and drove into the
town to pay some visits, conjecturing that if anything were known to have gone
wrong in Mr. Bulstrode's affairs, she should see or hear some sign of it.
She
called on Mrs. Thesiger, who was not at home, and then drove to Mrs. Hackbutt's
on the other side of the churchyard. Mrs. Hackbutt saw her coming from an
up-stairs window, and remembering her former alarm lest she should meet Mrs.
Bulstrode, felt almost bound in consistency to send word that she was not at
home; but against that, there was a sudden strong desire within her for the
excitement of an interview in which she was quite determined not to make the
slightest allusion to what was in her mind.
Hence
Mrs. Bulstrode was shown into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Hackbutt went to her,
with more tightness of lip and rubbing of her hands than was usually observable
in her, these being precautions adopted against freedom of speech. She was
resolved not to ask how Mr. Bulstrode was.
"I
have not been anywhere except to church for nearly a week," said Mrs.
Bulstrode, after a few introductory remarks. "But Mr. Bulstrode was taken
so ill at the meeting on Thursday that I have not liked to leave the
house."
Mrs.
Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other held against
her chest, and let her eyes ramble over the pattern on the rug.
"Was
Mr. Hackbutt at the meeting?" persevered Mrs. Bulstrode.
"Yes,
he was," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with the same attitude. "The land is to
be bought by subscription, I believe."
"Let
us hope that there will be no more cases of cholera to be buried in it,"
said Mrs. Bulstrode. "It is an awful visitation. But I always think
Middlemarch a very healthy spot. I suppose it is being used to it from a child;
but I never saw the town I should like to live at better, and especially our
end."
"I
am sure I should be glad that you always should live at Middlemarch, Mrs.
Bulstrode," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with a slight sigh. "Still, we must
learn to resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be cast. Though I am sure there
will always be people in this town who will wish you well."
Mrs. Hackbutt
longed to say, "if you take my advice you will part from your
husband," but it seemed clear to her that the poor woman knew nothing of
the thunder ready to bolt on her head, and she herself could do no more than
prepare her a little. Mrs. Bulstrode felt suddenly rather chill and trembling:
there was evidently something unusual behind this speech of Mrs. Hackbutt's;
but though she had set out with the desire to be fully informed, she found
herself unable now to pursue her brave purpose, and turning the conversation by
an inquiry about the young Hackbutts, she soon took her leave saying that she
was going to see Mrs. Plymdale. On her way thither she tried to imagine that
there might have been some unusually warm sparring at the meeting between Mr.
Bulstrode and some of his frequent opponents—perhaps Mr. Hackbutt might have
been one of them. That would account for everything.
But when
she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that comforting explanation seemed
no longer tenable. "Selina" received her with a pathetic
affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers on the commonest
topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary quarrel of which the
most important consequence was a perturbation of Mr. Bulstrode's health.
Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought that she would sooner question Mrs.
Plymdale than any one else; but she found to her surprise that an old friend is
not always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of: there was the
barrier of remembered communication under other circumstances—there was the
dislike of being pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow her
the superiority. For certain words of mysterious appropriateness that Mrs.
Plymdale let fall about her resolution never to turn her back on her friends,
convinced Mrs. Bulstrode that what had happened must be some kind of
misfortune, and instead of being able to say with her native directness,
"What is it that you have in your mind?" she found herself anxious to
get away before she had heard anything more explicit. She began to have an
agitating certainty that the misfortune was something more than the mere loss
of money, being keenly sensitive to the fact that Selina now, just as Mrs.
Hackbutt had done before, avoided noticing what she said about her husband, as
they would have avoided noticing a personal blemish.
She said
good-by with nervous haste, and told the coachman to drive to Mr. Vincy's
warehouse. In that short drive her dread gathered so much force from the sense
of darkness, that when she entered the private counting-house where her brother
sat at his desk, her knees trembled and her usually florid face was deathly
pale. Something of the same effect was produced in him by the sight of her: he
rose from his seat to meet her, took her by the hand, and said, with his
impulsive rashness—
"God
help you, Harriet! you know all."
