"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 youthink she would turn to look at me, or value any word I ever uttered toher again at more than a dirty feather?—Explain! How can a man explainat 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 isnot a woman to be flattered because I made myself despicable—tobelieve 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 thatsees prey but cannot reach it. Presently he burst out again—
"I had no hope before—not much—of anything better to come. But Ihad one certainty—that she believed in me. Whatever people had said ordone about me, she believed in me.—That's gone! She'll never againthink me anything but a paltry pretence—too nice to take heaven exceptupon flattering conditions, and yet selling myself for any devil's changeby the sly. She'll think of me as an incarnate insult to her, from the firstmoment we—"
Will stopped as if he had found himself grasping something thatmust not be thrown and shattered. He found another vent for his rage bysnatching up Rosamond's words again, as if they were reptiles to bethrottled and flung off.
"Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain mypreference! I never had a preference for her, any more than I have apreference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. Iwould rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch anyother 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 wakinginto some new terrible existence. She had no sense of chill resoluterepulsion, of reticent self-justification such as she had known underLydgate's most stormy displeasure: all her sensibility was turned into abewildering novelty of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under a lashnever experienced before. What another nature felt in opposition to herown was being burnt and bitten into her consciousness. When Will hadceased to speak she had become an image of sickened misery: her lipswere pale, and her eyes had a tearless dismay in them. If it had beenTertius who stood opposite to her, that look of misery would have been apang to him, and he would have sunk by her side to comfort her, withthat strong-armed comfort which, she had often held very cheap.
Let it be forgiven to Will that he had no such movement of pity. Hehad felt no bond beforehand to this woman who had spoiled the idealtreasure of his life, and he held himself blameless. He knew that he wascruel, but he had no relenting in him yet.
After he had done speaking, he still moved about, half in absence ofmind, and Rosamond sat perfectly still. At length Will, seeming tobethink himself, took up his hat, yet stood some moments irresolute. Hehad spoken to her in a way that made a phrase of common politenessdifficult to utter; and yet, now that he had come to the point of goingaway from her without further speech, he shrank from it as a brutality;he felt checked and stultified in his anger. He walked towards themantel-piece and leaned his arm on it, and waited in silence for—hehardly knew what. The vindictive fire was still burning in him, and hecould utter no word of retractation; but it was nevertheless in his mindthat having come back to this hearth where he had enjoyed a caressingfriendship he had found calamity seated there—he had had suddenlyrevealed 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 slowpincers:—that his life might come to be enslaved by this helpless womanwho had thrown herself upon him in the dreary sadness of her heart. Buthe was in gloomy rebellion against the fact that his quickapprehensiveness foreshadowed to him, and when his eyes fell onRosamond's blighted face it seemed to him that he was the more pitiableof the two; for pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before itcan turn into compassion.
And so they remained for many minutes, opposite each other, farapart, in silence; Will's face still possessed by a mute rage, andRosamond's by a mute misery. The poor thing had no force to fling outany passion in return; the terrible collapse of the illusion towards whichall her hope had been strained was a stroke which had too thoroughlyshaken her: her little world was in ruins, and she felt herself tottering inthe midst as a lonely bewildered consciousness.
Will wished that she would speak and bring some mitigating shadowacross his own cruel speech, which seemed to stand staring at them bothin mockery of any attempt at revived fellowship. But she said nothing,and at last with a desperate effort over himself, he asked, "Shall I comein and see Lydgate this evening?"
"If you like," Rosamond answered, just audibly.
And then Will went out of the house, Martha never knowing that hehad been in.
After he was gone, Rosamond tried to get up from her seat, but fellback fainting. When she came to herself again, she felt too ill to makethe exertion of rising to ring the bell, and she remained helpless until thegirl, surprised at her long absence, thought for the first time of lookingfor her in all the down-stairs rooms. Rosamond said that she had feltsuddenly sick and faint, and wanted to be helped up-stairs. When thereshe threw herself on the bed with her clothes on, and lay in apparenttorpor, as she had done once before on a memorable day of grief.
Lydgate came home earlier than he had expected, about half-pastfive, and found her there. The perception that she was ill threw everyother thought into the background. When he felt her pulse, her eyesrested 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 differencein a moment, and seating himself by her put his arm gently under her,and bending over her said, "My poor Rosamond! has something agitatedyou?" Clinging to him she fell into hysterical sobbings and cries, and forthe next hour he did nothing but soothe and tend her. He imagined thatDorothea had been to see her, and that all this effect on her nervoussystem, which evidently involved some new turning towards himself, wasdue 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 thatshe might soon sleep under the effect of an anodyne, he went into thedrawing-room to fetch a book which he had left there, meaning to spendthe evening in his work-room, and he saw on the table Dorothea's letteraddressed to him. He had not ventured to ask Rosamond if Mrs.Casaubon had called, but the reading of this letter assured him of thefact, for Dorothea mentioned that it was to be carried by herself.
