To have approached Laure with any suit that was not reverentiallytender would have been simply a contradiction of his whole feelingtowards her.
"You have come all the way from Paris to find me?" she said to himthe next day, sitting before him with folded arms, and looking at himwith eyes that seemed to wonder as an untamed ruminating animalwonders. "Are all Englishmen like that?"
"I came because I could not live without trying to see you. You arelonely; I love you; I want you to consent to be my wife; I will wait, but Iwant you to promise that you will marry me—no one else."
Laure looked at him in silence with a melancholy radiance fromunder her grand eyelids, until he was full of rapturous certainty, andknelt close to her knees.
"I will tell you something," she said, in her cooing way, keeping herarms folded. "My foot really slipped."
"I know, I know," said Lydgate, deprecatingly. "It was a fatalaccident—a dreadful stroke of calamity that bound me to you the more."
Again Laure paused a little and then said, slowly, "I meant to do it."
Lydgate, strong man as he was, turned pale and trembled: momentsseemed to pass before he rose and stood at a distance from her.
"There was a secret, then," he said at last, even vehemently. "He wasbrutal to you: you hated him."
"No! he wearied me; he was too fond: he would live in Paris, and notin my country; that was not agreeable to me."
"Great God!" said Lydgate, in a groan of horror. "And you planned tomurder him?"
"I did not plan: it came to me in the play—I meant to do it."
Lydgate stood mute, and unconsciously pressed his hat on while helooked at her. He saw this woman—the first to whom he had given hisyoung adoration—amid the throng of stupid criminals.
"You are a good young man," she said. "But I do not like husbands. Iwill never have another."
Three days afterwards Lydgate was at his galvanism again in hisParis chambers, believing that illusions were at an end for him. He wassaved from hardening effects by the abundant kindness of his heart andhis belief that human life might be made better. But he had more reasonthan ever for trusting his judgment, now that it was so experienced; andhenceforth he would take a strictly scientific view of woman,entertaining no expectations but such as were justified beforehand. No one in Middle march was likely to have such a notion ofLydgate's past as has here been faintly shadowed, and indeed therespectable townsfolk there were not more given than mortals generallyto any eager attempt at exactness in the representation to themselves ofwhat did not come under their own senses. Not only young virgins ofthat town, but gray-bearded men also, were often in haste to conjecturehow a new acquaintance might be wrought into their purposes,contented with very vague knowledge as to the way in which life hadbeen shaping him for that instrumentality. Middlemarch, in fact, countedon swallowing Lydgate and assimilating him very comfortably.
CHAPTER XVI.
"All that in woman is adored
In thy fair self I find—
For the whole sex can but afford
The handsome and the kind."
—SIR CHARLES SEDLEY.
The question whether Mr. Tyke should be appointed as salariedchaplain to the hospital was an exciting topic to the Middlemarchers;and Lydgate heard it discussed in a way that threw much light on thepower exercised in the town by Mr. Bulstrode. The banker was evidentlya ruler, but there was an opposition party, and even among hissupporters there were some who allowed it to be seen that their supportwas a compromise, and who frankly stated their impression that thegeneral scheme of things, and especially the casualties of trade, requiredyou to hold a candle to the devil.
Mr. Bulstrode's power was not due simply to his being a countrybanker, who knew the financial secrets of most traders in the town andcould touch the springs of their credit; it was fortified by a beneficencethat was at once ready and severe—ready to confer obligations, andsevere in watching the result. He had gathered, as an industrious manalways at his post, a chief share in administering the town charities, andhis private charities were both minute and abundant. He would take agreat deal of pains about apprenticing Tegg the shoemaker's son, and hewould watch over Tegg's church-going; he would defend Mrs. Strype thewasherwoman against Stubbs's unjust exaction on the score of herdrying-ground, and he would himself-scrutinize a calumny against Mrs.Strype. His private minor loans were numerous, but he would inquirestrictly into the circumstances both before and after. In this way a mangathers a domain in his neighbors' hope and fear as well as gratitude;and power, when once it has got into that subtle region, propagatesitself, spreading out of all proportion to its external means. It was aprinciple with Mr. Bulstrode to gain as much power as possible, that hemight use it for the glory of God. He went through a great deal ofspiritual conflict and inward argument in order to adjust his motives,and make clear to himself what God's glory required. But, as we haveseen, his motives were not always rightly appreciated. There were manycrass minds in Middlemarch whose reflective scales could only weighthings in the lump; and they had a strong suspicion that since Mr.Bulstrode could not enjoy life in their fashion, eating and drinking solittle as he did, and worreting himself about everything, he must have asort of vampire's feast in the sense of mastery.