That
moment was perhaps worse than any which came after. It contained that
concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion reveals the bias of a
nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which will end an intermediate
struggle. Without that memory of Raffles she might still have thought only of
monetary ruin, but now along with her brother's look and words there darted
into her mind the idea of some guilt in her husband—then, under the working of
terror came the image of her husband exposed to disgrace—and then, after an
instant of scorching shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world, with
one leap of her heart she was at his side in mournful but unreproaching
fellowship with shame and isolation. All this went on within her in a mere
flash of time—while she sank into the chair, and raised her eyes to her
brother, who stood over her. "I know nothing, Walter. What is it?"
she said, faintly.
He told
her everything, very inartificially, in slow fragments, making her aware that
the scandal went much beyond proof, especially as to the end of Raffles.
"People
will talk," he said. "Even if a man has been acquitted by a jury,
they'll talk, and nod and wink—and as far as the world goes, a man might often
as well be guilty as not. It's a breakdown blow, and it damages Lydgate as much
as Bulstrode. I don't pretend to say what is the truth. I only wish we had
never heard the name of either Bulstrode or Lydgate. You'd better have been a
Vincy all your life, and so had Rosamond." Mrs. Bulstrode made no reply.
"But
you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet. People don't blame you.
And I'll stand by you whatever you make up your mind to do," said the
brother, with rough but well-meaning affectionateness.
"Give
me your arm to the carriage, Walter," said Mrs. Bulstrode. "I feel
very weak."
And when
she got home she was obliged to say to her daughter, "I am not well, my
dear; I must go and lie down. Attend to your papa. Leave me in quiet. I shall
take no dinner."
She
locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her maimed
consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk steadily to the
place allotted her. A new searching light had fallen on her husband's
character, and she could not judge him leniently: the twenty years in which she
had believed in him and venerated him by virtue of his concealments came back
with particulars that made them seem an odious deceit. He had married her with
that bad past life hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his
innocence of the worst that was imputed to him. Her honest ostentatious nature
made the sharing of a merited dishonour as bitter as it could be to any mortal.
But this
imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and habits were an odd patchwork, had a
loyal spirit within her. The man whose prosperity she had shared through nearly
half a life, and who had unvaryingly cherished her—now that punishment had befallen
him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake him. There is a
forsaking which still sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with
the forsaken soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. She knew, when
she locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down to her unhappy
husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will mourn and not
reproach. But she needed time to gather up her strength; she needed to sob out
her farewell to all the gladness and pride of her life. When she had resolved
to go down, she prepared herself by some little acts which might seem mere
folly to a hard onlooker; they were her way of expressing to all spectators
visible or invisible that she had begun a new life in which she embraced humiliation.
She took off all her ornaments and put on a plain black gown, and instead of
wearing her much-adorned cap and large bows of hair, she brushed her hair down
and put on a plain bonnet-cap, which made her look suddenly like an early
Methodist.
Bulstrode,
who knew that his wife had been out and had come in saying that she was not
well, had spent the time in an agitation equal to hers. He had looked forward
to her learning the truth from others, and had acquiesced in that probability,
as something easier to him than any confession. But now that he imagined the
moment of her knowledge come, he awaited the result in anguish. His daughters
had been obliged to consent to leave him, and though he had allowed some food
to be brought to him, he had not touched it. He felt himself perishing slowly
in unpitied misery. Perhaps he should never see his wife's face with affection
in it again. And if he turned to God there seemed to be no answer but the
pressure of retribution.
It was
eight o'clock in the evening before the door opened and his wife entered. He
dared not look up at her. He sat with his eyes bent down, and as she went
towards him she thought he looked smaller—he seemed so withered and shrunken. A
movement of new compassion and old tenderness went through her like a great
wave, and putting one hand on his which rested on the arm of the chair, and the
other on his shoulder, she said, solemnly but kindly—
"Look
up, Nicholas."
He raised
his eyes with a little start and looked at her half amazed for a moment: her
pale face, her changed, mourning dress, the trembling about her mouth, all
said, "I know;" and her hands and eyes rested gently on him. He burst
out crying and they cried together, she sitting at his side. They could not yet
speak to each other of the shame which she was bearing with him, or of the acts
which had brought it down on them. His confession was silent, and her promise
of faithfulness was silent. Open-minded as she was, she nevertheless shrank
from the words which would have expressed their mutual consciousness, as she
would have shrunk from flakes of fire. She could not say, "How much is
only slander and false suspicion?" and he did not say, "I am
innocent."
To be
continued
