Dorothea, submitting uneasily to this discouragement, went withCelia into the library, which was her usual drawing-room.
"Now, Dodo, do listen to what James says," said Celia, "else you willbe getting into a scrape. You always did, and you always will, when youset about doing as you please. And I think it is a mercy now after all thatyou have got James to think for you. He lets you have your plans, onlyhe hinders you from being taken in. And that is the good of having abrother instead of a husband. A husband would not let you have yourplans."
"As if I wanted a husband!" said Dorothea. "I only want not to havemy feelings checked at every turn." Mrs. Casaubon was stillundisciplined enough to burst into angry tears.
"Now, really, Dodo," said Celia, with rather a deeper guttural thanusual, "you are contradictory: first one thing and then another. You usedto submit to Mr. Casaubon quite shamefully: I think you would havegiven up ever coming to see me if he had asked you."
"Of course I submitted to him, because it was my duty; it was myfeeling 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 whatJames wishes?" said Celia, with a sense of stringency in her argument."Because he only wishes what is for your own good. And, of course, menknow best about everything, except what women know better." Dorothealaughed and forgot her tears.
"Well, I mean about babies and those things," explained Celia. "Ishould not give up to James when I knew he was wrong, as you used todo 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 herthat her husband had been seized with faintness at the meeting, but thathe 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 underthe pain of stings: he was ready to curse the day on which he had cometo Middlemarch. Everything that bad happened to him there seemed amere preparation for this hateful fatality, which had come as a blight onhis honorable ambition, and must make even people who had only vulgarstandards regard his reputation as irrevocably damaged. In suchmoments a man can hardly escape being unloving. Lydgate thought ofhimself as the sufferer, and of others as the agents who had injured hislot. He had meant everything to turn out differently; and others hadthrust themselves into his life and thwarted his purposes. His marriageseemed an unmitigated calamity; and he was afraid of going toRosamond before he had vented himself in this solitary rage, lest themere sight of her should exasperate him and make him behaveunwarrantably. There are episodes in most men's lives in which theirhighest qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the objects thatfill their inward vision: Lydgate's tenderheartedness was present justthen only as a dread lest he should offend against it, not as an emotionthat swayed him to tenderness. For he was very miserable. Only thosewho know the supremacy of the intellectual life—the life which has aseed of ennobling thought and purpose within it—can understand thegrief 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 peoplewho suspected him of baseness? How could he go silently away fromMiddlemarch as if he were retreating before a just condemnation? Andyet how was he to set about vindicating himself?
For that scene at the meeting, which he had just witnessed, althoughit had told him no particulars, had been enough to make his ownsituation thoroughly clear to him. Bulstrode had been in dread ofscandalous disclosures on the part of Raffles. Lydgate could nowconstruct all the probabilities of the case. "He was afraid of somebetrayal in my hearing: all he wanted was to bind me to him by a strongobligation: that was why he passed on a sudden from hardness toliberality. And he may have tampered with the patient—he may havedisobeyed my orders. I fear he did. But whether he did or not, the worldbelieves that he somehow or other poisoned the man and that I winkedat the crime, if I didn't help in it. And yet—and yet he may not be guiltyof the last offence; and it is just possible that the change towards memay have been a genuine relenting—the effect of second thoughts suchas he alleged. What we call the 'just possible' is sometimes true and thething we find it easier to believe is grossly false. In his last dealings withthis man Bulstrode may have kept his hands pure, in spite of mysuspicion to the contrary."
There was a benumbing cruelty in his position. Even if he renouncedevery other consideration than that of justifying himself—if he metshrugs, cold glances, and avoidance as an accusation, and made a publicstatement of all the facts as he knew them, who would be convinced? Itwould be playing the part of a fool to offer his own testimony on behalfof himself, and say, "I did not take the money as a bribe." Thecircumstances would always be stronger than his assertion. And besides,to come forward and tell everything about himself must includedeclarations about Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions ofothers against him. He must tell that he had not known of Raffles'sexistence when he first mentioned his pressing need of money toBulstrode, and that he took the money innocently as a result of thatcommunication, not knowing that a new motive for the loan might havearisen on his being called in to this man. And after all, the suspicion ofBulstrode's motives might be unjust.
But then came the question whether he should have acted inprecisely the same way if he had not taken the money? Certainly, ifRaffles had continued alive and susceptible of further treatment when hearrived, and he had then imagined any disobedience to his orders on thepart of Bulstrode, he would have made a strict inquiry, and if hisconjecture had been verified he would have thrown up the case, in spiteof his recent heavy obligation. But if he had not received any money—ifBulstrode had never revoked his cold recommendation of bankruptcy—would he, Lydgate, have abstained from all inquiry even on finding theman dead?—would the shrinking from an insult to Bulstrode—would thedubiousness of all medical treatment and the argument that his owntreatment would pass for the wrong with most members of hisprofession—have had just the same force or significance with him?
That was the uneasy corner of Lydgate's consciousness while he wasreviewing the facts and resisting all reproach. If he had beenindependent, this matter of a patient's treatment and the distinct rulethat he must do or see done that which he believed best for the lifecommitted to him, would have been the point on which he would havebeen the sturdiest. As it was, he had rested in the consideration thatdisobedience to his orders, however it might have arisen, could not beconsidered a crime, that in the dominant opinion obedience to his orderswas just as likely to be fatal, and that the affair was simply one ofetiquette. Whereas, again and again, in his time of freedom, he haddenounced the perversion of pathological doubt into moral doubt andhad 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 forit. Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives acharter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest withmistake, and must keep the conscience alive." Alas! the scientificconscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation andselfish respects.
"Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who wouldquestion himself as I do?" said poor Lydgate, with a renewed outburst ofrebellion against the oppression of his lot. "And yet they will all feelwarranted in making a wide space between me and them, as if I were aleper! My practice and my reputation are utterly damned—I can see that.Even if I could be cleared by valid evidence, it would make littledifference to the blessed world here. I have been set down as tainted andshould be cheapened to them all the same."
Already there had been abundant signs which had hitherto puzzledhim, that just when he had been paying off his debts and gettingcheerfully on his feet, the townsmen were avoiding him or lookingstrangely at him, and in two instances it came to his knowledge thatpatients of his had called in another practitioner. The reasons were tooplain now. The general black-balling had begun.
No wonder that in Lydgate's energetic nature the sense of a hopelessmisconstruction easily turned into a dogged resistance. The scowl whichoccasionally showed itself on his square brow was not a meaninglessaccident. Already when he was re-entering the town after that ride takenin the first hours of stinging pain, he was setting his mind on remainingin Middlemarch in spite of the worst that could be done against him. Hewould not retreat before calumny, as if he submitted to it. He would faceit to the utmost, and no act of his should show that he was afraid. Itbelonged to the generosity as well as defiant force of his nature that heresolved not to shrink from showing to the full his sense of obligation toBulstrode. It was true that the association with this man had been fatalto him—true that if he had had the thousand pounds still in his handswith all his debts unpaid he would have returned the money toBulstrode, and taken beggary rather than the rescue which had beensullied with the suspicion of a bribe (for, remember, he was one of theproudest among the sons of men)—nevertheless, he would not turn awayfrom this crushed fellow-mortal whose aid he had used, and make apitiful effort to get acquittal for himself by howling against another. "Ishall do as I think right, and explain to nobody. They will try to starveme out, but—" he was going on with an obstinate resolve, but he wasgetting near home, and the thought of Rosamond urged itself again intothat chief place from which it had been thrust by the agonized strugglesof wounded honor and pride.
How would Rosamond take it all? Here was another weight of chainto drag, and poor Lydgate was in a bad mood for bearing her dumbmastery. He had no impulse to tell her the trouble which must soon becommon to them both. He preferred waiting for the incidental disclosurewhich 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 townheld a bad opinion of her husband. No feminine intimate might carry herfriendship so far as to make a plain statement to the wife of theunpleasant fact known or believed about her husband; but when awoman with her thoughts much at leisure got them suddenly employedon something grievously disadvantageous to her neighbors, various moralimpulses were called into play which tended to stimulate utterance.Candor was one. To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, touse an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did nottake 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 thisrelation, a lively objection to seeing a wife look happier than herhusband's character warranted, or manifest too much satisfaction in herlot—the poor thing should have some hint given her that if she knew thetruth she would have less complacency in her bonnet, and in light dishesfor a supper-party. Stronger than all, there was the regard for a friend'smoral improvement, sometimes called her soul, which was likely to bebenefited by remarks tending to gloom, uttered with the accompanimentof pensive staring at the furniture and a manner implying that thespeaker would not tell what was on her mind, from regard to the feelingsof her hearer. On the whole, one might say that an ardent charity was atwork setting the virtuous mind to make a neighbor unhappy for hergood.
There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose matrimonialmisfortunes would in different ways be likely to call forth more of thismoral activity than Rosamond and her aunt Bulstrode. Mrs. Bulstrodewas not an object of dislike, and had never consciously injured anyhuman being. Men had always thought her a handsome comfortablewoman, and had reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode's hypocrisythat he had chosen a red-blooded Vincy, instead of a ghastly andmelancholy person suited to his low esteem for earthly pleasure. Whenthe scandal about her husband was disclosed they remarked of her—"Ah,poor woman! She's as honest as the day—she never suspected anythingwrong in him, you may depend on it." Women, who were intimate withher, talked together much of "poor Harriet," imagined what her feelingsmust be when she came to know everything, and conjectured how muchshe had already come to know. There was no spiteful disposition towardsher; rather, there was a busy benevolence anxious to ascertain what itwould be well for her to feel and do under the circumstances, which ofcourse kept the imagination occupied with her character and historyfrom the times when she was Harriet Vincy till now. With the review ofMrs. Bulstrode and her position it was inevitable to associate Rosamond,whose prospects were under the same blight with her aunt's. Rosamondwas more severely criticised and less pitied, though she too, as one ofthe good old Vincy family who had always been known in Middlemarch,was regarded as a victim to marriage with an interloper. The Vincys hadtheir weaknesses, but then they lay on the surface: there was neveranything bad to be "found out" concerning them. Mrs. Bulstrode wasvindicated from any resemblance to her husband. Harriet's faults wereher own.
"She has always been showy," said Mrs. Hackbutt, making tea for asmall party, "though she has got into the way of putting her religionforward, to conform to her husband; she has tried to hold her head upabove Middlemarch by making it known that she invites clergymen andheaven-knows-who from Riverston and those places."
"We can hardly blame her for that," said Mrs. Sprague; "because fewof the best people in the town cared to associate with Balstrode, and shemust have somebody to sit down at her table."
"Mr. Thesiger has always countenanced him," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "Ithink he must be sorry now."
