Bot-S: Middlemarch

This sore susceptibility in relation to Dorothea was thoroughly
prepared before Will Ladislaw had returned to Lowick, and what had
occurred since then had brought Mr. Casaubon's power of suspicious
construction into exasperated activity.  To all the facts which he
knew, he added imaginary facts both present and future which became
more real to him than those because they called up a stronger dislike,
a more predominating bitterness.  Suspicion and jealousy of Will
Ladislaw's intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Dorothea's
impressions, were constantly at their weaving work.  It would be quite
unjust to him to suppose that he could have entered into any coarse
misinterpretation of Dorothea: his own habits of mind and conduct,
quite as much as the open elevation of her nature, saved him from any
such mistake.  What he was jealous of was her opinion, the sway that
might be given to her ardent mind in its judgments, and the future
possibilities to which these might lead her.  As to Will, though until
his last defiant letter he had nothing definite which he would choose
formally to allege against him, he felt himself warranted in believing
that he was capable of any design which could fascinate a rebellious
temper and an undisciplined impulsiveness.  He was quite sure that
Dorothea was the cause of Will's return from Rome, and his
determination to settle in the neighborhood; and he was penetrating
enough to imagine that Dorothea had innocently encouraged this course.
It was as clear as possible that she was ready to be attached to Will
and to be pliant to his suggestions: they had never had a tete-a-tete
without her bringing away from it some new troublesome impression, and
the last interview that Mr. Casaubon was aware of (Dorothea, on
returning from Freshitt Hall, had for the first time been silent about
having seen Will) had led to a scene which roused an angrier feeling
against them both than he had ever known before.  Dorothea's outpouring
of her notions about money, in the darkness of the night, had done
nothing but bring a mixture of more odious foreboding into her
husband's mind.

And there was the shock lately given to his health always sadly present
with him.  He was certainly much revived; he had recovered all his
usual power of work: the illness might have been mere fatigue, and
there might still be twenty years of achievement before him, which
would justify the thirty years of preparation.  That prospect was made
the sweeter by a flavor of vengeance against the hasty sneers of Carp &
Company; for even when Mr. Casaubon was carrying his taper among the
tombs of the past, those modern figures came athwart the dim light, and
interrupted his diligent exploration.  To convince Carp of his mistake,
so that he would have to eat his own words with a good deal of
indigestion, would be an agreeable accident of triumphant authorship,
which the prospect of living to future ages on earth and to all
eternity in heaven could not exclude from contemplation.  Since, thus,
the prevision of his own unending bliss could not nullify the bitter
savors of irritated jealousy and vindictiveness, it is the less
surprising that the probability of a transient earthly bliss for other
persons, when he himself should have entered into glory, had not a
potently sweetening effect.  If the truth should be that some
undermining disease was at work within him, there might be large
opportunity for some people to be the happier when he was gone; and if
one of those people should be Will Ladislaw, Mr. Casaubon objected so
strongly that it seemed as if the annoyance would make part of his
disembodied existence.

This is a very bare and therefore a very incomplete way of putting the
case.  The human soul moves in many channels, and Mr. Casaubon, we
know, had a sense of rectitude and an honorable pride in satisfying the
requirements of honor, which compelled him to find other reasons for
his conduct than those of jealousy and vindictiveness.  The way in
which Mr. Casaubon put the case was this:--"In marrying Dorothea Brooke
I had to care for her well-being in case of my death.  But well-being
is not to be secured by ample, independent possession of property; on
the contrary, occasions might arise in which such possession might
expose her to the more danger.  She is ready prey to any man who knows
how to play adroitly either on her affectionate ardor or her Quixotic
enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that very intention in his mind--a
man with no other principle than transient caprice, and who has a
personal animosity towards me--I am sure of it--an animosity which is
fed by the consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has
constantly vented in ridicule of which I am as well assured as if I had
heard it.  Even if I live I shall not be without uneasiness as to what
he may attempt through indirect influence.  This man has gained
Dorothea's ear: he has fascinated her attention; he has evidently tried
to impress her mind with the notion that he has claims beyond anything
I have done for him.  If I die--and he is waiting here on the watch for
that--he will persuade her to marry him.  That would be calamity for
her and success for him.  _She_ would not think it calamity: he would
make her believe anything; she has a tendency to immoderate attachment
which she inwardly reproaches me for not responding to, and already her
mind is occupied with his fortunes.  He thinks of an easy conquest and
of entering into my nest.  That I will hinder! Such a marriage would be
fatal to Dorothea.  Has he ever persisted in anything except from
contradiction?  In knowledge he has always tried to be showy at small
cost.  In religion he could be, as long as it suited him, the facile
echo of Dorothea's vagaries.  When was sciolism ever dissociated from
laxity?  I utterly distrust his morals, and it is my duty to hinder to
the utmost the fulfilment of his designs."

The arrangements made by Mr. Casaubon on his marriage left strong
measures open to him, but in ruminating on them his mind inevitably
dwelt so much on the probabilities of his own life that the longing to
get the nearest possible calculation had at last overcome his proud
reticence, and had determined him to ask Lydgate's opinion as to the
nature of his illness.

He had mentioned to Dorothea that Lydgate was coming by appointment at
half-past three, and in answer to her anxious question, whether he had
felt ill, replied,--"No, I merely wish to have his opinion concerning
some habitual symptoms.  You need not see him, my dear.  I shall give
orders that he may be sent to me in the Yew-tree Walk, where I shall be
taking my usual exercise."

When Lydgate entered the Yew-tree Walk he saw Mr. Casaubon slowly
receding with his hands behind him according to his habit, and his head
bent forward.  It was a lovely afternoon; the leaves from the lofty
limes were falling silently across the sombre evergreens, while the
lights and shadows slept side by side: there was no sound but the
cawing of the rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that
last solemn lullaby, a dirge.  Lydgate, conscious of an energetic frame
in its prime, felt some compassion when the figure which he was likely
soon to overtake turned round, and in advancing towards him showed more
markedly than ever the signs of premature age--the student's bent
shoulders, the emaciated limbs, and the melancholy lines of the mouth.
"Poor fellow," he thought, "some men with his years are like lions; one
can tell nothing of their age except that they are full grown."

"Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, with his invariably polite air, "I am
exceedingly obliged to you for your punctuality.  We will, if you
please, carry on our conversation in walking to and fro."

"I hope your wish to see me is not due to the return of unpleasant
symptoms," said Lydgate, filling up a pause.

"Not immediately--no.  In order to account for that wish I must
mention--what it were otherwise needless to refer to--that my life, on
all collateral accounts insignificant, derives a possible importance
from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all its
best years.  In short, I have long had on hand a work which I would
fain leave behind me in such a state, at least, that it might be
committed to the press by--others.  Were I assured that this is the
utmost I can reasonably expect, that assurance would be a useful
circumscription of my attempts, and a guide in both the positive and
negative determination of my course."

Here Mr. Casaubon paused, removed one hand from his back and thrust it
between the buttons of his single-breasted coat.  To a mind largely
instructed in the human destiny hardly anything could be more
interesting than the inward conflict implied in his formal measured
address, delivered with the usual sing-song and motion of the head.
Nay, are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle
of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the
significance of its life--a significance which is to vanish as the
waters which come and go where no man has need of them?  But there was
nothing to strike others as sublime about Mr. Casaubon, and Lydgate,
who had some contempt at hand for futile scholarship, felt a little
amusement mingling with his pity.  He was at present too ill acquainted
with disaster to enter into the pathos of a lot where everything is
below the level of tragedy except the passionate egoism of the sufferer.

"You refer to the possible hindrances from want of health?" he said,
wishing to help forward Mr. Casaubon's purpose, which seemed to be
clogged by some hesitation.

"I do.  You have not implied to me that the symptoms which--I am bound
to testify--you watched with scrupulous care, were those of a fatal
disease.  But were it so, Mr. Lydgate, I should desire to know the
truth without reservation, and I appeal to you for an exact statement
of your conclusions: I request it as a friendly service.  If you can
tell me that my life is not threatened by anything else than ordinary
casualties, I shall rejoice, on grounds which I have already indicated.
If not, knowledge of the truth is even more important to me."

"Then I can no longer hesitate as to my course," said Lydgate; "but the
first thing I must impress on you is that my conclusions are doubly
uncertain--uncertain not only because of my fallibility, but because
diseases of the heart are eminently difficult to found predictions on.
In any case, one can hardly increase appreciably the tremendous
uncertainty of life."

Mr. Casaubon winced perceptibly, but bowed.

"I believe that you are suffering from what is called fatty
degeneration of the heart, a disease which was first divined and
explored by Laennec, the man who gave us the stethoscope, not so very
many years ago.  A good deal of experience--a more lengthened
observation--is wanting on the subject.  But after what you have said,
it is my duty to tell you that death from this disease is often sudden.
At the same time, no such result can be predicted.  Your condition may
be consistent with a tolerably comfortable life for another fifteen
years, or even more.  I could add no information to this beyond
anatomical or medical details, which would leave expectation at
precisely the same point." Lydgate's instinct was fine enough to tell
him that plain speech, quite free from ostentatious caution, would be
felt by Mr. Casaubon as a tribute of respect.

"I thank you, Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, after a moment's pause.
"One thing more I have still to ask: did you communicate what you have
now told me to Mrs. Casaubon?"

"Partly--I mean, as to the possible issues."  Lydgate was going to
explain why he had told Dorothea, but Mr. Casaubon, with an
unmistakable desire to end the conversation, waved his hand slightly,
and said again, "I thank you," proceeding to remark on the rare beauty
of the day.

Lydgate, certain that his patient wished to be alone, soon left him;
and the black figure with hands behind and head bent forward continued
to pace the walk where the dark yew-trees gave him a mute companionship
in melancholy, and the little shadows of bird or leaf that fleeted
across the isles of sunlight, stole along in silence as in the presence
of a sorrow.  Here was a man who now for the first time found himself
looking into the eyes of death--who was passing through one of those
rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace,
which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of
waters upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the
water which cannot be had to cool the burning tongue.  When the
commonplace "We must all die" transforms itself suddenly into the acute
consciousness "I must die--and soon," then death grapples us, and his
fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as
our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be
like the first.  To Mr. Casaubon now, it was as if he suddenly found
himself on the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the oncoming
oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons.  In such an
hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias, but carries it onward
in imagination to the other side of death, gazing backward--perhaps
with the divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the petty anxieties
of self-assertion. What was Mr. Casaubon's bias his acts will give us a
clew to.  He held himself to be, with some private scholarly
reservations, a believing Christian, as to estimates of the present and
hopes of the future.  But what we strive to gratify, though we may call
it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which
men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love.
And Mr. Casaubon's immediate desire was not for divine communion and
light divested of earthly conditions; his passionate longings, poor
man, clung low and mist-like in very shady places.

Dorothea had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had
stepped into the garden, with the impulse to go at once to her husband.
But she hesitated, fearing to offend him by obtruding herself; for her
ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory, to
heighten her dread, as thwarted energy subsides into a shudder; and she
wandered slowly round the nearer clumps of trees until she saw him
advancing.  Then she went towards him, and might have represented a
heaven-sent angel coming with a promise that the short hours remaining
should yet be filled with that faithful love which clings the closer to
a comprehended grief.  His glance in reply to hers was so chill that
she felt her timidity increased; yet she turned and passed her hand
through his arm.

Mr. Casaubon kept his hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm to
cling with difficulty against his rigid arm.

There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this
unresponsive hardness inflicted on her.  That is a strong word, but not
too strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of
joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard
faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth
bears no harvest of sweetness--calling their denial knowledge.  You may
ask why, in the name of manliness, Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in
that way.  Consider that his was a mind which shrank from pity: have
you ever watched in such a mind the effect of a suspicion that what is
pressing it as a grief may be really a source of contentment, either
actual or future, to the being who already offends by pitying?
Besides, he knew little of Dorothea's sensations, and had not reflected
that on such an occasion as the present they were comparable in
strength to his own sensibilities about Carp's criticisms.

Dorothea did not withdraw her arm, but she could not venture to speak.
Mr. Casaubon did not say, "I wish to be alone," but he directed his
steps in silence towards the house, and as they entered by the glass
door on this eastern side, Dorothea withdrew her arm and lingered on
the matting, that she might leave her husband quite free.  He entered
the library and shut himself in, alone with his sorrow.

She went up to her boudoir.  The open bow-window let in the serene
glory of the afternoon lying in the avenue, where the lime-trees cast
long shadows.  But Dorothea knew nothing of the scene.  She threw
herself on a chair, not heeding that she was in the dazzling sun-rays:
if there were discomfort in that, how could she tell that it was not
part of her inward misery?

She was in the reaction of a rebellious anger stronger than any she had
felt since her marriage.  Instead of tears there came words:--

"What have I done--what am I--that he should treat me so?  He never
knows what is in my mind--he never cares.  What is the use of anything
I do?  He wishes he had never married me."

She began to hear herself, and was checked into stillness.  Like one
who has lost his way and is weary, she sat and saw as in one glance all
the paths of her young hope which she should never find again.  And
just as clearly in the miserable light she saw her own and her
husband's solitude--how they walked apart so that she was obliged to
survey him.  If he had drawn her towards him, she would never have
surveyed him--never have said, "Is he worth living for?" but would have
felt him simply a part of her own life.  Now she said bitterly, "It is
his fault, not mine."  In the jar of her whole being, Pity was
overthrown.  Was it her fault that she had believed in him--had
believed in his worthiness?--And what, exactly, was he?--  She was able
enough to estimate him--she who waited on his glances with trembling,
and shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that
she might be petty enough to please him.  In such a crisis as this,
some women begin to hate.

The sun was low when Dorothea was thinking that she would not go down
again, but would send a message to her husband saying that she was not
well and preferred remaining up-stairs. She had never deliberately
allowed her resentment to govern her in this way before, but she
believed now that she could not see him again without telling him the
truth about her feeling, and she must wait till she could do it without
interruption.  He might wonder and be hurt at her message.  It was good
that he should wonder and be hurt.  Her anger said, as anger is apt to
say, that God was with her--that all heaven, though it were crowded
with spirits watching them, must be on her side.  She had determined to
ring her bell, when there came a rap at the door.

Mr. Casaubon had sent to say that he would have his dinner in the
library.  He wished to be quite alone this evening, being much occupied.

"I shall not dine, then, Tantripp."

"Oh, madam, let me bring you a little something?"

"No; I am not well.  Get everything ready in my dressing room, but pray
do not disturb me again."

Dorothea sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle, while the
evening slowly deepened into night.  But the struggle changed
continually, as that of a man who begins with a movement towards
striking and ends with conquering his desire to strike.  The energy
that would animate a crime is not more than is wanted to inspire a
resolved submission, when the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself.
That thought with which Dorothea had gone out to meet her husband--her
conviction that he had been asking about the possible arrest of all his
work, and that the answer must have wrung his heart, could not be long
without rising beside the image of him, like a shadowy monitor looking
at her anger with sad remonstrance.  It cost her a litany of pictured
sorrows and of silent cries that she might be the mercy for those
sorrows--but the resolved submission did come; and when the house was
still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon
habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside
in the darkness waiting for his coming up-stairs with a light in his
hand.  If he did not come soon she thought that she would go down and
even risk incurring another pang.  She would never again expect
anything else.  But she did hear the library door open, and slowly the
light advanced up the staircase without noise from the footsteps on the
carpet.  When her husband stood opposite to her, she saw that his face
was more haggard.  He started slightly on seeing her, and she looked up
at him beseechingly, without speaking.

"Dorothea!" he said, with a gentle surprise in his tone.  "Were you
waiting for me?"

"Yes, I did not like to disturb you."

"Come, my dear, come.  You are young, and need not to extend your life
by watching."

When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea's ears,
she felt something like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we
had narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature.  She put her hand into
her husband's, and they went along the broad corridor together.





BOOK V.





THE DEAD HAND.



CHAPTER XLIII.

    This figure hath high price: 't was wrought with love
    Ages ago in finest ivory;
    Nought modish in it, pure and noble lines
    Of generous womanhood that fits all time
    That too is costly ware; majolica
    Of deft design, to please a lordly eye:
    The smile, you see, is perfect--wonderful
    As mere Faience! a table ornament
    To suit the richest mounting."


Dorothea seldom left home without her husband, but she did occasionally
drive into Middlemarch alone, on little errands of shopping or charity
such as occur to every lady of any wealth when she lives within three
miles of a town.  Two days after that scene in the Yew-tree Walk, she
determined to use such an opportunity in order if possible to see
Lydgate, and learn from him whether her husband had really felt any
depressing change of symptoms which he was concealing from her, and
whether he had insisted on knowing the utmost about himself.  She felt
almost guilty in asking for knowledge about him from another, but the
dread of being without it--the dread of that ignorance which would make
her unjust or hard--overcame every scruple.  That there had been some
crisis in her husband's mind she was certain: he had the very next day
begun a new method of arranging his notes, and had associated her quite
newly in carrying out his plan.  Poor Dorothea needed to lay up stores
of patience.

It was about four o'clock when she drove to Lydgate's house in Lowick
Gate, wishing, in her immediate doubt of finding him at home, that she
had written beforehand.  And he was not at home.

"Is Mrs. Lydgate at home?" said Dorothea, who had never, that she knew
of, seen Rosamond, but now remembered the fact of the marriage.  Yes,
Mrs. Lydgate was at home.

"I will go in and speak to her, if she will allow me.  Will you ask her
if she can see me--see Mrs. Casaubon, for a few minutes?"

When the servant had gone to deliver that message, Dorothea could hear
sounds of music through an open window--a few notes from a man's voice
and then a piano bursting into roulades.  But the roulades broke off
suddenly, and then the servant came back saying that Mrs. Lydgate would
be happy to see Mrs. Casaubon.

When the drawing-room door opened and Dorothea entered, there was a
sort of contrast not infrequent in country life when the habits of the
different ranks were less blent than now.  Let those who know, tell us
exactly what stuff it was that Dorothea wore in those days of mild
autumn--that thin white woollen stuff soft to the touch and soft to the
eye.  It always seemed to have been lately washed, and to smell of the
sweet hedges--was always in the shape of a pelisse with sleeves hanging
all out of the fashion.  Yet if she had entered before a still audience
as Imogene or Cato's daughter, the dress might have seemed right
enough: the grace and dignity were in her limbs and neck; and about her
simply parted hair and candid eyes the large round poke which was then
in the fate of women, seemed no more odd as a head-dress than the gold
trencher we call a halo.  By the present audience of two persons, no
dramatic heroine could have been expected with more interest than Mrs.
Casaubon.  To Rosamond she was one of those county divinities not
mixing with Middlemarch mortality, whose slightest marks of manner or
appearance were worthy of her study; moreover, Rosamond was not without
satisfaction that Mrs. Casaubon should have an opportunity of studying
_her_. What is the use of being exquisite if you are not seen by the
best judges? and since Rosamond had received the highest compliments at
Sir Godwin Lydgate's, she felt quite confident of the impression she
must make on people of good birth.  Dorothea put out her hand with her
usual simple kindness, and looked admiringly at Lydgate's lovely
bride--aware that there was a gentleman standing at a distance, but
seeing him merely as a coated figure at a wide angle.  The gentleman
was too much occupied with the presence of the one woman to reflect on
the contrast between the two--a contrast that would certainly have been
striking to a calm observer.  They were both tall, and their eyes were
on a level; but imagine Rosamond's infantine blondness and wondrous
crown of hair-plaits, with her pale-blue dress of a fit and fashion so
perfect that no dressmaker could look at it without emotion, a large
embroidered collar which it was to be hoped all beholders would know
the price of, her small hands duly set off with rings, and that
controlled self-consciousness of manner which is the expensive
substitute for simplicity.

"Thank you very much for allowing me to interrupt you," said Dorothea,
immediately.  "I am anxious to see Mr. Lydgate, if possible, before I
go home, and I hoped that you might possibly tell me where I could find
him, or even allow me to wait for him, if you expect him soon."

"He is at the New Hospital," said Rosamond; "I am not sure how soon he
will come home.  But I can send for him."

"Will you let me go and fetch him?" said Will Ladislaw, coming forward.
He had already taken up his hat before Dorothea entered.  She colored
with surprise, but put out her hand with a smile of unmistakable
pleasure, saying--

"I did not know it was you: I had no thought of seeing you here."

"May I go to the Hospital and tell Mr. Lydgate that you wish to see
him?" said Will.

"It would be quicker to send the carriage for him," said Dorothea, "if
you will be kind enough to give the message to the coachman."

Will was moving to the door when Dorothea, whose mind had flashed in an
instant over many connected memories, turned quickly and said, "I will
go myself, thank you.  I wish to lose no time before getting home
again.  I will drive to the Hospital and see Mr. Lydgate there.  Pray
excuse me, Mrs. Lydgate.  I am very much obliged to you."

Her mind was evidently arrested by some sudden thought, and she left
the room hardly conscious of what was immediately around her--hardly
conscious that Will opened the door for her and offered her his arm to
lead her to the carriage.  She took the arm but said nothing.  Will was
feeling rather vexed and miserable, and found nothing to say on his
side.  He handed her into the carriage in silence, they said good-by,
and Dorothea drove away.

In the five minutes' drive to the Hospital she had time for some
reflections that were quite new to her.  Her decision to go, and her
preoccupation in leaving the room, had come from the sudden sense that
there would be a sort of deception in her voluntarily allowing any
further intercourse between herself and Will which she was unable to
mention to her husband, and already her errand in seeking Lydgate was a
matter of concealment.  That was all that had been explicitly in her
mind; but she had been urged also by a vague discomfort.  Now that she
was alone in her drive, she heard the notes of the man's voice and the
accompanying piano, which she had not noted much at the time, returning
on her inward sense; and she found herself thinking with some wonder
that Will Ladislaw was passing his time with Mrs. Lydgate in her
husband's absence.  And then she could not help remembering that he had
passed some time with her under like circumstances, so why should there
be any unfitness in the fact?  But Will was Mr. Casaubon's relative,
and one towards whom she was bound to show kindness.  Still there had
been signs which perhaps she ought to have understood as implying that
Mr. Casaubon did not like his cousin's visits during his own absence.
"Perhaps I have been mistaken in many things," said poor Dorothea to
herself, while the tears came rolling and she had to dry them quickly.
She felt confusedly unhappy, and the image of Will which had been so
clear to her before was mysteriously spoiled.  But the carriage stopped
at the gate of the Hospital.  She was soon walking round the grass
plots with Lydgate, and her feelings recovered the strong bent which
had made her seek for this interview.

Will Ladislaw, meanwhile, was mortified, and knew the reason of it
clearly enough.  His chances of meeting Dorothea were rare; and here
for the first time there had come a chance which had set him at a
disadvantage.  It was not only, as it had been hitherto, that she was
not supremely occupied with him, but that she had seen him under
circumstances in which he might appear not to be supremely occupied
with her.  He felt thrust to a new distance from her, amongst the
circles of Middlemarchers who made no part of her life.  But that was
not his fault: of course, since he had taken his lodgings in the town,
he had been making as many acquaintances as he could, his position
requiring that he should know everybody and everything.  Lydgate was
really better worth knowing than any one else in the neighborhood, and
he happened to have a wife who was musical and altogether worth calling
upon.  Here was the whole history of the situation in which Diana had
descended too unexpectedly on her worshipper.  It was mortifying.  Will
was conscious that he should not have been at Middlemarch but for
Dorothea; and yet his position there was threatening to divide him from
her with those barriers of habitual sentiment which are more fatal to
the persistence of mutual interest than all the distance between Rome
and Britain.  Prejudices about rank and status were easy enough to defy
in the form of a tyrannical letter from Mr. Casaubon; but prejudices,
like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid and subtle--solid
as the pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo, or as
the memory of hyacinths which once scented the darkness.  And Will was
of a temperament to feel keenly the presence of subtleties: a man of
clumsier perceptions would not have felt, as he did, that for the first
time some sense of unfitness in perfect freedom with him had sprung up
in Dorothea's mind, and that their silence, as he conducted her to the
carriage, had had a chill in it.  Perhaps Casaubon, in his hatred and
jealousy, had been insisting to Dorothea that Will had slid below her
socially.  Confound Casaubon!

Will re-entered the drawing-room, took up his hat, and looking
irritated as he advanced towards Mrs. Lydgate, who had seated herself
at her work-table, said--

"It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.  May I come
another day and just finish about the rendering of 'Lungi dal caro
bene'?"

"I shall be happy to be taught," said Rosamond.  "But I am sure you
admit that the interruption was a very beautiful one.  I quite envy
your acquaintance with Mrs. Casaubon.  Is she very clever?  She looks
as if she were."

"Really, I never thought about it," said Will, sulkily.

"That is just the answer Tertius gave me, when I first asked him if she
were handsome.  What is it that you gentlemen are thinking of when you
are with Mrs. Casaubon?"

"Herself," said Will, not indisposed to provoke the charming Mrs.
Lydgate.  "When one sees a perfect woman, one never thinks of her
attributes--one is conscious of her presence."

"I shall be jealous when Tertius goes to Lowick," said Rosamond,
dimpling, and speaking with aery lightness.  "He will come back and
think nothing of me."

"That does not seem to have been the effect on Lydgate hitherto.  Mrs.
Casaubon is too unlike other women for them to be compared with her."

"You are a devout worshipper, I perceive.  You often see her, I
suppose."

"No," said Will, almost pettishly.  "Worship is usually a matter of
theory rather than of practice.  But I am practising it to excess just
at this moment--I must really tear myself away."

"Pray come again some evening: Mr. Lydgate will like to hear the music,
and I cannot enjoy it so well without him."

When her husband was at home again, Rosamond said, standing in front of
him and holding his coat-collar with both her hands, "Mr. Ladislaw was
here singing with me when Mrs. Casaubon came in.  He seemed vexed.  Do
you think he disliked her seeing him at our house?  Surely your
position is more than equal to his--whatever may be his relation to the
Casaubons."

"No, no; it must be something else if he were really vexed, Ladislaw is
a sort of gypsy; he thinks nothing of leather and prunella."

"Music apart, he is not always very agreeable.  Do you like him?"

"Yes: I think he is a good fellow: rather miscellaneous and
bric-a-brac, but likable."

"Do you know, I think he adores Mrs. Casaubon."

"Poor devil!" said Lydgate, smiling and pinching his wife's ears.

Rosamond felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world,
especially in discovering what when she was in her unmarried girlhood
had been inconceivable to her except as a dim tragedy in by-gone
costumes--that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and
enslave men.  At that time young ladies in the country, even when
educated at Mrs. Lemon's, read little French literature later than
Racine, and public prints had not cast their present magnificent
illumination over the scandals of life.  Still, vanity, with a woman's
whole mind and day to work in, can construct abundantly on slight
hints, especially on such a hint as the possibility of indefinite
conquests.  How delightful to make captives from the throne of marriage
with a husband as crown-prince by your side--himself in fact a
subject--while the captives look up forever hopeless, losing their
rest probably, and if their appetite too, so much the better!  But
Rosamond's romance turned at present chiefly on her crown-prince, and
it was enough to enjoy his assured subjection.  When he said, "Poor
devil!" she asked, with playful curiosity--

"Why so?"

"Why, what can a man do when he takes to adoring one of you mermaids?
He only neglects his work and runs up bills."

"I am sure you do not neglect your work.  You are always at the
Hospital, or seeing poor patients, or thinking about some doctor's
quarrel; and then at home you always want to pore over your microscope
and phials.  Confess you like those things better than me."

"Haven't you ambition enough to wish that your husband should be
something better than a Middlemarch doctor?" said Lydgate, letting his
hands fall on to his wife's shoulders, and looking at her with
affectionate gravity.  "I shall make you learn my favorite bit from an
old poet--

        'Why should our pride make such a stir to be
         And be forgot?  What good is like to this,
         To do worthy the writing, and to write
         Worthy the reading and the worlds delight?'

What I want, Rosy, is to do worthy the writing,--and to write out
myself what I have done.  A man must work, to do that, my pet."

"Of course, I wish you to make discoveries: no one could more wish you
to attain a high position in some better place than Middlemarch.  You
cannot say that I have ever tried to hinder you from working.  But we
cannot live like hermits.  You are not discontented with me, Tertius?"

"No, dear, no.  I am too entirely contented."

"But what did Mrs. Casaubon want to say to you?"

"Merely to ask about her husband's health.  But I think she is going to
be splendid to our New Hospital: I think she will give us two hundred
a-year."



CHAPTER XLIV.

    I would not creep along the coast but steer
    Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.


When Dorothea, walking round the laurel-planted plots of the New
Hospital with Lydgate, had learned from him that there were no signs of
change in Mr. Casaubon's bodily condition beyond the mental sign of
anxiety to know the truth about his illness, she was silent for a few
moments, wondering whether she had said or done anything to rouse this
new anxiety.  Lydgate, not willing to let slip an opportunity of
furthering a favorite purpose, ventured to say--

"I don't know whether your or Mr.--Casaubon's attention has been drawn
to the needs of our New Hospital.  Circumstances have made it seem
rather egotistic in me to urge the subject; but that is not my fault:
it is because there is a fight being made against it by the other
medical men.  I think you are generally interested in such things, for
I remember that when I first had the pleasure of seeing you at Tipton
Grange before your marriage, you were asking me some questions about
the way in which the health of the poor was affected by their miserable
housing."

"Yes, indeed," said Dorothea, brightening.  "I shall be quite grateful
to you if you will tell me how I can help to make things a little
better.  Everything of that sort has slipped away from me since I have
been married.  I mean," she said, after a moment's hesitation, "that
the people in our village are tolerably comfortable, and my mind has
been too much taken up for me to inquire further.  But here--in such a
place as Middlemarch--there must be a great deal to be done."

"There is everything to be done," said Lydgate, with abrupt energy.
"And this Hospital is a capital piece of work, due entirely to Mr.
Bulstrode's exertions, and in a great degree to his money.  But one man
can't do everything in a scheme of this sort.  Of course he looked
forward to help.  And now there's a mean, petty feud set up against the
thing in the town, by certain persons who want to make it a failure."

"What can be their reasons?" said Dorothea, with naive surprise.

"Chiefly Mr. Bulstrode's unpopularity, to begin with.  Half the town
would almost take trouble for the sake of thwarting him.  In this
stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done
unless it is done by their own set.  I had no connection with Bulstrode
before I came here.  I look at him quite impartially, and I see that he
has some notions--that he has set things on foot--which I can turn to
good public purpose.  If a fair number of the better educated men went
to work with the belief that their observations might contribute to the
reform of medical doctrine and practice, we should soon see a change
for the better.  That's my point of view.  I hold that by refusing to
work with Mr. Bulstrode I should be turning my back on an opportunity
of making my profession more generally serviceable."

"I quite agree with you," said Dorothea, at once fascinated by the
situation sketched in Lydgate's words.  "But what is there against Mr.
Bulstrode?  I know that my uncle is friendly with him."

"People don't like his religious tone," said Lydgate, breaking off
there.

"That is all the stronger reason for despising such an opposition,"
said Dorothea, looking at the affairs of Middlemarch by the light of
the great persecutions.

"To put the matter quite fairly, they have other objections to him:--he
is masterful and rather unsociable, and he is concerned with trade,
which has complaints of its own that I know nothing about.  But what
has that to do with the question whether it would not be a fine thing
to establish here a more valuable hospital than any they have in the
county?  The immediate motive to the opposition, however, is the fact
that Bulstrode has put the medical direction into my hands.  Of course
I am glad of that.  It gives me an opportunity of doing some good
work,--and I am aware that I have to justify his choice of me.  But the
consequence is, that the whole profession in Middlemarch have set
themselves tooth and nail against the Hospital, and not only refuse to
cooperate themselves, but try to blacken the whole affair and hinder
subscriptions."

"How very petty!" exclaimed Dorothea, indignantly.

"I suppose one must expect to fight one's way: there is hardly anything
to be done without it.  And the ignorance of people about here is
stupendous.  I don't lay claim to anything else than having used some
opportunities which have not come within everybody's reach; but there
is no stifling the offence of being young, and a new-comer, and
happening to know something more than the old inhabitants.  Still, if I
believe that I can set going a better method of treatment--if I
believe that I can pursue certain observations and inquiries which may
be a lasting benefit to medical practice, I should be a base truckler
if I allowed any consideration of personal comfort to hinder me.  And
the course is all the clearer from there being no salary in question to
put my persistence in an equivocal light."

"I am glad you have told me this, Mr. Lydgate," said Dorothea,
cordially.  "I feel sure I can help a little.  I have some money, and
don't know what to do with it--that is often an uncomfortable thought
to me.  I am sure I can spare two hundred a-year for a grand purpose
like this.  How happy you must be, to know things that you feel sure
will do great good!  I wish I could awake with that knowledge every
morning.  There seems to be so much trouble taken that one can hardly
see the good of!"

There was a melancholy cadence in Dorothea's voice as she spoke these
last words.  But she presently added, more cheerfully, "Pray come to
Lowick and tell us more of this.  I will mention the subject to Mr.
Casaubon.  I must hasten home now."

She did mention it that evening, and said that she should like to
subscribe two hundred a-year--she had seven hundred a-year as the
equivalent of her own fortune, settled on her at her marriage.  Mr.
Casaubon made no objection beyond a passing remark that the sum might
be disproportionate in relation to other good objects, but when
Dorothea in her ignorance resisted that suggestion, he acquiesced.  He
did not care himself about spending money, and was not reluctant to
give it.  If he ever felt keenly any question of money it was through
the medium of another passion than the love of material property.

Dorothea told him that she had seen Lydgate, and recited the gist of
her conversation with him about the Hospital.  Mr. Casaubon did not
question her further, but he felt sure that she had wished to know what
had passed between Lydgate and himself. "She knows that I know," said
the ever-restless voice within; but that increase of tacit knowledge
only thrust further off any confidence between them.  He distrusted her
affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?



CHAPTER XLV.

    It is the humor of many heads to extol the days of their
    forefathers, and declaim against the wickedness of times
    present. Which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do,
    without the borrowed help and satire of times past;
    condemning the vices of their own times, by the expressions
    of vices in times which they commend, which cannot but argue
    the community of vice in both. Horace, therefore, Juvenal,
    and Persius, were no prophets, although their lines did seem
    to indigitate and point at our times.--SIR THOMAS BROWNE:
    Pseudodoxia Epidemica.


That opposition to the New Fever Hospital which Lydgate had sketched to
Dorothea was, like other oppositions, to be viewed in many different
lights.  He regarded it as a mixture of jealousy and dunderheaded
prejudice.  Mr. Bulstrode saw in it not only medical jealousy but a
determination to thwart himself, prompted mainly by a hatred of that
vital religion of which he had striven to be an effectual lay
representative--a hatred which certainly found pretexts apart from
religion such as were only too easy to find in the entanglements of
human action.  These might be called the ministerial views.  But
oppositions have the illimitable range of objections at command, which
need never stop short at the boundary of knowledge, but can draw
forever on the vasts of ignorance.  What the opposition in Middlemarch
said about the New Hospital and its administration had certainly a
great deal of echo in it, for heaven has taken care that everybody
shall not be an originator; but there were differences which
represented every social shade between the polished moderation of Dr.
Minchin and the trenchant assertion of Mrs. Dollop, the landlady of the
Tankard in Slaughter Lane.

Mrs. Dollop became more and more convinced by her own asseveration,
that Dr. Lydgate meant to let the people die in the Hospital, if not to
poison them, for the sake of cutting them up without saying by your
leave or with your leave; for it was a known "fac" that he had wanted
to cut up Mrs. Goby, as respectable a woman as any in Parley Street,
who had money in trust before her marriage--a poor tale for a doctor,
who if he was good for anything should know what was the matter with
you before you died, and not want to pry into your inside after you
were gone.  If that was not reason, Mrs. Dollop wished to know what
was; but there was a prevalent feeling in her audience that her opinion
was a bulwark, and that if it were overthrown there would be no limits
to the cutting-up of bodies, as had been well seen in Burke and Hare
with their pitch-plaisters--such a hanging business as that was not
wanted in Middlemarch!

And let it not be supposed that opinion at the Tankard in Slaughter
Lane was unimportant to the medical profession: that old authentic
public-house--the original Tankard, known by the name of Dollop's--was
the resort of a great Benefit Club, which had some months before put to
the vote whether its long-standing medical man, "Doctor Gambit," should
not be cashiered in favor of "this Doctor Lydgate," who was capable of
performing the most astonishing cures, and rescuing people altogether
given up by other practitioners.  But the balance had been turned
against Lydgate by two members, who for some private reasons held that
this power of resuscitating persons as good as dead was an equivocal
recommendation, and might interfere with providential favors.  In the
course of the year, however, there had been a change in the public
sentiment, of which the unanimity at Dollop's was an index.

A good deal more than a year ago, before anything was known of
Lydgate's skill, the judgments on it had naturally been divided,
depending on a sense of likelihood, situated perhaps in the pit of the
stomach or in the pineal gland, and differing in its verdicts, but not
the less valuable as a guide in the total deficit of evidence.
Patients who had chronic diseases or whose lives had long been worn
threadbare, like old Featherstone's, had been at once inclined to try
him; also, many who did not like paying their doctor's bills, thought
agreeably of opening an account with a new doctor and sending for him
without stint if the children's temper wanted a dose, occasions when
the old practitioners were often crusty; and all persons thus inclined
to employ Lydgate held it likely that he was clever.  Some considered
that he might do more than others "where there was liver;"--at least
there would be no harm in getting a few bottles of "stuff" from him,
since if these proved useless it would still be possible to return to
the Purifying Pills, which kept you alive if they did not remove the
yellowness.  But these were people of minor importance.  Good
Middlemarch families were of course not going to change their doctor
without reason shown; and everybody who had employed Mr. Peacock did
not feel obliged to accept a new man merely in the character of his
successor, objecting that he was "not likely to be equal to Peacock."

But Lydgate had not been long in the town before there were particulars
enough reported of him to breed much more specific expectations and to
intensify differences into partisanship; some of the particulars being
of that impressive order of which the significance is entirely hidden,
like a statistical amount without a standard of comparison, but with a
note of exclamation at the end.  The cubic feet of oxygen yearly
swallowed by a full-grown man--what a shudder they might have created
in some Middlemarch circles!  "Oxygen! nobody knows what that may
be--is it any wonder the cholera has got to Dantzic?  And yet there are
people who say quarantine is no good!"

One of the facts quickly rumored was that Lydgate did not dispense
drugs.  This was offensive both to the physicians whose exclusive
distinction seemed infringed on, and to the surgeon-apothecaries with
whom he ranged himself; and only a little while before, they might have
counted on having the law on their side against a man who without
calling himself a London-made M.D. dared to ask for pay except as a
charge on drugs.  But Lydgate had not been experienced enough to
foresee that his new course would be even more offensive to the laity;
and to Mr. Mawmsey, an important grocer in the Top Market, who, though
not one of his patients, questioned him in an affable manner on the
subject, he was injudicious enough to give a hasty popular explanation
of his reasons, pointing out to Mr. Mawmsey that it must lower the
character of practitioners, and be a constant injury to the public, if
their only mode of getting paid for their work was by their making out
long bills for draughts, boluses, and mixtures.

"It is in that way that hard-working medical men may come to be almost
as mischievous as quacks," said Lydgate, rather thoughtlessly.  "To get
their own bread they must overdose the king's lieges; and that's a bad
sort of treason, Mr. Mawmsey--undermines the constitution in a fatal
way."

Mr. Mawmsey was not only an overseer (it was about a question of
outdoor pay that he was having an interview with Lydgate), he was also
asthmatic and had an increasing family: thus, from a medical point of
view, as well as from his own, he was an important man; indeed, an
exceptional grocer, whose hair was arranged in a flame-like pyramid,
and whose retail deference was of the cordial, encouraging
kind--jocosely complimentary, and with a certain considerate abstinence
from letting out the full force of his mind.  It was Mr. Mawmsey's
friendly jocoseness in questioning him which had set the tone of
Lydgate's reply.  But let the wise be warned against too great
readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake,
lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

Lydgate smiled as he ended his speech, putting his foot into the
stirrup, and Mr. Mawmsey laughed more than he would have done if he had
known who the king's lieges were, giving his "Good morning, sir,
good-morning, sir," with the air of one who saw everything clearly
enough.  But in truth his views were perturbed.  For years he had been
paying bills with strictly made items, so that for every half-crown and
eighteen-pence he was certain something measurable had been delivered.
He had done this with satisfaction, including it among his
responsibilities as a husband and father, and regarding a longer bill
than usual as a dignity worth mentioning.  Moreover, in addition to the
massive benefit of the drugs to "self and family," he had enjoyed the
pleasure of forming an acute judgment as to their immediate effects, so
as to give an intelligent statement for the guidance of Mr. Gambit--a
practitioner just a little lower in status than Wrench or Toller, and
especially esteemed as an accoucheur, of whose ability Mr. Mawmsey had
the poorest opinion on all other points, but in doctoring, he was wont
to say in an undertone, he placed Gambit above any of them.

Here were deeper reasons than the superficial talk of a new man, which
appeared still flimsier in the drawing-room over the shop, when they
were recited to Mrs. Mawmsey, a woman accustomed to be made much of as
a fertile mother,--generally under attendance more or less frequent
from Mr. Gambit, and occasionally having attacks which required Dr.
Minchin.

"Does this Mr. Lydgate mean to say there is no use in taking medicine?"
said Mrs. Mawmsey, who was slightly given to drawling.  "I should like
him to tell me how I could bear up at Fair time, if I didn't take
strengthening medicine for a month beforehand.  Think of what I have to
provide for calling customers, my dear!"--here Mrs. Mawmsey turned to
an intimate female friend who sat by--"a large veal pie--a stuffed
fillet--a round of beef--ham, tongue, et cetera, et cetera!  But what
keeps me up best is the pink mixture, not the brown.  I wonder, Mr.
Mawmsey, with _your_ experience, you could have patience to listen.  I
should have told him at once that I knew a little better than that."

"No, no, no," said Mr. Mawmsey; "I was not going to tell him my
opinion.  Hear everything and judge for yourself is my motto.  But he
didn't know who he was talking to.  I was not to be turned on _his_
finger.  People often pretend to tell me things, when they might as
well say, 'Mawmsey, you're a fool.'  But I smile at it: I humor
everybody's weak place.  If physic had done harm to self and family, I
should have found it out by this time."

The next day Mr. Gambit was told that Lydgate went about saying physic
was of no use.

"Indeed!" said he, lifting his eyebrows with cautious surprise.  (He
was a stout husky man with a large ring on his fourth finger.) "How
will he cure his patients, then?"

"That is what I say," returned Mrs. Mawmsey, who habitually gave weight
to her speech by loading her pronouns.  "Does _he_ suppose that people
will pay him only to come and sit with them and go away again?"

Mrs. Mawmsey had had a great deal of sitting from Mr. Gambit, including
very full accounts of his own habits of body and other affairs; but of
course he knew there was no innuendo in her remark, since his spare
time and personal narrative had never been charged for.  So he replied,
humorously--

"Well, Lydgate is a good-looking young fellow, you know."

"Not one that I would employ," said Mrs. Mawmsey.  "_Others_ may do as
they please."

Hence Mr. Gambit could go away from the chief grocer's without fear of
rivalry, but not without a sense that Lydgate was one of those
hypocrites who try to discredit others by advertising their own
honesty, and that it might be worth some people's while to show him up.
Mr. Gambit, however, had a satisfactory practice, much pervaded by the
smells of retail trading which suggested the reduction of cash payments
to a balance.  And he did not think it worth his while to show Lydgate
up until he knew how.  He had not indeed great resources of education,
and had had to work his own way against a good deal of professional
contempt; but he made none the worse accoucheur for calling the
breathing apparatus "longs."

Other medical men felt themselves more capable.  Mr. Toller shared the
highest practice in the town and belonged to an old Middlemarch family:
there were Tollers in the law and everything else above the line of
retail trade.  Unlike our irascible friend Wrench, he had the easiest
way in the world of taking things which might be supposed to annoy him,
being a well-bred, quietly facetious man, who kept a good house, was
very fond of a little sporting when he could get it, very friendly with
Mr. Hawley, and hostile to Mr. Bulstrode.  It may seem odd that with
such pleasant habits he should have been given to the heroic treatment,
bleeding and blistering and starving his patients, with a dispassionate
disregard to his personal example; but the incongruity favored the
opinion of his ability among his patients, who commonly observed that
Mr. Toller had lazy manners, but his treatment was as active as you
could desire: no man, said they, carried more seriousness into his
profession: he was a little slow in coming, but when he came, he _did_
something.  He was a great favorite in his own circle, and whatever he
implied to any one's disadvantage told doubly from his careless
ironical tone.

He naturally got tired of smiling and saying, "Ah!" when he was told
that Mr. Peacock's successor did not mean to dispense medicines; and
Mr. Hackbutt one day mentioning it over the wine at a dinner-party, Mr.
Toller said, laughingly, "Dibbitts will get rid of his stale drugs,
then.  I'm fond of little Dibbitts--I'm glad he's in luck."

"I see your meaning, Toller," said Mr. Hackbutt, "and I am entirely of
your opinion.  I shall take an opportunity of expressing myself to that
effect.  A medical man should be responsible for the quality of the
drugs consumed by his patients.  That is the rationale of the system of
charging which has hitherto obtained; and nothing is more offensive
than this ostentation of reform, where there is no real amelioration."

"Ostentation, Hackbutt?" said Mr. Toller, ironically.  "I don't see
that.  A man can't very well be ostentatious of what nobody believes
in.  There's no reform in the matter: the question is, whether the
profit on the drugs is paid to the medical man by the druggist or by
the patient, and whether there shall be extra pay under the name of
attendance."

"Ah, to be sure; one of your damned new versions of old humbug," said
Mr. Hawley, passing the decanter to Mr. Wrench.

Mr. Wrench, generally abstemious, often drank wine rather freely at a
party, getting the more irritable in consequence.

"As to humbug, Hawley," he said, "that's a word easy to fling about.
But what I contend against is the way medical men are fouling their own
nest, and setting up a cry about the country as if a general
practitioner who dispenses drugs couldn't be a gentleman.  I throw back
the imputation with scorn.  I say, the most ungentlemanly trick a man
can be guilty of is to come among the members of his profession with
innovations which are a libel on their time-honored procedure.  That is
my opinion, and I am ready to maintain it against any one who
contradicts me."  Mr. Wrench's voice had become exceedingly sharp.

"I can't oblige you there, Wrench," said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his
hands into his trouser-pockets.

"My dear fellow," said Mr. Toller, striking in pacifically, and looking
at Mr. Wrench, "the physicians have their toes trodden on more than we
have.  If you come to dignity it is a question for Minchin and Sprague."

"Does medical jurisprudence provide nothing against these
infringements?" said Mr. Hackbutt, with a disinterested desire to offer
his lights.  "How does the law stand, eh, Hawley?"

"Nothing to be done there," said Mr. Hawley.  "I looked into it for
Sprague.  You'd only break your nose against a damned judge's decision."

"Pooh! no need of law," said Mr. Toller.  "So far as practice is
concerned the attempt is an absurdity.  No patient will like
it--certainly not Peacock's, who have been used to depletion.  Pass the
wine."

Mr. Toller's prediction was partly verified.  If Mr. and Mrs. Mawmsey,
who had no idea of employing Lydgate, were made uneasy by his supposed
declaration against drugs, it was inevitable that those who called him
in should watch a little anxiously to see whether he did "use all the
means he might use" in the case.  Even good Mr. Powderell, who in his
constant charity of interpretation was inclined to esteem Lydgate the
more for what seemed a conscientious pursuit of a better plan, had his
mind disturbed with doubts during his wife's attack of erysipelas, and
could not abstain from mentioning to Lydgate that Mr. Peacock on a
similar occasion had administered a series of boluses which were not
otherwise definable than by their remarkable effect in bringing Mrs.
Powderell round before Michaelmas from an illness which had begun in a
remarkably hot August.  At last, indeed, in the conflict between his
desire not to hurt Lydgate and his anxiety that no "means" should be
lacking, he induced his wife privately to take Widgeon's Purifying
Pills, an esteemed Middlemarch medicine, which arrested every disease
at the fountain by setting to work at once upon the blood.  This
co-operative measure was not to be mentioned to Lydgate, and Mr.
Powderell himself had no certain reliance on it, only hoping that it
might be attended with a blessing.

But in this doubtful stage of Lydgate's introduction he was helped by
what we mortals rashly call good fortune.  I suppose no doctor ever
came newly to a place without making cures that surprised somebody--cures
which may be called fortune's testimonials, and deserve as much
credit as the written or printed kind.  Various patients got well while
Lydgate was attending them, some even of dangerous illnesses; and it
was remarked that the new doctor with his new ways had at least the
merit of bringing people back from the brink of death.  The trash
talked on such occasions was the more vexatious to Lydgate, because it
gave precisely the sort of prestige which an incompetent and
unscrupulous man would desire, and was sure to be imputed to him by the
simmering dislike of the other medical men as an encouragement on his
own part of ignorant puffing.  But even his proud outspokenness was
checked by the discernment that it was as useless to fight against the
interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog; and "good fortune"
insisted on using those interpretations.

Mrs. Larcher having just become charitably concerned about alarming
symptoms in her charwoman, when Dr. Minchin called, asked him to see
her then and there, and to give her a certificate for the Infirmary;
whereupon after examination he wrote a statement of the case as one of
tumor, and recommended the bearer Nancy Nash as an out-patient. Nancy,
calling at home on her way to the Infirmary, allowed the stay maker and
his wife, in whose attic she lodged, to read Dr. Minchin's paper, and
by this means became a subject of compassionate conversation in the
neighboring shops of Churchyard Lane as being afflicted with a tumor at
first declared to be as large and hard as a duck's egg, but later in
the day to be about the size of "your fist." Most hearers agreed that
it would have to be cut out, but one had known of oil and another of
"squitchineal" as adequate to soften and reduce any lump in the body
when taken enough of into the inside--the oil by gradually "soopling,"
the squitchineal by eating away.

Meanwhile when Nancy presented herself at the Infirmary, it happened to
be one of Lydgate's days there.  After questioning and examining her,
Lydgate said to the house-surgeon in an undertone, "It's not tumor:
it's cramp."  He ordered her a blister and some steel mixture, and told
her to go home and rest, giving her at the same time a note to Mrs.
Larcher, who, she said, was her best employer, to testify that she was
in need of good food.

But by-and-by Nancy, in her attic, became portentously worse, the
supposed tumor having indeed given way to the blister, but only
wandered to another region with angrier pain.  The staymaker's wife
went to fetch Lydgate, and he continued for a fortnight to attend Nancy
in her own home, until under his treatment she got quite well and went
to work again.  But the case continued to be described as one of tumor
in Churchyard Lane and other streets--nay, by Mrs. Larcher also; for
when Lydgate's remarkable cure was mentioned to Dr. Minchin, he
naturally did not like to say, "The case was not one of tumor, and I
was mistaken in describing it as such," but answered, "Indeed! ah!  I
saw it was a surgical case, not of a fatal kind." He had been inwardly
annoyed, however, when he had asked at the Infirmary about the woman he
had recommended two days before, to hear from the house-surgeon, a
youngster who was not sorry to vex Minchin with impunity, exactly what
had occurred: he privately pronounced that it was indecent in a general
practitioner to contradict a physician's diagnosis in that open manner,
and afterwards agreed with Wrench that Lydgate was disagreeably
inattentive to etiquette.  Lydgate did not make the affair a ground for
valuing himself or (very particularly) despising Minchin, such
rectification of misjudgments often happening among men of equal
qualifications.  But report took up this amazing case of tumor, not
clearly distinguished from cancer, and considered the more awful for
being of the wandering sort; till much prejudice against Lydgate's
method as to drugs was overcome by the proof of his marvellous skill in
the speedy restoration of Nancy Nash after she had been rolling and
rolling in agonies from the presence of a tumor both hard and
obstinate, but nevertheless compelled to yield.

How could Lydgate help himself?  It is offensive to tell a lady when
she is expressing her amazement at your skill, that she is altogether
mistaken and rather foolish in her amazement.  And to have entered into
the nature of diseases would only have added to his breaches of medical
propriety.  Thus he had to wince under a promise of success given by
that ignorant praise which misses every valid quality.

In the case of a more conspicuous patient, Mr. Borthrop Trumbull,
Lydgate was conscious of having shown himself something better than an
every-day doctor, though here too it was an equivocal advantage that he
won.  The eloquent auctioneer was seized with pneumonia, and having
been a patient of Mr. Peacock's, sent for Lydgate, whom he had
expressed his intention to patronize.  Mr Trumbull was a robust man, a
good subject for trying the expectant theory upon--watching the course
of an interesting disease when left as much as possible to itself, so
that the stages might be noted for future guidance; and from the air
with which he described his sensations Lydgate surmised that he would
like to be taken into his medical man's confidence, and be represented
as a partner in his own cure.  The auctioneer heard, without much
surprise, that his was a constitution which (always with due watching)
might be left to itself, so as to offer a beautiful example of a
disease with all its phases seen in clear delineation, and that he
probably had the rare strength of mind voluntarily to become the test
of a rational procedure, and thus make the disorder of his pulmonary
functions a general benefit to society.

Mr. Trumbull acquiesced at once, and entered strongly into the view
that an illness of his was no ordinary occasion for medical science.

"Never fear, sir; you are not speaking to one who is altogether
ignorant of the vis medicatrix," said he, with his usual superiority of
expression, made rather pathetic by difficulty of breathing.  And he
went without shrinking through his abstinence from drugs, much
sustained by application of the thermometer which implied the
importance of his temperature, by the sense that he furnished objects
for the microscope, and by learning many new words which seemed suited
to the dignity of his secretions.  For Lydgate was acute enough to
indulge him with a little technical talk.

It may be imagined that Mr. Trumbull rose from his couch with a
disposition to speak of an illness in which he had manifested the
strength of his mind as well as constitution; and he was not backward
in awarding credit to the medical man who had discerned the quality of
patient he had to deal with.  The auctioneer was not an ungenerous man,
and liked to give others their due, feeling that he could afford it.
He had caught the words "expectant method," and rang chimes on this and
other learned phrases to accompany the assurance that Lydgate "knew a
thing or two more than the rest of the doctors--was far better versed
in the secrets of his profession than the majority of his compeers."

This had happened before the affair of Fred Vincy's illness had given
to Mr. Wrench's enmity towards Lydgate more definite personal ground.
The new-comer already threatened to be a nuisance in the shape of
rivalry, and was certainly a nuisance in the shape of practical
criticism or reflections on his hard-driven elders, who had had
something else to do than to busy themselves with untried notions.  His
practice had spread in one or two quarters, and from the first the
report of his high family had led to his being pretty generally
invited, so that the other medical men had to meet him at dinner in the
best houses; and having to meet a man whom you dislike is not observed
always to end in a mutual attachment.  There was hardly ever so much
unanimity among them as in the opinion that Lydgate was an arrogant
young fellow, and yet ready for the sake of ultimately predominating to
show a crawling subservience to Bulstrode.  That Mr. Farebrother, whose
name was a chief flag of the anti-Bulstrode party, always defended
Lydgate and made a friend of him, was referred to Farebrother's
unaccountable way of fighting on both sides.

Here was plenty of preparation for the outburst of professional disgust
at the announcement of the laws Mr. Bulstrode was laying down for the
direction of the New Hospital, which were the more exasperating because
there was no present possibility of interfering with his will and
pleasure, everybody except Lord Medlicote having refused help towards
the building, on the ground that they preferred giving to the Old
Infirmary.  Mr. Bulstrode met all the expenses, and had ceased to be
sorry that he was purchasing the right to carry out his notions of
improvement without hindrance from prejudiced coadjutors; but he had
had to spend large sums, and the building had lingered.  Caleb Garth
had undertaken it, had failed during its progress, and before the
interior fittings were begun had retired from the management of the
business; and when referring to the Hospital he often said that however
Bulstrode might ring if you tried him, he liked good solid carpentry
and masonry, and had a notion both of drains and chimneys.  In fact,
the Hospital had become an object of intense interest to Bulstrode, and
he would willingly have continued to spare a large yearly sum that he
might rule it dictatorially without any Board; but he had another
favorite object which also required money for its accomplishment: he
wished to buy some land in the neighborhood of Middlemarch, and
therefore he wished to get considerable contributions towards
maintaining the Hospital.  Meanwhile he framed his plan of management.
The Hospital was to be reserved for fever in all its forms; Lydgate was
to be chief medical superintendent, that he might have free authority
to pursue all comparative investigations which his studies,
particularly in Paris, had shown him the importance of, the other
medical visitors having a consultative influence, but no power to
contravene Lydgate's ultimate decisions; and the general management was
to be lodged exclusively in the hands of five directors associated with
Mr. Bulstrode, who were to have votes in the ratio of their
contributions, the Board itself filling up any vacancy in its numbers,
and no mob of small contributors being admitted to a share of
government.

There was an immediate refusal on the part of every medical man in the
town to become a visitor at the Fever Hospital.

"Very well," said Lydgate to Mr. Bulstrode, "we have a capital
house-surgeon and dispenser, a clear-headed, neat-handed fellow; we'll
get Webbe from Crabsley, as good a country practitioner as any of them,
to come over twice a-week, and in case of any exceptional operation,
Protheroe will come from Brassing.  I must work the harder, that's all,
and I have given up my post at the Infirmary.  The plan will flourish
in spite of them, and then they'll be glad to come in.  Things can't
last as they are: there must be all sorts of reform soon, and then
young fellows may be glad to come and study here."  Lydgate was in high
spirits.

"I shall not flinch, you may depend upon it, Mr. Lydgate," said Mr.
Bulstrode.  "While I see you carrying out high intentions with vigor,
you shall have my unfailing support.  And I have humble confidence that
the blessing which has hitherto attended my efforts against the spirit
of evil in this town will not be withdrawn.  Suitable directors to
assist me I have no doubt of securing.  Mr. Brooke of Tipton has
already given me his concurrence, and a pledge to contribute yearly: he
has not specified the sum--probably not a great one.  But he will be a
useful member of the board."

A useful member was perhaps to be defined as one who would originate
nothing, and always vote with Mr. Bulstrode.

The medical aversion to Lydgate was hardly disguised now.  Neither Dr.
Sprague nor Dr. Minchin said that he disliked Lydgate's knowledge, or
his disposition to improve treatment: what they disliked was his
arrogance, which nobody felt to be altogether deniable.  They implied
that he was insolent, pretentious, and given to that reckless
innovation for the sake of noise and show which was the essence of the
charlatan.

The word charlatan once thrown on the air could not be let drop.  In
those days the world was agitated about the wondrous doings of Mr. St.
John Long, "noblemen and gentlemen" attesting his extraction of a fluid
like mercury from the temples of a patient.

Mr. Toller remarked one day, smilingly, to Mrs. Taft, that "Bulstrode
had found a man to suit him in Lydgate; a charlatan in religion is sure
to like other sorts of charlatans."

"Yes, indeed, I can imagine," said Mrs. Taft, keeping the number of
thirty stitches carefully in her mind all the while; "there are so many
of that sort.  I remember Mr. Cheshire, with his irons, trying to make
people straight when the Almighty had made them crooked."

"No, no," said Mr. Toller, "Cheshire was all right--all fair and above
board.  But there's St. John Long--that's the kind of fellow we call a
charlatan, advertising cures in ways nobody knows anything about: a
fellow who wants to make a noise by pretending to go deeper than other
people.  The other day he was pretending to tap a man's brain and get
quicksilver out of it."

"Good gracious! what dreadful trifling with people's constitutions!"
said Mrs. Taft.

After this, it came to be held in various quarters that Lydgate played
even with respectable constitutions for his own purposes, and how much
more likely that in his flighty experimenting he should make sixes and
sevens of hospital patients.  Especially it was to be expected, as the
landlady of the Tankard had said, that he would recklessly cut up their
dead bodies.  For Lydgate having attended Mrs. Goby, who died
apparently of a heart-disease not very clearly expressed in the
symptoms, too daringly asked leave of her relatives to open the body,
and thus gave an offence quickly spreading beyond Parley Street, where
that lady had long resided on an income such as made this association
of her body with the victims of Burke and Hare a flagrant insult to her
memory.

Affairs were in this stage when Lydgate opened the subject of the
Hospital to Dorothea.  We see that he was bearing enmity and silly
misconception with much spirit, aware that they were partly created by
his good share of success.

"They will not drive me away," he said, talking confidentially in Mr.
Farebrother's study.  "I have got a good opportunity here, for the ends
I care most about; and I am pretty sure to get income enough for our
wants.  By-and-by I shall go on as quietly as possible: I have no
seductions now away from home and work.  And I am more and more
convinced that it will be possible to demonstrate the homogeneous
origin of all the tissues.  Raspail and others are on the same track,
and I have been losing time."

"I have no power of prophecy there," said Mr. Farebrother, who had been
puffing at his pipe thoughtfully while Lydgate talked; "but as to the
hostility in the town, you'll weather it if you are prudent."

"How am I to be prudent?" said Lydgate, "I just do what comes before me
to do.  I can't help people's ignorance and spite, any more than
Vesalius could.  It isn't possible to square one's conduct to silly
conclusions which nobody can foresee."

"Quite true; I didn't mean that.  I meant only two things.  One is,
keep yourself as separable from Bulstrode as you can: of course, you
can go on doing good work of your own by his help; but don't get tied.
Perhaps it seems like personal feeling in me to say so--and there's a
good deal of that, I own--but personal feeling is not always in the
wrong if you boil it down to the impressions which make it simply an
opinion."

"Bulstrode is nothing to me," said Lydgate, carelessly, "except on
public grounds.  As to getting very closely united to him, I am not
fond enough of him for that.  But what was the other thing you meant?"
said Lydgate, who was nursing his leg as comfortably as possible, and
feeling in no great need of advice.

"Why, this.  Take care--experto crede--take care not to get hampered
about money matters.  I know, by a word you let fall one day, that you
don't like my playing at cards so much for money.  You are right enough
there.  But try and keep clear of wanting small sums that you haven't
got.  I am perhaps talking rather superfluously; but a man likes to
assume superiority over himself, by holding up his bad example and
sermonizing on it."

Lydgate took Mr. Farebrother's hints very cordially, though he would
hardly have borne them from another man.  He could not help remembering
that he had lately made some debts, but these had seemed inevitable,
and he had no intention now to do more than keep house in a simple way.
The furniture for which he owed would not want renewing; nor even the
stock of wine for a long while.

Many thoughts cheered him at that time--and justly.  A man conscious of
enthusiasm for worthy aims is sustained under petty hostilities by the
memory of great workers who had to fight their way not without wounds,
and who hover in his mind as patron saints, invisibly helping.  At
home, that same evening when he had been chatting with Mr. Farebrother,
he had his long legs stretched on the sofa, his head thrown back, and
his hands clasped behind it according to his favorite ruminating
attitude, while Rosamond sat at the piano, and played one tune after
another, of which her husband only knew (like the emotional elephant he
was!) that they fell in with his mood as if they had been melodious
sea-breezes.

There was something very fine in Lydgate's look just then, and any one
might have been encouraged to bet on his achievement.  In his dark eyes
and on his mouth and brow there was that placidity which comes from the
fulness of contemplative thought--the mind not searching, but
beholding, and the glance seeming to be filled with what is behind it.

Presently Rosamond left the piano and seated herself on a chair close
to the sofa and opposite her husband's face.

"Is that enough music for you, my lord?" she said, folding her hands
before her and putting on a little air of meekness.

"Yes, dear, if you are tired," said Lydgate, gently, turning his eyes
and resting them on her, but not otherwise moving.  Rosamond's presence
at that moment was perhaps no more than a spoonful brought to the lake,
and her woman's instinct in this matter was not dull.


"What is absorbing you?" she said, leaning forward and bringing her
face nearer to his.

He moved his hands and placed them gently behind her shoulders.

"I am thinking of a great fellow, who was about as old as I am three
hundred years ago, and had already begun a new era in anatomy."

"I can't guess," said Rosamond, shaking her head.  "We used to play at
guessing historical characters at Mrs. Lemon's, but not anatomists."

"I'll tell you.  His name was Vesalius.  And the only way he could get
to know anatomy as he did, was by going to snatch bodies at night, from
graveyards and places of execution."

"Oh!" said Rosamond, with a look of disgust on her pretty face, "I am
very glad you are not Vesalius.  I should have thought he might find
some less horrible way than that."

"No, he couldn't," said Lydgate, going on too earnestly to take much
notice of her answer.  "He could only get a complete skeleton by
snatching the whitened bones of a criminal from the gallows, and
burying them, and fetching them away by bits secretly, in the dead of
night."

"I hope he is not one of your great heroes," said Rosamond, half
playfully, half anxiously, "else I shall have you getting up in the
night to go to St. Peter's churchyard.  You know how angry you told me
the people were about Mrs. Goby.  You have enemies enough already."

"So had Vesalius, Rosy.  No wonder the medical fogies in Middlemarch
are jealous, when some of the greatest doctors living were fierce upon
Vesalius because they had believed in Galen, and he showed that Galen
was wrong.  They called him a liar and a poisonous monster.  But the
facts of the human frame were on his side; and so he got the better of
them."

"And what happened to him afterwards?" said Rosamond, with some
interest.

"Oh, he had a good deal of fighting to the last.  And they did
exasperate him enough at one time to make him burn a good deal of his
work.  Then he got shipwrecked just as he was coming from Jerusalem to
take a great chair at Padua.  He died rather miserably."

There was a moment's pause before Rosamond said, "Do you know, Tertius,
I often wish you had not been a medical man."

"Nay, Rosy, don't say that," said Lydgate, drawing her closer to him.
"That is like saying you wish you had married another man."

"Not at all; you are clever enough for anything: you might easily have
been something else.  And your cousins at Quallingham all think that
you have sunk below them in your choice of a profession."

"The cousins at Quallingham may go to the devil!" said Lydgate, with
scorn.  "It was like their impudence if they said anything of the sort
to you."

"Still," said Rosamond, "I do _not_ think it is a nice profession,
dear."  We know that she had much quiet perseverance in her opinion.

"It is the grandest profession in the world, Rosamond," said Lydgate,
gravely.  "And to say that you love me without loving the medical man
in me, is the same sort of thing as to say that you like eating a peach
but don't like its flavor.  Don't say that again, dear, it pains me."

"Very well, Doctor Grave-face," said Rosy, dimpling, "I will declare in
future that I dote on skeletons, and body-snatchers, and bits of things
in phials, and quarrels with everybody, that end in your dying
miserably."

"No, no, not so bad as that," said Lydgate, giving up remonstrance and
petting her resignedly.



CHAPTER XLVI.

    Pues no podemos haber aquello que queremos, queramos
    aquello que podremos.

    Since we cannot get what we like, let us like
    what we can get.
                                     --Spanish Proverb.


While Lydgate, safely married and with the Hospital under his command,
felt himself struggling for Medical Reform against Middlemarch,
Middlemarch was becoming more and more conscious of the national
struggle for another kind of Reform.

By the time that Lord John Russell's measure was being debated in the
House of Commons, there was a new political animation in Middlemarch,
and a new definition of parties which might show a decided change of
balance if a new election came.  And there were some who already
predicted this event, declaring that a Reform Bill would never be
carried by the actual Parliament.  This was what Will Ladislaw dwelt on
to Mr. Brooke as a reason for congratulation that he had not yet tried
his strength at the hustings.

"Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year," said Will.
"The public temper will soon get to a cometary heat, now the question
of Reform has set in.  There is likely to be another election before
long, and by that time Middlemarch will have got more ideas into its
head.  What we have to work at now is the 'Pioneer' and political
meetings."

"Quite right, Ladislaw; we shall make a new thing of opinion here,"
said Mr. Brooke.  "Only I want to keep myself independent about Reform,
you know; I don't want to go too far.  I want to take up
Wilberforce's and Romilly's line, you know, and work at Negro
Emancipation, Criminal Law--that kind of thing.  But of course I should
support Grey."

"If you go in for the principle of Reform, you must be prepared to take
what the situation offers," said Will.  "If everybody pulled for his
own bit against everybody else, the whole question would go to tatters."

"Yes, yes, I agree with you--I quite take that point of view.  I should
put it in that light.  I should support Grey, you know.  But I don't
want to change the balance of the constitution, and I don't think Grey
would."

"But that is what the country wants," said Will.  "Else there would be
no meaning in political unions or any other movement that knows what
it's about.  It wants to have a House of Commons which is not weighted
with nominees of the landed class, but with representatives of the
other interests.  And as to contending for a reform short of that, it
is like asking for a bit of an avalanche which has already begun to
thunder."

"That is fine, Ladislaw: that is the way to put it.  Write that down,
now.  We must begin to get documents about the feeling of the country,
as well as the machine-breaking and general distress."

"As to documents," said Will, "a two-inch card will hold plenty.  A few
rows of figures are enough to deduce misery from, and a few more will
show the rate at which the political determination of the people is
growing."

"Good: draw that out a little more at length, Ladislaw.  That is an
idea, now: write it out in the 'Pioneer.' Put the figures and deduce
the misery, you know; and put the other figures and deduce--and so on.
You have a way of putting things.  Burke, now:--when I think of Burke,
I can't help wishing somebody had a pocket-borough to give you,
Ladislaw.  You'd never get elected, you know.  And we shall always want
talent in the House: reform as we will, we shall always want talent.
That avalanche and the thunder, now, was really a little like Burke.  I
want that sort of thing--not ideas, you know, but a way of putting
them."

"Pocket-boroughs would be a fine thing," said Ladislaw, "if they were
always in the right pocket, and there were always a Burke at hand."

Will was not displeased with that complimentary comparison, even from
Mr. Brooke; for it is a little too trying to human flesh to be
conscious of expressing one's self better than others and never to have
it noticed, and in the general dearth of admiration for the right
thing, even a chance bray of applause falling exactly in time is rather
fortifying.  Will felt that his literary refinements were usually
beyond the limits of Middlemarch perception; nevertheless, he was
beginning thoroughly to like the work of which when he began he had
said to himself rather languidly, "Why not?"--and he studied the
political situation with as ardent an interest as he had ever given to
poetic metres or mediaevalism.  It is undeniable that but for the
desire to be where Dorothea was, and perhaps the want of knowing what
else to do, Will would not at this time have been meditating on the
needs of the English people or criticising English statesmanship: he
would probably have been rambling in Italy sketching plans for several
dramas, trying prose and finding it too jejune, trying verse and
finding it too artificial, beginning to copy "bits" from old pictures,
leaving off because they were "no good," and observing that, after all,
self-culture was the principal point; while in politics he would have
been sympathizing warmly with liberty and progress in general.  Our
sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place
of dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality of our action is not
a matter of indifference.

Ladislaw had now accepted his bit of work, though it was not that
indeterminate loftiest thing which he had once dreamed of as alone
worthy of continuous effort.  His nature warmed easily in the presence
of subjects which were visibly mixed with life and action, and the
easily stirred rebellion in him helped the glow of public spirit.  In
spite of Mr. Casaubon and the banishment from Lowick, he was rather
happy; getting a great deal of fresh knowledge in a vivid way and for
practical purposes, and making the "Pioneer" celebrated as far as
Brassing (never mind the smallness of the area; the writing was not
worse than much that reaches the four corners of the earth).

Mr. Brooke was occasionally irritating; but Will's impatience was
relieved by the division of his time between visits to the Grange and
retreats to his Middlemarch lodgings, which gave variety to his life.

"Shift the pegs a little," he said to himself, "and Mr. Brooke might be
in the Cabinet, while I was Under-Secretary. That is the common order
of things: the little waves make the large ones and are of the same
pattern.  I am better here than in the sort of life Mr. Casaubon would
have trained me for, where the doing would be all laid down by a
precedent too rigid for me to react upon.  I don't care for prestige or
high pay."

As Lydgate had said of him, he was a sort of gypsy, rather enjoying the
sense of belonging to no class; he had a feeling of romance in his
position, and a pleasant consciousness of creating a little surprise
wherever he went.  That sort of enjoyment had been disturbed when he
had felt some new distance between himself and Dorothea in their
accidental meeting at Lydgate's, and his irritation had gone out
towards Mr. Casaubon, who had declared beforehand that Will would lose
caste.  "I never had any caste," he would have said, if that prophecy
had been uttered to him, and the quick blood would have come and gone
like breath in his transparent skin.  But it is one thing to like
defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.

Meanwhile, the town opinion about the new editor of the "Pioneer" was
tending to confirm Mr. Casaubon's view.  Will's relationship in that
distinguished quarter did not, like Lydgate's high connections, serve
as an advantageous introduction: if it was rumored that young Ladislaw
was Mr. Casaubon's nephew or cousin, it was also rumored that "Mr.
Casaubon would have nothing to do with him."

"Brooke has taken him up," said Mr. Hawley, "because that is what no
man in his senses could have expected.  Casaubon has devilish good
reasons, you may be sure, for turning the cold shoulder on a young
fellow whose bringing-up he paid for.  Just like Brooke--one of those
fellows who would praise a cat to sell a horse."

And some oddities of Will's, more or less poetical, appeared to support
Mr. Keck, the editor of the "Trumpet," in asserting that Ladislaw, if
the truth were known, was not only a Polish emissary but crack-brained,
which accounted for the preternatural quickness and glibness of his
speech when he got on to a platform--as he did whenever he had an
opportunity, speaking with a facility which cast reflections on solid
Englishmen generally.  It was disgusting to Keck to see a strip of a
fellow, with light curls round his head, get up and speechify by the
hour against institutions "which had existed when he was in his
cradle."  And in a leading article of the "Trumpet," Keck characterized
Ladislaw's speech at a Reform meeting as "the violence of an
energumen--a miserable effort to shroud in the brilliancy of fireworks
the daring of irresponsible statements and the poverty of a knowledge
which was of the cheapest and most recent description."

"That was a rattling article yesterday, Keck," said Dr. Sprague, with
sarcastic intentions.  "But what is an energumen?"

"Oh, a term that came up in the French Revolution," said Keck.

This dangerous aspect of Ladislaw was strangely contrasted with other
habits which became matter of remark.  He had a fondness, half
artistic, half affectionate, for little children--the smaller they were
on tolerably active legs, and the funnier their clothing, the better
Will liked to surprise and please them.  We know that in Rome he was
given to ramble about among the poor people, and the taste did not quit
him in Middlemarch.

He had somehow picked up a troop of droll children, little hatless boys
with their galligaskins much worn and scant shirting to hang out,
little girls who tossed their hair out of their eyes to look at him,
and guardian brothers at the mature age of seven.  This troop he had
led out on gypsy excursions to Halsell Wood at nutting-time, and since
the cold weather had set in he had taken them on a clear day to gather
sticks for a bonfire in the hollow of a hillside, where he drew out a
small feast of gingerbread for them, and improvised a Punch-and-Judy
drama with some private home-made puppets.  Here was one oddity.
Another was, that in houses where he got friendly, he was given to
stretch himself at full length on the rug while he talked, and was apt
to be discovered in this attitude by occasional callers for whom such
an irregularity was likely to confirm the notions of his dangerously
mixed blood and general laxity.

But Will's articles and speeches naturally recommended him in families
which the new strictness of party division had marked off on the side
of Reform.  He was invited to Mr. Bulstrode's; but here he could not
lie down on the rug, and Mrs. Bulstrode felt that his mode of talking
about Catholic countries, as if there were any truce with Antichrist,
illustrated the usual tendency to unsoundness in intellectual men.

At Mr. Farebrother's, however, whom the irony of events had brought on
the same side with Bulstrode in the national movement, Will became a
favorite with the ladies; especially with little Miss Noble, whom it
was one of his oddities to escort when he met her in the street with
her little basket, giving her his arm in the eyes of the town, and
insisting on going with her to pay some call where she distributed her
small filchings from her own share of sweet things.

But the house where he visited oftenest and lay most on the rug was
Lydgate's. The two men were not at all alike, but they agreed none the
worse.  Lydgate was abrupt but not irritable, taking little notice of
megrims in healthy people; and Ladislaw did not usually throw away his
susceptibilities on those who took no notice of them.  With Rosamond,
on the other hand, he pouted and was wayward--nay, often
uncomplimentary, much to her inward surprise; nevertheless he was
gradually becoming necessary to her entertainment by his companionship
in her music, his varied talk, and his freedom from the grave
preoccupation which, with all her husband's tenderness and indulgence,
often made his manners unsatisfactory to her, and confirmed her dislike
of the medical profession.

Lydgate, inclined to be sarcastic on the superstitious faith of the
people in the efficacy of "the bill," while nobody cared about the low
state of pathology, sometimes assailed Will with troublesome questions.
One evening in March, Rosamond in her cherry-colored dress with
swansdown trimming about the throat sat at the tea-table; Lydgate,
lately come in tired from his outdoor work, was seated sideways on an
easy-chair by the fire with one leg over the elbow, his brow looking a
little troubled as his eyes rambled over the columns of the "Pioneer,"
while Rosamond, having noticed that he was perturbed, avoided looking
at him, and inwardly thanked heaven that she herself had not a moody
disposition.  Will Ladislaw was stretched on the rug contemplating the
curtain-pole abstractedly, and humming very low the notes of "When
first I saw thy face;" while the house spaniel, also stretched out with
small choice of room, looked from between his paws at the usurper of
the rug with silent but strong objection.

Rosamond bringing Lydgate his cup of tea, he threw down the paper, and
said to Will, who had started up and gone to the table--

"It's no use your puffing Brooke as a reforming landlord, Ladislaw:
they only pick the more holes in his coat in the 'Trumpet.'"

"No matter; those who read the 'Pioneer' don't read the 'Trumpet,'"
said Will, swallowing his tea and walking about.  "Do you suppose the
public reads with a view to its own conversion?  We should have a
witches' brewing with a vengeance then--'Mingle, mingle, mingle,
mingle, You that mingle may'--and nobody would know which side he was
going to take."

"Farebrother says, he doesn't believe Brooke would get elected if the
opportunity came: the very men who profess to be for him would bring
another member out of the bag at the right moment."

"There's no harm in trying.  It's good to have resident members."

"Why?" said Lydgate, who was much given to use that inconvenient word
in a curt tone.

"They represent the local stupidity better," said Will, laughing, and
shaking his curls; "and they are kept on their best behavior in the
neighborhood.  Brooke is not a bad fellow, but he has done some good
things on his estate that he never would have done but for this
Parliamentary bite."

"He's not fitted to be a public man," said Lydgate, with contemptuous
decision.  "He would disappoint everybody who counted on him: I can see
that at the Hospital.  Only, there Bulstrode holds the reins and drives
him."

"That depends on how you fix your standard of public men," said Will.
"He's good enough for the occasion: when the people have made up their
mind as they are making it up now, they don't want a man--they only
want a vote."

"That is the way with you political writers, Ladislaw--crying up a
measure as if it were a universal cure, and crying up men who are a
part of the very disease that wants curing."

"Why not?  Men may help to cure themselves off the face of the land
without knowing it," said Will, who could find reasons impromptu, when
he had not thought of a question beforehand.

"That is no excuse for encouraging the superstitious exaggeration of
hopes about this particular measure, helping the cry to swallow it
whole and to send up voting popinjays who are good for nothing but to
carry it.  You go against rottenness, and there is nothing more
thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can be cured
by a political hocus-pocus."

"That's very fine, my dear fellow.  But your cure must begin somewhere,
and put it that a thousand things which debase a population can never
be reformed without this particular reform to begin with.  Look what
Stanley said the other day--that the House had been tinkering long
enough at small questions of bribery, inquiring whether this or that
voter has had a guinea when everybody knows that the seats have been
sold wholesale.  Wait for wisdom and conscience in public
agents--fiddlestick!  The only conscience we can trust to is the
massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom that will work
is the wisdom of balancing claims.  That's my text--which side is
injured?  I support the man who supports their claims; not the virtuous
upholder of the wrong."

"That general talk about a particular case is mere question begging,
Ladislaw.  When I say, I go in for the dose that cures, it doesn't
follow that I go in for opium in a given case of gout."

"I am not begging the question we are upon--whether we are to try for
nothing till we find immaculate men to work with.  Should you go on
that plan?  If there were one man who would carry you a medical reform
and another who would oppose it, should you inquire which had the
better motives or even the better brains?"

