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 aliberty."
"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 havenot—have you?—in order to pay your debts, incurred another debtwhich may harass you worse hereafter?"
"No," said Lydgate, coloring slightly. "There is no reason why Ishould not tell you—since the fact is so—that the person to whom I amindebted is Bulstrode. He has made me a very handsome advance—athousand pounds—and he can afford to wait for repayment."
"Well, that is generous," said Mr. Farebrother, compelling himself toapprove of the man whom he disliked. His delicate feeling shrank fromdwelling even in his thought on the fact that he had always urgedLydgate to avoid any personal entanglement with Bulstrode. He addedimmediately, "And Bulstrode must naturally feel an interest in yourwelfare, after you have worked with him in a way which has probablyreduced your income instead of adding to it. I am glad to think that hehas acted accordingly."
Lydgate felt uncomfortable under these kindly suppositions. Theymade more distinct within him the uneasy consciousness which hadshown its first dim stirrings only a few hours before, that Bulstrode'smotives for his sudden beneficence following close upon the chillestindifference might be merely selfish. He let the kindly suppositions pass.He could not tell the history of the loan, but it was more vividly presentwith him than ever, as well as the fact which the Vicar delicatelyignored—that this relation of personal indebtedness to Bulstrode waswhat 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 mistakeneffort in that respect. And if Rosamond will not mind, I shall take anapprentice. I don't like these things, but if one carries them out faithfullythey 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 fallenfrom him involuntarily as part of his thought, was a significant mark ofthe yoke he bore. But Mr. Farebrother, whose hopes entered stronglyinto the same current with Lydgate's, and who knew nothing about himthat could now raise a melancholy presentiment, left him withaffectionate 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 athis leisure under the large archway leading into the yard of the GreenDragon. He was not fond of solitary contemplation, but he had only justcome out of the house, and any human figure standing at ease under thearchway in the early afternoon was as certain to attract companionshipas a pigeon which has found something worth peeking at. In this casethere was no material object to feed upon, but the eye of reason saw aprobability of mental sustenance in the shape of gossip. Mr. Hopkins,the meek-mannered draper opposite, was the first to act on this inwardvision, being the more ambitious of a little masculine talk because hiscustomers were chiefly women. Mr. Bambridge was rather curt to thedraper, feeling that Hopkins was of course glad to talk to him, but thathe was not going to waste much of his talk on Hopkins. Soon, however,there was a small cluster of more important listeners, who were eitherdeposited from the passers-by, or had sauntered to the spot expressly tosee if there were anything going on at the Green Dragon; and Mr.Bambridge was finding it worth his while to say many impressive thingsabout the fine studs he had been seeing and the purchases he had madeon a journey in the north from which he had just returned. Gentlemenpresent were assured that when they could show him anything to cut outa blood mare, a bay, rising four, which was to be seen at Doncaster ifthey chose to go and look at it, Mr. Bambridge would gratify them bybeing shot "from here to Hereford." Also, a pair of blacks which he wasgoing to put into the break recalled vividly to his mind a pair which hehad sold to Faulkner in '19, for a hundred guineas, and which Faulknerhad sold for a hundred and sixty two months later—any gent who coulddisprove 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 loungingat the Green Dragon, but happening to pass along the High Street andseeing Bambridge on the other side, he took some of his long stridesacross to ask the horsedealer whether he had found the first-rate gig-horse which he had engaged to look for. Mr. Hawley was requested towait until he had seen a gray selected at Bilkley: if that did not meet hiswishes to a hair, Bambridge did not know a horse when he saw it, whichseemed to be the highest conceivable unlikelihood. Mr. Hawley, standingwith his back to the street, was fixing a time for looking at the gray andseeing it tried, when a horseman passed slowly by.
"Bulstrode!" said two or three voices at once in a low tone, one ofthem, which was the draper's, respectfully prefixing the "Mr.;" butnobody having more intention in this interjectural naming than if theyhad said "the Riverston coach" when that vehicle appeared in thedistance. 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, "Ipicked up something else at Bilkley besides your gig-horse, Mr. Hawley. Ipicked up a fine story about Bulstrode. Do you know how he came by hisfortune? Any gentleman wanting a bit of curious information, I can giveit him free of expense. If everybody got their deserts, Bulstrode mighthave had to say his prayers at Botany Bay."
"What do you mean?" said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his hands into hispockets, and pushing a little forward under the archway. If Bulstrodeshould 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 tellyou where I first picked him up," said Bambridge, with a sudden gestureof his fore-finger. "He was at Larcher's sale, but I knew nothing of himthen—he slipped through my fingers—was after Bulstrode, no doubt. Hetells 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 Ithink he meant to turn king's evidence; but he's that sort of braggingfellow, the bragging runs over hedge and ditch with him, till he'd brag ofa 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 hisown 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 decentfuneral." There was a strong sensation among the listeners. Mr.Bambridge gave an ejaculation in which "brimstone" was the mildestword, 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 arelation of the master's. He came there ill on Friday."
"Why, it was on Wednesday I took a glass with him," interposedBambridge.
"Did any doctor attend him?" said Mr. Hawley
"Yes. Mr. Lydgate. Mr. Bulstrode sat up with him one night. He diedthe third morning."
"Go on, Bambridge," said Mr. Hawley, insistently. "What did thisfellow say about Bulstrode?"
The group had already become larger, the town-clerk's presencebeing a guarantee that something worth listening to was going on there;and Mr. Bambridge delivered his narrative in the hearing of seven. It wasmainly what we know, including the fact about Will Ladislaw, with somelocal color and circumstance added: it was what Bulstrode had dreadedthe betrayal of—and hoped to have buried forever with the corpse ofRaffles—it was that haunting ghost of his earlier life which as he rodepast the archway of the Green Dragon he was trusting that Providencehad delivered him from. Yes, Providence. He had not confessed tohimself yet that he had done anything in the way of contrivance to thisend; he had accepted what seemed to have been offered. It wasimpossible to prove that he had done anything which hastened thedeparture of that man's soul.