When Will Ladislaw came in a little later Lydgate met him with asurprise 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 thismorning?"
"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. Shehas been overwrought lately. The truth is, Ladislaw, I am an unluckydevil. 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 youare only just come down—you look rather battered—you have not beenlong enough in the town to hear anything?"
"I travelled all night and got to the White Hart at eight o'clock thismorning. I have been shutting myself up and resting," said Will, feelinghimself a sneak, but seeing no alternative to this evasion.
And then he heard Lydgate's account of the troubles whichRosamond had already depicted to him in her way. She had notmentioned the fact of Will's name being connected with the publicstory—this detail not immediately affecting her—and he now heard it forthe first time.
"I thought it better to tell you that your name is mixed up with thedisclosures," said Lydgate, who could understand better than most menhow Ladislaw might be stung by the revelation. "You will be sure to hearit as soon as you turn out into the town. I suppose it is true that Rafflesspoke to you."
"Yes," said Will, sardonically. "I shall be fortunate if gossip does notmake me the most disreputable person in the whole affair. I should thinkthe latest version must be, that I plotted with Raffles to murderBulstrode, and ran away from Middlemarch for the purpose."
He was thinking "Here is a new ring in the sound of my name torecommend it in her hearing; however—what does it signify now?"
But he said nothing of Bulstrode's offer to him. Will was very openand careless about his personal affairs, but it was among the moreexquisite touches in nature's modelling of him that he had a delicategenerosity which warned him into reticence here. He shrank from sayingthat he had rejected Bulstrode's money, in the moment when he waslearning that it was Lydgate's misfortune to have accepted it.
Lydgate too was reticent in the midst of his confidence. He made noallusion to Rosamond's feeling under their trouble, and of Dorothea heonly said, "Mrs. Casaubon has been the one person to come forward andsay 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 thathis words might have some hidden painful bearing on it. And it occurredto him that Dorothea was the real cause of the present visit toMiddlemarch.
The two men were pitying each other, but it was only Will whoguessed the extent of his companion's trouble. When Lydgate spoke withdesperate resignation of going to settle in London, and said with a faintsmile, "We shall have you again, old fellow." Will felt inexpressiblymournful, and said nothing. Rosamond had that morning entreated himto urge this step on Lydgate; and it seemed to him as if he werebeholding in a magic panorama a future where he himself was slidinginto that pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations of circumstance,which is a commoner history of perdition than any single momentousbargain.
We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at ourfuture selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipidmisdoing and shabby achievement. Poor Lydgate was inwardly groaningon that margin, and Will was arriving at it. It seemed to him this eveningas if the cruelty of his outburst to Rosamond had made an obligation forhim, and he dreaded the obligation: he dreaded Lydgate's unsuspectinggood-will: he dreaded his own distaste for his spoiled life, which wouldleave 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 hadpromised to go and dine at the parsonage on her return from Freshitt.There was a frequent interchange of visits between her and theFarebrother family, which enabled her to say that she was not at alllonely at the Manor, and to resist for the present the severe prescriptionof a lady companion. When she reached home and remembered herengagement, she was glad of it; and finding that she had still an hourbefore she could dress for dinner, she walked straight to the schoolhouseand entered into a conversation with the master and mistress about thenew bell, giving eager attention to their small details and repetitions, andgetting up a dramatic sense that her life was very busy. She paused onher way back to talk to old Master Bunney who was putting in somegarden-seeds, and discoursed wisely with that rural sage about the cropsthat would make the most return on a perch of ground, and the result ofsixty years' experience as to soils—namely, that if your soil was prettymellow it would do, but if there came wet, wet, wet to make it all of amummy, 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 thanwas necessary. That house was never dull, Mr. Farebrother, like anotherWhite of Selborne, having continually something new to tell of hisinarticulate guests and proteges, whom he was teaching the boys not totorment; and he had just set up a pair of beautiful goats to be pets of thevillage in general, and to walk at large as sacred animals. The eveningwent by cheerfully till after tea, Dorothea talking more than usual anddilating with Mr. Farebrother on the possible histories of creatures thatconverse compendiously with their antennae, and for aught we knowmay hold reformed parliaments; when suddenly some inarticulate littlesounds were heard which called everybody's attention.
"Henrietta Noble," said Mrs. Farebrother, seeing her small sistermoving about the furniture-legs distressfully, "what is the matter?"
"I have lost my tortoise-shell lozenge-box. I fear the kitten has rolledit away," said the tiny old lady, involuntarily continuing her beaver-likenotes.
"Is it a great treasure, aunt?" said Mr. Farebrother, putting up hisglasses and looking at the carpet.
"Mr. Ladislaw gave it me," said Miss Noble. "A German box—verypretty, 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 toneof comprehension, getting up and hunting. The box was found at lastunder a chiffonier, and Miss Noble grasped it with delight, saying, "itwas 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.