"Oh, of course," said Lydgate, seeing himself checkmated by a move
which he had often used himself, "if one did not work with such men as
are at hand, things must come to a dead-lock. Suppose the worst opinion
in the town about Bulstrode were a true one, that would not make it
less true that he has the sense and the resolution to do what I think
ought to be done in the matters I know and care most about; but that is
the only ground on which I go with him," Lydgate added rather proudly,
bearing in mind Mr. Farebrother's remarks.  "He is nothing to me
otherwise; I would not cry him up on any personal ground--I would keep
clear of that."

"Do you mean that I cry up Brooke on any personal ground?" said Will
Ladislaw, nettled, and turning sharp round.  For the first time he felt
offended with Lydgate; not the less so, perhaps, because he would have
declined any close inquiry into the growth of his relation to Mr.
Brooke.

"Not at all," said Lydgate, "I was simply explaining my own action.  I
meant that a man may work for a special end with others whose motives
and general course are equivocal, if he is quite sure of his personal
independence, and that he is not working for his private
interest--either place or money."

"Then, why don't you extend your liberality to others?" said Will,
still nettled.  "My personal independence is as important to me as
yours is to you.  You have no more reason to imagine that I have
personal expectations from Brooke, than I have to imagine that you have
personal expectations from Bulstrode.  Motives are points of honor, I
suppose--nobody can prove them.  But as to money and place in the
world." Will ended, tossing back his head, "I think it is pretty clear
that I am not determined by considerations of that sort."

"You quite mistake me, Ladislaw," said Lydgate, surprised.  He had been
preoccupied with his own vindication, and had been blind to what
Ladislaw might infer on his own account.  "I beg your pardon for
unintentionally annoying you.  In fact, I should rather attribute to
you a romantic disregard of your own worldly interests.  On the
political question, I referred simply to intellectual bias."

"How very unpleasant you both are this evening!" said Rosamond.  "I
cannot conceive why money should have been referred to.  Polities and
Medicine are sufficiently disagreeable to quarrel upon.  You can both
of you go on quarrelling with all the world and with each other on
those two topics."

Rosamond looked mildly neutral as she said this, rising to ring the
bell, and then crossing to her work-table.

"Poor Rosy!" said Lydgate, putting out his hand to her as she was
passing him.  "Disputation is not amusing to cherubs.  Have some music.
Ask Ladislaw to sing with you."

When Will was gone Rosamond said to her husband, "What put you out of
temper this evening, Tertius?"

"Me?  It was Ladislaw who was out of temper.  He is like a bit of
tinder."

"But I mean, before that.  Something had vexed you before you came in,
you looked cross.  And that made you begin to dispute with Mr.
Ladislaw.  You hurt me very much when you look so, Tertius."

"Do I?  Then I am a brute," said Lydgate, caressing her penitently.

"What vexed you?"

"Oh, outdoor things--business."  It was really a letter insisting on
the payment of a bill for furniture.  But Rosamond was expecting to
have a baby, and Lydgate wished to save her from any perturbation.



CHAPTER XLVII.

    Was never true love loved in vain,
    For truest love is highest gain.
    No art can make it: it must spring
    Where elements are fostering.
        So in heaven's spot and hour
        Springs the little native flower,
        Downward root and upward eye,
        Shapen by the earth and sky.


It happened to be on a Saturday evening that Will Ladislaw had that
little discussion with Lydgate.  Its effect when he went to his own
rooms was to make him sit up half the night, thinking over again, under
a new irritation, all that he had before thought of his having settled
in Middlemarch and harnessed himself with Mr. Brooke.  Hesitations
before he had taken the step had since turned into susceptibility to
every hint that he would have been wiser not to take it; and hence came
his heat towards Lydgate--a heat which still kept him restless.  Was he
not making a fool of himself?--and at a time when he was more than
ever conscious of being something better than a fool?  And for what end?

Well, for no definite end.  True, he had dreamy visions of
possibilities: there is no human being who having both passions and
thoughts does not think in consequence of his passions--does not find
images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting
it with dread.  But this, which happens to us all, happens to some with
a wide difference; and Will was not one of those whose wit "keeps the
roadway:" he had his bypaths where there were little joys of his own
choosing, such as gentlemen cantering on the highroad might have
thought rather idiotic.  The way in which he made a sort of happiness
for himself out of his feeling for Dorothea was an example of this.  It
may seem strange, but it is the fact, that the ordinary vulgar vision
of which Mr. Casaubon suspected him--namely, that Dorothea might become
a widow, and that the interest he had established in her mind might
turn into acceptance of him as a husband--had no tempting, arresting
power over him; he did not live in the scenery of such an event, and
follow it out, as we all do with that imagined "otherwise" which is our
practical heaven.  It was not only that he was unwilling to entertain
thoughts which could be accused of baseness, and was already uneasy in
the sense that he had to justify himself from the charge of
ingratitude--the latent consciousness of many other barriers between
himself and Dorothea besides the existence of her husband, had helped
to turn away his imagination from speculating on what might befall Mr.
Casaubon.  And there were yet other reasons.  Will, we know, could not
bear the thought of any flaw appearing in his crystal: he was at once
exasperated and delighted by the calm freedom with which Dorothea
looked at him and spoke to him, and there was something so exquisite in
thinking of her just as she was, that he could not long for a change
which must somehow change her.  Do we not shun the street version of a
fine melody?--or shrink from the news that the rarity--some bit of
chiselling or engraving perhaps--which we have dwelt on even with
exultation in the trouble it has cost us to snatch glimpses of it, is
really not an uncommon thing, and may be obtained as an every-day
possession?  Our good depends on the quality and breadth of our
emotion; and to Will, a creature who cared little for what are called
the solid things of life and greatly for its subtler influences, to
have within him such a feeling as he had towards Dorothea, was like the
inheritance of a fortune.  What others might have called the futility
of his passion, made an additional delight for his imagination: he was
conscious of a generous movement, and of verifying in his own
experience that higher love-poetry which had charmed his fancy.
Dorothea, he said to himself, was forever enthroned in his soul: no
other woman could sit higher than her footstool; and if he could have
written out in immortal syllables the effect she wrought within him, he
might have boasted after the example of old Drayton, that,--

        "Queens hereafter might be glad to live
         Upon the alms of her superfluous praise."

But this result was questionable.  And what else could he do for
Dorothea?  What was his devotion worth to her?  It was impossible to
tell.  He would not go out of her reach.  He saw no creature among her
friends to whom he could believe that she spoke with the same simple
confidence as to him.  She had once said that she would like him to
stay; and stay he would, whatever fire-breathing dragons might hiss
around her.

This had always been the conclusion of Will's hesitations.  But he was
not without contradictoriness and rebellion even towards his own
resolve.  He had often got irritated, as he was on this particular
night, by some outside demonstration that his public exertions with Mr.
Brooke as a chief could not seem as heroic as he would like them to be,
and this was always associated with the other ground of
irritation--that notwithstanding his sacrifice of dignity for
Dorothea's sake, he could hardly ever see her.  Whereupon, not being
able to contradict these unpleasant facts, he contradicted his own
strongest bias and said, "I am a fool."

Nevertheless, since the inward debate necessarily turned on Dorothea,
he ended, as he had done before, only by getting a livelier sense of
what her presence would be to him; and suddenly reflecting that the
morrow would be Sunday, he determined to go to Lowick Church and see
her.  He slept upon that idea, but when he was dressing in the rational
morning light, Objection said--

"That will be a virtual defiance of Mr. Casaubon's prohibition to visit
Lowick, and Dorothea will be displeased."

"Nonsense!" argued Inclination, "it would be too monstrous for him to
hinder me from going out to a pretty country church on a spring
morning.  And Dorothea will be glad."

"It will be clear to Mr. Casaubon that you have come either to annoy
him or to see Dorothea."

"It is not true that I go to annoy him, and why should I not go to see
Dorothea?  Is he to have everything to himself and be always
comfortable?  Let him smart a little, as other people are obliged to
do.  I have always liked the quaintness of the church and congregation;
besides, I know the Tuckers: I shall go into their pew."

Having silenced Objection by force of unreason, Will walked to Lowick
as if he had been on the way to Paradise, crossing Halsell Common and
skirting the wood, where the sunlight fell broadly under the budding
boughs, bringing out the beauties of moss and lichen, and fresh green
growths piercing the brown.  Everything seemed to know that it was
Sunday, and to approve of his going to Lowick Church.  Will easily felt
happy when nothing crossed his humor, and by this time the thought of
vexing Mr. Casaubon had become rather amusing to him, making his face
break into its merry smile, pleasant to see as the breaking of sunshine
on the water--though the occasion was not exemplary.  But most of us
are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is
odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his
personality excites in ourselves.  Will went along with a small book
under his arm and a hand in each side-pocket, never reading, but
chanting a little, as he made scenes of what would happen in church and
coming out.  He was experimenting in tunes to suit some words of his
own, sometimes trying a ready-made melody, sometimes improvising.  The
words were not exactly a hymn, but they certainly fitted his Sunday
experience:--

        "O me, O me, what frugal cheer
           My love doth feed upon!
         A touch, a ray, that is not here,
           A shadow that is gone:

        "A dream of breath that might be near,
           An inly-echoed tone,
         The thought that one may think me dear,
           The place where one was known,

        "The tremor of a banished fear,
           An ill that was not done--
         O me, O me, what frugal cheer
           My love doth feed upon!"

Sometimes, when he took off his hat, shaking his head backward, and
showing his delicate throat as he sang, he looked like an incarnation
of the spring whose spirit filled the air--a bright creature, abundant
in uncertain promises.

The bells were still ringing when he got to Lowick, and he went into
the curate's pew before any one else arrived there.  But he was still
left alone in it when the congregation had assembled.  The curate's pew
was opposite the rector's at the entrance of the small chancel, and
Will had time to fear that Dorothea might not come while he looked
round at the group of rural faces which made the congregation from year
to year within the white-washed walls and dark old pews, hardly with
more change than we see in the boughs of a tree which breaks here and
there with age, but yet has young shoots.  Mr. Rigg's frog-face was
something alien and unaccountable, but notwithstanding this shock to
the order of things, there were still the Waules and the rural stock of
the Powderells in their pews side by side; brother Samuel's cheek had
the same purple round as ever, and the three generations of decent
cottagers came as of old with a sense of duty to their betters
generally--the smaller children regarding Mr. Casaubon, who wore the
black gown and mounted to the highest box, as probably the chief of all
betters, and the one most awful if offended.  Even in 1831 Lowick was
at peace, not more agitated by Reform than by the solemn tenor of the
Sunday sermon.  The congregation had been used to seeing Will at church
in former days, and no one took much note of him except the choir, who
expected him to make a figure in the singing.

Dorothea did at last appear on this quaint background, walking up the
short aisle in her white beaver bonnet and gray cloak--the same she had
worn in the Vatican.  Her face being, from her entrance, towards the
chancel, even her shortsighted eyes soon discerned Will, but there was
no outward show of her feeling except a slight paleness and a grave bow
as she passed him.  To his own surprise Will felt suddenly
uncomfortable, and dared not look at her after they had bowed to each
other.  Two minutes later, when Mr. Casaubon came out of the vestry,
and, entering the pew, seated himself in face of Dorothea, Will felt
his paralysis more complete.  He could look nowhere except at the choir
in the little gallery over the vestry-door: Dorothea was perhaps
pained, and he had made a wretched blunder.  It was no longer amusing
to vex Mr. Casaubon, who had the advantage probably of watching him and
seeing that he dared not turn his head.  Why had he not imagined this
beforehand?--but he could not expect that he should sit in that square
pew alone, unrelieved by any Tuckers, who had apparently departed from
Lowick altogether, for a new clergyman was in the desk.  Still he
called himself stupid now for not foreseeing that it would be
impossible for him to look towards Dorothea--nay, that she might feel
his coming an impertinence.  There was no delivering himself from his
cage, however; and Will found his places and looked at his book as if
he had been a school-mistress, feeling that the morning service had
never been so immeasurably long before, that he was utterly ridiculous,
out of temper, and miserable.  This was what a man got by worshipping
the sight of a woman!  The clerk observed with surprise that Mr.
Ladislaw did not join in the tune of Hanover, and reflected that he
might have a cold.

Mr. Casaubon did not preach that morning, and there was no change in
Will's situation until the blessing had been pronounced and every one
rose.  It was the fashion at Lowick for "the betters" to go out first.
With a sudden determination to break the spell that was upon him, Will
looked straight at Mr. Casaubon.  But that gentleman's eyes were on the
button of the pew-door, which he opened, allowing Dorothea to pass, and
following her immediately without raising his eyelids.  Will's glance
had caught Dorothea's as she turned out of the pew, and again she
bowed, but this time with a look of agitation, as if she were
repressing tears.  Will walked out after them, but they went on towards
the little gate leading out of the churchyard into the shrubbery, never
looking round.

It was impossible for him to follow them, and he could only walk back
sadly at mid-day along the same road which he had trodden hopefully in
the morning.  The lights were all changed for him both without and
within.



CHAPTER XLVIII

    Surely the golden hours are turning gray
    And dance no more, and vainly strive to run:
    I see their white locks streaming in the wind--
    Each face is haggard as it looks at me,
    Slow turning in the constant clasping round
    Storm-driven.


Dorothea's distress when she was leaving the church came chiefly from
the perception that Mr. Casaubon was determined not to speak to his
cousin, and that Will's presence at church had served to mark more
strongly the alienation between them.  Will's coming seemed to her
quite excusable, nay, she thought it an amiable movement in him towards
a reconciliation which she herself had been constantly wishing for.  He
had probably imagined, as she had, that if Mr. Casaubon and he could
meet easily, they would shake hands and friendly intercourse might
return.  But now Dorothea felt quite robbed of that hope.  Will was
banished further than ever, for Mr. Casaubon must have been newly
embittered by this thrusting upon him of a presence which he refused to
recognize.

He had not been very well that morning, suffering from some difficulty
in breathing, and had not preached in consequence; she was not
surprised, therefore, that he was nearly silent at luncheon, still less
that he made no allusion to Will Ladislaw.  For her own part she felt
that she could never again introduce that subject.  They usually spent
apart the hours between luncheon and dinner on a Sunday; Mr. Casaubon
in the library dozing chiefly, and Dorothea in her boudoir, where she
was wont to occupy herself with some of her favorite books.  There was
a little heap of them on the table in the bow-window--of various sorts,
from Herodotus, which she was learning to read with Mr. Casaubon, to
her old companion Pascal, and Keble's "Christian Year." But to-day
opened one after another, and could read none of them.  Everything
seemed dreary: the portents before the birth of Cyrus--Jewish
antiquities--oh dear!--devout epigrams--the sacred chime of favorite
hymns--all alike were as flat as tunes beaten on wood: even the spring
flowers and the grass had a dull shiver in them under the afternoon
clouds that hid the sun fitfully; even the sustaining thoughts which
had become habits seemed to have in them the weariness of long future
days in which she would still live with them for her sole companions.
It was another or rather a fuller sort of companionship that poor
Dorothea was hungering for, and the hunger had grown from the perpetual
effort demanded by her married life.  She was always trying to be what
her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she
was.  The thing that she liked, that she spontaneously cared to have,
seemed to be always excluded from her life; for if it was only granted
and not shared by her husband it might as well have been denied.  About
Will Ladislaw there had been a difference between them from the first,
and it had ended, since Mr. Casaubon had so severely repulsed
Dorothea's strong feeling about his claims on the family property, by
her being convinced that she was in the right and her husband in the
wrong, but that she was helpless.  This afternoon the helplessness was
more wretchedly benumbing than ever: she longed for objects who could
be dear to her, and to whom she could be dear.  She longed for work
which would be directly beneficent like the sunshine and the rain, and
now it appeared that she was to live more and more in a virtual tomb,
where there was the apparatus of a ghastly labor producing what would
never see the light.  Today she had stood at the door of the tomb and
seen Will Ladislaw receding into the distant world of warm activity and
fellowship--turning his face towards her as he went.

Books were of no use.  Thinking was of no use.  It was Sunday, and she
could not have the carriage to go to Celia, who had lately had a baby.
There was no refuge now from spiritual emptiness and discontent, and
Dorothea had to bear her bad mood, as she would have borne a headache.

After dinner, at the hour when she usually began to read aloud, Mr.
Casaubon proposed that they should go into the library, where, he said,
he had ordered a fire and lights.  He seemed to have revived, and to be
thinking intently.

In the library Dorothea observed that he had newly arranged a row of
his note-books on a table, and now he took up and put into her hand a
well-known volume, which was a table of contents to all the others.

"You will oblige me, my dear," he said, seating himself, "if instead of
other reading this evening, you will go through this aloud, pencil in
hand, and at each point where I say 'mark,' will make a cross with your
pencil.  This is the first step in a sifting process which I have long
had in view, and as we go on I shall be able to indicate to you certain
principles of selection whereby you will, I trust, have an intelligent
participation in my purpose."

This proposal was only one more sign added to many since his memorable
interview with Lydgate, that Mr. Casaubon's original reluctance to let
Dorothea work with him had given place to the contrary disposition,
namely, to demand much interest and labor from her.

After she had read and marked for two hours, he said, "We will take the
volume up-stairs--and the pencil, if you please--and in case of
reading in the night, we can pursue this task.  It is not wearisome to
you, I trust, Dorothea?"

"I prefer always reading what you like best to hear," said Dorothea,
who told the simple truth; for what she dreaded was to exert herself in
reading or anything else which left him as joyless as ever.

It was a proof of the force with which certain characteristics in
Dorothea impressed those around her, that her husband, with all his
jealousy and suspicion, had gathered implicit trust in the integrity of
her promises, and her power of devoting herself to her idea of the
right and best.  Of late he had begun to feel that these qualities were
a peculiar possession for himself, and he wanted to engross them.

The reading in the night did come.  Dorothea in her young weariness had
slept soon and fast: she was awakened by a sense of light, which seemed
to her at first like a sudden vision of sunset after she had climbed a
steep hill: she opened her eyes and saw her husband wrapped in his warm
gown seating himself in the arm-chair near the fire-place where the
embers were still glowing.  He had lit two candles, expecting that
Dorothea would awake, but not liking to rouse her by more direct means.

"Are you ill, Edward?" she said, rising immediately.

"I felt some uneasiness in a reclining posture.  I will sit here for a
time."  She threw wood on the fire, wrapped herself up, and said, "You
would like me to read to you?"

"You would oblige me greatly by doing so, Dorothea," said Mr. Casaubon,
with a shade more meekness than usual in his polite manner.  "I am
wakeful: my mind is remarkably lucid."

"I fear that the excitement may be too great for you," said Dorothea,
remembering Lydgate's cautions.

"No, I am not conscious of undue excitement.  Thought is easy."
Dorothea dared not insist, and she read for an hour or more on the same
plan as she had done in the evening, but getting over the pages with
more quickness.  Mr. Casaubon's mind was more alert, and he seemed to
anticipate what was coming after a very slight verbal indication,
saying, "That will do--mark that"--or "Pass on to the next head--I omit
the second excursus on Crete." Dorothea was amazed to think of the
bird-like speed with which his mind was surveying the ground where it
had been creeping for years.  At last he said--

"Close the book now, my dear.  We will resume our work to-morrow.  I
have deferred it too long, and would gladly see it completed.  But you
observe that the principle on which my selection is made, is to give
adequate, and not disproportionate illustration to each of the theses
enumerated in my introduction, as at present sketched.  You have
perceived that distinctly, Dorothea?"

"Yes," said Dorothea, rather tremulously.  She felt sick at heart.

"And now I think that I can take some repose," said Mr. Casaubon.  He
laid down again and begged her to put out the lights.  When she had
lain down too, and there was a darkness only broken by a dull glow on
the hearth, he said--

"Before I sleep, I have a request to make, Dorothea."

"What is it?" said Dorothea, with dread in her mind.

"It is that you will let me know, deliberately, whether, in case of my
death, you will carry out my wishes: whether you will avoid doing what
I should deprecate, and apply yourself to do what I should desire."

Dorothea was not taken by surprise: many incidents had been leading her
to the conjecture of some intention on her husband's part which might
make a new yoke for her.  She did not answer immediately.

"You refuse?" said Mr. Casaubon, with more edge in his tone.

"No, I do not yet refuse," said Dorothea, in a clear voice, the need of
freedom asserting itself within her; "but it is too solemn--I think it
is not right--to make a promise when I am ignorant what it will bind me
to.  Whatever affection prompted I would do without promising."

"But you would use your own judgment: I ask you to obey mine; you
refuse."

"No, dear, no!" said Dorothea, beseechingly, crushed by opposing fears.
"But may I wait and reflect a little while?  I desire with my whole
soul to do what will comfort you; but I cannot give any pledge
suddenly--still less a pledge to do I know not what."

"You cannot then confide in the nature of my wishes?"

"Grant me till to-morrow," said Dorothea, beseechingly.

"Till to-morrow then," said Mr. Casaubon.

Soon she could hear that he was sleeping, but there was no more sleep
for her.  While she constrained herself to lie still lest she should
disturb him, her mind was carrying on a conflict in which imagination
ranged its forces first on one side and then on the other.  She had no
presentiment that the power which her husband wished to establish over
her future action had relation to anything else than his work.  But it
was clear enough to her that he would expect her to devote herself to
sifting those mixed heaps of material, which were to be the doubtful
illustration of principles still more doubtful.  The poor child had
become altogether unbelieving as to the trustworthiness of that Key
which had made the ambition and the labor of her husband's life.  It
was not wonderful that, in spite of her small instruction, her judgment
in this matter was truer than his: for she looked with unbiassed
comparison and healthy sense at probabilities on which he had risked
all his egoism.  And now she pictured to herself the days, and months,
and years which she must spend in sorting what might be called
shattered mummies, and fragments of a tradition which was itself a
mosaic wrought from crushed ruins--sorting them as food for a theory
which was already withered in the birth like an elfin child.  Doubtless
a vigorous error vigorously pursued has kept the embryos of truth
a-breathing: the quest of gold being at the same time a questioning of
substances, the body of chemistry is prepared for its soul, and
Lavoisier is born.  But Mr. Casaubon's theory of the elements which
made the seed of all tradition was not likely to bruise itself unawares
against discoveries: it floated among flexible conjectures no more
solid than those etymologies which seemed strong because of likeness in
sound until it was shown that likeness in sound made them impossible:
it was a method of interpretation which was not tested by the necessity
of forming anything which had sharper collisions than an elaborate
notion of Gog and Magog: it was as free from interruption as a plan for
threading the stars together.  And Dorothea had so often had to check
her weariness and impatience over this questionable riddle-guessing, as
it revealed itself to her instead of the fellowship in high knowledge
which was to make life worthier!  She could understand well enough now
why her husband had come to cling to her, as possibly the only hope
left that his labors would ever take a shape in which they could be
given to the world.  At first it had seemed that he wished to keep even
her aloof from any close knowledge of what he was doing; but gradually
the terrible stringency of human need--the prospect of a too speedy
death--

And here Dorothea's pity turned from her own future to her husband's
past--nay, to his present hard struggle with a lot which had grown out
of that past: the lonely labor, the ambition breathing hardly under the
pressure of self-distrust; the goal receding, and the heavier limbs;
and now at last the sword visibly trembling above him!  And had she not
wished to marry him that she might help him in his life's labor?--But
she had thought the work was to be something greater, which she could
serve in devoutly for its own sake.  Was it right, even to soothe his
grief--would it be possible, even if she promised--to work as in a
treadmill fruitlessly?

And yet, could she deny him?  Could she say, "I refuse to content this
pining hunger?"  It would be refusing to do for him dead, what she was
almost sure to do for him living.  If he lived as Lydgate had said he
might, for fifteen years or more, her life would certainly be spent in
helping him and obeying him.

Still, there was a deep difference between that devotion to the living
and that indefinite promise of devotion to the dead.  While he lived,
he could claim nothing that she would not still be free to remonstrate
against, and even to refuse.  But--the thought passed through her mind
more than once, though she could not believe in it--might he not mean
to demand something more from her than she had been able to imagine,
since he wanted her pledge to carry out his wishes without telling her
exactly what they were?  No; his heart was bound up in his work only:
that was the end for which his failing life was to be eked out by hers.

And now, if she were to say, "No! if you die, I will put no finger to
your work"--it seemed as if she would be crushing that bruised heart.

For four hours Dorothea lay in this conflict, till she felt ill and
bewildered, unable to resolve, praying mutely.  Helpless as a child
which has sobbed and sought too long, she fell into a late morning
sleep, and when she waked Mr. Casaubon was already up.  Tantripp told
her that he had read prayers, breakfasted, and was in the library.

"I never saw you look so pale, madam," said Tantripp, a solid-figured
woman who had been with the sisters at Lausanne.

"Was I ever high-colored, Tantripp?" said Dorothea, smiling faintly.

"Well, not to say high-colored, but with a bloom like a Chiny rose.
But always smelling those leather books, what can be expected?  Do rest
a little this morning, madam.  Let me say you are ill and not able to
go into that close library."

"Oh no, no! let me make haste," said Dorothea.  "Mr. Casaubon wants me
particularly."

When she went down she felt sure that she should promise to fulfil his
wishes; but that would be later in the day--not yet.

As Dorothea entered the library, Mr. Casaubon turned round from the
table where he had been placing some books, and said--

"I was waiting for your appearance, my dear.  I had hoped to set to
work at once this morning, but I find myself under some indisposition,
probably from too much excitement yesterday.  I am going now to take a
turn in the shrubbery, since the air is milder."

"I am glad to hear that," said Dorothea.  "Your mind, I feared, was too
active last night."

"I would fain have it set at rest on the point I last spoke of,
Dorothea.  You can now, I hope, give me an answer."

"May I come out to you in the garden presently?" said Dorothea, winning
a little breathing space in that way.

"I shall be in the Yew-tree Walk for the next half-hour," said Mr.
Casaubon, and then he left her.

Dorothea, feeling very weary, rang and asked Tantripp to bring her some
wraps.  She had been sitting still for a few minutes, but not in any
renewal of the former conflict: she simply felt that she was going to
say "Yes" to her own doom: she was too weak, too full of dread at the
thought of inflicting a keen-edged blow on her husband, to do anything
but submit completely.  She sat still and let Tantripp put on her
bonnet and shawl, a passivity which was unusual with her, for she liked
to wait on herself.

"God bless you, madam!" said Tantripp, with an irrepressible movement
of love towards the beautiful, gentle creature for whom she felt unable
to do anything more, now that she had finished tying the bonnet.

This was too much for Dorothea's highly-strung feeling, and she burst
into tears, sobbing against Tantripp's arm.  But soon she checked
herself, dried her eyes, and went out at the glass door into the
shrubbery.

"I wish every book in that library was built into a caticom for your
master," said Tantripp to Pratt, the butler, finding him in the
breakfast-room. She had been at Rome, and visited the antiquities, as
we know; and she always declined to call Mr. Casaubon anything but
"your master," when speaking to the other servants.

Pratt laughed.  He liked his master very well, but he liked Tantripp
better.

When Dorothea was out on the gravel walks, she lingered among the
nearer clumps of trees, hesitating, as she had done once before, though
from a different cause.  Then she had feared lest her effort at
fellowship should be unwelcome; now she dreaded going to the spot where
she foresaw that she must bind herself to a fellowship from which she
shrank.  Neither law nor the world's opinion compelled her to
this--only her husband's nature and her own compassion, only the ideal
and not the real yoke of marriage.  She saw clearly enough the whole
situation, yet she was fettered: she could not smite the stricken soul
that entreated hers.  If that were weakness, Dorothea was weak.  But
the half-hour was passing, and she must not delay longer.  When she
entered the Yew-tree Walk she could not see her husband; but the walk
had bends, and she went, expecting to catch sight of his figure wrapped
in a blue cloak, which, with a warm velvet cap, was his outer garment
on chill days for the garden.  It occurred to her that he might be
resting in the summer-house, towards which the path diverged a little.
Turning the angle, she could see him seated on the bench, close to a
stone table.  His arms were resting on the table, and his brow was
bowed down on them, the blue cloak being dragged forward and screening
his face on each side.

"He exhausted himself last night," Dorothea said to herself, thinking
at first that he was asleep, and that the summer-house was too damp a
place to rest in.  But then she remembered that of late she had seen
him take that attitude when she was reading to him, as if he found it
easier than any other; and that he would sometimes speak, as well as
listen, with his face down in that way.  She went into the summerhouse
and said, "I am come, Edward; I am ready."

He took no notice, and she thought that he must be fast asleep.  She
laid her hand on his shoulder, and repeated, "I am ready!" Still he was
motionless; and with a sudden confused fear, she leaned down to him,
took off his velvet cap, and leaned her cheek close to his head, crying
in a distressed tone--

"Wake, dear, wake!  Listen to me.  I am come to answer." But Dorothea
never gave her answer.

Later in the day, Lydgate was seated by her bedside, and she was
talking deliriously, thinking aloud, and recalling what had gone
through her mind the night before.  She knew him, and called him by his
name, but appeared to think it right that she should explain everything
to him; and again, and again, begged him to explain everything to her
husband.

"Tell him I shall go to him soon: I am ready to promise.  Only,
thinking about it was so dreadful--it has made me ill.  Not very ill.
I shall soon be better.  Go and tell him."

But the silence in her husband's ear was never more to be broken.



CHAPTER XLIX.

    A task too strong for wizard spells
    This squire had brought about;
    'T is easy dropping stones in wells,
    But who shall get them out?"


"I wish to God we could hinder Dorothea from knowing this," said Sir
James Chettam, with a little frown on his brow, and an expression of
intense disgust about his mouth.

He was standing on the hearth-rug in the library at Lowick Grange, and
speaking to Mr. Brooke.  It was the day after Mr. Casaubon had been
buried, and Dorothea was not yet able to leave her room.

"That would be difficult, you know, Chettam, as she is an executrix,
and she likes to go into these things--property, land, that kind of
thing.  She has her notions, you know," said Mr. Brooke, sticking his
eye-glasses on nervously, and exploring the edges of a folded paper
which he held in his hand; "and she would like to act--depend upon it,
as an executrix Dorothea would want to act.  And she was twenty-one
last December, you know.  I can hinder nothing."

Sir James looked at the carpet for a minute in silence, and then
lifting his eyes suddenly fixed them on Mr. Brooke, saying, "I will
tell you what we can do.  Until Dorothea is well, all business must be
kept from her, and as soon as she is able to be moved she must come to
us.  Being with Celia and the baby will be the best thing in the world
for her, and will pass away the time.  And meanwhile you must get rid
of Ladislaw: you must send him out of the country." Here Sir James's
look of disgust returned in all its intensity.

Mr. Brooke put his hands behind him, walked to the window and
straightened his back with a little shake before he replied.

"That is easily said, Chettam, easily said, you know."

"My dear sir," persisted Sir James, restraining his indignation within
respectful forms, "it was you who brought him here, and you who keep
him here--I mean by the occupation you give him."

"Yes, but I can't dismiss him in an instant without assigning reasons,
my dear Chettam.  Ladislaw has been invaluable, most satisfactory.  I
consider that I have done this part of the country a service by
bringing him--by bringing him, you know."  Mr. Brooke ended with a nod,
turning round to give it.

"It's a pity this part of the country didn't do without him, that's all
I have to say about it.  At any rate, as Dorothea's brother-in-law, I
feel warranted in objecting strongly to his being kept here by any
action on the part of her friends.  You admit, I hope, that I have a
right to speak about what concerns the dignity of my wife's sister?"

Sir James was getting warm.

"Of course, my dear Chettam, of course.  But you and I have different
ideas--different--"

"Not about this action of Casaubon's, I should hope," interrupted Sir
James.  "I say that he has most unfairly compromised Dorothea.  I say
that there never was a meaner, more ungentlemanly action than this--a
codicil of this sort to a will which he made at the time of his
marriage with the knowledge and reliance of her family--a positive
insult to Dorothea!"

"Well, you know, Casaubon was a little twisted about Ladislaw.
Ladislaw has told me the reason--dislike of the bent he took, you
know--Ladislaw didn't think much of Casaubon's notions, Thoth and
Dagon--that sort of thing: and I fancy that Casaubon didn't like the
independent position Ladislaw had taken up.  I saw the letters between
them, you know.  Poor Casaubon was a little buried in books--he didn't
know the world."

"It's all very well for Ladislaw to put that color on it," said Sir
James.  "But I believe Casaubon was only jealous of him on Dorothea's
account, and the world will suppose that she gave him some reason; and
that is what makes it so abominable--coupling her name with this young
fellow's."

"My dear Chettam, it won't lead to anything, you know," said Mr.
Brooke, seating himself and sticking on his eye-glass again.  "It's all
of a piece with Casaubon's oddity.  This paper, now, 'Synoptical
Tabulation' and so on, 'for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,' it was locked up
in the desk with the will.  I suppose he meant Dorothea to publish his
researches, eh? and she'll do it, you know; she has gone into his
studies uncommonly."

"My dear sir," said Sir James, impatiently, "that is neither here nor
there.  The question is, whether you don't see with me the propriety of
sending young Ladislaw away?"

"Well, no, not the urgency of the thing.  By-and-by, perhaps, it may
come round.  As to gossip, you know, sending him away won't hinder
gossip.  People say what they like to say, not what they have chapter
and verse for," said Mr Brooke, becoming acute about the truths that
lay on the side of his own wishes.  "I might get rid of Ladislaw up to
a certain point--take away the 'Pioneer' from him, and that sort of
thing; but I couldn't send him out of the country if he didn't choose
to go--didn't choose, you know."

Mr. Brooke, persisting as quietly as if he were only discussing the
nature of last year's weather, and nodding at the end with his usual
amenity, was an exasperating form of obstinacy.

"Good God!" said Sir James, with as much passion as he ever showed,
"let us get him a post; let us spend money on him.  If he could go in
the suite of some Colonial Governor!  Grampus might take him--and I
could write to Fulke about it."

"But Ladislaw won't be shipped off like a head of cattle, my dear
fellow; Ladislaw has his ideas.  It's my opinion that if he were to
part from me to-morrow, you'd only hear the more of him in the country.
With his talent for speaking and drawing up documents, there are few
men who could come up to him as an agitator--an agitator, you know."

"Agitator!" said Sir James, with bitter emphasis, feeling that the
syllables of this word properly repeated were a sufficient exposure of
its hatefulness.

"But be reasonable, Chettam.  Dorothea, now.  As you say, she had
better go to Celia as soon as possible.  She can stay under your roof,
and in the mean time things may come round quietly.  Don't let us be
firing off our guns in a hurry, you know.  Standish will keep our
counsel, and the news will be old before it's known.  Twenty things may
happen to carry off Ladislaw--without my doing anything, you know."

"Then I am to conclude that you decline to do anything?"

"Decline, Chettam?--no--I didn't say decline.  But I really don't see
what I could do.  Ladislaw is a gentleman."

"I am glad to hear it!" said Sir James, his irritation making him
forget himself a little.  "I am sure Casaubon was not."

"Well, it would have been worse if he had made the codicil to hinder
her from marrying again at all, you know."

"I don't know that," said Sir James.  "It would have been less
indelicate."

"One of poor Casaubon's freaks!  That attack upset his brain a little.
It all goes for nothing.  She doesn't _want_ to marry Ladislaw."

"But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she
did.  I don't believe anything of the sort about Dorothea," said Sir
James--then frowningly, "but I suspect Ladislaw.  I tell you frankly,
I suspect Ladislaw."

"I couldn't take any immediate action on that ground, Chettam.  In
fact, if it were possible to pack him off--send him to Norfolk
Island--that sort of thing--it would look all the worse for Dorothea
to those who knew about it.  It would seem as if we distrusted
her--distrusted her, you know."

That Mr. Brooke had hit on an undeniable argument, did not tend to
soothe Sir James.  He put out his hand to reach his hat, implying that
he did not mean to contend further, and said, still with some heat--

"Well, I can only say that I think Dorothea was sacrificed once,
because her friends were too careless.  I shall do what I can, as her
brother, to protect her now."

"You can't do better than get her to Freshitt as soon as possible,
Chettam.  I approve that plan altogether," said Mr. Brooke, well
pleased that he had won the argument.  It would have been highly
inconvenient to him to part with Ladislaw at that time, when a
dissolution might happen any day, and electors were to be convinced of
the course by which the interests of the country would be best served.
Mr. Brooke sincerely believed that this end could be secured by his own
return to Parliament: he offered the forces of his mind honestly to the
nation.



CHAPTER L.

    "'This Loller here wol precilen us somewhat.'
     'Nay by my father's soule! that schal he nat,'
      Sayde the Schipman, 'here schal he not preche,
      We schal no gospel glosen here ne teche.
      We leven all in the gret God,' quod he.
      He wolden sowen some diffcultee."
                                 Canterbury Tales.


Dorothea had been safe at Freshitt Hall nearly a week before she had
asked any dangerous questions.  Every morning now she sat with Celia in
the prettiest of up-stairs sitting-rooms, opening into a small
conservatory--Celia all in white and lavender like a bunch of mixed
violets, watching the remarkable acts of the baby, which were so
dubious to her inexperienced mind that all conversation was interrupted
by appeals for their interpretation made to the oracular nurse.
Dorothea sat by in her widow's dress, with an expression which rather
provoked Celia, as being much too sad; for not only was baby quite
well, but really when a husband had been so dull and troublesome while
he lived, and besides that had--well, well!  Sir James, of course, had
told Celia everything, with a strong representation how important it
was that Dorothea should not know it sooner than was inevitable.

But Mr. Brooke had been right in predicting that Dorothea would not
long remain passive where action had been assigned to her; she knew the
purport of her husband's will made at the time of their marriage, and
her mind, as soon as she was clearly conscious of her position, was
silently occupied with what she ought to do as the owner of Lowick
Manor with the patronage of the living attached to it.

One morning when her uncle paid his usual visit, though with an unusual
alacrity in his manner which he accounted for by saying that it was now
pretty certain Parliament would be dissolved forthwith, Dorothea said--

"Uncle, it is right now that I should consider who is to have the
living at Lowick.  After Mr. Tucker had been provided for, I never
heard my husband say that he had any clergyman in his mind as a
successor to himself.  I think I ought to have the keys now and go to
Lowick to examine all my husband's papers.  There may be something that
would throw light on his wishes."

"No hurry, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, quietly.  "By-and-by, you know,
you can go, if you like.  But I cast my eyes over things in the desks
and drawers--there was nothing--nothing but deep subjects, you
know--besides the will.  Everything can be done by-and-by. As to the
living, I have had an application for interest already--I should say
rather good.  Mr. Tyke has been strongly recommended to me--I had
something to do with getting him an appointment before.  An apostolic
man, I believe--the sort of thing that would suit you, my dear."

"I should like to have fuller knowledge about him, uncle, and judge for
myself, if Mr. Casaubon has not left any expression of his wishes.  He
has perhaps made some addition to his will--there may be some
instructions for me," said Dorothea, who had all the while had this
conjecture in her mind with relation to her husband's work.

"Nothing about the rectory, my dear--nothing," said Mr. Brooke, rising
to go away, and putting out his hand to his nieces: "nor about his
researches, you know.  Nothing in the will."

Dorothea's lip quivered.

"Come, you must not think of these things yet, my dear.  By-and-by, you
know."

"I am quite well now, uncle; I wish to exert myself."

"Well, well, we shall see.  But I must run away now--I have no end of
work now--it's a crisis--a political crisis, you know.  And here is
Celia and her little man--you are an aunt, you know, now, and I am a
sort of grandfather," said Mr. Brooke, with placid hurry, anxious to
get away and tell Chettam that it would not be his (Mr. Brooke's) fault
if Dorothea insisted on looking into everything.

Dorothea sank back in her chair when her uncle had left the room, and
cast her eyes down meditatively on her crossed hands.

"Look, Dodo! look at him!  Did you ever see anything like that?" said
Celia, in her comfortable staccato.

"What, Kitty?" said Dorothea, lifting her eyes rather absently.

"What? why, his upper lip; see how he is drawing it down, as if he
meant to make a face.  Isn't it wonderful!  He may have his little
thoughts.  I wish nurse were here.  Do look at him."

A large tear which had been for some time gathering, rolled down
Dorothea's cheek as she looked up and tried to smile.

"Don't be sad, Dodo; kiss baby.  What are you brooding over so?  I am
sure you did everything, and a great deal too much.  You should be
happy now."

"I wonder if Sir James would drive me to Lowick.  I want to look over
everything--to see if there were any words written for me."

"You are not to go till Mr. Lydgate says you may go.  And he has not
said so yet (here you are, nurse; take baby and walk up and down the
gallery). Besides, you have got a wrong notion in your head as usual,
Dodo--I can see that: it vexes me."

"Where am I wrong, Kitty?" said Dorothea, quite meekly.  She was almost
ready now to think Celia wiser than herself, and was really wondering
with some fear what her wrong notion was.  Celia felt her advantage,
and was determined to use it.  None of them knew Dodo as well as she
did, or knew how to manage her.  Since Celia's baby was born, she had
had a new sense of her mental solidity and calm wisdom.  It seemed
clear that where there was a baby, things were right enough, and that
error, in general, was a mere lack of that central poising force.

"I can see what you are thinking of as well as can be, Dodo," said
Celia.  "You are wanting to find out if there is anything uncomfortable
for you to do now, only because Mr. Casaubon wished it.  As if you had
not been uncomfortable enough before.  And he doesn't deserve it, and
you will find that out.  He has behaved very badly.  James is as angry
with him as can be.  And I had better tell you, to prepare you."

"Celia," said Dorothea, entreatingly, "you distress me.  Tell me at
once what you mean."  It glanced through her mind that Mr. Casaubon
had left the property away from her--which would not be so very
distressing.

"Why, he has made a codicil to his will, to say the property was all to
go away from you if you married--I mean--"

"That is of no consequence," said Dorothea, breaking in impetuously.

"But if you married Mr. Ladislaw, not anybody else," Celia went on with
persevering quietude.  "Of course that is of no consequence in one
way--you never _would_ marry Mr. Ladislaw; but that only makes it worse
of Mr. Casaubon."

The blood rushed to Dorothea's face and neck painfully.  But Celia was
administering what she thought a sobering dose of fact.  It was taking
up notions that had done Dodo's health so much harm.  So she went on in
her neutral tone, as if she had been remarking on baby's robes.

"James says so.  He says it is abominable, and not like a gentleman.
And there never was a better judge than James.  It is as if Mr.
Casaubon wanted to make people believe that you would wish to marry Mr.
Ladislaw--which is ridiculous.  Only James says it was to hinder Mr.
Ladislaw from wanting to marry you for your money--just as if he ever
would think of making you an offer.  Mrs. Cadwallader said you might as
well marry an Italian with white mice!  But I must just go and look at
baby," Celia added, without the least change of tone, throwing a light
shawl over her, and tripping away.

Dorothea by this time had turned cold again, and now threw herself back
helplessly in her chair.  She might have compared her experience at
that moment to the vague, alarmed consciousness that her life was
taking on a new form, that she was undergoing a metamorphosis in which
memory would not adjust itself to the stirring of new organs.
Everything was changing its aspect: her husband's conduct, her own
duteous feeling towards him, every struggle between them--and yet
more, her whole relation to Will Ladislaw.  Her world was in a state of
convulsive change; the only thing she could say distinctly to herself
was, that she must wait and think anew.  One change terrified her as if
it had been a sin; it was a violent shock of repulsion from her
departed husband, who had had hidden thoughts, perhaps perverting
everything she said and did.  Then again she was conscious of another
change which also made her tremulous; it was a sudden strange yearning
of heart towards Will Ladislaw.  It had never before entered her mind
that he could, under any circumstances, be her lover: conceive the
effect of the sudden revelation that another had thought of him in that
light--that perhaps he himself had been conscious of such a
possibility,--and this with the hurrying, crowding vision of unfitting
conditions, and questions not soon to be solved.

It seemed a long while--she did not know how long--before she heard
Celia saying, "That will do, nurse; he will be quiet on my lap now.
You can go to lunch, and let Garratt stay in the next room." "What I
think, Dodo," Celia went on, observing nothing more than that Dorothea
was leaning back in her chair, and likely to be passive, "is that Mr.
Casaubon was spiteful.  I never did like him, and James never did.  I
think the corners of his mouth were dreadfully spiteful.  And now he
has behaved in this way, I am sure religion does not require you to
make yourself uncomfortable about him.  If he has been taken away, that
is a mercy, and you ought to be grateful.  We should not grieve, should
we, baby?" said Celia confidentially to that unconscious centre and
poise of the world, who had the most remarkable fists all complete even
to the nails, and hair enough, really, when you took his cap off, to
make--you didn't know what:--in short, he was Bouddha in a Western
form.

At this crisis Lydgate was announced, and one of the first things he
said was, "I fear you are not so well as you were, Mrs. Casaubon; have
you been agitated? allow me to feel your pulse."  Dorothea's hand was
of a marble coldness.

"She wants to go to Lowick, to look over papers," said Celia.  "She
ought not, ought she?"

Lydgate did not speak for a few moments.  Then he said, looking at
Dorothea.  "I hardly know.  In my opinion Mrs. Casaubon should do what
would give her the most repose of mind.  That repose will not always
come from being forbidden to act."

"Thank you," said Dorothea, exerting herself, "I am sure that is wise.
There are so many things which I ought to attend to.  Why should I sit
here idle?"  Then, with an effort to recall subjects not connected with
her agitation, she added, abruptly, "You know every one in Middlemarch,
I think, Mr. Lydgate.  I shall ask you to tell me a great deal.  I have
serious things to do now.  I have a living to give away.  You know Mr.
Tyke and all the--" But Dorothea's effort was too much for her; she
broke off and burst into sobs.  Lydgate made her drink a dose of sal
volatile.

"Let Mrs. Casaubon do as she likes," he said to Sir James, whom he
asked to see before quitting the house.  "She wants perfect freedom, I
think, more than any other prescription."

His attendance on Dorothea while her brain was excited, had enabled him
to form some true conclusions concerning the trials of her life.  He
felt sure that she had been suffering from the strain and conflict of
self-repression; and that she was likely now to feel herself only in
another sort of pinfold than that from which she had been released.

Lydgate's advice was all the easier for Sir James to follow when he
found that Celia had already told Dorothea the unpleasant fact about
the will.  There was no help for it now--no reason for any further
delay in the execution of necessary business.  And the next day Sir
James complied at once with her request that he would drive her to
Lowick.

"I have no wish to stay there at present," said Dorothea; "I could
hardly bear it.  I am much happier at Freshitt with Celia.  I shall be
able to think better about what should be done at Lowick by looking at
it from a distance.  And I should like to be at the Grange a little
while with my uncle, and go about in all the old walks and among the
people in the village."

"Not yet, I think.  Your uncle is having political company, and you are
better out of the way of such doings," said Sir James, who at that
moment thought of the Grange chiefly as a haunt of young Ladislaw's.
But no word passed between him and Dorothea about the objectionable
part of the will; indeed, both of them felt that the mention of it
between them would be impossible.  Sir James was shy, even with men,
about disagreeable subjects; and the one thing that Dorothea would have
chosen to say, if she had spoken on the matter at all, was forbidden to
her at present because it seemed to be a further exposure of her
husband's injustice.  Yet she did wish that Sir James could know what
had passed between her and her husband about Will Ladislaw's moral
claim on the property: it would then, she thought, be apparent to him
as it was to her, that her husband's strange indelicate proviso had
been chiefly urged by his bitter resistance to that idea of claim, and
not merely by personal feelings more difficult to talk about.  Also, it
must be admitted, Dorothea wished that this could be known for Will's
sake, since her friends seemed to think of him as simply an object of
Mr. Casaubon's charity.  Why should he be compared with an Italian
carrying white mice?  That word quoted from Mrs. Cadwallader seemed
like a mocking travesty wrought in the dark by an impish finger.

At Lowick Dorothea searched desk and drawer--searched all her husband's
places of deposit for private writing, but found no paper addressed
especially to her, except that "Synoptical Tabulation," which was
probably only the beginning of many intended directions for her
guidance.  In carrying out this bequest of labor to Dorothea, as in all
else, Mr. Casaubon had been slow and hesitating, oppressed in the plan
of transmitting his work, as he had been in executing it, by the sense
of moving heavily in a dim and clogging medium: distrust of Dorothea's
competence to arrange what he had prepared was subdued only by distrust
of any other redactor.  But he had come at last to create a trust for
himself out of Dorothea's nature: she could do what she resolved to do:
and he willingly imagined her toiling under the fetters of a promise to
erect a tomb with his name upon it.  (Not that Mr. Casaubon called the
future volumes a tomb; he called them the Key to all Mythologies.) But
the months gained on him and left his plans belated: he had only had
time to ask for that promise by which he sought to keep his cold grasp
on Dorothea's life.

The grasp had slipped away.  Bound by a pledge given from the depths of
her pity, she would have been capable of undertaking a toil which her
judgment whispered was vain for all uses except that consecration of
faithfulness which is a supreme use.  But now her judgment, instead of
being controlled by duteous devotion, was made active by the
imbittering discovery that in her past union there had lurked the
hidden alienation of secrecy and suspicion.  The living, suffering man
was no longer before her to awaken her pity: there remained only the
retrospect of painful subjection to a husband whose thoughts had been
lower than she had believed, whose exorbitant claims for himself had
even blinded his scrupulous care for his own character, and made him
defeat his own pride by shocking men of ordinary honor.  As for the
property which was the sign of that broken tie, she would have been
glad to be free from it and have nothing more than her original fortune
which had been settled on her, if there had not been duties attached to
ownership, which she ought not to flinch from.  About this property
many troublous questions insisted on rising: had she not been right in
thinking that the half of it ought to go to Will Ladislaw?--but was it
not impossible now for her to do that act of justice?  Mr. Casaubon had
taken a cruelly effective means of hindering her: even with indignation
against him in her heart, any act that seemed a triumphant eluding of
his purpose revolted her.

After collecting papers of business which she wished to examine, she
locked up again the desks and drawers--all empty of personal words for
her--empty of any sign that in her husband's lonely brooding his heart
had gone out to her in excuse or explanation; and she went back to
Freshitt with the sense that around his last hard demand and his last
injurious assertion of his power, the silence was unbroken.

Dorothea tried now to turn her thoughts towards immediate duties, and
one of these was of a kind which others were determined to remind her
of.  Lydgate's ear had caught eagerly her mention of the living, and as
soon as he could, he reopened the subject, seeing here a possibility of
making amends for the casting-vote he had once given with an
ill-satisfied conscience.  "Instead of telling you anything about Mr.
Tyke," he said, "I should like to speak of another man--Mr.
Farebrother, the Vicar of St. Botolph's.  His living is a poor one, and
gives him a stinted provision for himself and his family.  His mother,
aunt, and sister all live with him, and depend upon him.  I believe he
has never married because of them.  I never heard such good preaching
as his--such plain, easy eloquence.  He would have done to preach at
St. Paul's Cross after old Latimer.  His talk is just as good about all
subjects: original, simple, clear.  I think him a remarkable fellow: he
ought to have done more than he has done."

"Why has he not done more?" said Dorothea, interested now in all who
had slipped below their own intention.

"That's a hard question," said Lydgate.  "I find myself that it's
uncommonly difficult to make the right thing work: there are so many
strings pulling at once.  Farebrother often hints that he has got into
the wrong profession; he wants a wider range than that of a poor
clergyman, and I suppose he has no interest to help him on.  He is very
fond of Natural History and various scientific matters, and he is
hampered in reconciling these tastes with his position.  He has no
money to spare--hardly enough to use; and that has led him into
card-playing--Middlemarch is a great place for whist.  He does play for
money, and he wins a good deal.  Of course that takes him into company
a little beneath him, and makes him slack about some things; and yet,
with all that, looking at him as a whole, I think he is one of the most
blameless men I ever knew.  He has neither venom nor doubleness in him,
and those often go with a more correct outside."

"I wonder whether he suffers in his conscience because of that habit,"
said Dorothea; "I wonder whether he wishes he could leave it off."

"I have no doubt he would leave it off, if he were transplanted into
plenty: he would be glad of the time for other things."

"My uncle says that Mr. Tyke is spoken of as an apostolic man," said
Dorothea, meditatively.  She was wishing it were possible to restore
the times of primitive zeal, and yet thinking of Mr. Farebrother with a
strong desire to rescue him from his chance-gotten money.

"I don't pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic," said Lydgate.
"His position is not quite like that of the Apostles: he is only a
parson among parishioners whose lives he has to try and make better.
Practically I find that what is called being apostolic now, is an
impatience of everything in which the parson doesn't cut the principal
figure.  I see something of that in Mr. Tyke at the Hospital: a good
deal of his doctrine is a sort of pinching hard to make people
uncomfortably aware of him.  Besides, an apostolic man at Lowick!--he
ought to think, as St. Francis did, that it is needful to preach to the
birds."

"True," said Dorothea.  "It is hard to imagine what sort of notions our
farmers and laborers get from their teaching.  I have been looking into
a volume of sermons by Mr. Tyke: such sermons would be of no use at
Lowick--I mean, about imputed righteousness and the prophecies in the
Apocalypse.  I have always been thinking of the different ways in which
Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a
wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean
that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most
people as sharers in it.  It is surely better to pardon too much, than
to condemn too much.  But I should like to see Mr. Farebrother and hear
him preach."

"Do," said Lydgate; "I trust to the effect of that.  He is very much
beloved, but he has his enemies too: there are always people who can't
forgive an able man for differing from them.  And that money-winning
business is really a blot.  You don't, of course, see many Middlemarch
people: but Mr. Ladislaw, who is constantly seeing Mr. Brooke, is a
great friend of Mr. Farebrother's old ladies, and would be glad to sing
the Vicar's praises.  One of the old ladies--Miss Noble, the aunt--is a
wonderfully quaint picture of self-forgetful goodness, and Ladislaw
gallants her about sometimes.  I met them one day in a back street: you
know Ladislaw's look--a sort of Daphnis in coat and waistcoat; and this
little old maid reaching up to his arm--they looked like a couple
dropped out of a romantic comedy.  But the best evidence about
Farebrother is to see him and hear him."

Happily Dorothea was in her private sitting-room when this conversation
occurred, and there was no one present to make Lydgate's innocent
introduction of Ladislaw painful to her.  As was usual with him in
matters of personal gossip, Lydgate had quite forgotten Rosamond's
remark that she thought Will adored Mrs. Casaubon.  At that moment he
was only caring for what would recommend the Farebrother family; and he
had purposely given emphasis to the worst that could be said about the
Vicar, in order to forestall objections.  In the weeks since Mr.
Casaubon's death he had hardly seen Ladislaw, and he had heard no rumor
to warn him that Mr. Brooke's confidential secretary was a dangerous
subject with Mrs. Casaubon.  When he was gone, his picture of Ladislaw
lingered in her mind and disputed the ground with that question of the
Lowick living.  What was Will Ladislaw thinking about her?  Would he
hear of that fact which made her cheeks burn as they never used to do?
And how would he feel when he heard it?--But she could see as well as
possible how he smiled down at the little old maid.  An Italian with
white mice!--on the contrary, he was a creature who entered into every
one's feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of
urging his own with iron resistance.



CHAPTER LI.

    Party is Nature too, and you shall see
    By force of Logic how they both agree:
    The Many in the One, the One in Many;
    All is not Some, nor Some the same as Any:
    Genus holds species, both are great or small;
    One genus highest, one not high at all;
    Each species has its differentia too,
    This is not That, and He was never You,
    Though this and that are AYES, and you and he
    Are like as one to one, or three to three.


No gossip about Mr. Casaubon's will had yet reached Ladislaw: the air
seemed to be filled with the dissolution of Parliament and the coming
election, as the old wakes and fairs were filled with the rival clatter
of itinerant shows; and more private noises were taken little notice
of.  The famous "dry election" was at hand, in which the depths of
public feeling might be measured by the low flood-mark of drink.  Will
Ladislaw was one of the busiest at this time; and though Dorothea's
widowhood was continually in his thought, he was so far from wishing to
be spoken to on the subject, that when Lydgate sought him out to tell
him what had passed about the Lowick living, he answered rather
waspishly--

"Why should you bring me into the matter?  I never see Mrs. Casaubon,
and am not likely to see her, since she is at Freshitt.  I never go
there.  It is Tory ground, where I and the 'Pioneer' are no more
welcome than a poacher and his gun."

The fact was that Will had been made the more susceptible by observing
that Mr. Brooke, instead of wishing him, as before, to come to the
Grange oftener than was quite agreeable to himself, seemed now to
contrive that he should go there as little as possible.  This was a
shuffling concession of Mr. Brooke's to Sir James Chettam's indignant
remonstrance; and Will, awake to the slightest hint in this direction,
concluded that he was to be kept away from the Grange on Dorothea's
account.  Her friends, then, regarded him with some suspicion?  Their
fears were quite superfluous: they were very much mistaken if they
imagined that he would put himself forward as a needy adventurer trying
to win the favor of a rich woman.

Until now Will had never fully seen the chasm between himself and
Dorothea--until now that he was come to the brink of it, and saw her on
the other side.  He began, not without some inward rage, to think of
going away from the neighborhood: it would be impossible for him to
show any further interest in Dorothea without subjecting himself to
disagreeable imputations--perhaps even in her mind, which others might
try to poison.

"We are forever divided," said Will.  "I might as well be at Rome; she
would be no farther from me."  But what we call our despair is often
only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.  There were plenty of reasons
why he should not go--public reasons why he should not quit his post at
this crisis, leaving Mr. Brooke in the lurch when he needed "coaching"
for the election, and when there was so much canvassing, direct and
indirect, to be carried on.  Will could not like to leave his own
chessmen in the heat of a game; and any candidate on the right side,
even if his brain and marrow had been as soft as was consistent with a
gentlemanly bearing, might help to turn a majority.  To coach Mr.
Brooke and keep him steadily to the idea that he must pledge himself to
vote for the actual Reform Bill, instead of insisting on his
independence and power of pulling up in time, was not an easy task.
Mr. Farebrother's prophecy of a fourth candidate "in the bag" had not
yet been fulfilled, neither the Parliamentary Candidate Society nor any
other power on the watch to secure a reforming majority seeing a worthy
nodus for interference while there was a second reforming candidate
like Mr. Brooke, who might be returned at his own expense; and the
fight lay entirely between Pinkerton the old Tory member, Bagster the
new Whig member returned at the last election, and Brooke the future
independent member, who was to fetter himself for this occasion only.
Mr. Hawley and his party would bend all their forces to the return of
Pinkerton, and Mr. Brooke's success must depend either on plumpers
which would leave Bagster in the rear, or on the new minting of Tory
votes into reforming votes.  The latter means, of course, would be
preferable.

This prospect of converting votes was a dangerous distraction to Mr.
Brooke: his impression that waverers were likely to be allured by
wavering statements, and also the liability of his mind to stick afresh
at opposing arguments as they turned up in his memory, gave Will
Ladislaw much trouble.

"You know there are tactics in these things," said Mr. Brooke; "meeting
people half-way--tempering your ideas--saying, 'Well now, there's
something in that,' and so on.  I agree with you that this is a
peculiar occasion--the country with a will of its own--political
unions--that sort of thing--but we sometimes cut with rather too sharp
a knife, Ladislaw.  These ten-pound householders, now: why ten?  Draw
the line somewhere--yes: but why just at ten?  That's a difficult
question, now, if you go into it."

"Of course it is," said Will, impatiently.  "But if you are to wait
till we get a logical Bill, you must put yourself forward as a
revolutionist, and then Middlemarch would not elect you, I fancy.  As
for trimming, this is not a time for trimming."

Mr. Brooke always ended by agreeing with Ladislaw, who still appeared
to him a sort of Burke with a leaven of Shelley; but after an interval
the wisdom of his own methods reasserted itself, and he was again drawn
into using them with much hopefulness.  At this stage of affairs he was
in excellent spirits, which even supported him under large advances of
money; for his powers of convincing and persuading had not yet been
tested by anything more difficult than a chairman's speech introducing
other orators, or a dialogue with a Middlemarch voter, from which he
came away with a sense that he was a tactician by nature, and that it
was a pity he had not gone earlier into this kind of thing.  He was a
little conscious of defeat, however, with Mr. Mawmsey, a chief
representative in Middlemarch of that great social power, the retail
trader, and naturally one of the most doubtful voters in the
borough--willing for his own part to supply an equal quality of teas
and sugars to reformer and anti-reformer, as well as to agree
impartially with both, and feeling like the burgesses of old that this
necessity of electing members was a great burthen to a town; for even
if there were no danger in holding out hopes to all parties beforehand,
there would be the painful necessity at last of disappointing
respectable people whose names were on his books.  He was accustomed to
receive large orders from Mr. Brooke of Tipton; but then, there were
many of Pinkerton's committee whose opinions had a great weight of
grocery on their side.  Mr. Mawmsey thinking that Mr. Brooke, as not
too "clever in his intellects," was the more likely to forgive a grocer
who gave a hostile vote under pressure, had become confidential in his
back parlor.

"As to Reform, sir, put it in a family light," he said, rattling the
small silver in his pocket, and smiling affably.  "Will it support Mrs.
Mawmsey, and enable her to bring up six children when I am no more?  I
put the question _fictiously_, knowing what must be the answer.  Very
well, sir.  I ask you what, as a husband and a father, I am to do when
gentlemen come to me and say, 'Do as you like, Mawmsey; but if you vote
against us, I shall get my groceries elsewhere: when I sugar my liquor
I like to feel that I am benefiting the country by maintaining
tradesmen of the right color.'  Those very words have been spoken to
me, sir, in the very chair where you are now sitting.  I don't mean by
your honorable self, Mr. Brooke."

"No, no, no--that's narrow, you know.  Until my butler complains to me
of your goods, Mr. Mawmsey," said Mr. Brooke, soothingly, "until I hear
that you send bad sugars, spices--that sort of thing--I shall never
order him to go elsewhere."

"Sir, I am your humble servant, and greatly obliged," said Mr. Mawmsey,
feeling that politics were clearing up a little.  "There would be some
pleasure in voting for a gentleman who speaks in that honorable manner."

"Well, you know, Mr. Mawmsey, you would find it the right thing to put
yourself on our side.  This Reform will touch everybody by-and-by--a
thoroughly popular measure--a sort of A, B, C, you know, that must come
first before the rest can follow.  I quite agree with you that you've
got to look at the thing in a family light: but public spirit, now.
We're all one family, you know--it's all one cupboard.  Such a thing
as a vote, now: why, it may help to make men's fortunes at the
Cape--there's no knowing what may be the effect of a vote," Mr. Brooke
ended, with a sense of being a little out at sea, though finding it
still enjoyable.  But Mr. Mawmsey answered in a tone of decisive check.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I can't afford that.  When I give a vote I
must know what I am doing; I must look to what will be the effects on
my till and ledger, speaking respectfully.  Prices, I'll admit, are
what nobody can know the merits of; and the sudden falls after you've
bought in currants, which are a goods that will not keep--I've never;
myself seen into the ins and outs there; which is a rebuke to human
pride.  But as to one family, there's debtor and creditor, I hope;
they're not going to reform that away; else I should vote for things
staying as they are.  Few men have less need to cry for change than I
have, personally speaking--that is, for self and family.  I am not one
of those who have nothing to lose: I mean as to respectability both in
parish and private business, and noways in respect of your honorable
self and custom, which you was good enough to say you would not
withdraw from me, vote or no vote, while the article sent in was
satisfactory."

After this conversation Mr. Mawmsey went up and boasted to his wife
that he had been rather too many for Brooke of Tipton, and that he
didn't mind so much now about going to the poll.

Mr. Brooke on this occasion abstained from boasting of his tactics to
Ladislaw, who for his part was glad enough to persuade himself that he
had no concern with any canvassing except the purely argumentative
sort, and that he worked no meaner engine than knowledge.  Mr. Brooke,
necessarily, had his agents, who understood the nature of the
Middlemarch voter and the means of enlisting his ignorance on the side
of the Bill--which were remarkably similar to the means of enlisting it
on the side against the Bill.  Will stopped his ears.  Occasionally
Parliament, like the rest of our lives, even to our eating and apparel,
could hardly go on if our imaginations were too active about processes.
There were plenty of dirty-handed men in the world to do dirty
business; and Will protested to himself that his share in bringing Mr.
Brooke through would be quite innocent.

But whether he should succeed in that mode of contributing to the
majority on the right side was very doubtful to him.  He had written
out various speeches and memoranda for speeches, but he had begun to
perceive that Mr. Brooke's mind, if it had the burthen of remembering
any train of thought, would let it drop, run away in search of it, and
not easily come back again.  To collect documents is one mode of
serving your country, and to remember the contents of a document is
another.  No! the only way in which Mr. Brooke could be coerced into
thinking of the right arguments at the right time was to be well plied
with them till they took up all the room in his brain.  But here there
was the difficulty of finding room, so many things having been taken in
beforehand.  Mr. Brooke himself observed that his ideas stood rather in
his way when he was speaking.

However, Ladislaw's coaching was forthwith to be put to the test, for
before the day of nomination Mr. Brooke was to explain himself to the
worthy electors of Middlemarch from the balcony of the White Hart,
which looked out advantageously at an angle of the market-place,
commanding a large area in front and two converging streets.  It was a
fine May morning, and everything seemed hopeful: there was some
prospect of an understanding between Bagster's committee and Brooke's,
to which Mr. Bulstrode, Mr. Standish as a Liberal lawyer, and such
manufacturers as Mr. Plymdale and Mr. Vincy, gave a solidity which
almost counterbalanced Mr. Hawley and his associates who sat for
Pinkerton at the Green Dragon.  Mr. Brooke, conscious of having
weakened the blasts of the "Trumpet" against him, by his reforms as a
landlord in the last half year, and hearing himself cheered a little as
he drove into the town, felt his heart tolerably light under his
buff-colored waistcoat.  But with regard to critical occasions, it
often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.

"This looks well, eh?" said Mr. Brooke as the crowd gathered.  "I shall
have a good audience, at any rate.  I like this, now--this kind of
public made up of one's own neighbors, you know."

The weavers and tanners of Middlemarch, unlike Mr. Mawmsey, had never
thought of Mr. Brooke as a neighbor, and were not more attached to him
than if he had been sent in a box from London.  But they listened
without much disturbance to the speakers who introduced the candidate,
one of them--a political personage from Brassing, who came to tell
Middlemarch its duty--spoke so fully, that it was alarming to think
what the candidate could find to say after him.  Meanwhile the crowd
became denser, and as the political personage neared the end of his
speech, Mr. Brooke felt a remarkable change in his sensations while he
still handled his eye-glass, trifled with documents before him, and
exchanged remarks with his committee, as a man to whom the moment of
summons was indifferent.

"I'll take another glass of sherry, Ladislaw," he said, with an easy
air, to Will, who was close behind him, and presently handed him the
supposed fortifier.  It was ill-chosen; for Mr. Brooke was an
abstemious man, and to drink a second glass of sherry quickly at no
great interval from the first was a surprise to his system which tended
to scatter his energies instead of collecting them.  Pray pity him: so
many English gentlemen make themselves miserable by speechifying on
entirely private grounds!  whereas Mr. Brooke wished to serve his
country by standing for Parliament--which, indeed, may also be done on
private grounds, but being once undertaken does absolutely demand some
speechifying.

It was not about the beginning of his speech that Mr. Brooke was at all
anxious; this, he felt sure, would be all right; he should have it
quite pat, cut out as neatly as a set of couplets from Pope.  Embarking
would be easy, but the vision of open sea that might come after was
alarming.  "And questions, now," hinted the demon just waking up in his
stomach, "somebody may put questions about the schedules.--Ladislaw,"
he continued, aloud, "just hand me the memorandum of the schedules."

When Mr. Brooke presented himself on the balcony, the cheers were quite
loud enough to counterbalance the yells, groans, brayings, and other
expressions of adverse theory, which were so moderate that Mr. Standish
(decidedly an old bird) observed in the ear next to him, "This looks
dangerous, by God!  Hawley has got some deeper plan than this."  Still,
the cheers were exhilarating, and no candidate could look more amiable
than Mr. Brooke, with the memorandum in his breast-pocket, his left
hand on the rail of the balcony, and his right trifling with his
eye-glass. The striking points in his appearance were his buff
waistcoat, short-clipped blond hair, and neutral physiognomy.  He began
with some confidence.

"Gentlemen--Electors of Middlemarch!"

This was so much the right thing that a little pause after it seemed
natural.

"I'm uncommonly glad to be here--I was never so proud and happy in my
life--never so happy, you know."

This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing; for,
unhappily, the pat opening had slipped away--even couplets from Pope
may be but "fallings from us, vanishings," when fear clutches us, and a
glass of sherry is hurrying like smoke among our ideas.  Ladislaw, who
stood at the window behind the speaker, thought, "it's all up now.  The
only chance is that, since the best thing won't always do, floundering
may answer for once."  Mr. Brooke, meanwhile, having lost other clews,
fell back on himself and his qualifications--always an appropriate
graceful subject for a candidate.

"I am a close neighbor of yours, my good friends--you've known me on
the bench a good while--I've always gone a good deal into public
questions--machinery, now, and machine-breaking--you're many of you
concerned with machinery, and I've been going into that lately.  It
won't do, you know, breaking machines: everything must go on--trade,
manufactures, commerce, interchange of staples--that kind of
thing--since Adam Smith, that must go on.  We must look all over the
globe:--'Observation with extensive view,' must look everywhere, 'from
China to Peru,' as somebody says--Johnson, I think, 'The Rambler,' you
know.  That is what I have done up to a certain point--not as far as
Peru; but I've not always stayed at home--I saw it wouldn't do.  I've
been in the Levant, where some of your Middlemarch goods go--and then,
again, in the Baltic.  The Baltic, now."

Plying among his recollections in this way, Mr. Brooke might have got
along, easily to himself, and would have come back from the remotest
seas without trouble; but a diabolical procedure had been set up by the
enemy.  At one and the same moment there had risen above the shoulders
of the crowd, nearly opposite Mr. Brooke, and within ten yards of him,
the effigy of himself: buff-colored waistcoat, eye-glass, and neutral
physiognomy, painted on rag; and there had arisen, apparently in the
air, like the note of the cuckoo, a parrot-like, Punch-voiced echo of
his words.  Everybody looked up at the open windows in the houses at
the opposite angles of the converging streets; but they were either
blank, or filled by laughing listeners.  The most innocent echo has an
impish mockery in it when it follows a gravely persistent speaker, and
this echo was not at all innocent; if it did not follow with the
precision of a natural echo, it had a wicked choice of the words it
overtook.  By the time it said, "The Baltic, now," the laugh which had
been running through the audience became a general shout, and but for
the sobering effects of party and that great public cause which the
entanglement of things had identified with "Brooke of Tipton," the
laugh might have caught his committee.  Mr. Bulstrode asked,
reprehensively, what the new police was doing; but a voice could not
well be collared, and an attack on the effigy of the candidate would
have been too equivocal, since Hawley probably meant it to be pelted.

Mr. Brooke himself was not in a position to be quickly conscious of
anything except a general slipping away of ideas within himself: he had
even a little singing in the ears, and he was the only person who had
not yet taken distinct account of the echo or discerned the image of
himself.  Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly captive than
anxiety about what we have got to say.  Mr. Brooke heard the laughter;
but he had expected some Tory efforts at disturbance, and he was at
this moment additionally excited by the tickling, stinging sense that
his lost exordium was coming back to fetch him from the Baltic.

"That reminds me," he went on, thrusting a hand into his side-pocket,
with an easy air, "if I wanted a precedent, you know--but we never want
a precedent for the right thing--but there is Chatham, now; I can't say
I should have supported Chatham, or Pitt, the younger Pitt--he was not
a man of ideas, and we want ideas, you know."

"Blast your ideas! we want the Bill," said a loud rough voice from the
crowd below.

Immediately the invisible Punch, who had hitherto followed Mr. Brooke,
repeated, "Blast your ideas! we want the Bill." The laugh was louder
than ever, and for the first time Mr. Brooke being himself silent,
heard distinctly the mocking echo.  But it seemed to ridicule his
interrupter, and in that light was encouraging; so he replied with
amenity--

"There is something in what you say, my good friend, and what do we
meet for but to speak our minds--freedom of opinion, freedom of the
press, liberty--that kind of thing?  The Bill, now--you shall have the
Bill"--here Mr. Brooke paused a moment to fix on his eye-glass and take
the paper from his breast-pocket, with a sense of being practical and
coming to particulars.  The invisible Punch followed:--

"You shall have the Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering contest, and a
seat outside Parliament as delivered, five thousand pounds, seven
shillings, and fourpence."

Mr. Brooke, amid the roars of laughter, turned red, let his eye-glass
fall, and looking about him confusedly, saw the image of himself, which
had come nearer.  The next moment he saw it dolorously bespattered with
eggs.  His spirit rose a little, and his voice too.

"Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth--all that is very
well"--here an unpleasant egg broke on Mr. Brooke's shoulder, as the
echo said, "All that is very well;" then came a hail of eggs, chiefly
aimed at the image, but occasionally hitting the original, as if by
chance.  There was a stream of new men pushing among the crowd;
whistles, yells, bellowings, and fifes made all the greater hubbub
because there was shouting and struggling to put them down.  No voice
would have had wing enough to rise above the uproar, and Mr. Brooke,
disagreeably anointed, stood his ground no longer.  The frustration
would have been less exasperating if it had been less gamesome and
boyish: a serious assault of which the newspaper reporter "can aver
that it endangered the learned gentleman's ribs," or can respectfully
bear witness to "the soles of that gentleman's boots having been
visible above the railing," has perhaps more consolations attached to
it.

Mr. Brooke re-entered the committee-room, saying, as carelessly as he
could, "This is a little too bad, you know.  I should have got the ear
of the people by-and-by--but they didn't give me time.  I should have
gone into the Bill by-and-by, you know," he added, glancing at
Ladislaw.  "However, things will come all right at the nomination."

But it was not resolved unanimously that things would come right; on
the contrary, the committee looked rather grim, and the political
personage from Brassing was writing busily, as if he were brewing new
devices.

"It was Bowyer who did it," said Mr. Standish, evasively.  "I know it
as well as if he had been advertised.  He's uncommonly good at
ventriloquism, and he did it uncommonly well, by God!  Hawley has been
having him to dinner lately: there's a fund of talent in Bowyer."

"Well, you know, you never mentioned him to me, Standish, else I would
have invited him to dine," said poor Mr. Brooke, who had gone through a
great deal of inviting for the good of his country.

"There's not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer," said
Ladislaw, indignantly, "but it seems as if the paltry fellows were
always to turn the scale."

Will was thoroughly out of temper with himself as well as with his
"principal," and he went to shut himself in his rooms with a
half-formed resolve to throw up the "Pioneer" and Mr. Brooke together.
Why should he stay?  If the impassable gulf between himself and
Dorothea were ever to be filled up, it must rather be by his going away
and getting into a thoroughly different position than by staying here
and slipping into deserved contempt as an understrapper of Brooke's.
Then came the young dream of wonders that he might do--in five years,
for example: political writing, political speaking, would get a higher
value now public life was going to be wider and more national, and they
might give him such distinction that he would not seem to be asking
Dorothea to step down to him.  Five years:--if he could only be sure
that she cared for him more than for others; if he could only make her
aware that he stood aloof until he could tell his love without lowering
himself--then he could go away easily, and begin a career which at
five-and-twenty seemed probable enough in the inward order of things,
where talent brings fame, and fame everything else which is delightful.
He could speak and he could write; he could master any subject if he
chose, and he meant always to take the side of reason and justice, on
which he would carry all his ardor.  Why should he not one day be
lifted above the shoulders of the crowd, and feel that he had won that
eminence well?  Without doubt he would leave Middlemarch, go to town,
and make himself fit for celebrity by "eating his dinners."

But not immediately: not until some kind of sign had passed between him
and Dorothea.  He could not be satisfied until she knew why, even if he
were the man she would choose to marry, he would not marry her.  Hence
he must keep his post and bear with Mr. Brooke a little longer.

But he soon had reason to suspect that Mr. Brooke had anticipated him
in the wish to break up their connection.  Deputations without and
voices within had concurred in inducing that philanthropist to take a
stronger measure than usual for the good of mankind; namely, to
withdraw in favor of another candidate, to whom he left the advantages
of his canvassing machinery.  He himself called this a strong measure,
but observed that his health was less capable of sustaining excitement
than he had imagined.

"I have felt uneasy about the chest--it won't do to carry that too
far," he said to Ladislaw in explaining the affair.  "I must pull up.
Poor Casaubon was a warning, you know.  I've made some heavy advances,
but I've dug a channel.  It's rather coarse work--this electioneering,
eh, Ladislaw? dare say you are tired of it.  However, we have dug a
channel with the 'Pioneer'--put things in a track, and so on.  A more
ordinary man than you might carry it on now--more ordinary, you know."

"Do you wish me to give it up?" said Will, the quick color coming in
his face, as he rose from the writing-table, and took a turn of three
steps with his hands in his pockets.  "I am ready to do so whenever you
wish it."

"As to wishing, my dear Ladislaw, I have the highest opinion of your
powers, you know.  But about the 'Pioneer,' I have been consulting a
little with some of the men on our side, and they are inclined to take
it into their hands--indemnify me to a certain extent--carry it on, in
fact.  And under the circumstances, you might like to give up--might
find a better field.  These people might not take that high view of you
which I have always taken, as an alter ego, a right hand--though I
always looked forward to your doing something else.  I think of having
a run into France.  But I'll write you any letters, you know--to
Althorpe and people of that kind.  I've met Althorpe."

"I am exceedingly obliged to you," said Ladislaw, proudly.  "Since you
are going to part with the 'Pioneer,' I need not trouble you about the
steps I shall take.  I may choose to continue here for the present."

After Mr. Brooke had left him Will said to himself, "The rest of the
family have been urging him to get rid of me, and he doesn't care now
about my going.  I shall stay as long as I like.  I shall go of my own
movements and not because they are afraid of me."



CHAPTER LII.

                                 "His heart
    The lowliest duties on itself did lay."
                                 --WORDSWORTH.


On that June evening when Mr. Farebrother knew that he was to have the
Lowick living, there was joy in the old fashioned parlor, and even the
portraits of the great lawyers seemed to look on with satisfaction.
His mother left her tea and toast untouched, but sat with her usual
pretty primness, only showing her emotion by that flush in the cheeks
and brightness in the eyes which give an old woman a touching momentary
identity with her far-off youthful self, and saying decisively--

"The greatest comfort, Camden, is that you have deserved it."

"When a man gets a good berth, mother, half the deserving must come
after," said the son, brimful of pleasure, and not trying to conceal
it.  The gladness in his face was of that active kind which seems to
have energy enough not only to flash outwardly, but to light up busy
vision within: one seemed to see thoughts, as well as delight, in his
glances.

"Now, aunt," he went on, rubbing his hands and looking at Miss Noble,
who was making tender little beaver-like noises, "There shall be
sugar-candy always on the table for you to steal and give to the
children, and you shall have a great many new stockings to make
presents of, and you shall darn your own more than ever!"

Miss Noble nodded at her nephew with a subdued half-frightened laugh,
conscious of having already dropped an additional lump of sugar into
her basket on the strength of the new preferment.

"As for you, Winny"--the Vicar went on--"I shall make no difficulty
about your marrying any Lowick bachelor--Mr. Solomon Featherstone, for
example, as soon as I find you are in love with him."

Miss Winifred, who had been looking at her brother all the while and
crying heartily, which was her way of rejoicing, smiled through her
tears and said, "You must set me the example, Cam: _you_ must marry
now."

"With all my heart.  But who is in love with me?  I am a seedy old
fellow," said the Vicar, rising, pushing his chair away and looking
down at himself.  "What do you say, mother?"

"You are a handsome man, Camden: though not so fine a figure of a man
as your father," said the old lady.

"I wish you would marry Miss Garth, brother," said Miss Winifred.  "She
would make us so lively at Lowick."

"Very fine! You talk as if young women were tied up to be chosen, like
poultry at market; as if I had only to ask and everybody would have
me," said the Vicar, not caring to specify.

"We don't want everybody," said Miss Winifred.  "But _you_ would like
Miss Garth, mother, shouldn't you?"

"My son's choice shall be mine," said Mrs. Farebrother, with majestic
discretion, "and a wife would be most welcome, Camden.  You will want
your whist at home when we go to Lowick, and Henrietta Noble never was
a whist-player." (Mrs. Farebrother always called her tiny old sister by
that magnificent name.)

"I shall do without whist now, mother."