But this gossip about Bulstrode spread through Middlemarch like thesmell of fire. Mr. Frank Hawley followed up his information by sending aclerk whom he could trust to Stone Court on a pretext of inquiring abouthay, but really to gather all that could be learned about Raffles and hisillness 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 inconsequence took an opportunity of seeing Caleb, calling at his office toask whether he had time to undertake an arbitration if it were required,and then asking him incidentally about Raffles. Caleb was betrayed intono word injurious to Bulstrode beyond the fact which he was forced toadmit, that he had given up acting for him within the last week. MrHawley drew his inferences, and feeling convinced that Raffles had toldhis story to Garth, and that Garth had given up Bulstrode's affairs inconsequence, said so a few hours later to Mr. Toller. The statement waspassed on until it had quite lost the stamp of an inference, and wastaken as information coming straight from Garth, so that even a diligenthistorian might have concluded Caleb to be the chief publisher ofBulstrode's misdemeanors.
Mr. Hawley was not slow to perceive that there was no handle forthe law either in the revelations made by Raffles or in the circumstancesof his death. He had himself ridden to Lowick village that he might lookat the register and talk over the whole matter with Mr. Farebrother, whowas not more surprised than the lawyer that an ugly secret should havecome to light about Bulstrode, though he had always had justice enoughin him to hinder his antipathy from turning into conclusions. But whilethey were talking another combination was silently going forward in Mr.Farebrother's mind, which foreshadowed what was soon to be loudlyspoken of in Middlemarch as a necessary "putting of two and twotogether." With the reasons which kept Bulstrode in dread of Rafflesthere flashed the thought that the dread might have something to dowith his munificence towards his medical man; and though he resistedthe suggestion that it had been consciously accepted in any way as abribe, he had a foreboding that this complication of things might be ofmalignant effect on Lydgate's reputation. He perceived that Mr. Hawleyknew nothing at present of the sudden relief from debt, and he himselfwas careful to glide away from all approaches towards the subject.
"Well," he said, with a deep breath, wanting to wind up theillimitable discussion of what might have been, though nothing could belegally proven, "it is a strange story. So our mercurial Ladislaw has aqueer genealogy! A high-spirited young lady and a musical Polish patriotmade a likely enough stock for him to spring from, but I should neverhave suspected a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker. However, there's noknowing what a mixture will turn out beforehand. Some sorts of dirtserve to clarify."
"It's just what I should have expected," said Mr. Hawley, mountinghis horse. "Any cursed alien blood, Jew, Corsican, or Gypsy."
"I know he's one of your black sheep, Hawley. But he is really adisinterested, unworldly fellow," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling.
"Ay, ay, that is your Whiggish twist," said Mr. Hawley, who had beenin the habit of saying apologetically that Farebrother was such a damnedpleasant good-hearted fellow you would mistake him for a Tory.
Mr. Hawley rode home without thinking of Lydgate's attendance onRaffles in any other light than as a piece of evidence on the side ofBulstrode. But the news that Lydgate had all at once become able notonly to get rid of the execution in his house but to pay all his debts inMiddlemarch was spreading fast, gathering round it conjectures andcomments which gave it new body and impetus, and soon filling the earsof other persons besides Mr. Hawley, who were not slow to see asignificant relation between this sudden command of money andBulstrode's desire to stifle the scandal of Raffles. That the money camefrom Bulstrode would infallibly have been guessed even if there had beenno direct evidence of it; for it had beforehand entered into the gossipabout Lydgate's affairs, that neither his father-in-law nor his own familywould do anything for him, and direct evidence was furnished not onlyby a clerk at the Bank, but by innocent Mrs. Bulstrode herself, whomentioned the loan to Mrs. Plymdale, who mentioned it to her daughter-in-law of the house of Toller, who mentioned it generally. The businesswas 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 strengthof this scandal concerning Bulstrode and Lydgate; wives, widows, andsingle ladies took their work and went out to tea oftener than usual; andall public conviviality, from the Green Dragon to Dollop's, gathered azest which could not be won from the question whether the Lords wouldthrow out the Reform Bill.
For hardly anybody doubted that some scandalous reason or otherwas at the bottom of Bulstrode's liberality to Lydgate. Mr. Hawleyindeed, in the first instance, invited a select party, including the twophysicians, with Mr Toller and Mr. Wrench, expressly to hold a closediscussion as to the probabilities of Raffles's illness, reciting to them allthe particulars which had been gathered from Mrs. Abel in connectionwith Lydgate's certificate, that the death was due to delirium tremens;and the medical gentlemen, who all stood undisturbedly on the old pathsin relation to this disease, declared that they could see nothing in theseparticulars which could be transformed into a positive ground ofsuspicion. But the moral grounds of suspicion remained: the strongmotives Bulstrode clearly had for wishing to be rid of Raffles, and thefact that at this critical moment he had given Lydgate the help which hemust for some time have known the need for; the disposition, moreover,to believe that Bulstrode would be unscrupulous, and the absence of anyindisposition to believe that Lydgate might be as easily bribed as otherhaughty-minded men when they have found themselves in want ofmoney. Even if the money had been given merely to make him hold histongue about the scandal of Bulstrode's earlier life, the fact threw anodious light on Lydgate, who had long been sneered at as making himselfsubservient to the banker for the sake of working himself intopredominance, and discrediting the elder members of his profession.Hence, in spite of the negative as to any direct sign of guilt in relation tothe death at Stone Court, Mr. Hawley's select party broke up with thesense that the affair had "an ugly look."
