"Oh, no! I am strong: I need the walk," said Dorothea, rising withanimation in her face. "Mrs. Lydgate and I have chatted a great deal, andit is time for me to go. I have always been accused of being immoderateand saying too much."
She put out her hand to Rosamond, and they said an earnest, quietgood-by without kiss or other show of effusion: there had been betweenthem too much serious emotion for them to use the signs of itsuperficially.
As Lydgate took her to the door she said nothing of Rosamond, buttold him of Mr. Farebrother and the other friends who had listened withbelief to his story.
When he came back to Rosamond, she had already thrown herself onthe sofa, in resigned fatigue.
"Well, Rosy," he said, standing over her, and touching her hair, "whatdo 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 sheis very beautiful. If you go to talk to her so often, you will be morediscontented with me than ever!"
Lydgate laughed at the "so often." "But has she made you any lessdiscontented with me?"
"I think she has," said Rosamond, looking up in his face. "How heavyyour eyes are, Tertius—and do push your hair back." He lifted up hislarge white hand to obey her, and felt thankful for this little mark ofinterest in him. Poor Rosamond's vagrant fancy had come back terriblyscourged—meek enough to nestle under the old despised shelter. And theshelter was still there: Lydgate had accepted his narrowed lot with sadresignation. He had chosen this fragile creature, and had taken theburthen of her life upon his arms. He must walk as he could, carryingthat 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 inbanishment unless they are obliged. When Will Ladislaw exiled himselffrom Middlemarch he had placed no stronger obstacle to his return thanhis own resolve, which was by no means an iron barrier, but simply astate of mind liable to melt into a minuet with other states of mind, andto find itself bowing, smiling, and giving place with polite facility. As themonths went on, it had seemed more and more difficult to him to saywhy he should not run down to Middlemarch—merely for the sake ofhearing something about Dorothea; and if on such a flying visit heshould chance by some strange coincidence to meet with her, there wasno reason for him to be ashamed of having taken an innocent journeywhich he had beforehand supposed that he should not take. Since he washopelessly divided from her, he might surely venture into herneighborhood; and as to the suspicious friends who kept a dragon watchover her—their opinions seemed less and less important with time andchange of air.
And there had come a reason quite irrespective of Dorothea, whichseemed to make a journey to Middlemarch a sort of philanthropic duty.Will had given a disinterested attention to an intended settlement on anew plan in the Far West, and the need for funds in order to carry out agood design had set him on debating with himself whether it would notbe a laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode, to urge theapplication of that money which had been offered to himself as a meansof carrying out a scheme likely to be largely beneficial. The questionseemed a very dubious one to Will, and his repugnance to again enteringinto any relation with the banker might have made him dismiss itquickly, if there had not arisen in his imagination the probability that hisjudgment might be more safely determined by a visit to Middlemarch.
That was the object which Will stated to himself as a reason forcoming down. He had meant to confide in Lydgate, and discuss themoney question with him, and he had meant to amuse himself for thefew evenings of his stay by having a great deal of music and badinagewith fair Rosamond, without neglecting his friends at LowickParsonage:—if the Parsonage was close to the Manor, that was no faultof his. He had neglected the Farebrothers before his departure, from aproud resistance to the possible accusation of indirectly seekinginterviews with Dorothea; but hunger tames us, and Will had becomevery hungry for the vision of a certain form and the sound of a certainvoice. Nothing, had done instead—not the opera, or the converse ofzealous politicians, or the flattering reception (in dim corners) of his newhand in leading articles.
Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence how almosteverything would be in his familiar little world; fearing, indeed, thatthere would be no surprises in his visit. But he had found that humdrumworld in a terribly dynamic condition, in which even badinage and lyrismhad turned explosive; and the first day of this visit had become the mostfatal epoch of his life. The next morning he felt so harassed with thenightmare of consequences—he dreaded so much the immediate issuesbefore him—that seeing while he breakfasted the arrival of the Riverstoncoach, he went out hurriedly and took his place on it, that he might berelieved, at least for a day, from the necessity of doing or sayinganything in Middlemarch. Will Ladislaw was in one of those tangledcrises which are commoner in experience than one might imagine, fromthe shallow absoluteness of men's judgments. He had found Lydgate, forwhom he had the sincerest respect, under circumstances which claimedhis thorough and frankly declared sympathy; and the reason why, inspite of that claim, it would have been better for Will to have avoided allfurther intimacy, or even contact, with Lydgate, was precisely of thekind to make such a course appear impossible. To a creature of Will'ssusceptible temperament—without any neutral region of indifference inhis nature, ready to turn everything that befell him into the collisions ofa passionate drama—the revelation that Rosamond had made herhappiness in any way dependent on him was a difficulty which hisoutburst of rage towards her had immeasurably increased for him. Hehated his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded to show the fulness of hisrelenting: he must go to her again; the friendship could not be put to asudden end; and her unhappiness was a power which he dreaded. Andall the while there was no more foretaste of enjoyment in the life beforehim than if his limbs had been lopped off and he was making his freshstart on crutches. In the night he had debated whether he should not geton the coach, not for Riverston, but for London, leaving a note toLydgate which would give a makeshift reason for his retreat. But therewere strong cords pulling him back from that abrupt departure: theblight on his happiness in thinking of Dorothea, the crushing of thatchief hope which had remained in spite of the acknowledged necessityfor renunciation, was too fresh a misery for him to resign himself to itand 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 hismind 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 incertain invisible conditions. Will felt as if he were forced to cross hissmall boundary ditch, and what he saw beyond it was not empire, butdiscontented subjection.