"Why so, Camden?  In my time whist was thought an undeniable amusement
for a good churchman," said Mrs. Farebrother, innocent of the meaning
that whist had for her son, and speaking rather sharply, as at some
dangerous countenancing of new doctrine.

"I shall be too busy for whist; I shall have two parishes," said the
Vicar, preferring not to discuss the virtues of that game.

He had already said to Dorothea, "I don't feel bound to give up St.
Botolph's. It is protest enough against the pluralism they want to
reform if I give somebody else most of the money.  The stronger thing
is not to give up power, but to use it well."

"I have thought of that," said Dorothea.  "So far as self is concerned,
I think it would be easier to give up power and money than to keep
them.  It seems very unfitting that I should have this patronage, yet I
felt that I ought not to let it be used by some one else instead of me."

"It is I who am bound to act so that you will not regret your power,"
said Mr. Farebrother.

His was one of the natures in which conscience gets the more active
when the yoke of life ceases to gall them.  He made no display of
humility on the subject, but in his heart he felt rather ashamed that
his conduct had shown laches which others who did not get benefices
were free from.

"I used often to wish I had been something else than a clergyman," he
said to Lydgate, "but perhaps it will be better to try and make as good
a clergyman out of myself as I can.  That is the well-beneficed point
of view, you perceive, from which difficulties are much simplified," he
ended, smiling.

The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy.  But
Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly--something like a heavy
friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg
within our gates.

Hardly a week later, Duty presented itself in his study under the
disguise of Fred Vincy, now returned from Omnibus College with his
bachelor's degree.

"I am ashamed to trouble you, Mr. Farebrother," said Fred, whose fair
open face was propitiating, "but you are the only friend I can consult.
I told you everything once before, and you were so good that I can't
help coming to you again."

"Sit down, Fred, I'm ready to hear and do anything I can," said the
Vicar, who was busy packing some small objects for removal, and went on
with his work.

"I wanted to tell you--" Fred hesitated an instant and then went on
plungingly, "I might go into the Church now; and really, look where I
may, I can't see anything else to do.  I don't like it, but I know it's
uncommonly hard on my father to say so, after he has spent a good deal
of money in educating me for it." Fred paused again an instant, and
then repeated, "and I can't see anything else to do."

"I did talk to your father about it, Fred, but I made little way with
him.  He said it was too late.  But you have got over one bridge now:
what are your other difficulties?"

"Merely that I don't like it.  I don't like divinity, and preaching,
and feeling obliged to look serious.  I like riding across country, and
doing as other men do.  I don't mean that I want to be a bad fellow in
any way; but I've no taste for the sort of thing people expect of a
clergyman.  And yet what else am I to do?  My father can't spare me any
capital, else I might go into farming.  And he has no room for me in
his trade.  And of course I can't begin to study for law or physic now,
when my father wants me to earn something.  It's all very well to say
I'm wrong to go into the Church; but those who say so might as well
tell me to go into the backwoods."

Fred's voice had taken a tone of grumbling remonstrance, and Mr.
Farebrother might have been inclined to smile if his mind had not been
too busy in imagining more than Fred told him.

"Have you any difficulties about doctrines--about the Articles?" he
said, trying hard to think of the question simply for Fred's sake.

"No; I suppose the Articles are right.  I am not prepared with any
arguments to disprove them, and much better, cleverer fellows than I am
go in for them entirely.  I think it would be rather ridiculous in me
to urge scruples of that sort, as if I were a judge," said Fred, quite
simply.

"I suppose, then, it has occurred to you that you might be a fair
parish priest without being much of a divine?"

"Of course, if I am obliged to be a clergyman, I shall try and do my
duty, though I mayn't like it.  Do you think any body ought to blame
me?"

"For going into the Church under the circumstances?  That depends on
your conscience, Fred--how far you have counted the cost, and seen what
your position will require of you.  I can only tell you about myself,
that I have always been too lax, and have been uneasy in consequence."

"But there is another hindrance," said Fred, coloring.  "I did not tell
you before, though perhaps I may have said things that made you guess
it.  There is somebody I am very fond of: I have loved her ever since
we were children."

"Miss Garth, I suppose?" said the Vicar, examining some labels very
closely.

"Yes.  I shouldn't mind anything if she would have me.  And I know I
could be a good fellow then."

"And you think she returns the feeling?"

"She never will say so; and a good while ago she made me promise not to
speak to her about it again.  And she has set her mind especially
against my being a clergyman; I know that.  But I can't give her up.  I
do think she cares about me.  I saw Mrs. Garth last night, and she said
that Mary was staying at Lowick Rectory with Miss Farebrother."

"Yes, she is very kindly helping my sister.  Do you wish to go there?"

"No, I want to ask a great favor of you.  I am ashamed to bother you in
this way; but Mary might listen to what you said, if you mentioned the
subject to her--I mean about my going into the Church."

"That is rather a delicate task, my dear Fred.  I shall have to
presuppose your attachment to her; and to enter on the subject as you
wish me to do, will be asking her to tell me whether she returns it."

"That is what I want her to tell you," said Fred, bluntly.  "I don't
know what to do, unless I can get at her feeling."

"You mean that you would be guided by that as to your going into the
Church?"

"If Mary said she would never have me I might as well go wrong in one
way as another."

"That is nonsense, Fred.  Men outlive their love, but they don't
outlive the consequences of their recklessness."

"Not my sort of love: I have never been without loving Mary.  If I had
to give her up, it would be like beginning to live on wooden legs."

"Will she not be hurt at my intrusion?"

"No, I feel sure she will not.  She respects you more than any one, and
she would not put you off with fun as she does me.  Of course I could
not have told any one else, or asked any one else to speak to her, but
you.  There is no one else who could be such a friend to both of us."
Fred paused a moment, and then said, rather complainingly, "And she
ought to acknowledge that I have worked in order to pass.  She ought to
believe that I would exert myself for her sake."

There was a moment's silence before Mr. Farebrother laid down his work,
and putting out his hand to Fred said--

"Very well, my boy.  I will do what you wish."

That very day Mr. Farebrother went to Lowick parsonage on the nag which
he had just set up.  "Decidedly I am an old stalk," he thought, "the
young growths are pushing me aside."

He found Mary in the garden gathering roses and sprinkling the petals
on a sheet.  The sun was low, and tall trees sent their shadows across
the grassy walks where Mary was moving without bonnet or parasol.  She
did not observe Mr. Farebrother's approach along the grass, and had
just stooped down to lecture a small black-and-tan terrier, which would
persist in walking on the sheet and smelling at the rose-leaves as Mary
sprinkled them.  She took his fore-paws in one hand, and lifted up the
forefinger of the other, while the dog wrinkled his brows and looked
embarrassed.  "Fly, Fly, I am ashamed of you," Mary was saying in a
grave contralto.  "This is not becoming in a sensible dog; anybody
would think you were a silly young gentleman."

"You are unmerciful to young gentlemen, Miss Garth," said the Vicar,
within two yards of her.

Mary started up and blushed.  "It always answers to reason with Fly,"
she said, laughingly.

"But not with young gentlemen?"

"Oh, with some, I suppose; since some of them turn into excellent men."

"I am glad of that admission, because I want at this very moment to
interest you in a young gentleman."

"Not a silly one, I hope," said Mary, beginning to pluck the roses
again, and feeling her heart beat uncomfortably.

"No; though perhaps wisdom is not his strong point, but rather
affection and sincerity.  However, wisdom lies more in those two
qualities than people are apt to imagine.  I hope you know by those
marks what young gentleman I mean."

"Yes, I think I do," said Mary, bravely, her face getting more serious,
and her hands cold; "it must be Fred Vincy."

"He has asked me to consult you about his going into the Church.  I
hope you will not think that I consented to take a liberty in promising
to do so."

"On the contrary, Mr. Farebrother," said Mary, giving up the roses, and
folding her arms, but unable to look up, "whenever you have anything to
say to me I feel honored."

"But before I enter on that question, let me just touch a point on
which your father took me into confidence; by the way, it was that very
evening on which I once before fulfilled a mission from Fred, just
after he had gone to college.  Mr. Garth told me what happened on the
night of Featherstone's death--how you refused to burn the will; and he
said that you had some heart-prickings on that subject, because you had
been the innocent means of hindering Fred from getting his ten thousand
pounds.  I have kept that in mind, and I have heard something that may
relieve you on that score--may show you that no sin-offering is
demanded from you there."

Mr. Farebrother paused a moment and looked at Mary.  He meant to give
Fred his full advantage, but it would be well, he thought, to clear her
mind of any superstitions, such as women sometimes follow when they do
a man the wrong of marrying him as an act of atonement.  Mary's cheeks
had begun to burn a little, and she was mute.

"I mean, that your action made no real difference to Fred's lot.  I
find that the first will would not have been legally good after the
burning of the last; it would not have stood if it had been disputed,
and you may be sure it would have been disputed.  So, on that score,
you may feel your mind free."

"Thank you, Mr. Farebrother," said Mary, earnestly.  "I am grateful to
you for remembering my feelings."

"Well, now I may go on.  Fred, you know, has taken his degree.  He has
worked his way so far, and now the question is, what is he to do?  That
question is so difficult that he is inclined to follow his father's
wishes and enter the Church, though you know better than I do that he
was quite set against that formerly.  I have questioned him on the
subject, and I confess I see no insuperable objection to his being a
clergyman, as things go.  He says that he could turn his mind to doing
his best in that vocation, on one condition.  If that condition were
fulfilled I would do my utmost in helping Fred on.  After a time--not,
of course, at first--he might be with me as my curate, and he would
have so much to do that his stipend would be nearly what I used to get
as vicar.  But I repeat that there is a condition without which all
this good cannot come to pass.  He has opened his heart to me, Miss
Garth, and asked me to plead for him.  The condition lies entirely in
your feeling."

Mary looked so much moved, that he said after a moment, "Let us walk a
little;" and when they were walking he added, "To speak quite plainly,
Fred will not take any course which would lessen the chance that you
would consent to be his wife; but with that prospect, he will try his
best at anything you approve."

"I cannot possibly say that I will ever be his wife, Mr. Farebrother:
but I certainly never will be his wife if he becomes a clergyman.  What
you say is most generous and kind; I don't mean for a moment to correct
your judgment.  It is only that I have my girlish, mocking way of
looking at things," said Mary, with a returning sparkle of playfulness
in her answer which only made its modesty more charming.

"He wishes me to report exactly what you think," said Mr. Farebrother.

"I could not love a man who is ridiculous," said Mary, not choosing to
go deeper.  "Fred has sense and knowledge enough to make him
respectable, if he likes, in some good worldly business, but I can
never imagine him preaching and exhorting, and pronouncing blessings,
and praying by the sick, without feeling as if I were looking at a
caricature.  His being a clergyman would be only for gentility's sake,
and I think there is nothing more contemptible than such imbecile
gentility.  I used to think that of Mr. Crowse, with his empty face and
neat umbrella, and mincing little speeches.  What right have such men
to represent Christianity--as if it were an institution for getting up
idiots genteelly--as if--" Mary checked herself.  She had been carried
along as if she had been speaking to Fred instead of Mr. Farebrother.

"Young women are severe: they don't feel the stress of action as men
do, though perhaps I ought to make you an exception there.  But you
don't put Fred Vincy on so low a level as that?"

"No, indeed, he has plenty of sense, but I think he would not show it
as a clergyman.  He would be a piece of professional affectation."

"Then the answer is quite decided.  As a clergyman he could have no
hope?"

Mary shook her head.

"But if he braved all the difficulties of getting his bread in some
other way--will you give him the support of hope?  May he count on
winning you?"

"I think Fred ought not to need telling again what I have already said
to him," Mary answered, with a slight resentment in her manner.  "I
mean that he ought not to put such questions until he has done
something worthy, instead of saying that he could do it."

Mr. Farebrother was silent for a minute or more, and then, as they
turned and paused under the shadow of a maple at the end of a grassy
walk, said, "I understand that you resist any attempt to fetter you,
but either your feeling for Fred Vincy excludes your entertaining
another attachment, or it does not: either he may count on your
remaining single until he shall have earned your hand, or he may in any
case be disappointed.  Pardon me, Mary--you know I used to catechise
you under that name--but when the state of a woman's affections touches
the happiness of another life--of more lives than one--I think it would
be the nobler course for her to be perfectly direct and open."

Mary in her turn was silent, wondering not at Mr. Farebrother's manner
but at his tone, which had a grave restrained emotion in it.  When the
strange idea flashed across her that his words had reference to
himself, she was incredulous, and ashamed of entertaining it.  She had
never thought that any man could love her except Fred, who had espoused
her with the umbrella ring, when she wore socks and little strapped
shoes; still less that she could be of any importance to Mr.
Farebrother, the cleverest man in her narrow circle.  She had only time
to feel that all this was hazy and perhaps illusory; but one thing was
clear and determined--her answer.

"Since you think it my duty, Mr. Farebrother, I will tell you that I
have too strong a feeling for Fred to give him up for any one else.  I
should never be quite happy if I thought he was unhappy for the loss of
me.  It has taken such deep root in me--my gratitude to him for always
loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time
when we were very little.  I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to
make that weaker.  I should like better than anything to see him worthy
of every one's respect.  But please tell him I will not promise to
marry him till then: I should shame and grieve my father and mother.
He is free to choose some one else."

"Then I have fulfilled my commission thoroughly," said Mr. Farebrother,
putting out his hand to Mary, "and I shall ride back to Middlemarch
forthwith.  With this prospect before him, we shall get Fred into the
right niche somehow, and I hope I shall live to join your hands.  God
bless you!"

"Oh, please stay, and let me give you some tea," said Mary.  Her eyes
filled with tears, for something indefinable, something like the
resolute suppression of a pain in Mr. Farebrother's manner, made her
feel suddenly miserable, as she had once felt when she saw her father's
hands trembling in a moment of trouble.

"No, my dear, no.  I must get back."

In three minutes the Vicar was on horseback again, having gone
magnanimously through a duty much harder than the renunciation of
whist, or even than the writing of penitential meditations.



CHAPTER LIII.

    It is but a shallow haste which concludeth insincerity from
    what outsiders call inconsistency--putting a dead mechanism
    of "ifs" and "therefores" for the living myriad of hidden
    suckers whereby the belief and the conduct are wrought into
    mutual sustainment.


Mr. Bulstrode, when he was hoping to acquire a new interest in Lowick,
had naturally had an especial wish that the new clergyman should be one
whom he thoroughly approved; and he believed it to be a chastisement
and admonition directed to his own shortcomings and those of the nation
at large, that just about the time when he came in possession of the
deeds which made him the proprietor of Stone Court, Mr. Farebrother
"read himself" into the quaint little church and preached his first
sermon to the congregation of farmers, laborers, and village artisans.
It was not that Mr. Bulstrode intended to frequent Lowick Church or to
reside at Stone Court for a good while to come: he had bought the
excellent farm and fine homestead simply as a retreat which he might
gradually enlarge as to the land and beautify as to the dwelling, until
it should be conducive to the divine glory that he should enter on it
as a residence, partially withdrawing from his present exertions in the
administration of business, and throwing more conspicuously on the side
of Gospel truth the weight of local landed proprietorship, which
Providence might increase by unforeseen occasions of purchase.  A
strong leading in this direction seemed to have been given in the
surprising facility of getting Stone Court, when every one had expected
that Mr. Rigg Featherstone would have clung to it as the Garden of
Eden.  That was what poor old Peter himself had expected; having often,
in imagination, looked up through the sods above him, and, unobstructed
by perspective, seen his frog-faced legatee enjoying the fine old
place to the perpetual surprise and disappointment of other survivors.

But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbors!  We
judge from our own desires, and our neighbors themselves are not always
open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.  The cool and judicious
Joshua Rigg had not allowed his parent to perceive that Stone Court was
anything less than the chief good in his estimation, and he had
certainly wished to call it his own.  But as Warren Hastings looked at
gold and thought of buying Daylesford, so Joshua Rigg looked at Stone
Court and thought of buying gold.  He had a very distinct and intense
vision of his chief good, the vigorous greed which he had inherited
having taken a special form by dint of circumstance: and his chief good
was to be a moneychanger.  From his earliest employment as an
errand-boy in a seaport, he had looked through the windows of the
moneychangers as other boys look through the windows of the
pastry-cooks; the fascination had wrought itself gradually into a deep
special passion; he meant, when he had property, to do many things, one
of them being to marry a genteel young person; but these were all
accidents and joys that imagination could dispense with.  The one joy
after which his soul thirsted was to have a money-changer's shop on a
much-frequented quay, to have locks all round him of which he held the
keys, and to look sublimely cool as he handled the breeding coins of
all nations, while helpless Cupidity looked at him enviously from the
other side of an iron lattice.  The strength of that passion had been a
power enabling him to master all the knowledge necessary to gratify it.
And when others were thinking that he had settled at Stone Court for
life, Joshua himself was thinking that the moment now was not far off
when he should settle on the North Quay with the best appointments in
safes and locks.

Enough.  We are concerned with looking at Joshua Rigg's sale of his
land from Mr. Bulstrode's point of view, and he interpreted it as a
cheering dispensation conveying perhaps a sanction to a purpose which
he had for some time entertained without external encouragement; he
interpreted it thus, but not too confidently, offering up his
thanksgiving in guarded phraseology.  His doubts did not arise from the
possible relations of the event to Joshua Rigg's destiny, which
belonged to the unmapped regions not taken under the providential
government, except perhaps in an imperfect colonial way; but they arose
from reflecting that this dispensation too might be a chastisement for
himself, as Mr. Farebrother's induction to the living clearly was.

This was not what Mr. Bulstrode said to any man for the sake of
deceiving him: it was what he said to himself--it was as genuinely his
mode of explaining events as any theory of yours may be, if you happen
to disagree with him.  For the egoism which enters into our theories
does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is
satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

However, whether for sanction or for chastisement, Mr. Bulstrode,
hardly fifteen months after the death of Peter Featherstone, had become
the proprietor of Stone Court, and what Peter would say "if he were
worthy to know," had become an inexhaustible and consolatory subject of
conversation to his disappointed relatives.  The tables were now turned
on that dear brother departed, and to contemplate the frustration of
his cunning by the superior cunning of things in general was a cud of
delight to Solomon.  Mrs. Waule had a melancholy triumph in the proof
that it did not answer to make false Featherstones and cut off the
genuine; and Sister Martha receiving the news in the Chalky Flats said,
"Dear, dear! then the Almighty could have been none so pleased with the
almshouses after all."

Affectionate Mrs. Bulstrode was particularly glad of the advantage
which her husband's health was likely to get from the purchase of Stone
Court.  Few days passed without his riding thither and looking over
some part of the farm with the bailiff, and the evenings were delicious
in that quiet spot, when the new hay-ricks lately set up were sending
forth odors to mingle with the breath of the rich old garden.  One
evening, while the sun was still above the horizon and burning in
golden lamps among the great walnut boughs, Mr. Bulstrode was pausing
on horseback outside the front gate waiting for Caleb Garth, who had
met him by appointment to give an opinion on a question of stable
drainage, and was now advising the bailiff in the rick-yard.

Mr. Bulstrode was conscious of being in a good spiritual frame and more
than usually serene, under the influence of his innocent recreation.
He was doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit in
himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain when
the sense of demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory and
revive the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse.  Nay, it may be
held with intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning is but a
measure for the depth of forgiveness, and a clenching proof that we are
peculiar instruments of the divine intention.  The memory has as many
moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.  At this
moment Mr. Bulstrode felt as if the sunshine were all one with that of
far-off evenings when he was a very young man and used to go out
preaching beyond Highbury.  And he would willingly have had that
service of exhortation in prospect now.  The texts were there still,
and so was his own facility in expounding them.  His brief reverie was
interrupted by the return of Caleb Garth, who also was on horseback,
and was just shaking his bridle before starting, when he exclaimed--

"Bless my heart! what's this fellow in black coming along the lane?
He's like one of those men one sees about after the races."

Mr. Bulstrode turned his horse and looked along the lane, but made no
reply.  The comer was our slight acquaintance Mr. Raffles, whose
appearance presented no other change than such as was due to a suit of
black and a crape hat-band. He was within three yards of the horseman
now, and they could see the flash of recognition in his face as he
whirled his stick upward, looking all the while at Mr. Bulstrode, and
at last exclaiming:--

"By Jove, Nick, it's you!  I couldn't be mistaken, though the
five-and-twenty years have played old Boguy with us both!  How are you,
eh? you didn't expect to see _me_ here.  Come, shake us by the hand."
To say that Mr. Raffles' manner was rather excited would be only one
mode of saying that it was evening.  Caleb Garth could see that there
was a moment of struggle and hesitation in Mr. Bulstrode, but it ended
in his putting out his hand coldly to Raffles and saying--

"I did not indeed expect to see you in this remote country place."

"Well, it belongs to a stepson of mine," said Raffles, adjusting
himself in a swaggering attitude.  "I came to see him here before.  I'm
not so surprised at seeing you, old fellow, because I picked up a
letter--what you may call a providential thing.  It's uncommonly
fortunate I met you, though; for I don't care about seeing my stepson:
he's not affectionate, and his poor mother's gone now.  To tell the
truth, I came out of love to you, Nick: I came to get your address,
for--look here!"  Raffles drew a crumpled paper from his pocket.

Almost any other man than Caleb Garth might have been tempted to linger
on the spot for the sake of hearing all he could about a man whose
acquaintance with Bulstrode seemed to imply passages in the banker's
life so unlike anything that was known of him in Middlemarch that they
must have the nature of a secret to pique curiosity.  But Caleb was
peculiar: certain human tendencies which are commonly strong were
almost absent from his mind; and one of these was curiosity about
personal affairs.  Especially if there was anything discreditable to be
found out concerning another man, Caleb preferred not to know it; and
if he had to tell anybody under him that his evil doings were
discovered, he was more embarrassed than the culprit.  He now spurred
his horse, and saying, "I wish you good evening, Mr. Bulstrode; I must
be getting home," set off at a trot.

"You didn't put your full address to this letter," Raffles continued.
"That was not like the first-rate man of business you used to be.  'The
Shrubs,'--they may be anywhere: you live near at hand, eh?--have cut
the London concern altogether--perhaps turned country squire--have a
rural mansion to invite me to.  Lord, how many years it is ago!  The
old lady must have been dead a pretty long while--gone to glory without
the pain of knowing how poor her daughter was, eh?  But, by Jove!
you're very pale and pasty, Nick.  Come, if you're going home, I'll
walk by your side."

Mr. Bulstrode's usual paleness had in fact taken an almost deathly hue.
Five minutes before, the expanse of his life had been submerged in its
evening sunshine which shone backward to its remembered morning: sin
seemed to be a question of doctrine and inward penitence, humiliation
an exercise of the closet, the bearing of his deeds a matter of private
vision adjusted solely by spiritual relations and conceptions of the
divine purposes.  And now, as if by some hideous magic, this loud red
figure had risen before him in unmanageable solidity--an incorporate
past which had not entered into his imagination of chastisements.  But
Mr. Bulstrode's thought was busy, and he was not a man to act or speak
rashly.

"I was going home," he said, "but I can defer my ride a little.  And
you can, if you please, rest here."

"Thank you," said Raffles, making a grimace.  "I don't care now about
seeing my stepson.  I'd rather go home with you."

"Your stepson, if Mr. Rigg Featherstone was he, is here no longer.  I
am master here now."

Raffles opened wide eyes, and gave a long whistle of surprise, before
he said, "Well then, I've no objection.  I've had enough walking from
the coach-road. I never was much of a walker, or rider either.  What I
like is a smart vehicle and a spirited cob.  I was always a little
heavy in the saddle.  What a pleasant surprise it must be to you to see
me, old fellow!" he continued, as they turned towards the house.  "You
don't say so; but you never took your luck heartily--you were always
thinking of improving the occasion--you'd such a gift for improving
your luck."

Mr. Raffles seemed greatly to enjoy his own wit, and swung his leg in a
swaggering manner which was rather too much for his companion's
judicious patience.

"If I remember rightly," Mr. Bulstrode observed, with chill anger, "our
acquaintance many years ago had not the sort of intimacy which you are
now assuming, Mr. Raffles.  Any services you desire of me will be the
more readily rendered if you will avoid a tone of familiarity which did
not lie in our former intercourse, and can hardly be warranted by more
than twenty years of separation."

"You don't like being called Nick?  Why, I always called you Nick in my
heart, and though lost to sight, to memory dear.  By Jove! my feelings
have ripened for you like fine old cognac.  I hope you've got some in
the house now.  Josh filled my flask well the last time."

Mr. Bulstrode had not yet fully learned that even the desire for cognac
was not stronger in Raffles than the desire to torment, and that a hint
of annoyance always served him as a fresh cue.  But it was at least
clear that further objection was useless, and Mr. Bulstrode, in giving
orders to the housekeeper for the accommodation of the guest, had a
resolute air of quietude.

There was the comfort of thinking that this housekeeper had been in the
service of Rigg also, and might accept the idea that Mr. Bulstrode
entertained Raffles merely as a friend of her former master.

When there was food and drink spread before his visitor in the
wainscoted parlor, and no witness in the room, Mr. Bulstrode said--

"Your habits and mine are so different, Mr. Raffles, that we can hardly
enjoy each other's society.  The wisest plan for both of us will
therefore be to part as soon as possible.  Since you say that you
wished to meet me, you probably considered that you had some business
to transact with me.  But under the circumstances I will invite you to
remain here for the night, and I will myself ride over here early
to-morrow morning--before breakfast, in fact, when I can receive any
Communication you have to make to me."

"With all my heart," said Raffles; "this is a comfortable place--a
little dull for a continuance; but I can put up with it for a night,
with this good liquor and the prospect of seeing you again in the
morning.  You're a much better host than my stepson was; but Josh owed
me a bit of a grudge for marrying his mother; and between you and me
there was never anything but kindness."

Mr. Bulstrode, hoping that the peculiar mixture of joviality and
sneering in Raffles' manner was a good deal the effect of drink, had
determined to wait till he was quite sober before he spent more words
upon him.  But he rode home with a terribly lucid vision of the
difficulty there would be in arranging any result that could be
permanently counted on with this man.  It was inevitable that he should
wish to get rid of John Raffles, though his reappearance could not be
regarded as lying outside the divine plan.  The spirit of evil might
have sent him to threaten Mr. Bulstrode's subversion as an instrument
of good; but the threat must have been permitted, and was a
chastisement of a new kind.  It was an hour of anguish for him very
different from the hours in which his struggle had been securely
private, and which had ended with a sense that his secret misdeeds were
pardoned and his services accepted.  Those misdeeds even when
committed--had they not been half sanctified by the singleness of his
desire to devote himself and all he possessed to the furtherance of the
divine scheme?  And was he after all to become a mere stone of
stumbling and a rock of offence?  For who would understand the work
within him?  Who would not, when there was the pretext of casting
disgrace upon him, confound his whole life and the truths he had
espoused, in one heap of obloquy?

In his closest meditations the life-long habit of Mr. Bulstrode's mind
clad his most egoistic terrors in doctrinal references to superhuman
ends.  But even while we are talking and meditating about the earth's
orbit and the solar system, what we feel and adjust our movements to is
the stable earth and the changing day.  And now within all the
automatic succession of theoretic phrases--distinct and inmost as the
shiver and the ache of oncoming fever when we are discussing abstract
pain, was the forecast of disgrace in the presence of his neighbors and
of his own wife.  For the pain, as well as the public estimate of
disgrace, depends on the amount of previous profession.  To men who
only aim at escaping felony, nothing short of the prisoner's dock is
disgrace.  But Mr. Bulstrode had aimed at being an eminent Christian.

It was not more than half-past seven in the morning when he again
reached Stone Court.  The fine old place never looked more like a
delightful home than at that moment; the great white lilies were in
flower, the nasturtiums, their pretty leaves all silvered with dew,
were running away over the low stone wall; the very noises all around
had a heart of peace within them.  But everything was spoiled for the
owner as he walked on the gravel in front and awaited the descent of
Mr. Raffles, with whom he was condemned to breakfast.

It was not long before they were seated together in the wainscoted
parlor over their tea and toast, which was as much as Raffles cared to
take at that early hour.  The difference between his morning and
evening self was not so great as his companion had imagined that it
might be; the delight in tormenting was perhaps even the stronger
because his spirits were rather less highly pitched.  Certainly his
manners seemed more disagreeable by the morning light.

"As I have little time to spare, Mr. Raffles," said the banker, who
could hardly do more than sip his tea and break his toast without
eating it, "I shall be obliged if you will mention at once the ground
on which you wished to meet with me.  I presume that you have a home
elsewhere and will be glad to return to it."

"Why, if a man has got any heart, doesn't he want to see an old friend,
Nick?--I must call you Nick--we always did call you young Nick when we
knew you meant to marry the old widow.  Some said you had a handsome
family likeness to old Nick, but that was your mother's fault, calling
you Nicholas.  Aren't you glad to see me again?  I expected an invite
to stay with you at some pretty place.  My own establishment is broken
up now my wife's dead.  I've no particular attachment to any spot; I
would as soon settle hereabout as anywhere."

"May I ask why you returned from America?  I considered that the strong
wish you expressed to go there, when an adequate sum was furnished, was
tantamount to an engagement that you would remain there for life."

"Never knew that a wish to go to a place was the same thing as a wish
to stay.  But I did stay a matter of ten years; it didn't suit me to
stay any longer.  And I'm not going again, Nick." Here Mr. Raffles
winked slowly as he looked at Mr. Bulstrode.

"Do you wish to be settled in any business?  What is your calling now?"

"Thank you, my calling is to enjoy myself as much as I can.  I don't
care about working any more.  If I did anything it would be a little
travelling in the tobacco line--or something of that sort, which takes
a man into agreeable company.  But not without an independence to fall
back upon.  That's what I want: I'm not so strong as I was, Nick,
though I've got more color than you.  I want an independence."

"That could be supplied to you, if you would engage to keep at a
distance," said Mr. Bulstrode, perhaps with a little too much eagerness
in his undertone.

"That must be as it suits my convenience," said Raffles coolly.  "I see
no reason why I shouldn't make a few acquaintances hereabout.  I'm not
ashamed of myself as company for anybody.  I dropped my portmanteau at
the turnpike when I got down--change of linen--genuine--honor bright--more
than fronts and wristbands; and with this suit of mourning, straps
and everything, I should do you credit among the nobs here."  Mr.
Raffles had pushed away his chair and looked down at himself,
particularly at his straps.  His chief intention was to annoy
Bulstrode, but he really thought that his appearance now would produce
a good effect, and that he was not only handsome and witty, but clad in
a mourning style which implied solid connections.

"If you intend to rely on me in any way, Mr. Raffles," said Bulstrode,
after a moment's pause, "you will expect to meet my wishes."

"Ah, to be sure," said Raffles, with a mocking cordiality.  "Didn't I
always do it?  Lord, you made a pretty thing out of me, and I got but
little.  I've often thought since, I might have done better by telling
the old woman that I'd found her daughter and her grandchild: it would
have suited my feelings better; I've got a soft place in my heart.  But
you've buried the old lady by this time, I suppose--it's all one to her
now.  And you've got your fortune out of that profitable business which
had such a blessing on it.  You've taken to being a nob, buying land,
being a country bashaw.  Still in the Dissenting line, eh?  Still
godly?  Or taken to the Church as more genteel?"

This time Mr. Raffles' slow wink and slight protrusion of his tongue
was worse than a nightmare, because it held the certitude that it was
not a nightmare, but a waking misery.  Mr. Bulstrode felt a shuddering
nausea, and did not speak, but was considering diligently whether he
should not leave Raffles to do as he would, and simply defy him as a
slanderer.  The man would soon show himself disreputable enough to make
people disbelieve him.  "But not when he tells any ugly-looking truth
about _you_," said discerning consciousness.  And again: it seemed no
wrong to keep Raffles at a distance, but Mr. Bulstrode shrank from the
direct falsehood of denying true statements.  It was one thing to look
back on forgiven sins, nay, to explain questionable conformity to lax
customs, and another to enter deliberately on the necessity of
falsehood.

But since Bulstrode did not speak, Raffles ran on, by way of using time
to the utmost.

"I've not had such fine luck as you, by Jove!  Things went confoundedly
with me in New York; those Yankees are cool hands, and a man of
gentlemanly feelings has no chance with them.  I married when I came
back--a nice woman in the tobacco trade--very fond of me--but the
trade was restricted, as we say.  She had been settled there a good
many years by a friend; but there was a son too much in the case.  Josh
and I never hit it off.  However, I made the most of the position, and
I've always taken my glass in good company.  It's been all on the
square with me; I'm as open as the day.  You won't take it ill of me
that I didn't look you up before.  I've got a complaint that makes me a
little dilatory.  I thought you were trading and praying away in London
still, and didn't find you there.  But you see I was sent to you,
Nick--perhaps for a blessing to both of us."

Mr. Raffles ended with a jocose snuffle: no man felt his intellect more
superior to religious cant.  And if the cunning which calculates on the
meanest feelings in men could be called intellect, he had his share,
for under the blurting rallying tone with which he spoke to Bulstrode,
there was an evident selection of statements, as if they had been so
many moves at chess.  Meanwhile Bulstrode had determined on his move,
and he said, with gathered resolution--

"You will do well to reflect, Mr. Raffles, that it is possible for a
man to overreach himself in the effort to secure undue advantage.
Although I am not in any way bound to you, I am willing to supply you
with a regular annuity--in quarterly payments--so long as you fulfil a
promise to remain at a distance from this neighborhood.  It is in your
power to choose.  If you insist on remaining here, even for a short
time, you will get nothing from me.  I shall decline to know you."

"Ha, ha!" said Raffles, with an affected explosion, "that reminds me of
a droll dog of a thief who declined to know the constable."

"Your allusions are lost on me sir," said Bulstrode, with white heat;
"the law has no hold on me either through your agency or any other."

"You can't understand a joke, my good fellow.  I only meant that I
should never decline to know you.  But let us be serious.  Your
quarterly payment won't quite suit me.  I like my freedom."

Here Raffles rose and stalked once or twice up and down the room,
swinging his leg, and assuming an air of masterly meditation.  At last
he stopped opposite Bulstrode, and said, "I'll tell you what!  Give us
a couple of hundreds--come, that's modest--and I'll go away--honor
bright!--pick up my portmanteau and go away.  But I shall not give up
my Liberty for a dirty annuity.  I shall come and go where I like.
Perhaps it may suit me to stay away, and correspond with a friend;
perhaps not.  Have you the money with you?"

"No, I have one hundred," said Bulstrode, feeling the immediate
riddance too great a relief to be rejected on the ground of future
uncertainties.  "I will forward you the other if you will mention an
address."

"No, I'll wait here till you bring it," said Raffles.  "I'll take a
stroll and have a snack, and you'll be back by that time."

Mr. Bulstrode's sickly body, shattered by the agitations he had gone
through since the last evening, made him feel abjectly in the power of
this loud invulnerable man.  At that moment he snatched at a temporary
repose to be won on any terms.  He was rising to do what Raffles
suggested, when the latter said, lifting up his finger as if with a
sudden recollection--

"I did have another look after Sarah again, though I didn't tell you;
I'd a tender conscience about that pretty young woman.  I didn't find
her, but I found out her husband's name, and I made a note of it.  But
hang it, I lost my pocketbook.  However, if I heard it, I should know
it again.  I've got my faculties as if I was in my prime, but names
wear out, by Jove!  Sometimes I'm no better than a confounded tax-paper
before the names are filled in.  However, if I hear of her and her
family, you shall know, Nick.  You'd like to do something for her, now
she's your step-daughter."

"Doubtless," said Mr. Bulstrode, with the usual steady look of his
light-gray eyes; "though that might reduce my power of assisting you."

As he walked out of the room, Raffles winked slowly at his back, and
then turned towards the window to watch the banker riding away--virtually
at his command.  His lips first curled with a smile and then opened
with a short triumphant laugh.

"But what the deuce was the name?" he presently said, half aloud,
scratching his head, and wrinkling his brows horizontally.  He had not
really cared or thought about this point of forgetfulness until it
occurred to him in his invention of annoyances for Bulstrode.

"It began with L; it was almost all l's I fancy," he went on, with a
sense that he was getting hold of the slippery name.  But the hold was
too slight, and he soon got tired of this mental chase; for few men
were more impatient of private occupation or more in need of making
themselves continually heard than Mr. Raffles.  He preferred using his
time in pleasant conversation with the bailiff and the housekeeper,
from whom he gathered as much as he wanted to know about Mr.
Bulstrode's position in Middlemarch.

After all, however, there was a dull space of time which needed
relieving with bread and cheese and ale, and when he was seated alone
with these resources in the wainscoted parlor, he suddenly slapped his
knee, and exclaimed, "Ladislaw!"  That action of memory which he had
tried to set going, and had abandoned in despair, had suddenly
completed itself without conscious effort--a common experience,
agreeable as a completed sneeze, even if the name remembered is of no
value.  Raffles immediately took out his pocket-book, and wrote down
the name, not because he expected to use it, but merely for the sake of
not being at a loss if he ever did happen to want it.  He was not going
to tell Bulstrode: there was no actual good in telling, and to a mind
like that of Mr. Raffles there is always probable good in a secret.

He was satisfied with his present success, and by three o'clock that
day he had taken up his portmanteau at the turnpike and mounted the
coach, relieving Mr. Bulstrode's eyes of an ugly black spot on the
landscape at Stone Court, but not relieving him of the dread that the
black spot might reappear and become inseparable even from the vision
of his hearth.





BOOK VI.





THE WIDOW AND THE WIFE.



CHAPTER LIV.

    "Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore;
         Per che si fa gentil ciò ch'ella mira:
         Ov'ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira,
         E cui saluta fa tremar lo core.

     Sicchè, bassando il viso, tutto smore,
         E d'ogni suo difetto allor sospira:
         Fuggon dinanzi a lei Superbia ed Ira:
         Aiutatemi, donne, a farle onore.

     Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile
         Nasce nel core a chi parlar la sente;
         Ond'è beato chi prima la vide.
     Quel ch'ella par quand' un poco sorride,
         Non si può dicer, nè tener a mente,
         Si è nuovo miracolo gentile."
                        --DANTE: la Vita Nuova.


By that delightful morning when the hay-ricks at Stone Court were
scenting the air quite impartially, as if Mr. Raffles had been a guest
worthy of finest incense, Dorothea had again taken up her abode at
Lowick Manor.  After three months Freshitt had become rather
oppressive: to sit like a model for Saint Catherine looking rapturously
at Celia's baby would not do for many hours in the day, and to remain
in that momentous babe's presence with persistent disregard was a
course that could not have been tolerated in a childless sister.
Dorothea would have been capable of carrying baby joyfully for a mile
if there had been need, and of loving it the more tenderly for that
labor; but to an aunt who does not recognize her infant nephew as
Bouddha, and has nothing to do for him but to admire, his behavior is
apt to appear monotonous, and the interest of watching him exhaustible.
This possibility was quite hidden from Celia, who felt that Dorothea's
childless widowhood fell in quite prettily with the birth of little
Arthur (baby was named after Mr. Brooke).

"Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having anything of her
own--children or anything!" said Celia to her husband.  "And if she
had had a baby, it never could have been such a dear as Arthur.  Could
it, James?

"Not if it had been like Casaubon," said Sir James, conscious of some
indirectness in his answer, and of holding a strictly private opinion
as to the perfections of his first-born.

"No! just imagine!  Really it was a mercy," said Celia; "and I think it
is very nice for Dodo to be a widow.  She can be just as fond of our
baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions of her own
as she likes."

"It is a pity she was not a queen," said the devout Sir James.

"But what should we have been then?  We must have been something else,"
said Celia, objecting to so laborious a flight of imagination.  "I like
her better as she is."

Hence, when she found that Dorothea was making arrangements for her
final departure to Lowick, Celia raised her eyebrows with
disappointment, and in her quiet unemphatic way shot a needle-arrow of
sarcasm.

"What will you do at Lowick, Dodo?  You say yourself there is nothing
to be done there: everybody is so clean and well off, it makes you
quite melancholy.  And here you have been so happy going all about
Tipton with Mr. Garth into the worst backyards.  And now uncle is
abroad, you and Mr. Garth can have it all your own way; and I am sure
James does everything you tell him."

"I shall often come here, and I shall see how baby grows all the
better," said Dorothea.

"But you will never see him washed," said Celia; "and that is quite the
best part of the day."  She was almost pouting: it did seem to her very
hard in Dodo to go away from the baby when she might stay.

"Dear Kitty, I will come and stay all night on purpose," said Dorothea;
"but I want to be alone now, and in my own home.  I wish to know the
Farebrothers better, and to talk to Mr. Farebrother about what there is
to be done in Middlemarch."

Dorothea's native strength of will was no longer all converted into
resolute submission.  She had a great yearning to be at Lowick, and was
simply determined to go, not feeling bound to tell all her reasons.
But every one around her disapproved.  Sir James was much pained, and
offered that they should all migrate to Cheltenham for a few months
with the sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle: at that period a man
could hardly know what to propose if Cheltenham were rejected.

The Dowager Lady Chettam, just returned from a visit to her daughter in
town, wished, at least, that Mrs. Vigo should be written to, and
invited to accept the office of companion to Mrs. Casaubon: it was not
credible that Dorothea as a young widow would think of living alone in
the house at Lowick.  Mrs. Vigo had been reader and secretary to royal
personages, and in point of knowledge and sentiments even Dorothea
could have nothing to object to her.

Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, "You will certainly go mad in that
house alone, my dear.  You will see visions.  We have all got to exert
ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as
other people call them by.  To be sure, for younger sons and women who
have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care
of then.  But you must not run into that.  I dare say you are a little
bored here with our good dowager; but think what a bore you might
become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing
tragedy queen and taking things sublimely.  Sitting alone in that
library at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must
get a few people round you who wouldn't believe you if you told them.
That is a good lowering medicine."

"I never called everything by the same name that all the people about
me did," said Dorothea, stoutly.

"But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear," said Mrs.
Cadwallader, "and that is a proof of sanity."

Dorothea was aware of the sting, but it did not hurt her.  "No," she
said, "I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken
about many things.  Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the
greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion."

Mrs. Cadwallader said no more on that point to Dorothea, but to her
husband she remarked, "It will be well for her to marry again as soon
as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people.  Of
course the Chettams would not wish it.  But I see clearly a husband is
the best thing to keep her in order.  If we were not so poor I would
invite Lord Triton.  He will be marquis some day, and there is no
denying that she would make a good marchioness: she looks handsomer
than ever in her mourning."

"My dear Elinor, do let the poor woman alone.  Such contrivances are of
no use," said the easy Rector.

"No use?  How are matches made, except by bringing men and women
together?  And it is a shame that her uncle should have run away and
shut up the Grange just now.  There ought to be plenty of eligible
matches invited to Freshitt and the Grange.  Lord Triton is precisely
the man: full of plans for making the people happy in a soft-headed
sort of way.  That would just suit Mrs. Casaubon."

"Let Mrs. Casaubon choose for herself, Elinor."

"That is the nonsense you wise men talk!  How can she choose if she has
no variety to choose from?  A woman's choice usually means taking the
only man she can get.  Mark my words, Humphrey.  If her friends don't
exert themselves, there will be a worse business than the Casaubon
business yet."

"For heaven's sake don't touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a very sore
point with Sir James. He would be deeply offended if you entered on it
to him unnecessarily."

"I have never entered on it," said Mrs Cadwallader, opening her hands.
"Celia told me all about the will at the beginning, without any asking
of mine."

"Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand that the
young fellow is going out of the neighborhood."

Mrs. Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her husband three significant
nods, with a very sarcastic expression in her dark eyes.

Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion.  So
by the end of June the shutters were all opened at Lowick Manor, and
the morning gazed calmly into the library, shining on the rows of
note-books as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge stones,
the mute memorial of a forgotten faith; and the evening laden with
roses entered silently into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose
oftenest to sit.  At first she walked into every room, questioning the
eighteen months of her married life, and carrying on her thoughts as if
they were a speech to be heard by her husband.  Then, she lingered in
the library and could not be at rest till she had carefully ranged all
the note-books as she imagined that he would wish to see them, in
orderly sequence.  The pity which had been the restraining compelling
motive in her life with him still clung about his image, even while she
remonstrated with him in indignant thought and told him that he was
unjust.  One little act of hers may perhaps be smiled at as
superstitious.  The Synoptical Tabulation for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,
she carefully enclosed and sealed, writing within the envelope, "I
could not use it.  Do you not see now that I could not submit my soul
to yours, by working hopelessly at what I have no belief in--Dorothea?"
Then she deposited the paper in her own desk.

That silent colloquy was perhaps only the more earnest because
underneath and through it all there was always the deep longing which
had really determined her to come to Lowick.  The longing was to see
Will Ladislaw.  She did not know any good that could come of their
meeting: she was helpless; her hands had been tied from making up to
him for any unfairness in his lot.  But her soul thirsted to see him.
How could it be otherwise?  If a princess in the days of enchantment
had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds
come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her with
choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, what
would she look for when the herds passed her?  Surely for the gaze
which had found her, and which she would know again.  Life would be no
better than candle-light tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits
were not touched by what has been, to issues of longing and constancy.
It was true that Dorothea wanted to know the Farebrothers better, and
especially to talk to the new rector, but also true that remembering
what Lydgate had told her about Will Ladislaw and little Miss Noble,
she counted on Will's coming to Lowick to see the Farebrother family.
The very first Sunday, _before_ she entered the church, she saw him as
she had seen him the last time she was there, alone in the clergyman's
pew; but _when_ she entered his figure was gone.

In the week-days when she went to see the ladies at the Rectory, she
listened in vain for some word that they might let fall about Will; but
it seemed to her that Mrs. Farebrother talked of every one else in the
neighborhood and out of it.

"Probably some of Mr. Farebrother's Middlemarch hearers may follow him
to Lowick sometimes.  Do you not think so?" said Dorothea, rather
despising herself for having a secret motive in asking the question.

"If they are wise they will, Mrs. Casaubon," said the old lady.  "I see
that you set a right value on my son's preaching.  His grandfather on
my side was an excellent clergyman, but his father was in the law:--most
exemplary and honest nevertheless, which is a reason for our never
being rich.  They say Fortune is a woman and capricious.  But sometimes
she is a good woman and gives to those who merit, which has been the
case with you, Mrs. Casaubon, who have given a living to my son."

Mrs. Farebrother recurred to her knitting with a dignified satisfaction
in her neat little effort at oratory, but this was not what Dorothea
wanted to hear.  Poor thing! she did not even know whether Will
Ladislaw was still at Middlemarch, and there was no one whom she dared
to ask, unless it were Lydgate.  But just now she could not see Lydgate
without sending for him or going to seek him.  Perhaps Will Ladislaw,
having heard of that strange ban against him left by Mr. Casaubon, had
felt it better that he and she should not meet again, and perhaps she
was wrong to wish for a meeting that others might find many good
reasons against.  Still "I do wish it" came at the end of those wise
reflections as naturally as a sob after holding the breath.  And the
meeting did happen, but in a formal way quite unexpected by her.

One morning, about eleven, Dorothea was seated in her boudoir with a
map of the land attached to the manor and other papers before her,
which were to help her in making an exact statement for herself of her
income and affairs.  She had not yet applied herself to her work, but
was seated with her hands folded on her lap, looking out along the
avenue of limes to the distant fields.  Every leaf was at rest in the
sunshine, the familiar scene was changeless, and seemed to represent
the prospect of her life, full of motiveless ease--motiveless, if her
own energy could not seek out reasons for ardent action.  The widow's
cap of those times made an oval frame for the face, and had a crown
standing up; the dress was an experiment in the utmost laying on of
crape; but this heavy solemnity of clothing made her face look all the
younger, with its recovered bloom, and the sweet, inquiring candor of
her eyes.

Her reverie was broken by Tantripp, who came to say that Mr. Ladislaw
was below, and begged permission to see Madam if it were not too early.

"I will see him," said Dorothea, rising immediately.  "Let him be shown
into the drawing-room."

The drawing-room was the most neutral room in the house to her--the
one least associated with the trials of her married life: the damask
matched the wood-work, which was all white and gold; there were two
tall mirrors and tables with nothing on them--in brief, it was a room
where you had no reason for sitting in one place rather than in
another.  It was below the boudoir, and had also a bow-window looking
out on the avenue.  But when Pratt showed Will Ladislaw into it the
window was open; and a winged visitor, buzzing in and out now and then
without minding the furniture, made the room look less formal and
uninhabited.

"Glad to see you here again, sir," said Pratt, lingering to adjust a
blind.

"I am only come to say good-by, Pratt," said Will, who wished even the
butler to know that he was too proud to hang about Mrs. Casaubon now
she was a rich widow.

"Very sorry to hear it, sir," said Pratt, retiring.  Of course, as a
servant who was to be told nothing, he knew the fact of which Ladislaw
was still ignorant, and had drawn his inferences; indeed, had not
differed from his betrothed Tantripp when she said, "Your master was as
jealous as a fiend--and no reason.  Madam would look higher than Mr.
Ladislaw, else I don't know her.  Mrs. Cadwallader's maid says there's
a lord coming who is to marry her when the mourning's over."

There were not many moments for Will to walk about with his hat in his
hand before Dorothea entered.  The meeting was very different from that
first meeting in Rome when Will had been embarrassed and Dorothea calm.
This time he felt miserable but determined, while she was in a state of
agitation which could not be hidden.  Just outside the door she had
felt that this longed-for meeting was after all too difficult, and when
she saw Will advancing towards her, the deep blush which was rare in
her came with painful suddenness.  Neither of them knew how it was, but
neither of them spoke.  She gave her hand for a moment, and then they
went to sit down near the window, she on one settee and he on another
opposite.  Will was peculiarly uneasy: it seemed to him not like
Dorothea that the mere fact of her being a widow should cause such a
change in her manner of receiving him; and he knew of no other
condition which could have affected their previous relation to each
other--except that, as his imagination at once told him, her friends
might have been poisoning her mind with their suspicions of him.

"I hope I have not presumed too much in calling," said Will; "I could
not bear to leave the neighborhood and begin a new life without seeing
you to say good-by."

"Presumed?  Surely not.  I should have thought it unkind if you had not
wished to see me," said Dorothea, her habit of speaking with perfect
genuineness asserting itself through all her uncertainty and agitation.
"Are you going away immediately?"

"Very soon, I think.  I intend to go to town and eat my dinners as a
barrister, since, they say, that is the preparation for all public
business.  There will be a great deal of political work to be done
by-and-by, and I mean to try and do some of it.  Other men have managed
to win an honorable position for themselves without family or money."

"And that will make it all the more honorable," said Dorothea,
ardently.  "Besides, you have so many talents.  I have heard from my
uncle how well you speak in public, so that every one is sorry when you
leave off, and how clearly you can explain things.  And you care that
justice should be done to every one.  I am so glad.  When we were in
Rome, I thought you only cared for poetry and art, and the things that
adorn life for us who are well off.  But now I know you think about the
rest of the world."

While she was speaking Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment,
and had become like her former self.  She looked at Will with a direct
glance, full of delighted confidence.

"You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming here
again till I have made myself of some mark in the world?" said Will,
trying hard to reconcile the utmost pride with the utmost effort to get
an expression of strong feeling from Dorothea.

She was not aware how long it was before she answered.  She had turned
her head and was looking out of the window on the rose-bushes, which
seemed to have in them the summers of all the years when Will would be
away.  This was not judicious behavior.  But Dorothea never thought of
studying her manners: she thought only of bowing to a sad necessity
which divided her from Will.  Those first words of his about his
intentions had seemed to make everything clear to her: he knew, she
supposed, all about Mr. Casaubon's final conduct in relation to him,
and it had come to him with the same sort of shock as to herself.  He
had never felt more than friendship for her--had never had anything in
his mind to justify what she felt to be her husband's outrage on the
feelings of both: and that friendship he still felt.  Something which
may be called an inward silent sob had gone on in Dorothea before she
said with a pure voice, just trembling in the last words as if only
from its liquid flexibility--

"Yes, it must be right for you to do as you say.  I shall be very happy
when I hear that you have made your value felt.  But you must have
patience.  It will perhaps be a long while."

Will never quite knew how it was that he saved himself from falling
down at her feet, when the "long while" came forth with its gentle
tremor.  He used to say that the horrible hue and surface of her crape
dress was most likely the sufficient controlling force.  He sat still,
however, and only said--

"I shall never hear from you.  And you will forget all about me."

"No," said Dorothea, "I shall never forget you.  I have never forgotten
any one whom I once knew.  My life has never been crowded, and seems
not likely to be so.  And I have a great deal of space for memory at
Lowick, haven't I?"  She smiled.

"Good God!"  Will burst out passionately, rising, with his hat still in
his hand, and walking away to a marble table, where he suddenly turned
and leaned his back against it.  The blood had mounted to his face and
neck, and he looked almost angry.  It had seemed to him as if they were
like two creatures slowly turning to marble in each other's presence,
while their hearts were conscious and their eyes were yearning.  But
there was no help for it.  It should never be true of him that in this
meeting to which he had come with bitter resolution he had ended by a
confession which might be interpreted into asking for her fortune.
Moreover, it was actually true that he was fearful of the effect which
such confessions might have on Dorothea herself.

She looked at him from that distance in some trouble, imagining that
there might have been an offence in her words.  But all the while there
was a current of thought in her about his probable want of money, and
the impossibility of her helping him.  If her uncle had been at home,
something might have been done through him!  It was this preoccupation
with the hardship of Will's wanting money, while she had what ought to
have been his share, which led her to say, seeing that he remained
silent and looked away from her--

"I wonder whether you would like to have that miniature which hangs
up-stairs--I mean that beautiful miniature of your grandmother.  I
think it is not right for me to keep it, if you would wish to have it.
It is wonderfully like you."

"You are very good," said Will, irritably.  "No; I don't mind about it.
It is not very consoling to have one's own likeness.  It would be more
consoling if others wanted to have it."

"I thought you would like to cherish her memory--I thought--" Dorothea
broke off an instant, her imagination suddenly warning her away from
Aunt Julia's history--"you would surely like to have the miniature as a
family memorial."

"Why should I have that, when I have nothing else!  A man with only a
portmanteau for his stowage must keep his memorials in his head."

Will spoke at random: he was merely venting his petulance; it was a
little too exasperating to have his grandmother's portrait offered him
at that moment.  But to Dorothea's feeling his words had a peculiar
sting.  She rose and said with a touch of indignation as well as
hauteur--

"You are much the happier of us two, Mr. Ladislaw, to have nothing."

Will was startled.  Whatever the words might be, the tone seemed like a
dismissal; and quitting his leaning posture, he walked a little way
towards her.  Their eyes met, but with a strange questioning gravity.
Something was keeping their minds aloof, and each was left to
conjecture what was in the other.  Will had really never thought of
himself as having a claim of inheritance on the property which was held
by Dorothea, and would have required a narrative to make him understand
her present feeling.

"I never felt it a misfortune to have nothing till now," he said.  "But
poverty may be as bad as leprosy, if it divides us from what we most
care for."

The words cut Dorothea to the heart, and made her relent.  She answered
in a tone of sad fellowship.

"Sorrow comes in so many ways.  Two years ago I had no notion of
that--I mean of the unexpected way in which trouble comes, and ties our
hands, and makes us silent when we long to speak.  I used to despise
women a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better
things.  I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given
it up," she ended, smiling playfully.

"I have not given up doing as I like, but I can very seldom do it,"
said Will.  He was standing two yards from her with his mind full of
contradictory desires and resolves--desiring some unmistakable proof
that she loved him, and yet dreading the position into which such a
proof might bring him.  "The thing one most longs for may be surrounded
with conditions that would be intolerable."

At this moment Pratt entered and said, "Sir James Chettam is in the
library, madam."

"Ask Sir James to come in here," said Dorothea, immediately.  It was as
if the same electric shock had passed through her and Will.  Each of
them felt proudly resistant, and neither looked at the other, while
they awaited Sir James's entrance.

After shaking hands with Dorothea, he bowed as slightly as possible to
Ladislaw, who repaid the slightness exactly, and then going towards
Dorothea, said--

"I must say good-by, Mrs. Casaubon; and probably for a long while."

Dorothea put out her hand and said her good-by cordially.  The sense
that Sir James was depreciating Will, and behaving rudely to him,
roused her resolution and dignity: there was no touch of confusion in
her manner.  And when Will had left the room, she looked with such calm
self-possession at Sir James, saying, "How is Celia?" that he was
obliged to behave as if nothing had annoyed him.  And what would be the
use of behaving otherwise?  Indeed, Sir James shrank with so much
dislike from the association even in thought of Dorothea with Ladislaw
as her possible lover, that he would himself have wished to avoid an
outward show of displeasure which would have recognized the
disagreeable possibility.  If any one had asked him why he shrank in
that way, I am not sure that he would at first have said anything
fuller or more precise than "_That_ Ladislaw!"--though on reflection
he might have urged that Mr. Casaubon's codicil, barring Dorothea's
marriage with Will, except under a penalty, was enough to cast
unfitness over any relation at all between them.  His aversion was all
the stronger because he felt himself unable to interfere.

But Sir James was a power in a way unguessed by himself.  Entering at
that moment, he was an incorporation of the strongest reasons through
which Will's pride became a repellent force, keeping him asunder from
Dorothea.



CHAPTER LV.

    Hath she her faults?  I would you had them too.
    They are the fruity must of soundest wine;
    Or say, they are regenerating fire
    Such as hath turned the dense black element
    Into a crystal pathway for the sun.


If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that
our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think
its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind.  Each
crisis seems final, simply because it is new.  We are told that the
oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by the
earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock, and reflect that
there are plenty more to come.

To Dorothea, still in that time of youth when the eyes with their long
full lashes look out after their rain of tears unsoiled and unwearied
as a freshly opened passion-flower, that morning's parting with Will
Ladislaw seemed to be the close of their personal relations.  He was
going away into the distance of unknown years, and if ever he came back
he would be another man.  The actual state of his mind--his proud
resolve to give the lie beforehand to any suspicion that he would play
the needy adventurer seeking a rich woman--lay quite out of her
imagination, and she had interpreted all his behavior easily enough by
her supposition that Mr. Casaubon's codicil seemed to him, as it did to
her, a gross and cruel interdict on any active friendship between them.
Their young delight in speaking to each other, and saying what no one
else would care to hear, was forever ended, and become a treasure of
the past.  For this very reason she dwelt on it without inward check.
That unique happiness too was dead, and in its shadowed silent chamber
she might vent the passionate grief which she herself wondered at.  For
the first time she took down the miniature from the wall and kept it
before her, liking to blend the woman who had been too hardly judged
with the grandson whom her own heart and judgment defended.  Can any
one who has rejoiced in woman's tenderness think it a reproach to her
that she took the little oval picture in her palm and made a bed for it
there, and leaned her cheek upon it, as if that would soothe the
creatures who had suffered unjust condemnation?  She did not know then
that it was Love who had come to her briefly, as in a dream before
awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings--that it was Love to
whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the
blameless rigor of irresistible day.  She only felt that there was
something irrevocably amiss and lost in her lot, and her thoughts about
the future were the more readily shapen into resolve.  Ardent souls,
ready to construct their coming lives, are apt to commit themselves to
the fulfilment of their own visions.

One day that she went to Freshitt to fulfil her promise of staying all
night and seeing baby washed, Mrs. Cadwallader came to dine, the Rector
being gone on a fishing excursion.  It was a warm evening, and even in
the delightful drawing-room, where the fine old turf sloped from the
open window towards a lilied pool and well-planted mounds, the heat was
enough to make Celia in her white muslin and light curls reflect with
pity on what Dodo must feel in her black dress and close cap.  But this
was not until some episodes with baby were over, and had left her mind
at leisure.  She had seated herself and taken up a fan for some time
before she said, in her quiet guttural--

"Dear Dodo, do throw off that cap.  I am sure your dress must make you
feel ill."

"I am so used to the cap--it has become a sort of shell," said
Dorothea, smiling.  "I feel rather bare and exposed when it is off."

"I must see you without it; it makes us all warm," said Celia, throwing
down her fan, and going to Dorothea.  It was a pretty picture to see
this little lady in white muslin unfastening the widow's cap from her
more majestic sister, and tossing it on to a chair.  Just as the coils
and braids of dark-brown hair had been set free, Sir James entered the
room.  He looked at the released head, and said, "Ah!" in a tone of
satisfaction.

"It was I who did it, James," said Celia.  "Dodo need not make such a
slavery of her mourning; she need not wear that cap any more among her
friends."

"My dear Celia," said Lady Chettam, "a widow must wear her mourning at
least a year."

"Not if she marries again before the end of it," said Mrs. Cadwallader,
who had some pleasure in startling her good friend the Dowager.  Sir
James was annoyed, and leaned forward to play with Celia's Maltese dog.

"That is very rare, I hope," said Lady Chettam, in a tone intended to
guard against such events.  "No friend of ours ever committed herself
in that way except Mrs. Beevor, and it was very painful to Lord
Grinsell when she did so.  Her first husband was objectionable, which
made it the greater wonder.  And severely she was punished for it.
They said Captain Beevor dragged her about by the hair, and held up
loaded pistols at her."

"Oh, if she took the wrong man!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, who was in a
decidedly wicked mood.  "Marriage is always bad then, first or second.
Priority is a poor recommendation in a husband if he has got no other.
I would rather have a good second husband than an indifferent first."

"My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you," said Lady Chettam.
"I am sure you would be the last woman to marry again prematurely, if
our dear Rector were taken away."

"Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy.  It is lawful to
marry again, I suppose; else we might as well be Hindoos instead of
Christians.  Of course if a woman accepts the wrong man, she must take
the consequences, and one who does it twice over deserves her fate.
But if she can marry blood, beauty, and bravery--the sooner the
better."

"I think the subject of our conversation is very ill-chosen," said Sir
James, with a look of disgust.  "Suppose we change it."

"Not on my account, Sir James," said Dorothea, determined not to lose
the opportunity of freeing herself from certain oblique references to
excellent matches.  "If you are speaking on my behalf, I can assure you
that no question can be more indifferent and impersonal to me than
second marriage.  It is no more to me than if you talked of women going
fox-hunting: whether it is admirable in them or not, I shall not follow
them.  Pray let Mrs. Cadwallader amuse herself on that subject as much
as on any other."

"My dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Lady Chettam, in her stateliest way, "you
do not, I hope, think there was any allusion to you in my mentioning
Mrs. Beevor.  It was only an instance that occurred to me.  She was
step-daughter to Lord Grinsell: he married Mrs. Teveroy for his second
wife.  There could be no possible allusion to you."

"Oh no," said Celia.  "Nobody chose the subject; it all came out of
Dodo's cap.  Mrs. Cadwallader only said what was quite true.  A woman
could not be married in a widow's cap, James."

"Hush, my dear!" said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "I will not offend again.  I
will not even refer to Dido or Zenobia.  Only what are we to talk
about?  I, for my part, object to the discussion of Human Nature,
because that is the nature of rectors' wives."

Later in the evening, after Mrs. Cadwallader was gone, Celia said
privately to Dorothea, "Really, Dodo, taking your cap off made you like
yourself again in more ways than one.  You spoke up just as you used to
do, when anything was said to displease you.  But I could hardly make
out whether it was James that you thought wrong, or Mrs. Cadwallader."

"Neither," said Dorothea.  "James spoke out of delicacy to me, but he
was mistaken in supposing that I minded what Mrs. Cadwallader said.  I
should only mind if there were a law obliging me to take any piece of
blood and beauty that she or anybody else recommended."

"But you know, Dodo, if you ever did marry, it would be all the better
to have blood and beauty," said Celia, reflecting that Mr. Casaubon had
not been richly endowed with those gifts, and that it would be well to
caution Dorothea in time.

"Don't be anxious, Kitty; I have quite other thoughts about my life.  I
shall never marry again," said Dorothea, touching her sister's chin,
and looking at her with indulgent affection.  Celia was nursing her
baby, and Dorothea had come to say good-night to her.

"Really--quite?" said Celia.  "Not anybody at all--if he were very
wonderful indeed?"

Dorothea shook her head slowly.  "Not anybody at all.  I have
delightful plans.  I should like to take a great deal of land, and
drain it, and make a little colony, where everybody should work, and
all the work should be done well.  I should know every one of the
people and be their friend.  I am going to have great consultations
with Mr. Garth: he can tell me almost everything I want to know."

"Then you _will_ be happy, if you have a plan, Dodo?" said Celia.
"Perhaps little Arthur will like plans when he grows up, and then he
can help you."

Sir James was informed that same night that Dorothea was really quite
set against marrying anybody at all, and was going to take to "all
sorts of plans," just like what she used to have.  Sir James made no
remark.  To his secret feeling there was something repulsive in a
woman's second marriage, and no match would prevent him from feeling it
a sort of desecration for Dorothea.  He was aware that the world would
regard such a sentiment as preposterous, especially in relation to a
woman of one-and-twenty; the practice of "the world" being to treat of
a young widow's second marriage as certain and probably near, and to
smile with meaning if the widow acts accordingly.  But if Dorothea did
choose to espouse her solitude, he felt that the resolution would well
become her.



CHAPTER LVI.

    "How happy is he born and taught
     That serveth not another's will;
     Whose armor is his honest thought,
     And simple truth his only skill!
        .   .   .   .   .   .   .
     This man is freed from servile bands
     Of hope to rise or fear to fall;
     Lord of himself though not of lands;
     And having nothing yet hath all."
                             --SIR HENRY WOTTON.


Dorothea's confidence in Caleb Garth's knowledge, which had begun on
her hearing that he approved of her cottages, had grown fast during her
stay at Freshitt, Sir James having induced her to take rides over the
two estates in company with himself and Caleb, who quite returned her
admiration, and told his wife that Mrs. Casaubon had a head for
business most uncommon in a woman.  It must be remembered that by
"business" Caleb never meant money transactions, but the skilful
application of labor.

"Most uncommon!" repeated Caleb.  "She said a thing I often used to
think myself when I was a lad:--'Mr. Garth, I should like to feel, if I
lived to be old, that I had improved a great piece of land and built a
great many good cottages, because the work is of a healthy kind while
it is being done, and after it is done, men are the better for it.'
Those were the very words: she sees into things in that way."

"But womanly, I hope," said Mrs. Garth, half suspecting that Mrs.
Casaubon might not hold the true principle of subordination.

"Oh, you can't think!" said Caleb, shaking his head.  "You would like
to hear her speak, Susan.  She speaks in such plain words, and a voice
like music.  Bless me! it reminds me of bits in the 'Messiah'--'and
straightway there appeared a multitude of the heavenly host, praising
God and saying;' it has a tone with it that satisfies your ear."

Caleb was very fond of music, and when he could afford it went to hear
an oratorio that came within his reach, returning from it with a
profound reverence for this mighty structure of tones, which made him
sit meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing much unutterable
language into his outstretched hands.

With this good understanding between them, it was natural that Dorothea
asked Mr. Garth to undertake any business connected with the three
farms and the numerous tenements attached to Lowick Manor; indeed, his
expectation of getting work for two was being fast fulfilled.  As he
said, "Business breeds."  And one form of business which was beginning
to breed just then was the construction of railways.  A projected line
was to run through Lowick parish where the cattle had hitherto grazed
in a peace unbroken by astonishment; and thus it happened that the
infant struggles of the railway system entered into the affairs of
Caleb Garth, and determined the course of this history with regard to
two persons who were dear to him.  The submarine railway may have its
difficulties; but the bed of the sea is not divided among various
landed proprietors with claims for damages not only measurable but
sentimental.  In the hundred to which Middlemarch belonged railways
were as exciting a topic as the Reform Bill or the imminent horrors of
Cholera, and those who held the most decided views on the subject were
women and landholders.  Women both old and young regarded travelling by
steam as presumptuous and dangerous, and argued against it by saying
that nothing should induce them to get into a railway carriage; while
proprietors, differing from each other in their arguments as much as
Mr. Solomon Featherstone differed from Lord Medlicote, were yet
unanimous in the opinion that in selling land, whether to the Enemy of
mankind or to a company obliged to purchase, these pernicious agencies
must be made to pay a very high price to landowners for permission to
injure mankind.

But the slower wits, such as Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule, who both
occupied land of their own, took a long time to arrive at this
conclusion, their minds halting at the vivid conception of what it
would be to cut the Big Pasture in two, and turn it into three-cornered
bits, which would be "nohow;" while accommodation-bridges and high
payments were remote and incredible.

"The cows will all cast their calves, brother," said Mrs. Waule, in a
tone of deep melancholy, "if the railway comes across the Near Close;
and I shouldn't wonder at the mare too, if she was in foal.  It's a
poor tale if a widow's property is to be spaded away, and the law say
nothing to it.  What's to hinder 'em from cutting right and left if
they begin?  It's well known, _I_ can't fight."

"The best way would be to say nothing, and set somebody on to send 'em
away with a flea in their ear, when they came spying and measuring,"
said Solomon.  "Folks did that about Brassing, by what I can
understand.  It's all a pretence, if the truth was known, about their
being forced to take one way.  Let 'em go cutting in another parish.
And I don't believe in any pay to make amends for bringing a lot of
ruffians to trample your crops.  Where's a company's pocket?"

"Brother Peter, God forgive him, got money out of a company," said Mrs.
Waule.  "But that was for the manganese.  That wasn't for railways to
blow you to pieces right and left."

"Well, there's this to be said, Jane," Mr. Solomon concluded, lowering
his voice in a cautious manner--"the more spokes we put in their wheel,
the more they'll pay us to let 'em go on, if they must come whether or
not."

This reasoning of Mr. Solomon's was perhaps less thorough than he
imagined, his cunning bearing about the same relation to the course of
railways as the cunning of a diplomatist bears to the general chill or
catarrh of the solar system.  But he set about acting on his views in a
thoroughly diplomatic manner, by stimulating suspicion.  His side of
Lowick was the most remote from the village, and the houses of the
laboring people were either lone cottages or were collected in a hamlet
called Frick, where a water-mill and some stone-pits made a little
centre of slow, heavy-shouldered industry.

In the absence of any precise idea as to what railways were, public
opinion in Frick was against them; for the human mind in that grassy
corner had not the proverbial tendency to admire the unknown, holding
rather that it was likely to be against the poor man, and that
suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it.  Even the rumor
of Reform had not yet excited any millennial expectations in Frick,
there being no definite promise in it, as of gratuitous grains to
fatten Hiram Ford's pig, or of a publican at the "Weights and Scales"
who would brew beer for nothing, or of an offer on the part of the
three neighboring farmers to raise wages during winter.  And without
distinct good of this kind in its promises, Reform seemed on a footing
with the bragging of pedlers, which was a hint for distrust to every
knowing person.  The men of Frick were not ill-fed, and were less given
to fanaticism than to a strong muscular suspicion; less inclined to
believe that they were peculiarly cared for by heaven, than to regard
heaven itself as rather disposed to take them in--a disposition
observable in the weather.

Thus the mind of Frick was exactly of the sort for Mr. Solomon
Featherstone to work upon, he having more plenteous ideas of the same
order, with a suspicion of heaven and earth which was better fed and
more entirely at leisure.  Solomon was overseer of the roads at that
time, and on his slow-paced cob often took his rounds by Frick to look
at the workmen getting the stones there, pausing with a mysterious
deliberation, which might have misled you into supposing that he had
some other reason for staying than the mere want of impulse to move.
After looking for a long while at any work that was going on, he would
raise his eyes a little and look at the horizon; finally he would shake
his bridle, touch his horse with the whip, and get it to move slowly
onward.  The hour-hand of a clock was quick by comparison with Mr.
Solomon, who had an agreeable sense that he could afford to be slow.
He was in the habit of pausing for a cautious, vaguely designing chat
with every hedger or ditcher on his way, and was especially willing to
listen even to news which he had heard before, feeling himself at an
advantage over all narrators in partially disbelieving them.  One day,
however, he got into a dialogue with Hiram Ford, a wagoner, in which he
himself contributed information.  He wished to know whether Hiram had
seen fellows with staves and instruments spying about: they called
themselves railroad people, but there was no telling what they were or
what they meant to do.  The least they pretended was that they were
going to cut Lowick Parish into sixes and sevens.

"Why, there'll be no stirrin' from one pla-ace to another," said Hiram,
thinking of his wagon and horses.

"Not a bit," said Mr. Solomon.  "And cutting up fine land such as this
parish!  Let 'em go into Tipton, say I. But there's no knowing what
there is at the bottom of it.  Traffic is what they put for'ard; but
it's to do harm to the land and the poor man in the long-run."

"Why, they're Lunnon chaps, I reckon," said Hiram, who had a dim notion
of London as a centre of hostility to the country.

"Ay, to be sure.  And in some parts against Brassing, by what I've
heard say, the folks fell on 'em when they were spying, and broke their
peep-holes as they carry, and drove 'em away, so as they knew better
than come again."

"It war good foon, I'd be bound," said Hiram, whose fun was much
restricted by circumstances.

"Well, I wouldn't meddle with 'em myself," said Solomon.  "But some say
this country's seen its best days, and the sign is, as it's being
overrun with these fellows trampling right and left, and wanting to cut
it up into railways; and all for the big traffic to swallow up the
little, so as there shan't be a team left on the land, nor a whip to
crack."

"I'll crack _my_ whip about their ear'n, afore they bring it to that,
though," said Hiram, while Mr. Solomon, shaking his bridle, moved
onward.

Nettle-seed needs no digging.  The ruin of this countryside by
railroads was discussed, not only at the "Weights and Scales," but in
the hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for
talk such as were rarely had through the rural year.

One morning, not long after that interview between Mr. Farebrother and
Mary Garth, in which she confessed to him her feeling for Fred Vincy,
it happened that her father had some business which took him to
Yoddrell's farm in the direction of Frick: it was to measure and value
an outlying piece of land belonging to Lowick Manor, which Caleb
expected to dispose of advantageously for Dorothea (it must be
confessed that his bias was towards getting the best possible terms
from railroad companies). He put up his gig at Yoddrell's, and in
walking with his assistant and measuring-chain to the scene of his
work, he encountered the party of the company's agents, who were
adjusting their spirit-level. After a little chat he left them,
observing that by-and-by they would reach him again where he was going
to measure.  It was one of those gray mornings after light rains, which
become delicious about twelve o'clock, when the clouds part a little,
and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the
hedgerows.

The scent would have been sweeter to Fred Vincy, who was coming along
the lanes on horseback, if his mind had not been worried by
unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was to do, with his father on
one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church, with Mary on
the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it, and with the
working-day world showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman
without capital and generally unskilled.  It was the harder to Fred's
disposition because his father, satisfied that he was no longer
rebellious, was in good humor with him, and had sent him on this
pleasant ride to see after some greyhounds.  Even when he had fixed on
what he should do, there would be the task of telling his father.  But
it must be admitted that the fixing, which had to come first, was the
more difficult task:--what secular avocation on earth was there for a
young man (whose friends could not get him an "appointment") which was
at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special
knowledge?  Riding along the lanes by Frick in this mood, and
slackening his pace while he reflected whether he should venture to go
round by Lowick Parsonage to call on Mary, he could see over the hedges
from one field to another.  Suddenly a noise roused his attention, and
on the far side of a field on his left hand he could see six or seven
men in smock-frocks with hay-forks in their hands making an offensive
approach towards the four railway agents who were facing them, while
Caleb Garth and his assistant were hastening across the field to join
the threatened group.  Fred, delayed a few moments by having to find
the gate, could not gallop up to the spot before the party in
smock-frocks, whose work of turning the hay had not been too pressing
after swallowing their mid-day beer, were driving the men in coats
before them with their hay-forks; while Caleb Garth's assistant, a lad
of seventeen, who had snatched up the spirit-level at Caleb's order,
had been knocked down and seemed to be lying helpless.  The coated men
had the advantage as runners, and Fred covered their retreat by getting
in front of the smock-frocks and charging them suddenly enough to throw
their chase into confusion.  "What do you confounded fools mean?"
shouted Fred, pursuing the divided group in a zigzag, and cutting right
and left with his whip.  "I'll swear to every one of you before the
magistrate.  You've knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I
know.  You'll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you
don't mind," said Fred, who afterwards laughed heartily as he
remembered his own phrases.

The laborers had been driven through the gate-way into their hay-field,
and Fred had checked his horse, when Hiram Ford, observing himself at a
safe challenging distance, turned back and shouted a defiance which he
did not know to be Homeric.

"Yo're a coward, yo are.  Yo git off your horse, young measter, and
I'll have a round wi' ye, I wull.  Yo daredn't come on wi'out your hoss
an' whip.  I'd soon knock the breath out on ye, I would."

"Wait a minute, and I'll come back presently, and have a round with you
all in turn, if you like," said Fred, who felt confidence in his power
of boxing with his dearly beloved brethren.  But just now he wanted to
hasten back to Caleb and the prostrate youth.

The lad's ankle was strained, and he was in much pain from it, but he
was no further hurt, and Fred placed him on the horse that he might
ride to Yoddrell's and be taken care of there.

"Let them put the horse in the stable, and tell the surveyors they can
come back for their traps," said Fred.  "The ground is clear now."

"No, no," said Caleb, "here's a breakage.  They'll have to give up for
to-day, and it will be as well.  Here, take the things before you on
the horse, Tom.  They'll see you coming, and they'll turn back."

"I'm glad I happened to be here at the right moment, Mr. Garth," said
Fred, as Tom rode away.  "No knowing what might have happened if the
cavalry had not come up in time."

"Ay, ay, it was lucky," said Caleb, speaking rather absently, and
looking towards the spot where he had been at work at the moment of
interruption.  "But--deuce take it--this is what comes of men being
fools--I'm hindered of my day's work.  I can't get along without
somebody to help me with the measuring-chain. However!" He was
beginning to move towards the spot with a look of vexation, as if he
had forgotten Fred's presence, but suddenly he turned round and said
quickly, "What have you got to do to-day, young fellow?"

"Nothing, Mr. Garth.  I'll help you with pleasure--can I?" said Fred,
with a sense that he should be courting Mary when he was helping her
father.

"Well, you mustn't mind stooping and getting hot."

"I don't mind anything.  Only I want to go first and have a round with
that hulky fellow who turned to challenge me.  It would be a good
lesson for him.  I shall not be five minutes."

"Nonsense!" said Caleb, with his most peremptory intonation.  "I shall
go and speak to the men myself.  It's all ignorance.  Somebody has been
telling them lies.  The poor fools don't know any better."

"I shall go with you, then," said Fred.

"No, no; stay where you are.  I don't want your young blood.  I can
take care of myself."

Caleb was a powerful man and knew little of any fear except the fear of
hurting others and the fear of having to speechify.  But he felt it his
duty at this moment to try and give a little harangue.  There was a
striking mixture in him--which came from his having always been a
hard-working man himself--of rigorous notions about workmen and
practical indulgence towards them.  To do a good day's work and to do
it well, he held to be part of their welfare, as it was the chief part
of his own happiness; but he had a strong sense of fellowship with
them.  When he advanced towards the laborers they had not gone to work
again, but were standing in that form of rural grouping which consists
in each turning a shoulder towards the other, at a distance of two or
three yards.  They looked rather sulkily at Caleb, who walked quickly
with one hand in his pocket and the other thrust between the buttons of
his waistcoat, and had his every-day mild air when he paused among them.

"Why, my lads, how's this?" he began, taking as usual to brief phrases,
which seemed pregnant to himself, because he had many thoughts lying
under them, like the abundant roots of a plant that just manages to
peep above the water.  "How came you to make such a mistake as this?
Somebody has been telling you lies.  You thought those men up there
wanted to do mischief."

"Aw!" was the answer, dropped at intervals by each according to his
degree of unreadiness.

"Nonsense!  No such thing!  They're looking out to see which way the
railroad is to take.  Now, my lads, you can't hinder the railroad: it
will be made whether you like it or not.  And if you go fighting
against it, you'll get yourselves into trouble.  The law gives those
men leave to come here on the land.  The owner has nothing to say
against it, and if you meddle with them you'll have to do with the
constable and Justice Blakesley, and with the handcuffs and Middlemarch
jail.  And you might be in for it now, if anybody informed against you."

Caleb paused here, and perhaps the greatest orator could not have
chosen either his pause or his images better for the occasion.

"But come, you didn't mean any harm.  Somebody told you the railroad
was a bad thing.  That was a lie.  It may do a bit of harm here and
there, to this and to that; and so does the sun in heaven.  But the
railway's a good thing."

"Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on," said old Timothy
Cooper, who had stayed behind turning his hay while the others had been
gone on their spree;--"I'n seen lots o' things turn up sin' I war a
young un--the war an' the peace, and the canells, an' the oald King
George, an' the Regen', an' the new King George, an' the new un as has
got a new ne-ame--an' it's been all aloike to the poor mon.  What's the
canells been t' him?  They'n brought him neyther me-at nor be-acon, nor
wage to lay by, if he didn't save it wi' clemmin' his own inside.
Times ha' got wusser for him sin' I war a young un.  An' so it'll be
wi' the railroads.  They'll on'y leave the poor mon furder behind.  But
them are fools as meddle, and so I told the chaps here.  This is the
big folks's world, this is.  But yo're for the big folks, Muster Garth,
yo are."

Timothy was a wiry old laborer, of a type lingering in those times--who
had his savings in a stocking-foot, lived in a lone cottage, and was
not to be wrought on by any oratory, having as little of the feudal
spirit, and believing as little, as if he had not been totally
unacquainted with the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man.  Caleb was
in a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and
unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of
an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process of feeling,
and can let it fall like a giant's club on your neatly carved argument
for a social benefit which they do not feel.  Caleb had no cant at
command, even if he could have chosen to use it; and he had been
accustomed to meet all such difficulties in no other way than by doing
his "business" faithfully.  He answered--

"If you don't think well of me, Tim, never mind; that's neither here
nor there now.  Things may be bad for the poor man--bad they are; but I
want the lads here not to do what will make things worse for
themselves.  The cattle may have a heavy load, but it won't help 'em to
throw it over into the roadside pit, when it's partly their own fodder."

"We war on'y for a bit o' foon," said Hiram, who was beginning to see
consequences.  "That war all we war arter."

"Well, promise me not to meddle again, and I'll see that nobody informs
against you."

"I'n ne'er meddled, an' I'n no call to promise," said Timothy.

"No, but the rest.  Come, I'm as hard at work as any of you to-day, and
I can't spare much time.  Say you'll be quiet without the constable."

"Aw, we wooant meddle--they may do as they loike for oos"--were the
forms in which Caleb got his pledges; and then he hastened back to
Fred, who had followed him, and watched him in the gateway.

They went to work, and Fred helped vigorously.  His spirits had risen,
and he heartily enjoyed a good slip in the moist earth under the
hedgerow, which soiled his perfect summer trousers.  Was it his
successful onset which had elated him, or the satisfaction of helping
Mary's father?  Something more.  The accidents of the morning had
helped his frustrated imagination to shape an employment for himself
which had several attractions.  I am not sure that certain fibres in
Mr. Garth's mind had not resumed their old vibration towards the very
end which now revealed itself to Fred.  For the effective accident is
but the touch of fire where there is oil and tow; and it always
appeared to Fred that the railway brought the needed touch.  But they
went on in silence except when their business demanded speech.  At
last, when they had finished and were walking away, Mr. Garth said--

"A young fellow needn't be a B. A. to do this sort of work, eh, Fred?"

"I wish I had taken to it before I had thought of being a B. A.," said
Fred.  He paused a moment, and then added, more hesitatingly, "Do you
think I am too old to learn your business, Mr. Garth?"

"My business is of many sorts, my boy," said Mr. Garth, smiling.  "A
good deal of what I know can only come from experience: you can't learn
it off as you learn things out of a book.  But you are young enough to
lay a foundation yet."  Caleb pronounced the last sentence
emphatically, but paused in some uncertainty.  He had been under the
impression lately that Fred had made up his mind to enter the Church.

"You do think I could do some good at it, if I were to try?" said Fred,
more eagerly.

"That depends," said Caleb, turning his head on one side and lowering
his voice, with the air of a man who felt himself to be saying
something deeply religious.  "You must be sure of two things: you must
love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting
your play to begin.  And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your
work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something
else.  You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it
well, and not be always saying, There's this and there's that--if I had
this or that to do, I might make something of it.  No matter what a man
is--I wouldn't give twopence for him"--here Caleb's mouth looked
bitter, and he snapped his fingers--"whether he was the prime minister
or the rick-thatcher, if he didn't do well what he undertook to do."

"I can never feel that I should do that in being a clergyman," said
Fred, meaning to take a step in argument.

"Then let it alone, my boy," said Caleb, abruptly, "else you'll never
be easy.  Or, if you _are_ easy, you'll be a poor stick."

"That is very nearly what Mary thinks about it," said Fred, coloring.
"I think you must know what I feel for Mary, Mr. Garth: I hope it does
not displease you that I have always loved her better than any one
else, and that I shall never love any one as I love her."

The expression of Caleb's face was visibly softening while Fred spoke.
But he swung his head with a solemn slowness, and said--

"That makes things more serious, Fred, if you want to take Mary's
happiness into your keeping."

"I know that, Mr. Garth," said Fred, eagerly, "and I would do anything
for _her_.  She says she will never have me if I go into the Church;
and I shall be the most miserable devil in the world if I lose all hope
of Mary.  Really, if I could get some other profession,
business--anything that I am at all fit for, I would work hard, I would
deserve your good opinion.  I should like to have to do with outdoor
things.  I know a good deal about land and cattle already.  I used to
believe, you know--though you will think me rather foolish for it--that
I should have land of my own.  I am sure knowledge of that sort would
come easily to me, especially if I could be under you in any way."

"Softly, my boy," said Caleb, having the image of "Susan" before his
eyes.  "What have you said to your father about all this?"

"Nothing, yet; but I must tell him.  I am only waiting to know what I
can do instead of entering the Church.  I am very sorry to disappoint
him, but a man ought to be allowed to judge for himself when he is
four-and-twenty. How could I know when I was fifteen, what it would be
right for me to do now?  My education was a mistake."

"But hearken to this, Fred," said Caleb.  "Are you sure Mary is fond of
you, or would ever have you?"

"I asked Mr. Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden
me--I didn't know what else to do," said Fred, apologetically.  "And he
says that I have every reason to hope, if I can put myself in an
honorable position--I mean, out of the Church. I dare say you think it
unwarrantable in me, Mr. Garth, to be troubling you and obtruding my
own wishes about Mary, before I have done anything at all for myself.
Of course I have not the least claim--indeed, I have already a debt to
you which will never be discharged, even when I have been, able to pay
it in the shape of money."

"Yes, my boy, you have a claim," said Caleb, with much feeling in his
voice.  "The young ones have always a claim on the old to help them
forward.  I was young myself once and had to do without much help; but
help would have been welcome to me, if it had been only for the
fellow-feeling's sake.  But I must consider.  Come to me to-morrow at
the office, at nine o'clock. At the office, mind."

Mr. Garth would take no important step without consulting Susan, but it
must be confessed that before he reached home he had taken his
resolution.  With regard to a large number of matters about which other
men are decided or obstinate, he was the most easily manageable man in
the world.  He never knew what meat he would choose, and if Susan had
said that they ought to live in a four-roomed cottage, in order to
save, he would have said, "Let us go," without inquiring into details.
But where Caleb's feeling and judgment strongly pronounced, he was a
ruler; and in spite of his mildness and timidity in reproving, every
one about him knew that on the exceptional occasions when he chose, he
was absolute.  He never, indeed, chose to be absolute except on some
one else's behalf.  On ninety-nine points Mrs. Garth decided, but on
the hundredth she was often aware that she would have to perform the
singularly difficult task of carrying out her own principle, and to
make herself subordinate.

"It is come round as I thought, Susan," said Caleb, when they were
seated alone in the evening.  He had already narrated the adventure
which had brought about Fred's sharing in his work, but had kept back
the further result.  "The children _are_ fond of each other--I mean,
Fred and Mary."

Mrs. Garth laid her work on her knee, and fixed her penetrating eyes
anxiously on her husband.

"After we'd done our work, Fred poured it all out to me.  He can't bear
to be a clergyman, and Mary says she won't have him if he is one; and
the lad would like to be under me and give his mind to business.  And
I've determined to take him and make a man of him."

"Caleb!" said Mrs. Garth, in a deep contralto, expressive of resigned
astonishment.

"It's a fine thing to do," said Mr. Garth, settling himself firmly
against the back of his chair, and grasping the elbows.  "I shall have
trouble with him, but I think I shall carry it through.  The lad loves
Mary, and a true love for a good woman is a great thing, Susan.  It
shapes many a rough fellow."

"Has Mary spoken to you on the subject?" said Mrs Garth, secretly a
little hurt that she had to be informed on it herself.

"Not a word.  I asked her about Fred once; I gave her a bit of a
warning.  But she assured me she would never marry an idle
self-indulgent man--nothing since.  But it seems Fred set on Mr.
Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden him to speak
himself, and Mr. Farebrother has found out that she is fond of Fred,
but says he must not be a clergyman.  Fred's heart is fixed on Mary,
that I can see: it gives me a good opinion of the lad--and we always
liked him, Susan."

"It is a pity for Mary, I think," said Mrs. Garth.

"Why--a pity?"

"Because, Caleb, she might have had a man who is worth twenty Fred
Vincy's."

"Ah?" said Caleb, with surprise.

"I firmly believe that Mr. Farebrother is attached to her, and meant to
make her an offer; but of course, now that Fred has used him as an
envoy, there is an end to that better prospect." There was a severe
precision in Mrs. Garth's utterance.  She was vexed and disappointed,
but she was bent on abstaining from useless words.

Caleb was silent a few moments under a conflict of feelings.  He looked
at the floor and moved his head and hands in accompaniment to some
inward argumentation.  At last he said--

"That would have made me very proud and happy, Susan, and I should have
been glad for your sake.  I've always felt that your belongings have
never been on a level with you.  But you took me, though I was a plain
man."

"I took the best and cleverest man I had ever known," said Mrs. Garth,
convinced that _she_ would never have loved any one who came short of
that mark.

"Well, perhaps others thought you might have done better.  But it would
have been worse for me.  And that is what touches me close about Fred.
The lad is good at bottom, and clever enough to do, if he's put in the
right way; and he loves and honors my daughter beyond anything, and she
has given him a sort of promise according to what he turns out.  I say,
that young man's soul is in my hand; and I'll do the best I can for
him, so help me God!  It's my duty, Susan."

Mrs. Garth was not given to tears, but there was a large one rolling
down her face before her husband had finished.  It came from the
pressure of various feelings, in which there was much affection and
some vexation.  She wiped it away quickly, saying--

"Few men besides you would think it a duty to add to their anxieties in
that way, Caleb."

"That signifies nothing--what other men would think.  I've got a clear
feeling inside me, and that I shall follow; and I hope your heart will
go with me, Susan, in making everything as light as can be to Mary,
poor child."

Caleb, leaning back in his chair, looked with anxious appeal towards
his wife.  She rose and kissed him, saying, "God bless you, Caleb!  Our
children have a good father."

But she went out and had a hearty cry to make up for the suppression of
her words.  She felt sure that her husband's conduct would be
misunderstood, and about Fred she was rational and unhopeful.  Which
would turn out to have the more foresight in it--her rationality or
Caleb's ardent generosity?

When Fred went to the office the next morning, there was a test to be
gone through which he was not prepared for.

"Now Fred," said Caleb, "you will have some desk-work. I have always
done a good deal of writing myself, but I can't do without help, and as
I want you to understand the accounts and get the values into your
head, I mean to do without another clerk.  So you must buckle to.  How
are you at writing and arithmetic?"

Fred felt an awkward movement of the heart; he had not thought of
desk-work; but he was in a resolute mood, and not going to shrink.
"I'm not afraid of arithmetic, Mr. Garth: it always came easily to me.
I think you know my writing."

"Let us see," said Caleb, taking up a pen, examining it carefully and
handing it, well dipped, to Fred with a sheet of ruled paper.  "Copy me
a line or two of that valuation, with the figures at the end."

At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath a gentleman to
write legibly, or with a hand in the least suitable to a clerk.  Fred
wrote the lines demanded in a hand as gentlemanly as that of any
viscount or bishop of the day: the vowels were all alike and the
consonants only distinguishable as turning up or down, the strokes had
a blotted solidity and the letters disdained to keep the line--in
short, it was a manuscript of that venerable kind easy to interpret
when you know beforehand what the writer means.

As Caleb looked on, his visage showed a growing depression, but when
Fred handed him the paper he gave something like a snarl, and rapped
the paper passionately with the back of his hand.  Bad work like this
dispelled all Caleb's mildness.

"The deuce!" he exclaimed, snarlingly.  "To think that this is a
country where a man's education may cost hundreds and hundreds, and it
turns you out this!"  Then in a more pathetic tone, pushing up his
spectacles and looking at the unfortunate scribe, "The Lord have mercy
on us, Fred, I can't put up with this!"

"What can I do, Mr. Garth?" said Fred, whose spirits had sunk very low,
not only at the estimate of his handwriting, but at the vision of
himself as liable to be ranked with office clerks.

"Do?  Why, you must learn to form your letters and keep the line.
What's the use of writing at all if nobody can understand it?" asked
Caleb, energetically, quite preoccupied with the bad quality of the
work.  "Is there so little business in the world that you must be
sending puzzles over the country?  But that's the way people are
brought up.  I should lose no end of time with the letters some people
send me, if Susan did not make them out for me.  It's disgusting." Here
Caleb tossed the paper from him.

Any stranger peeping into the office at that moment might have wondered
what was the drama between the indignant man of business, and the
fine-looking young fellow whose blond complexion was getting rather
patchy as he bit his lip with mortification.  Fred was struggling with
many thoughts.  Mr. Garth had been so kind and encouraging at the
beginning of their interview, that gratitude and hopefulness had been
at a high pitch, and the downfall was proportionate.  He had not
thought of desk-work--in fact, like the majority of young gentlemen, he
wanted an occupation which should be free from disagreeables.  I cannot
tell what might have been the consequences if he had not distinctly
promised himself that he would go to Lowick to see Mary and tell her
that he was engaged to work under her father.  He did not like to
disappoint himself there.

"I am very sorry," were all the words that he could muster.  But Mr.
Garth was already relenting.

"We must make the best of it, Fred," he began, with a return to his
usual quiet tone.  "Every man can learn to write.  I taught myself.  Go
at it with a will, and sit up at night if the day-time isn't enough.
We'll be patient, my boy.  Callum shall go on with the books for a bit,
while you are learning.  But now I must be off," said Caleb, rising.
"You must let your father know our agreement.  You'll save me Callum's
salary, you know, when you can write; and I can afford to give you
eighty pounds for the first year, and more after."

When Fred made the necessary disclosure to his parents, the relative
effect on the two was a surprise which entered very deeply into his
memory.  He went straight from Mr. Garth's office to the warehouse,
rightly feeling that the most respectful way in which he could behave
to his father was to make the painful communication as gravely and
formally as possible.  Moreover, the decision would be more certainly
understood to be final, if the interview took place in his father's
gravest hours, which were always those spent in his private room at the
warehouse.

Fred entered on the subject directly, and declared briefly what he had
done and was resolved to do, expressing at the end his regret that he
should be the cause of disappointment to his father, and taking the
blame on his own deficiencies.  The regret was genuine, and inspired
Fred with strong, simple words.

Mr. Vincy listened in profound surprise without uttering even an
exclamation, a silence which in his impatient temperament was a sign of
unusual emotion.  He had not been in good spirits about trade that
morning, and the slight bitterness in his lips grew intense as he
listened.  When Fred had ended, there was a pause of nearly a minute,
during which Mr. Vincy replaced a book in his desk and turned the key
emphatically.  Then he looked at his son steadily, and said--

"So you've made up your mind at last, sir?"

"Yes, father."

"Very well; stick to it.  I've no more to say.  You've thrown away your
education, and gone down a step in life, when I had given you the means
of rising, that's all."

"I am very sorry that we differ, father.  I think I can be quite as
much of a gentleman at the work I have undertaken, as if I had been a
curate.  But I am grateful to you for wishing to do the best for me."

"Very well; I have no more to say.  I wash my hands of you.  I only
hope, when you have a son of your own he will make a better return for
the pains you spend on him."

This was very cutting to Fred.  His father was using that unfair
advantage possessed by us all when we are in a pathetic situation and
see our own past as if it were simply part of the pathos.  In reality,
Mr. Vincy's wishes about his son had had a great deal of pride,
inconsiderateness, and egoistic folly in them.  But still the
disappointed father held a strong lever; and Fred felt as if he were
being banished with a malediction.

"I hope you will not object to my remaining at home, sir?" he said,
after rising to go; "I shall have a sufficient salary to pay for my
board, as of course I should wish to do."

"Board be hanged!" said Mr. Vincy, recovering himself in his disgust at
the notion that Fred's keep would be missed at his table.  "Of course
your mother will want you to stay.  But I shall keep no horse for you,
you understand; and you will pay your own tailor.  You will do with a
suit or two less, I fancy, when you have to pay for 'em."

Fred lingered; there was still something to be said.  At last it came.

"I hope you will shake hands with me, father, and forgive me the
vexation I have caused you."

Mr. Vincy from his chair threw a quick glance upward at his son, who
had advanced near to him, and then gave his hand, saying hurriedly,
"Yes, yes, let us say no more."

Fred went through much more narrative and explanation with his mother,
but she was inconsolable, having before her eyes what perhaps her
husband had never thought of, the certainty that Fred would marry Mary
Garth, that her life would henceforth be spoiled by a perpetual
infusion of Garths and their ways, and that her darling boy, with his
beautiful face and stylish air "beyond anybody else's son in
Middlemarch," would be sure to get like that family in plainness of
appearance and carelessness about his clothes.  To her it seemed that
there was a Garth conspiracy to get possession of the desirable Fred,
but she dared not enlarge on this opinion, because a slight hint of it
had made him "fly out" at her as he had never done before.  Her temper
was too sweet for her to show any anger, but she felt that her
happiness had received a bruise, and for several days merely to look at
Fred made her cry a little as if he were the subject of some baleful
prophecy.  Perhaps she was the slower to recover her usual cheerfulness
because Fred had warned her that she must not reopen the sore question
with his father, who had accepted his decision and forgiven him.  If
her husband had been vehement against Fred, she would have been urged
into defence of her darling.  It was the end of the fourth day when Mr.
Vincy said to her--

"Come, Lucy, my dear, don't be so down-hearted. You always have spoiled
the boy, and you must go on spoiling him."

"Nothing ever did cut me so before, Vincy," said the wife, her fair
throat and chin beginning to tremble again, "only his illness."

"Pooh, pooh, never mind!  We must expect to have trouble with our
children.  Don't make it worse by letting me see you out of spirits."

"Well, I won't," said Mrs. Vincy, roused by this appeal and adjusting
herself with a little shake as of a bird which lays down its ruffled
plumage.

"It won't do to begin making a fuss about one," said Mr. Vincy, wishing
to combine a little grumbling with domestic cheerfulness.  "There's
Rosamond as well as Fred."

"Yes, poor thing.  I'm sure I felt for her being disappointed of her
baby; but she got over it nicely."

"Baby, pooh!  I can see Lydgate is making a mess of his practice, and
getting into debt too, by what I hear.  I shall have Rosamond coming to
me with a pretty tale one of these days.  But they'll get no money from
me, I know.  Let _his_ family help him.  I never did like that
marriage.  But it's no use talking.  Ring the bell for lemons, and
don't look dull any more, Lucy.  I'll drive you and Louisa to Riverston
to-morrow."



CHAPTER LVII.

    They numbered scarce eight summers when a name
        Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there
    As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame
        At penetration of the quickening air:
    His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu,
        Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor,
    Making the little world their childhood knew
        Large with a land of mountain lake and scaur,
    And larger yet with wonder love belief
        Toward Walter Scott who living far away
    Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief.
        The book and they must part, but day by day,
            In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran
            They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.


The evening that Fred Vincy walked to Lowick parsonage (he had begun to
see that this was a world in which even a spirited young man must
sometimes walk for want of a horse to carry him) he set out at five
o'clock and called on Mrs. Garth by the way, wishing to assure himself
that she accepted their new relations willingly.

He found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great
apple-tree in the orchard.  It was a festival with Mrs. Garth, for her
eldest son, Christy, her peculiar joy and pride, had come home for a
short holiday--Christy, who held it the most desirable thing in the
world to be a tutor, to study all literatures and be a regenerate
Porson, and who was an incorporate criticism on poor Fred, a sort of
object-lesson given to him by the educational mother.  Christy himself,
a square-browed, broad-shouldered masculine edition of his mother not
much higher than Fred's shoulder--which made it the harder that he
should be held superior--was always as simple as possible, and thought
no more of Fred's disinclination to scholarship than of a giraffe's,
wishing that he himself were more of the same height.  He was lying on
the ground now by his mother's chair, with his straw hat laid flat over
his eyes, while Jim on the other side was reading aloud from that
beloved writer who has made a chief part in the happiness of many young
lives.  The volume was "Ivanhoe," and Jim was in the great archery
scene at the tournament, but suffered much interruption from Ben, who
had fetched his own old bow and arrows, and was making himself
dreadfully disagreeable, Letty thought, by begging all present to
observe his random shots, which no one wished to do except Brownie, the
active-minded but probably shallow mongrel, while the grizzled
Newfoundland lying in the sun looked on with the dull-eyed neutrality
of extreme old age.  Letty herself, showing as to her mouth and
pinafore some slight signs that she had been assisting at the gathering
of the cherries which stood in a coral-heap on the tea-table, was now
seated on the grass, listening open-eyed to the reading.

But the centre of interest was changed for all by the arrival of Fred
Vincy.  When, seating himself on a garden-stool, he said that he was on
his way to Lowick Parsonage, Ben, who had thrown down his bow, and
snatched up a reluctant half-grown kitten instead, strode across Fred's
outstretched leg, and said "Take me!"

"Oh, and me too," said Letty.

"You can't keep up with Fred and me," said Ben.

"Yes, I can.  Mother, please say that I am to go," urged Letty, whose
life was much checkered by resistance to her depreciation as a girl.

"I shall stay with Christy," observed Jim; as much as to say that he
had the advantage of those simpletons; whereupon Letty put her hand up
to her head and looked with jealous indecision from the one to the
other.

"Let us all go and see Mary," said Christy, opening his arms.

"No, my dear child, we must not go in a swarm to the parsonage.  And
that old Glasgow suit of yours would never do.  Besides, your father
will come home.  We must let Fred go alone.  He can tell Mary that you
are here, and she will come back to-morrow."

Christy glanced at his own threadbare knees, and then at Fred's
beautiful white trousers.  Certainly Fred's tailoring suggested the
advantages of an English university, and he had a graceful way even of
looking warm and of pushing his hair back with his handkerchief.

"Children, run away," said Mrs. Garth; "it is too warm to hang about
your friends.  Take your brother and show him the rabbits."

The eldest understood, and led off the children immediately.  Fred felt
that Mrs. Garth wished to give him an opportunity of saying anything he
had to say, but he could only begin by observing--

"How glad you must be to have Christy here!"

"Yes; he has come sooner than I expected.  He got down from the coach
at nine o'clock, just after his father went out.  I am longing for
Caleb to come and hear what wonderful progress Christy is making.  He
has paid his expenses for the last year by giving lessons, carrying on
hard study at the same time.  He hopes soon to get a private tutorship
and go abroad."

"He is a great fellow," said Fred, to whom these cheerful truths had a
medicinal taste, "and no trouble to anybody." After a slight pause, he
added, "But I fear you will think that I am going to be a great deal of
trouble to Mr. Garth."

"Caleb likes taking trouble: he is one of those men who always do more
than any one would have thought of asking them to do," answered Mrs.
Garth.  She was knitting, and could either look at Fred or not, as she
chose--always an advantage when one is bent on loading speech with
salutary meaning; and though Mrs. Garth intended to be duly reserved,
she did wish to say something that Fred might be the better for.

"I know you think me very undeserving, Mrs. Garth, and with good
reason," said Fred, his spirit rising a little at the perception of
something like a disposition to lecture him.  "I happen to have behaved
just the worst to the people I can't help wishing for the most from.
But while two men like Mr. Garth and Mr. Farebrother have not given me
up, I don't see why I should give myself up."  Fred thought it might be
well to suggest these masculine examples to Mrs. Garth.

"Assuredly," said she, with gathering emphasis.  "A young man for whom
two such elders had devoted themselves would indeed be culpable if he
threw himself away and made their sacrifices vain."

Fred wondered a little at this strong language, but only said, "I hope
it will not be so with me, Mrs. Garth, since I have some encouragement
to believe that I may win Mary.  Mr. Garth has told you about that?
You were not surprised, I dare say?"  Fred ended, innocently referring
only to his own love as probably evident enough.

"Not surprised that Mary has given you encouragement?" returned Mrs.
Garth, who thought it would be well for Fred to be more alive to the
fact that Mary's friends could not possibly have wished this
beforehand, whatever the Vincys might suppose.  "Yes, I confess I was
surprised."

"She never did give me any--not the least in the world, when I talked
to her myself," said Fred, eager to vindicate Mary.  "But when I asked
Mr. Farebrother to speak for me, she allowed him to tell me there was a
hope."

The power of admonition which had begun to stir in Mrs. Garth had not
yet discharged itself.  It was a little too provoking even for _her_
self-control that this blooming youngster should flourish on the
disappointments of sadder and wiser people--making a meal of a
nightingale and never knowing it--and that all the while his family
should suppose that hers was in eager need of this sprig; and her
vexation had fermented the more actively because of its total
repression towards her husband.  Exemplary wives will sometimes find
scapegoats in this way.  She now said with energetic decision, "You
made a great mistake, Fred, in asking Mr. Farebrother to speak for you."

"Did I?" said Fred, reddening instantaneously.  He was alarmed, but at
a loss to know what Mrs. Garth meant, and added, in an apologetic tone,
"Mr. Farebrother has always been such a friend of ours; and Mary, I
knew, would listen to him gravely; and he took it on himself quite
readily."

"Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own
wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others," said
Mrs. Garth. She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general
doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her
worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.

"I cannot conceive how it could be any pain to Mr. Farebrother," said
Fred, who nevertheless felt that surprising conceptions were beginning
to form themselves.

"Precisely; you cannot conceive," said Mrs. Garth, cutting her words as
neatly as possible.

For a moment Fred looked at the horizon with a dismayed anxiety, and
then turning with a quick movement said almost sharply--

"Do you mean to say, Mrs. Garth, that Mr. Farebrother is in love with
Mary?"

"And if it were so, Fred, I think you are the last person who ought to
be surprised," returned Mrs. Garth, laying her knitting down beside her
and folding her arms.  It was an unwonted sign of emotion in her that
she should put her work out of her hands.  In fact her feelings were
divided between the satisfaction of giving Fred his discipline and the
sense of having gone a little too far.  Fred took his hat and stick and
rose quickly.

"Then you think I am standing in his way, and in Mary's too?" he said,
in a tone which seemed to demand an answer.

Mrs. Garth could not speak immediately.  She had brought herself into
the unpleasant position of being called on to say what she really felt,
yet what she knew there were strong reasons for concealing.  And to her
the consciousness of having exceeded in words was peculiarly
mortifying.  Besides, Fred had given out unexpected electricity, and he
now added, "Mr. Garth seemed pleased that Mary should be attached to
me.  He could not have known anything of this."

Mrs. Garth felt a severe twinge at this mention of her husband, the
fear that Caleb might think her in the wrong not being easily
endurable.  She answered, wanting to check unintended consequences--

"I spoke from inference only.  I am not aware that Mary knows anything
of the matter."

But she hesitated to beg that he would keep entire silence on a subject
which she had herself unnecessarily mentioned, not being used to stoop
in that way; and while she was hesitating there was already a rush of
unintended consequences under the apple-tree where the tea-things
stood.  Ben, bouncing across the grass with Brownie at his heels, and
seeing the kitten dragging the knitting by a lengthening line of wool,
shouted and clapped his hands; Brownie barked, the kitten, desperate,
jumped on the tea-table and upset the milk, then jumped down again and
swept half the cherries with it; and Ben, snatching up the half-knitted
sock-top, fitted it over the kitten's head as a new source of madness,
while Letty arriving cried out to her mother against this cruelty--it
was a history as full of sensation as "This is the house that Jack
built." Mrs. Garth was obliged to interfere, the other young ones came
up and the tete-a-tete with Fred was ended.  He got away as soon as he
could, and Mrs. Garth could only imply some retractation of her
severity by saying "God bless you" when she shook hands with him.

She was unpleasantly conscious that she had been on the verge of
speaking as "one of the foolish women speaketh"--telling first and
entreating silence after.  But she had not entreated silence, and to
prevent Caleb's blame she determined to blame herself and confess all
to him that very night.  It was curious what an awful tribunal the mild
Caleb's was to her, whenever he set it up.  But she meant to point out
to him that the revelation might do Fred Vincy a great deal of good.

No doubt it was having a strong effect on him as he walked to Lowick.
Fred's light hopeful nature had perhaps never had so much of a bruise
as from this suggestion that if he had been out of the way Mary might
have made a thoroughly good match.  Also he was piqued that he had been
what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr.
Farebrother.  But it was not in a lover's nature--it was not in
Fred's, that the new anxiety raised about Mary's feeling should not
surmount every other.  Notwithstanding his trust in Mr. Farebrother's
generosity, notwithstanding what Mary had said to him, Fred could not
help feeling that he had a rival: it was a new consciousness, and he
objected to it extremely, not being in the least ready to give up Mary
for her good, being ready rather to fight for her with any man
whatsoever.  But the fighting with Mr. Farebrother must be of a
metaphorical kind, which was much more difficult to Fred than the
muscular.  Certainly this experience was a discipline for Fred hardly
less sharp than his disappointment about his uncle's will.  The iron
had not entered into his soul, but he had begun to imagine what the
sharp edge would be.  It did not once occur to Fred that Mrs. Garth
might be mistaken about Mr. Farebrother, but he suspected that she
might be wrong about Mary.  Mary had been staying at the parsonage
lately, and her mother might know very little of what had been passing
in her mind.

He did not feel easier when he found her looking cheerful with the
three ladies in the drawing-room. They were in animated discussion on
some subject which was dropped when he entered, and Mary was copying
the labels from a heap of shallow cabinet drawers, in a minute
handwriting which she was skilled in.  Mr. Farebrother was somewhere in
the village, and the three ladies knew nothing of Fred's peculiar
relation to Mary: it was impossible for either of them to propose that
they should walk round the garden, and Fred predicted to himself that
he should have to go away without saying a word to her in private.  He
told her first of Christy's arrival and then of his own engagement with
her father; and he was comforted by seeing that this latter news
touched her keenly.  She said hurriedly, "I am so glad," and then bent
over her writing to hinder any one from noticing her face.  But here
was a subject which Mrs. Farebrother could not let pass.

"You don't mean, my dear Miss Garth, that you are glad to hear of a
young man giving up the Church for which he was educated: you only mean
that things being so, you are glad that he should be under an excellent
man like your father."

"No, really, Mrs. Farebrother, I am glad of both, I fear," said Mary,
cleverly getting rid of one rebellious tear.  "I have a dreadfully
secular mind.  I never liked any clergyman except the Vicar of
Wakefield and Mr. Farebrother."

"Now why, my dear?" said Mrs. Farebrother, pausing on her large wooden
knitting-needles and looking at Mary.  "You have always a good reason
for your opinions, but this astonishes me.  Of course I put out of the
question those who preach new doctrine.  But why should you dislike
clergymen?"

"Oh dear," said Mary, her face breaking into merriment as she seemed to
consider a moment, "I don't like their neckcloths."

"Why, you don't like Camden's, then," said Miss Winifred, in some
anxiety.

"Yes, I do," said Mary.  "I don't like the other clergymen's
neckcloths, because it is they who wear them."

"How very puzzling!" said Miss Noble, feeling that her own intellect
was probably deficient.

"My dear, you are joking.  You would have better reasons than these for
slighting so respectable a class of men," said Mrs. Farebrother,
majestically.

"Miss Garth has such severe notions of what people should be that it is
difficult to satisfy her," said Fred.

"Well, I am glad at least that she makes an exception in favor of my
son," said the old lady.

Mary was wondering at Fred's piqued tone, when Mr. Farebrother came in
and had to hear the news about the engagement under Mr. Garth.  At the
end he said with quiet satisfaction, "_That_ is right;" and then bent
to look at Mary's labels and praise her handwriting.  Fred felt
horribly jealous--was glad, of course, that Mr. Farebrother was so
estimable, but wished that he had been ugly and fat as men at forty
sometimes are.  It was clear what the end would be, since Mary openly
placed Farebrother above everybody, and these women were all evidently
encouraging the affair.  He was feeling sure that he should have no
chance of speaking to Mary, when Mr. Farebrother said--

"Fred, help me to carry these drawers back into my study--you have
never seen my fine new study.  Pray come too, Miss Garth.  I want you
to see a stupendous spider I found this morning."

Mary at once saw the Vicar's intention.  He had never since the
memorable evening deviated from his old pastoral kindness towards her,
and her momentary wonder and doubt had quite gone to sleep.  Mary was
accustomed to think rather rigorously of what was probable, and if a
belief flattered her vanity she felt warned to dismiss it as
ridiculous, having early had much exercise in such dismissals.  It was
as she had foreseen: when Fred had been asked to admire the fittings of
the study, and she had been asked to admire the spider, Mr. Farebrother
said--

"Wait here a minute or two.  I am going to look out an engraving which
Fred is tall enough to hang for me.  I shall be back in a few minutes."
And then he went out.  Nevertheless, the first word Fred said to Mary
was--

"It is of no use, whatever I do, Mary.  You are sure to marry
Farebrother at last."  There was some rage in his tone.

"What do you mean, Fred?"  Mary exclaimed indignantly, blushing deeply,
and surprised out of all her readiness in reply.

"It is impossible that you should not see it all clearly enough--you
who see everything."

"I only see that you are behaving very ill, Fred, in speaking so of Mr.
Farebrother after he has pleaded your cause in every way.  How can you
have taken up such an idea?"

Fred was rather deep, in spite of his irritation.  If Mary had really
been unsuspicious, there was no good in telling her what Mrs. Garth had
said.

"It follows as a matter of course," he replied.  "When you are
continually seeing a man who beats me in everything, and whom you set
up above everybody, I can have no fair chance."

"You are very ungrateful, Fred," said Mary.  "I wish I had never told
Mr. Farebrother that I cared for you in the least."

"No, I am not ungrateful; I should be the happiest fellow in the world
if it were not for this.  I told your father everything, and he was
very kind; he treated me as if I were his son.  I could go at the work
with a will, writing and everything, if it were not for this."

"For this? for what?" said Mary, imagining now that something specific
must have been said or done.

"This dreadful certainty that I shall be bowled out by Farebrother."
Mary was appeased by her inclination to laugh.

"Fred," she said, peeping round to catch his eyes, which were sulkily
turned away from her, "you are too delightfully ridiculous.  If you
were not such a charming simpleton, what a temptation this would be to
play the wicked coquette, and let you suppose that somebody besides you
has made love to me."

"Do you really like me best, Mary?" said Fred, turning eyes full of
affection on her, and trying to take her hand.

"I don't like you at all at this moment," said Mary, retreating, and
putting her hands behind her.  "I only said that no mortal ever made
love to me besides you.  And that is no argument that a very wise man
ever will," she ended, merrily.

"I wish you would tell me that you could not possibly ever think of
him," said Fred.

"Never dare to mention this any more to me, Fred," said Mary, getting
serious again.  "I don't know whether it is more stupid or ungenerous
in you not to see that Mr. Farebrother has left us together on purpose
that we might speak freely.  I am disappointed that you should be so
blind to his delicate feeling."

There was no time to say any more before Mr. Farebrother came back with
the engraving; and Fred had to return to the drawing-room still with a
jealous dread in his heart, but yet with comforting arguments from
Mary's words and manner.  The result of the conversation was on the
whole more painful to Mary: inevitably her attention had taken a new
attitude, and she saw the possibility of new interpretations.  She was
in a position in which she seemed to herself to be slighting Mr.
Farebrother, and this, in relation to a man who is much honored, is
always dangerous to the firmness of a grateful woman.  To have a reason
for going home the next day was a relief, for Mary earnestly desired to
be always clear that she loved Fred best.  When a tender affection has
been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we
could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives.
And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can
over other treasures.

"Fred has lost all his other expectations; he must keep this," Mary
said to herself, with a smile curling her lips.  It was impossible to
help fleeting visions of another kind--new dignities and an
acknowledged value of which she had often felt the absence.  But these
things with Fred outside them, Fred forsaken and looking sad for the
want of her, could never tempt her deliberate thought.



CHAPTER LVIII.

    "For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
     Therefore in that I cannot know thy change:
     In many's looks the false heart's history
     Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange:
     But Heaven in thy creation did decree
     That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell:
     Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be
     Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell."
                                       --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.


At the time when Mr. Vincy uttered that presentiment about Rosamond,
she herself had never had the idea that she should be driven to make
the sort of appeal which he foresaw.  She had not yet had any anxiety
about ways and means, although her domestic life had been expensive as
well as eventful.  Her baby had been born prematurely, and all the
embroidered robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness.  This
misfortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted in going out
on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to do so; but
it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or
rudely told him that she would do as she liked.

What led her particularly to desire horse-exercise was a visit from
Captain Lydgate, the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was
detested by our Tertius of that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair
from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by Tertius
himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper
thing to say on every topic.  Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly
that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to his uncle's on
the wedding-tour, and he made himself rather disagreeable to Rosamond
by saying so in private.  For to Rosamond this visit was a source of
unprecedented but gracefully concealed exultation.  She was so
intensely conscious of having a cousin who was a baronet's son staying
in the house, that she imagined the knowledge of what was implied by
his presence to be diffused through all other minds; and when she
introduced Captain Lydgate to her guests, she had a placid sense that
his rank penetrated them as if it had been an odor.  The satisfaction
was enough for the time to melt away some disappointment in the
conditions of marriage with a medical man even of good birth: it seemed
now that her marriage was visibly as well as ideally floating her above
the Middlemarch level, and the future looked bright with letters and
visits to and from Quallingham, and vague advancement in consequence
for Tertius.  Especially as, probably at the Captain's suggestion, his
married sister, Mrs. Mengan, had come with her maid, and stayed two
nights on her way from town.  Hence it was clearly worth while for
Rosamond to take pains with her music and the careful selection of her
lace.

As to Captain Lydgate himself, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on
one side, and his rather heavy utterance, might have been
disadvantageous in any young gentleman who had not a military bearing
and mustache to give him what is doted on by some flower-like blond
heads as "style."  He had, moreover, that sort of high-breeding which
consists in being free from the petty solicitudes of middle-class
gentility, and he was a great critic of feminine charms.  Rosamond
delighted in his admiration now even more than she had done at
Quallingham, and he found it easy to spend several hours of the day in
flirting with her.  The visit altogether was one of the pleasantest
larks he had ever had, not the less so perhaps because he suspected
that his queer cousin Tertius wished him away: though Lydgate, who
would rather (hyperbolically speaking) have died than have failed in
polite hospitality, suppressed his dislike, and only pretended
generally not to hear what the gallant officer said, consigning the
task of answering him to Rosamond.  For he was not at all a jealous
husband, and preferred leaving a feather-headed young gentleman alone
with his wife to bearing him company.

"I wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner, Tertius," said
Rosamond, one evening when the important guest was gone to Loamford to
see some brother officers stationed there.  "You really look so absent
sometimes--you seem to be seeing through his head into something behind
it, instead of looking at him."

"My dear Rosy, you don't expect me to talk much to such a conceited ass
as that, I hope," said Lydgate, brusquely.  "If he got his head broken,
I might look at it with interest, not before."

"I cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so
contemptuously," said Rosamond, her fingers moving at her work while
she spoke with a mild gravity which had a touch of disdain in it.

"Ask Ladislaw if he doesn't think your Captain the greatest bore he
ever met with.  Ladislaw has almost forsaken the house since he came."

Rosamond thought she knew perfectly well why Mr. Ladislaw disliked the
Captain: he was jealous, and she liked his being jealous.

"It is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons," she
answered, "but in my opinion Captain Lydgate is a thorough gentleman,
and I think you ought not, out of respect to Sir Godwin, to treat him
with neglect."

"No, dear; but we have had dinners for him.  And he comes in and goes
out as he likes.  He doesn't want me."

"Still, when he is in the room, you might show him more attention.  He
may not be a phoenix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is
different; but it would be all the better for you to talk a little on
his subjects.  _I_ think his conversation is quite agreeable.  And he
is anything but an unprincipled man."

"The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy,"
said Lydgate, in a sort of resigned murmur, with a smile which was not
exactly tender, and certainly not merry.  Rosamond was silent and did
not smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked good-tempered
enough without smiling.

Those words of Lydgate's were like a sad milestone marking how far he
had travelled from his old dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared
to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband's
mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and
looking-glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his adored
wisdom alone.  He had begun to distinguish between that imagined
adoration and the attraction towards a man's talent because it gives
him prestige, and is like an order in his button-hole or an Honorable
before his name.

It might have been supposed that Rosamond had travelled too, since she
had found the pointless conversation of Mr. Ned Plymdale perfectly
wearisome; but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is
unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable--else,
indeed, what would become of social bonds?  Captain Lydgate's stupidity
was delicately scented, carried itself with "style," talked with a good
accent, and was closely related to Sir Godwin.  Rosamond found it quite
agreeable and caught many of its phrases.

Therefore since Rosamond, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were
plenty of reasons why she should be tempted to resume her riding when
Captain Lydgate, who had ordered his man with two horses to follow him
and put up at the "Green Dragon," begged her to go out on the gray
which he warranted to be gentle and trained to carry a lady--indeed, he
had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to Quallingham.
Rosamond went out the first time without telling her husband, and came
back before his return; but the ride had been so thorough a success,
and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that he was
informed of it with full reliance on his consent that she should go
riding again.

On the contrary Lydgate was more than hurt--he was utterly confounded
that she had risked herself on a strange horse without referring the
matter to his wish.  After the first almost thundering exclamations of
astonishment, which sufficiently warned Rosamond of what was coming, he
was silent for some moments.

"However, you have come back safely," he said, at last, in a decisive
tone.  "You will not go again, Rosy; that is understood.  If it were
the quietest, most familiar horse in the world, there would always be
the chance of accident.  And you know very well that I wished you to
give up riding the roan on that account."

"But there is the chance of accident indoors, Tertius."

"My darling, don't talk nonsense," said Lydgate, in an imploring tone;
"surely I am the person to judge for you.  I think it is enough that I
say you are not to go again."

Rosamond was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of
her head in the glass showed no change in its loveliness except a
little turning aside of the long neck.  Lydgate had been moving about
with his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her, as if he
awaited some assurance.

"I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear," said Rosamond, letting
her arms fall with a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of
standing there like a brute.  Lydgate had often fastened the plaits
before, being among the deftest of men with his large finely formed
fingers.  He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the
tall comb (to such uses do men come!); and what could he do then but
kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all its delicate curves?
But when we do what we have done before, it is often with a difference.
Lydgate was still angry, and had not forgotten his point.

"I shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known better than offer
you his horse," he said, as he moved away.

"I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Tertius," said Rosamond,
looking at him with something more marked than usual in her speech.
"It will be treating me as if I were a child.  Promise that you will
leave the subject to me."

There did seem to be some truth in her objection.  Lydgate said, "Very
well," with a surly obedience, and thus the discussion ended with his
promising Rosamond, and not with her promising him.

In fact, she had been determined not to promise.  Rosamond had that
victorious obstinacy which never wastes its energy in impetuous
resistance.  What she liked to do was to her the right thing, and all
her cleverness was directed to getting the means of doing it.  She
meant to go out riding again on the gray, and she did go on the next
opportunity of her husband's absence, not intending that he should know
until it was late enough not to signify to her.  The temptation was
certainly great: she was very fond of the exercise, and the
gratification of riding on a fine horse, with Captain Lydgate, Sir
Godwin's son, on another fine horse by her side, and of being met in
this position by any one but her husband, was something as good as her
dreams before marriage: moreover she was riveting the connection with
the family at Quallingham, which must be a wise thing to do.

But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being
felled on the edge of Halsell wood, took fright, and caused a worse
fright to Rosamond, leading finally to the loss of her baby.  Lydgate
could not show his anger towards her, but he was rather bearish to the
Captain, whose visit naturally soon came to an end.

In all future conversations on the subject, Rosamond was mildly certain
that the ride had made no difference, and that if she had stayed at
home the same symptoms would have come on and would have ended in the
same way, because she had felt something like them before.

Lydgate could only say, "Poor, poor darling!"--but he secretly wondered
over the terrible tenacity of this mild creature.  There was gathering
within him an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond.  His
superior knowledge and mental force, instead of being, as he had
imagined, a shrine to consult on all occasions, was simply set aside on
every practical question.  He had regarded Rosamond's cleverness as
precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman.  He was now
beginning to find out what that cleverness was--what was the shape into
which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent.  No one
quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the
track of her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Lydgate's
preeminence in Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively
tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have
advanced him; but for her, his professional and scientific ambition had
no other relation to these desirable effects than if they had been the
fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil.  And that oil apart, with
which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in her own opinion
more than she did in his.  Lydgate was astounded to find in numberless
trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding,
that affection did not make her compliant.  He had no doubt that the
affection was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything
to repel it.  For his own part he said to himself that he loved her as
tenderly as ever, and could make up his mind to her negations;
but--well!  Lydgate was much worried, and conscious of new elements in
his life as noxious to him as an inlet of mud to a creature that has
been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in
the clearest of waters.

Rosamond was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying
drives in her father's phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be
invited to Quallingham.  She knew that she was a much more exquisite
ornament to the drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and
in reflecting that the gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps
sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see
themselves surpassed.

Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she
inwardly called his moodiness--a name which to her covered his
thoughtful preoccupation with other subjects than herself, as well as
that uneasy look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as if
they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really made a sort of
weather-glass to his vexation and foreboding.  These latter states of
mind had one cause amongst others, which he had generously but
mistakenly avoided mentioning to Rosamond, lest it should affect her
health and spirits.  Between him and her indeed there was that total
missing of each other's mental track, which is too evidently possible
even between persons who are continually thinking of each other.  To
Lydgate it seemed that he had been spending month after month in
sacrificing more than half of his best intent and best power to his
tenderness for Rosamond; bearing her little claims and interruptions
without impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of
bitterness to look through less and less of interfering illusion at the
blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to his ardor for the more
impersonal ends of his profession and his scientific study, an ardor
which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship as
sublime, though not in the least knowing why.  But his endurance was
mingled with a self-discontent which, if we know how to be candid, we
shall confess to make more than half our bitterness under grievances,
wife or husband included.  It always remains true that if we had been
greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.  Lydgate
was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more than
the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize
an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our
lives.  And on Lydgate's enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not a
simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading
care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort.

This was the care which he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to
Rosamond; and he believed, with some wonder, that it had never entered
her mind, though certainly no difficulty could be less mysterious.  It
was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and had been easily
drawn by indifferent observers, that Lydgate was in debt; and he could
not succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was
every day getting deeper into that swamp, which tempts men towards it
with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure.  It is wonderful
how soon a man gets up to his chin there--in a condition in which,
in spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he
had a scheme of the universe in his soul.

Eighteen months ago Lydgate was poor, but had never known the eager
want of small sums, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one who
descended a step in order to gain them.  He was now experiencing
something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar
hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things
which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for,
though the demand for payment has become pressing.

How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or
knowledge of prices.  When a man in setting up a house and preparing
for marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come
to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay
for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses,
horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds
of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred
per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred,
chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he
minds it or not, he is in debt.  Those were less expensive times than
our own, and provincial life was comparatively modest; but the ease
with which a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who thought
that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose table was supplied
without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and a high rent
for house and garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts,
can be conceived by any one who does not think these details beneath
his consideration.  Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant
household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering
the best of everything--nothing else "answered;" and Lydgate supposed
that "if things were done at all, they must be done properly"--he did
not see how they were to live otherwise.  If each head of household
expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have
probably observed that "it could hardly come to much," and if any one
had suggested a saving on a particular article--for example, the
substitution of cheap fish for dear--it would have appeared to him
simply a penny-wise, mean notion.  Rosamond, even without such an
occasion as Captain Lydgate's visit, was fond of giving invitations,
and Lydgate, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not
interfere.  This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional
prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable.  It is true Lydgate
was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his
prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by
this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in
men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by
side and never compare them with each other?  Expenditure--like
ugliness and errors--becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own
personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is
manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others.  Lydgate
believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man
who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a
matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments--such things
were naturally ordered in sheaves.  It must be remembered that he had
never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked by
habit, not by self-criticism.  But the check had come.

Its novelty made it the more irritating.  He was amazed, disgusted that
conditions so foreign to all his purposes, so hatefully disconnected
with the objects he cared to occupy himself with, should have lain in
ambush and clutched him when he was unaware.  And there was not only
the actual debt; there was the certainty that in his present position
he must go on deepening it.  Two furnishing tradesmen at Brassing,
whose bills had been incurred before his marriage, and whom
uncalculated current expenses had ever since prevented him from paying,
had repeatedly sent him unpleasant letters which had forced themselves
on his attention.  This could hardly have been more galling to any
disposition than to Lydgate's, with his intense pride--his dislike of
asking a favor or being under an obligation to any one.  He had scorned
even to form conjectures about Mr. Vincy's intentions on money matters,
and nothing but extremity could have induced him to apply to his
father-in-law, even if he had not been made aware in various indirect
ways since his marriage that Mr. Vincy's own affairs were not
flourishing, and that the expectation of help from him would be
resented.  Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it had
never in the former part of his life occurred to Lydgate that he should
need to do so: he had never thought what borrowing would be to him; but
now that the idea had entered his mind, he felt that he would rather
incur any other hardship.  In the mean time he had no money or
prospects of money; and his practice was not getting more lucrative.

No wonder that Lydgate had been unable to suppress all signs of inward
trouble during the last few months, and now that Rosamond was regaining
brilliant health, he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on
his difficulties.  New conversance with tradesmen's bills had forced
his reasoning into a new channel of comparison: he had begun to
consider from a new point of view what was necessary and unnecessary in
goods ordered, and to see that there must be some change of habits.
How could such a change be made without Rosamond's concurrence?  The
immediate occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her was forced
upon him.

Having no money, and having privately sought advice as to what security
could possibly be given by a man in his position, Lydgate had offered
the one good security in his power to the less peremptory creditor, who
was a silversmith and jeweller, and who consented to take on himself
the upholsterer's credit also, accepting interest for a given term.
The security necessary was a bill of sale on the furniture of his
house, which might make a creditor easy for a reasonable time about a
debt amounting to less than four hundred pounds; and the silversmith,
Mr. Dover, was willing to reduce it by taking back a portion of the
plate and any other article which was as good as new.  "Any other
article" was a phrase delicately implying jewellery, and more
particularly some purple amethysts costing thirty pounds, which Lydgate
had bought as a bridal present.

Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in making this present: some
may think that it was a graceful attention to be expected from a man
like Lydgate, and that the fault of any troublesome consequences lay in
the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that time, which offered
no conveniences for professional people whose fortune was not
proportioned to their tastes; also, in Lydgate's ridiculous
fastidiousness about asking his friends for money.

However, it had seemed a question of no moment to him on that fine
morning when he went to give a final order for plate: in the presence
of other jewels enormously expensive, and as an addition to orders of
which the amount had not been exactly calculated, thirty pounds for
ornaments so exquisitely suited to Rosamond's neck and arms could
hardly appear excessive when there was no ready cash for it to exceed.
But at this crisis Lydgate's imagination could not help dwelling on the
possibility of letting the amethysts take their place again among Mr.
Dover's stock, though he shrank from the idea of proposing this to
Rosamond.  Having been roused to discern consequences which he had
never been in the habit of tracing, he was preparing to act on this
discernment with some of the rigor (by no means all) that he would have
applied in pursuing experiment.  He was nerving himself to this rigor
as he rode from Brassing, and meditated on the representations he must
make to Rosamond.

It was evening when he got home.  He was intensely miserable, this
strong man of nine-and-twenty and of many gifts.  He was not saying
angrily within himself that he had made a profound mistake; but the
mistake was at work in him like a recognized chronic disease, mingling
its uneasy importunities with every prospect, and enfeebling every
thought.  As he went along the passage to the drawing-room, he heard
the piano and singing.  Of course, Ladislaw was there.  It was some
weeks since Will had parted from Dorothea, yet he was still at the old
post in Middlemarch.  Lydgate had no objection in general to Ladislaw's
coming, but just now he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth
free.  When he opened the door the two singers went on towards the
key-note, raising their eyes and looking at him indeed, but not
regarding his entrance as an interruption.  To a man galled with his
harness as poor Lydgate was, it is not soothing to see two people
warbling at him, as he comes in with the sense that the painful day has
still pains in store.  His face, already paler than usual, took on a
scowl as he walked across the room and flung himself into a chair.

The singers feeling themselves excused by the fact that they had only
three bars to sing, now turned round.

"How are you, Lydgate?" said Will, coming forward to shake hands.

Lydgate took his hand, but did not think it necessary to speak.

"Have you dined, Tertius?  I expected you much earlier," said Rosamond,
who had already seen that her husband was in a "horrible humor." She
seated herself in her usual place as she spoke.

"I have dined.  I should like some tea, please," said Lydgate, curtly,
still scowling and looking markedly at his legs stretched out before
him.

Will was too quick to need more.  "I shall be off," he said, reaching
his hat.

"Tea is coming," said Rosamond; "pray don't go."

"Yes, Lydgate is bored," said Will, who had more comprehension of
Lydgate than Rosamond had, and was not offended by his manner, easily
imagining outdoor causes of annoyance.

"There is the more need for you to stay," said Rosamond, playfully, and
in her lightest accent; "he will not speak to me all the evening."

"Yes, Rosamond, I shall," said Lydgate, in his strong baritone.  "I
have some serious business to speak to you about."

No introduction of the business could have been less like that which
Lydgate had intended; but her indifferent manner had been too provoking.

"There! you see," said Will.  "I'm going to the meeting about the
Mechanics' Institute.  Good-by;" and he went quickly out of the room.

Rosamond did not look at her husband, but presently rose and took her
place before the tea-tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him
so disagreeable.  Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched her
as she delicately handled the tea-service with her taper fingers, and
looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face
disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all
people with unpleasant manners.  For the moment he lost the sense of
his wound in a sudden speculation about this new form of feminine
impassibility revealing itself in the sylph-like frame which he had
once interpreted as the sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness.  His
mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Rosamond, he said
inwardly, "Would _she_ kill me because I wearied her?" and then, "It is
the way with all women." But this power of generalizing which gives men
so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals, was
immediately thwarted by Lydgate's memory of wondering impressions from
the behavior of another woman--from Dorothea's looks and tones of
emotion about her husband when Lydgate began to attend him--from her
passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose
sake it seemed as if she must quell every impulse in her except the
yearnings of faithfulness and compassion.  These revived impressions
succeeded each other quickly and dreamily in Lydgate's mind while the
tea was being brewed.  He had shut his eyes in the last instant of
reverie while he heard Dorothea saying, "Advise me--think what I can
do--he has been all his life laboring and looking forward.  He minds
about nothing else--and I mind about nothing else."

That voice of deep-souled womanhood had remained within him as the
enkindling conceptions of dead and sceptred genius had remained within
him (is there not a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over
human spirits and their conclusions?); the tones were a music from
which he was falling away--he had really fallen into a momentary doze,
when Rosamond said in her silvery neutral way, "Here is your tea,
Tertius," setting it on the small table by his side, and then moved
back to her place without looking at him.  Lydgate was too hasty in
attributing insensibility to her; after her own fashion, she was
sensitive enough, and took lasting impressions.  Her impression now was
one of offence and repulsion.  But then, Rosamond had no scowls and had
never raised her voice: she was quite sure that no one could justly
find fault with her.

Perhaps Lydgate and she had never felt so far off each other before;
but there were strong reasons for not deferring his revelation, even if
he had not already begun it by that abrupt announcement; indeed some of
the angry desire to rouse her into more sensibility on his account
which had prompted him to speak prematurely, still mingled with his
pain in the prospect of her pain.  But he waited till the tray was
gone, the candles were lit, and the evening quiet might be counted on:
the interval had left time for repelled tenderness to return into the
old course.  He spoke kindly.

"Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit by me," he said, gently,
pushing away the table, and stretching out his arm to draw a chair near
his own.

Rosamond obeyed.  As she came towards him in her drapery of transparent
faintly tinted muslin, her slim yet round figure never looked more
graceful; as she sat down by him and laid one hand on the elbow of his
chair, at last looking at him and meeting his eyes, her delicate neck
and cheek and purely cut lips never had more of that untarnished beauty
which touches as in spring-time and infancy and all sweet freshness.
It touched Lydgate now, and mingled the early moments of his love for
her with all the other memories which were stirred in this crisis of
deep trouble.  He laid his ample hand softly on hers, saying--

"Dear!" with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the word.
Rosamond too was still under the power of that same past, and her
husband was still in part the Lydgate whose approval had stirred
delight.  She put his hair lightly away from his forehead, then laid
her other hand on his, and was conscious of forgiving him.

"I am obliged to tell you what will hurt you, Rosy.  But there are
things which husband and wife must think of together.  I dare say it
has occurred to you already that I am short of money."

Lydgate paused; but Rosamond turned her neck and looked at a vase on
the mantel-piece.

"I was not able to pay for all the things we had to get before we were
married, and there have been expenses since which I have been obliged
to meet.  The consequence is, there is a large debt at Brassing--three
hundred and eighty pounds--which has been pressing on me a good while,
and in fact we are getting deeper every day, for people don't pay me
the faster because others want the money.  I took pains to keep it from
you while you were not well; but now we must think together about it,
and you must help me."

"What can--I--do, Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning her eyes on him
again.  That little speech of four words, like so many others in all
languages, is capable by varied vocal inflections of expressing all
states of mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumentative
perception, from the completest self-devoting fellowship to the most
neutral aloofness.  Rosamond's thin utterance threw into the words
"What can--I--do!" as much neutrality as they could hold.  They fell
like a mortal chill on Lydgate's roused tenderness.  He did not storm
in indignation--he felt too sad a sinking of the heart.  And when he
spoke again it was more in the tone of a man who forces himself to
fulfil a task.

"It is necessary for you to know, because I have to give security for a
time, and a man must come to make an inventory of the furniture."

Rosamond colored deeply.  "Have you not asked papa for money?" she
said, as soon as she could speak.

"No."

"Then I must ask him!" she said, releasing her hands from Lydgate's,
and rising to stand at two yards' distance from him.

"No, Rosy," said Lydgate, decisively.  "It is too late to do that.  The
inventory will be begun to-morrow. Remember it is a mere security: it
will make no difference: it is a temporary affair.  I insist upon it
that your father shall not know, unless I choose to tell him," added
Lydgate, with a more peremptory emphasis.

This certainly was unkind, but Rosamond had thrown him back on evil
expectation as to what she would do in the way of quiet steady
disobedience.  The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her: she was not
given to weeping and disliked it, but now her chin and lips began to
tremble and the tears welled up.  Perhaps it was not possible for
Lydgate, under the double stress of outward material difficulty and of
his own proud resistance to humiliating consequences, to imagine fully
what this sudden trial was to a young creature who had known nothing
but indulgence, and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence, more
exactly to her taste.  But he did wish to spare her as much as he
could, and her tears cut him to the heart.  He could not speak again
immediately; but Rosamond did not go on sobbing: she tried to conquer
her agitation and wiped away her tears, continuing to look before her
at the mantel-piece.

"Try not to grieve, darling," said Lydgate, turning his eyes up towards
her.  That she had chosen to move away from him in this moment of her
trouble made everything harder to say, but he must absolutely go on.
"We must brace ourselves to do what is necessary.  It is I who have
been in fault: I ought to have seen that I could not afford to live in
this way. But many things have told against me in my practice, and it
really just now has ebbed to a low point.  I may recover it, but in the
mean time we must pull up--we must change our way of living.  We shall
weather it.  When I have given this security I shall have time to look
about me; and you are so clever that if you turn your mind to managing
you will school me into carefulness.  I have been a thoughtless rascal
about squaring prices--but come, dear, sit down and forgive me."

Lydgate was bowing his neck under the yoke like a creature who had
talons, but who had Reason too, which often reduces us to meekness.
When he had spoken the last words in an imploring tone, Rosamond
returned to the chair by his side.  His self-blame gave her some hope
that he would attend to her opinion, and she said--

"Why can you not put off having the inventory made?  You can send the
men away to-morrow when they come."

"I shall not send them away," said Lydgate, the peremptoriness rising
again.  Was it of any use to explain?

"If we left Middlemarch? there would of course be a sale, and that
would do as well."

"But we are not going to leave Middlemarch."

"I am sure, Tertius, it would be much better to do so.  Why can we not
go to London?  Or near Durham, where your family is known?"

"We can go nowhere without money, Rosamond."

"Your friends would not wish you to be without money.  And surely these
odious tradesmen might be made to understand that, and to wait, if you
would make proper representations to them."

"This is idle Rosamond," said Lydgate, angrily.  "You must learn to
take my judgment on questions you don't understand.  I have made
necessary arrangements, and they must be carried out.  As to friends, I
have no expectations whatever from them, and shall not ask them for
anything."

Rosamond sat perfectly still.  The thought in her mind was that if she
had known how Lydgate would behave, she would never have married him.

"We have no time to waste now on unnecessary words, dear," said
Lydgate, trying to be gentle again.  "There are some details that I
want to consider with you.  Dover says he will take a good deal of the
plate back again, and any of the jewellery we like.  He really behaves
very well."

"Are we to go without spoons and forks then?" said Rosamond, whose very
lips seemed to get thinner with the thinness of her utterance.  She was
determined to make no further resistance or suggestions.

"Oh no, dear!" said Lydgate.  "But look here," he continued, drawing a
paper from his pocket and opening it; "here is Dover's account.  See, I
have marked a number of articles, which if we returned them would
reduce the amount by thirty pounds and more.  I have not marked any
of the jewellery."  Lydgate had really felt this point of the jewellery
very bitter to himself; but he had overcome the feeling by severe
argument.  He could not propose to Rosamond that she should return any
particular present of his, but he had told himself that he was bound to
put Dover's offer before her, and her inward prompting might make the
affair easy.

"It is useless for me to look, Tertius," said Rosamond, calmly; "you
will return what you please."  She would not turn her eyes on the
paper, and Lydgate, flushing up to the roots of his hair, drew it back
and let it fall on his knee.  Meanwhile Rosamond quietly went out of
the room, leaving Lydgate helpless and wondering.  Was she not coming
back?  It seemed that she had no more identified herself with him than
if they had been creatures of different species and opposing interests.
He tossed his head and thrust his hands deep into his pockets with a
sort of vengeance.  There was still science--there were still good
objects to work for.  He must give a tug still--all the stronger
because other satisfactions were going.

But the door opened and Rosamond re-entered. She carried the leather
box containing the amethysts, and a tiny ornamental basket which
contained other boxes, and laying them on the chair where she had been
sitting, she said, with perfect propriety in her air--

"This is all the jewellery you ever gave me.  You can return what you
like of it, and of the plate also.  You will not, of course, expect me
to stay at home to-morrow. I shall go to papa's."

To many women the look Lydgate cast at her would have been more
terrible than one of anger: it had in it a despairing acceptance of the
distance she was placing between them.

"And when shall you come back again?" he said, with a bitter edge on
his accent.

"Oh, in the evening.  Of course I shall not mention the subject to
mamma."  Rosamond was convinced that no woman could behave more
irreproachably than she was behaving; and she went to sit down at her
work-table. Lydgate sat meditating a minute or two, and the result was
that he said, with some of the old emotion in his tone--

"Now we have been united, Rosy, you should not leave me to myself in
the first trouble that has come."

"Certainly not," said Rosamond; "I shall do everything it becomes me to
do."

"It is not right that the thing should be left to servants, or that I
should have to speak to them about it.  And I shall be obliged to go
out--I don't know how early.  I understand your shrinking from the
humiliation of these money affairs.  But, my dear Rosamond, as a
question of pride, which I feel just as much as you can, it is surely
better to manage the thing ourselves, and let the servants see as
little of it as possible; and since you are my wife, there is no
hindering your share in my disgraces--if there were disgraces."

Rosamond did not answer immediately, but at last she said, "Very well,
I will stay at home."

"I shall not touch these jewels, Rosy.  Take them away again.  But I
will write out a list of plate that we may return, and that can be
packed up and sent at once."

"The servants will know _that_," said Rosamond, with the slightest
touch of sarcasm.

"Well, we must meet some disagreeables as necessities.  Where is the
ink, I wonder?" said Lydgate, rising, and throwing the account on the
larger table where he meant to write.

Rosamond went to reach the inkstand, and after setting it on the table
was going to turn away, when Lydgate, who was standing close by, put
his arm round her and drew her towards him, saying--

"Come, darling, let us make the best of things.  It will only be for a
time, I hope, that we shall have to be stingy and particular.  Kiss me."

His native warm-heartedness took a great deal of quenching, and it is a
part of manliness for a husband to feel keenly the fact that an
inexperienced girl has got into trouble by marrying him.  She received
his kiss and returned it faintly, and in this way an appearance of
accord was recovered for the time.  But Lydgate could not help looking
forward with dread to the inevitable future discussions about
expenditure and the necessity for a complete change in their way of
living.



CHAPTER LIX.

    They said of old the Soul had human shape,
    But smaller, subtler than the fleshly self,
    So wandered forth for airing when it pleased.
    And see! beside her cherub-face there floats
    A pale-lipped form aerial whispering
    Its promptings in that little shell her ear."


News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively as that pollen
which the bees carry off (having no idea how powdery they are) when
they are buzzing in search of their particular nectar.  This fine
comparison has reference to Fred Vincy, who on that evening at Lowick
Parsonage heard a lively discussion among the ladies on the news which
their old servant had got from Tantripp concerning Mr. Casaubon's
strange mention of Mr. Ladislaw in a codicil to his will made not long
before his death.  Miss Winifred was astounded to find that her brother
had known the fact before, and observed that Camden was the most
wonderful man for knowing things and not telling them; whereupon Mary
Garth said that the codicil had perhaps got mixed up with the habits of
spiders, which Miss Winifred never would listen to.  Mrs. Farebrother
considered that the news had something to do with their having only
once seen Mr. Ladislaw at Lowick, and Miss Noble made many small
compassionate mewings.

Fred knew little and cared less about Ladislaw and the Casaubons, and
his mind never recurred to that discussion till one day calling on
Rosamond at his mother's request to deliver a message as he passed, he
happened to see Ladislaw going away.  Fred and Rosamond had little to
say to each other now that marriage had removed her from collision with
the unpleasantness of brothers, and especially now that he had taken
what she held the stupid and even reprehensible step of giving up the
Church to take to such a business as Mr. Garth's. Hence Fred talked by
preference of what he considered indifferent news, and "a propos of
that young Ladislaw" mentioned what he had heard at Lowick Parsonage.

Now Lydgate, like Mr. Farebrother, knew a great deal more than he told,
and when he had once been set thinking about the relation between Will
and Dorothea his conjectures had gone beyond the fact.  He imagined
that there was a passionate attachment on both sides, and this struck
him as much too serious to gossip about.  He remembered Will's
irritability when he had mentioned Mrs. Casaubon, and was the more
circumspect.  On the whole his surmises, in addition to what he knew of
the fact, increased his friendliness and tolerance towards Ladislaw,
and made him understand the vacillation which kept him at Middlemarch
after he had said that he should go away.  It was significant of the
separateness between Lydgate's mind and Rosamond's that he had no
impulse to speak to her on the subject; indeed, he did not quite trust
her reticence towards Will.  And he was right there; though he had no
vision of the way in which her mind would act in urging her to speak.

When she repeated Fred's news to Lydgate, he said, "Take care you don't
drop the faintest hint to Ladislaw, Rosy.  He is likely to fly out as
if you insulted him.  Of course it is a painful affair."

Rosamond turned her neck and patted her hair, looking the image of
placid indifference.  But the next time Will came when Lydgate was
away, she spoke archly about his not going to London as he had
threatened.

"I know all about it.  I have a confidential little bird," said she,
showing very pretty airs of her head over the bit of work held high
between her active fingers.  "There is a powerful magnet in this
neighborhood."

"To be sure there is.  Nobody knows that better than you," said Will,
with light gallantry, but inwardly prepared to be angry.

"It is really the most charming romance: Mr. Casaubon jealous, and
foreseeing that there was no one else whom Mrs. Casaubon would so much
like to marry, and no one who would so much like to marry her as a
certain gentleman; and then laying a plan to spoil all by making her
forfeit her property if she did marry that gentleman--and then--and
then--and then--oh, I have no doubt the end will be thoroughly
romantic."

"Great God! what do you mean?" said Will, flushing over face and ears,
his features seeming to change as if he had had a violent shake.
"Don't joke; tell me what you mean."

"You don't really know?" said Rosamond, no longer playful, and desiring
nothing better than to tell in order that she might evoke effects.

"No!" he returned, impatiently.

"Don't know that Mr. Casaubon has left it in his will that if Mrs.
Casaubon marries you she is to forfeit all her property?"

"How do you know that it is true?" said Will, eagerly.

"My brother Fred heard it from the Farebrothers."  Will started up from
his chair and reached his hat.

"I dare say she likes you better than the property," said Rosamond,
looking at him from a distance.

"Pray don't say any more about it," said Will, in a hoarse undertone
extremely unlike his usual light voice.  "It is a foul insult to her
and to me."  Then he sat down absently, looking before him, but seeing
nothing.

"Now you are angry with _me_," said Rosamond.  "It is too bad to bear
_me_ malice.  You ought to be obliged to me for telling you."

"So I am," said Will, abruptly, speaking with that kind of double soul
which belongs to dreamers who answer questions.

"I expect to hear of the marriage," said Rosamond, playfully.

"Never!  You will never hear of the marriage!"

With those words uttered impetuously, Will rose, put out his hand to
Rosamond, still with the air of a somnambulist, and went away.

When he was gone, Rosamond left her chair and walked to the other end
of the room, leaning when she got there against a chiffonniere, and
looking out of the window wearily.  She was oppressed by ennui, and by
that dissatisfaction which in women's minds is continually turning into
a trivial jealousy, referring to no real claims, springing from no
deeper passion than the vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable
of impelling action as well as speech.  "There really is nothing to
care for much," said poor Rosamond inwardly, thinking of the family at
Quallingham, who did not write to her; and that perhaps Tertius when he
came home would tease her about expenses.  She had already secretly
disobeyed him by asking her father to help them, and he had ended
decisively by saying, "I am more likely to want help myself."



CHAPTER LX.

    Good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable.
                                          --Justice Shallow.


A few days afterwards--it was already the end of August--there was an
occasion which caused some excitement in Middlemarch: the public, if it
chose, was to have the advantage of buying, under the distinguished
auspices of Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, the furniture, books, and pictures
which anybody might see by the handbills to be the best in every kind,
belonging to Edwin Larcher, Esq. This was not one of the sales
indicating the depression of trade; on the contrary, it was due to Mr.
Larcher's great success in the carrying business, which warranted his
purchase of a mansion near Riverston already furnished in high style by
an illustrious Spa physician--furnished indeed with such large
framefuls of expensive flesh-painting in the dining-room, that Mrs.
Larcher was nervous until reassured by finding the subjects to be
Scriptural.  Hence the fine opportunity to purchasers which was well
pointed out in the handbills of Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, whose
acquaintance with the history of art enabled him to state that the hall
furniture, to be sold without reserve, comprised a piece of carving by
a contemporary of Gibbons.

At Middlemarch in those times a large sale was regarded as a kind of
festival.  There was a table spread with the best cold eatables, as at
a superior funeral; and facilities were offered for that
generous-drinking of cheerful glasses which might lead to generous and
cheerful bidding for undesirable articles.  Mr. Larcher's sale was the
more attractive in the fine weather because the house stood just at the
end of the town, with a garden and stables attached, in that pleasant
issue from Middlemarch called the London Road, which was also the road
to the New Hospital and to Mr. Bulstrode's retired residence, known as
the Shrubs.  In short, the auction was as good as a fair, and drew all
classes with leisure at command: to some, who risked making bids in
order simply to raise prices, it was almost equal to betting at the
races.  The second day, when the best furniture was to be sold,
"everybody" was there; even Mr. Thesiger, the rector of St. Peter's,
had looked in for a short time, wishing to buy the carved table, and
had rubbed elbows with Mr. Bambridge and Mr. Horrock.  There was a
wreath of Middlemarch ladies accommodated with seats round the large
table in the dining-room, where Mr. Borthrop Trumbull was mounted with
desk and hammer; but the rows chiefly of masculine faces behind were
often varied by incomings and outgoings both from the door and the
large bow-window opening on to the lawn.

"Everybody" that day did not include Mr. Bulstrode, whose health could
not well endure crowds and draughts.  But Mrs. Bulstrode had
particularly wished to have a certain picture--a "Supper at Emmaus,"
attributed in the catalogue to Guido; and at the last moment before the
day of the sale Mr. Bulstrode had called at the office of the
"Pioneer," of which he was now one of the proprietors, to beg of Mr.
Ladislaw as a great favor that he would obligingly use his remarkable
knowledge of pictures on behalf of Mrs. Bulstrode, and judge of the
value of this particular painting--"if," added the scrupulously polite
banker, "attendance at the sale would not interfere with the
arrangements for your departure, which I know is imminent."

This proviso might have sounded rather satirically in Will's ear if he
had been in a mood to care about such satire.  It referred to an
understanding entered into many weeks before with the proprietors of
the paper, that he should be at liberty any day he pleased to hand over
the management to the subeditor whom he had been training; since he
wished finally to quit Middlemarch.  But indefinite visions of ambition
are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly
agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve
when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary.  In such
states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning
towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be
fulfilled, still--very wonderful things have happened!  Will did not
confess this weakness to himself, but he lingered.  What was the use of
going to London at that time of the year?  The Rugby men who would
remember him were not there; and so far as political writing was
concerned, he would rather for a few weeks go on with the "Pioneer."
At the present moment, however, when Mr. Bulstrode was speaking to him,
he had both a strengthened resolve to go and an equally strong resolve
not to go till he had once more seen Dorothea.  Hence he replied that
he had reasons for deferring his departure a little, and would be happy
to go to the sale.

Will was in a defiant mood, his consciousness being deeply stung with
the thought that the people who looked at him probably knew a fact
tantamount to an accusation against him as a fellow with low designs
which were to be frustrated by a disposal of property.  Like most
people who assert their freedom with regard to conventional
distinction, he was prepared to be sudden and quick at quarrel with any
one who might hint that he had personal reasons for that assertion--that
there was anything in his blood, his bearing, or his character to
which he gave the mask of an opinion.  When he was under an irritating
impression of this kind he would go about for days with a defiant look,
the color changing in his transparent skin as if he were on the qui
vive, watching for something which he had to dart upon.

This expression was peculiarly noticeable in him at the sale, and those
who had only seen him in his moods of gentle oddity or of bright
enjoyment would have been struck with a contrast.  He was not sorry to
have this occasion for appearing in public before the Middlemarch
tribes of Toller, Hackbutt, and the rest, who looked down on him as an
adventurer, and were in a state of brutal ignorance about Dante--who
sneered at his Polish blood, and were themselves of a breed very much
in need of crossing.  He stood in a conspicuous place not far from the
auctioneer, with a fore-finger in each side-pocket and his head thrown
backward, not caring to speak to anybody, though he had been cordially
welcomed as a connoiss_ure_ by Mr. Trumbull, who was enjoying the
utmost activity of his great faculties.

And surely among all men whose vocation requires them to exhibit their
powers of speech, the happiest is a prosperous provincial auctioneer
keenly alive to his own jokes and sensible of his encyclopedic
knowledge.  Some saturnine, sour-blooded persons might object to be
constantly insisting on the merits of all articles from boot-jacks to
"Berghems;" but Mr. Borthrop Trumbull had a kindly liquid in his veins;
he was an admirer by nature, and would have liked to have the universe
under his hammer, feeling that it would go at a higher figure for his
recommendation.

Meanwhile Mrs. Larcher's drawing-room furniture was enough for him.
When Will Ladislaw had come in, a second fender, said to have been
forgotten in its right place, suddenly claimed the auctioneer's
enthusiasm, which he distributed on the equitable principle of praising
those things most which were most in need of praise.  The fender was of
polished steel, with much lancet-shaped open-work and a sharp edge.

"Now, ladies," said he, "I shall appeal to you.  Here is a fender which
at any other sale would hardly be offered with out reserve, being, as I
may say, for quality of steel and quaintness of design, a kind of
thing"--here Mr. Trumbull dropped his voice and became slightly nasal,
trimming his outlines with his left finger--"that might not fall in
with ordinary tastes.  Allow me to tell you that by-and-by this style
of workmanship will be the only one in vogue--half-a-crown, you said?
thank you--going at half-a-crown, this characteristic fender; and I
have particular information that the antique style is very much sought
after in high quarters.  Three shillings--three-and-sixpence--hold it
well up, Joseph!  Look, ladies, at the chastity of the design--I have
no doubt myself that it was turned out in the last century!  Four
shillings, Mr. Mawmsey?--four shillings."

"It's not a thing I would put in _my_ drawing-room," said Mrs. Mawmsey,
audibly, for the warning of the rash husband.  "I wonder _at_ Mrs.
Larcher.  Every blessed child's head that fell against it would be cut
in two.  The edge is like a knife."

"Quite true," rejoined Mr. Trumbull, quickly, "and most uncommonly
useful to have a fender at hand that will cut, if you have a leather
shoe-tie or a bit of string that wants cutting and no knife at hand:
many a man has been left hanging because there was no knife to cut him
down.  Gentlemen, here's a fender that if you had the misfortune to
hang yourselves would cut you down in no time--with astonishing
celerity--four-and-sixpence--five--five-and-sixpence--an appropriate
thing for a spare bedroom where there was a four-poster and a guest a
little out of his mind--six shillings--thank you, Mr. Clintup--going
at six shillings--going--gone!"  The auctioneer's glance, which had
been searching round him with a preternatural susceptibility to all
signs of bidding, here dropped on the paper before him, and his voice
too dropped into a tone of indifferent despatch as he said, "Mr.
Clintup.  Be handy, Joseph."

"It was worth six shillings to have a fender you could always tell that
joke on," said Mr. Clintup, laughing low and apologetically to his next
neighbor.  He was a diffident though distinguished nurseryman, and
feared that the audience might regard his bid as a foolish one.

Meanwhile Joseph had brought a trayful of small articles.  "Now,
ladies," said Mr. Trumbull, taking up one of the articles, "this tray
contains a very recherchy lot--a collection of trifles for the
drawing-room table--and trifles make the sum _of_ human things--nothing
more important than trifles--(yes, Mr. Ladislaw, yes, by-and-by)--but
pass the tray round, Joseph--these bijoux must be examined, ladies.
This I have in my hand is an ingenious contrivance--a sort of
practical rebus, I may call it: here, you see, it looks like an elegant
heart-shaped box, portable--for the pocket; there, again, it becomes
like a splendid double flower--an ornament for the table; and now"--Mr.
Trumbull allowed the flower to fall alarmingly into strings of
heart-shaped leaves--"a book of riddles!  No less than five hundred
printed in a beautiful red.  Gentlemen, if I had less of a conscience,
I should not wish you to bid high for this lot--I have a longing for
it myself.  What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more
than a good riddle?--it hinders profane language, and attaches a man to
the society of refined females.  This ingenious article itself, without
the elegant domino-box, card-basket, &c., ought alone to give a high
price to the lot.  Carried in the pocket it might make an individual
welcome in any society.  Four shillings, sir?--four shillings for this
remarkable collection of riddles with the et caeteras.  Here is a
sample: 'How must you spell honey to make it catch lady-birds?
Answer--money.'  You hear?--lady-birds--honey money.  This is an
amusement to sharpen the intellect; it has a sting--it has what we call
satire, and wit without indecency.  Four-and-sixpence--five shillings."

The bidding ran on with warming rivalry.  Mr. Bowyer was a bidder, and
this was too exasperating.  Bowyer couldn't afford it, and only wanted
to hinder every other man from making a figure.  The current carried
even Mr. Horrock with it, but this committal of himself to an opinion
fell from him with so little sacrifice of his neutral expression, that
the bid might not have been detected as his but for the friendly oaths
of Mr. Bambridge, who wanted to know what Horrock would do with blasted
stuff only fit for haberdashers given over to that state of perdition
which the horse-dealer so cordially recognized in the majority of
earthly existences.  The lot was finally knocked down at a guinea to
Mr. Spilkins, a young Slender of the neighborhood, who was reckless
with his pocket-money and felt his want of memory for riddles.

"Come, Trumbull, this is too bad--you've been putting some old maid's
rubbish into the sale," murmured Mr. Toller, getting close to the
auctioneer.  "I want to see how the prints go, and I must be off soon."

"_Im_mediately, Mr. Toller.  It was only an act of benevolence which
your noble heart would approve.  Joseph! quick with the prints--Lot
235.  Now, gentlemen, you who are connoiss_ures_, you are going to have
a treat.  Here is an engraving of the Duke of Wellington surrounded by
his staff on the Field of Waterloo; and notwithstanding recent events
which have, as it were, enveloped our great Hero in a cloud, I will be
bold to say--for a man in my line must not be blown about by political
winds--that a finer subject--of the modern order, belonging to our own
time and epoch--the understanding of man could hardly conceive: angels
might, perhaps, but not men, sirs, not men."

"Who painted it?" said Mr. Powderell, much impressed.

"It is a proof before the letter, Mr. Powderell--the painter is not
known," answered Trumbull, with a certain gaspingness in his last
words, after which he pursed up his lips and stared round him.

"I'll bid a pound!" said Mr. Powderell, in a tone of resolved emotion,
as of a man ready to put himself in the breach.  Whether from awe or
pity, nobody raised the price on him.

Next came two Dutch prints which Mr. Toller had been eager for, and
after he had secured them he went away.  Other prints, and afterwards
some paintings, were sold to leading Middlemarchers who had come with a
special desire for them, and there was a more active movement of the
audience in and out; some, who had bought what they wanted, going away,
others coming in either quite newly or from a temporary visit to the
refreshments which were spread under the marquee on the lawn.  It was
this marquee that Mr. Bambridge was bent on buying, and he appeared to
like looking inside it frequently, as a foretaste of its possession.
On the last occasion of his return from it he was observed to bring
with him a new companion, a stranger to Mr. Trumbull and every one
else, whose appearance, however, led to the supposition that he might
be a relative of the horse-dealer's--also "given to indulgence."  His
large whiskers, imposing swagger, and swing of the leg, made him a
striking figure; but his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges,
caused the prejudicial inference that he was not able to afford himself
as much indulgence as he liked.

"Who is it you've picked up, Bam?" said Mr. Horrock, aside.

"Ask him yourself," returned Mr. Bambridge.  "He said he'd just turned
in from the road."

Mr. Horrock eyed the stranger, who was leaning back against his stick
with one hand, using his toothpick with the other, and looking about
him with a certain restlessness apparently under the silence imposed on
him by circumstances.

At length the "Supper at Emmaus" was brought forward, to Will's immense
relief, for he was getting so tired of the proceedings that he had
drawn back a little and leaned his shoulder against the wall just
behind the auctioneer.  He now came forward again, and his eye caught
the conspicuous stranger, who, rather to his surprise, was staring at
him markedly.  But Will was immediately appealed to by Mr. Trumbull.

"Yes, Mr. Ladislaw, yes; this interests you as a connoiss_ure_, I
think.  It is some pleasure," the auctioneer went on with a rising
fervor, "to have a picture like this to show to a company of ladies and
gentlemen--a picture worth any sum to an individual whose means were on
a level with his judgment.  It is a painting of the Italian school--by
the celebrated Guydo, the greatest painter in the world, the chief of
the Old Masters, as they are called--I take it, because they were up
to a thing or two beyond most of us--in possession of secrets now lost
to the bulk of mankind.  Let me tell you, gentlemen, I have seen a
great many pictures by the Old Masters, and they are not all up to this
mark--some of them are darker than you might like and not family
subjects.  But here is a Guydo--the frame alone is worth pounds--which
any lady might be proud to hang up--a suitable thing for what we call a
refectory in a charitable institution, if any gentleman of the
Corporation wished to show his munifi_cence_. Turn it a little, sir?
yes.  Joseph, turn it a little towards Mr. Ladislaw--Mr. Ladislaw,
having been abroad, understands the merit of these things, you observe."

All eyes were for a moment turned towards Will, who said, coolly, "Five
pounds."  The auctioneer burst out in deep remonstrance.

"Ah!  Mr. Ladislaw! the frame alone is worth that.  Ladies and
gentlemen, for the credit of the town!  Suppose it should be discovered
hereafter that a gem of art has been amongst us in this town, and
nobody in Middlemarch awake to it.  Five guineas--five seven-six--five
ten.  Still, ladies, still!  It is a gem, and 'Full many a gem,' as the
poet says, has been allowed to go at a nominal price because the public
knew no better, because it was offered in circles where there was--I
was going to say a low feeling, but no!--Six pounds--six guineas--a
Guydo of the first order going at six guineas--it is an insult to
religion, ladies; it touches us all as Christians, gentlemen, that a
subject like this should go at such a low figure--six pounds
ten--seven--"

The bidding was brisk, and Will continued to share in it, remembering
that Mrs. Bulstrode had a strong wish for the picture, and thinking
that he might stretch the price to twelve pounds.  But it was knocked
down to him at ten guineas, whereupon he pushed his way towards the
bow-window and went out.  He chose to go under the marquee to get a
glass of water, being hot and thirsty: it was empty of other visitors,
and he asked the woman in attendance to fetch him some fresh water; but
before she was well gone he was annoyed to see entering the florid
stranger who had stared at him.  It struck Will at this moment that the
man might be one of those political parasitic insects of the bloated
kind who had once or twice claimed acquaintance with him as having
heard him speak on the Reform question, and who might think of getting
a shilling by news.  In this light his person, already rather heating
to behold on a summer's day, appeared the more disagreeable; and Will,
half-seated on the elbow of a garden-chair, turned his eyes carefully
away from the comer.  But this signified little to our acquaintance Mr.
Raffles, who never hesitated to thrust himself on unwilling
observation, if it suited his purpose to do so.  He moved a step or two
till he was in front of Will, and said with full-mouthed haste, "Excuse
me, Mr. Ladislaw--was your mother's name Sarah Dunkirk?"

Will, starting to his feet, moved backward a step, frowning, and saying
with some fierceness, "Yes, sir, it was.  And what is that to you?"

It was in Will's nature that the first spark it threw out was a direct
answer of the question and a challenge of the consequences.  To have
said, "What is that to you?" in the first instance, would have seemed
like shuffling--as if he minded who knew anything about his origin!

Raffles on his side had not the same eagerness for a collision which
was implied in Ladislaw's threatening air.  The slim young fellow with
his girl's complexion looked like a tiger-cat ready to spring on him.
Under such circumstances Mr. Raffles's pleasure in annoying his company
was kept in abeyance.

"No offence, my good sir, no offence!  I only remember your mother--knew
her when she was a girl.  But it is your father that you feature,
sir.  I had the pleasure of seeing your father too.  Parents alive, Mr.
Ladislaw?"

"No!" thundered Will, in the same attitude as before.

"Should be glad to do you a service, Mr. Ladislaw--by Jove, I should!
Hope to meet again."

Hereupon Raffles, who had lifted his hat with the last words, turned
himself round with a swing of his leg and walked away.  Will looked
after him a moment, and could see that he did not re-enter the
auction-room, but appeared to be walking towards the road.  For an
instant he thought that he had been foolish not to let the man go on
talking;--but no! on the whole he preferred doing without knowledge
from that source.

Later in the evening, however, Raffles overtook him in the street, and
appearing either to have forgotten the roughness of his former
reception or to intend avenging it by a forgiving familiarity, greeted
him jovially and walked by his side, remarking at first on the
pleasantness of the town and neighborhood.  Will suspected that the man
had been drinking and was considering how to shake him off when Raffles
said--

"I've been abroad myself, Mr. Ladislaw--I've seen the world--used to
parley-vous a little.  It was at Boulogne I saw your father--a most
uncommon likeness you are of him, by Jove! mouth--nose--eyes--hair
turned off your brow just like his--a little in the foreign style.
John Bull doesn't do much of that.  But your father was very ill when I
saw him.  Lord, lord! hands you might see through.  You were a small
youngster then.  Did he get well?"

"No," said Will, curtly.

"Ah!  Well!  I've often wondered what became of your mother.  She ran
away from her friends when she was a young lass--a proud-spirited
lass, and pretty, by Jove!  I knew the reason why she ran away," said
Raffles, winking slowly as he looked sideways at Will.

"You know nothing dishonorable of her, sir," said Will, turning on him
rather savagely.  But Mr. Raffles just now was not sensitive to shades
of manner.

"Not a bit!" said he, tossing his head decisively "She was a little too
honorable to like her friends--that was it!"  Here Raffles again winked
slowly.  "Lord bless you, I knew all about 'em--a little in what you
may call the respectable thieving line--the high style of
receiving-house--none of your holes and corners--first-rate. Slap-up
shop, high profits and no mistake.  But Lord!  Sarah would have known
nothing about it--a dashing young lady she was--fine
boarding-school--fit for a lord's wife--only Archie Duncan threw it at
her out of spite, because she would have nothing to do with him.  And
so she ran away from the whole concern.  I travelled for 'em, sir, in a
gentlemanly way--at a high salary.  They didn't mind her running away
at first--godly folks, sir, very godly--and she was for the stage.  The
son was alive then, and the daughter was at a discount.  Hallo! here we
are at the Blue Bull.  What do you say, Mr. Ladislaw?--shall we turn in
and have a glass?"

"No, I must say good evening," said Will, dashing up a passage which
led into Lowick Gate, and almost running to get out of Raffles's reach.

He walked a long while on the Lowick road away from the town, glad of
the starlit darkness when it came.  He felt as if he had had dirt cast
on him amidst shouts of scorn.  There was this to confirm the fellow's
statement--that his mother never would tell him the reason why she had
run away from her family.

Well! what was he, Will Ladislaw, the worse, supposing the truth about
that family to be the ugliest?  His mother had braved hardship in order
to separate herself from it.  But if Dorothea's friends had known this
story--if the Chettams had known it--they would have had a fine color
to give their suspicions a welcome ground for thinking him unfit to
come near her.  However, let them suspect what they pleased, they would
find themselves in the wrong.  They would find out that the blood in
his veins was as free from the taint of meanness as theirs.



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, honored 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 favor 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,
honorable 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 dishonorable
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 honor 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.



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 honor--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 honor 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.





BOOK VII.





TWO TEMPTATIONS.



CHAPTER LXIII.

    These little things are great to little man.--GOLDSMITH.


"Have you seen much of your scientific phoenix, Lydgate, lately?" said
Mr. Toller at one of his Christmas dinner-parties, speaking to Mr.
Farebrother on his right hand.

"Not much, I am sorry to say," answered the Vicar, accustomed to parry
Mr. Toller's banter about his belief in the new medical light.  "I am
out of the way and he is too busy."

"Is he?  I am glad to hear it," said Dr. Minchin, with mingled suavity
and surprise.

"He gives a great deal of time to the New Hospital," said Mr.
Farebrother, who had his reasons for continuing the subject: "I hear of
that from my neighbor, Mrs. Casaubon, who goes there often.  She says
Lydgate is indefatigable, and is making a fine thing of Bulstrode's
institution.  He is preparing a new ward in case of the cholera coming
to us."

"And preparing theories of treatment to try on the patients, I
suppose," said Mr. Toller.

"Come, Toller, be candid," said Mr. Farebrother.  "You are too clever
not to see the good of a bold fresh mind in medicine, as well as in
everything else; and as to cholera, I fancy, none of you are very sure
what you ought to do.  If a man goes a little too far along a new road,
it is usually himself that he harms more than any one else."

"I am sure you and Wrench ought to be obliged to him," said Dr.
Minchin, looking towards Toller, "for he has sent you the cream of
Peacock's patients."

"Lydgate has been living at a great rate for a young beginner," said
Mr. Harry Toller, the brewer.  "I suppose his relations in the North
back him up."

"I hope so," said Mr. Chichely, "else he ought not to have married that
nice girl we were all so fond of.  Hang it, one has a grudge against a
man who carries off the prettiest girl in the town."

"Ay, by God! and the best too," said Mr. Standish.

"My friend Vincy didn't half like the marriage, I know that," said Mr.
Chichely.  "_He_ wouldn't do much.  How the relations on the other side
may have come down I can't say."  There was an emphatic kind of
reticence in Mr. Chichely's manner of speaking.

"Oh, I shouldn't think Lydgate ever looked to practice for a living,"
said Mr. Toller, with a slight touch of sarcasm, and there the subject
was dropped.

This was not the first time that Mr. Farebrother had heard hints of
Lydgate's expenses being obviously too great to be met by his practice,
but he thought it not unlikely that there were resources or
expectations which excused the large outlay at the time of Lydgate's
marriage, and which might hinder any bad consequences from the
disappointment in his practice.  One evening, when he took the pains to
go to Middlemarch on purpose to have a chat with Lydgate as of old, he
noticed in him an air of excited effort quite unlike his usual easy way
of keeping silence or breaking it with abrupt energy whenever he had
anything to say.  Lydgate talked persistently when they were in his
work-room, putting arguments for and against the probability of certain
biological views; but he had none of those definite things to say or to
show which give the waymarks of a patient uninterrupted pursuit, such
as he used himself to insist on, saying that "there must be a systole
and diastole in all inquiry," and that "a man's mind must be
continually expanding and shrinking between the whole human horizon and
the horizon of an object-glass." That evening he seemed to be talking
widely for the sake of resisting any personal bearing; and before long
they went into the drawing room, where Lydgate, having asked Rosamond
to give them music, sank back in his chair in silence, but with a
strange light in his eyes.  "He may have been taking an opiate," was a
thought that crossed Mr. Farebrother's mind--"tic-douloureux
perhaps--or medical worries."

It did not occur to him that Lydgate's marriage was not delightful: he
believed, as the rest did, that Rosamond was an amiable, docile
creature, though he had always thought her rather uninteresting--a
little too much the pattern-card of the finishing-school; and his
mother could not forgive Rosamond because she never seemed to see that
Henrietta Noble was in the room.  "However, Lydgate fell in love with
her," said the Vicar to himself, "and she must be to his taste."

Mr. Farebrother was aware that Lydgate was a proud man, but having very
little corresponding fibre in himself, and perhaps too little care
about personal dignity, except the dignity of not being mean or
foolish, he could hardly allow enough for the way in which Lydgate
shrank, as from a burn, from the utterance of any word about his
private affairs.  And soon after that conversation at Mr. Toller's, the
Vicar learned something which made him watch the more eagerly for an
opportunity of indirectly letting Lydgate know that if he wanted to
open himself about any difficulty there was a friendly ear ready.

The opportunity came at Mr. Vincy's, where, on New Year's Day, there
was a party, to which Mr. Farebrother was irresistibly invited, on the
plea that he must not forsake his old friends on the first new year of
his being a greater man, and Rector as well as Vicar.  And this party
was thoroughly friendly: all the ladies of the Farebrother family were
present; the Vincy children all dined at the table, and Fred had
persuaded his mother that if she did not invite Mary Garth, the
Farebrothers would regard it as a slight to themselves, Mary being
their particular friend.  Mary came, and Fred was in high spirits,
though his enjoyment was of a checkered kind--triumph that his mother
should see Mary's importance with the chief personages in the party
being much streaked with jealousy when Mr. Farebrother sat down by her.
Fred used to be much more easy about his own accomplishments in the
days when he had not begun to dread being "bowled out by Farebrother,"
and this terror was still before him.  Mrs. Vincy, in her fullest
matronly bloom, looked at Mary's little figure, rough wavy hair, and
visage quite without lilies and roses, and wondered; trying
unsuccessfully to fancy herself caring about Mary's appearance in
wedding clothes, or feeling complacency in grandchildren who would
"feature" the Garths.  However, the party was a merry one, and Mary was
particularly bright; being glad, for Fred's sake, that his friends were
getting kinder to her, and being also quite willing that they should
see how much she was valued by others whom they must admit to be judges.

Mr. Farebrother noticed that Lydgate seemed bored, and that Mr. Vincy
spoke as little as possible to his son-in-law. Rosamond was perfectly
graceful and calm, and only a subtle observation such as the Vicar had
not been roused to bestow on her would have perceived the total absence
of that interest in her husband's presence which a loving wife is sure
to betray, even if etiquette keeps her aloof from him.  When Lydgate
was taking part in the conversation, she never looked towards him any
more than if she had been a sculptured Psyche modelled to look another
way: and when, after being called out for an hour or two, he re-entered
the room, she seemed unconscious of the fact, which eighteen months
before would have had the effect of a numeral before ciphers.  In
reality, however, she was intensely aware of Lydgate's voice and
movements; and her pretty good-tempered air of unconsciousness was a
studied negation by which she satisfied her inward opposition to him
without compromise of propriety.  When the ladies were in the
drawing-room after Lydgate had been called away from the dessert, Mrs.
Farebrother, when Rosamond happened to be near her, said--"You have to
give up a great deal of your husband's society, Mrs. Lydgate."

"Yes, the life of a medical man is very arduous: especially when he is
so devoted to his profession as Mr. Lydgate is," said Rosamond, who was
standing, and moved easily away at the end of this correct little
speech.

"It is dreadfully dull for her when there is no company," said Mrs.
Vincy, who was seated at the old lady's side.  "I am sure I thought so
when Rosamond was ill, and I was staying with her.  You know, Mrs.
Farebrother, ours is a cheerful house.  I am of a cheerful disposition
myself, and Mr. Vincy always likes something to be going on.  That is
what Rosamond has been used to.  Very different from a husband out at
odd hours, and never knowing when he will come home, and of a close,
proud disposition, _I_ think"--indiscreet Mrs. Vincy did lower her tone
slightly with this parenthesis.  "But Rosamond always had an angel of a
temper; her brothers used very often not to please her, but she was
never the girl to show temper; from a baby she was always as good as
good, and with a complexion beyond anything.  But my children are all
good-tempered, thank God."

This was easily credible to any one looking at Mrs. Vincy as she threw
back her broad cap-strings, and smiled towards her three little girls,
aged from seven to eleven.  But in that smiling glance she was obliged
to include Mary Garth, whom the three girls had got into a corner to
make her tell them stories.  Mary was just finishing the delicious tale
of Rumpelstiltskin, which she had well by heart, because Letty was
never tired of communicating it to her ignorant elders from a favorite
red volume.  Louisa, Mrs. Vincy's darling, now ran to her with
wide-eyed serious excitement, crying, "Oh mamma, mamma, the little man
stamped so hard on the floor he couldn't get his leg out again!"

"Bless you, my cherub!" said mamma; "you shall tell me all about it
to-morrow. Go and listen!" and then, as her eyes followed Louisa back
towards the attractive corner, she thought that if Fred wished her to
invite Mary again she would make no objection, the children being so
pleased with her.

But presently the corner became still more animated, for Mr.
Farebrother came in, and seating himself behind Louisa, took her on his
lap; whereupon the girls all insisted that he must hear
Rumpelstiltskin, and Mary must tell it over again.  He insisted too,
and Mary, without fuss, began again in her neat fashion, with precisely
the same words as before.  Fred, who had also seated himself near,
would have felt unmixed triumph in Mary's effectiveness if Mr.
Farebrother had not been looking at her with evident admiration, while
he dramatized an intense interest in the tale to please the children.

"You will never care any more about my one-eyed giant, Loo," said Fred
at the end.

"Yes, I shall.  Tell about him now," said Louisa.

"Oh, I dare say; I am quite cut out.  Ask Mr. Farebrother."

"Yes," added Mary; "ask Mr. Farebrother to tell you about the ants
whose beautiful house was knocked down by a giant named Tom, and he
thought they didn't mind because he couldn't hear them cry, or see them
use their pocket-handkerchiefs."

"Please," said Louisa, looking up at the Vicar.

"No, no, I am a grave old parson.  If I try to draw a story out of my
bag a sermon comes instead.  Shall I preach you a sermon?" said he,
putting on his short-sighted glasses, and pursing up his lips.

"Yes," said Louisa, falteringly.

"Let me see, then.  Against cakes: how cakes are bad things, especially
if they are sweet and have plums in them."

Louisa took the affair rather seriously, and got down from the Vicar's
knee to go to Fred.

"Ah, I see it will not do to preach on New Year's Day," said Mr.
Farebrother, rising and walking away.  He had discovered of late that
Fred had become jealous of him, and also that he himself was not losing
his preference for Mary above all other women.

"A delightful young person is Miss Garth," said Mrs. Farebrother, who
had been watching her son's movements.

"Yes," said Mrs. Vincy, obliged to reply, as the old lady turned to her
expectantly.  "It is a pity she is not better-looking."

"I cannot say that," said Mrs. Farebrother, decisively.  "I like her
countenance.  We must not always ask for beauty, when a good God has
seen fit to make an excellent young woman without it.  I put good
manners first, and Miss Garth will know how to conduct herself in any
station."

The old lady was a little sharp in her tone, having a prospective
reference to Mary's becoming her daughter-in-law; for there was this
inconvenience in Mary's position with regard to Fred, that it was not
suitable to be made public, and hence the three ladies at Lowick
Parsonage were still hoping that Camden would choose Miss Garth.

New visitors entered, and the drawing-room was given up to music and
games, while whist-tables were prepared in the quiet room on the other
side of the hall.  Mr. Farebrother played a rubber to satisfy his
mother, who regarded her occasional whist as a protest against scandal
and novelty of opinion, in which light even a revoke had its dignity.
But at the end he got Mr. Chichely to take his place, and left the
room.  As he crossed the hall, Lydgate had just come in and was taking
off his great-coat.

"You are the man I was going to look for," said the Vicar; and instead
of entering the drawing-room, they walked along the hall and stood
against the fireplace, where the frosty air helped to make a glowing
bank.  "You see, I can leave the whist-table easily enough," he went
on, smiling at Lydgate, "now I don't play for money.  I owe that to
you, Mrs. Casaubon says."

"How?" said Lydgate, coldly.

"Ah, you didn't mean me to know it; I call that ungenerous reticence.
You should let a man have the pleasure of feeling that you have done
him a good turn.  I don't enter into some people's dislike of being
under an obligation: upon my word, I prefer being under an obligation
to everybody for behaving well to me."

"I can't tell what you mean," said Lydgate, "unless it is that I once
spoke of you to Mrs. Casaubon.  But I did not think that she would
break her promise not to mention that I had done so," said Lydgate,
leaning his back against the corner of the mantel-piece, and showing no
radiance in his face.

"It was Brooke who let it out, only the other day.  He paid me the
compliment of saying that he was very glad I had the living though you
had come across his tactics, and had praised me up as a lien and a
Tillotson, and that sort of thing, till Mrs. Casaubon would hear of no
one else."

"Oh, Brooke is such a leaky-minded fool," said Lydgate, contemptuously.

"Well, I was glad of the leakiness then.  I don't see why you shouldn't
like me to know that you wished to do me a service, my dear fellow.
And you certainly have done me one.  It's rather a strong check to
one's self-complacency to find how much of one's right doing depends on
not being in want of money.  A man will not be tempted to say the
Lord's Prayer backward to please the devil, if he doesn't want the
devil's services.  I have no need to hang on the smiles of chance now."

"I don't see that there's any money-getting without chance," said
Lydgate; "if a man gets it in a profession, it's pretty sure to come by
chance."

Mr. Farebrother thought he could account for this speech, in striking
contrast with Lydgate's former way of talking, as the perversity which
will often spring from the moodiness of a man ill at ease in his
affairs.  He answered in a tone of good-humored admission--

"Ah, there's enormous patience wanted with the way of the world.  But
it is the easier for a man to wait patiently when he has friends who
love him, and ask for nothing better than to help him through, so far
as it lies in their power."

"Oh yes," said Lydgate, in a careless tone, changing his attitude and
looking at his watch.  "People make much more of their difficulties
than they need to do."

He knew as distinctly as possible that this was an offer of help to
himself from Mr. Farebrother, and he could not bear it.  So strangely
determined are we mortals, that, after having been long gratified with
the sense that he had privately done the Vicar a service, the
suggestion that the Vicar discerned his need of a service in return
made him shrink into unconquerable reticence.  Besides, behind all
making of such offers what else must come?--that he should "mention his
case," imply that he wanted specific things.  At that moment, suicide
seemed easier.

Mr. Farebrother was too keen a man not to know the meaning of that
reply, and there was a certain massiveness in Lydgate's manner and
tone, corresponding with his physique, which if he repelled your
advances in the first instance seemed to put persuasive devices out of
question.

"What time are you?" said the Vicar, devouring his wounded feeling.

"After eleven," said Lydgate.  And they went into the drawing-room.



CHAPTER LXIV.

    1st Gent. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.
    2d Gent.  Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright
                  The coming pest with border fortresses,
                  Or catch your carp with subtle argument.
                  All force is twain in one: cause is not cause
                  Unless effect be there; and action's self
                  Must needs contain a passive.  So command
                  Exists but with obedience."


Even if Lydgate had been inclined to be quite open about his affairs,
he knew that it would have hardly been in Mr. Farebrother's power to
give him the help he immediately wanted.  With the year's bills coming
in from his tradesmen, with Dover's threatening hold on his furniture,
and with nothing to depend on but slow dribbling payments from patients
who must not be offended--for the handsome fees he had had from
Freshitt Hall and Lowick Manor had been easily absorbed--nothing less
than a thousand pounds would have freed him from actual embarrassment,
and left a residue which, according to the favorite phrase of
hopefulness in such circumstances, would have given him "time to look
about him."

Naturally, the merry Christmas bringing the happy New Year, when
fellow-citizens expect to be paid for the trouble and goods they have
smilingly bestowed on their neighbors, had so tightened the pressure of
sordid cares on Lydgate's mind that it was hardly possible for him to
think unbrokenly of any other subject, even the most habitual and
soliciting.  He was not an ill-tempered man; his intellectual activity,
the ardent kindness of his heart, as well as his strong frame, would
always, under tolerably easy conditions, have kept him above the petty
uncontrolled susceptibilities which make bad temper.  But he was now a
prey to that worst irritation which arises not simply from annoyances,
but from the second consciousness underlying those annoyances, of
wasted energy and a degrading preoccupation, which was the reverse of
all his former purposes.  "_This_ is what I am thinking of; and _that_
is what I might have been thinking of," was the bitter incessant murmur
within him, making every difficulty a double goad to impatience.

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general
discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their
great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self
and an insignificant world may have its consolations.  Lydgate's
discontent was much harder to bear: it was the sense that there was a
grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while
his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic
fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears.
His troubles will perhaps appear miserably sordid, and beneath the
attention of lofty persons who can know nothing of debt except on a
magnificent scale.  Doubtless they were sordid; and for the majority,
who are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but by being free
from money-craving, with all its base hopes and temptations, its
watching for death, its hinted requests, its horse-dealer's desire to
make bad work pass for good, its seeking for function which ought to be
another's, its compulsion often to long for Luck in the shape of a wide
calamity.

It was because Lydgate writhed under the idea of getting his neck
beneath this vile yoke that he had fallen into a bitter moody state
which was continually widening Rosamond's alienation from him.  After
the first disclosure about the bill of sale, he had made many efforts
to draw her into sympathy with him about possible measures for
narrowing their expenses, and with the threatening approach of
Christmas his propositions grew more and more definite.  "We two can do
with only one servant, and live on very little," he said, "and I shall
manage with one horse."  For Lydgate, as we have seen, had begun to
reason, with a more distinct vision, about the expenses of living, and
any share of pride he had given to appearances of that sort was meagre
compared with the pride which made him revolt from exposure as a
debtor, or from asking men to help him with their money.

"Of course you can dismiss the other two servants, if you like," said
Rosamond; "but I should have thought it would be very injurious to your
position for us to live in a poor way.  You must expect your practice
to be lowered."

"My dear Rosamond, it is not a question of choice.  We have begun too
expensively.  Peacock, you know, lived in a much smaller house than
this.  It is my fault: I ought to have known better, and I deserve a
thrashing--if there were anybody who had a right to give it me--for
bringing you into the necessity of living in a poorer way than you have
been used to.  But we married because we loved each other, I suppose.
And that may help us to pull along till things get better.  Come, dear,
put down that work and come to me."

He was really in chill gloom about her at that moment, but he dreaded a
future without affection, and was determined to resist the oncoming of
division between them.  Rosamond obeyed him, and he took her on his
knee, but in her secret soul she was utterly aloof from him.  The poor
thing saw only that the world was not ordered to her liking, and
Lydgate was part of that world.  But he held her waist with one hand
and laid the other gently on both of hers; for this rather abrupt man
had much tenderness in his manners towards women, seeming to have
always present in his imagination the weakness of their frames and the
delicate poise of their health both in body and mind.  And he began
again to speak persuasively.

"I find, now I look into things a little, Rosy, that it is wonderful
what an amount of money slips away in our housekeeping.  I suppose the
servants are careless, and we have had a great many people coming.  But
there must be many in our rank who manage with much less: they must do
with commoner things, I suppose, and look after the scraps.  It seems,
money goes but a little way in these matters, for Wrench has everything
as plain as possible, and he has a very large practice."

"Oh, if you think of living as the Wrenches do!" said Rosamond, with a
little turn of her neck.  "But I have heard you express your disgust at
that way of living."

"Yes, they have bad taste in everything--they make economy look ugly.
We needn't do that.  I only meant that they avoid expenses, although
Wrench has a capital practice."

"Why should not you have a good practice, Tertius?  Mr. Peacock had.
You should be more careful not to offend people, and you should send
out medicines as the others do.  I am sure you began well, and you got
several good houses.  It cannot answer to be eccentric; you should
think what will be generally liked," said Rosamond, in a decided little
tone of admonition.

Lydgate's anger rose: he was prepared to be indulgent towards feminine
weakness, but not towards feminine dictation.  The shallowness of a
waternixie's soul may have a charm until she becomes didactic.  But he
controlled himself, and only said, with a touch of despotic firmness--

"What I am to do in my practice, Rosy, it is for me to judge.  That is
not the question between us.  It is enough for you to know that our
income is likely to be a very narrow one--hardly four hundred, perhaps
less, for a long time to come, and we must try to re-arrange our lives
in accordance with that fact."

Rosamond was silent for a moment or two, looking before her, and then
said, "My uncle Bulstrode ought to allow you a salary for the time you
give to the Hospital: it is not right that you should work for nothing."

"It was understood from the beginning that my services would be
gratuitous.  That, again, need not enter into our discussion.  I have
pointed out what is the only probability," said Lydgate, impatiently.
Then checking himself, he went on more quietly--

"I think I see one resource which would free us from a good deal of the
present difficulty.  I hear that young Ned Plymdale is going to be
married to Miss Sophy Toller.  They are rich, and it is not often that
a good house is vacant in Middlemarch.  I feel sure that they would be
glad to take this house from us with most of our furniture, and they
would be willing to pay handsomely for the lease.  I can employ
Trumbull to speak to Plymdale about it."

Rosamond left her husband's knee and walked slowly to the other end of
the room; when she turned round and walked towards him it was evident
that the tears had come, and that she was biting her under-lip and
clasping her hands to keep herself from crying.  Lydgate was
wretched--shaken with anger and yet feeling that it would be unmanly to
vent the anger just now.

"I am very sorry, Rosamond; I know this is painful."

"I thought, at least, when I had borne to send the plate back and have
that man taking an inventory of the furniture--I should have thought
_that_ would suffice."

"I explained it to you at the time, dear.  That was only a security and
behind that security there is a debt.  And that debt must be paid
within the next few months, else we shall have our furniture sold.  If
young Plymdale will take our house and most of our furniture, we shall
be able to pay that debt, and some others too, and we shall be quit of
a place too expensive for us.  We might take a smaller house: Trumbull,
I know, has a very decent one to let at thirty pounds a-year, and this
is ninety."  Lydgate uttered this speech in the curt hammering way with
which we usually try to nail down a vague mind to imperative facts.
Tears rolled silently down Rosamond's cheeks; she just pressed her
handkerchief against them, and stood looking at the large vase on the
mantel-piece. It was a moment of more intense bitterness than she had
ever felt before.  At last she said, without hurry and with careful
emphasis--

"I never could have believed that you would like to act in that way."

"Like it?" burst out Lydgate, rising from his chair, thrusting his
hands in his pockets and stalking away from the hearth; "it's not a
question of liking.  Of course, I don't like it; it's the only thing I
can do."  He wheeled round there, and turned towards her.

"I should have thought there were many other means than that," said
Rosamond.  "Let us have a sale and leave Middlemarch altogether."

"To do what?  What is the use of my leaving my work in Middlemarch to
go where I have none?  We should be just as penniless elsewhere as we
are here," said Lydgate still more angrily.

"If we are to be in that position it will be entirely your own doing,
Tertius," said Rosamond, turning round to speak with the fullest
conviction.  "You will not behave as you ought to do to your own
family.  You offended Captain Lydgate.  Sir Godwin was very kind to me
when we were at Quallingham, and I am sure if you showed proper regard
to him and told him your affairs, he would do anything for you.  But
rather than that, you like giving up our house and furniture to Mr. Ned
Plymdale."

There was something like fierceness in Lydgate's eyes, as he answered
with new violence, "Well, then, if you will have it so, I do like it.
I admit that I like it better than making a fool of myself by going to
beg where it's of no use.  Understand then, that it is what I _like to
do._"

There was a tone in the last sentence which was equivalent to the
clutch of his strong hand on Rosamond's delicate arm.  But for all
that, his will was not a whit stronger than hers.  She immediately
walked out of the room in silence, but with an intense determination to
hinder what Lydgate liked to do.

He went out of the house, but as his blood cooled he felt that the
chief result of the discussion was a deposit of dread within him at the
idea of opening with his wife in future subjects which might again urge
him to violent speech.  It was as if a fracture in delicate crystal had
begun, and he was afraid of any movement that might make it fatal.  His
marriage would be a mere piece of bitter irony if they could not go on
loving each other.  He had long ago made up his mind to what he thought
was her negative character--her want of sensibility, which showed
itself in disregard both of his specific wishes and of his general
aims.  The first great disappointment had been borne: the tender
devotedness and docile adoration of the ideal wife must be renounced,
and life must be taken up on a lower stage of expectation, as it is by
men who have lost their limbs.  But the real wife had not only her
claims, she had still a hold on his heart, and it was his intense
desire that the hold should remain strong.  In marriage, the certainty,
"She will never love me much," is easier to bear than the fear, "I
shall love her no more."  Hence, after that outburst, his inward effort
was entirely to excuse her, and to blame the hard circumstances which
were partly his fault.  He tried that evening, by petting her, to heal
the wound he had made in the morning, and it was not in Rosamond's
nature to be repellent or sulky; indeed, she welcomed the signs that
her husband loved her and was under control.  But this was something
quite distinct from loving _him_. Lydgate would not have chosen soon to
recur to the plan of parting with the house; he was resolved to carry
it out, and say as little more about it as possible.  But Rosamond
herself touched on it at breakfast by saying, mildly--

"Have you spoken to Trumbull yet?"

"No," said Lydgate, "but I shall call on him as I go by this morning.
No time must be lost."  He took Rosamond's question as a sign that she
withdrew her inward opposition, and kissed her head caressingly when he
got up to go away.

As soon as it was late enough to make a call, Rosamond went to Mrs.
Plymdale, Mr. Ned's mother, and entered with pretty congratulations
into the subject of the coming marriage.  Mrs. Plymdale's maternal view
was, that Rosamond might possibly now have retrospective glimpses of
her own folly; and feeling the advantages to be at present all on the
side of her son, was too kind a woman not to behave graciously.

"Yes, Ned is most happy, I must say.  And Sophy Toller is all I could
desire in a daughter-in-law. Of course her father is able to do
something handsome for her--that is only what would be expected with a
brewery like his.  And the connection is everything we should desire.
But that is not what I look at.  She is such a very nice girl--no airs,
no pretensions, though on a level with the first.  I don't mean with
the titled aristocracy.  I see very little good in people aiming out of
their own sphere.  I mean that Sophy is equal to the best in the town,
and she is contented with that."

"I have always thought her very agreeable," said Rosamond.

"I look upon it as a reward for Ned, who never held his head too high,
that he should have got into the very best connection," continued Mrs.
Plymdale, her native sharpness softened by a fervid sense that she was
taking a correct view.  "And such particular people as the Tollers are,
they might have objected because some of our friends are not theirs.
It is well known that your aunt Bulstrode and I have been intimate from
our youth, and Mr. Plymdale has been always on Mr. Bulstrode's side.
And I myself prefer serious opinions.  But the Tollers have welcomed
Ned all the same."

"I am sure he is a very deserving, well-principled young man," said
Rosamond, with a neat air of patronage in return for Mrs. Plymdale's
wholesome corrections.

"Oh, he has not the style of a captain in the army, or that sort of
carriage as if everybody was beneath him, or that showy kind of
talking, and singing, and intellectual talent.  But I am thankful he
has not.  It is a poor preparation both for here and Hereafter."

"Oh dear, yes; appearances have very little to do with happiness," said
Rosamond.  "I think there is every prospect of their being a happy
couple.  What house will they take?"

"Oh, as for that, they must put up with what they can get.  They have
been looking at the house in St. Peter's Place, next to Mr. Hackbutt's;
it belongs to him, and he is putting it nicely in repair.  I suppose
they are not likely to hear of a better.  Indeed, I think Ned will
decide the matter to-day."

"I should think it is a nice house; I like St. Peter's Place."

"Well, it is near the Church, and a genteel situation.  But the windows
are narrow, and it is all ups and downs.  You don't happen to know of
any other that would be at liberty?" said Mrs. Plymdale, fixing her
round black eyes on Rosamond with the animation of a sudden thought in
them.

"Oh no; I hear so little of those things."

Rosamond had not foreseen that question and answer in setting out to
pay her visit; she had simply meant to gather any information which
would help her to avert the parting with her own house under
circumstances thoroughly disagreeable to her.  As to the untruth in her
reply, she no more reflected on it than she did on the untruth there
was in her saying that appearances had very little to do with
happiness.  Her object, she was convinced, was thoroughly justifiable:
it was Lydgate whose intention was inexcusable; and there was a plan in
her mind which, when she had carried it out fully, would prove how very
false a step it would have been for him to have descended from his
position.

She returned home by Mr. Borthrop Trumbull's office, meaning to call
there.  It was the first time in her life that Rosamond had thought of
doing anything in the form of business, but she felt equal to the
occasion.  That she should be obliged to do what she intensely
disliked, was an idea which turned her quiet tenacity into active
invention.  Here was a case in which it could not be enough simply to
disobey and be serenely, placidly obstinate: she must act according to
her judgment, and she said to herself that her judgment was
right--"indeed, if it had not been, she would not have wished to act on
it."

Mr. Trumbull was in the back-room of his office, and received Rosamond
with his finest manners, not only because he had much sensibility to
her charms, but because the good-natured fibre in him was stirred by
his certainty that Lydgate was in difficulties, and that this
uncommonly pretty woman--this young lady with the highest personal
attractions--was likely to feel the pinch of trouble--to find herself
involved in circumstances beyond her control.  He begged her to do him
the honor to take a seat, and stood before her trimming and comporting
himself with an eager solicitude, which was chiefly benevolent.
Rosamond's first question was, whether her husband had called on Mr.
Trumbull that morning, to speak about disposing of their house.

"Yes, ma'am, yes, he did; he did so," said the good auctioneer, trying
to throw something soothing into his iteration.  "I was about to fulfil
his order, if possible, this afternoon.  He wished me not to
procrastinate."

"I called to tell you not to go any further, Mr. Trumbull; and I beg of
you not to mention what has been said on the subject.  Will you oblige
me?"

"Certainly I will, Mrs. Lydgate, certainly.  Confidence is sacred with
me on business or any other topic.  I am then to consider the
commission withdrawn?" said Mr. Trumbull, adjusting the long ends of
his blue cravat with both hands, and looking at Rosamond deferentially.

"Yes, if you please.  I find that Mr. Ned Plymdale has taken a house--the
one in St. Peter's Place next to Mr. Hackbutt's. Mr. Lydgate would be
annoyed that his orders should be fulfilled uselessly.  And besides
that, there are other circumstances which render the proposal
unnecessary."

"Very good, Mrs. Lydgate, very good.  I am at your commands, whenever
you require any service of me," said Mr. Trumbull, who felt pleasure in
conjecturing that some new resources had been opened.  "Rely on me, I
beg.  The affair shall go no further."

That evening Lydgate was a little comforted by observing that Rosamond
was more lively than she had usually been of late, and even seemed
interested in doing what would please him without being asked.  He
thought, "If she will be happy and I can rub through, what does it all
signify?  It is only a narrow swamp that we have to pass in a long
journey.  If I can get my mind clear again, I shall do."

He was so much cheered that he began to search for an account of
experiments which he had long ago meant to look up, and had neglected
out of that creeping self-despair which comes in the train of petty
anxieties.  He felt again some of the old delightful absorption in a
far-reaching inquiry, while Rosamond played the quiet music which was
as helpful to his meditation as the plash of an oar on the evening
lake.  It was rather late; he had pushed away all the books, and was
looking at the fire with his hands clasped behind his head in
forgetfulness of everything except the construction of a new
controlling experiment, when Rosamond, who had left the piano and was
leaning back in her chair watching him, said--

"Mr. Ned Plymdale has taken a house already."

Lydgate, startled and jarred, looked up in silence for a moment, like a
man who has been disturbed in his sleep.  Then flushing with an
unpleasant consciousness, he asked--

"How do you know?"

"I called at Mrs. Plymdale's this morning, and she told me that he had
taken the house in St. Peter's Place, next to Mr. Hackbutt's."

Lydgate was silent.  He drew his hands from behind his head and pressed
them against the hair which was hanging, as it was apt to do, in a mass
on his forehead, while he rested his elbows on his knees.  He was
feeling bitter disappointment, as if he had opened a door out of a
suffocating place and had found it walled up; but he also felt sure
that Rosamond was pleased with the cause of his disappointment.  He
preferred not looking at her and not speaking, until he had got over
the first spasm of vexation.  After all, he said in his bitterness,
what can a woman care about so much as house and furniture? a husband
without them is an absurdity.  When he looked up and pushed his hair
aside, his dark eyes had a miserable blank non-expectance of sympathy
in them, but he only said, coolly--

"Perhaps some one else may turn up.  I told Trumbull to be on the
look-out if he failed with Plymdale."

Rosamond made no remark.  She trusted to the chance that nothing more
would pass between her husband and the auctioneer until some issue
should have justified her interference; at any rate, she had hindered
the event which she immediately dreaded.  After a pause, she said--

"How much money is it that those disagreeable people want?"

"What disagreeable people?"

"Those who took the list--and the others.  I mean, how much money would
satisfy them so that you need not be troubled any more?"

Lydgate surveyed her for a moment, as if he were looking for symptoms,
and then said, "Oh, if I could have got six hundred from Plymdale for
furniture and as premium, I might have managed.  I could have paid off
Dover, and given enough on account to the others to make them wait
patiently, if we contracted our expenses."

"But I mean how much should you want if we stayed in this house?"

"More than I am likely to get anywhere," said Lydgate, with rather a
grating sarcasm in his tone.  It angered him to perceive that
Rosamond's mind was wandering over impracticable wishes instead of
facing possible efforts.

"Why should you not mention the sum?" said Rosamond, with a mild
indication that she did not like his manners.

"Well," said Lydgate in a guessing tone, "it would take at least a
thousand to set me at ease.  But," he added, incisively, "I have to
consider what I shall do without it, not with it."

Rosamond said no more.

But the next day she carried out her plan of writing to Sir Godwin
Lydgate.  Since the Captain's visit, she had received a letter from
him, and also one from Mrs. Mengan, his married sister, condoling with
her on the loss of her baby, and expressing vaguely the hope that they
should see her again at Quallingham.  Lydgate had told her that this
politeness meant nothing; but she was secretly convinced that any
backwardness in Lydgate's family towards him was due to his cold and
contemptuous behavior, and she had answered the letters in her most
charming manner, feeling some confidence that a specific invitation
would follow.  But there had been total silence.  The Captain evidently
was not a great penman, and Rosamond reflected that the sisters might
have been abroad.  However, the season was come for thinking of friends
at home, and at any rate Sir Godwin, who had chucked her under the
chin, and pronounced her to be like the celebrated beauty, Mrs. Croly,
who had made a conquest of him in 1790, would be touched by any appeal
from her, and would find it pleasant for her sake to behave as he ought
to do towards his nephew.  Rosamond was naively convinced of what an
old gentleman ought to do to prevent her from suffering annoyance.  And
she wrote what she considered the most judicious letter possible--one
which would strike Sir Godwin as a proof of her excellent sense--pointing
out how desirable it was that Tertius should quit such a place
as Middlemarch for one more fitted to his talents, how the unpleasant
character of the inhabitants had hindered his professional success, and
how in consequence he was in money difficulties, from which it would
require a thousand pounds thoroughly to extricate him.  She did not say
that Tertius was unaware of her intention to write; for she had the
idea that his supposed sanction of her letter would be in accordance
with what she did say of his great regard for his uncle Godwin as the
relative who had always been his best friend.  Such was the force of
Poor Rosamond's tactics now she applied them to affairs.

This had happened before the party on New Year's Day, and no answer had
yet come from Sir Godwin.  But on the morning of that day Lydgate had
to learn that Rosamond had revoked his order to Borthrop Trumbull.
Feeling it necessary that she should be gradually accustomed to the
idea of their quitting the house in Lowick Gate, he overcame his
reluctance to speak to her again on the subject, and when they were
breakfasting said--

"I shall try to see Trumbull this morning, and tell him to advertise
the house in the 'Pioneer' and the 'Trumpet.' If the thing were
advertised, some one might be inclined to take it who would not
otherwise have thought of a change.  In these country places many
people go on in their old houses when their families are too large for
them, for want of knowing where they can find another.  And Trumbull
seems to have got no bite at all."

Rosamond knew that the inevitable moment was come.  "I ordered Trumbull
not to inquire further," she said, with a careful calmness which was
evidently defensive.

Lydgate stared at her in mute amazement.  Only half an hour before he
had been fastening up her plaits for her, and talking the "little
language" of affection, which Rosamond, though not returning it,
accepted as if she had been a serene and lovely image, now and then
miraculously dimpling towards her votary.  With such fibres still astir
in him, the shock he received could not at once be distinctly anger; it
was confused pain.  He laid down the knife and fork with which he was
carving, and throwing himself back in his chair, said at last, with a
cool irony in his tone--

"May I ask when and why you did so?"

"When I knew that the Plymdales had taken a house, I called to tell him
not to mention ours to them; and at the same time I told him not to let
the affair go on any further.  I knew that it would be very injurious
to you if it were known that you wished to part with your house and
furniture, and I had a very strong objection to it.  I think that was
reason enough."

"It was of no consequence then that I had told you imperative reasons
of another kind; of no consequence that I had come to a different
conclusion, and given an order accordingly?" said Lydgate, bitingly,
the thunder and lightning gathering about his brow and eyes.

The effect of any one's anger on Rosamond had always been to make her
shrink in cold dislike, and to become all the more calmly correct, in
the conviction that she was not the person to misbehave whatever others
might do.  She replied--

"I think I had a perfect right to speak on a subject which concerns me
at least as much as you."

"Clearly--you had a right to speak, but only to me.  You had no right
to contradict my orders secretly, and treat me as if I were a fool,"
said Lydgate, in the same tone as before.  Then with some added scorn,
"Is it possible to make you understand what the consequences will be?
Is it of any use for me to tell you again why we must try to part with
the house?"

"It is not necessary for you to tell me again," said Rosamond, in a
voice that fell and trickled like cold water-drops. "I remembered what
you said.  You spoke just as violently as you do now.  But that does
not alter my opinion that you ought to try every other means rather
than take a step which is so painful to me.  And as to advertising the
house, I think it would be perfectly degrading to you."

"And suppose I disregard your opinion as you disregard mine?"

"You can do so, of course.  But I think you ought to have told me
before we were married that you would place me in the worst position,
rather than give up your own will."

Lydgate did not speak, but tossed his head on one side, and twitched
the corners of his mouth in despair.  Rosamond, seeing that he was not
looking at her, rose and set his cup of coffee before him; but he took
no notice of it, and went on with an inward drama and argument,
occasionally moving in his seat, resting one arm on the table, and
rubbing his hand against his hair.  There was a conflux of emotions and
thoughts in him that would not let him either give thorough way to his
anger or persevere with simple rigidity of resolve.  Rosamond took
advantage of his silence.

"When we were married everyone felt that your position was very high.
I could not have imagined then that you would want to sell our
furniture, and take a house in Bride Street, where the rooms are like
cages.  If we are to live in that way let us at least leave
Middlemarch."

"These would be very strong considerations," said Lydgate, half
ironically--still there was a withered paleness about his lips as he
looked at his coffee, and did not drink--"these would be very strong
considerations if I did not happen to be in debt."

"Many persons must have been in debt in the same way, but if they are
respectable, people trust them.  I am sure I have heard papa say that
the Torbits were in debt, and they went on very well.  It cannot be
good to act rashly," said Rosamond, with serene wisdom.

Lydgate sat paralyzed by opposing impulses: since no reasoning he could
apply to Rosamond seemed likely to conquer her assent, he wanted to
smash and grind some object on which he could at least produce an
impression, or else to tell her brutally that he was master, and she
must obey.  But he not only dreaded the effect of such extremities on
their mutual life--he had a growing dread of Rosamond's quiet elusive
obstinacy, which would not allow any assertion of power to be final;
and again, she had touched him in a spot of keenest feeling by implying
that she had been deluded with a false vision of happiness in marrying
him.  As to saying that he was master, it was not the fact.  The very
resolution to which he had wrought himself by dint of logic and
honorable pride was beginning to relax under her torpedo contact.  He
swallowed half his cup of coffee, and then rose to go.

"I may at least request that you will not go to Trumbull at
present--until it has been seen that there are no other means," said
Rosamond.  Although she was not subject to much fear, she felt it safer
not to betray that she had written to Sir Godwin.  "Promise me that you
will not go to him for a few weeks, or without telling me."

Lydgate gave a short laugh.  "I think it is I who should exact a
promise that you will do nothing without telling me," he said, turning
his eyes sharply upon her, and then moving to the door.

"You remember that we are going to dine at papa's," said Rosamond,
wishing that he should turn and make a more thorough concession to her.
But he only said "Oh yes," impatiently, and went away.  She held it to
be very odious in him that he did not think the painful propositions he
had had to make to her were enough, without showing so unpleasant a
temper.  And when she put the moderate request that he would defer
going to Trumbull again, it was cruel in him not to assure her of what
he meant to do.  She was convinced of her having acted in every way for
the best; and each grating or angry speech of Lydgate's served only as
an addition to the register of offences in her mind.  Poor Rosamond for
months had begun to associate her husband with feelings of
disappointment, and the terribly inflexible relation of marriage had
lost its charm of encouraging delightful dreams.  It had freed her from
the disagreeables of her father's house, but it had not given her
everything that she had wished and hoped.  The Lydgate with whom she
had been in love had been a group of airy conditions for her, most of
which had disappeared, while their place had been taken by every-day
details which must be lived through slowly from hour to hour, not
floated through with a rapid selection of favorable aspects.  The
habits of Lydgate's profession, his home preoccupation with scientific
subjects, which seemed to her almost like a morbid vampire's taste, his
peculiar views of things which had never entered into the dialogue of
courtship--all these continually alienating influences, even without
the fact of his having placed himself at a disadvantage in the town,
and without that first shock of revelation about Dover's debt, would
have made his presence dull to her.  There was another presence which
ever since the early days of her marriage, until four months ago, had
been an agreeable excitement, but that was gone: Rosamond would not
confess to herself how much the consequent blank had to do with her
utter ennui; and it seemed to her (perhaps she was right) that an
invitation to Quallingham, and an opening for Lydgate to settle
elsewhere than in Middlemarch--in London, or somewhere likely to be
free from unpleasantness--would satisfy her quite well, and make her
indifferent to the absence of Will Ladislaw, towards whom she felt some
resentment for his exaltation of Mrs. Casaubon.

That was the state of things with Lydgate and Rosamond on the New
Year's Day when they dined at her father's, she looking mildly neutral
towards him in remembrance of his ill-tempered behavior at breakfast,
and he carrying a much deeper effect from the inward conflict in which
that morning scene was only one of many epochs.  His flushed effort
while talking to Mr. Farebrother--his effort after the cynical pretence
that all ways of getting money are essentially the same, and that
chance has an empire which reduces choice to a fool's illusion--was but
the symptom of a wavering resolve, a benumbed response to the old
stimuli of enthusiasm.

What was he to do?  He saw even more keenly than Rosamond did the
dreariness of taking her into the small house in Bride Street, where
she would have scanty furniture around her and discontent within: a
life of privation and life with Rosamond were two images which had
become more and more irreconcilable ever since the threat of privation
had disclosed itself.  But even if his resolves had forced the two
images into combination, the useful preliminaries to that hard change
were not visibly within reach.  And though he had not given the promise
which his wife had asked for, he did not go again to Trumbull.  He even
began to think of taking a rapid journey to the North and seeing Sir
Godwin.  He had once believed that nothing would urge him into making
an application for money to his uncle, but he had not then known the
full pressure of alternatives yet more disagreeable.  He could not
depend on the effect of a letter; it was only in an interview, however
disagreeable this might be to himself, that he could give a thorough
explanation and could test the effectiveness of kinship.  No sooner had
Lydgate begun to represent this step to himself as the easiest than
there was a reaction of anger that he--he who had long ago determined
to live aloof from such abject calculations, such self-interested
anxiety about the inclinations and the pockets of men with whom he had
been proud to have no aims in common--should have fallen not simply to
their level, but to the level of soliciting them.



CHAPTER LXV.

    "One of us two must bowen douteless,
     And, sith a man is more reasonable
     Than woman is, ye [men] moste be suffrable.
                             --CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales.


The bias of human nature to be slow in correspondence triumphs even
over the present quickening in the general pace of things: what wonder
then that in 1832 old Sir Godwin Lydgate was slow to write a letter
which was of consequence to others rather than to himself?  Nearly
three weeks of the new year were gone, and Rosamond, awaiting an answer
to her winning appeal, was every day disappointed.  Lydgate, in total
ignorance of her expectations, was seeing the bills come in, and
feeling that Dover's use of his advantage over other creditors was
imminent.  He had never mentioned to Rosamond his brooding purpose of
going to Quallingham: he did not want to admit what would appear to her
a concession to her wishes after indignant refusal, until the last
moment; but he was really expecting to set off soon.  A slice of the
railway would enable him to manage the whole journey and back in four
days.

But one morning after Lydgate had gone out, a letter came addressed to
him, which Rosamond saw clearly to be from Sir Godwin.  She was full of
hope.  Perhaps there might be a particular note to her enclosed; but
Lydgate was naturally addressed on the question of money or other aid,
and the fact that he was written to, nay, the very delay in writing at
all, seemed to certify that the answer was thoroughly compliant.  She
was too much excited by these thoughts to do anything but light
stitching in a warm corner of the dining-room, with the outside of this
momentous letter lying on the table before her.  About twelve she heard
her husband's step in the passage, and tripping to open the door, she
said in her lightest tones, "Tertius, come in here--here is a letter
for you."

"Ah?" he said, not taking off his hat, but just turning her round
within his arm to walk towards the spot where the letter lay.  "My
uncle Godwin!" he exclaimed, while Rosamond reseated herself, and
watched him as he opened the letter.  She had expected him to be
surprised.

While Lydgate's eyes glanced rapidly over the brief letter, she saw his
face, usually of a pale brown, taking on a dry whiteness; with nostrils
and lips quivering he tossed down the letter before her, and said
violently--

"It will be impossible to endure life with you, if you will always be
acting secretly--acting in opposition to me and hiding your actions."

He checked his speech and turned his back on her--then wheeled round
and walked about, sat down, and got up again restlessly, grasping hard
the objects deep down in his pockets.  He was afraid of saying
something irremediably cruel.

Rosamond too had changed color as she read.  The letter ran in this
way:--

"DEAR TERTIUS,--Don't set your wife to write to me when you have
anything to ask.  It is a roundabout wheedling sort of thing which I
should not have credited you with.  I never choose to write to a woman
on matters of business.  As to my supplying you with a thousand pounds,
or only half that sum, I can do nothing of the sort.  My own family
drains me to the last penny.  With two younger sons and three
daughters, I am not likely to have cash to spare.  You seem to have got
through your own money pretty quickly, and to have made a mess where
you are; the sooner you go somewhere else the better.  But I have
nothing to do with men of your profession, and can't help you there.  I
did the best I could for you as guardian, and let you have your own way
in taking to medicine.  You might have gone into the army or the
Church.  Your money would have held out for that, and there would have
been a surer ladder before you.  Your uncle Charles has had a grudge
against you for not going into his profession, but not I. I have always
wished you well, but you must consider yourself on your own legs
entirely now.

                Your affectionate uncle,
                        GODWIN LYDGATE."

When Rosamond had finished reading the letter she sat quite still, with
her hands folded before her, restraining any show of her keen
disappointment, and intrenching herself in quiet passivity under her
husband's wrath.  Lydgate paused in his movements, looked at her again,
and said, with biting severity--

"Will this be enough to convince you of the harm you may do by secret
meddling?  Have you sense enough to recognize now your incompetence to
judge and act for me--to interfere with your ignorance in affairs which
it belongs to me to decide on?"

The words were hard; but this was not the first time that Lydgate had
been frustrated by her.  She did not look at him, and made no reply.

"I had nearly resolved on going to Quallingham.  It would have cost me
pain enough to do it, yet it might have been of some use.  But it has
been of no use for me to think of anything.  You have always been
counteracting me secretly.  You delude me with a false assent, and then
I am at the mercy of your devices.  If you mean to resist every wish I
express, say so and defy me.  I shall at least know what I am doing
then."

It is a terrible moment in young lives when the closeness of love's
bond has turned to this power of galling.  In spite of Rosamond's
self-control a tear fell silently and rolled over her lips.  She still
said nothing; but under that quietude was hidden an intense effect: she
was in such entire disgust with her husband that she wished she had
never seen him.  Sir Godwin's rudeness towards her and utter want of
feeling ranged him with Dover and all other creditors--disagreeable
people who only thought of themselves, and did not mind how annoying
they were to her.  Even her father was unkind, and might have done more
for them.  In fact there was but one person in Rosamond's world whom
she did not regard as blameworthy, and that was the graceful creature
with blond plaits and with little hands crossed before her, who had
never expressed herself unbecomingly, and had always acted for the
best--the best naturally being what she best liked.

Lydgate pausing and looking at her began to feel that half-maddening
sense of helplessness which comes over passionate people when their
passion is met by an innocent-looking silence whose meek victimized air
seems to put them in the wrong, and at last infects even the justest
indignation with a doubt of its justice.  He needed to recover the full
sense that he was in the right by moderating his words.

"Can you not see, Rosamond," he began again, trying to be simply grave
and not bitter, "that nothing can be so fatal as a want of openness and
confidence between us?  It has happened again and again that I have
expressed a decided wish, and you have seemed to assent, yet after that
you have secretly disobeyed my wish.  In that way I can never know what
I have to trust to.  There would be some hope for us if you would admit
this.  Am I such an unreasonable, furious brute?  Why should you not be
open with me?"  Still silence.

"Will you only say that you have been mistaken, and that I may depend
on your not acting secretly in future?" said Lydgate, urgently, but
with something of request in his tone which Rosamond was quick to
perceive.  She spoke with coolness.

"I cannot possibly make admissions or promises in answer to such words
as you have used towards me.  I have not been accustomed to language of
that kind.  You have spoken of my 'secret meddling,' and my
'interfering ignorance,' and my 'false assent.'  I have never expressed
myself in that way to you, and I think that you ought to apologize.
You spoke of its being impossible to live with me.  Certainly you have
not made my life pleasant to me of late.  I think it was to be expected
that I should try to avert some of the hardships which our marriage has
brought on me."  Another tear fell as Rosamond ceased speaking, and she
pressed it away as quietly as the first.

Lydgate flung himself into a chair, feeling checkmated.  What place was
there in her mind for a remonstrance to lodge in?  He laid down his
hat, flung an arm over the back of his chair, and looked down for some
moments without speaking.  Rosamond had the double purchase over him of
insensibility to the point of justice in his reproach, and of
sensibility to the undeniable hardships now present in her married
life.  Although her duplicity in the affair of the house had exceeded
what he knew, and had really hindered the Plymdales from knowing of it,
she had no consciousness that her action could rightly be called false.
We are not obliged to identify our own acts according to a strict
classification, any more than the materials of our grocery and clothes.
Rosamond felt that she was aggrieved, and that this was what Lydgate
had to recognize.

As for him, the need of accommodating himself to her nature, which was
inflexible in proportion to its negations, held him as with pincers.
He had begun to have an alarmed foresight of her irrevocable loss of
love for him, and the consequent dreariness of their life.  The ready
fulness of his emotions made this dread alternate quickly with the
first violent movements of his anger.  It would assuredly have been a
vain boast in him to say that he was her master.

"You have not made my life pleasant to me of late"--"the hardships
which our marriage has brought on me"--these words were stinging his
imagination as a pain makes an exaggerated dream.  If he were not only
to sink from his highest resolve, but to sink into the hideous
fettering of domestic hate?

"Rosamond," he said, turning his eyes on her with a melancholy look,
"you should allow for a man's words when he is disappointed and
provoked.  You and I cannot have opposite interests.  I cannot part my
happiness from yours.  If I am angry with you, it is that you seem not
to see how any concealment divides us.  How could I wish to make
anything hard to you either by my words or conduct?  When I hurt you, I
hurt part of my own life.  I should never be angry with you if you
would be quite open with me."

"I have only wished to prevent you from hurrying us into wretchedness
without any necessity," said Rosamond, the tears coming again from a
softened feeling now that her husband had softened.  "It is so very
hard to be disgraced here among all the people we know, and to live in
such a miserable way.  I wish I had died with the baby."

She spoke and wept with that gentleness which makes such words and
tears omnipotent over a loving-hearted man.  Lydgate drew his chair
near to hers and pressed her delicate head against his cheek with his
powerful tender hand.  He only caressed her; he did not say anything;
for what was there to say?  He could not promise to shield her from the
dreaded wretchedness, for he could see no sure means of doing so.  When
he left her to go out again, he told himself that it was ten times
harder for her than for him: he had a life away from home, and constant
appeals to his activity on behalf of others.  He wished to excuse
everything in her if he could--but it was inevitable that in that
excusing mood he should think of her as if she were an animal of
another and feebler species.  Nevertheless she had mastered him.



CHAPTER LXVI.

    "'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
      Another thing to fall."
                          --Measure for Measure.


Lydgate certainly had good reason to reflect on the service his
practice did him in counteracting his personal cares.  He had no longer
free energy enough for spontaneous research and speculative thinking,
but by the bedside of patients, the direct external calls on his
judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse needed to draw him
out of himself.  It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine
which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live
calmly--it was a perpetual claim on the immediate fresh application of
thought, and on the consideration of another's need and trial.  Many of
us looking back through life would say that the kindest man we have
ever known has been a medical man, or perhaps that surgeon whose fine
tact, directed by deeply informed perception, has come to us in our
need with a more sublime beneficence than that of miracle-workers. Some
of that twice-blessed mercy was always with Lydgate in his work at the
Hospital or in private houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet
and sustain him under his anxieties and his sense of mental degeneracy.

Mr. Farebrother's suspicion as to the opiate was true, however.  Under
the first galling pressure of foreseen difficulties, and the first
perception that his marriage, if it were not to be a yoked loneliness,
must be a state of effort to go on loving without too much care about
being loved, he had once or twice tried a dose of opium.  But he had no
hereditary constitutional craving after such transient escapes from the
hauntings of misery.  He was strong, could drink a great deal of wine,
but did not care about it; and when the men round him were drinking
spirits, he took sugar and water, having a contemptuous pity even for
the earliest stages of excitement from drink.  It was the same with
gambling.  He had looked on at a great deal of gambling in Paris,
watching it as if it had been a disease.  He was no more tempted by
such winning than he was by drink.  He had said to himself that the
only winning he cared for must be attained by a conscious process of
high, difficult combination tending towards a beneficent result.  The
power he longed for could not be represented by agitated fingers
clutching a heap of coin, or by the half-barbarous, half-idiotic
triumph in the eyes of a man who sweeps within his arms the ventures of
twenty chapfallen companions.

But just as he had tried opium, so his thought now began to turn upon
gambling--not with appetite for its excitement, but with a sort of
wistful inward gaze after that easy way of getting money, which implied
no asking and brought no responsibility.  If he had been in London or
Paris at that time, it is probable that such thoughts, seconded by
opportunity, would have taken him into a gambling-house, no longer to
watch the gamblers, but to watch with them in kindred eagerness.
Repugnance would have been surmounted by the immense need to win, if
chance would be kind enough to let him.  An incident which happened not
very long after that airy notion of getting aid from his uncle had been
excluded, was a strong sign of the effect that might have followed any
extant opportunity of gambling.

The billiard-room at the Green Dragon was the constant resort of a
certain set, most of whom, like our acquaintance Mr. Bambridge, were
regarded as men of pleasure.  It was here that poor Fred Vincy had made
part of his memorable debt, having lost money in betting, and been
obliged to borrow of that gay companion.  It was generally known in
Middlemarch that a good deal of money was lost and won in this way; and
the consequent repute of the Green Dragon as a place of dissipation
naturally heightened in some quarters the temptation to go there.
Probably its regular visitants, like the initiates of freemasonry,
wished that there were something a little more tremendous to keep to
themselves concerning it; but they were not a closed community, and
many decent seniors as well as juniors occasionally turned into the
billiard-room to see what was going on.  Lydgate, who had the muscular
aptitude for billiards, and was fond of the game, had once or twice in
the early days after his arrival in Middlemarch taken his turn with the
cue at the Green Dragon; but afterwards he had no leisure for the game,
and no inclination for the socialities there.  One evening, however, he
had occasion to seek Mr. Bambridge at that resort.  The horsedealer had
engaged to get him a customer for his remaining good horse, for which
Lydgate had determined to substitute a cheap hack, hoping by this
reduction of style to get perhaps twenty pounds; and he cared now for
every small sum, as a help towards feeding the patience of his
tradesmen.  To run up to the billiard-room, as he was passing, would
save time.

Mr. Bambridge was not yet come, but would be sure to arrive by-and-by,
said his friend Mr. Horrock; and Lydgate stayed, playing a game for the
sake of passing the time.  That evening he had the peculiar light in
the eyes and the unusual vivacity which had been once noticed in him by
Mr. Farebrother.  The exceptional fact of his presence was much noticed
in the room, where there was a good deal of Middlemarch company; and
several lookers-on, as well as some of the players, were betting with
animation.  Lydgate was playing well, and felt confident; the bets were
dropping round him, and with a swift glancing thought of the probable
gain which might double the sum he was saving from his horse, he began
to bet on his own play, and won again and again.  Mr. Bambridge had
come in, but Lydgate did not notice him.  He was not only excited with
his play, but visions were gleaming on him of going the next day to
Brassing, where there was gambling on a grander scale to be had, and
where, by one powerful snatch at the devil's bait, he might carry it
off without the hook, and buy his rescue from his daily solicitings.

He was still winning when two new visitors entered.  One of them was a
young Hawley, just come from his law studies in town, and the other was
Fred Vincy, who had spent several evenings of late at this old haunt of
his.  Young Hawley, an accomplished billiard-player, brought a cool
fresh hand to the cue.  But Fred Vincy, startled at seeing Lydgate, and
astonished to see him betting with an excited air, stood aside, and
kept out of the circle round the table.

Fred had been rewarding resolution by a little laxity of late.  He had
been working heartily for six months at all outdoor occupations under
Mr. Garth, and by dint of severe practice had nearly mastered the
defects of his handwriting, this practice being, perhaps, a little the
less severe that it was often carried on in the evening at Mr. Garth's
under the eyes of Mary.  But the last fortnight Mary had been staying
at Lowick Parsonage with the ladies there, during Mr. Farebrother's
residence in Middlemarch, where he was carrying out some parochial
plans; and Fred, not seeing anything more agreeable to do, had turned
into the Green Dragon, partly to play at billiards, partly to taste the
old flavor of discourse about horses, sport, and things in general,
considered from a point of view which was not strenuously correct.  He
had not been out hunting once this season, had had no horse of his own
to ride, and had gone from place to place chiefly with Mr. Garth in his
gig, or on the sober cob which Mr. Garth could lend him.  It was a
little too bad, Fred began to think, that he should be kept in the
traces with more severity than if he had been a clergyman.  "I will
tell you what, Mistress Mary--it will be rather harder work to learn
surveying and drawing plans than it would have been to write sermons,"
he had said, wishing her to appreciate what he went through for her
sake; "and as to Hercules and Theseus, they were nothing to me.  They
had sport, and never learned to write a bookkeeping hand." And now,
Mary being out of the way for a little while, Fred, like any other
strong dog who cannot slip his collar, had pulled up the staple of his
chain and made a small escape, not of course meaning to go fast or far.
There could be no reason why he should not play at billiards, but he
was determined not to bet.  As to money just now, Fred had in his mind
the heroic project of saving almost all of the eighty pounds that Mr.
Garth offered him, and returning it, which he could easily do by giving
up all futile money-spending, since he had a superfluous stock of
clothes, and no expense in his board.  In that way he could, in one
year, go a good way towards repaying the ninety pounds of which he had
deprived Mrs. Garth, unhappily at a time when she needed that sum more
than she did now.  Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that on this
evening, which was the fifth of his recent visits to the billiard-room,
Fred had, not in his pocket, but in his mind, the ten pounds which he
meant to reserve for himself from his half-year's salary (having before
him the pleasure of carrying thirty to Mrs. Garth when Mary was likely
to be come home again)--he had those ten pounds in his mind as a fund
from which he might risk something, if there were a chance of a good
bet.  Why?  Well, when sovereigns were flying about, why shouldn't he
catch a few?  He would never go far along that road again; but a man
likes to assure himself, and men of pleasure generally, what he could
do in the way of mischief if he chose, and that if he abstains from
making himself ill, or beggaring himself, or talking with the utmost
looseness which the narrow limits of human capacity will allow, it is
not because he is a spooney.  Fred did not enter into formal reasons,
which are a very artificial, inexact way of representing the tingling
returns of old habit, and the caprices of young blood: but there was
lurking in him a prophetic sense that evening, that when he began to
play he should also begin to bet--that he should enjoy some
punch-drinking, and in general prepare himself for feeling "rather
seedy" in the morning.  It is in such indefinable movements that action
often begins.

But the last thing likely to have entered Fred's expectation was that
he should see his brother-in-law Lydgate--of whom he had never quite
dropped the old opinion that he was a prig, and tremendously conscious
of his superiority--looking excited and betting, just as he himself
might have done.  Fred felt a shock greater than he could quite account
for by the vague knowledge that Lydgate was in debt, and that his
father had refused to help him; and his own inclination to enter into
the play was suddenly checked.  It was a strange reversal of attitudes:
Fred's blond face and blue eyes, usually bright and careless, ready to
give attention to anything that held out a promise of amusement,
looking involuntarily grave and almost embarrassed as if by the sight
of something unfitting; while Lydgate, who had habitually an air of
self-possessed strength, and a certain meditativeness that seemed to
lie behind his most observant attention, was acting, watching, speaking
with that excited narrow consciousness which reminds one of an animal
with fierce eyes and retractile claws.

Lydgate, by betting on his own strokes, had won sixteen pounds; but
young Hawley's arrival had changed the poise of things.  He made
first-rate strokes himself, and began to bet against Lydgate's strokes,
the strain of whose nerves was thus changed from simple confidence in
his own movements to defying another person's doubt in them.  The
defiance was more exciting than the confidence, but it was less sure.
He continued to bet on his own play, but began often to fail.  Still he
went on, for his mind was as utterly narrowed into that precipitous
crevice of play as if he had been the most ignorant lounger there.
Fred observed that Lydgate was losing fast, and found himself in the
new situation of puzzling his brains to think of some device by which,
without being offensive, he could withdraw Lydgate's attention, and
perhaps suggest to him a reason for quitting the room.  He saw that
others were observing Lydgate's strange unlikeness to himself, and it
occurred to him that merely to touch his elbow and call him aside for a
moment might rouse him from his absorption.  He could think of nothing
cleverer than the daring improbability of saying that he wanted to see
Rosy, and wished to know if she were at home this evening; and he was
going desperately to carry out this weak device, when a waiter came up
to him with a message, saying that Mr. Farebrother was below, and
begged to speak with him.

Fred was surprised, not quite comfortably, but sending word that he
would be down immediately, he went with a new impulse up to Lydgate,
said, "Can I speak to you a moment?" and drew him aside.

"Farebrother has just sent up a message to say that he wants to speak
to me.  He is below.  I thought you might like to know he was there, if
you had anything to say to him."

Fred had simply snatched up this pretext for speaking, because he could
not say, "You are losing confoundedly, and are making everybody stare
at you; you had better come away."  But inspiration could hardly have
served him better.  Lydgate had not before seen that Fred was present,
and his sudden appearance with an announcement of Mr. Farebrother had
the effect of a sharp concussion.

"No, no," said Lydgate; "I have nothing particular to say to him.
But--the game is up--I must be going--I came in just to see Bambridge."

"Bambridge is over there, but he is making a row--I don't think he's
ready for business.  Come down with me to Farebrother.  I expect he is
going to blow me up, and you will shield me," said Fred, with some
adroitness.

Lydgate felt shame, but could not bear to act as if he felt it, by
refusing to see Mr. Farebrother; and he went down.  They merely shook
hands, however, and spoke of the frost; and when all three had turned
into the street, the Vicar seemed quite willing to say good-by to
Lydgate.  His present purpose was clearly to talk with Fred alone, and
he said, kindly, "I disturbed you, young gentleman, because I have some
pressing business with you.  Walk with me to St. Botolph's, will you?"

It was a fine night, the sky thick with stars, and Mr. Farebrother
proposed that they should make a circuit to the old church by the
London road.  The next thing he said was--

"I thought Lydgate never went to the Green Dragon?"

"So did I," said Fred.  "But he said that he went to see Bambridge."

"He was not playing, then?"

Fred had not meant to tell this, but he was obliged now to say, "Yes,
he was.  But I suppose it was an accidental thing.  I have never seen
him there before."

"You have been going often yourself, then, lately?"

"Oh, about five or six times."

"I think you had some good reason for giving up the habit of going
there?"

"Yes.  You know all about it," said Fred, not liking to be catechised
in this way.  "I made a clean breast to you."

"I suppose that gives me a warrant to speak about the matter now.  It
is understood between us, is it not?--that we are on a footing of open
friendship: I have listened to you, and you will be willing to listen
to me.  I may take my turn in talking a little about myself?"

"I am under the deepest obligation to you, Mr. Farebrother," said Fred,
in a state of uncomfortable surmise.

"I will not affect to deny that you are under some obligation to me.
But I am going to confess to you, Fred, that I have been tempted to
reverse all that by keeping silence with you just now.  When somebody
said to me, 'Young Vincy has taken to being at the billiard-table every
night again--he won't bear the curb long;' I was tempted to do the
opposite of what I am doing--to hold my tongue and wait while you went
down the ladder again, betting first and then--"

"I have not made any bets," said Fred, hastily.

"Glad to hear it.  But I say, my prompting was to look on and see you
take the wrong turning, wear out Garth's patience, and lose the best
opportunity of your life--the opportunity which you made some rather
difficult effort to secure.  You can guess the feeling which raised
that temptation in me--I am sure you know it.  I am sure you know that
the satisfaction of your affections stands in the way of mine."

There was a pause.  Mr. Farebrother seemed to wait for a recognition of
the fact; and the emotion perceptible in the tones of his fine voice
gave solemnity to his words.  But no feeling could quell Fred's alarm.

"I could not be expected to give her up," he said, after a moment's
hesitation: it was not a case for any pretence of generosity.

"Clearly not, when her affection met yours.  But relations of this
sort, even when they are of long standing, are always liable to change.
I can easily conceive that you might act in a way to loosen the tie she
feels towards you--it must be remembered that she is only conditionally
bound to you--and that in that case, another man, who may flatter
himself that he has a hold on her regard, might succeed in winning that
firm place in her love as well as respect which you had let slip.  I
can easily conceive such a result," repeated Mr. Farebrother,
emphatically.  "There is a companionship of ready sympathy, which might
get the advantage even over the longest associations."  It seemed to
Fred that if Mr. Farebrother had had a beak and talons instead of his
very capable tongue, his mode of attack could hardly be more cruel.  He
had a horrible conviction that behind all this hypothetic statement
there was a knowledge of some actual change in Mary's feeling.

"Of course I know it might easily be all up with me," he said, in a
troubled voice.  "If she is beginning to compare--"  He broke off, not
liking to betray all he felt, and then said, by the help of a little
bitterness, "But I thought you were friendly to me."

"So I am; that is why we are here.  But I have had a strong disposition
to be otherwise.  I have said to myself, 'If there is a likelihood of
that youngster doing himself harm, why should you interfere?  Aren't
you worth as much as he is, and don't your sixteen years over and above
his, in which you have gone rather hungry, give you more right to
satisfaction than he has?  If there's a chance of his going to the
dogs, let him--perhaps you could nohow hinder it--and do you take the
benefit.'"

There was a pause, in which Fred was seized by a most uncomfortable
chill.  What was coming next?  He dreaded to hear that something had
been said to Mary--he felt as if he were listening to a threat rather
than a warning.  When the Vicar began again there was a change in his
tone like the encouraging transition to a major key.

"But I had once meant better than that, and I am come back to my old
intention.  I thought that I could hardly _secure myself_ in it better,
Fred, than by telling you just what had gone on in me.  And now, do you
understand me?  I want you to make the happiness of her life and your
own, and if there is any chance that a word of warning from me may turn
aside any risk to the contrary--well, I have uttered it."

There was a drop in the Vicar's voice when he spoke the last words. He
paused--they were standing on a patch of green where the road diverged
towards St. Botolph's, and he put out his hand, as if to imply that the
conversation was closed.  Fred was moved quite newly.  Some one highly
susceptible to the contemplation of a fine act has said, that it
produces a sort of regenerating shudder through the frame, and makes
one feel ready to begin a new life.  A good degree of that effect was
just then present in Fred Vincy.

"I will try to be worthy," he said, breaking off before he could say
"of you as well as of her."  And meanwhile Mr. Farebrother had gathered
the impulse to say something more.

"You must not imagine that I believe there is at present any decline in
her preference of you, Fred.  Set your heart at rest, that if you keep
right, other things will keep right."

"I shall never forget what you have done," Fred answered.  "I can't say
anything that seems worth saying--only I will try that your goodness
shall not be thrown away."

"That's enough.  Good-by, and God bless you."

In that way they parted.  But both of them walked about a long while
before they went out of the starlight.  Much of Fred's rumination might
be summed up in the words, "It certainly would have been a fine thing
for her to marry Farebrother--but if she loves me best and I am a good
husband?"

Perhaps Mr. Farebrother's might be concentrated into a single shrug and
one little speech.  "To think of the part one little woman can play in
the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation
of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline!"



CHAPTER LXVII.

    Now is there civil war within the soul:
    Resolve is thrust from off the sacred throne
    By clamorous Needs, and Pride the grand-vizier
    Makes humble compact, plays the supple part
    Of envoy and deft-tongued apologist
    For hungry rebels.


Happily Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiard-room, and brought
away no encouragement to make a raid on luck.  On the contrary, he felt
unmixed disgust with himself the next day when he had to pay four or
five pounds over and above his gains, and he carried about with him a
most unpleasant vision of the figure he had made, not only rubbing
elbows with the men at the Green Dragon but behaving just as they did.
A philosopher fallen to betting is hardly distinguishable from a
Philistine under the same circumstances: the difference will chiefly be
found in his subsequent reflections, and Lydgate chewed a very
disagreeable cud in that way.  His reason told him how the affair might
have been magnified into ruin by a slight change of scenery--if it had
been a gambling-house that he had turned into, where chance could be
clutched with both hands instead of being picked up with thumb and
fore-finger. Nevertheless, though reason strangled the desire to
gamble, there remained the feeling that, with an assurance of luck to
the needful amount, he would have liked to gamble, rather than take the
alternative which was beginning to urge itself as inevitable.