But it is given to us sometimes even in our every-day life to witnessthe saving influence of a noble nature, the divine efficacy of rescue thatmay lie in a self-subduing act of fellowship. If Dorothea, after her night'sanguish, had not taken that walk to Rosamond—why, she perhaps wouldhave been a woman who gained a higher character for discretion, but itwould certainly not have been as well for those three who were on onehearth in Lydgate's house at half-past seven that evening.
Rosamond had been prepared for Will's visit, and she received himwith a languid coldness which Lydgate accounted for by her nervousexhaustion, of which he could not suppose that it had any relation toWill. And when she sat in silence bending over a bit of work, heinnocently apologized for her in an indirect way by begging her to leanbackward and rest. Will was miserable in the necessity for playing thepart of a friend who was making his first appearance and greeting toRosamond, while his thoughts were busy about her feeling since thatscene of yesterday, which seemed still inexorably to enclose them both,like the painful vision of a double madness. It happened that nothingcalled 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 hissaucer. He saw it and secured it quickly, but as he went back to his innhe had no eagerness to unfold the paper. What Rosamond had written tohim would probably deepen the painful impressions of the evening. Still,he opened and read it by his bed-candle. There were only these fewwords 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 havenothing to reproach me with now. I shall not have made any differenceto you."
The effect of these words was not quite all gladness. As Will dwelton them with excited imagination, he felt his cheeks and ears burning atthe thought of what had occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond—atthe uncertainty how far Dorothea might still feel her dignity wounded inhaving an explanation of his conduct offered to her. There might stillremain in her mind a changed association with him which made anirremediable difference—a lasting flaw. With active fancy he wroughthimself into a state of doubt little more easy than that of the man whohas escaped from wreck by night and stands on unknown ground in thedarkness. Until that wretched yesterday—except the moment of vexationlong ago in the very same room and in the very same presence—all theirvision, 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 noother soul entered. But now—would Dorothea meet him in that worldagain?
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 hadhad 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 hadpaid two visits to the Parsonage; but she never in her life told any onethe reason why she spent her time in that fruitless manner, and thismorning she was rather angry with herself for her childish restlessness.To-day was to be spent quite differently. What was there to be done inthe village? Oh dear! nothing. Everybody was well and had flannel;nobody's pig had died; and it was Saturday morning, when there was ageneral scrubbing of doors and door-stones, and when it was useless togo into the school. But there were various subjects that Dorothea wastrying to get clear upon, and she resolved to throw herself energeticallyinto the gravest of all. She sat down in the library before her particularlittle heap of books on political economy and kindred matters, out ofwhich she was trying to get light as to the best way of spending moneyso 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 shecould 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 shefound herself reading sentences twice over with an intense consciousnessof many things, but not of any one thing contained in the text. This washopeless. Should she order the carriage and drive to Tipton? No; forsome reason or other she preferred staying at Lowick. But her vagrantmind must be reduced to order: there was an art in self-discipline; andshe walked round and round the brown library considering by what sortof manoeuvre she could arrest her wandering thoughts. Perhaps a meretask was the best means—something to which she must go doggedly.Was there not the geography of Asia Minor, in which her slackness hadoften been rebuked by Mr. Casaubon? She went to the cabinet of mapsand unrolled one: this morning she might make herself finally sure thatPaphlagonia was not on the Levantine coast, and fix her total darknessabout the Chalybes firmly on the shores of the Euxine. A map was a finething to study when you were disposed to think of something else, beingmade up of names that would turn into a chime if you went back uponthem. Dorothea set earnestly to work, bending close to her map, anduttering the names in an audible, subdued tone, which often got into achime. She looked amusingly girlish after all her deep experience—nodding her head and marking the names off on her fingers, with a littlepursing of her lip, and now and then breaking off to put her hands oneach 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 theannouncement of Miss Noble.
The little old lady, whose bonnet hardly reached Dorothea'sshoulder, was warmly welcomed, but while her hand was being pressedshe made many of her beaver-like noises, as if she had somethingdifficult to say.
"Do sit down," said Dorothea, rolling a chair forward. "Am I wantedfor anything? I shall be so glad if I can do anything."
"I will not stay," said Miss Noble, putting her hand into her smallbasket, and holding some article inside it nervously; "I have left a friendin the churchyard." She lapsed into her inarticulate sounds, andunconsciously drew forth the article which she was fingering. It was thetortoise-shell lozenge-box, and Dorothea felt the color mounting to hercheeks.
"Mr. Ladislaw," continued the timid little woman. "He fears he hasoffended you, and has begged me to ask if you will see him for a fewminutes."
Dorothea did not answer on the instant: it was crossing her mindthat she could not receive him in this library, where her husband'sprohibition seemed to dwell. She looked towards the window. Could shego out and meet him in the grounds? The sky was heavy, and the treeshad begun to shiver as at a coming storm. Besides, she shrank fromgoing out to him.
"Do see him, Mrs. Casaubon," said Miss Noble, pathetically; "else Imust go back and say No, and that will hurt him."