That alternative was to apply to Mr. Bulstrode.  Lydgate had so many
times boasted both to himself and others that he was totally
independent of Bulstrode, to whose plans he had lent himself solely
because they enabled him to carry out his own ideas of professional
work and public benefit--he had so constantly in their personal
intercourse had his pride sustained by the sense that he was making a
good social use of this predominating banker, whose opinions he thought
contemptible and whose motives often seemed to him an absurd mixture of
contradictory impressions--that he had been creating for himself
strong ideal obstacles to the proffering of any considerable request to
him on his own account.

Still, early in March his affairs were at that pass in which men begin
to say that their oaths were delivered in ignorance, and to perceive
that the act which they had called impossible to them is becoming
manifestly possible.  With Dover's ugly security soon to be put in
force, with the proceeds of his practice immediately absorbed in paying
back debts, and with the chance, if the worst were known, of daily
supplies being refused on credit, above all with the vision of
Rosamond's hopeless discontent continually haunting him, Lydgate had
begun to see that he should inevitably bend himself to ask help from
somebody or other.  At first he had considered whether he should write
to Mr. Vincy; but on questioning Rosamond he found that, as he had
suspected, she had already applied twice to her father, the last time
being since the disappointment from Sir Godwin; and papa had said that
Lydgate must look out for himself.  "Papa said he had come, with one
bad year after another, to trade more and more on borrowed capital, and
had had to give up many indulgences; he could not spare a single
hundred from the charges of his family.  He said, let Lydgate ask
Bulstrode: they have always been hand and glove."

Indeed, Lydgate himself had come to the conclusion that if he must end
by asking for a free loan, his relations with Bulstrode, more at least
than with any other man, might take the shape of a claim which was not
purely personal.  Bulstrode had indirectly helped to cause the failure
of his practice, and had also been highly gratified by getting a
medical partner in his plans:--but who among us ever reduced himself
to the sort of dependence in which Lydgate now stood, without trying to
believe that he had claims which diminished the humiliation of asking?
It was true that of late there had seemed to be a new languor of
interest in Bulstrode about the Hospital; but his health had got worse,
and showed signs of a deep-seated nervous affection.  In other respects
he did not appear to be changed: he had always been highly polite, but
Lydgate had observed in him from the first a marked coldness about his
marriage and other private circumstances, a coldness which he had
hitherto preferred to any warmth of familiarity between them.  He
deferred the intention from day to day, his habit of acting on his
conclusions being made infirm by his repugnance to every possible
conclusion and its consequent act.  He saw Mr. Bulstrode often, but he
did not try to use any occasion for his private purpose.  At one moment
he thought, "I will write a letter: I prefer that to any circuitous
talk;" at another he thought, "No; if I were talking to him, I could
make a retreat before any signs of disinclination."

Still the days passed and no letter was written, no special interview
sought.  In his shrinking from the humiliation of a dependent attitude
towards Bulstrode, he began to familiarize his imagination with another
step even more unlike his remembered self.  He began spontaneously to
consider whether it would be possible to carry out that puerile notion
of Rosamond's which had often made him angry, namely, that they should
quit Middlemarch without seeing anything beyond that preface.  The
question came--"Would any man buy the practice of me even now, for as
little as it is worth?  Then the sale might happen as a necessary
preparation for going away."

But against his taking this step, which he still felt to be a
contemptible relinquishment of present work, a guilty turning aside
from what was a real and might be a widening channel for worthy
activity, to start again without any justified destination, there was
this obstacle, that the purchaser, if procurable at all, might not be
quickly forthcoming.  And afterwards?  Rosamond in a poor lodging,
though in the largest city or most distant town, would not find the
life that could save her from gloom, and save him from the reproach of
having plunged her into it.  For when a man is at the foot of the hill
in his fortunes, he may stay a long while there in spite of
professional accomplishment.  In the British climate there is no
incompatibility between scientific insight and furnished lodgings: the
incompatibility is chiefly between scientific ambition and a wife who
objects to that kind of residence.

But in the midst of his hesitation, opportunity came to decide him.  A
note from Mr. Bulstrode requested Lydgate to call on him at the Bank.
A hypochondriacal tendency had shown itself in the banker's
constitution of late; and a lack of sleep, which was really only a
slight exaggeration of an habitual dyspeptic symptom, had been dwelt on
by him as a sign of threatening insanity.  He wanted to consult Lydgate
without delay on that particular morning, although he had nothing to
tell beyond what he had told before.  He listened eagerly to what
Lydgate had to say in dissipation of his fears, though this too was
only repetition; and this moment in which Bulstrode was receiving a
medical opinion with a sense of comfort, seemed to make the
communication of a personal need to him easier than it had been in
Lydgate's contemplation beforehand.  He had been insisting that it
would be well for Mr. Bulstrode to relax his attention to business.

"One sees how any mental strain, however slight, may affect a delicate
frame," said Lydgate at that stage of the consultation when the remarks
tend to pass from the personal to the general, "by the deep stamp which
anxiety will make for a time even on the young and vigorous.  I am
naturally very strong; yet I have been thoroughly shaken lately by an
accumulation of trouble."

"I presume that a constitution in the susceptible state in which mine
at present is, would be especially liable to fall a victim to cholera,
if it visited our district.  And since its appearance near London, we
may well besiege the Mercy-seat for our protection," said Mr.
Bulstrode, not intending to evade Lydgate's allusion, but really
preoccupied with alarms about himself.

"You have at all events taken your share in using good practical
precautions for the town, and that is the best mode of asking for
protection," said Lydgate, with a strong distaste for the broken
metaphor and bad logic of the banker's religion, somewhat increased by
the apparent deafness of his sympathy.  But his mind had taken up its
long-prepared movement towards getting help, and was not yet arrested.
He added, "The town has done well in the way of cleansing, and finding
appliances; and I think that if the cholera should come, even our
enemies will admit that the arrangements in the Hospital are a public
good."

"Truly," said Mr. Bulstrode, with some coldness.  "With regard to what
you say, Mr. Lydgate, about the relaxation of my mental labor, I have
for some time been entertaining a purpose to that effect--a purpose of
a very decided character.  I contemplate at least a temporary
withdrawal from the management of much business, whether benevolent or
commercial.  Also I think of changing my residence for a time: probably
I shall close or let 'The Shrubs,' and take some place near the
coast--under advice of course as to salubrity.  That would be a measure
which you would recommend?"

"Oh yes," said Lydgate, falling backward in his chair, with
ill-repressed impatience under the banker's pale earnest eyes and
intense preoccupation with himself.

"I have for some time felt that I should open this subject with you in
relation to our Hospital," continued Bulstrode.  "Under the
circumstances I have indicated, of course I must cease to have any
personal share in the management, and it is contrary to my views of
responsibility to continue a large application of means to an
institution which I cannot watch over and to some extent regulate.  I
shall therefore, in case of my ultimate decision to leave Middlemarch,
consider that I withdraw other support to the New Hospital than that
which will subsist in the fact that I chiefly supplied the expenses of
building it, and have contributed further large sums to its successful
working."

Lydgate's thought, when Bulstrode paused according to his wont, was,
"He has perhaps been losing a good deal of money." This was the most
plausible explanation of a speech which had caused rather a startling
change in his expectations.  He said in reply--

"The loss to the Hospital can hardly be made up, I fear."

"Hardly," returned Bulstrode, in the same deliberate, silvery tone;
"except by some changes of plan.  The only person who may be certainly
counted on as willing to increase her contributions is Mrs. Casaubon.
I have had an interview with her on the subject, and I have pointed out
to her, as I am about to do to you, that it will be desirable to win a
more general support to the New Hospital by a change of system."
Another pause, but Lydgate did not speak.

"The change I mean is an amalgamation with the Infirmary, so that the
New Hospital shall be regarded as a special addition to the elder
institution, having the same directing board.  It will be necessary,
also, that the medical management of the two shall be combined.  In
this way any difficulty as to the adequate maintenance of our new
establishment will be removed; the benevolent interests of the town
will cease to be divided."

Mr. Bulstrode had lowered his eyes from Lydgate's face to the buttons
of his coat as he again paused.

"No doubt that is a good device as to ways and means," said Lydgate,
with an edge of irony in his tone.  "But I can't be expected to rejoice
in it at once, since one of the first results will be that the other
medical men will upset or interrupt my methods, if it were only because
they are mine."

"I myself, as you know, Mr. Lydgate, highly valued the opportunity of
new and independent procedure which you have diligently employed: the
original plan, I confess, was one which I had much at heart, under
submission to the Divine Will.  But since providential indications
demand a renunciation from me, I renounce."

Bulstrode showed a rather exasperating ability in this conversation.
The broken metaphor and bad logic of motive which had stirred his
hearer's contempt were quite consistent with a mode of putting the
facts which made it difficult for Lydgate to vent his own indignation
and disappointment.  After some rapid reflection, he only asked--

"What did Mrs. Casaubon say?"

"That was the further statement which I wished to make to you," said
Bulstrode, who had thoroughly prepared his ministerial explanation.
"She is, you are aware, a woman of most munificent disposition, and
happily in possession--not I presume of great wealth, but of funds
which she can well spare.  She has informed me that though she has
destined the chief part of those funds to another purpose, she is
willing to consider whether she cannot fully take my place in relation
to the Hospital.  But she wishes for ample time to mature her thoughts
on the subject, and I have told her that there is no need for
haste--that, in fact, my own plans are not yet absolute."

Lydgate was ready to say, "If Mrs. Casaubon would take your place,
there would be gain, instead of loss."  But there was still a weight on
his mind which arrested this cheerful candor.  He replied, "I suppose,
then, that I may enter into the subject with Mrs. Casaubon."

"Precisely; that is what she expressly desires.  Her decision, she
says, will much depend on what you can tell her.  But not at present:
she is, I believe, just setting out on a journey.  I have her letter
here," said Mr. Bulstrode, drawing it out, and reading from it.  "'I am
immediately otherwise engaged,' she says.  'I am going into Yorkshire
with Sir James and Lady Chettam; and the conclusions I come to about
some land which I am to see there may affect my power of contributing
to the Hospital.'  Thus, Mr. Lydgate, there is no haste necessary in
this matter; but I wished to apprise you beforehand of what may
possibly occur."

Mr. Bulstrode returned the letter to his side-pocket, and changed his
attitude as if his business were closed.  Lydgate, whose renewed hope
about the Hospital only made him more conscious of the facts which
poisoned his hope, felt that his effort after help, if made at all,
must be made now and vigorously.

"I am much obliged to you for giving me full notice," he said, with a
firm intention in his tone, yet with an interruptedness in his delivery
which showed that he spoke unwillingly.  "The highest object to me is
my profession, and I had identified the Hospital with the best use I
can at present make of my profession.  But the best use is not always
the same with monetary success.  Everything which has made the Hospital
unpopular has helped with other causes--I think they are all connected
with my professional zeal--to make me unpopular as a practitioner.  I
get chiefly patients who can't pay me.  I should like them best, if I
had nobody to pay on my own side." Lydgate waited a little, but
Bulstrode only bowed, looking at him fixedly, and he went on with the
same interrupted enunciation--as if he were biting an objectional leek.

"I have slipped into money difficulties which I can see no way out of,
unless some one who trusts me and my future will advance me a sum
without other security.  I had very little fortune left when I came
here.  I have no prospects of money from my own family.  My expenses,
in consequence of my marriage, have been very much greater than I had
expected.  The result at this moment is that it would take a thousand
pounds to clear me.  I mean, to free me from the risk of having all my
goods sold in security of my largest debt--as well as to pay my other
debts--and leave anything to keep us a little beforehand with our small
income.  I find that it is out of the question that my wife's father
should make such an advance.  That is why I mention my position to--to
the only other man who may be held to have some personal connection
with my prosperity or ruin."

Lydgate hated to hear himself.  But he had spoken now, and had spoken
with unmistakable directness.  Mr. Bulstrode replied without haste, but
also without hesitation.

"I am grieved, though, I confess, not surprised by this information,
Mr. Lydgate.  For my own part, I regretted your alliance with my
brother-in-law's family, which has always been of prodigal habits, and
which has already been much indebted to me for sustainment in its
present position.  My advice to you, Mr. Lydgate, would be, that
instead of involving yourself in further obligations, and continuing a
doubtful struggle, you should simply become a bankrupt."

"That would not improve my prospect," said Lydgate, rising and speaking
bitterly, "even if it were a more agreeable thing in itself."

"It is always a trial," said Mr. Bulstrode; "but trial, my dear sir, is
our portion here, and is a needed corrective.  I recommend you to weigh
the advice I have given."

"Thank you," said Lydgate, not quite knowing what he said.  "I have
occupied you too long.  Good-day."



CHAPTER LXVIII.

    "What suit of grace hath Virtue to put on
     If Vice shall wear as good, and do as well?
     If Wrong, if Craft, if Indiscretion
     Act as fair parts with ends as laudable?
     Which all this mighty volume of events
     The world, the universal map of deeds,
     Strongly controls, and proves from all descents,
     That the directest course still best succeeds.
     For should not grave and learn'd Experience
     That looks with the eyes of all the world beside,
     And with all ages holds intelligence,
     Go safer than Deceit without a guide!
                                --DANIEL: Musophilus.


That change of plan and shifting of interest which Bulstrode stated or
betrayed in his conversation with Lydgate, had been determined in him
by some severe experience which he had gone through since the epoch of
Mr. Larcher's sale, when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw, and when
the banker had in vain attempted an act of restitution which might move
Divine Providence to arrest painful consequences.

His certainty that Raffles, unless he were dead, would return to
Middlemarch before long, had been justified.  On Christmas Eve he had
reappeared at The Shrubs.  Bulstrode was at home to receive him, and
hinder his communication with the rest of the family, but he could not
altogether hinder the circumstances of the visit from compromising
himself and alarming his wife.  Raffles proved more unmanageable than
he had shown himself to be in his former appearances, his chronic state
of mental restlessness, the growing effect of habitual intemperance,
quickly shaking off every impression from what was said to him.  He
insisted on staying in the house, and Bulstrode, weighing two sets of
evils, felt that this was at least not a worse alternative than his
going into the town.  He kept him in his own room for the evening and
saw him to bed, Raffles all the while amusing himself with the
annoyance he was causing this decent and highly prosperous
fellow-sinner, an amusement which he facetiously expressed as sympathy
with his friend's pleasure in entertaining a man who had been
serviceable to him, and who had not had all his earnings.  There was a
cunning calculation under this noisy joking--a cool resolve to extract
something the handsomer from Bulstrode as payment for release from this
new application of torture.  But his cunning had a little overcast its
mark.

Bulstrode was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre of Raffles
could enable him to imagine.  He had told his wife that he was simply
taking care of this wretched creature, the victim of vice, who might
otherwise injure himself; he implied, without the direct form of
falsehood, that there was a family tie which bound him to this care,
and that there were signs of mental alienation in Raffles which urged
caution.  He would himself drive the unfortunate being away the next
morning.  In these hints he felt that he was supplying Mrs. Bulstrode
with precautionary information for his daughters and servants, and
accounting for his allowing no one but himself to enter the room even
with food and drink.  But he sat in an agony of fear lest Raffles
should be overheard in his loud and plain references to past facts--lest
Mrs. Bulstrode should be even tempted to listen at the door.  How
could he hinder her, how betray his terror by opening the door to
detect her?  She was a woman of honest direct habits, and little likely
to take so low a course in order to arrive at painful knowledge; but
fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.

In this way Raffles had pushed the torture too far, and produced an
effect which had not been in his plan.  By showing himself hopelessly
unmanageable he had made Bulstrode feel that a strong defiance was the
only resource left.  After taking Raffles to bed that night the banker
ordered his closed carriage to be ready at half-past seven the next
morning.  At six o'clock he had already been long dressed, and had
spent some of his wretchedness in prayer, pleading his motives for
averting the worst evil if in anything he had used falsity and spoken
what was not true before God.  For Bulstrode shrank from a direct lie
with an intensity disproportionate to the number of his more indirect
misdeeds.  But many of these misdeeds were like the subtle muscular
movements which are not taken account of in the consciousness, though
they bring about the end that we fix our mind on and desire.  And it is
only what we are vividly conscious of that we can vividly imagine to be
seen by Omniscience.

Bulstrode carried his candle to the bedside of Raffles, who was
apparently in a painful dream.  He stood silent, hoping that the
presence of the light would serve to waken the sleeper gradually and
gently, for he feared some noise as the consequence of a too sudden
awakening.  He had watched for a couple of minutes or more the
shudderings and pantings which seemed likely to end in waking, when
Raffles, with a long half-stifled moan, started up and stared round him
in terror, trembling and gasping.  But he made no further noise, and
Bulstrode, setting down the candle, awaited his recovery.

It was a quarter of an hour later before Bulstrode, with a cold
peremptoriness of manner which he had not before shown, said, "I came
to call you thus early, Mr. Raffles, because I have ordered the
carriage to be ready at half-past seven, and intend myself to conduct
you as far as Ilsely, where you can either take the railway or await a
coach." Raffles was about to speak, but Bulstrode anticipated him
imperiously with the words, "Be silent, sir, and hear what I have to
say.  I shall supply you with money now, and I will furnish you with a
reasonable sum from time to time, on your application to me by letter;
but if you choose to present yourself here again, if you return to
Middlemarch, if you use your tongue in a manner injurious to me, you
will have to live on such fruits as your malice can bring you, without
help from me.  Nobody will pay you well for blasting my name: I know
the worst you can do against me, and I shall brave it if you dare to
thrust yourself upon me again.  Get up, sir, and do as I order you,
without noise, or I will send for a policeman to take you off my
premises, and you may carry your stories into every pothouse in the
town, but you shall have no sixpence from me to pay your expenses
there."

Bulstrode had rarely in his life spoken with such nervous energy: he
had been deliberating on this speech and its probable effects through a
large part of the night; and though he did not trust to its ultimately
saving him from any return of Raffles, he had concluded that it was the
best throw he could make.  It succeeded in enforcing submission from
the jaded man this morning: his empoisoned system at this moment
quailed before Bulstrode's cold, resolute bearing, and he was taken off
quietly in the carriage before the family breakfast time.  The servants
imagined him to be a poor relation, and were not surprised that a
strict man like their master, who held his head high in the world,
should be ashamed of such a cousin and want to get rid of him.  The
banker's drive of ten miles with his hated companion was a dreary
beginning of the Christmas day; but at the end of the drive, Raffles
had recovered his spirits, and parted in a contentment for which there
was the good reason that the banker had given him a hundred pounds.
Various motives urged Bulstrode to this open-handedness, but he did not
himself inquire closely into all of them.  As he had stood watching
Raffles in his uneasy sleep, it had certainly entered his mind that the
man had been much shattered since the first gift of two hundred pounds.

He had taken care to repeat the incisive statement of his resolve not
to be played on any more; and had tried to penetrate Raffles with the
fact that he had shown the risks of bribing him to be quite equal to
the risks of defying him.  But when, freed from his repulsive presence,
Bulstrode returned to his quiet home, he brought with him no confidence
that he had secured more than a respite.  It was as if he had had a
loathsome dream, and could not shake off its images with their hateful
kindred of sensations--as if on all the pleasant surroundings of his
life a dangerous reptile had left his slimy traces.

Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the
thoughts he believes other men to have about him, until that fabric of
opinion is threatened with ruin?

Bulstrode was only the more conscious that there was a deposit of
uneasy presentiment in his wife's mind, because she carefully avoided
any allusion to it.  He had been used every day to taste the flavor of
supremacy and the tribute of complete deference: and the certainty that
he was watched or measured with a hidden suspicion of his having some
discreditable secret, made his voice totter when he was speaking to
edification.  Foreseeing, to men of Bulstrode's anxious temperament, is
often worse than seeing; and his imagination continually heightened the
anguish of an imminent disgrace.  Yes, imminent; for if his defiance of
Raffles did not keep the man away--and though he prayed for this result
he hardly hoped for it--the disgrace was certain.  In vain he said to
himself that, if permitted, it would be a divine visitation, a
chastisement, a preparation; he recoiled from the imagined burning; and
he judged that it must be more for the Divine glory that he should
escape dishonor.  That recoil had at last urged him to make
preparations for quitting Middlemarch.  If evil truth must be reported
of him, he would then be at a less scorching distance from the contempt
of his old neighbors; and in a new scene, where his life would not have
gathered the same wide sensibility, the tormentor, if he pursued him,
would be less formidable.  To leave the place finally would, he knew,
be extremely painful to his wife, and on other grounds he would have
preferred to stay where he had struck root.  Hence he made his
preparations at first in a conditional way, wishing to leave on all
sides an opening for his return after brief absence, if any favorable
intervention of Providence should dissipate his fears.  He was
preparing to transfer his management of the Bank, and to give up any
active control of other commercial affairs in the neighborhood, on the
ground of his failing health, but without excluding his future
resumption of such work.  The measure would cause him some added
expense and some diminution of income beyond what he had already
undergone from the general depression of trade; and the Hospital
presented itself as a principal object of outlay on which he could
fairly economize.

This was the experience which had determined his conversation with
Lydgate.  But at this time his arrangements had most of them gone no
farther than a stage at which he could recall them if they proved to be
unnecessary.  He continually deferred the final steps; in the midst of
his fears, like many a man who is in danger of shipwreck or of being
dashed from his carriage by runaway horses, he had a clinging
impression that something would happen to hinder the worst, and that to
spoil his life by a late transplantation might be over-hasty--especially
since it was difficult to account satisfactorily to his wife for the
project of their indefinite exile from the only place where she would
like to live.

Among the affairs Bulstrode had to care for, was the management of the
farm at Stone Court in case of his absence; and on this as well as on
all other matters connected with any houses and land he possessed in or
about Middlemarch, he had consulted Caleb Garth.  Like every one else
who had business of that sort, he wanted to get the agent who was more
anxious for his employer's interests than his own.  With regard to
Stone Court, since Bulstrode wished to retain his hold on the stock,
and to have an arrangement by which he himself could, if he chose,
resume his favorite recreation of superintendence, Caleb had advised
him not to trust to a mere bailiff, but to let the land, stock, and
implements yearly, and take a proportionate share of the proceeds.

"May I trust to you to find me a tenant on these terms, Mr. Garth?"
said Bulstrode.  "And will you mention to me the yearly sum which would
repay you for managing these affairs which we have discussed together?"

"I'll think about it," said Caleb, in his blunt way.  "I'll see how I
can make it out."

If it had not been that he had to consider Fred Vincy's future, Mr.
Garth would not probably have been glad of any addition to his work, of
which his wife was always fearing an excess for him as he grew older.
But on quitting Bulstrode after that conversation, a very alluring idea
occurred to him about this said letting of Stone Court.  What if
Bulstrode would agree to his placing Fred Vincy there on the
understanding that he, Caleb Garth, should be responsible for the
management?  It would be an excellent schooling for Fred; he might make
a modest income there, and still have time left to get knowledge by
helping in other business.  He mentioned his notion to Mrs. Garth with
such evident delight that she could not bear to chill his pleasure by
expressing her constant fear of his undertaking too much.

"The lad would be as happy as two," he said, throwing himself back in
his chair, and looking radiant, "if I could tell him it was all
settled.  Think; Susan!  His mind had been running on that place for
years before old Featherstone died.  And it would be as pretty a turn
of things as could be that he should hold the place in a good
industrious way after all--by his taking to business.  For it's likely
enough Bulstrode might let him go on, and gradually buy the stock.  He
hasn't made up his mind, I can see, whether or not he shall settle
somewhere else as a lasting thing.  I never was better pleased with a
notion in my life.  And then the children might be married by-and-by,
Susan."

"You will not give any hint of the plan to Fred, until you are sure
that Bulstrode would agree to the plan?" said Mrs. Garth, in a tone of
gentle caution.  "And as to marriage, Caleb, we old people need not
help to hasten it."

"Oh, I don't know," said Caleb, swinging his head aside.  "Marriage is
a taming thing.  Fred would want less of my bit and bridle.  However, I
shall say nothing till I know the ground I'm treading on.  I shall
speak to Bulstrode again."

He took his earliest opportunity of doing so.  Bulstrode had anything
but a warm interest in his nephew Fred Vincy, but he had a strong wish
to secure Mr. Garth's services on many scattered points of business at
which he was sure to be a considerable loser, if they were under less
conscientious management.  On that ground he made no objection to Mr.
Garth's proposal; and there was also another reason why he was not
sorry to give a consent which was to benefit one of the Vincy family.
It was that Mrs. Bulstrode, having heard of Lydgate's debts, had been
anxious to know whether her husband could not do something for poor
Rosamond, and had been much troubled on learning from him that
Lydgate's affairs were not easily remediable, and that the wisest plan
was to let them "take their course." Mrs. Bulstrode had then said for
the first time, "I think you are always a little hard towards my
family, Nicholas.  And I am sure I have no reason to deny any of my
relatives.  Too worldly they may be, but no one ever had to say that
they were not respectable."

"My dear Harriet," said Mr. Bulstrode, wincing under his wife's eyes,
which were filling with tears, "I have supplied your brother with a
great deal of capital.  I cannot be expected to take care of his
married children."

That seemed to be true, and Mrs. Bulstrode's remonstrance subsided into
pity for poor Rosamond, whose extravagant education she had always
foreseen the fruits of.

But remembering that dialogue, Mr. Bulstrode felt that when he had to
talk to his wife fully about his plan of quitting Middlemarch, he
should be glad to tell her that he had made an arrangement which might
be for the good of her nephew Fred.  At present he had merely mentioned
to her that he thought of shutting up The Shrubs for a few months, and
taking a house on the Southern Coast.

Hence Mr. Garth got the assurance he desired, namely, that in case of
Bulstrode's departure from Middlemarch for an indefinite time, Fred
Vincy should be allowed to have the tenancy of Stone Court on the terms
proposed.

Caleb was so elated with his hope of this "neat turn" being given to
things, that if his self-control had not been braced by a little
affectionate wifely scolding, he would have betrayed everything to
Mary, wanting "to give the child comfort."  However, he restrained
himself, and kept in strict privacy from Fred certain visits which he
was making to Stone Court, in order to look more thoroughly into the
state of the land and stock, and take a preliminary estimate.  He was
certainly more eager in these visits than the probable speed of events
required him to be; but he was stimulated by a fatherly delight in
occupying his mind with this bit of probable happiness which he held in
store like a hidden birthday gift for Fred and Mary.

"But suppose the whole scheme should turn out to be a castle in the
air?" said Mrs. Garth.

"Well, well," replied Caleb; "the castle will tumble about nobody's
head."



CHAPTER LXIX.

    "If thou hast heard a word, let it die with thee."
                                       --Ecclesiasticus.


Mr. Bulstrode was still seated in his manager's room at the Bank, about
three o'clock of the same day on which he had received Lydgate there,
when the clerk entered to say that his horse was waiting, and also that
Mr. Garth was outside and begged to speak with him.

"By all means," said Bulstrode; and Caleb entered.  "Pray sit down, Mr.
Garth," continued the banker, in his suavest tone.

"I am glad that you arrived just in time to find me here.  I know you
count your minutes."

"Oh," said Caleb, gently, with a slow swing of his head on one side, as
he seated himself and laid his hat on the floor.

He looked at the ground, leaning forward and letting his long fingers
droop between his legs, while each finger moved in succession, as if it
were sharing some thought which filled his large quiet brow.

Mr. Bulstrode, like every one else who knew Caleb, was used to his
slowness in beginning to speak on any topic which he felt to be
important, and rather expected that he was about to recur to the buying
of some houses in Blindman's Court, for the sake of pulling them down,
as a sacrifice of property which would be well repaid by the influx of
air and light on that spot.  It was by propositions of this kind that
Caleb was sometimes troublesome to his employers; but he had usually
found Bulstrode ready to meet him in projects of improvement, and they
had got on well together.  When he spoke again, however, it was to say,
in rather a subdued voice--

"I have just come away from Stone Court, Mr. Bulstrode."

"You found nothing wrong there, I hope," said the banker; "I was there
myself yesterday.  Abel has done well with the lambs this year."

"Why, yes," said Caleb, looking up gravely, "there is something wrong--a
stranger, who is very ill, I think.  He wants a doctor, and I came to
tell you of that.  His name is Raffles."

He saw the shock of his words passing through Bulstrode's frame.  On
this subject the banker had thought that his fears were too constantly
on the watch to be taken by surprise; but he had been mistaken.

"Poor wretch!" he said in a compassionate tone, though his lips
trembled a little.  "Do you know how he came there?"

"I took him myself," said Caleb, quietly--"took him up in my gig.  He
had got down from the coach, and was walking a little beyond the
turning from the toll-house, and I overtook him.  He remembered seeing
me with you once before, at Stone Court, and he asked me to take him
on.  I saw he was ill: it seemed to me the right thing to do, to carry
him under shelter.  And now I think you should lose no time in getting
advice for him." Caleb took up his hat from the floor as he ended, and
rose slowly from his seat.

"Certainly," said Bulstrode, whose mind was very active at this moment.
"Perhaps you will yourself oblige me, Mr. Garth, by calling at Mr.
Lydgate's as you pass--or stay! he may at this hour probably be at the
Hospital.  I will first send my man on the horse there with a note this
instant, and then I will myself ride to Stone Court."

Bulstrode quickly wrote a note, and went out himself to give the
commission to his man.  When he returned, Caleb was standing as before
with one hand on the back of the chair, holding his hat with the other.
In Bulstrode's mind the dominant thought was, "Perhaps Raffles only
spoke to Garth of his illness.  Garth may wonder, as he must have done
before, at this disreputable fellow's claiming intimacy with me; but he
will know nothing.  And he is friendly to me--I can be of use to him."

He longed for some confirmation of this hopeful conjecture, but to have
asked any question as to what Raffles had said or done would have been
to betray fear.

"I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Garth," he said, in his usual
tone of politeness.  "My servant will be back in a few minutes, and I
shall then go myself to see what can be done for this unfortunate man.
Perhaps you had some other business with me?  If so, pray be seated."

"Thank you," said Caleb, making a slight gesture with his right hand to
waive the invitation.  "I wish to say, Mr. Bulstrode, that I must
request you to put your business into some other hands than mine.  I am
obliged to you for your handsome way of meeting me--about the letting
of Stone Court, and all other business.  But I must give it up."  A
sharp certainty entered like a stab into Bulstrode's soul.

"This is sudden, Mr. Garth," was all he could say at first.

"It is," said Caleb; "but it is quite fixed.  I must give it up."

He spoke with a firmness which was very gentle, and yet he could see
that Bulstrode seemed to cower under that gentleness, his face looking
dried and his eyes swerving away from the glance which rested on him.
Caleb felt a deep pity for him, but he could have used no pretexts to
account for his resolve, even if they would have been of any use.

"You have been led to this, I apprehend, by some slanders concerning me
uttered by that unhappy creature," said Bulstrode, anxious now to know
the utmost.

"That is true.  I can't deny that I act upon what I heard from him."

"You are a conscientious man, Mr. Garth--a man, I trust, who feels
himself accountable to God.  You would not wish to injure me by being
too ready to believe a slander," said Bulstrode, casting about for
pleas that might be adapted to his hearer's mind.  "That is a poor
reason for giving up a connection which I think I may say will be
mutually beneficial."

"I would injure no man if I could help it," said Caleb; "even if I
thought God winked at it.  I hope I should have a feeling for my
fellow-creature. But, sir--I am obliged to believe that this Raffles
has told me the truth.  And I can't be happy in working with you, or
profiting by you.  It hurts my mind.  I must beg you to seek another
agent."

"Very well, Mr. Garth.  But I must at least claim to know the worst
that he has told you.  I must know what is the foul speech that I am
liable to be the victim of," said Bulstrode, a certain amount of anger
beginning to mingle with his humiliation before this quiet man who
renounced his benefits.

"That's needless," said Caleb, waving his hand, bowing his head
slightly, and not swerving from the tone which had in it the merciful
intention to spare this pitiable man.  "What he has said to me will
never pass from my lips, unless something now unknown forces it from
me.  If you led a harmful life for gain, and kept others out of their
rights by deceit, to get the more for yourself, I dare say you
repent--you would like to go back, and can't: that must be a bitter
thing"--Caleb paused a moment and shook his head--"it is not for me to
make your life harder to you."

"But you do--you do make it harder to me," said Bulstrode constrained
into a genuine, pleading cry.  "You make it harder to me by turning
your back on me."

"That I'm forced to do," said Caleb, still more gently, lifting up his
hand.  "I am sorry.  I don't judge you and say, he is wicked, and I am
righteous.  God forbid.  I don't know everything.  A man may do wrong,
and his will may rise clear out of it, though he can't get his life
clear.  That's a bad punishment.  If it is so with you,--well, I'm
very sorry for you.  But I have that feeling inside me, that I can't go
on working with you.  That's all, Mr. Bulstrode.  Everything else is
buried, so far as my will goes.  And I wish you good-day."

"One moment, Mr. Garth!" said Bulstrode, hurriedly.  "I may trust then
to your solemn assurance that you will not repeat either to man or
woman what--even if it have any degree of truth in it--is yet a
malicious representation?"  Caleb's wrath was stirred, and he said,
indignantly--

"Why should I have said it if I didn't mean it?  I am in no fear of
you.  Such tales as that will never tempt my tongue."

"Excuse me--I am agitated--I am the victim of this abandoned man."

"Stop a bit! you have got to consider whether you didn't help to make
him worse, when you profited by his vices."

"You are wronging me by too readily believing him," said Bulstrode,
oppressed, as by a nightmare, with the inability to deny flatly what
Raffles might have said; and yet feeling it an escape that Caleb had
not so stated it to him as to ask for that flat denial.

"No," said Caleb, lifting his hand deprecatingly; "I am ready to
believe better, when better is proved.  I rob you of no good chance.
As to speaking, I hold it a crime to expose a man's sin unless I'm
clear it must be done to save the innocent.  That is my way of
thinking, Mr. Bulstrode, and what I say, I've no need to swear.  I wish
you good-day."

Some hours later, when he was at home, Caleb said to his wife,
incidentally, that he had had some little differences with Bulstrode,
and that in consequence, he had given up all notion of taking Stone
Court, and indeed had resigned doing further business for him.

"He was disposed to interfere too much, was he?" said Mrs. Garth,
imagining that her husband had been touched on his sensitive point, and
not been allowed to do what he thought right as to materials and modes
of work.

"Oh," said Caleb, bowing his head and waving his hand gravely.  And
Mrs. Garth knew that this was a sign of his not intending to speak
further on the subject.

As for Bulstrode, he had almost immediately mounted his horse and set
off for Stone Court, being anxious to arrive there before Lydgate.

His mind was crowded with images and conjectures, which were a language
to his hopes and fears, just as we hear tones from the vibrations which
shake our whole system.  The deep humiliation with which he had winced
under Caleb Garth's knowledge of his past and rejection of his
patronage, alternated with and almost gave way to the sense of safety
in the fact that Garth, and no other, had been the man to whom Raffles
had spoken.  It seemed to him a sort of earnest that Providence
intended his rescue from worse consequences; the way being thus left
open for the hope of secrecy.  That Raffles should be afflicted with
illness, that he should have been led to Stone Court rather than
elsewhere--Bulstrode's heart fluttered at the vision of probabilities
which these events conjured up.  If it should turn out that he was
freed from all danger of disgrace--if he could breathe in perfect
liberty--his life should be more consecrated than it had ever been
before.  He mentally lifted up this vow as if it would urge the result
he longed for--he tried to believe in the potency of that prayerful
resolution--its potency to determine death.  He knew that he ought to
say, "Thy will be done;" and he said it often.  But the intense desire
remained that the will of God might be the death of that hated man.

Yet when he arrived at Stone Court he could not see the change in
Raffles without a shock.  But for his pallor and feebleness, Bulstrode
would have called the change in him entirely mental.  Instead of his
loud tormenting mood, he showed an intense, vague terror, and seemed to
deprecate Bulstrode's anger, because the money was all gone--he had
been robbed--it had half of it been taken from him.  He had only come
here because he was ill and somebody was hunting him--somebody was
after him, he had told nobody anything, he had kept his mouth shut.
Bulstrode, not knowing the significance of these symptoms, interpreted
this new nervous susceptibility into a means of alarming Raffles into
true confessions, and taxed him with falsehood in saying that he had
not told anything, since he had just told the man who took him up in
his gig and brought him to Stone Court.  Raffles denied this with
solemn adjurations; the fact being that the links of consciousness were
interrupted in him, and that his minute terror-stricken narrative to
Caleb Garth had been delivered under a set of visionary impulses which
had dropped back into darkness.

Bulstrode's heart sank again at this sign that he could get no grasp
over the wretched man's mind, and that no word of Raffles could be
trusted as to the fact which he most wanted to know, namely, whether or
not he had really kept silence to every one in the neighborhood except
Caleb Garth.  The housekeeper had told him without the least constraint
of manner that since Mr. Garth left, Raffles had asked her for beer,
and after that had not spoken, seeming very ill.  On that side it might
be concluded that there had been no betrayal.  Mrs. Abel thought, like
the servants at The Shrubs, that the strange man belonged to the
unpleasant "kin" who are among the troubles of the rich; she had at
first referred the kinship to Mr. Rigg, and where there was property
left, the buzzing presence of such large blue-bottles seemed natural
enough.  How he could be "kin" to Bulstrode as well was not so clear,
but Mrs. Abel agreed with her husband that there was "no knowing," a
proposition which had a great deal of mental food for her, so that she
shook her head over it without further speculation.

In less than an hour Lydgate arrived.  Bulstrode met him outside the
wainscoted parlor, where Raffles was, and said--

"I have called you in, Mr. Lydgate, to an unfortunate man who was once
in my employment, many years ago.  Afterwards he went to America, and
returned I fear to an idle dissolute life.  Being destitute, he has a
claim on me.  He was slightly connected with Rigg, the former owner of
this place, and in consequence found his way here.  I believe he is
seriously ill: apparently his mind is affected.  I feel bound to do the
utmost for him."

Lydgate, who had the remembrance of his last conversation with
Bulstrode strongly upon him, was not disposed to say an unnecessary
word to him, and bowed slightly in answer to this account; but just
before entering the room he turned automatically and said, "What is his
name?"--to know names being as much a part of the medical man's
accomplishment as of the practical politician's.

"Raffles, John Raffles," said Bulstrode, who hoped that whatever became
of Raffles, Lydgate would never know any more of him.

When he had thoroughly examined and considered the patient, Lydgate
ordered that he should go to bed, and be kept there in as complete
quiet as possible, and then went with Bulstrode into another room.

"It is a serious case, I apprehend," said the banker, before Lydgate
began to speak.

"No--and yes," said Lydgate, half dubiously.  "It is difficult to
decide as to the possible effect of long-standing complications; but
the man had a robust constitution to begin with.  I should not expect
this attack to be fatal, though of course the system is in a ticklish
state.  He should be well watched and attended to."

"I will remain here myself," said Bulstrode.  "Mrs. Abel and her
husband are inexperienced.  I can easily remain here for the night, if
you will oblige me by taking a note for Mrs. Bulstrode."

"I should think that is hardly necessary," said Lydgate.  "He seems
tame and terrified enough.  He might become more unmanageable.  But
there is a man here--is there not?"

"I have more than once stayed here a few nights for the sake of
seclusion," said Bulstrode, indifferently; "I am quite disposed to do
so now.  Mrs. Abel and her husband can relieve or aid me, if necessary."

"Very well.  Then I need give my directions only to you," said Lydgate,
not feeling surprised at a little peculiarity in Bulstrode.

"You think, then, that the case is hopeful?" said Bulstrode, when
Lydgate had ended giving his orders.

"Unless there turn out to be further complications, such as I have not
at present detected--yes," said Lydgate.  "He may pass on to a worse
stage; but I should not wonder if he got better in a few days, by
adhering to the treatment I have prescribed.  There must be firmness.
Remember, if he calls for liquors of any sort, not to give them to him.
In my opinion, men in his condition are oftener killed by treatment
than by the disease.  Still, new symptoms may arise.  I shall come
again to-morrow morning."

After waiting for the note to be carried to Mrs. Bulstrode, Lydgate
rode away, forming no conjectures, in the first instance, about the
history of Raffles, but rehearsing the whole argument, which had lately
been much stirred by the publication of Dr. Ware's abundant experience
in America, as to the right way of treating cases of alcoholic
poisoning such as this.  Lydgate, when abroad, had already been
interested in this question: he was strongly convinced against the
prevalent practice of allowing alcohol and persistently administering
large doses of opium; and he had repeatedly acted on this conviction
with a favorable result.

"The man is in a diseased state," he thought, "but there's a good deal
of wear in him still.  I suppose he is an object of charity to
Bulstrode.  It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie
side by side in men's dispositions.  Bulstrode seems the most
unsympathetic fellow I ever saw about some people, and yet he has taken
no end of trouble, and spent a great deal of money, on benevolent
objects.  I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven
cares for--he has made up his mind that it doesn't care for me."

This streak of bitterness came from a plenteous source, and kept
widening in the current of his thought as he neared Lowick Gate.  He
had not been there since his first interview with Bulstrode in the
morning, having been found at the Hospital by the banker's messenger;
and for the first time he was returning to his home without the vision
of any expedient in the background which left him a hope of raising
money enough to deliver him from the coming destitution of everything
which made his married life tolerable--everything which saved him and
Rosamond from that bare isolation in which they would be forced to
recognize how little of a comfort they could be to each other.  It was
more bearable to do without tenderness for himself than to see that his
own tenderness could make no amends for the lack of other things to
her.  The sufferings of his own pride from humiliations past and to
come were keen enough, yet they were hardly distinguishable to himself
from that more acute pain which dominated them--the pain of foreseeing
that Rosamond would come to regard him chiefly as the cause of
disappointment and unhappiness to her.  He had never liked the
makeshifts of poverty, and they had never before entered into his
prospects for himself; but he was beginning now to imagine how two
creatures who loved each other, and had a stock of thoughts in common,
might laugh over their shabby furniture, and their calculations how far
they could afford butter and eggs.  But the glimpse of that poetry
seemed as far off from him as the carelessness of the golden age; in
poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look
small in.  He got down from his horse in a very sad mood, and went into
the house, not expecting to be cheered except by his dinner, and
reflecting that before the evening closed it would be wise to tell
Rosamond of his application to Bulstrode and its failure.  It would be
well not to lose time in preparing her for the worst.

But his dinner waited long for him before he was able to eat it.  For
on entering he found that Dover's agent had already put a man in the
house, and when he asked where Mrs. Lydgate was, he was told that she
was in her bedroom.  He went up and found her stretched on the bed pale
and silent, without an answer even in her face to any word or look of
his.  He sat down by the bed and leaning over her said with almost a
cry of prayer--

"Forgive me for this misery, my poor Rosamond!  Let us only love one
another."

She looked at him silently, still with the blank despair on her face;
but then the tears began to fill her blue eyes, and her lip trembled.
The strong man had had too much to bear that day.  He let his head fall
beside hers and sobbed.

He did not hinder her from going to her father early in the morning--it
seemed now that he ought not to hinder her from doing as she
pleased.  In half an hour she came back, and said that papa and mamma
wished her to go and stay with them while things were in this miserable
state.  Papa said he could do nothing about the debt--if he paid this,
there would be half-a-dozen more.  She had better come back home again
till Lydgate had got a comfortable home for her.  "Do you object,
Tertius?"

"Do as you like," said Lydgate.  "But things are not coming to a crisis
immediately.  There is no hurry."

"I should not go till to-morrow," said Rosamond; "I shall want to pack
my clothes."

"Oh, I would wait a little longer than to-morrow--there is no knowing
what may happen," said Lydgate, with bitter irony.  "I may get my neck
broken, and that may make things easier to you."

It was Lydgate's misfortune and Rosamond's too, that his tenderness
towards her, which was both an emotional prompting and a
well-considered resolve, was inevitably interrupted by these outbursts
of indignation either ironical or remonstrant.  She thought them
totally unwarranted, and the repulsion which this exceptional severity
excited in her was in danger of making the more persistent tenderness
unacceptable.

"I see you do not wish me to go," she said, with chill mildness; "why
can you not say so, without that kind of violence?  I shall stay until
you request me to do otherwise."

Lydgate said no more, but went out on his rounds.  He felt bruised and
shattered, and there was a dark line under his eyes which Rosamond had
not seen before.  She could not bear to look at him.  Tertius had a way
of taking things which made them a great deal worse for her.



CHAPTER LXX.

    Our deeds still travel with us from afar,
    And what we have been makes us what we are."


Bulstrode's first object after Lydgate had left Stone Court was to
examine Raffles's pockets, which he imagined were sure to carry signs
in the shape of hotel-bills of the places he had stopped in, if he had
not told the truth in saying that he had come straight from Liverpool
because he was ill and had no money.  There were various bills crammed
into his pocketbook, but none of a later date than Christmas at any
other place, except one, which bore date that morning.  This was
crumpled up with a hand-bill about a horse-fair in one of his
tail-pockets, and represented the cost of three days' stay at an inn at
Bilkley, where the fair was held--a town at least forty miles from
Middlemarch.  The bill was heavy, and since Raffles had no luggage with
him, it seemed probable that he had left his portmanteau behind in
payment, in order to save money for his travelling fare; for his purse
was empty, and he had only a couple of sixpences and some loose pence
in his pockets.

Bulstrode gathered a sense of safety from these indications that
Raffles had really kept at a distance from Middlemarch since his
memorable visit at Christmas.  At a distance and among people who were
strangers to Bulstrode, what satisfaction could there be to Raffles's
tormenting, self-magnifying vein in telling old scandalous stories
about a Middlemarch banker?  And what harm if he did talk?  The chief
point now was to keep watch over him as long as there was any danger of
that intelligible raving, that unaccountable impulse to tell, which
seemed to have acted towards Caleb Garth; and Bulstrode felt much
anxiety lest some such impulse should come over him at the sight of
Lydgate.  He sat up alone with him through the night, only ordering the
housekeeper to lie down in her clothes, so as to be ready when he
called her, alleging his own indisposition to sleep, and his anxiety to
carry out the doctor's orders.  He did carry them out faithfully,
although Raffles was incessantly asking for brandy, and declaring that
he was sinking away--that the earth was sinking away from under him.
He was restless and sleepless, but still quailing and manageable.  On
the offer of the food ordered by Lydgate, which he refused, and the
denial of other things which he demanded, he seemed to concentrate all
his terror on Bulstrode, imploringly deprecating his anger, his revenge
on him by starvation, and declaring with strong oaths that he had never
told any mortal a word against him.  Even this Bulstrode felt that he
would not have liked Lydgate to hear; but a more alarming sign of
fitful alternation in his delirium was, that in-the morning twilight
Raffles suddenly seemed to imagine a doctor present, addressing him and
declaring that Bulstrode wanted to starve him to death out of revenge
for telling, when he never had told.

Bulstrode's native imperiousness and strength of determination served
him well.  This delicate-looking man, himself nervously perturbed,
found the needed stimulus in his strenuous circumstances, and through
that difficult night and morning, while he had the air of an animated
corpse returned to movement without warmth, holding the mastery by its
chill impassibility his mind was intensely at work thinking of what he
had to guard against and what would win him security.  Whatever prayers
he might lift up, whatever statements he might inwardly make of this
man's wretched spiritual condition, and the duty he himself was under
to submit to the punishment divinely appointed for him rather than to
wish for evil to another--through all this effort to condense words
into a solid mental state, there pierced and spread with irresistible
vividness the images of the events he desired.  And in the train of
those images came their apology.  He could not but see the death of
Raffles, and see in it his own deliverance.  What was the removal of
this wretched creature?  He was impenitent--but were not public
criminals impenitent?--yet the law decided on their fate.  Should
Providence in this case award death, there was no sin in contemplating
death as the desirable issue--if he kept his hands from hastening
it--if he scrupulously did what was prescribed.  Even here there might
be a mistake: human prescriptions were fallible things: Lydgate had
said that treatment had hastened death,--why not his own method of
treatment?  But of course intention was everything in the question of
right and wrong.

And Bulstrode set himself to keep his intention separate from his
desire.  He inwardly declared that he intended to obey orders.  Why
should he have got into any argument about the validity of these
orders?  It was only the common trick of desire--which avails itself of
any irrelevant scepticism, finding larger room for itself in all
uncertainty about effects, in every obscurity that looks like the
absence of law.  Still, he did obey the orders.

His anxieties continually glanced towards Lydgate, and his remembrance
of what had taken place between them the morning before was accompanied
with sensibilities which had not been roused at all during the actual
scene.  He had then cared but little about Lydgate's painful
impressions with regard to the suggested change in the Hospital, or
about the disposition towards himself which what he held to be his
justifiable refusal of a rather exorbitant request might call forth.
He recurred to the scene now with a perception that he had probably
made Lydgate his enemy, and with an awakened desire to propitiate him,
or rather to create in him a strong sense of personal obligation.  He
regretted that he had not at once made even an unreasonable
money-sacrifice. For in case of unpleasant suspicions, or even
knowledge gathered from the raving of Raffles, Bulstrode would have
felt that he had a defence in Lydgate's mind by having conferred a
momentous benefit on him.  But the regret had perhaps come too late.

Strange, piteous conflict in the soul of this unhappy man, who had
longed for years to be better than he was--who had taken his selfish
passions into discipline and clad them in severe robes, so that he had
walked with them as a devout choir, till now that a terror had risen
among them, and they could chant no longer, but threw out their common
cries for safety.

It was nearly the middle of the day before Lydgate arrived: he had
meant to come earlier, but had been detained, he said; and his
shattered looks were noticed by Balstrode.  But he immediately threw
himself into the consideration of the patient, and inquired strictly
into all that had occurred.  Raffles was worse, would take hardly any
food, was persistently wakeful and restlessly raving; but still not
violent.  Contrary to Bulstrode's alarmed expectation, he took little
notice of Lydgate's presence, and continued to talk or murmur
incoherently.

"What do you think of him?" said Bulstrode, in private.

"The symptoms are worse."

"You are less hopeful?"

"No; I still think he may come round.  Are you going to stay here
yourself?" said Lydgate, looking at Bulstrode with an abrupt question,
which made him uneasy, though in reality it was not due to any
suspicious conjecture.

"Yes, I think so," said Bulstrode, governing himself and speaking with
deliberation.  "Mrs. Bulstrode is advised of the reasons which detain
me.  Mrs. Abel and her husband are not experienced enough to be left
quite alone, and this kind of responsibility is scarcely included in
their service of me.  You have some fresh instructions, I presume."

The chief new instruction that Lydgate had to give was on the
administration of extremely moderate doses of opium, in case of the
sleeplessness continuing after several hours.  He had taken the
precaution of bringing opium in his pocket, and he gave minute
directions to Bulstrode as to the doses, and the point at which they
should cease.  He insisted on the risk of not ceasing; and repeated his
order that no alcohol should be given.

"From what I see of the case," he ended, "narcotism is the only thing I
should be much afraid of.  He may wear through even without much food.
There's a good deal of strength in him."

"You look ill yourself, Mr. Lydgate--a most unusual, I may say
unprecedented thing in my knowledge of you," said Bulstrode, showing a
solicitude as unlike his indifference the day before, as his present
recklessness about his own fatigue was unlike his habitual
self-cherishing anxiety.  "I fear you are harassed."

"Yes, I am," said Lydgate, brusquely, holding his hat, and ready to go.

"Something new, I fear," said Bulstrode, inquiringly.  "Pray be seated."

"No, thank you," said Lydgate, with some hauteur. "I mentioned to you
yesterday what was the state of my affairs.  There is nothing to add,
except that the execution has since then been actually put into my
house.  One can tell a good deal of trouble in a short sentence.  I
will say good morning."

"Stay, Mr. Lydgate, stay," said Bulstrode; "I have been reconsidering
this subject.  I was yesterday taken by surprise, and saw it
superficially.  Mrs. Bulstrode is anxious for her niece, and I myself
should grieve at a calamitous change in your position.  Claims on me
are numerous, but on reconsideration, I esteem it right that I should
incur a small sacrifice rather than leave you unaided.  You said, I
think, that a thousand pounds would suffice entirely to free you from
your burthens, and enable you to recover a firm stand?"

"Yes," said Lydgate, a great leap of joy within him surmounting every
other feeling; "that would pay all my debts, and leave me a little on
hand.  I could set about economizing in our way of living.  And
by-and-by my practice might look up."

"If you will wait a moment, Mr. Lydgate, I will draw a check to that
amount.  I am aware that help, to be effectual in these cases, should
be thorough."

While Bulstrode wrote, Lydgate turned to the window thinking of his
home--thinking of his life with its good start saved from frustration,
its good purposes still unbroken.

"You can give me a note of hand for this, Mr. Lydgate," said the
banker, advancing towards him with the check.  "And by-and-by, I hope,
you may be in circumstances gradually to repay me.  Meanwhile, I have
pleasure in thinking that you will be released from further difficulty."

"I am deeply obliged to you," said Lydgate.  "You have restored to me
the prospect of working with some happiness and some chance of good."

It appeared to him a very natural movement in Bulstrode that he should
have reconsidered his refusal: it corresponded with the more munificent
side of his character.  But as he put his hack into a canter, that he
might get the sooner home, and tell the good news to Rosamond, and get
cash at the bank to pay over to Dover's agent, there crossed his mind,
with an unpleasant impression, as from a dark-winged flight of evil
augury across his vision, the thought of that contrast in himself which
a few months had brought--that he should be overjoyed at being under a
strong personal obligation--that he should be overjoyed at getting
money for himself from Bulstrode.

The banker felt that he had done something to nullify one cause of
uneasiness, and yet he was scarcely the easier.  He did not measure the
quantity of diseased motive which had made him wish for Lydgate's
good-will, but the quantity was none the less actively there, like an
irritating agent in his blood.  A man vows, and yet will not cast away
the means of breaking his vow.  Is it that he distinctly means to break
it?  Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in
him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his
muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the
reasons for his vow.  Raffles, recovering quickly, returning to the
free use of his odious powers--how could Bulstrode wish for that?
Raffles dead was the image that brought release, and indirectly he
prayed for that way of release, beseeching that, if it were possible,
the rest of his days here below might be freed from the threat of an
ignominy which would break him utterly as an instrument of God's
service.  Lydgate's opinion was not on the side of promise that this
prayer would be fulfilled; and as the day advanced, Bulstrode felt
himself getting irritated at the persistent life in this man, whom he
would fain have seen sinking into the silence of death: imperious will
stirred murderous impulses towards this brute life, over which will, by
itself, had no power.  He said inwardly that he was getting too much
worn; he would not sit up with the patient to-night, but leave him to
Mrs. Abel, who, if necessary, could call her husband.

At six o'clock, Raffles, having had only fitful perturbed snatches of
sleep, from which he waked with fresh restlessness and perpetual cries
that he was sinking away, Bulstrode began to administer the opium
according to Lydgate's directions.  At the end of half an hour or more
he called Mrs. Abel and told her that he found himself unfit for
further watching.  He must now consign the patient to her care; and he
proceeded to repeat to her Lydgate's directions as to the quantity of
each dose.  Mrs. Abel had not before known anything of Lydgate's
prescriptions; she had simply prepared and brought whatever Bulstrode
ordered, and had done what he pointed out to her.  She began now to ask
what else she should do besides administering the opium.

"Nothing at present, except the offer of the soup or the soda-water:
you can come to me for further directions.  Unless there is any
important change, I shall not come into the room again to-night. You
will ask your husband for help if necessary.  I must go to bed early."

"You've much need, sir, I'm sure," said Mrs. Abel, "and to take
something more strengthening than what you've done."

Bulstrode went away now without anxiety as to what Raffles might say in
his raving, which had taken on a muttering incoherence not likely to
create any dangerous belief.  At any rate he must risk this.  He went
down into the wainscoted parlor first, and began to consider whether he
would not have his horse saddled and go home by the moonlight, and give
up caring for earthly consequences.  Then, he wished that he had begged
Lydgate to come again that evening.  Perhaps he might deliver a
different opinion, and think that Raffles was getting into a less
hopeful state.  Should he send for Lydgate?  If Raffles were really
getting worse, and slowly dying, Bulstrode felt that he could go to bed
and sleep in gratitude to Providence.  But was he worse?  Lydgate might
come and simply say that he was going on as he expected, and predict
that he would by-and-by fall into a good sleep, and get well.  What was
the use of sending for him?  Bulstrode shrank from that result.  No
ideas or opinions could hinder him from seeing the one probability to
be, that Raffles recovered would be just the same man as before, with
his strength as a tormentor renewed, obliging him to drag away his wife
to spend her years apart from her friends and native place, carrying an
alienating suspicion against him in her heart.

He had sat an hour and a half in this conflict by the firelight only,
when a sudden thought made him rise and light the bed-candle, which he
had brought down with him.  The thought was, that he had not told Mrs.
Abel when the doses of opium must cease.

He took hold of the candlestick, but stood motionless for a long while.
She might already have given him more than Lydgate had prescribed.  But
it was excusable in him, that he should forget part of an order, in his
present wearied condition.  He walked up-stairs, candle in hand, not
knowing whether he should straightway enter his own room and go to bed,
or turn to the patient's room and rectify his omission.  He paused in
the passage, with his face turned towards Raffles's room, and he could
hear him moaning and murmuring.  He was not asleep, then.  Who could
know that Lydgate's prescription would not be better disobeyed than
followed, since there was still no sleep?

He turned into his own room.  Before he had quite undressed, Mrs. Abel
rapped at the door; he opened it an inch, so that he could hear her
speak low.

"If you please, sir, should I have no brandy nor nothing to give the
poor creetur?  He feels sinking away, and nothing else will he
swaller--and but little strength in it, if he did--only the opium.  And
he says more and more he's sinking down through the earth."

To her surprise, Mr. Bulstrode did not answer.  A struggle was going on
within him.

"I think he must die for want o' support, if he goes on in that way.
When I nursed my poor master, Mr. Robisson, I had to give him port-wine
and brandy constant, and a big glass at a time," added Mrs. Abel, with
a touch of remonstrance in her tone.

But again Mr. Bulstrode did not answer immediately, and she continued,
"It's not a time to spare when people are at death's door, nor would
you wish it, sir, I'm sure.  Else I should give him our own bottle o'
rum as we keep by us.  But a sitter-up so as you've been, and doing
everything as laid in your power--"

Here a key was thrust through the inch of doorway, and Mr. Bulstrode
said huskily, "That is the key of the wine-cooler. You will find plenty
of brandy there."

Early in the morning--about six--Mr. Bulstrode rose and spent some time
in prayer.  Does any one suppose that private prayer is necessarily
candid--necessarily goes to the roots of action?  Private prayer is
inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can represent
himself just as he is, even in his own reflections?  Bulstrode had not
yet unravelled in his thought the confused promptings of the last
four-and-twenty hours.

He listened in the passage, and could hear hard stertorous breathing.
Then he walked out in the garden, and looked at the early rime on the
grass and fresh spring leaves.  When he re-entered the house, he felt
startled at the sight of Mrs. Abel.

"How is your patient--asleep, I think?" he said, with an attempt at
cheerfulness in his tone.

"He's gone very deep, sir," said Mrs. Abel.  "He went off gradual
between three and four o'clock.  Would you please to go and look at
him?  I thought it no harm to leave him.  My man's gone afield, and the
little girl's seeing to the kettles."

Bulstrode went up.  At a glance he knew that Raffles was not in the
sleep which brings revival, but in the sleep which streams deeper and
deeper into the gulf of death.

He looked round the room and saw a bottle with some brandy in it, and
the almost empty opium phial.  He put the phial out of sight, and
carried the brandy-bottle down-stairs with him, locking it again in the
wine-cooler.

While breakfasting he considered whether he should ride to Middlemarch
at once, or wait for Lydgate's arrival.  He decided to wait, and told
Mrs. Abel that she might go about her work--he could watch in the
bed-chamber.

As he sat there and beheld the enemy of his peace going irrevocably
into silence, he felt more at rest than he had done for many months.
His conscience was soothed by the enfolding wing of secrecy, which
seemed just then like an angel sent down for his relief.  He drew out
his pocket-book to review various memoranda there as to the
arrangements he had projected and partly carried out in the prospect of
quitting Middlemarch, and considered how far he would let them stand or
recall them, now that his absence would be brief.  Some economies which
he felt desirable might still find a suitable occasion in his temporary
withdrawal from management, and he hoped still that Mrs. Casaubon would
take a large share in the expenses of the Hospital.  In that way the
moments passed, until a change in the stertorous breathing was marked
enough to draw his attention wholly to the bed, and forced him to think
of the departing life, which had once been subservient to his
own--which he had once been glad to find base enough for him to act on
as he would.  It was his gladness then which impelled him now to be
glad that the life was at an end.

And who could say that the death of Raffles had been hastened?  Who
knew what would have saved him?

Lydgate arrived at half-past ten, in time to witness the final pause of
the breath.  When he entered the room Bulstrode observed a sudden
expression in his face, which was not so much surprise as a recognition
that he had not judged correctly.  He stood by the bed in silence for
some time, with his eyes turned on the dying man, but with that subdued
activity of expression which showed that he was carrying on an inward
debate.

"When did this change begin?" said he, looking at Bulstrode.

"I did not watch by him last night," said Bulstrode.  "I was over-worn,
and left him under Mrs. Abel's care.  She said that he sank into sleep
between three and four o'clock.  When I came in before eight he was
nearly in this condition."

Lydgate did not ask another question, but watched in silence until he
said, "It's all over."

This morning Lydgate was in a state of recovered hope and freedom.  He
had set out on his work with all his old animation, and felt himself
strong enough to bear all the deficiencies of his married life.  And he
was conscious that Bulstrode had been a benefactor to him.  But he was
uneasy about this case.  He had not expected it to terminate as it had
done.  Yet he hardly knew how to put a question on the subject to
Bulstrode without appearing to insult him; and if he examined the
housekeeper--why, the man was dead.  There seemed to be no use in
implying that somebody's ignorance or imprudence had killed him.  And
after all, he himself might be wrong.

He and Bulstrode rode back to Middlemarch together, talking of many
things--chiefly cholera and the chances of the Reform Bill in the House
of Lords, and the firm resolve of the political Unions.  Nothing was
said about Raffles, except that Bulstrode mentioned the necessity of
having a grave for him in Lowick churchyard, and observed that, so far
as he knew, the poor man had no connections, except Rigg, whom he had
stated to be unfriendly towards him.

On returning home Lydgate had a visit from Mr. Farebrother.  The Vicar
had not been in the town the day before, but the news that there was an
execution in Lydgate's house had got to Lowick by the evening, having
been carried by Mr. Spicer, shoemaker and parish-clerk, who had it from
his brother, the respectable bell-hanger in Lowick Gate.  Since that
evening when Lydgate had come down from the billiard room with Fred
Vincy, Mr. Farebrother's thoughts about him had been rather gloomy.
Playing at the Green Dragon once or oftener might have been a trifle in
another man; but in Lydgate it was one of several signs that he was
getting unlike his former self.  He was beginning to do things for
which he had formerly even an excessive scorn.  Whatever certain
dissatisfactions in marriage, which some silly tinklings of gossip had
given him hints of, might have to do with this change, Mr. Farebrother
felt sure that it was chiefly connected with the debts which were being
more and more distinctly reported, and he began to fear that any notion
of Lydgate's having resources or friends in the background must be
quite illusory.  The rebuff he had met with in his first attempt to win
Lydgate's confidence, disinclined him to a second; but this news of the
execution being actually in the house, determined the Vicar to overcome
his reluctance.

Lydgate had just dismissed a poor patient, in whom he was much
interested, and he came forward to put out his hand--with an open
cheerfulness which surprised Mr. Farebrother.  Could this too be a
proud rejection of sympathy and help?  Never mind; the sympathy and
help should be offered.

"How are you, Lydgate?  I came to see you because I had heard something
which made me anxious about you," said the Vicar, in the tone of a good
brother, only that there was no reproach in it.  They were both seated
by this time, and Lydgate answered immediately--

"I think I know what you mean.  You had heard that there was an
execution in the house?"

"Yes; is it true?"

"It was true," said Lydgate, with an air of freedom, as if he did not
mind talking about the affair now.  "But the danger is over; the debt
is paid.  I am out of my difficulties now: I shall be freed from debts,
and able, I hope, to start afresh on a better plan."

"I am very thankful to hear it," said the Vicar, falling back in his
chair, and speaking with that low-toned quickness which often follows
the removal of a load.  "I like that better than all the news in the
'Times.' I confess I came to you with a heavy heart."

"Thank you for coming," said Lydgate, cordially.  "I can enjoy the
kindness all the more because I am happier.  I have certainly been a
good deal crushed.  I'm afraid I shall find the bruises still painful
by-and by," he added, smiling rather sadly; "but just now I can only
feel that the torture-screw is off."

Mr. Farebrother was silent for a moment, and then said earnestly, "My
dear fellow, let me ask you one question.  Forgive me if I take a
liberty."

"I don't believe you will ask anything that ought to offend me."

"Then--this is necessary to set my heart quite at rest--you have
not--have you?--in order to pay your debts, incurred another debt which
may harass you worse hereafter?"

"No," said Lydgate, coloring slightly.  "There is no reason why I
should not tell you--since the fact is so--that the person to whom I am
indebted is Bulstrode.  He has made me a very handsome advance--a
thousand pounds--and he can afford to wait for repayment."

"Well, that is generous," said Mr. Farebrother, compelling himself to
approve of the man whom he disliked.  His delicate feeling shrank from
dwelling even in his thought on the fact that he had always urged
Lydgate to avoid any personal entanglement with Bulstrode.  He added
immediately, "And Bulstrode must naturally feel an interest in your
welfare, after you have worked with him in a way which has probably
reduced your income instead of adding to it.  I am glad to think that
he has acted accordingly."

Lydgate felt uncomfortable under these kindly suppositions.  They made
more distinct within him the uneasy consciousness which had shown its
first dim stirrings only a few hours before, that Bulstrode's motives
for his sudden beneficence following close upon the chillest
indifference might be merely selfish.  He let the kindly suppositions
pass.  He could not tell the history of the loan, but it was more
vividly present with him than ever, as well as the fact which the Vicar
delicately ignored--that this relation of personal indebtedness to
Bulstrode was what he had once been most resolved to avoid.

He began, instead of answering, to speak of his projected economies,
and of his having come to look at his life from a different point of
view.

"I shall set up a surgery," he said.  "I really think I made a mistaken
effort in that respect.  And if Rosamond will not mind, I shall take an
apprentice.  I don't like these things, but if one carries them out
faithfully they are not really lowering.  I have had a severe galling
to begin with: that will make the small rubs seem easy."

Poor Lydgate! the "if Rosamond will not mind," which had fallen from
him involuntarily as part of his thought, was a significant mark of the
yoke he bore.  But Mr. Farebrother, whose hopes entered strongly into
the same current with Lydgate's, and who knew nothing about him that
could now raise a melancholy presentiment, left him with affectionate
congratulation.



CHAPTER LXXI.

    Clown. . . . 'Twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed,
            you have a delight to sit, have you not?
    Froth. I have so: because it is an open room, and good for winter.
      Clo. Why, very well then: I hope here be truths.
                                     --Measure for Measure.


Five days after the death of Raffles, Mr. Bambridge was standing at his
leisure under the large archway leading into the yard of the Green
Dragon.  He was not fond of solitary contemplation, but he had only
just come out of the house, and any human figure standing at ease under
the archway in the early afternoon was as certain to attract
companionship as a pigeon which has found something worth pecking at.
In this case there was no material object to feed upon, but the eye of
reason saw a probability of mental sustenance in the shape of gossip.
Mr. Hopkins, the meek-mannered draper opposite, was the first to act on
this inward vision, being the more ambitious of a little masculine talk
because his customers were chiefly women.  Mr. Bambridge was rather
curt to the draper, feeling that Hopkins was of course glad to talk to
_him_, but that he was not going to waste much of his talk on Hopkins.
Soon, however, there was a small cluster of more important listeners,
who were either deposited from the passers-by, or had sauntered to the
spot expressly to see if there were anything going on at the Green
Dragon; and Mr. Bambridge was finding it worth his while to say many
impressive things about the fine studs he had been seeing and the
purchases he had made on a journey in the north from which he had just
returned.  Gentlemen present were assured that when they could show him
anything to cut out a blood mare, a bay, rising four, which was to be
seen at Doncaster if they chose to go and look at it, Mr. Bambridge
would gratify them by being shot "from here to Hereford."  Also, a pair
of blacks which he was going to put into the break recalled vividly to
his mind a pair which he had sold to Faulkner in '19, for a hundred
guineas, and which Faulkner had sold for a hundred and sixty two months
later--any gent who could disprove this statement being offered the
privilege of calling Mr. Bambridge by a very ugly name until the
exercise made his throat dry.

When the discourse was at this point of animation, came up Mr. Frank
Hawley.  He was not a man to compromise his dignity by lounging at the
Green Dragon, but happening to pass along the High Street and seeing
Bambridge on the other side, he took some of his long strides across to
ask the horsedealer whether he had found the first-rate gig-horse which
he had engaged to look for.  Mr. Hawley was requested to wait until he
had seen a gray selected at Bilkley: if that did not meet his wishes to
a hair, Bambridge did not know a horse when he saw it, which seemed to
be the highest conceivable unlikelihood.  Mr. Hawley, standing with his
back to the street, was fixing a time for looking at the gray and
seeing it tried, when a horseman passed slowly by.

"Bulstrode!" said two or three voices at once in a low tone, one of
them, which was the draper's, respectfully prefixing the "Mr.;" but
nobody having more intention in this interjectural naming than if they
had said "the Riverston coach" when that vehicle appeared in the
distance.  Mr. Hawley gave a careless glance round at Bulstrode's back,
but as Bambridge's eyes followed it he made a sarcastic grimace.

"By jingo! that reminds me," he began, lowering his voice a little, "I
picked up something else at Bilkley besides your gig-horse, Mr. Hawley.
I picked up a fine story about Bulstrode.  Do you know how he came by
his fortune?  Any gentleman wanting a bit of curious information, I can
give it him free of expense.  If everybody got their deserts, Bulstrode
might have had to say his prayers at Botany Bay."

"What do you mean?" said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his hands into his
pockets, and pushing a little forward under the archway.  If Bulstrode
should turn out to be a rascal, Frank Hawley had a prophetic soul.

"I had it from a party who was an old chum of Bulstrode's.  I'll tell
you where I first picked him up," said Bambridge, with a sudden gesture
of his fore-finger. "He was at Larcher's sale, but I knew nothing of
him then--he slipped through my fingers--was after Bulstrode, no
doubt.  He tells me he can tap Bulstrode to any amount, knows all his
secrets.  However, he blabbed to me at Bilkley: he takes a stiff glass.
Damme if I think he meant to turn king's evidence; but he's that sort
of bragging fellow, the bragging runs over hedge and ditch with him,
till he'd brag of a spavin as if it 'ud fetch money.  A man should know
when to pull up." Mr. Bambridge made this remark with an air of
disgust, satisfied that his own bragging showed a fine sense of the
marketable.

"What's the man's name?  Where can he be found?" said Mr. Hawley.

"As to where he is to be found, I left him to it at the Saracen's Head;
but his name is Raffles."

"Raffles!" exclaimed Mr. Hopkins.  "I furnished his funeral yesterday.
He was buried at Lowick.  Mr. Bulstrode followed him.  A very decent
funeral."  There was a strong sensation among the listeners.  Mr.
Bambridge gave an ejaculation in which "brimstone" was the mildest
word, and Mr. Hawley, knitting his brows and bending his head forward,
exclaimed, "What?--where did the man die?"

"At Stone Court," said the draper.  "The housekeeper said he was a
relation of the master's. He came there ill on Friday."

"Why, it was on Wednesday I took a glass with him," interposed
Bambridge.

"Did any doctor attend him?" said Mr. Hawley

"Yes.  Mr. Lydgate.  Mr. Bulstrode sat up with him one night.  He died
the third morning."

"Go on, Bambridge," said Mr. Hawley, insistently.  "What did this
fellow say about Bulstrode?"

The group had already become larger, the town-clerk's presence being a
guarantee that something worth listening to was going on there; and Mr.
Bambridge delivered his narrative in the hearing of seven.  It was
mainly what we know, including the fact about Will Ladislaw, with some
local color and circumstance added: it was what Bulstrode had dreaded
the betrayal of--and hoped to have buried forever with the corpse of
Raffles--it was that haunting ghost of his earlier life which as he
rode past the archway of the Green Dragon he was trusting that
Providence had delivered him from.  Yes, Providence.  He had not
confessed to himself yet that he had done anything in the way of
contrivance to this end; he had accepted what seemed to have been
offered.  It was impossible to prove that he had done anything which
hastened the departure of that man's soul.

But this gossip about Bulstrode spread through Middlemarch like the
smell of fire.  Mr. Frank Hawley followed up his information by sending
a clerk whom he could trust to Stone Court on a pretext of inquiring
about hay, but really to gather all that could be learned about Raffles
and his illness from Mrs. Abel.  In this way it came to his knowledge
that Mr. Garth had carried the man to Stone Court in his gig; and Mr.
Hawley in consequence took an opportunity of seeing Caleb, calling at
his office to ask whether he had time to undertake an arbitration if it
were required, and then asking him incidentally about Raffles.  Caleb
was betrayed into no word injurious to Bulstrode beyond the fact which
he was forced to admit, that he had given up acting for him within the
last week.  Mr Hawley drew his inferences, and feeling convinced that
Raffles had told his story to Garth, and that Garth had given up
Bulstrode's affairs in consequence, said so a few hours later to Mr.
Toller.  The statement was passed on until it had quite lost the stamp
of an inference, and was taken as information coming straight from
Garth, so that even a diligent historian might have concluded Caleb to
be the chief publisher of Bulstrode's misdemeanors.

Mr. Hawley was not slow to perceive that there was no handle for the
law either in the revelations made by Raffles or in the circumstances
of his death.  He had himself ridden to Lowick village that he might
look at the register and talk over the whole matter with Mr.
Farebrother, who was not more surprised than the lawyer that an ugly
secret should have come to light about Bulstrode, though he had always
had justice enough in him to hinder his antipathy from turning into
conclusions.  But while they were talking another combination was
silently going forward in Mr. Farebrother's mind, which foreshadowed
what was soon to be loudly spoken of in Middlemarch as a necessary
"putting of two and two together."  With the reasons which kept
Bulstrode in dread of Raffles there flashed the thought that the dread
might have something to do with his munificence towards his medical
man; and though he resisted the suggestion that it had been consciously
accepted in any way as a bribe, he had a foreboding that this
complication of things might be of malignant effect on Lydgate's
reputation.  He perceived that Mr. Hawley knew nothing at present of
the sudden relief from debt, and he himself was careful to glide away
from all approaches towards the subject.

"Well," he said, with a deep breath, wanting to wind up the illimitable
discussion of what might have been, though nothing could be legally
proven, "it is a strange story.  So our mercurial Ladislaw has a queer
genealogy!  A high-spirited young lady and a musical Polish patriot
made a likely enough stock for him to spring from, but I should never
have suspected a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker.  However, there's no
knowing what a mixture will turn out beforehand.  Some sorts of dirt
serve to clarify."

"It's just what I should have expected," said Mr. Hawley, mounting his
horse.  "Any cursed alien blood, Jew, Corsican, or Gypsy."

"I know he's one of your black sheep, Hawley.  But he is really a
disinterested, unworldly fellow," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling.

"Ay, ay, that is your Whiggish twist," said Mr. Hawley, who had been in
the habit of saying apologetically that Farebrother was such a damned
pleasant good-hearted fellow you would mistake him for a Tory.

Mr. Hawley rode home without thinking of Lydgate's attendance on
Raffles in any other light than as a piece of evidence on the side of
Bulstrode.  But the news that Lydgate had all at once become able not
only to get rid of the execution in his house but to pay all his debts
in Middlemarch was spreading fast, gathering round it conjectures and
comments which gave it new body and impetus, and soon filling the ears
of other persons besides Mr. Hawley, who were not slow to see a
significant relation between this sudden command of money and
Bulstrode's desire to stifle the scandal of Raffles.  That the money
came from Bulstrode would infallibly have been guessed even if there
had been no direct evidence of it; for it had beforehand entered into
the gossip about Lydgate's affairs, that neither his father-in-law nor
his own family would do anything for him, and direct evidence was
furnished not only by a clerk at the Bank, but by innocent Mrs.
Bulstrode herself, who mentioned the loan to Mrs. Plymdale, who
mentioned it to her daughter-in-law of the house of Toller, who
mentioned it generally.  The business was felt to be so public and
important that it required dinners to feed it, and many invitations
were just then issued and accepted on the strength of this scandal
concerning Bulstrode and Lydgate; wives, widows, and single ladies took
their work and went out to tea oftener than usual; and all public
conviviality, from the Green Dragon to Dollop's, gathered a zest which
could not be won from the question whether the Lords would throw out
the Reform Bill.

For hardly anybody doubted that some scandalous reason or other was at
the bottom of Bulstrode's liberality to Lydgate.  Mr. Hawley indeed, in
the first instance, invited a select party, including the two
physicians, with Mr Toller and Mr. Wrench, expressly to hold a close
discussion as to the probabilities of Raffles's illness, reciting to
them all the particulars which had been gathered from Mrs. Abel in
connection with Lydgate's certificate, that the death was due to
delirium tremens; and the medical gentlemen, who all stood
undisturbedly on the old paths in relation to this disease, declared
that they could see nothing in these particulars which could be
transformed into a positive ground of suspicion.  But the moral grounds
of suspicion remained: the strong motives Bulstrode clearly had for
wishing to be rid of Raffles, and the fact that at this critical moment
he had given Lydgate the help which he must for some time have known
the need for; the disposition, moreover, to believe that Bulstrode
would be unscrupulous, and the absence of any indisposition to believe
that Lydgate might be as easily bribed as other haughty-minded men when
they have found themselves in want of money.  Even if the money had
been given merely to make him hold his tongue about the scandal of
Bulstrode's earlier life, the fact threw an odious light on Lydgate,
who had long been sneered at as making himself subservient to the
banker for the sake of working himself into predominance, and
discrediting the elder members of his profession.  Hence, in spite of
the negative as to any direct sign of guilt in relation to the death at
Stone Court, Mr. Hawley's select party broke up with the sense that the
affair had "an ugly look."

But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt, which was enough to
keep up much head-shaking and biting innuendo even among substantial
professional seniors, had for the general mind all the superior power
of mystery over fact.  Everybody liked better to conjecture how the
thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more
confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the
incompatible.  Even the more definite scandal concerning Bulstrode's
earlier life was, for some minds, melted into the mass of mystery, as
so much lively metal to be poured out in dialogue, and to take such
fantastic shapes as heaven pleased.

This was the tone of thought chiefly sanctioned by Mrs. Dollop, the
spirited landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane, who had often to
resist the shallow pragmatism of customers disposed to think that their
reports from the outer world were of equal force with what had "come
up" in her mind.  How it had been brought to her she didn't know, but
it was there before her as if it had been "scored with the chalk on the
chimney-board--" as Bulstrode should say, "his inside was _that black_
as if the hairs of his head knowed the thoughts of his heart, he'd tear
'em up by the roots."

"That's odd," said Mr. Limp, a meditative shoemaker, with weak eyes and
a piping voice.  "Why, I read in the 'Trumpet' that was what the Duke
of Wellington said when he turned his coat and went over to the Romans."

"Very like," said Mrs. Dollop.  "If one raskill said it, it's more
reason why another should.  But hypo_crite_ as he's been, and holding
things with that high hand, as there was no parson i' the country good
enough for him, he was forced to take Old Harry into his counsel, and
Old Harry's been too many for him."

"Ay, ay, he's a 'complice you can't send out o' the country," said Mr.
Crabbe, the glazier, who gathered much news and groped among it dimly.
"But by what I can make out, there's them says Bulstrode was for
running away, for fear o' being found out, before now."

"He'll be drove away, whether or no," said Mr. Dill, the barber, who
had just dropped in.  "I shaved Fletcher, Hawley's clerk, this
morning--he's got a bad finger--and he says they're all of one mind to
get rid of Bulstrode.  Mr. Thesiger is turned against him, and wants
him out o' the parish.  And there's gentlemen in this town says they'd
as soon dine with a fellow from the hulks.  'And a deal sooner I
would,' says Fletcher; 'for what's more against one's stomach than a
man coming and making himself bad company with his religion, and giving
out as the Ten Commandments are not enough for him, and all the while
he's worse than half the men at the tread-mill?' Fletcher said so
himself."

"It'll be a bad thing for the town though, if Bulstrode's money goes
out of it," said Mr. Limp, quaveringly.

"Ah, there's better folks spend their money worse," said a firm-voiced
dyer, whose crimson hands looked out of keeping with his good-natured
face.

"But he won't keep his money, by what I can make out," said the
glazier.  "Don't they say as there's somebody can strip it off him?  By
what I can understan', they could take every penny off him, if they
went to lawing."

"No such thing!" said the barber, who felt himself a little above his
company at Dollop's, but liked it none the worse.  "Fletcher says it's
no such thing.  He says they might prove over and over again whose
child this young Ladislaw was, and they'd do no more than if they
proved I came out of the Fens--he couldn't touch a penny."

"Look you there now!" said Mrs. Dollop, indignantly.  "I thank the Lord
he took my children to Himself, if that's all the law can do for the
motherless.  Then by that, it's o' no use who your father and mother
is.  But as to listening to what one lawyer says without asking
another--I wonder at a man o' your cleverness, Mr. Dill.  It's well
known there's always two sides, if no more; else who'd go to law, I
should like to know?  It's a poor tale, with all the law as there is up
and down, if it's no use proving whose child you are.  Fletcher may say
that if he likes, but I say, don't Fletcher _me_!"

Mr. Dill affected to laugh in a complimentary way at Mrs. Dollop, as a
woman who was more than a match for the lawyers; being disposed to
submit to much twitting from a landlady who had a long score against
him.

"If they come to lawing, and it's all true as folks say, there's more
to be looked to nor money," said the glazier.  "There's this poor
creetur as is dead and gone; by what I can make out, he'd seen the day
when he was a deal finer gentleman nor Bulstrode."

"Finer gentleman!  I'll warrant him," said Mrs. Dollop; "and a far
personabler man, by what I can hear.  As I said when Mr. Baldwin, the
tax-gatherer, comes in, a-standing where you sit, and says, 'Bulstrode
got all his money as he brought into this town by thieving and
swindling,'--I said, 'You don't make me no wiser, Mr. Baldwin: it's set
my blood a-creeping to look at him ever sin' here he came into
Slaughter Lane a-wanting to buy the house over my head: folks don't
look the color o' the dough-tub and stare at you as if they wanted to
see into your backbone for nothingk.'  That was what I said, and Mr.
Baldwin can bear me witness."

"And in the rights of it too," said Mr. Crabbe.  "For by what I can
make out, this Raffles, as they call him, was a lusty, fresh-colored
man as you'd wish to see, and the best o' company--though dead he lies
in Lowick churchyard sure enough; and by what I can understan', there's
them knows more than they _should_ know about how he got there."

"I'll believe you!" said Mrs. Dallop, with a touch of scorn at Mr.
Crabbe's apparent dimness.  "When a man's been 'ticed to a lone house,
and there's them can pay for hospitals and nurses for half the
country-side choose to be sitters-up night and day, and nobody to come
near but a doctor as is known to stick at nothingk, and as poor as he
can hang together, and after that so flush o' money as he can pay off
Mr. Byles the butcher as his bill has been running on for the best o'
joints since last Michaelmas was a twelvemonth--I don't want anybody to
come and tell me as there's been more going on nor the Prayer-book's
got a service for--I don't want to stand winking and blinking and
thinking."

Mrs. Dollop looked round with the air of a landlady accustomed to
dominate her company.  There was a chorus of adhesion from the more
courageous; but Mr. Limp, after taking a draught, placed his flat hands
together and pressed them hard between his knees, looking down at them
with blear-eyed contemplation, as if the scorching power of Mrs.
Dollop's speech had quite dried up and nullified his wits until they
could be brought round again by further moisture.

"Why shouldn't they dig the man up and have the Crowner?" said the
dyer.  "It's been done many and many's the time.  If there's been foul
play they might find it out."

"Not they, Mr. Jonas!" said Mrs Dollop, emphatically.  "I know what
doctors are.  They're a deal too cunning to be found out.  And this
Doctor Lydgate that's been for cutting up everybody before the breath
was well out o' their body--it's plain enough what use he wanted to
make o' looking into respectable people's insides.  He knows drugs, you
may be sure, as you can neither smell nor see, neither before they're
swallowed nor after.  Why, I've seen drops myself ordered by Doctor
Gambit, as is our club doctor and a good charikter, and has brought
more live children into the world nor ever another i' Middlemarch--I
say I've seen drops myself as made no difference whether they was in
the glass or out, and yet have griped you the next day.  So I'll leave
your own sense to judge.  Don't tell me!  All I say is, it's a mercy
they didn't take this Doctor Lydgate on to our club.  There's many a
mother's child might ha' rued it."

The heads of this discussion at "Dollop's" had been the common theme
among all classes in the town, had been carried to Lowick Parsonage on
one side and to Tipton Grange on the other, had come fully to the ears
of the Vincy family, and had been discussed with sad reference to "poor
Harriet" by all Mrs. Bulstrode's friends, before Lydgate knew
distinctly why people were looking strangely at him, and before
Bulstrode himself suspected the betrayal of his secrets.  He had not
been accustomed to very cordial relations with his neighbors, and hence
he could not miss the signs of cordiality; moreover, he had been taking
journeys on business of various kinds, having now made up his mind that
he need not quit Middlemarch, and feeling able consequently to
determine on matters which he had before left in suspense.

"We will make a journey to Cheltenham in the course of a month or two,"
he had said to his wife.  "There are great spiritual advantages to be
had in that town along with the air and the waters, and six weeks there
will be eminently refreshing to us."

He really believed in the spiritual advantages, and meant that his life
henceforth should be the more devoted because of those later sins which
he represented to himself as hypothetic, praying hypothetically for
their pardon:--"if I have herein transgressed."

As to the Hospital, he avoided saying anything further to Lydgate,
fearing to manifest a too sudden change of plans immediately on the
death of Raffles.  In his secret soul he believed that Lydgate
suspected his orders to have been intentionally disobeyed, and
suspecting this he must also suspect a motive. But nothing had been
betrayed to him as to the history of Raffles, and Bulstrode was anxious
not to do anything which would give emphasis to his undefined
suspicions.  As to any certainty that a particular method of treatment
would either save or kill, Lydgate himself was constantly arguing
against such dogmatism; he had no right to speak, and he had every
motive for being silent.  Hence Bulstrode felt himself providentially
secured.  The only incident he had strongly winced under had been an
occasional encounter with Caleb Garth, who, however, had raised his hat
with mild gravity.

Meanwhile, on the part of the principal townsmen a strong determination
was growing against him.

A meeting was to be held in the Town-Hall on a sanitary question which
had risen into pressing importance by the occurrence of a cholera case
in the town.  Since the Act of Parliament, which had been hurriedly
passed, authorizing assessments for sanitary measures, there had been a
Board for the superintendence of such measures appointed in
Middlemarch, and much cleansing and preparation had been concurred in
by Whigs and Tories.  The question now was, whether a piece of ground
outside the town should be secured as a burial-ground by means of
assessment or by private subscription.  The meeting was to be open, and
almost everybody of importance in the town was expected to be there.

Mr. Bulstrode was a member of the Board, and just before twelve o'clock
he started from the Bank with the intention of urging the plan of
private subscription.  Under the hesitation of his projects, he had for
some time kept himself in the background, and he felt that he should
this morning resume his old position as a man of action and influence
in the public affairs of the town where he expected to end his days.
Among the various persons going in the same direction, he saw Lydgate;
they joined, talked over the object of the meeting, and entered it
together.

It seemed that everybody of mark had been earlier than they.  But there
were still spaces left near the head of the large central table, and
they made their way thither.  Mr. Farebrother sat opposite, not far
from Mr. Hawley; all the medical men were there; Mr. Thesiger was in
the chair, and Mr. Brooke of Tipton was on his right hand.

Lydgate noticed a peculiar interchange of glances when he and Bulstrode
took their seats.

After the business had been fully opened by the chairman, who pointed
out the advantages of purchasing by subscription a piece of ground
large enough to be ultimately used as a general cemetery, Mr.
Bulstrode, whose rather high-pitched but subdued and fluent voice the
town was used to at meetings of this sort, rose and asked leave to
deliver his opinion.  Lydgate could see again the peculiar interchange
of glances before Mr. Hawley started up, and said in his firm resonant
voice, "Mr. Chairman, I request that before any one delivers his
opinion on this point I may be permitted to speak on a question of
public feeling, which not only by myself, but by many gentlemen
present, is regarded as preliminary."

Mr. Hawley's mode of speech, even when public decorum repressed his
"awful language," was formidable in its curtness and self-possession.
Mr. Thesiger sanctioned the request, Mr. Bulstrode sat down, and Mr.
Hawley continued.

"In what I have to say, Mr. Chairman, I am not speaking simply on my
own behalf: I am speaking with the concurrence and at the express
request of no fewer than eight of my fellow-townsmen, who are
immediately around us.  It is our united sentiment that Mr. Bulstrode
should be called upon--and I do now call upon him--to resign public
positions which he holds not simply as a tax-payer, but as a gentleman
among gentlemen.  There are practices and there are acts which, owing
to circumstances, the law cannot visit, though they may be worse than
many things which are legally punishable.  Honest men and gentlemen, if
they don't want the company of people who perpetrate such acts, have
got to defend themselves as they best can, and that is what I and the
friends whom I may call my clients in this affair are determined to do.
I don't say that Mr. Bulstrode has been guilty of shameful acts, but I
call upon him either publicly to deny and confute the scandalous
statements made against him by a man now dead, and who died in his
house--the statement that he was for many years engaged in nefarious
practices, and that he won his fortune by dishonest procedures--or else
to withdraw from positions which could only have been allowed him as a
gentleman among gentlemen."

All eyes in the room were turned on Mr. Bulstrode, who, since the first
mention of his name, had been going through a crisis of feeling almost
too violent for his delicate frame to support.  Lydgate, who himself
was undergoing a shock as from the terrible practical interpretation of
some faint augury, felt, nevertheless, that his own movement of
resentful hatred was checked by that instinct of the Healer which
thinks first of bringing rescue or relief to the sufferer, when he
looked at the shrunken misery of Bulstrode's livid face.

The quick vision that his life was after all a failure, that he was a
dishonored man, and must quail before the glance of those towards whom
he had habitually assumed the attitude of a reprover--that God had
disowned him before men and left him unscreened to the triumphant scorn
of those who were glad to have their hatred justified--the sense of
utter futility in that equivocation with his conscience in dealing with
the life of his accomplice, an equivocation which now turned venomously
upon him with the full-grown fang of a discovered lie:--all this
rushed through him like the agony of terror which fails to kill, and
leaves the ears still open to the returning wave of execration.  The
sudden sense of exposure after the re-established sense of safety
came--not to the coarse organization of a criminal but to--the
susceptible nerve of a man whose intensest being lay in such mastery
and predominance as the conditions of his life had shaped for him.

But in that intense being lay the strength of reaction.  Through all
his bodily infirmity there ran a tenacious nerve of ambitious
self-preserving will, which had continually leaped out like a flame,
scattering all doctrinal fears, and which, even while he sat an object
of compassion for the merciful, was beginning to stir and glow under
his ashy paleness.  Before the last words were out of Mr. Hawley's
mouth, Bulstrode felt that he should answer, and that his answer would
be a retort.  He dared not get up and say, "I am not guilty, the whole
story is false"--even if he had dared this, it would have seemed to
him, under his present keen sense of betrayal, as vain as to pull, for
covering to his nakedness, a frail rag which would rend at every little
strain.

For a few moments there was total silence, while every man in the room
was looking at Bulstrode.  He sat perfectly still, leaning hard against
the back of his chair; he could not venture to rise, and when he began
to speak he pressed his hands upon the seat on each side of him.  But
his voice was perfectly audible, though hoarser than usual, and his
words were distinctly pronounced, though he paused between sentence as
if short of breath.  He said, turning first toward Mr. Thesiger, and
then looking at Mr. Hawley--

"I protest before you, sir, as a Christian minister, against the
sanction of proceedings towards me which are dictated by virulent
hatred.  Those who are hostile to me are glad to believe any libel
uttered by a loose tongue against me.  And their consciences become
strict against me.  Say that the evil-speaking of which I am to be made
the victim accuses me of malpractices--" here Bulstrode's voice rose
and took on a more biting accent, till it seemed a low cry--"who shall
be my accuser?  Not men whose own lives are unchristian, nay,
scandalous--not men who themselves use low instruments to carry out
their ends--whose profession is a tissue of chicanery--who have been
spending their income on their own sensual enjoyments, while I have
been devoting mine to advance the best objects with regard to this life
and the next."

After the word chicanery there was a growing noise, half of murmurs and
half of hisses, while four persons started up at once--Mr. Hawley, Mr.
Toller, Mr. Chichely, and Mr. Hackbutt; but Mr. Hawley's outburst was
instantaneous, and left the others behind in silence.

"If you mean me, sir, I call you and every one else to the inspection
of my professional life.  As to Christian or unchristian, I repudiate
your canting palavering Christianity; and as to the way in which I
spend my income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves and cheat
offspring of their due inheritance in order to support religion and set
myself up as a saintly Killjoy.  I affect no niceness of conscience--I
have not found any nice standards necessary yet to measure your actions
by, sir.  And I again call upon you to enter into satisfactory
explanations concerning the scandals against you, or else to withdraw
from posts in which we at any rate decline you as a colleague.  I say,
sir, we decline to co-operate with a man whose character is not cleared
from infamous lights cast upon it, not only by reports but by recent
actions."

"Allow me, Mr. Hawley," said the chairman; and Mr. Hawley, still
fuming, bowed half impatiently, and sat down with his hands thrust deep
in his pockets.

"Mr. Bulstrode, it is not desirable, I think, to prolong the present
discussion," said Mr. Thesiger, turning to the pallid trembling man; "I
must so far concur with what has fallen from Mr. Hawley in expression
of a general feeling, as to think it due to your Christian profession
that you should clear yourself, if possible, from unhappy aspersions.
I for my part should be willing to give you full opportunity and
hearing.  But I must say that your present attitude is painfully
inconsistent with those principles which you have sought to identify
yourself with, and for the honor of which I am bound to care.  I
recommend you at present, as your clergyman, and one who hopes for your
reinstatement in respect, to quit the room, and avoid further hindrance
to business."

Bulstrode, after a moment's hesitation, took his hat from the floor and
slowly rose, but he grasped the corner of the chair so totteringly that
Lydgate felt sure there was not strength enough in him to walk away
without support.  What could he do?  He could not see a man sink close
to him for want of help.  He rose and gave his arm to Bulstrode, and in
that way led him out of the room; yet this act, which might have been
one of gentle duty and pure compassion, was at this moment unspeakably
bitter to him.  It seemed as if he were putting his sign-manual to that
association of himself with Bulstrode, of which he now saw the full
meaning as it must have presented itself to other minds.  He now felt
the conviction that this man who was leaning tremblingly on his arm,
had given him the thousand pounds as a bribe, and that somehow the
treatment of Raffles had been tampered with from an evil motive.  The
inferences were closely linked enough; the town knew of the loan,
believed it to be a bribe, and believed that he took it as a bribe.

Poor Lydgate, his mind struggling under the terrible clutch of this
revelation, was all the while morally forced to take Mr. Bulstrode to
the Bank, send a man off for his carriage, and wait to accompany him
home.

Meanwhile the business of the meeting was despatched, and fringed off
into eager discussion among various groups concerning this affair of
Bulstrode--and Lydgate.

Mr. Brooke, who had before heard only imperfect hints of it, and was
very uneasy that he had "gone a little too far" in countenancing
Bulstrode, now got himself fully informed, and felt some benevolent
sadness in talking to Mr. Farebrother about the ugly light in which
Lydgate had come to be regarded.  Mr. Farebrother was going to walk
back to Lowick.

"Step into my carriage," said Mr. Brooke.  "I am going round to see
Mrs. Casaubon.  She was to come back from Yorkshire last night.  She
will like to see me, you know."

So they drove along, Mr. Brooke chatting with good-natured hope that
there had not really been anything black in Lydgate's behavior--a
young fellow whom he had seen to be quite above the common mark, when
he brought a letter from his uncle Sir Godwin.  Mr. Farebrother said
little: he was deeply mournful: with a keen perception of human
weakness, he could not be confident that under the pressure of
humiliating needs Lydgate had not fallen below himself.

When the carriage drove up to the gate of the Manor, Dorothea was out
on the gravel, and came to greet them.

"Well, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have just come from a meeting--a
sanitary meeting, you know."

"Was Mr. Lydgate there?" said Dorothea, who looked full of health and
animation, and stood with her head bare under the gleaming April
lights.  "I want to see him and have a great consultation with him
about the Hospital.  I have engaged with Mr. Bulstrode to do so."

"Oh, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have been hearing bad news--bad
news, you know."

They walked through the garden towards the churchyard gate, Mr.
Farebrother wanting to go on to the parsonage; and Dorothea heard the
whole sad story.

She listened with deep interest, and begged to hear twice over the
facts and impressions concerning Lydgate.  After a short silence,
pausing at the churchyard gate, and addressing Mr. Farebrother, she
said energetically--

"You don't believe that Mr. Lydgate is guilty of anything base?  I will
not believe it.  Let us find out the truth and clear him!"





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 honorable 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 favor 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 ardor, "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 ardor.

"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 honorable 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 honor 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.
Candor 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 candor 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
neighbor 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 dishonor 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."



CHAPTER LXXV.

    "Le sentiment de la fausseté des plaisirs présents, et
    l'ignorance de la vanité des plaisirs absents causent
    l'inconstance."--PASCAL.


Rosamond had a gleam of returning cheerfulness when the house was freed
from the threatening figure, and when all the disagreeable creditors
were paid.  But she was not joyous: her married life had fulfilled none
of her hopes, and had been quite spoiled for her imagination.  In this
brief interval of calm, Lydgate, remembering that he had often been
stormy in his hours of perturbation, and mindful of the pain Rosamond
had had to bear, was carefully gentle towards her; but he, too, had
lost some of his old spirit, and he still felt it necessary to refer to
an economical change in their way of living as a matter of course,
trying to reconcile her to it gradually, and repressing his anger when
she answered by wishing that he would go to live in London.  When she
did not make this answer, she listened languidly, and wondered what she
had that was worth living for.  The hard and contemptuous words which
had fallen from her husband in his anger had deeply offended that
vanity which he had at first called into active enjoyment; and what she
regarded as his perverse way of looking at things, kept up a secret
repulsion, which made her receive all his tenderness as a poor
substitute for the happiness he had failed to give her.  They were at a
disadvantage with their neighbors, and there was no longer any outlook
towards Quallingham--there was no outlook anywhere except in an
occasional letter from Will Ladislaw.  She had felt stung and
disappointed by Will's resolution to quit Middlemarch, for in spite of
what she knew and guessed about his admiration for Dorothea, she
secretly cherished the belief that he had, or would necessarily come to
have, much more admiration for herself; Rosamond being one of those
women who live much in the idea that each man they meet would have
preferred them if the preference had not been hopeless.  Mrs. Casaubon
was all very well; but Will's interest in her dated before he knew Mrs.
Lydgate.  Rosamond took his way of talking to herself, which was a
mixture of playful fault-finding and hyperbolical gallantry, as the
disguise of a deeper feeling; and in his presence she felt that
agreeable titillation of vanity and sense of romantic drama which
Lydgate's presence had no longer the magic to create.  She even
fancied--what will not men and women fancy in these matters?--that
Will exaggerated his admiration for Mrs. Casaubon in order to pique
herself.  In this way poor Rosamond's brain had been busy before Will's
departure.  He would have made, she thought, a much more suitable
husband for her than she had found in Lydgate.  No notion could have
been falser than this, for Rosamond's discontent in her marriage was
due to the conditions of marriage itself, to its demand for
self-suppression and tolerance, and not to the nature of her husband;
but the easy conception of an unreal Better had a sentimental charm
which diverted her ennui.  She constructed a little romance which was
to vary the flatness of her life: Will Ladislaw was always to be a
bachelor and live near her, always to be at her command, and have an
understood though never fully expressed passion for her, which would be
sending out lambent flames every now and then in interesting scenes.
His departure had been a proportionate disappointment, and had sadly
increased her weariness of Middlemarch; but at first she had the
alternative dream of pleasures in store from her intercourse with the
family at Quallingham.  Since then the troubles of her married life had
deepened, and the absence of other relief encouraged her regretful
rumination over that thin romance which she had once fed on.  Men and
women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague
uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and
oftener still for a mighty love.  Will Ladislaw had written chatty
letters, half to her and half to Lydgate, and she had replied: their
separation, she felt, was not likely to be final, and the change she
now most longed for was that Lydgate should go to live in London;
everything would be agreeable in London; and she had set to work with
quiet determination to win this result, when there came a sudden,
delightful promise which inspirited her.

It came shortly before the memorable meeting at the town-hall, and was
nothing less than a letter from Will Ladislaw to Lydgate, which turned
indeed chiefly on his new interest in plans of colonization, but
mentioned incidentally, that he might find it necessary to pay a visit
to Middlemarch within the next few weeks--a very pleasant necessity, he
said, almost as good as holidays to a schoolboy.  He hoped there was
his old place on the rug, and a great deal of music in store for him.
But he was quite uncertain as to the time.  While Lydgate was reading
the letter to Rosamond, her face looked like a reviving flower--it grew
prettier and more blooming.  There was nothing unendurable now: the
debts were paid, Mr. Ladislaw was coming, and Lydgate would be
persuaded to leave Middlemarch and settle in London, which was "so
different from a provincial town."

That was a bright bit of morning.  But soon the sky became black over
poor Rosamond.  The presence of a new gloom in her husband, about which
he was entirely reserved towards her--for he dreaded to expose his
lacerated feeling to her neutrality and misconception--soon received a
painfully strange explanation, alien to all her previous notions of
what could affect her happiness.  In the new gayety of her spirits,
thinking that Lydgate had merely a worse fit of moodiness than usual,
causing him to leave her remarks unanswered, and evidently to keep out
of her way as much as possible, she chose, a few days after the
meeting, and without speaking to him on the subject, to send out notes
of invitation for a small evening party, feeling convinced that this
was a judicious step, since people seemed to have been keeping aloof
from them, and wanted restoring to the old habit of intercourse.  When
the invitations had been accepted, she would tell Lydgate, and give him
a wise admonition as to how a medical man should behave to his
neighbors; for Rosamond had the gravest little airs possible about
other people's duties.  But all the invitations were declined, and the
last answer came into Lydgate's hands.

"This is Chichely's scratch.  What is he writing to you about?" said
Lydgate, wonderingly, as he handed the note to her.  She was obliged to
let him see it, and, looking at her severely, he said--

"Why on earth have you been sending out invitations without telling me,
Rosamond?  I beg, I insist that you will not invite any one to this
house.  I suppose you have been inviting others, and they have refused
too."  She said nothing.

"Do you hear me?" thundered Lydgate.

"Yes, certainly I hear you," said Rosamond, turning her head aside with
the movement of a graceful long-necked bird.

Lydgate tossed his head without any grace and walked out of the room,
feeling himself dangerous.  Rosamond's thought was, that he was getting
more and more unbearable--not that there was any new special reason for
this peremptoriness.  His indisposition to tell her anything in which
he was sure beforehand that she would not be interested was growing
into an unreflecting habit, and she was in ignorance of everything
connected with the thousand pounds except that the loan had come from
her uncle Bulstrode.  Lydgate's odious humors and their neighbors'
apparent avoidance of them had an unaccountable date for her in their
relief from money difficulties.  If the invitations had been accepted
she would have gone to invite her mamma and the rest, whom she had seen
nothing of for several days; and she now put on her bonnet to go and
inquire what had become of them all, suddenly feeling as if there were
a conspiracy to leave her in isolation with a husband disposed to
offend everybody.  It was after the dinner hour, and she found her
father and mother seated together alone in the drawing-room. They
greeted her with sad looks, saying "Well, my dear!" and no more.  She
had never seen her father look so downcast; and seating herself near
him she said--

"Is there anything the matter, papa?"

He did not answer, but Mrs. Vincy said, "Oh, my dear, have you heard
nothing?  It won't be long before it reaches you."

"Is it anything about Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning pale.  The idea
of trouble immediately connected itself with what had been
unaccountable to her in him.

"Oh, my dear, yes.  To think of your marrying into this trouble.  Debt
was bad enough, but this will be worse."

"Stay, stay, Lucy," said Mr. Vincy.  "Have you heard nothing about your
uncle Bulstrode, Rosamond?"

"No, papa," said the poor thing, feeling as if trouble were not
anything she had before experienced, but some invisible power with an
iron grasp that made her soul faint within her.

Her father told her everything, saying at the end, "It's better for you
to know, my dear.  I think Lydgate must leave the town.  Things have
gone against him.  I dare say he couldn't help it.  I don't accuse him
of any harm," said Mr. Vincy.  He had always before been disposed to
find the utmost fault with Lydgate.

The shock to Rosamond was terrible.  It seemed to her that no lot could
be so cruelly hard as hers to have married a man who had become the
centre of infamous suspicions.  In many cases it is inevitable that the
shame is felt to be the worst part of crime; and it would have required
a great deal of disentangling reflection, such as had never entered
into Rosamond's life, for her in these moments to feel that her trouble
was less than if her husband had been certainly known to have done
something criminal.  All the shame seemed to be there.  And she had
innocently married this man with the belief that he and his family were
a glory to her!  She showed her usual reticence to her parents, and
only said, that if Lydgate had done as she wished he would have left
Middlemarch long ago.

"She bears it beyond anything," said her mother when she was gone.

"Ah, thank God!" said Mr. Vincy, who was much broken down.

But Rosamond went home with a sense of justified repugnance towards her
husband.  What had he really done--how had he really acted?  She did
not know.  Why had he not told her everything?  He did not speak to her
on the subject, and of course she could not speak to him.  It came into
her mind once that she would ask her father to let her go home again;
but dwelling on that prospect made it seem utter dreariness to her: a
married woman gone back to live with her parents--life seemed to have
no meaning for her in such a position: she could not contemplate
herself in it.

The next two days Lydgate observed a change in her, and believed that
she had heard the bad news.  Would she speak to him about it, or would
she go on forever in the silence which seemed to imply that she
believed him guilty?  We must remember that he was in a morbid state of
mind, in which almost all contact was pain.  Certainly Rosamond in this
case had equal reason to complain of reserve and want of confidence on
his part; but in the bitterness of his soul he excused himself;--was
he not justified in shrinking from the task of telling her, since now
she knew the truth she had no impulse to speak to him?  But a
deeper-lying consciousness that he was in fault made him restless, and
the silence between them became intolerable to him; it was as if they
were both adrift on one piece of wreck and looked away from each other.

He thought, "I am a fool.  Haven't I given up expecting anything?  I
have married care, not help."  And that evening he said--

"Rosamond, have you heard anything that distresses you?"

"Yes," she answered, laying down her work, which she had been carrying
on with a languid semi-consciousness, most unlike her usual self.

"What have you heard?"

"Everything, I suppose.  Papa told me."

"That people think me disgraced?"

"Yes," said Rosamond, faintly, beginning to sew again automatically.

There was silence.  Lydgate thought, "If she has any trust in me--any
notion of what I am, she ought to speak now and say that she does not
believe I have deserved disgrace."

But Rosamond on her side went on moving her fingers languidly.
Whatever was to be said on the subject she expected to come from
Tertius.  What did she know?  And if he were innocent of any wrong, why
did he not do something to clear himself?

This silence of hers brought a new rush of gall to that bitter mood in
which Lydgate had been saying to himself that nobody believed in
him--even Farebrother had not come forward.  He had begun to question
her with the intent that their conversation should disperse the chill
fog which had gathered between them, but he felt his resolution checked
by despairing resentment.  Even this trouble, like the rest, she seemed
to regard as if it were hers alone.  He was always to her a being
apart, doing what she objected to.  He started from his chair with an
angry impulse, and thrusting his hands in his pockets, walked up and
down the room.  There was an underlying consciousness all the while
that he should have to master this anger, and tell her everything, and
convince her of the facts.  For he had almost learned the lesson that
he must bend himself to her nature, and that because she came short in
her sympathy, he must give the more.  Soon he recurred to his intention
of opening himself: the occasion must not be lost.  If he could bring
her to feel with some solemnity that here was a slander which must be
met and not run away from, and that the whole trouble had come out of
his desperate want of money, it would be a moment for urging powerfully
on her that they should be one in the resolve to do with as little
money as possible, so that they might weather the bad time and keep
themselves independent.  He would mention the definite measures which
he desired to take, and win her to a willing spirit.  He was bound to
try this--and what else was there for him to do?

He did not know how long he had been walking uneasily backwards and
forwards, but Rosamond felt that it was long, and wished that he would
sit down.  She too had begun to think this an opportunity for urging on
Tertius what he ought to do.  Whatever might be the truth about all
this misery, there was one dread which asserted itself.

Lydgate at last seated himself, not in his usual chair, but in one
nearer to Rosamond, leaning aside in it towards her, and looking at her
gravely before he reopened the sad subject.  He had conquered himself
so far, and was about to speak with a sense of solemnity, as on an
occasion which was not to be repeated.  He had even opened his lips,
when Rosamond, letting her hands fall, looked at him and said--

"Surely, Tertius--"

"Well?"

"Surely now at last you have given up the idea of staying in
Middlemarch.  I cannot go on living here.  Let us go to London.  Papa,
and every one else, says you had better go.  Whatever misery I have to
put up with, it will be easier away from here."

Lydgate felt miserably jarred.  Instead of that critical outpouring for
which he had prepared himself with effort, here was the old round to be
gone through again.  He could not bear it.  With a quick change of
countenance he rose and went out of the room.

Perhaps if he had been strong enough to persist in his determination to
be the more because she was less, that evening might have had a better
issue.  If his energy could have borne down that check, he might still
have wrought on Rosamond's vision and will.  We cannot be sure that any
natures, however inflexible or peculiar, will resist this effect from a
more massive being than their own.  They may be taken by storm and for
the moment converted, becoming part of the soul which enwraps them in
the ardor of its movement.  But poor Lydgate had a throbbing pain
within him, and his energy had fallen short of its task.

The beginning of mutual understanding and resolve seemed as far off as
ever; nay, it seemed blocked out by the sense of unsuccessful effort.
They lived on from day to day with their thoughts still apart, Lydgate
going about what work he had in a mood of despair, and Rosamond
feeling, with some justification, that he was behaving cruelly.  It was
of no use to say anything to Tertius; but when Will Ladislaw came, she
was determined to tell him everything.  In spite of her general
reticence, she needed some one who would recognize her wrongs.



CHAPTER LXXVI.

    "To mercy, pity, peace, and love
         All pray in their distress,
     And to these virtues of delight,
         Return their thankfulness.
           .   .   .   .   .   .
     For Mercy has a human heart,
         Pity a human face;
     And Love, the human form divine;
         And Peace, the human dress.
                       --WILLIAM BLAKE: Songs of Innocence.


Some days later, Lydgate was riding to Lowick Manor, in consequence of
a summons from Dorothea.  The summons had not been unexpected, since it
had followed a letter from Mr. Bulstrode, in which he stated that he
had resumed his arrangements for quitting Middlemarch, and must remind
Lydgate of his previous communications about the Hospital, to the
purport of which he still adhered.  It had been his duty, before taking
further steps, to reopen the subject with Mrs. Casaubon, who now
wished, as before, to discuss the question with Lydgate.  "Your views
may possibly have undergone some change," wrote Mr. Bulstrode; "but, in
that case also, it is desirable that you should lay them before her."

Dorothea awaited his arrival with eager interest.  Though, in deference
to her masculine advisers, she had refrained from what Sir James had
called "interfering in this Bulstrode business," the hardship of
Lydgate's position was continually in her mind, and when Bulstrode
applied to her again about the hospital, she felt that the opportunity
was come to her which she had been hindered from hastening.  In her
luxurious home, wandering under the boughs of her own great trees, her
thought was going out over the lot of others, and her emotions were
imprisoned.  The idea of some active good within her reach, "haunted
her like a passion," and another's need having once come to her as a
distinct image, preoccupied her desire with the yearning to give
relief, and made her own ease tasteless.  She was full of confident
hope about this interview with Lydgate, never heeding what was said of
his personal reserve; never heeding that she was a very young woman.
Nothing could have seemed more irrelevant to Dorothea than insistence
on her youth and sex when she was moved to show her human fellowship.

As she sat waiting in the library, she could do nothing but live
through again all the past scenes which had brought Lydgate into her
memories.  They all owed their significance to her marriage and its
troubles--but no; there were two occasions in which the image of
Lydgate had come painfully in connection with his wife and some one
else.  The pain had been allayed for Dorothea, but it had left in her
an awakened conjecture as to what Lydgate's marriage might be to him, a
susceptibility to the slightest hint about Mrs. Lydgate.  These
thoughts were like a drama to her, and made her eyes bright, and gave
an attitude of suspense to her whole frame, though she was only looking
out from the brown library on to the turf and the bright green buds
which stood in relief against the dark evergreens.

When Lydgate came in, she was almost shocked at the change in his face,
which was strikingly perceptible to her who had not seen him for two
months.  It was not the change of emaciation, but that effect which
even young faces will very soon show from the persistent presence of
resentment and despondency.  Her cordial look, when she put out her
hand to him, softened his expression, but only with melancholy.

"I have wished very much to see you for a long while, Mr. Lydgate,"
said Dorothea when they were seated opposite each other; "but I put off
asking you to come until Mr. Bulstrode applied to me again about the
Hospital.  I know that the advantage of keeping the management of it
separate from that of the Infirmary depends on you, or, at least, on
the good which you are encouraged to hope for from having it under your
control.  And I am sure you will not refuse to tell me exactly what you
think."

"You want to decide whether you should give a generous support to the
Hospital," said Lydgate.  "I cannot conscientiously advise you to do it
in dependence on any activity of mine.  I may be obliged to leave the
town."

He spoke curtly, feeling the ache of despair as to his being able to
carry out any purpose that Rosamond had set her mind against.

"Not because there is no one to believe in you?" said Dorothea, pouring
out her words in clearness from a full heart.  "I know the unhappy
mistakes about you.  I knew them from the first moment to be mistakes.
You have never done anything vile.  You would not do anything
dishonorable."

It was the first assurance of belief in him that had fallen on
Lydgate's ears.  He drew a deep breath, and said, "Thank you." He could
say no more: it was something very new and strange in his life that
these few words of trust from a woman should be so much to him.

"I beseech you to tell me how everything was," said Dorothea,
fearlessly.  "I am sure that the truth would clear you."

Lydgate started up from his chair and went towards the window,
forgetting where he was.  He had so often gone over in his mind the
possibility of explaining everything without aggravating appearances
that would tell, perhaps unfairly, against Bulstrode, and had so often
decided against it--he had so often said to himself that his assertions
would not change people's impressions--that Dorothea's words sounded
like a temptation to do something which in his soberness he had
pronounced to be unreasonable.

"Tell me, pray," said Dorothea, with simple earnestness; "then we can
consult together.  It is wicked to let people think evil of any one
falsely, when it can be hindered."

Lydgate turned, remembering where he was, and saw Dorothea's face
looking up at him with a sweet trustful gravity.  The presence of a
noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes
the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger,
quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in
the wholeness of our character.  That influence was beginning to act on
Lydgate, who had for many days been seeing all life as one who is
dragged and struggling amid the throng.  He sat down again, and felt
that he was recovering his old self in the consciousness that he was
with one who believed in it.

"I don't want," he said, "to bear hard on Bulstrode, who has lent me
money of which I was in need--though I would rather have gone without
it now.  He is hunted down and miserable, and has only a poor thread of
life in him.  But I should like to tell you everything.  It will be a
comfort to me to speak where belief has gone beforehand, and where I
shall not seem to be offering assertions of my own honesty.  You will
feel what is fair to another, as you feel what is fair to me."

"Do trust me," said Dorothea; "I will not repeat anything without your
leave.  But at the very least, I could say that you have made all the
circumstances clear to me, and that I know you are not in any way
guilty.  Mr. Farebrother would believe me, and my uncle, and Sir James
Chettam.  Nay, there are persons in Middlemarch to whom I could go;
although they don't know much of me, they would believe me.  They would
know that I could have no other motive than truth and justice.  I would
take any pains to clear you.  I have very little to do.  There is
nothing better that I can do in the world."

Dorothea's voice, as she made this childlike picture of what she would
do, might have been almost taken as a proof that she could do it
effectively.  The searching tenderness of her woman's tones seemed made
for a defence against ready accusers.  Lydgate did not stay to think
that she was Quixotic: he gave himself up, for the first time in his
life, to the exquisite sense of leaning entirely on a generous
sympathy, without any check of proud reserve.  And he told her
everything, from the time when, under the pressure of his difficulties,
he unwillingly made his first application to Bulstrode; gradually, in
the relief of speaking, getting into a more thorough utterance of what
had gone on in his mind--entering fully into the fact that his
treatment of the patient was opposed to the dominant practice, into his
doubts at the last, his ideal of medical duty, and his uneasy
consciousness that the acceptance of the money had made some difference
in his private inclination and professional behavior, though not in his
fulfilment of any publicly recognized obligation.

"It has come to my knowledge since," he added, "that Hawley sent some
one to examine the housekeeper at Stone Court, and she said that she
gave the patient all the opium in the phial I left, as well as a good
deal of brandy.  But that would not have been opposed to ordinary
prescriptions, even of first-rate men.  The suspicions against me had
no hold there: they are grounded on the knowledge that I took money,
that Bulstrode had strong motives for wishing the man to die, and that
he gave me the money as a bribe to concur in some malpractices or other
against the patient--that in any case I accepted a bribe to hold my
tongue.  They are just the suspicions that cling the most obstinately,
because they lie in people's inclination and can never be disproved.
How my orders came to be disobeyed is a question to which I don't know
the answer.  It is still possible that Bulstrode was innocent of any
criminal intention--even possible that he had nothing to do with the
disobedience, and merely abstained from mentioning it.  But all that
has nothing to do with the public belief.  It is one of those cases on
which a man is condemned on the ground of his character--it is
believed that he has committed a crime in some undefined way, because
he had the motive for doing it; and Bulstrode's character has enveloped
me, because I took his money.  I am simply blighted--like a damaged
ear of corn--the business is done and can't be undone."

"Oh, it is hard!" said Dorothea.  "I understand the difficulty there is
in your vindicating yourself.  And that all this should have come to
you who had meant to lead a higher life than the common, and to find
out better ways--I cannot bear to rest in this as unchangeable.  I know
you meant that.  I remember what you said to me when you first spoke to
me about the hospital.  There is no sorrow I have thought more about
than that--to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail."

"Yes," said Lydgate, feeling that here he had found room for the full
meaning of his grief.  "I had some ambition.  I meant everything to be
different with me.  I thought I had more strength and mastery.  But the
most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself."

"Suppose," said Dorothea, meditatively,--"suppose we kept on the
Hospital according to the present plan, and you stayed here though only
with the friendship and support of a few, the evil feeling towards you
would gradually die out; there would come opportunities in which people
would be forced to acknowledge that they had been unjust to you,
because they would see that your purposes were pure.  You may still win
a great fame like the Louis and Laennec I have heard you speak of, and
we shall all be proud of you," she ended, with a smile.

"That might do if I had my old trust in myself," said Lydgate,
mournfully.  "Nothing galls me more than the notion of turning round
and running away before this slander, leaving it unchecked behind me.
Still, I can't ask any one to put a great deal of money into a plan
which depends on me."

"It would be quite worth my while," said Dorothea, simply.  "Only
think.  I am very uncomfortable with my money, because they tell me I
have too little for any great scheme of the sort I like best, and yet I
have too much.  I don't know what to do.  I have seven hundred a-year
of my own fortune, and nineteen hundred a-year that Mr. Casaubon left
me, and between three and four thousand of ready money in the bank.  I
wished to raise money and pay it off gradually out of my income which I
don't want, to buy land with and found a village which should be a
school of industry; but Sir James and my uncle have convinced me that
the risk would be too great.  So you see that what I should most
rejoice at would be to have something good to do with my money: I
should like it to make other people's lives better to them.  It makes
me very uneasy--coming all to me who don't want it."

A smile broke through the gloom of Lydgate's face.  The childlike
grave-eyed earnestness with which Dorothea said all this was
irresistible--blent into an adorable whole with her ready understanding
of high experience.  (Of lower experience such as plays a great part in
the world, poor Mrs. Casaubon had a very blurred shortsighted
knowledge, little helped by her imagination.) But she took the smile as
encouragement of her plan.

"I think you see now that you spoke too scrupulously," she said, in a
tone of persuasion.  "The hospital would be one good; and making your
life quite whole and well again would be another."

Lydgate's smile had died away.  "You have the goodness as well as the
money to do all that; if it could be done," he said.  "But--"

He hesitated a little while, looking vaguely towards the window; and
she sat in silent expectation.  At last he turned towards her and said
impetuously--

"Why should I not tell you?--you know what sort of bond marriage is.
You will understand everything."

Dorothea felt her heart beginning to beat faster.  Had he that sorrow
too?  But she feared to say any word, and he went on immediately.

"It is impossible for me now to do anything--to take any step without
considering my wife's happiness.  The thing that I might like to do if
I were alone, is become impossible to me.  I can't see her miserable.
She married me without knowing what she was going into, and it might
have been better for her if she had not married me."

"I know, I know--you could not give her pain, if you were not obliged
to do it," said Dorothea, with keen memory of her own life.

"And she has set her mind against staying.  She wishes to go.  The
troubles she has had here have wearied her," said Lydgate, breaking off
again, lest he should say too much.

"But when she saw the good that might come of staying--" said Dorothea,
remonstrantly, looking at Lydgate as if he had forgotten the reasons
which had just been considered.  He did not speak immediately.

"She would not see it," he said at last, curtly, feeling at first that
this statement must do without explanation.  "And, indeed, I have lost
all spirit about carrying on my life here."  He paused a moment and
then, following the impulse to let Dorothea see deeper into the
difficulty of his life, he said, "The fact is, this trouble has come
upon her confusedly.  We have not been able to speak to each other
about it.  I am not sure what is in her mind about it: she may fear
that I have really done something base.  It is my fault; I ought to be
more open.  But I have been suffering cruelly."

"May I go and see her?" said Dorothea, eagerly.  "Would she accept my
sympathy?  I would tell her that you have not been blamable before any
one's judgment but your own.  I would tell her that you shall be
cleared in every fair mind.  I would cheer her heart.  Will you ask her
if I may go to see her?  I did see her once."

"I am sure you may," said Lydgate, seizing the proposition with some
hope.  "She would feel honored--cheered, I think, by the proof that you
at least have some respect for me.  I will not speak to her about your
coming--that she may not connect it with my wishes at all.  I know very
well that I ought not to have left anything to be told her by others,
but--"

He broke off, and there was a moment's silence.  Dorothea refrained
from saying what was in her mind--how well she knew that there might be
invisible barriers to speech between husband and wife.  This was a
point on which even sympathy might make a wound.  She returned to the
more outward aspect of Lydgate's position, saying cheerfully--

"And if Mrs. Lydgate knew that there were friends who would believe in
you and support you, she might then be glad that you should stay in
your place and recover your hopes--and do what you meant to do.
Perhaps then you would see that it was right to agree with what I
proposed about your continuing at the Hospital.  Surely you would, if
you still have faith in it as a means of making your knowledge useful?"

Lydgate did not answer, and she saw that he was debating with himself.

"You need not decide immediately," she said, gently.  "A few days hence
it will be early enough for me to send my answer to Mr. Bulstrode."

Lydgate still waited, but at last turned to speak in his most decisive
tones.

"No; I prefer that there should be no interval left for wavering.  I am
no longer sure enough of myself--I mean of what it would be possible
for me to do under the changed circumstances of my life.  It would be
dishonorable to let others engage themselves to anything serious in
dependence on me.  I might be obliged to go away after all; I see
little chance of anything else.  The whole thing is too problematic; I
cannot consent to be the cause of your goodness being wasted.  No--let
the new Hospital be joined with the old Infirmary, and everything go on
as it might have done if I had never come.  I have kept a valuable
register since I have been there; I shall send it to a man who will
make use of it," he ended bitterly.  "I can think of nothing for a long
while but getting an income."

"It hurts me very much to hear you speak so hopelessly," said Dorothea.
"It would be a happiness to your friends, who believe in your future,
in your power to do great things, if you would let them save you from
that.  Think how much money I have; it would be like taking a burthen
from me if you took some of it every year till you got free from this
fettering want of income.  Why should not people do these things?  It
is so difficult to make shares at all even.  This is one way."

"God bless you, Mrs. Casaubon!" said Lydgate, rising as if with the
same impulse that made his words energetic, and resting his arm on the
back of the great leather chair he had been sitting in.  "It is good
that you should have such feelings.  But I am not the man who ought to
allow himself to benefit by them.  I have not given guarantees enough.
I must not at least sink into the degradation of being pensioned for
work that I never achieved.  It is very clear to me that I must not
count on anything else than getting away from Middlemarch as soon as I
can manage it.  I should not be able for a long while, at the very
best, to get an income here, and--and it is easier to make necessary
changes in a new place.  I must do as other men do, and think what will
please the world and bring in money; look for a little opening in the
London crowd, and push myself; set up in a watering-place, or go to
some southern town where there are plenty of idle English, and get
myself puffed,--that is the sort of shell I must creep into and try to
keep my soul alive in."

"Now that is not brave," said Dorothea,--"to give up the fight."

"No, it is not brave," said Lydgate, "but if a man is afraid of
creeping paralysis?"  Then, in another tone, "Yet you have made a great
difference in my courage by believing in me.  Everything seems more
bearable since I have talked to you; and if you can clear me in a few
other minds, especially in Farebrother's, I shall be deeply grateful.
The point I wish you not to mention is the fact of disobedience to my
orders.  That would soon get distorted.  After all, there is no
evidence for me but people's opinion of me beforehand.  You can only
repeat my own report of myself."

"Mr. Farebrother will believe--others will believe," said Dorothea.  "I
can say of you what will make it stupidity to suppose that you would be
bribed to do a wickedness."

"I don't know," said Lydgate, with something like a groan in his voice.
"I have not taken a bribe yet.  But there is a pale shade of bribery
which is sometimes called prosperity.  You will do me another great
kindness, then, and come to see my wife?"

"Yes, I will.  I remember how pretty she is," said Dorothea, into whose
mind every impression about Rosamond had cut deep.  "I hope she will
like me."

As Lydgate rode away, he thought, "This young creature has a heart
large enough for the Virgin Mary.  She evidently thinks nothing of her
own future, and would pledge away half her income at once, as if she
wanted nothing for herself but a chair to sit in from which she can
look down with those clear eyes at the poor mortals who pray to her.
She seems to have what I never saw in any woman before--a fountain of
friendship towards men--a man can make a friend of her.  Casaubon must
have raised some heroic hallucination in her.  I wonder if she could
have any other sort of passion for a man?  Ladislaw?--there was
certainly an unusual feeling between them.  And Casaubon must have had
a notion of it.  Well--her love might help a man more than her money."

Dorothea on her side had immediately formed a plan of relieving Lydgate
from his obligation to Bulstrode, which she felt sure was a part,
though small, of the galling pressure he had to bear.  She sat down at
once under the inspiration of their interview, and wrote a brief note,
in which she pleaded that she had more claim than Mr. Bulstrode had to
the satisfaction of providing the money which had been serviceable to
Lydgate--that it would be unkind in Lydgate not to grant her the
position of being his helper in this small matter, the favor being
entirely to her who had so little that was plainly marked out for her
to do with her superfluous money.  He might call her a creditor or by
any other name if it did but imply that he granted her request.  She
enclosed a check for a thousand pounds, and determined to take the
letter with her the next day when she went to see Rosamond.



CHAPTER LXXVII.

    "And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
     To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
     With some suspicion."
                                         --Henry V.


The next day Lydgate had to go to Brassing, and told Rosamond that he
should be away until the evening.  Of late she had never gone beyond
her own house and garden, except to church, and once to see her papa,
to whom she said, "If Tertius goes away, you will help us to move, will
you not, papa?  I suppose we shall have very little money.  I am sure I
hope some one will help us." And Mr. Vincy had said, "Yes, child, I
don't mind a hundred or two.  I can see the end of that."  With these
exceptions she had sat at home in languid melancholy and suspense,
fixing her mind on Will Ladislaw's coming as the one point of hope and
interest, and associating this with some new urgency on Lydgate to make
immediate arrangements for leaving Middlemarch and going to London,
till she felt assured that the coming would be a potent cause of the
going, without at all seeing how.  This way of establishing sequences
is too common to be fairly regarded as a peculiar folly in Rosamond.
And it is precisely this sort of sequence which causes the greatest
shock when it is sundered: for to see how an effect may be produced is
often to see possible missings and checks; but to see nothing except
the desirable cause, and close upon it the desirable effect, rids us of
doubt and makes our minds strongly intuitive.  That was the process
going on in poor Rosamond, while she arranged all objects around her
with the same nicety as ever, only with more slowness--or sat down to
the piano, meaning to play, and then desisting, yet lingering on the
music stool with her white fingers suspended on the wooden front, and
looking before her in dreamy ennui.  Her melancholy had become so
marked that Lydgate felt a strange timidity before it, as a perpetual
silent reproach, and the strong man, mastered by his keen sensibilities
towards this fair fragile creature whose life he seemed somehow to have
bruised, shrank from her look, and sometimes started at her approach,
fear of her and fear for her rushing in only the more forcibly after it
had been momentarily expelled by exasperation.

But this morning Rosamond descended from her room upstairs--where she
sometimes sat the whole day when Lydgate was out--equipped for a walk
in the town.  She had a letter to post--a letter addressed to Mr.
Ladislaw and written with charming discretion, but intended to hasten
his arrival by a hint of trouble.  The servant-maid, their sole
house-servant now, noticed her coming down-stairs in her walking dress,
and thought "there never did anybody look so pretty in a bonnet poor
thing."

Meanwhile Dorothea's mind was filled with her project of going to
Rosamond, and with the many thoughts, both of the past and the probable
future, which gathered round the idea of that visit.  Until yesterday
when Lydgate had opened to her a glimpse of some trouble in his married
life, the image of Mrs. Lydgate had always been associated for her with
that of Will Ladislaw.  Even in her most uneasy moments--even when she
had been agitated by Mrs. Cadwallader's painfully graphic report of
gossip--her effort, nay, her strongest impulsive prompting, had been
towards the vindication of Will from any sullying surmises; and when,
in her meeting with him afterwards, she had at first interpreted his
words as a probable allusion to a feeling towards Mrs. Lydgate which he
was determined to cut himself off from indulging, she had had a quick,
sad, excusing vision of the charm there might be in his constant
opportunities of companionship with that fair creature, who most likely
shared his other tastes as she evidently did his delight in music.  But
there had followed his parting words--the few passionate words in
which he had implied that she herself was the object of whom his love
held him in dread, that it was his love for her only which he was
resolved not to declare but to carry away into banishment.  From the
time of that parting, Dorothea, believing in Will's love for her,
believing with a proud delight in his delicate sense of honor and his
determination that no one should impeach him justly, felt her heart
quite at rest as to the regard he might have for Mrs. Lydgate.  She was
sure that the regard was blameless.

There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having
a sort of baptism and consecration: they bind us over to rectitude and
purity by their pure belief about us; and our sins become that worst
kind of sacrilege which tears down the invisible altar of trust.  "If
you are not good, none is good"--those little words may give a
terrific meaning to responsibility, may hold a vitriolic intensity for
remorse.

Dorothea's nature was of that kind: her own passionate faults lay along
the easily counted open channels of her ardent character; and while she
was full of pity for the visible mistakes of others, she had not yet
any material within her experience for subtle constructions and
suspicions of hidden wrong.  But that simplicity of hers, holding up an
ideal for others in her believing conception of them, was one of the
great powers of her womanhood.  And it had from the first acted
strongly on Will Ladislaw.  He felt, when he parted from her, that the
brief words by which he had tried to convey to her his feeling about
herself and the division which her fortune made between them, would
only profit by their brevity when Dorothea had to interpret them: he
felt that in her mind he had found his highest estimate.

And he was right there.  In the months since their parting Dorothea had
felt a delicious though sad repose in their relation to each other, as
one which was inwardly whole and without blemish.  She had an active
force of antagonism within her, when the antagonism turned on the
defence either of plans or persons that she believed in; and the wrongs
which she felt that Will had received from her husband, and the
external conditions which to others were grounds for slighting him,
only gave the more tenacity to her affection and admiring judgment.
And now with the disclosures about Bulstrode had come another fact
affecting Will's social position, which roused afresh Dorothea's inward
resistance to what was said about him in that part of her world which
lay within park palings.

"Young Ladislaw the grandson of a thieving Jew pawnbroker" was a phrase
which had entered emphatically into the dialogues about the Bulstrode
business, at Lowick, Tipton, and Freshitt, and was a worse kind of
placard on poor Will's back than the "Italian with white mice."
Upright Sir James Chettam was convinced that his own satisfaction was
righteous when he thought with some complacency that here was an added
league to that mountainous distance between Ladislaw and Dorothea,
which enabled him to dismiss any anxiety in that direction as too
absurd.  And perhaps there had been some pleasure in pointing Mr.
Brooke's attention to this ugly bit of Ladislaw's genealogy, as a fresh
candle for him to see his own folly by.  Dorothea had observed the
animus with which Will's part in the painful story had been recalled
more than once; but she had uttered no word, being checked now, as she
had not been formerly in speaking of Will, by the consciousness of a
deeper relation between them which must always remain in consecrated
secrecy.  But her silence shrouded her resistant emotion into a more
thorough glow; and this misfortune in Will's lot which, it seemed,
others were wishing to fling at his back as an opprobrium, only gave
something more of enthusiasm to her clinging thought.

She entertained no visions of their ever coming into nearer union, and
yet she had taken no posture of renunciation.  She had accepted her
whole relation to Will very simply as part of her marriage sorrows, and
would have thought it very sinful in her to keep up an inward wail
because she was not completely happy, being rather disposed to dwell on
the superfluities of her lot.  She could bear that the chief pleasures
of her tenderness should lie in memory, and the idea of marriage came
to her solely as a repulsive proposition from some suitor of whom she
at present knew nothing, but whose merits, as seen by her friends,
would be a source of torment to her:--"somebody who will manage your
property for you, my dear," was Mr. Brooke's attractive suggestion of
suitable characteristics.  "I should like to manage it myself, if I
knew what to do with it," said Dorothea.  No--she adhered to her
declaration that she would never be married again, and in the long
valley of her life which looked so flat and empty of waymarks, guidance
would come as she walked along the road, and saw her fellow-passengers
by the way.

This habitual state of feeling about Will Ladislaw had been strong in
all her waking hours since she had proposed to pay a visit to Mrs.
Lydgate, making a sort of background against which she saw Rosamond's
figure presented to her without hindrances to her interest and
compassion.  There was evidently some mental separation, some barrier
to complete confidence which had arisen between this wife and the
husband who had yet made her happiness a law to him.  That was a
trouble which no third person must directly touch.  But Dorothea
thought with deep pity of the loneliness which must have come upon
Rosamond from the suspicions cast on her husband; and there would
surely be help in the manifestation of respect for Lydgate and sympathy
with her.

"I shall talk to her about her husband," thought Dorothea, as she was
being driven towards the town.  The clear spring morning, the scent of
the moist earth, the fresh leaves just showing their creased-up wealth
of greenery from out their half-opened sheaths, seemed part of the
cheerfulness she was feeling from a long conversation with Mr.
Farebrother, who had joyfully accepted the justifying explanation of
Lydgate's conduct.  "I shall take Mrs. Lydgate good news, and perhaps
she will like to talk to me and make a friend of me."

Dorothea had another errand in Lowick Gate: it was about a new
fine-toned bell for the school-house, and as she had to get out of her
carriage very near to Lydgate's, she walked thither across the street,
having told the coachman to wait for some packages.  The street door
was open, and the servant was taking the opportunity of looking out at
the carriage which was pausing within sight when it became apparent to
her that the lady who "belonged to it" was coming towards her.

"Is Mrs. Lydgate at home?" said Dorothea.

"I'm not sure, my lady; I'll see, if you'll please to walk in," said
Martha, a little confused on the score of her kitchen apron, but
collected enough to be sure that "mum" was not the right title for this
queenly young widow with a carriage and pair.  "Will you please to walk
in, and I'll go and see."

"Say that I am Mrs. Casaubon," said Dorothea, as Martha moved forward
intending to show her into the drawing-room and then to go up-stairs to
see if Rosamond had returned from her walk.

They crossed the broader part of the entrance-hall, and turned up the
passage which led to the garden.  The drawing-room door was unlatched,
and Martha, pushing it without looking into the room, waited for Mrs.
Casaubon to enter and then turned away, the door having swung open and
swung back again without noise.

Dorothea had less of outward vision than usual this morning, being
filled with images of things as they had been and were going to be.
She found herself on the other side of the door without seeing anything
remarkable, but immediately she heard a voice speaking in low tones
which startled her as with a sense of dreaming in daylight, and
advancing unconsciously a step or two beyond the projecting slab of a
bookcase, she saw, in the terrible illumination of a certainty which
filled up all outlines, something which made her pause, motionless,
without self-possession enough to speak.

Seated with his back towards her on a sofa which stood against the wall
on a line with the door by which she had entered, she saw Will
Ladislaw: close by him and turned towards him with a flushed
tearfulness which gave a new brilliancy to her face sat Rosamond, her
bonnet hanging back, while Will leaning towards her clasped both her
upraised hands in his and spoke with low-toned fervor.

Rosamond in her agitated absorption had not noticed the silently
advancing figure; but when Dorothea, after the first immeasurable
instant of this vision, moved confusedly backward and found herself
impeded by some piece of furniture, Rosamond was suddenly aware of her
presence, and with a spasmodic movement snatched away her hands and
rose, looking at Dorothea who was necessarily arrested.  Will Ladislaw,
starting up, looked round also, and meeting Dorothea's eyes with a new
lightning in them, seemed changing to marble: But she immediately
turned them away from him to Rosamond and said in a firm voice--

"Excuse me, Mrs. Lydgate, the servant did not know that you were here.
I called to deliver an important letter for Mr. Lydgate, which I wished
to put into your own hands."

She laid down the letter on the small table which had checked her
retreat, and then including Rosamond and Will in one distant glance and
bow, she went quickly out of the room, meeting in the passage the
surprised Martha, who said she was sorry the mistress was not at home,
and then showed the strange lady out with an inward reflection that
grand people were probably more impatient than others.

Dorothea walked across the street with her most elastic step and was
quickly in her carriage again.

"Drive on to Freshitt Hall," she said to the coachman, and any one
looking at her might have thought that though she was paler than usual
she was never animated by a more self-possessed energy.  And that was
really her experience.  It was as if she had drunk a great draught of
scorn that stimulated her beyond the susceptibility to other feelings.
She had seen something so far below her belief, that her emotions
rushed back from it and made an excited throng without an object.  She
needed something active to turn her excitement out upon.  She felt
power to walk and work for a day, without meat or drink.  And she would
carry out the purpose with which she had started in the morning, of
going to Freshitt and Tipton to tell Sir James and her uncle all that
she wished them to know about Lydgate, whose married loneliness under
his trial now presented itself to her with new significance, and made
her more ardent in readiness to be his champion.  She had never felt
anything like this triumphant power of indignation in the struggle of
her married life, in which there had always been a quickly subduing
pang; and she took it as a sign of new strength.

"Dodo, how very bright your eyes are!" said Celia, when Sir James was
gone out of the room.  "And you don't see anything you look at, Arthur
or anything.  You are going to do something uncomfortable, I know.  Is
it all about Mr. Lydgate, or has something else happened?" Celia had
been used to watch her sister with expectation.

"Yes, dear, a great many things have happened," said Dodo, in her full
tones.

"I wonder what," said Celia, folding her arms cozily and leaning
forward upon them.

"Oh, all the troubles of all people on the face of the earth," said
Dorothea, lifting her arms to the back of her head.

"Dear me, Dodo, are you going to have a scheme for them?" said Celia, a
little uneasy at this Hamlet-like raving.

But Sir James came in again, ready to accompany Dorothea to the Grange,
and she finished her expedition well, not swerving in her resolution
until she descended at her own door.



CHAPTER LXXVIII.

    "Would it were yesterday and I i' the grave,
     With her sweet faith above for monument"


Rosamond and Will stood motionless--they did not know how long--he
looking towards the spot where Dorothea had stood, and she looking
towards him with doubt.  It seemed an endless time to Rosamond, in
whose inmost soul there was hardly so much annoyance as gratification
from what had just happened.  Shallow natures dream of an easy sway
over the emotions of others, trusting implicitly in their own petty
magic to turn the deepest streams, and confident, by pretty gestures
and remarks, of making the thing that is not as though it were.  She
knew that Will had received a severe blow, but she had been little used
to imagining other people's states of mind except as a material cut
into shape by her own wishes; and she believed in her own power to
soothe or subdue.  Even Tertius, that most perverse of men, was always
subdued in the long-run: events had been obstinate, but still Rosamond
would have said now, as she did before her marriage, that she never
gave up what she had set her mind on.

She put out her arm and laid the tips of her fingers on Will's
coat-sleeve.

"Don't touch me!" he said, with an utterance like the cut of a lash,
darting from her, and changing from pink to white and back again, as if
his whole frame were tingling with the pain of the sting.  He wheeled
round to the other side of the room and stood opposite to her, with the
tips of his fingers in his pockets and his head thrown back, looking
fiercely not at Rosamond but at a point a few inches away from her.

She was keenly offended, but the Signs she made of this were such as
only Lydgate was used to interpret.  She became suddenly quiet and
seated herself, untying her hanging bonnet and laying it down with her
shawl.  Her little hands which she folded before her were very cold.

It would have been safer for Will in the first instance to have taken
up his hat and gone away; but he had felt no impulse to do this; on the
contrary, he had a horrible inclination to stay and shatter Rosamond
with his anger.  It seemed as impossible to bear the fatality she had
drawn down on him without venting his fury as it would be to a panther
to bear the javelin-wound without springing and biting.  And yet--how
could he tell a woman that he was ready to curse her?  He was fuming
under a repressive law which he was forced to acknowledge: he was
dangerously poised, and Rosamond's voice now brought the decisive
vibration.  In flute-like tones of sarcasm she said--

"You can easily go after Mrs. Casaubon and explain your preference."

"Go after her!" he burst out, with a sharp edge in his voice.  "Do you
think she would turn to look at me, or value any word I ever uttered to
her again at more than a dirty feather?--Explain!  How can a man
explain at the expense of a woman?"

"You can tell her what you please," said Rosamond with more tremor.

"Do you suppose she would like me better for sacrificing you?  She is
not a woman to be flattered because I made myself despicable--to
believe that I must be true to her because I was a dastard to you."

He began to move about with the restlessness of a wild animal that sees
prey but cannot reach it.  Presently he burst out again--

"I had no hope before--not much--of anything better to come.  But I had
one certainty--that she believed in me.  Whatever people had said or
done about me, she believed in me.--That's gone!  She'll never again
think me anything but a paltry pretence--too nice to take heaven
except upon flattering conditions, and yet selling myself for any
devil's change by the sly.  She'll think of me as an incarnate insult
to her, from the first moment we--"

Will stopped as if he had found himself grasping something that must
not be thrown and shattered.  He found another vent for his rage by
snatching up Rosamond's words again, as if they were reptiles to be
throttled and flung off.

"Explain!  Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell!  Explain my
preference!  I never had a _preference_ for her, any more than I have a
preference for breathing.  No other woman exists by the side of her.  I
would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any
other woman's living."

Rosamond, while these poisoned weapons were being hurled at her, was
almost losing the sense of her identity, and seemed to be waking into
some new terrible existence.  She had no sense of chill resolute
repulsion, of reticent self-justification such as she had known under
Lydgate's most stormy displeasure: all her sensibility was turned into
a bewildering novelty of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under a
lash never experienced before.  What another nature felt in opposition
to her own was being burnt and bitten into her consciousness.  When
Will had ceased to speak she had become an image of sickened misery:
her lips were pale, and her eyes had a tearless dismay in them.  If it
had been Tertius who stood opposite to her, that look of misery would
have been a pang to him, and he would have sunk by her side to comfort
her, with that strong-armed comfort which, she had often held very
cheap.

Let it be forgiven to Will that he had no such movement of pity.  He
had felt no bond beforehand to this woman who had spoiled the ideal
treasure of his life, and he held himself blameless.  He knew that he
was cruel, but he had no relenting in him yet.

After he had done speaking, he still moved about, half in absence of
mind, and Rosamond sat perfectly still.  At length Will, seeming to
bethink himself, took up his hat, yet stood some moments irresolute.
He had spoken to her in a way that made a phrase of common politeness
difficult to utter; and yet, now that he had come to the point of going
away from her without further speech, he shrank from it as a brutality;
he felt checked and stultified in his anger.  He walked towards the
mantel-piece and leaned his arm on it, and waited in silence for--he
hardly knew what.  The vindictive fire was still burning in him, and he
could utter no word of retractation; but it was nevertheless in his
mind that having come back to this hearth where he had enjoyed a
caressing friendship he had found calamity seated there--he had had
suddenly revealed to him a trouble that lay outside the home as well as
within it.  And what seemed a foreboding was pressing upon him as with
slow pincers:--that his life might come to be enslaved by this helpless
woman who had thrown herself upon him in the dreary sadness of her
heart.  But he was in gloomy rebellion against the fact that his quick
apprehensiveness foreshadowed to him, and when his eyes fell on
Rosamond's blighted face it seemed to him that he was the more pitiable
of the two; for pain must enter into its glorified life of memory
before it can turn into compassion.

And so they remained for many minutes, opposite each other, far apart,
in silence; Will's face still possessed by a mute rage, and Rosamond's
by a mute misery.  The poor thing had no force to fling out any passion
in return; the terrible collapse of the illusion towards which all her
hope had been strained was a stroke which had too thoroughly shaken
her: her little world was in ruins, and she felt herself tottering in
the midst as a lonely bewildered consciousness.

Will wished that she would speak and bring some mitigating shadow
across his own cruel speech, which seemed to stand staring at them both
in mockery of any attempt at revived fellowship.  But she said nothing,
and at last with a desperate effort over himself, he asked, "Shall I
come in and see Lydgate this evening?"

"If you like," Rosamond answered, just audibly.

And then Will went out of the house, Martha never knowing that he had
been in.

After he was gone, Rosamond tried to get up from her seat, but fell
back fainting.  When she came to herself again, she felt too ill to
make the exertion of rising to ring the bell, and she remained helpless
until the girl, surprised at her long absence, thought for the first
time of looking for her in all the down-stairs rooms.  Rosamond said
that she had felt suddenly sick and faint, and wanted to be helped
up-stairs. When there she threw herself on the bed with her clothes on,
and lay in apparent torpor, as she had done once before on a memorable
day of grief.

Lydgate came home earlier than he had expected, about half-past five,
and found her there.  The perception that she was ill threw every other
thought into the background.  When he felt her pulse, her eyes rested
on him with more persistence than they had done for a long while, as if
she felt some content that he was there.  He perceived the difference
in a moment, and seating himself by her put his arm gently under her,
and bending over her said, "My poor Rosamond! has something agitated
you?"  Clinging to him she fell into hysterical sobbings and cries, and
for the next hour he did nothing but soothe and tend her.  He imagined
that Dorothea had been to see her, and that all this effect on her
nervous system, which evidently involved some new turning towards
himself, was due to the excitement of the new impressions which that
visit had raised.



CHAPTER LXXIX.

    "Now, I saw in my dream, that just as they had ended their
    talk, they drew nigh to a very miry slough, that was in the
    midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall
    suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was
    Despond."--BUNYAN.


When Rosamond was quiet, and Lydgate had left her, hoping that she
might soon sleep under the effect of an anodyne, he went into the
drawing-room to fetch a book which he had left there, meaning to spend
the evening in his work-room, and he saw on the table Dorothea's letter
addressed to him.  He had not ventured to ask Rosamond if Mrs. Casaubon
had called, but the reading of this letter assured him of the fact, for
Dorothea mentioned that it was to be carried by herself.

When Will Ladislaw came in a little later Lydgate met him with a
surprise which made it clear that he had not been told of the earlier
visit, and Will could not say, "Did not Mrs. Lydgate tell you that I
came this morning?"

"Poor Rosamond is ill," Lydgate added immediately on his greeting.

"Not seriously, I hope," said Will.

"No--only a slight nervous shock--the effect of some agitation.  She
has been overwrought lately.  The truth is, Ladislaw, I am an unlucky
devil.  We have gone through several rounds of purgatory since you
left, and I have lately got on to a worse ledge of it than ever.  I
suppose you are only just come down--you look rather battered--you
have not been long enough in the town to hear anything?"

"I travelled all night and got to the White Hart at eight o'clock this
morning. I have been shutting myself up and resting," said Will,
feeling himself a sneak, but seeing no alternative to this evasion.

And then he heard Lydgate's account of the troubles which Rosamond had
already depicted to him in her way.  She had not mentioned the fact of
Will's name being connected with the public story--this detail not
immediately affecting her--and he now heard it for the first time.

"I thought it better to tell you that your name is mixed up with the
disclosures," said Lydgate, who could understand better than most men
how Ladislaw might be stung by the revelation.  "You will be sure to
hear it as soon as you turn out into the town.  I suppose it is true
that Raffles spoke to you."

"Yes," said Will, sardonically.  "I shall be fortunate if gossip does
not make me the most disreputable person in the whole affair.  I should
think the latest version must be, that I plotted with Raffles to murder
Bulstrode, and ran away from Middlemarch for the purpose."

He was thinking "Here is a new ring in the sound of my name to
recommend it in her hearing; however--what does it signify now?"

But he said nothing of Bulstrode's offer to him.  Will was very open
and careless about his personal affairs, but it was among the more
exquisite touches in nature's modelling of him that he had a delicate
generosity which warned him into reticence here.  He shrank from saying
that he had rejected Bulstrode's money, in the moment when he was
learning that it was Lydgate's misfortune to have accepted it.

Lydgate too was reticent in the midst of his confidence.  He made no
allusion to Rosamond's feeling under their trouble, and of Dorothea he
only said, "Mrs. Casaubon has been the one person to come forward and
say that she had no belief in any of the suspicions against me."
Observing a change in Will's face, he avoided any further mention of
her, feeling himself too ignorant of their relation to each other not
to fear that his words might have some hidden painful bearing on it.
And it occurred to him that Dorothea was the real cause of the present
visit to Middlemarch.

The two men were pitying each other, but it was only Will who guessed
the extent of his companion's trouble.  When Lydgate spoke with
desperate resignation of going to settle in London, and said with a
faint smile, "We shall have you again, old fellow." Will felt
inexpressibly mournful, and said nothing.  Rosamond had that morning
entreated him to urge this step on Lydgate; and it seemed to him as if
he were beholding in a magic panorama a future where he himself was
sliding into that pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations of
circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdition than any single
momentous bargain.

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our
future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into
insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.  Poor Lydgate was inwardly
groaning on that margin, and Will was arriving at it.  It seemed to him
this evening as if the cruelty of his outburst to Rosamond had made an
obligation for him, and he dreaded the obligation: he dreaded Lydgate's
unsuspecting good-will: he dreaded his own distaste for his spoiled
life, which would leave him in motiveless levity.



CHAPTER LXXX.

       "Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
        The Godhead's most benignant grace;
        Nor know we anything so fair
        As is the smile upon thy face;
        Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
        And fragrance in thy footing treads;
        Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong;
    And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.
                                        --WORDSWORTH: Ode to Duty.


When Dorothea had seen Mr. Farebrother in the morning, she had promised
to go and dine at the parsonage on her return from Freshitt.  There was
a frequent interchange of visits between her and the Farebrother
family, which enabled her to say that she was not at all lonely at the
Manor, and to resist for the present the severe prescription of a lady
companion.  When she reached home and remembered her engagement, she
was glad of it; and finding that she had still an hour before she could
dress for dinner, she walked straight to the schoolhouse and entered
into a conversation with the master and mistress about the new bell,
giving eager attention to their small details and repetitions, and
getting up a dramatic sense that her life was very busy.  She paused on
her way back to talk to old Master Bunney who was putting in some
garden-seeds, and discoursed wisely with that rural sage about the
crops that would make the most return on a perch of ground, and the
result of sixty years' experience as to soils--namely, that if your
soil was pretty mellow it would do, but if there came wet, wet, wet to
make it all of a mummy, why then--

Finding that the social spirit had beguiled her into being rather late,
she dressed hastily and went over to the parsonage rather earlier than
was necessary.  That house was never dull, Mr. Farebrother, like
another White of Selborne, having continually something new to tell of
his inarticulate guests and proteges, whom he was teaching the boys not
to torment; and he had just set up a pair of beautiful goats to be pets
of the village in general, and to walk at large as sacred animals.  The
evening went by cheerfully till after tea, Dorothea talking more than
usual and dilating with Mr. Farebrother on the possible histories of
creatures that converse compendiously with their antennae, and for
aught we know may hold reformed parliaments; when suddenly some
inarticulate little sounds were heard which called everybody's
attention.

"Henrietta Noble," said Mrs. Farebrother, seeing her small sister
moving about the furniture-legs distressfully, "what is the matter?"

"I have lost my tortoise-shell lozenge-box. I fear the kitten has
rolled it away," said the tiny old lady, involuntarily continuing her
beaver-like notes.

"Is it a great treasure, aunt?" said Mr. Farebrother, putting up his
glasses and looking at the carpet.

"Mr. Ladislaw gave it me," said Miss Noble.  "A German box--very
pretty, but if it falls it always spins away as far as it can."

"Oh, if it is Ladislaw's present," said Mr. Farebrother, in a deep tone
of comprehension, getting up and hunting.  The box was found at last
under a chiffonier, and Miss Noble grasped it with delight, saying, "it
was under a fender the last time."

"That is an affair of the heart with my aunt," said Mr. Farebrother,
smiling at Dorothea, as he reseated himself.

"If Henrietta Noble forms an attachment to any one, Mrs. Casaubon,"
said his mother, emphatically,--"she is like a dog--she would take
their shoes for a pillow and sleep the better."

"Mr. Ladislaw's shoes, I would," said Henrietta Noble.

Dorothea made an attempt at smiling in return.  She was surprised and
annoyed to find that her heart was palpitating violently, and that it
was quite useless to try after a recovery of her former animation.
Alarmed at herself--fearing some further betrayal of a change so marked
in its occasion, she rose and said in a low voice with undisguised
anxiety, "I must go; I have overtired myself."

Mr. Farebrother, quick in perception, rose and said, "It is true; you
must have half-exhausted yourself in talking about Lydgate.  That sort
of work tells upon one after the excitement is over."

He gave her his arm back to the Manor, but Dorothea did not attempt to
speak, even when he said good-night.

The limit of resistance was reached, and she had sunk back helpless
within the clutch of inescapable anguish.  Dismissing Tantripp with a
few faint words, she locked her door, and turning away from it towards
the vacant room she pressed her hands hard on the top of her head, and
moaned out--

"Oh, I did love him!"

Then came the hour in which the waves of suffering shook her too
thoroughly to leave any power of thought.  She could only cry in loud
whispers, between her sobs, after her lost belief which she had planted
and kept alive from a very little seed since the days in Rome--after
her lost joy of clinging with silent love and faith to one who,
misprized by others, was worthy in her thought--after her lost woman's
pride of reigning in his memory--after her sweet dim perspective of
hope, that along some pathway they should meet with unchanged
recognition and take up the backward years as a yesterday.

In that hour she repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude have
looked on for ages in the spiritual struggles of man--she besought
hardness and coldness and aching weariness to bring her relief from the
mysterious incorporeal might of her anguish: she lay on the bare floor
and let the night grow cold around her; while her grand woman's frame
was shaken by sobs as if she had been a despairing child.

There were two images--two living forms that tore her heart in two, as
if it had been the heart of a mother who seems to see her child divided
by the sword, and presses one bleeding half to her breast while her
gaze goes forth in agony towards the half which is carried away by the
lying woman that has never known the mother's pang.

Here, with the nearness of an answering smile, here within the
vibrating bond of mutual speech, was the bright creature whom she had
trusted--who had come to her like the spirit of morning visiting the
dim vault where she sat as the bride of a worn-out life; and now, with
a full consciousness which had never awakened before, she stretched out
her arms towards him and cried with bitter cries that their nearness
was a parting vision: she discovered her passion to herself in the
unshrinking utterance of despair.

And there, aloof, yet persistently with her, moving wherever she moved,
was the Will Ladislaw who was a changed belief exhausted of hope, a
detected illusion--no, a living man towards whom there could not yet
struggle any wail of regretful pity, from the midst of scorn and
indignation and jealous offended pride.  The fire of Dorothea's anger
was not easily spent, and it flamed out in fitful returns of spurning
reproach.  Why had he come obtruding his life into hers, hers that
might have been whole enough without him?  Why had he brought his cheap
regard and his lip-born words to her who had nothing paltry to give in
exchange?  He knew that he was deluding her--wished, in the very moment
of farewell, to make her believe that he gave her the whole price of
her heart, and knew that he had spent it half before.  Why had he not
stayed among the crowd of whom she asked nothing--but only prayed that
they might be less contemptible?

But she lost energy at last even for her loud-whispered cries and
moans: she subsided into helpless sobs, and on the cold floor she
sobbed herself to sleep.

In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim around
her, she awoke--not with any amazed wondering where she was or what had
happened, but with the clearest consciousness that she was looking into
the eyes of sorrow.  She rose, and wrapped warm things around her, and
seated herself in a great chair where she had often watched before.
She was vigorous enough to have borne that hard night without feeling
ill in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but she had waked to a new
condition: she felt as if her soul had been liberated from its terrible
conflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sit
down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her
thoughts.  For now the thoughts came thickly.  It was not in Dorothea's
nature, for longer than the duration of a paroxysm, to sit in the
narrow cell of her calamity, in the besotted misery of a consciousness
that only sees another's lot as an accident of its own.

She began now to live through that yesterday morning deliberately
again, forcing herself to dwell on every detail and its possible
meaning.  Was she alone in that scene?  Was it her event only?  She
forced herself to think of it as bound up with another woman's life--a
woman towards whom she had set out with a longing to carry some
clearness and comfort into her beclouded youth.  In her first outleap
of jealous indignation and disgust, when quitting the hateful room, she
had flung away all the mercy with which she had undertaken that visit.
She had enveloped both Will and Rosamond in her burning scorn, and it
seemed to her as if Rosamond were burned out of her sight forever.  But
that base prompting which makes a women more cruel to a rival than to a
faithless lover, could have no strength of recurrence in Dorothea when
the dominant spirit of justice within her had once overcome the tumult
and had once shown her the truer measure of things.  All the active
thought with which she had before been representing to herself the
trials of Lydgate's lot, and this young marriage union which, like her
own, seemed to have its hidden as well as evident troubles--all this
vivid sympathetic experience returned to her now as a power: it
asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will not let
us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance.  She said to her own
irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful, instead of
driving her back from effort.

And what sort of crisis might not this be in three lives whose contact
with hers laid an obligation on her as if they had been suppliants
bearing the sacred branch?  The objects of her rescue were not to be
sought out by her fancy: they were chosen for her.  She yearned towards
the perfect Right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her
errant will.  "What should I do--how should I act now, this very day,
if I could clutch my own pain, and compel it to silence, and think of
those three?"

It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was light
piercing into the room.  She opened her curtains, and looked out
towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond outside
the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle on his
back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could see figures
moving--perhaps the shepherd with his dog.  Far off in the bending sky
was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the
manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance.  She was a part of that
involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from
her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish
complaining.

What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but
something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching
murmur which would soon gather distinctness.  She took off the clothes
which seemed to have some of the weariness of a hard watching in them,
and began to make her toilet.  Presently she rang for Tantripp, who
came in her dressing-gown.

"Why, madam, you've never been in bed this blessed night," burst out
Tantripp, looking first at the bed and then at Dorothea's face, which
in spite of bathing had the pale cheeks and pink eyelids of a mater
dolorosa. "You'll kill yourself, you _will_.  Anybody might think now
you had a right to give yourself a little comfort."

"Don't be alarmed, Tantripp," said Dorothea, smiling.  "I have slept; I
am not ill.  I shall be glad of a cup of coffee as soon as possible.
And I want you to bring me my new dress; and most likely I shall want
my new bonnet to-day."

"They've lain there a month and more ready for you, madam, and most
thankful I shall be to see you with a couple o' pounds' worth less of
crape," said Tantripp, stooping to light the fire.  "There's a reason
in mourning, as I've always said; and three folds at the bottom of your
skirt and a plain quilling in your bonnet--and if ever anybody looked
like an angel, it's you in a net quilling--is what's consistent for a
second year.  At least, that's _my_ thinking," ended Tantripp, looking
anxiously at the fire; "and if anybody was to marry me flattering
himself I should wear those hijeous weepers two years for him, he'd be
deceived by his own vanity, that's all."

"The fire will do, my good Tan," said Dorothea, speaking as she used to
do in the old Lausanne days, only with a very low voice; "get me the
coffee."

She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against it
in fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp went away wondering at this
strange contrariness in her young mistress--that just the morning when
she had more of a widow's face than ever, she should have asked for her
lighter mourning which she had waived before.  Tantripp would never
have found the clew to this mystery.  Dorothea wished to acknowledge
that she had not the less an active life before her because she had
buried a private joy; and the tradition that fresh garments belonged to
all initiation, haunting her mind, made her grasp after even that
slight outward help towards calm resolve.  For the resolve was not easy.

Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking towards Middlemarch,
having made up her mind that she would make as quietly and unnoticeably
as possible her second attempt to see and save Rosamond.



CHAPTER LXXXI.

    "Du Erde warst auch diese Nacht bestandig,
     Und athmest neu erquickt zu meinen Fussen,
     Beginnest schon mit Lust mich zu umgeben,
     Zum regst und ruhrst ein kraftiges Reschliessen
     Zum hochsten Dasein immerfort zu streben.
                                   --Faust: 2r Theil.


When Dorothea was again at Lydgate's door speaking to Martha, he was in
the room close by with the door ajar, preparing to go out.  He heard
her voice, and immediately came to her.

"Do you think that Mrs. Lydgate can receive me this morning?" she said,
having reflected that it would be better to leave out all allusion to
her previous visit.

"I have no doubt she will," said Lydgate, suppressing his thought about
Dorothea's looks, which were as much changed as Rosamond's, "if you
will be kind enough to come in and let me tell her that you are here.
She has not been very well since you were here yesterday, but she is
better this morning, and I think it is very likely that she will be
cheered by seeing you again."

It was plain that Lydgate, as Dorothea had expected, knew nothing about
the circumstances of her yesterday's visit; nay, he appeared to imagine
that she had carried it out according to her intention.  She had
prepared a little note asking Rosamond to see her, which she would have
given to the servant if he had not been in the way, but now she was in
much anxiety as to the result of his announcement.

After leading her into the drawing-room, he paused to take a letter
from his pocket and put it into her hands, saying, "I wrote this last
night, and was going to carry it to Lowick in my ride.  When one is
grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less
unsatisfactory than speech--one does not at least _hear_ how inadequate
the words are."

Dorothea's face brightened.  "It is I who have most to thank for, since
you have let me take that place.  You _have_ consented?" she said,
suddenly doubting.

"Yes, the check is going to Bulstrode to-day."

He said no more, but went up-stairs to Rosamond, who had but lately
finished dressing herself, and sat languidly wondering what she should
do next, her habitual industry in small things, even in the days of her
sadness, prompting her to begin some kind of occupation, which she
dragged through slowly or paused in from lack of interest.  She looked
ill, but had recovered her usual quietude of manner, and Lydgate had
feared to disturb her by any questions.  He had told her of Dorothea's
letter containing the check, and afterwards he had said, "Ladislaw is
come, Rosy; he sat with me last night; I dare say he will be here again
to-day. I thought he looked rather battered and depressed."  And
Rosamond had made no reply.

Now, when he came up, he said to her very gently, "Rosy, dear, Mrs.
Casaubon is come to see you again; you would like to see her, would you
not?"  That she colored and gave rather a startled movement did not
surprise him after the agitation produced by the interview yesterday--a
beneficent agitation, he thought, since it seemed to have made her turn
to him again.

Rosamond dared not say no.  She dared not with a tone of her voice
touch the facts of yesterday.  Why had Mrs. Casaubon come again?  The
answer was a blank which Rosamond could only fill up with dread, for
Will Ladislaw's lacerating words had made every thought of Dorothea a
fresh smart to her.  Nevertheless, in her new humiliating uncertainty
she dared do nothing but comply.  She did not say yes, but she rose and
let Lydgate put a light shawl over her shoulders, while he said, "I am
going out immediately." Then something crossed her mind which prompted
her to say, "Pray tell Martha not to bring any one else into the
drawing-room." And Lydgate assented, thinking that he fully understood
this wish.  He led her down to the drawing-room door, and then turned
away, observing to himself that he was rather a blundering husband to
be dependent for his wife's trust in him on the influence of another
woman.

Rosamond, wrapping her soft shawl around her as she walked towards
Dorothea, was inwardly wrapping her soul in cold reserve.  Had Mrs.
Casaubon come to say anything to her about Will?  If so, it was a
liberty that Rosamond resented; and she prepared herself to meet every
word with polite impassibility.  Will had bruised her pride too sorely
for her to feel any compunction towards him and Dorothea: her own
injury seemed much the greater.  Dorothea was not only the "preferred"
woman, but had also a formidable advantage in being Lydgate's
benefactor; and to poor Rosamond's pained confused vision it seemed
that this Mrs. Casaubon--this woman who predominated in all things
concerning her--must have come now with the sense of having the
advantage, and with animosity prompting her to use it.  Indeed, not
Rosamond only, but any one else, knowing the outer facts of the case,
and not the simple inspiration on which Dorothea acted, might well have
wondered why she came.

Looking like the lovely ghost of herself, her graceful slimness wrapped
in her soft white shawl, the rounded infantine mouth and cheek
inevitably suggesting mildness and innocence, Rosamond paused at three
yards' distance from her visitor and bowed.  But Dorothea, who had
taken off her gloves, from an impulse which she could never resist when
she wanted a sense of freedom, came forward, and with her face full of
a sad yet sweet openness, put out her hand.  Rosamond could not avoid
meeting her glance, could not avoid putting her small hand into
Dorothea's, which clasped it with gentle motherliness; and immediately
a doubt of her own prepossessions began to stir within her.  Rosamond's
eye was quick for faces; she saw that Mrs. Casaubon's face looked pale
and changed since yesterday, yet gentle, and like the firm softness of
her hand.  But Dorothea had counted a little too much on her own
strength: the clearness and intensity of her mental action this morning
were the continuance of a nervous exaltation which made her frame as
dangerously responsive as a bit of finest Venetian crystal; and in
looking at Rosamond, she suddenly found her heart swelling, and was
unable to speak--all her effort was required to keep back tears.  She
succeeded in that, and the emotion only passed over her face like the
spirit of a sob; but it added to Rosamond's impression that Mrs.
Casaubon's state of mind must be something quite different from what
she had imagined.

So they sat down without a word of preface on the two chairs that
happened to be nearest, and happened also to be close together; though
Rosamond's notion when she first bowed was that she should stay a long
way off from Mrs. Casaubon.  But she ceased thinking how anything would
turn out--merely wondering what would come.  And Dorothea began to
speak quite simply, gathering firmness as she went on.

"I had an errand yesterday which I did not finish; that is why I am
here again so soon.  You will not think me too troublesome when I tell
you that I came to talk to you about the injustice that has been shown
towards Mr. Lydgate.  It will cheer you--will it not?--to know a great
deal about him, that he may not like to speak about himself just
because it is in his own vindication and to his own honor.  You will
like to know that your husband has warm friends, who have not left off
believing in his high character?  You will let me speak of this without
thinking that I take a liberty?"

The cordial, pleading tones which seemed to flow with generous
heedlessness above all the facts which had filled Rosamond's mind as
grounds of obstruction and hatred between her and this woman, came as
soothingly as a warm stream over her shrinking fears.  Of course Mrs.
Casaubon had the facts in her mind, but she was not going to speak of
anything connected with them.  That relief was too great for Rosamond
to feel much else at the moment.  She answered prettily, in the new
ease of her soul--

"I know you have been very good.  I shall like to hear anything you
will say to me about Tertius."

"The day before yesterday," said Dorothea, "when I had asked him to
come to Lowick to give me his opinion on the affairs of the Hospital,
he told me everything about his conduct and feelings in this sad event
which has made ignorant people cast suspicions on him.  The reason he
told me was because I was very bold and asked him.  I believed that he
had never acted dishonorably, and I begged him to tell me the history.
He confessed to me that he had never told it before, not even to you,
because he had a great dislike to say, 'I was not wrong,' as if that
were proof, when there are guilty people who will say so.  The truth
is, he knew nothing of this man Raffles, or that there were any bad
secrets about him; and he thought that Mr. Bulstrode offered him the
money because he repented, out of kindness, of having refused it
before.  All his anxiety about his patient was to treat him rightly,
and he was a little uncomfortable that the case did not end as he had
expected; but he thought then and still thinks that there may have been
no wrong in it on any one's part.  And I have told Mr. Farebrother, and
Mr. Brooke, and Sir James Chettam: they all believe in your husband.
That will cheer you, will it not?  That will give you courage?"

Dorothea's face had become animated, and as it beamed on Rosamond very
close to her, she felt something like bashful timidity before a
superior, in the presence of this self-forgetful ardor.  She said, with
blushing embarrassment, "Thank you: you are very kind."

"And he felt that he had been so wrong not to pour out everything about
this to you.  But you will forgive him.  It was because he feels so
much more about your happiness than anything else--he feels his life
bound into one with yours, and it hurts him more than anything, that
his misfortunes must hurt you.  He could speak to me because I am an
indifferent person.  And then I asked him if I might come to see you;
because I felt so much for his trouble and yours.  That is why I came
yesterday, and why I am come to-day. Trouble is so hard to bear, is it
not?--  How can we live and think that any one has trouble--piercing
trouble--and we could help them, and never try?"

Dorothea, completely swayed by the feeling that she was uttering,
forgot everything but that she was speaking from out the heart of her
own trial to Rosamond's. The emotion had wrought itself more and more
into her utterance, till the tones might have gone to one's very
marrow, like a low cry from some suffering creature in the darkness.
And she had unconsciously laid her hand again on the little hand that
she had pressed before.

Rosamond, with an overmastering pang, as if a wound within her had been
probed, burst into hysterical crying as she had done the day before
when she clung to her husband.  Poor Dorothea was feeling a great wave
of her own sorrow returning over her--her thought being drawn to the
possible share that Will Ladislaw might have in Rosamond's mental
tumult.  She was beginning to fear that she should not be able to
suppress herself enough to the end of this meeting, and while her hand
was still resting on Rosamond's lap, though the hand underneath it was
withdrawn, she was struggling against her own rising sobs.  She tried
to master herself with the thought that this might be a turning-point
in three lives--not in her own; no, there the irrevocable had
happened, but--in those three lives which were touching hers with the
solemn neighborhood of danger and distress.  The fragile creature who
was crying close to her--there might still be time to rescue her from
the misery of false incompatible bonds; and this moment was unlike any
other: she and Rosamond could never be together again with the same
thrilling consciousness of yesterday within them both.  She felt the
relation between them to be peculiar enough to give her a peculiar
influence, though she had no conception that the way in which her own
feelings were involved was fully known to Mrs. Lydgate.

It was a newer crisis in Rosamond's experience than even Dorothea could
imagine: she was under the first great shock that had shattered her
dream-world in which she had been easily confident of herself and
critical of others; and this strange unexpected manifestation of
feeling in a woman whom she had approached with a shrinking aversion
and dread, as one who must necessarily have a jealous hatred towards
her, made her soul totter all the more with a sense that she had been
walking in an unknown world which had just broken in upon her.

When Rosamond's convulsed throat was subsiding into calm, and she
withdrew the handkerchief with which she had been hiding her face, her
eyes met Dorothea's as helplessly as if they had been blue flowers.
What was the use of thinking about behavior after this crying?  And
Dorothea looked almost as childish, with the neglected trace of a
silent tear.  Pride was broken down between these two.

"We were talking about your husband," Dorothea said, with some
timidity.  "I thought his looks were sadly changed with suffering the
other day.  I had not seen him for many weeks before.  He said he had
been feeling very lonely in his trial; but I think he would have borne
it all better if he had been able to be quite open with you."

"Tertius is so angry and impatient if I say anything," said Rosamond,
imagining that he had been complaining of her to Dorothea.  "He ought
not to wonder that I object to speak to him on painful subjects."

"It was himself he blamed for not speaking," said Dorothea.  "What he
said of you was, that he could not be happy in doing anything which
made you unhappy--that his marriage was of course a bond which must
affect his choice about everything; and for that reason he refused my
proposal that he should keep his position at the Hospital, because that
would bind him to stay in Middlemarch, and he would not undertake to do
anything which would be painful to you.  He could say that to me,
because he knows that I had much trial in my marriage, from my
husband's illness, which hindered his plans and saddened him; and he
knows that I have felt how hard it is to walk always in fear of hurting
another who is tied to us."

Dorothea waited a little; she had discerned a faint pleasure stealing
over Rosamond's face.  But there was no answer, and she went on, with a
gathering tremor, "Marriage is so unlike everything else.  There is
something even awful in the nearness it brings.  Even if we loved some
one else better than--than those we were married to, it would be no
use"--poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her
language brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving
or getting any blessedness in that sort of love.  I know it may be very
dear--but it murders our marriage--and then the marriage stays with us
like a murder--and everything else is gone.  And then our husband--if
he loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse
in his life--"

Her voice had sunk very low: there was a dread upon her of presuming
too far, and of speaking as if she herself were perfection addressing
error.  She was too much preoccupied with her own anxiety, to be aware
that Rosamond was trembling too; and filled with the need to express
pitying fellowship rather than rebuke, she put her hands on Rosamond's,
and said with more agitated rapidity,--"I know, I know that the feeling
may be very dear--it has taken hold of us unawares--it is so hard, it
may seem like death to part with it--and we are weak--I am weak--"

The waves of her own sorrow, from out of which she was struggling to
save another, rushed over Dorothea with conquering force.  She stopped
in speechless agitation, not crying, but feeling as if she were being
inwardly grappled.  Her face had become of a deathlier paleness, her
lips trembled, and she pressed her hands helplessly on the hands that
lay under them.

Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own--hurried
along in a new movement which gave all things some new, awful,
undefined aspect--could find no words, but involuntarily she put her
lips to Dorothea's forehead which was very near her, and then for a
minute the two women clasped each other as if they had been in a
shipwreck.

"You are thinking what is not true," said Rosamond, in an eager
half-whisper, while she was still feeling Dorothea's arms round
her--urged by a mysterious necessity to free herself from something
that oppressed her as if it were blood guiltiness.

They moved apart, looking at each other.

"When you came in yesterday--it was not as you thought," said Rosamond
in the same tone.

There was a movement of surprised attention in Dorothea.  She expected
a vindication of Rosamond herself.

"He was telling me how he loved another woman, that I might know he
could never love me," said Rosamond, getting more and more hurried as
she went on.  "And now I think he hates me because--because you
mistook him yesterday.  He says it is through me that you will think
ill of him--think that he is a false person.  But it shall not be
through me.  He has never had any love for me--I know he has not--he
has always thought slightly of me.  He said yesterday that no other
woman existed for him beside you.  The blame of what happened is
entirely mine.  He said he could never explain to you--because of me.
He said you could never think well of him again.  But now I have told
you, and he cannot reproach me any more."

Rosamond had delivered her soul under impulses which she had not known
before.  She had begun her confession under the subduing influence of
Dorothea's emotion; and as she went on she had gathered the sense that
she was repelling Will's reproaches, which were still like a
knife-wound within her.

The revulsion of feeling in Dorothea was too strong to be called joy.
It was a tumult in which the terrible strain of the night and morning
made a resistant pain:--she could only perceive that this would be joy
when she had recovered her power of feeling it.  Her immediate
consciousness was one of immense sympathy without check; she cared for
Rosamond without struggle now, and responded earnestly to her last
words--

"No, he cannot reproach you any more."

With her usual tendency to over-estimate the good in others, she felt a
great outgoing of her heart towards Rosamond, for the generous effort
which had redeemed her from suffering, not counting that the effort was
a reflex of her own energy.  After they had been silent a little, she
said--

"You are not sorry that I came this morning?"

"No, you have been very good to me," said Rosamond.  "I did not think
that you would be so good.  I was very unhappy.  I am not happy now.
Everything is so sad."

"But better days will come.  Your husband will be rightly valued.  And
he depends on you for comfort.  He loves you best.  The worst loss
would be to lose that--and you have not lost it," said Dorothea.

She tried to thrust away the too overpowering thought of her own
relief, lest she should fail to win some sign that Rosamond's affection
was yearning back towards her husband.

"Tertius did not find fault with me, then?" said Rosamond,
understanding now that Lydgate might have said anything to Mrs.
Casaubon, and that she certainly was different from other women.
Perhaps there was a faint taste of jealousy in the question.  A smile
began to play over Dorothea's face as she said--

"No, indeed!  How could you imagine it?"  But here the door opened, and
Lydgate entered.

"I am come back in my quality of doctor," he said.  "After I went away,
I was haunted by two pale faces: Mrs. Casaubon looked as much in need
of care as you, Rosy.  And I thought that I had not done my duty in
leaving you together; so when I had been to Coleman's I came home
again.  I noticed that you were walking, Mrs. Casaubon, and the sky has
changed--I think we may have rain.  May I send some one to order your
carriage to come for you?"

"Oh, no!  I am strong: I need the walk," said Dorothea, rising with
animation in her face.  "Mrs. Lydgate and I have chatted a great deal,
and it is time for me to go.  I have always been accused of being
immoderate and saying too much."

She put out her hand to Rosamond, and they said an earnest, quiet
good-by without kiss or other show of effusion: there had been between
them too much serious emotion for them to use the signs of it
superficially.

As Lydgate took her to the door she said nothing of Rosamond, but told
him of Mr. Farebrother and the other friends who had listened with
belief to his story.

When he came back to Rosamond, she had already thrown herself on the
sofa, in resigned fatigue.

"Well, Rosy," he said, standing over her, and touching her hair, "what
do you think of Mrs. Casaubon now you have seen so much of her?"

"I think she must be better than any one," said Rosamond, "and she is
very beautiful.  If you go to talk to her so often, you will be more
discontented with me than ever!"

Lydgate laughed at the "so often."  "But has she made you any less
discontented with me?"

"I think she has," said Rosamond, looking up in his face.  "How heavy
your eyes are, Tertius--and do push your hair back." He lifted up his
large white hand to obey her, and felt thankful for this little mark of
interest in him.  Poor Rosamond's vagrant fancy had come back terribly
scourged--meek enough to nestle under the old despised shelter.  And
the shelter was still there: Lydgate had accepted his narrowed lot with
sad resignation.  He had chosen this fragile creature, and had taken
the burthen of her life upon his arms.  He must walk as he could,
carrying that burthen pitifully.



CHAPTER LXXXII.

    "My grief lies onward and my joy behind."
                                  --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.


Exiles notoriously feed much on hopes, and are unlikely to stay in
banishment unless they are obliged.  When Will Ladislaw exiled himself
from Middlemarch he had placed no stronger obstacle to his return than
his own resolve, which was by no means an iron barrier, but simply a
state of mind liable to melt into a minuet with other states of mind,
and to find itself bowing, smiling, and giving place with polite
facility.  As the months went on, it had seemed more and more difficult
to him to say why he should not run down to Middlemarch--merely for the
sake of hearing something about Dorothea; and if on such a flying visit
he should chance by some strange coincidence to meet with her, there
was no reason for him to be ashamed of having taken an innocent journey
which he had beforehand supposed that he should not take.  Since he was
hopelessly divided from her, he might surely venture into her
neighborhood; and as to the suspicious friends who kept a dragon watch
over her--their opinions seemed less and less important with time and
change of air.

And there had come a reason quite irrespective of Dorothea, which
seemed to make a journey to Middlemarch a sort of philanthropic duty.
Will had given a disinterested attention to an intended settlement on a
new plan in the Far West, and the need for funds in order to carry out
a good design had set him on debating with himself whether it would not
be a laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode, to urge the
application of that money which had been offered to himself as a means
of carrying out a scheme likely to be largely beneficial.  The question
seemed a very dubious one to Will, and his repugnance to again entering
into any relation with the banker might have made him dismiss it
quickly, if there had not arisen in his imagination the probability
that his judgment might be more safely determined by a visit to
Middlemarch.

That was the object which Will stated to himself as a reason for coming
down.  He had meant to confide in Lydgate, and discuss the money
question with him, and he had meant to amuse himself for the few
evenings of his stay by having a great deal of music and badinage with
fair Rosamond, without neglecting his friends at Lowick Parsonage:--if
the Parsonage was close to the Manor, that was no fault of his.  He had
neglected the Farebrothers before his departure, from a proud
resistance to the possible accusation of indirectly seeking interviews
with Dorothea; but hunger tames us, and Will had become very hungry for
the vision of a certain form and the sound of a certain voice.
Nothing, had done instead--not the opera, or the converse of zealous
politicians, or the flattering reception (in dim corners) of his new
hand in leading articles.

Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence how almost everything
would be in his familiar little world; fearing, indeed, that there
would be no surprises in his visit.  But he had found that humdrum
world in a terribly dynamic condition, in which even badinage and
lyrism had turned explosive; and the first day of this visit had become
the most fatal epoch of his life.  The next morning he felt so harassed
with the nightmare of consequences--he dreaded so much the immediate
issues before him--that seeing while he breakfasted the arrival of the
Riverston coach, he went out hurriedly and took his place on it, that
he might be relieved, at least for a day, from the necessity of doing
or saying anything in Middlemarch.  Will Ladislaw was in one of those
tangled crises which are commoner in experience than one might imagine,
from the shallow absoluteness of men's judgments.  He had found
Lydgate, for whom he had the sincerest respect, under circumstances
which claimed his thorough and frankly declared sympathy; and the
reason why, in spite of that claim, it would have been better for Will
to have avoided all further intimacy, or even contact, with Lydgate,
was precisely of the kind to make such a course appear impossible.  To
a creature of Will's susceptible temperament--without any neutral
region of indifference in his nature, ready to turn everything that
befell him into the collisions of a passionate drama--the revelation
that Rosamond had made her happiness in any way dependent on him was a
difficulty which his outburst of rage towards her had immeasurably
increased for him.  He hated his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded to
show the fulness of his relenting: he must go to her again; the
friendship could not be put to a sudden end; and her unhappiness was a
power which he dreaded.  And all the while there was no more foretaste
of enjoyment in the life before him than if his limbs had been lopped
off and he was making his fresh start on crutches.  In the night he had
debated whether he should not get on the coach, not for Riverston, but
for London, leaving a note to Lydgate which would give a makeshift
reason for his retreat.  But there were strong cords pulling him back
from that abrupt departure: the blight on his happiness in thinking of
Dorothea, the crushing of that chief hope which had remained in spite
of the acknowledged necessity for renunciation, was too fresh a misery
for him to resign himself to it and go straightway into a distance
which was also despair.

Thus he did nothing more decided than taking the Riverston coach.  He
came back again by it while it was still daylight, having made up his
mind that he must go to Lydgate's that evening.  The Rubicon, we know,
was a very insignificant stream to look at; its significance lay
entirely in certain invisible conditions.  Will felt as if he were
forced to cross his small boundary ditch, and what he saw beyond it was
not empire, but discontented subjection.

But it is given to us sometimes even in our every-day life to witness
the saving influence of a noble nature, the divine efficacy of rescue
that may lie in a self-subduing act of fellowship.  If Dorothea, after
her night's anguish, had not taken that walk to Rosamond--why, she
perhaps would have been a woman who gained a higher character for
discretion, but it would certainly not have been as well for those
three who were on one hearth in Lydgate's house at half-past seven that
evening.

Rosamond had been prepared for Will's visit, and she received him with
a languid coldness which Lydgate accounted for by her nervous
exhaustion, of which he could not suppose that it had any relation to
Will.  And when she sat in silence bending over a bit of work, he
innocently apologized for her in an indirect way by begging her to lean
backward and rest.  Will was miserable in the necessity for playing the
part of a friend who was making his first appearance and greeting to
Rosamond, while his thoughts were busy about her feeling since that
scene of yesterday, which seemed still inexorably to enclose them both,
like the painful vision of a double madness.  It happened that nothing
called Lydgate out of the room; but when Rosamond poured out the tea,
and Will came near to fetch it, she placed a tiny bit of folded paper
in his saucer.  He saw it and secured it quickly, but as he went back
to his inn he had no eagerness to unfold the paper.  What Rosamond had
written to him would probably deepen the painful impressions of the
evening.  Still, he opened and read it by his bed-candle. There were
only these few words in her neatly flowing hand:--

"I have told Mrs. Casaubon.  She is not under any mistake about you.  I
told her because she came to see me and was very kind.  You will have
nothing to reproach me with now.  I shall not have made any difference
to you."

The effect of these words was not quite all gladness.  As Will dwelt on
them with excited imagination, he felt his cheeks and ears burning at
the thought of what had occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond--at the
uncertainty how far Dorothea might still feel her dignity wounded in
having an explanation of his conduct offered to her.  There might still
remain in her mind a changed association with him which made an
irremediable difference--a lasting flaw.  With active fancy he wrought
himself into a state of doubt little more easy than that of the man who
has escaped from wreck by night and stands on unknown ground in the
darkness.  Until that wretched yesterday--except the moment of
vexation long ago in the very same room and in the very same
presence--all their vision, all their thought of each other, had been
as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies,
where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered.  But now--would
Dorothea meet him in that world again?



CHAPTER LXXXIII.

    "And now good-morrow to our waking souls
     Which watch not one another out of fear;
     For love all love of other sights controls,
     And makes one little room, an everywhere."
                                       --DR. DONNE.


On the second morning after Dorothea's visit to Rosamond, she had had
two nights of sound sleep, and had not only lost all traces of fatigue,
but felt as if she had a great deal of superfluous strength--that is
to say, more strength than she could manage to concentrate on any
occupation.  The day before, she had taken long walks outside the
grounds, and had paid two visits to the Parsonage; but she never in her
life told any one the reason why she spent her time in that fruitless
manner, and this morning she was rather angry with herself for her
childish restlessness.  To-day was to be spent quite differently.  What
was there to be done in the village?  Oh dear! nothing.  Everybody was
well and had flannel; nobody's pig had died; and it was Saturday
morning, when there was a general scrubbing of doors and door-stones,
and when it was useless to go into the school.  But there were various
subjects that Dorothea was trying to get clear upon, and she resolved
to throw herself energetically into the gravest of all.  She sat down
in the library before her particular little heap of books on political
economy and kindred matters, out of which she was trying to get light
as to the best way of spending money so as not to injure one's
neighbors, or--what comes to the same thing--so as to do them the most
good.  Here was a weighty subject which, if she could but lay hold of
it, would certainly keep her mind steady.  Unhappily her mind slipped
off it for a whole hour; and at the end she found herself reading
sentences twice over with an intense consciousness of many things, but
not of any one thing contained in the text.  This was hopeless.  Should
she order the carriage and drive to Tipton?  No; for some reason or
other she preferred staying at Lowick.  But her vagrant mind must be
reduced to order: there was an art in self-discipline; and she walked
round and round the brown library considering by what sort of manoeuvre
she could arrest her wandering thoughts.  Perhaps a mere task was the
best means--something to which she must go doggedly.  Was there not the
geography of Asia Minor, in which her slackness had often been rebuked
by Mr. Casaubon?  She went to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one:
this morning she might make herself finally sure that Paphlagonia was
not on the Levantine coast, and fix her total darkness about the
Chalybes firmly on the shores of the Euxine.  A map was a fine thing to
study when you were disposed to think of something else, being made up
of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them.
Dorothea set earnestly to work, bending close to her map, and uttering
the names in an audible, subdued tone, which often got into a chime.
She looked amusingly girlish after all her deep experience--nodding
her head and marking the names off on her fingers, with a little
pursing of her lip, and now and then breaking off to put her hands on
each side of her face and say, "Oh dear!  oh dear!"

There was no reason why this should end any more than a merry-go-round;
but it was at last interrupted by the opening of the door and the
announcement of Miss Noble.

The little old lady, whose bonnet hardly reached Dorothea's shoulder,
was warmly welcomed, but while her hand was being pressed she made many
of her beaver-like noises, as if she had something difficult to say.

"Do sit down," said Dorothea, rolling a chair forward.  "Am I wanted
for anything?  I shall be so glad if I can do anything."

"I will not stay," said Miss Noble, putting her hand into her small
basket, and holding some article inside it nervously; "I have left a
friend in the churchyard."  She lapsed into her inarticulate sounds,
and unconsciously drew forth the article which she was fingering.  It
was the tortoise-shell lozenge-box, and Dorothea felt the color
mounting to her cheeks.

"Mr. Ladislaw," continued the timid little woman.  "He fears he has
offended you, and has begged me to ask if you will see him for a few
minutes."

Dorothea did not answer on the instant: it was crossing her mind that
she could not receive him in this library, where her husband's
prohibition seemed to dwell.  She looked towards the window.  Could she
go out and meet him in the grounds?  The sky was heavy, and the trees
had begun to shiver as at a coming storm.  Besides, she shrank from
going out to him.

"Do see him, Mrs. Casaubon," said Miss Noble, pathetically; "else I
must go back and say No, and that will hurt him."

"Yes, I will see him," said Dorothea.  "Pray tell him to come."

What else was there to be done?  There was nothing that she longed for
at that moment except to see Will: the possibility of seeing him had
thrust itself insistently between her and every other object; and yet
she had a throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her--a sense that
she was doing something daringly defiant for his sake.

When the little lady had trotted away on her mission, Dorothea stood in
the middle of the library with her hands falling clasped before her,
making no attempt to compose herself in an attitude of dignified
unconsciousness.  What she was least conscious of just then was her own
body: she was thinking of what was likely to be in Will's mind, and of
the hard feelings that others had had about him.  How could any duty
bind her to hardness?  Resistance to unjust dispraise had mingled with
her feeling for him from the very first, and now in the rebound of her
heart after her anguish the resistance was stronger than ever.  "If I
love him too much it is because he has been used so ill:"--there was a
voice within her saying this to some imagined audience in the library,
when the door was opened, and she saw Will before her.

She did not move, and he came towards her with more doubt and timidity
in his face than she had ever seen before.  He was in a state of
uncertainty which made him afraid lest some look or word of his should
condemn him to a new distance from her; and Dorothea was afraid of her
_own_ emotion.  She looked as if there were a spell upon her, keeping
her motionless and hindering her from unclasping her hands, while some
intense, grave yearning was imprisoned within her eyes.  Seeing that
she did not put out her hand as usual, Will paused a yard from her and
said with embarrassment, "I am so grateful to you for seeing me."

"I wanted to see you," said Dorothea, having no other words at command.
It did not occur to her to sit down, and Will did not give a cheerful
interpretation to this queenly way of receiving him; but he went on to
say what he had made up his mind to say.

"I fear you think me foolish and perhaps wrong for coming back so soon.
I have been punished for my impatience.  You know--every one knows
now--a painful story about my parentage.  I knew of it before I went
away, and I always meant to tell you of it if--if we ever met again."

There was a slight movement in Dorothea, and she unclasped her hands,
but immediately folded them over each other.

"But the affair is matter of gossip now," Will continued.  "I wished
you to know that something connected with it--something which happened
before I went away, helped to bring me down here again.  At least I
thought it excused my coming.  It was the idea of getting Bulstrode to
apply some money to a public purpose--some money which he had thought
of giving me.  Perhaps it is rather to Bulstrode's credit that he
privately offered me compensation for an old injury: he offered to give
me a good income to make amends; but I suppose you know the
disagreeable story?"

Will looked doubtfully at Dorothea, but his manner was gathering some
of the defiant courage with which he always thought of this fact in his
destiny.  He added, "You know that it must be altogether painful to me."

"Yes--yes--I know," said Dorothea, hastily.

"I did not choose to accept an income from such a source.  I was sure
that you would not think well of me if I did so," said Will.  Why
should he mind saying anything of that sort to her now?  She knew that
he had avowed his love for her.  "I felt that"--he broke off,
nevertheless.

"You acted as I should have expected you to act," said Dorothea, her
face brightening and her head becoming a little more erect on its
beautiful stem.

"I did not believe that you would let any circumstance of my birth
create a prejudice in you against me, though it was sure to do so in
others," said Will, shaking his head backward in his old way, and
looking with a grave appeal into her eyes.

"If it were a new hardship it would be a new reason for me to cling to
you," said Dorothea, fervidly.  "Nothing could have changed me but--"
her heart was swelling, and it was difficult to go on; she made a great
effort over herself to say in a low tremulous voice, "but thinking that
you were different--not so good as I had believed you to be."

"You are sure to believe me better than I am in everything but one,"
said Will, giving way to his own feeling in the evidence of hers.  "I
mean, in my truth to you.  When I thought you doubted of that, I didn't
care about anything that was left.  I thought it was all over with me,
and there was nothing to try for--only things to endure."

"I don't doubt you any longer," said Dorothea, putting out her hand; a
vague fear for him impelling her unutterable affection.

He took her hand and raised it to his lips with something like a sob.
But he stood with his hat and gloves in the other hand, and might have
done for the portrait of a Royalist.  Still it was difficult to loose
the hand, and Dorothea, withdrawing it in a confusion that distressed
her, looked and moved away.

"See how dark the clouds have become, and how the trees are tossed,"
she said, walking towards the window, yet speaking and moving with only
a dim sense of what she was doing.

Will followed her at a little distance, and leaned against the tall
back of a leather chair, on which he ventured now to lay his hat and
gloves, and free himself from the intolerable durance of formality to
which he had been for the first time condemned in Dorothea's presence.
It must be confessed that he felt very happy at that moment leaning on
the chair.  He was not much afraid of anything that she might feel now.

They stood silent, not looking at each other, but looking at the
evergreens which were being tossed, and were showing the pale underside
of their leaves against the blackening sky.  Will never enjoyed the
prospect of a storm so much: it delivered him from the necessity of
going away.  Leaves and little branches were hurled about, and the
thunder was getting nearer.  The light was more and more sombre, but
there came a flash of lightning which made them start and look at each
other, and then smile.  Dorothea began to say what she had been
thinking of.

"That was a wrong thing for you to say, that you would have had nothing
to try for.  If we had lost our own chief good, other people's good
would remain, and that is worth trying for.  Some can be happy.  I
seemed to see that more clearly than ever, when I was the most
wretched.  I can hardly think how I could have borne the trouble, if
that feeling had not come to me to make strength."

"You have never felt the sort of misery I felt," said Will; "the misery
of knowing that you must despise me."

"But I have felt worse--it was worse to think ill--" Dorothea had begun
impetuously, but broke off.

Will colored.  He had the sense that whatever she said was uttered in
the vision of a fatality that kept them apart.  He was silent a moment,
and then said passionately--

"We may at least have the comfort of speaking to each other without
disguise.  Since I must go away--since we must always be divided--you
may think of me as one on the brink of the grave."

While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of lightning which lit
each of them up for the other--and the light seemed to be the terror of
a hopeless love.  Dorothea darted instantaneously from the window; Will
followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement; and so they
stood, with their hands clasped, like two children, looking out on the
storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack and roll above them,
and the rain began to pour down.  Then they turned their faces towards
each other, with the memory of his last words in them, and they did not
loose each other's hands.

"There is no hope for me," said Will.  "Even if you loved me as well as
I love you--even if I were everything to you--I shall most likely
always be very poor: on a sober calculation, one can count on nothing
but a creeping lot.  It is impossible for us ever to belong to each
other.  It is perhaps base of me to have asked for a word from you.  I
meant to go away into silence, but I have not been able to do what I
meant."

"Don't be sorry," said Dorothea, in her clear tender tones.  "I would
rather share all the trouble of our parting."

Her lips trembled, and so did his.  It was never known which lips were
the first to move towards the other lips; but they kissed tremblingly,
and then they moved apart.

The rain was dashing against the window-panes as if an angry spirit
were within it, and behind it was the great swoop of the wind; it was
one of those moments in which both the busy and the idle pause with a
certain awe.

Dorothea sat down on the seat nearest to her, a long low ottoman in the
middle of the room, and with her hands folded over each other on her
lap, looked at the drear outer world.  Will stood still an instant
looking at her, then seated himself beside her, and laid his hand on
hers, which turned itself upward to be clasped.  They sat in that way
without looking at each other, until the rain abated and began to fall
in stillness.  Each had been full of thoughts which neither of them
could begin to utter.

But when the rain was quiet, Dorothea turned to look at Will.  With
passionate exclamation, as if some torture screw were threatening him,
he started up and said, "It is impossible!"

He went and leaned on the back of the chair again, and seemed to be
battling with his own anger, while she looked towards him sadly.

"It is as fatal as a murder or any other horror that divides people,"
he burst out again; "it is more intolerable--to have our life maimed by
petty accidents."

"No--don't say that--your life need not be maimed," said Dorothea,
gently.

"Yes, it must," said Will, angrily.  "It is cruel of you to speak in
that way--as if there were any comfort.  You may see beyond the misery
of it, but I don't. It is unkind--it is throwing back my love for you
as if it were a trifle, to speak in that way in the face of the fact.
We can never be married."

"Some time--we might," said Dorothea, in a trembling voice.

"When?" said Will, bitterly.  "What is the use of counting on any
success of mine?  It is a mere toss up whether I shall ever do more
than keep myself decently, unless I choose to sell myself as a mere pen
and a mouthpiece.  I can see that clearly enough.  I could not offer
myself to any woman, even if she had no luxuries to renounce."

There was silence.  Dorothea's heart was full of something that she
wanted to say, and yet the words were too difficult.  She was wholly
possessed by them: at that moment debate was mute within her.  And it
was very hard that she could not say what she wanted to say.  Will was
looking out of the window angrily.  If he would have looked at her and
not gone away from her side, she thought everything would have been
easier.  At last he turned, still resting against the chair, and
stretching his hand automatically towards his hat, said with a sort of
exasperation, "Good-by."

"Oh, I cannot bear it--my heart will break," said Dorothea, starting
from her seat, the flood of her young passion bearing down all the
obstructions which had kept her silent--the great tears rising and
falling in an instant: "I don't mind about poverty--I hate my wealth."

In an instant Will was close to her and had his arms round her, but she
drew her head back and held his away gently that she might go on
speaking, her large tear-filled eyes looking at his very simply, while
she said in a sobbing childlike way, "We could live quite well on my
own fortune--it is too much--seven hundred a-year--I want so little--no
new clothes--and I will learn what everything costs."



CHAPTER LXXXIV.

    "Though it be songe of old and yonge,
         That I sholde be to blame,
     Theyrs be the charge, that spoke so large
         In hurtynge of my name."
                           --The Not-Browne Mayde.


It was just after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill: that
explains how Mr. Cadwallader came to be walking on the slope of the
lawn near the great conservatory at Freshitt Hall, holding the "Times"
in his hands behind him, while he talked with a trout-fisher's
dispassionateness about the prospects of the country to Sir James
Chettam.  Mrs. Cadwallader, the Dowager Lady Chettam, and Celia were
sometimes seated on garden-chairs, sometimes walking to meet little
Arthur, who was being drawn in his chariot, and, as became the
infantine Bouddha, was sheltered by his sacred umbrella with handsome
silken fringe.

The ladies also talked politics, though more fitfully.  Mrs.
Cadwallader was strong on the intended creation of peers: she had it
for certain from her cousin that Truberry had gone over to the other
side entirely at the instigation of his wife, who had scented peerages
in the air from the very first introduction of the Reform question, and
would sign her soul away to take precedence of her younger sister, who
had married a baronet.  Lady Chettam thought that such conduct was very
reprehensible, and remembered that Mrs. Truberry's mother was a Miss
Walsingham of Melspring.  Celia confessed it was nicer to be "Lady"
than "Mrs.," and that Dodo never minded about precedence if she could
have her own way.  Mrs. Cadwallader held that it was a poor
satisfaction to take precedence when everybody about you knew that you
had not a drop of good blood in your veins; and Celia again, stopping
to look at Arthur, said, "It would be very nice, though, if he were a
Viscount--and his lordship's little tooth coming through!  He might
have been, if James had been an Earl."

"My dear Celia," said the Dowager, "James's title is worth far more
than any new earldom.  I never wished his father to be anything else
than Sir James."

"Oh, I only meant about Arthur's little tooth," said Celia,
comfortably.  "But see, here is my uncle coming."

She tripped off to meet her uncle, while Sir James and Mr. Cadwallader
came forward to make one group with the ladies.  Celia had slipped her
arm through her uncle's, and he patted her hand with a rather
melancholy "Well, my dear!"  As they approached, it was evident that
Mr. Brooke was looking dejected, but this was fully accounted for by
the state of politics; and as he was shaking hands all round without
more greeting than a "Well, you're all here, you know," the Rector
said, laughingly--

"Don't take the throwing out of the Bill so much to heart, Brooke;
you've got all the riff-raff of the country on your side."

"The Bill, eh? ah!" said Mr. Brooke, with a mild distractedness of
manner.  "Thrown out, you know, eh?  The Lords are going too far,
though.  They'll have to pull up.  Sad news, you know.  I mean, here at
home--sad news.  But you must not blame me, Chettam."

"What is the matter?" said Sir James.  "Not another gamekeeper shot, I
hope?  It's what I should expect, when a fellow like Trapping Bass is
let off so easily."

"Gamekeeper?  No. Let us go in; I can tell you all in the house, you
know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding at the Cadwalladers, to show that he
included them in his confidence.  "As to poachers like Trapping Bass,
you know, Chettam," he continued, as they were entering, "when you are
a magistrate, you'll not find it so easy to commit.  Severity is all
very well, but it's a great deal easier when you've got somebody to do
it for you.  You have a soft place in your heart yourself, you
know--you're not a Draco, a Jeffreys, that sort of thing."

Mr. Brooke was evidently in a state of nervous perturbation.  When he
had something painful to tell, it was usually his way to introduce it
among a number of disjointed particulars, as if it were a medicine that
would get a milder flavor by mixing.  He continued his chat with Sir
James about the poachers until they were all seated, and Mrs.
Cadwallader, impatient of this drivelling, said--

"I'm dying to know the sad news.  The gamekeeper is not shot: that is
settled.  What is it, then?"

"Well, it's a very trying thing, you know," said Mr. Brooke.  "I'm glad
you and the Rector are here; it's a family matter--but you will help
us all to bear it, Cadwallader.  I've got to break it to you, my dear."
Here Mr. Brooke looked at Celia--"You've no notion what it is, you
know.  And, Chettam, it will annoy you uncommonly--but, you see, you
have not been able to hinder it, any more than I have.  There's
something singular in things: they come round, you know."

"It must be about Dodo," said Celia, who had been used to think of her
sister as the dangerous part of the family machinery.  She had seated
herself on a low stool against her husband's knee.

"For God's sake let us hear what it is!" said Sir James.

"Well, you know, Chettam, I couldn't help Casaubon's will: it was a
sort of will to make things worse."

"Exactly," said Sir James, hastily.  "But _what_ is worse?"

"Dorothea is going to be married again, you know," said Mr. Brooke,
nodding towards Celia, who immediately looked up at her husband with a
frightened glance, and put her hand on his knee.  Sir James was almost
white with anger, but he did not speak.

"Merciful heaven!" said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "Not to _young_ Ladislaw?"

Mr. Brooke nodded, saying, "Yes; to Ladislaw," and then fell into a
prudential silence.

"You see, Humphrey!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her arm towards her
husband.  "Another time you will admit that I have some foresight; or
rather you will contradict me and be just as blind as ever.  _You_
supposed that the young gentleman was gone out of the country."

"So he might be, and yet come back," said the Rector, quietly

"When did you learn this?" said Sir James, not liking to hear any one
else speak, though finding it difficult to speak himself.

"Yesterday," said Mr. Brooke, meekly.  "I went to Lowick.  Dorothea
sent for me, you know.  It had come about quite suddenly--neither of
them had any idea two days ago--not any idea, you know.  There's
something singular in things.  But Dorothea is quite determined--it is
no use opposing.  I put it strongly to her.  I did my duty, Chettam.
But she can act as she likes, you know."

"It would have been better if I had called him out and shot him a year
ago," said Sir James, not from bloody-mindedness, but because he needed
something strong to say.

"Really, James, that would have been very disagreeable," said Celia.

"Be reasonable, Chettam.  Look at the affair more quietly," said Mr.
Cadwallader, sorry to see his good-natured friend so overmastered by
anger.

"That is not so very easy for a man of any dignity--with any sense of
right--when the affair happens to be in his own family," said Sir
James, still in his white indignation.  "It is perfectly scandalous.
If Ladislaw had had a spark of honor he would have gone out of the
country at once, and never shown his face in it again.  However, I am
not surprised.  The day after Casaubon's funeral I said what ought to
be done.  But I was not listened to."

"You wanted what was impossible, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke.
"You wanted him shipped off.  I told you Ladislaw was not to be done as
we liked with: he had his ideas.  He was a remarkable fellow--I always
said he was a remarkable fellow."

"Yes," said Sir James, unable to repress a retort, "it is rather a pity
you formed that high opinion of him.  We are indebted to that for his
being lodged in this neighborhood.  We are indebted to that for seeing
a woman like Dorothea degrading herself by marrying him." Sir James
made little stoppages between his clauses, the words not coming easily.
"A man so marked out by her husband's will, that delicacy ought to have
forbidden her from seeing him again--who takes her out of her proper
rank--into poverty--has the meanness to accept such a sacrifice--has
always had an objectionable position--a bad origin--and, I _believe_,
is a man of little principle and light character.  That is my opinion."
Sir James ended emphatically, turning aside and crossing his leg.

"I pointed everything out to her," said Mr. Brooke, apologetically--"I
mean the poverty, and abandoning her position.  I said, 'My dear, you
don't know what it is to live on seven hundred a-year, and have no
carriage, and that kind of thing, and go amongst people who don't know
who you are.'  I put it strongly to her.  But I advise you to talk to
Dorothea herself.  The fact is, she has a dislike to Casaubon's
property.  You will hear what she says, you know."

"No--excuse me--I shall not," said Sir James, with more coolness.  "I
cannot bear to see her again; it is too painful.  It hurts me too much
that a woman like Dorothea should have done what is wrong."

"Be just, Chettam," said the easy, large-lipped Rector, who objected to
all this unnecessary discomfort.  "Mrs. Casaubon may be acting
imprudently: she is giving up a fortune for the sake of a man, and we
men have so poor an opinion of each other that we can hardly call a
woman wise who does that.  But I think you should not condemn it as a
wrong action, in the strict sense of the word."

"Yes, I do," answered Sir James.  "I think that Dorothea commits a
wrong action in marrying Ladislaw."

"My dear fellow, we are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it
is unpleasant to us," said the Rector, quietly.  Like many men who take
life easily, he had the knack of saying a home truth occasionally to
those who felt themselves virtuously out of temper.  Sir James took out
his handkerchief and began to bite the corner.

"It is very dreadful of Dodo, though," said Celia, wishing to justify
her husband.  "She said she _never would_ marry again--not anybody at
all."

"I heard her say the same thing myself," said Lady Chettam,
majestically, as if this were royal evidence.

"Oh, there is usually a silent exception in such cases," said Mrs.
Cadwallader.  "The only wonder to me is, that any of you are surprised.
You did nothing to hinder it.  If you would have had Lord Triton down
here to woo her with his philanthropy, he might have carried her off
before the year was over.  There was no safety in anything else.  Mr.
Casaubon had prepared all this as beautifully as possible.  He made
himself disagreeable--or it pleased God to make him so--and then he
dared her to contradict him.  It's the way to make any trumpery
tempting, to ticket it at a high price in that way."

"I don't know what you mean by wrong, Cadwallader," said Sir James,
still feeling a little stung, and turning round in his chair towards
the Rector.  "He's not a man we can take into the family.  At least, I
must speak for myself," he continued, carefully keeping his eyes off
Mr. Brooke.  "I suppose others will find his society too pleasant to
care about the propriety of the thing."

"Well, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke, good-humoredly, nursing his
leg, "I can't turn my back on Dorothea.  I must be a father to her up
to a certain point.  I said, 'My dear, I won't refuse to give you
away.'  I had spoken strongly before.  But I can cut off the entail,
you know.  It will cost money and be troublesome; but I can do it, you
know."

Mr. Brooke nodded at Sir James, and felt that he was both showing his
own force of resolution and propitiating what was just in the Baronet's
vexation.  He had hit on a more ingenious mode of parrying than he was
aware of.  He had touched a motive of which Sir James was ashamed.  The
mass of his feeling about Dorothea's marriage to Ladislaw was due
partly to excusable prejudice, or even justifiable opinion, partly to a
jealous repugnance hardly less in Ladislaw's case than in Casaubon's.
He was convinced that the marriage was a fatal one for Dorothea.  But
amid that mass ran a vein of which he was too good and honorable a man
to like the avowal even to himself: it was undeniable that the union of
the two estates--Tipton and Freshitt--lying charmingly within a
ring-fence, was a prospect that flattered him for his son and heir.
Hence when Mr. Brooke noddingly appealed to that motive, Sir James felt
a sudden embarrassment; there was a stoppage in his throat; he even
blushed.  He had found more words than usual in the first jet of his
anger, but Mr. Brooke's propitiation was more clogging to his tongue
than Mr. Cadwallader's caustic hint.

But Celia was glad to have room for speech after her uncle's suggestion
of the marriage ceremony, and she said, though with as little eagerness
of manner as if the question had turned on an invitation to dinner, "Do
you mean that Dodo is going to be married directly, uncle?"

"In three weeks, you know," said Mr. Brooke, helplessly.  "I can do
nothing to hinder it, Cadwallader," he added, turning for a little
countenance toward the Rector, who said--

"--I--should not make any fuss about it.  If she likes to be poor, that
is her affair.  Nobody would have said anything if she had married the
young fellow because he was rich.  Plenty of beneficed clergy are
poorer than they will be.  Here is Elinor," continued the provoking
husband; "she vexed her friends by me: I had hardly a thousand
a-year--I was a lout--nobody could see anything in me--my shoes were
not the right cut--all the men wondered how a woman could like me.
Upon my word, I must take Ladislaw's part until I hear more harm of
him."

"Humphrey, that is all sophistry, and you know it," said his wife.
"Everything is all one--that is the beginning and end with you.  As if
you had not been a Cadwallader!  Does any one suppose that I would have
taken such a monster as you by any other name?"

"And a clergyman too," observed Lady Chettam with approbation.  "Elinor
cannot be said to have descended below her rank.  It is difficult to
say what Mr. Ladislaw is, eh, James?"

Sir James gave a small grunt, which was less respectful than his usual
mode of answering his mother.  Celia looked up at him like a thoughtful
kitten.

"It must be admitted that his blood is a frightful mixture!" said Mrs.
Cadwallader.  "The Casaubon cuttle-fish fluid to begin with, and then a
rebellious Polish fiddler or dancing-master, was it?--and then an old
clo--"

"Nonsense, Elinor," said the Rector, rising.  "It is time for us to go."

"After all, he is a pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, rising too,
and wishing to make amends.  "He is like the fine old Crichley
portraits before the idiots came in."

"I'll go with you," said Mr. Brooke, starting up with alacrity.  "You
must all come and dine with me to-morrow, you know--eh, Celia, my dear?"

"You will, James--won't you?" said Celia, taking her husband's hand.

"Oh, of course, if you like," said Sir James, pulling down his
waistcoat, but unable yet to adjust his face good-humoredly. "That is
to say, if it is not to meet anybody else.':

"No, no, no," said Mr. Brooke, understanding the condition.  "Dorothea
would not come, you know, unless you had been to see her."

When Sir James and Celia were alone, she said, "Do you mind about my
having the carriage to go to Lowick, James?"

"What, now, directly?" he answered, with some surprise.

"Yes, it is very important," said Celia.

"Remember, Celia, I cannot see her," said Sir James.

"Not if she gave up marrying?"

"What is the use of saying that?--however, I'm going to the stables.
I'll tell Briggs to bring the carriage round."

Celia thought it was of great use, if not to say that, at least to take
a journey to Lowick in order to influence Dorothea's mind.  All through
their girlhood she had felt that she could act on her sister by a word
judiciously placed--by opening a little window for the daylight of her
own understanding to enter among the strange colored lamps by which
Dodo habitually saw.  And Celia the matron naturally felt more able to
advise her childless sister.  How could any one understand Dodo so well
as Celia did or love her so tenderly?

Dorothea, busy in her boudoir, felt a glow of pleasure at the sight of
her sister so soon after the revelation of her intended marriage.  She
had prefigured to herself, even with exaggeration, the disgust of her
friends, and she had even feared that Celia might be kept aloof from
her.

"O Kitty, I am delighted to see you!" said Dorothea, putting her hands
on Celia's shoulders, and beaming on her.  "I almost thought you would
not come to me."

"I have not brought Arthur, because I was in a hurry," said Celia, and
they sat down on two small chairs opposite each other, with their knees
touching.

"You know, Dodo, it is very bad," said Celia, in her placid guttural,
looking as prettily free from humors as possible.  "You have
disappointed us all so.  And I can't think that it ever _will_ be--you
never can go and live in that way.  And then there are all your plans!
You never can have thought of that.  James would have taken any trouble
for you, and you might have gone on all your life doing what you liked."

"On the contrary, dear," said Dorothea, "I never could do anything that
I liked.  I have never carried out any plan yet."

"Because you always wanted things that wouldn't do.  But other plans
would have come.  And how can you marry Mr. Ladislaw, that we none of
us ever thought you _could_ marry?  It shocks James so dreadfully.  And
then it is all so different from what you have always been.  You would
have Mr. Casaubon because he had such a great soul, and was so and
dismal and learned; and now, to think of marrying Mr. Ladislaw, who has
got no estate or anything.  I suppose it is because you must be making
yourself uncomfortable in some way or other."

Dorothea laughed.

"Well, it is very serious, Dodo," said Celia, becoming more impressive.
"How will you live? and you will go away among queer people.  And I
shall never see you--and you won't mind about little Arthur--and I
thought you always would--"

Celia's rare tears had got into her eyes, and the corners of her mouth
were agitated.

"Dear Celia," said Dorothea, with tender gravity, "if you don't ever
see me, it will not be my fault."

"Yes, it will," said Celia, with the same touching distortion of her
small features.  "How can I come to you or have you with me when James
can't bear it?--that is because he thinks it is not right--he thinks
you are so wrong, Dodo.  But you always were wrong: only I can't help
loving you.  And nobody can think where you will live: where can you
go?"

"I am going to London," said Dorothea.

"How can you always live in a street?  And you will be so poor.  I
could give you half my things, only how can I, when I never see you?"

"Bless you, Kitty," said Dorothea, with gentle warmth.  "Take comfort:
perhaps James will forgive me some time."

"But it would be much better if you would not be married," said Celia,
drying her eyes, and returning to her argument; "then there would be
nothing uncomfortable.  And you would not do what nobody thought you
could do.  James always said you ought to be a queen; but this is not
at all being like a queen.  You know what mistakes you have always been
making, Dodo, and this is another.  Nobody thinks Mr. Ladislaw a proper
husband for you.  And you _said you_ would never be married again."

"It is quite true that I might be a wiser person, Celia," said
Dorothea, "and that I might have done something better, if I had been
better.  But this is what I am going to do.  I have promised to marry
Mr. Ladislaw; and I am going to marry him."

The tone in which Dorothea said this was a note that Celia had long
learned to recognize.  She was silent a few moments, and then said, as
if she had dismissed all contest, "Is he very fond of you, Dodo?"

"I hope so.  I am very fond of him."

"That is nice," said Celia, comfortably.  "Only I rather you had such a
sort of husband as James is, with a place very near, that I could drive
to."

Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative.  Presently she
said, "I cannot think how it all came about." Celia thought it would be
pleasant to hear the story.

"I dare say not," said-Dorothea, pinching her sister's chin.  "If you
knew how it came about, it would not seem wonderful to you."

"Can't you tell me?" said Celia, settling her arms cozily.

"No, dear, you would have to feel with me, else you would never know."



CHAPTER LXXXV.

    "Then went the jury out whose names were Mr. Blindman, Mr.
    No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr.
    Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr.
    Hate-light, Mr. Implacable, who every one gave in his
    private verdict against him among themselves, and afterwards
    unanimously concluded to bring him in guilty before the
    judge. And first among themselves, Mr. Blindman, the
    foreman, said, I see clearly that this man is a heretic.
    Then said Mr. No-good, Away with such a fellow from the
    earth! Ay, said Mr. Malice, for I hate the very look of him.
    Then said Mr. Love-lust, I could never endure him. Nor I,
    said Mr. Live-loose; for he would be always condemning my
    way. Hang him, hang him, said Mr. Heady. A sorry scrub, said
    Mr. High-mind. My heart riseth against him, said Mr. Enmity.
    He is a rogue, said Mr. Liar. Hanging is too good for him,
    said Mr. Cruelty. Let us despatch him out of the way said
    Mr. Hate-light. Then said Mr. Implacable, Might I have all
    the world given me, I could not be reconciled to him;
    therefore let us forthwith bring him in guilty of death."
                                            --Pilgrim's Progress.


When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the persecuting passions
bringing in their verdict of guilty, who pities Faithful?  That is a
rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have not attained, to know
ourselves guiltless before a condemning crowd--to be sure that what we
are denounced for is solely the good in us.  The pitiable lot is that
of the man who could not call himself a martyr even though he were to
persuade himself that the men who stoned him were but ugly passions
incarnate--who knows that he is stoned, not for professing the Right,
but for not being the man he professed to be.

This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he
made his preparations for departing from Middlemarch, and going to end
his stricken life in that sad refuge, the indifference of new faces.
The duteous merciful constancy of his wife had delivered him from one
dread, but it could not hinder her presence from being still a tribunal
before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy.  His
equivocations with himself about the death of Raffles had sustained the
conception of an Omniscience whom he prayed to, yet he had a terror
upon him which would not let him expose them to judgment by a full
confession to his wife: the acts which he had washed and diluted with
inward argument and motive, and for which it seemed comparatively easy
to win invisible pardon--what name would she call them by?  That she
should ever silently call his acts Murder was what he could not bear.
He felt shrouded by her doubt: he got strength to face her from the
sense that she could not yet feel warranted in pronouncing that worst
condemnation on him.  Some time, perhaps--when he was dying--he would
tell her all: in the deep shadow of that time, when she held his hand
in the gathering darkness, she might listen without recoiling from his
touch.  Perhaps: but concealment had been the habit of his life, and
the impulse to confession had no power against the dread of a deeper
humiliation.

He was full of timid care for his wife, not only because he deprecated
any harshness of judgment from her, but because he felt a deep distress
at the sight of her suffering.  She had sent her daughters away to
board at a school on the coast, that this crisis might be hidden from
them as far as possible.  Set free by their absence from the
intolerable necessity of accounting for her grief or of beholding their
frightened wonder, she could live unconstrainedly with the sorrow that
was every day streaking her hair with whiteness and making her eyelids
languid.

"Tell me anything that you would like to have me do, Harriet,"
Bulstrode had said to her; "I mean with regard to arrangements of
property.  It is my intention not to sell the land I possess in this
neighborhood, but to leave it to you as a safe provision.  If you have
any wish on such subjects, do not conceal it from me."

A few days afterwards, when she had returned from a visit to her
brother's, she began to speak to her husband on a subject which had for
some time been in her mind.

"I _should_ like to do something for my brother's family, Nicholas; and
I think we are bound to make some amends to Rosamond and her husband.
Walter says Mr. Lydgate must leave the town, and his practice is almost
good for nothing, and they have very little left to settle anywhere
with.  I would rather do without something for ourselves, to make some
amends to my poor brother's family."

Mrs. Bulstrode did not wish to go nearer to the facts than in the
phrase "make some amends;" knowing that her husband must understand
her.  He had a particular reason, which she was not aware of, for
wincing under her suggestion.  He hesitated before he said--

"It is not possible to carry out your wish in the way you propose, my
dear.  Mr. Lydgate has virtually rejected any further service from me.
He has returned the thousand pounds which I lent him.  Mrs. Casaubon
advanced him the sum for that purpose.  Here is his letter."

The letter seemed to cut Mrs. Bulstrode severely.  The mention of Mrs.
Casaubon's loan seemed a reflection of that public feeling which held
it a matter of course that every one would avoid a connection with her
husband.  She was silent for some time; and the tears fell one after
the other, her chin trembling as she wiped them away.  Bulstrode,
sitting opposite to her, ached at the sight of that grief-worn face,
which two months before had been bright and blooming.  It had aged to
keep sad company with his own withered features.  Urged into some
effort at comforting her, he said--

"There is another means, Harriet, by which I might do a service to your
brother's family, if you like to act in it.  And it would, I think, be
beneficial to you: it would be an advantageous way of managing the land
which I mean to be yours."

She looked attentive.

"Garth once thought of undertaking the management of Stone Court in
order to place your nephew Fred there.  The stock was to remain as it
is, and they were to pay a certain share of the profits instead of an
ordinary rent.  That would be a desirable beginning for the young man,
in conjunction with his employment under Garth.  Would it be a
satisfaction to you?"

"Yes, it would," said Mrs. Bulstrode, with some return of energy.
"Poor Walter is so cast down; I would try anything in my power to do
him some good before I go away.  We have always been brother and
sister."

"You must make the proposal to Garth yourself, Harriet," said Mr.
Bulstrode, not liking what he had to say, but desiring the end he had
in view, for other reasons besides the consolation of his wife.  "You
must state to him that the land is virtually yours, and that he need
have no transactions with me.  Communications can be made through
Standish.  I mention this, because Garth gave up being my agent.  I can
put into your hands a paper which he himself drew up, stating
conditions; and you can propose his renewed acceptance of them.  I
think it is not unlikely that he will accept when you propose the thing
for the sake of your nephew."



CHAPTER LXXXVI.

    "Le coeur se sature d'amour comme d'un sel divin qui le
    conserve; de la l'incorruptible adherence de ceux qui se
    sont aimes des l'aube de la vie, et la fraicheur des vielles
    amours prolonges. Il existe un embaumement d'amour. C'est de
    Daphnis et Chloe que sont faits Philemon et Baucis. Cette
    vieillesse la, ressemblance du soir avec l'aurore."
                    --VICTOR HUGO: L'homme qui rit.


Mrs. Garth, hearing Caleb enter the passage about tea-time, opened the
parlor-door and said, "There you are, Caleb.  Have you had your
dinner?"  (Mr. Garth's meals were much subordinated to "business.")

"Oh yes, a good dinner--cold mutton and I don't know what.  Where is
Mary?"

"In the garden with Letty, I think."

"Fred is not come yet?"

"No. Are you going out again without taking tea, Caleb?" said Mrs.
Garth, seeing that her absent-minded husband was putting on again the
hat which he had just taken off.

"No, no; I'm only going to Mary a minute."

Mary was in a grassy corner of the garden, where there was a swing
loftily hung between two pear-trees. She had a pink kerchief tied over
her head, making a little poke to shade her eyes from the level
sunbeams, while she was giving a glorious swing to Letty, who laughed
and screamed wildly.

Seeing her father, Mary left the swing and went to meet him, pushing
back the pink kerchief and smiling afar off at him with the involuntary
smile of loving pleasure.

"I came to look for you, Mary," said Mr. Garth.  "Let us walk about a
bit."

Mary knew quite well that her father had something particular to say:
his eyebrows made their pathetic angle, and there was a tender gravity
in his voice: these things had been signs to her when she was Letty's
age.  She put her arm within his, and they turned by the row of
nut-trees.

"It will be a sad while before you can be married, Mary," said her
father, not looking at her, but at the end of the stick which he held
in his other hand.

"Not a sad while, father--I mean to be merry," said Mary, laughingly.
"I have been single and merry for four-and-twenty years and more: I
suppose it will not be quite as long again as that."  Then, after a
little pause, she said, more gravely, bending her face before her
father's, "If you are contented with Fred?"

Caleb screwed up his mouth and turned his head aside wisely.

"Now, father, you did praise him last Wednesday.  You said he had an
uncommon notion of stock, and a good eye for things."

"Did I?" said Caleb, rather slyly.

"Yes, I put it all down, and the date, anno Domini, and everything,"
said Mary.  "You like things to be neatly booked.  And then his
behavior to you, father, is really good; he has a deep respect for you;
and it is impossible to have a better temper than Fred has."

"Ay, ay; you want to coax me into thinking him a fine match."

"No, indeed, father.  I don't love him because he is a fine match."

"What for, then?"

"Oh, dear, because I have always loved him.  I should never like
scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in
a husband."

"Your mind is quite settled, then, Mary?" said Caleb, returning to his
first tone.  "There's no other wish come into it since things have been
going on as they have been of late?"  (Caleb meant a great deal in that
vague phrase;) "because, better late than never.  A woman must not
force her heart--she'll do a man no good by that."

"My feelings have not changed, father," said Mary, calmly.  "I shall be
constant to Fred as long as he is constant to me.  I don't think either
of us could spare the other, or like any one else better, however much
we might admire them.  It would make too great a difference to us--like
seeing all the old places altered, and changing the name for
everything.  We must wait for each other a long while; but Fred knows
that."

Instead of speaking immediately, Caleb stood still and screwed his
stick on the grassy walk.  Then he said, with emotion in his voice,
"Well, I've got a bit of news.  What do you think of Fred going to live
at Stone Court, and managing the land there?"

"How can that ever be, father?" said Mary, wonderingly.

"He would manage it for his aunt Bulstrode.  The poor woman has been to
me begging and praying.  She wants to do the lad good, and it might be
a fine thing for him.  With saving, he might gradually buy the stock,
and he has a turn for farming."

"Oh, Fred would be so happy!  It is too good to believe."

"Ah, but mind you," said Caleb, turning his head warningly, "I must
take it on _my_ shoulders, and be responsible, and see after
everything; and that will grieve your mother a bit, though she mayn't
say so.  Fred had need be careful."

"Perhaps it is too much, father," said Mary, checked in her joy.
"There would be no happiness in bringing you any fresh trouble."

"Nay, nay; work is my delight, child, when it doesn't vex your mother.
And then, if you and Fred get married," here Caleb's voice shook just
perceptibly, "he'll be steady and saving; and you've got your mother's
cleverness, and mine too, in a woman's sort of way; and you'll keep him
in order.  He'll be coming by-and-by, so I wanted to tell you first,
because I think you'd like to tell _him_ by yourselves.  After that, I
could talk it well over with him, and we could go into business and the
nature of things."

"Oh, you dear good father!" cried Mary, putting her hands round her
father's neck, while he bent his head placidly, willing to be caressed.
"I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the
world!"

"Nonsense, child; you'll think your husband better."

"Impossible," said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; "husbands are
an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order."

When they were entering the house with Letty, who had run to join them,
Mary saw Fred at the orchard-gate, and went to meet him.

"What fine clothes you wear, you extravagant youth!" said Mary, as Fred
stood still and raised his hat to her with playful formality.  "You are
not learning economy."

"Now that is too bad, Mary," said Fred.  "Just look at the edges of
these coat-cuffs! It is only by dint of good brushing that I look
respectable.  I am saving up three suits--one for a wedding-suit."

"How very droll you will look!--like a gentleman in an old
fashion-book."

"Oh no, they will keep two years."

"Two years! be reasonable, Fred," said Mary, turning to walk.  "Don't
encourage flattering expectations."

"Why not?  One lives on them better than on unflattering ones.  If we
can't be married in two years, the truth will be quite bad enough when
it comes."

"I have heard a story of a young gentleman who once encouraged
flattering expectations, and they did him harm."

"Mary, if you've got something discouraging to tell me, I shall bolt; I
shall go into the house to Mr. Garth.  I am out of spirits.  My father
is so cut up--home is not like itself.  I can't bear any more bad news."

"Should you call it bad news to be told that you were to live at Stone
Court, and manage the farm, and be remarkably prudent, and save money
every year till all the stock and furniture were your own, and you were
a distinguished agricultural character, as Mr. Borthrop Trumbull
says--rather stout, I fear, and with the Greek and Latin sadly
weather-worn?"

"You don't mean anything except nonsense, Mary?" said Fred, coloring
slightly nevertheless.

"That is what my father has just told me of as what may happen, and he
never talks nonsense," said Mary, looking up at Fred now, while he
grasped her hand as they walked, till it rather hurt her; but she would
not complain.

"Oh, I could be a tremendously good fellow then, Mary, and we could be
married directly."

"Not so fast, sir; how do you know that I would not rather defer our
marriage for some years?  That would leave you time to misbehave, and
then if I liked some one else better, I should have an excuse for
jilting you."

"Pray don't joke, Mary," said Fred, with strong feeling.  "Tell me
seriously that all this is true, and that you are happy because of
it--because you love me best."

"It is all true, Fred, and I am happy because of it--because I love you
best," said Mary, in a tone of obedient recitation.

They lingered on the door-step under the steep-roofed porch, and Fred
almost in a whisper said--

"When we were first engaged, with the umbrella-ring, Mary, you used
to--"

The spirit of joy began to laugh more decidedly in Mary's eyes, but the
fatal Ben came running to the door with Brownie yapping behind him,
and, bouncing against them, said--

"Fred and Mary! are you ever coming in?--or may I eat your cake?"


FINALE.


Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.  Who can quit young
lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know
what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life,
however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be
kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers
may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand
retrieval.

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a
great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in
Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of
the wilderness.  It is still the beginning of the home epic--the
gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which
makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet
memories in common.

Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope
and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each
other and the world.

All who have cared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth will like to know that
these two made no such failure, but achieved a solid mutual happiness.
Fred surprised his neighbors in various ways.  He became rather
distinguished in his side of the county as a theoretic and practical
farmer, and produced a work on the "Cultivation of Green Crops and the
Economy of Cattle-Feeding" which won him high congratulations at
agricultural meetings.  In Middlemarch admiration was more reserved:
most persons there were inclined to believe that the merit of Fred's
authorship was due to his wife, since they had never expected Fred
Vincy to write on turnips and mangel-wurzel.

But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys, called "Stories of
Great Men, taken from Plutarch," and had it printed and published by
Gripp & Co., Middlemarch, every one in the town was willing to give the
credit of this work to Fred, observing that he had been to the
University, "where the ancients were studied," and might have been a
clergyman if he had chosen.

In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch had never been deceived,
and that there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book, since
it was always done by somebody else.

Moreover, Fred remained unswervingly steady.  Some years after his
marriage he told Mary that his happiness was half owing to Farebrother,
who gave him a strong pull-up at the right moment.  I cannot say that
he was never again misled by his hopefulness: the yield of crops or the
profits of a cattle sale usually fell below his estimate; and he was
always prone to believe that he could make money by the purchase of a
horse which turned out badly--though this, Mary observed, was of
course the fault of the horse, not of Fred's judgment.  He kept his
love of horsemanship, but he rarely allowed himself a day's hunting;
and when he did so, it was remarkable that he submitted to be laughed
at for cowardliness at the fences, seeming to see Mary and the boys
sitting on the five-barred gate, or showing their curly heads between
hedge and ditch.

There were three boys: Mary was not discontented that she brought forth
men-children only; and when Fred wished to have a girl like her, she
said, laughingly, "that would be too great a trial to your mother."
Mrs. Vincy in her declining years, and in the diminished lustre of her
housekeeping, was much comforted by her perception that two at least of
Fred's boys were real Vincys, and did not "feature the Garths." But
Mary secretly rejoiced that the youngest of the three was very much
what her father must have been when he wore a round jacket, and showed
a marvellous nicety of aim in playing at marbles, or in throwing stones
to bring down the mellow pears.

Ben and Letty Garth, who were uncle and aunt before they were well in
their teens, disputed much as to whether nephews or nieces were more
desirable; Ben contending that it was clear girls were good for less
than boys, else they would not be always in petticoats, which showed
how little they were meant for; whereupon Letty, who argued much from
books, got angry in replying that God made coats of skins for both Adam
and Eve alike--also it occurred to her that in the East the men too
wore petticoats.  But this latter argument, obscuring the majesty of
the former, was one too many, for Ben answered contemptuously, "The
more spooneys they!" and immediately appealed to his mother whether
boys were not better than girls.  Mrs. Garth pronounced that both were
alike naughty, but that boys were undoubtedly stronger, could run
faster, and throw with more precision to a greater distance.  With this
oracular sentence Ben was well satisfied, not minding the naughtiness;
but Letty took it ill, her feeling of superiority being stronger than
her muscles.

Fred never became rich--his hopefulness had not led him to expect that;
but he gradually saved enough to become owner of the stock and
furniture at Stone Court, and the work which Mr. Garth put into his
hands carried him in plenty through those "bad times" which are always
present with farmers.  Mary, in her matronly days, became as solid in
figure as her mother; but, unlike her, gave the boys little formal
teaching, so that Mrs. Garth was alarmed lest they should never be well
grounded in grammar and geography.  Nevertheless, they were found quite
forward enough when they went to school; perhaps, because they had
liked nothing so well as being with their mother.  When Fred was riding
home on winter evenings he had a pleasant vision beforehand of the
bright hearth in the wainscoted parlor, and was sorry for other men who
could not have Mary for their wife; especially for Mr. Farebrother.
"He was ten times worthier of you than I was," Fred could now say to
her, magnanimously.  "To be sure he was," Mary answered; "and for that
reason he could do better without me.  But you--I shudder to think what
you would have been--a curate in debt for horse-hire and cambric
pocket-handkerchiefs!"

On inquiry it might possibly be found that Fred and Mary still inhabit
Stone Court--that the creeping plants still cast the foam of their
blossoms over the fine stone-wall into the field where the walnut-trees
stand in stately row--and that on sunny days the two lovers who were
first engaged with the umbrella-ring may be seen in white-haired
placidity at the open window from which Mary Garth, in the days of old
Peter Featherstone, had often been ordered to look out for Mr. Lydgate.

Lydgate's hair never became white.  He died when he was only fifty,
leaving his wife and children provided for by a heavy insurance on his
life.  He had gained an excellent practice, alternating, according to
the season, between London and a Continental bathing-place; having
written a treatise on Gout, a disease which has a good deal of wealth
on its side.  His skill was relied on by many paying patients, but he
always regarded himself as a failure: he had not done what he once
meant to do.  His acquaintances thought him enviable to have so
charming a wife, and nothing happened to shake their opinion.  Rosamond
never committed a second compromising indiscretion.  She simply
continued to be mild in her temper, inflexible in her judgment,
disposed to admonish her husband, and able to frustrate him by
stratagem.  As the years went on he opposed her less and less, whence
Rosamond concluded that he had learned the value of her opinion; on the
other hand, she had a more thorough conviction of his talents now that
he gained a good income, and instead of the threatened cage in Bride
Street provided one all flowers and gilding, fit for the bird of
paradise that she resembled.  In brief, Lydgate was what is called a
successful man.  But he died prematurely of diphtheria, and Rosamond
afterwards married an elderly and wealthy physician, who took kindly to
her four children.  She made a very pretty show with her daughters,
driving out in her carriage, and often spoke of her happiness as "a
reward"--she did not say for what, but probably she meant that it was a
reward for her patience with Tertius, whose temper never became
faultless, and to the last occasionally let slip a bitter speech which
was more memorable than the signs he made of his repentance.  He once
called her his basil plant; and when she asked for an explanation, said
that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered
man's brains.  Rosamond had a placid but strong answer to such
speeches.  Why then had he chosen her?  It was a pity he had not had
Mrs. Ladislaw, whom he was always praising and placing above her.  And
thus the conversation ended with the advantage on Rosamond's side.  But
it would be unjust not to tell, that she never uttered a word in
depreciation of Dorothea, keeping in religious remembrance the
generosity which had come to her aid in the sharpest crisis of her life.

Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women,
feeling that there was always something better which she might have
done, if she had only been better and known better.  Still, she never
repented that she had given up position and fortune to marry Will
Ladislaw, and he would have held it the greatest shame as well as
sorrow to him if she had repented.  They were bound to each other by a
love stronger than any impulses which could have marred it.  No life
would have been possible to Dorothea which was not filled with emotion,
and she had now a life filled also with a beneficent activity which she
had not the doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself.
Will became an ardent public man, working well in those times when
reforms were begun with a young hopefulness of immediate good which has
been much checked in our days, and getting at last returned to
Parliament by a constituency who paid his expenses.  Dorothea could
have liked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband
should be in the thick of a struggle against them, and that she should
give him wifely help.  Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so
substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life
of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother.
But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought
rather to have done--not even Sir James Chettam, who went no further
than the negative prescription that she ought not to have married Will
Ladislaw.

But this opinion of his did not cause a lasting alienation; and the way
in which the family was made whole again was characteristic of all
concerned.  Mr. Brooke could not resist the pleasure of corresponding
with Will and Dorothea; and one morning when his pen had been
remarkably fluent on the prospects of Municipal Reform, it ran off into
an invitation to the Grange, which, once written, could not be done
away with at less cost than the sacrifice (hardly to be conceived) of
the whole valuable letter.  During the months of this correspondence
Mr. Brooke had continually, in his talk with Sir James Chettam, been
presupposing or hinting that the intention of cutting off the entail
was still maintained; and the day on which his pen gave the daring
invitation, he went to Freshitt expressly to intimate that he had a
stronger sense than ever of the reasons for taking that energetic step
as a precaution against any mixture of low blood in the heir of the
Brookes.

But that morning something exciting had happened at the Hall.  A letter
had come to Celia which made her cry silently as she read it; and when
Sir James, unused to see her in tears, asked anxiously what was the
matter, she burst out in a wail such as he had never heard from her
before.

"Dorothea has a little boy.  And you will not let me go and see her.
And I am sure she wants to see me.  And she will not know what to do
with the baby--she will do wrong things with it.  And they thought she
would die.  It is very dreadful!  Suppose it had been me and little
Arthur, and Dodo had been hindered from coming to see me!  I wish you
would be less unkind, James!"

"Good heavens, Celia!" said Sir James, much wrought upon, "what do you
wish?  I will do anything you like.  I will take you to town to-morrow
if you wish it."  And Celia did wish it.

It was after this that Mr. Brooke came, and meeting the Baronet in the
grounds, began to chat with him in ignorance of the news, which Sir
James for some reason did not care to tell him immediately.  But when
the entail was touched on in the usual way, he said, "My dear sir, it
is not for me to dictate to you, but for my part I would let that
alone.  I would let things remain as they are."

Mr. Brooke felt so much surprised that he did not at once find out how
much he was relieved by the sense that he was not expected to do
anything in particular.

Such being the bent of Celia's heart, it was inevitable that Sir James
should consent to a reconciliation with Dorothea and her husband.
Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.
Sir James never liked Ladislaw, and Will always preferred to have Sir
James's company mixed with another kind: they were on a footing of
reciprocal tolerance which was made quite easy only when Dorothea and
Celia were present.

It became an understood thing that Mr. and Mrs. Ladislaw should pay at
least two visits during the year to the Grange, and there came
gradually a small row of cousins at Freshitt who enjoyed playing with
the two cousins visiting Tipton as much as if the blood of these
cousins had been less dubiously mixed.

Mr. Brooke lived to a good old age, and his estate was inherited by
Dorothea's son, who might have represented Middlemarch, but declined,
thinking that his opinions had less chance of being stifled if he
remained out of doors.

Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a
mistake; and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in
Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine
girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and
in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry
his cousin--young enough to have been his son, with no property, and
not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually
observed that she could not have been "a nice woman," else she would
not have married either the one or the other.

Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally
beautiful.  They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse
struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which
great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the
aspect of illusion.  For there is no creature whose inward being is so
strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.  A
new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual
life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in
daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which
their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone.  But we insignificant
people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many
Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that
of the Dorothea whose story we know.

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were
not widely visible.  Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus
broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on
the earth.  But the effect of her being on those around her was
incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly
dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you
and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived
faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Middlemarch - Part 2