The subject of the chaplaincy came up at Mr. Vincy's table whenLydgate was dining there, and the family connection with Mr. Bulstrodedid not, he observed, prevent some freedom of remark even on the partof the host himself, though his reasons against the proposed arrangementturned entirely on his objection to Mr. Tyke's sermons, which were alldoctrine, and his preference for Mr. Farebrother, whose sermons werefree from that taint. Mr. Vincy liked well enough the notion of thechaplain's having a salary, supposing it were given to Farebrother, whowas as good a little fellow as ever breathed, and the best preacheranywhere, and companionable too.
"What line shall you take, then?" said Mr. Chichely, the coroner, agreat coursing comrade of Mr. Vincy's.
"Oh, I'm precious glad I'm not one of the Directors now. I shall votefor referring the matter to the Directors and the Medical Board together.I shall roll some of my responsibility on your shoulders, Doctor," saidMr. Vincy, glancing first at Dr. Sprague, the senior physician of thetown, and then at Lydgate who sat opposite. "You medical gentlemenmust consult which sort of black draught you will prescribe, eh, Mr.Lydgate?"
"I know little of either," said Lydgate; "but in general, appointmentsare apt to be made too much a question of personal liking. The fittestman for a particular post is not always the best fellow or the mostagreeable. Sometimes, if you wanted to get a reform, your only waywould be to pension off the good fellows whom everybody is fond of,and put them out of the question."
Dr. Sprague, who was considered the physician of most "weight,"though Dr. Minchin was usually said to have more "penetration,"divested his large heavy face of all expression, and looked at his wine-glass while Lydgate was speaking. Whatever was not problematical andsuspected about this young man—for example, a certain showiness as toforeign ideas, and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled andforgotten by his elders—was positively unwelcome to a physician whosestanding had been fixed thirty years before by a treatise on Meningitis,of which at least one copy marked "own" was bound in calf. For my partI have some fellow-feeling with Dr. Sprague: one's self-satisfaction is anuntaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.
Lydgate's remark, however, did not meet the sense of the company.Mr. Vincy said, that if he could have his way, he would not putdisagreeable fellows anywhere.
"Hang your reforms!" said Mr. Chichely. "There's no greater humbugin the world. You never hear of a reform, but it means some trick to putin new men. I hope you are not one of the 'Lancet's' men, Mr. Lydgate—wanting to take the coronership out of the hands of the legal profession:your words appear to point that way."
"I disapprove of Wakley," interposed Dr. Sprague, "no man more: heis an ill-intentioned fellow, who would sacrifice the respectability of theprofession, which everybody knows depends on the London Colleges, forthe sake of getting some notoriety for himself. There are men who don'tmind about being kicked blue if they can only get talked about. ButWakley is right sometimes," the Doctor added, judicially. "I couldmention one or two points in which Wakley is in the right."
"Oh, well," said Mr. Chichely, "I blame no man for standing up infavor of his own cloth; but, coming to argument, I should like to knowhow a coroner is to judge of evidence if he has not had a legal training?"
"In my opinion," said Lydgate, "legal training only makes a man moreincompetent in questions that require knowledge a of another kind.People talk about evidence as if it could really be weighed in scales by ablind Justice. No man can judge what is good evidence on any particularsubject, unless he knows that subject well. A lawyer is no better than anold woman at a post-mortem examination. How is he to know the actionof a poison? You might as well say that scanning verse will teach you toscan the potato crops."
"You are aware, I suppose, that it is not the coroner's business toconduct the post-mortem, but only to take the evidence of the medicalwitness?" said Mr. Chichely, with some scorn.
"Who is often almost as ignorant as the coroner himself," saidLydgate. "Questions of medical jurisprudence ought not to be left to thechance of decent knowledge in a medical witness, and the coroner oughtnot to be a man who will believe that strychnine will destroy the coats ofthe stomach if an ignorant practitioner happens to tell him so."
Lydgate had really lost sight of the fact that Mr. Chichely was hisMajesty's coroner, and ended innocently with the question, "Don't youagree with me, Dr. Sprague?"
"To a certain extent—with regard to populous districts, and in themetropolis," said the Doctor. "But I hope it will be long before this partof the country loses the services of my friend Chichely, even though itmight get the best man in our profession to succeed him. I am sure Vincywill agree with me."
"Yes, yes, give me a coroner who is a good coursing man," said Mr.Vincy, jovially. "And in my opinion, you're safest with a lawyer. Nobodycan know everything. Most things are 'visitation of God.' And as topoisoning, why, what you want to know is the law. Come, shall we jointhe ladies?"
Lydgate's private opinion was that Mr. Chichely might be the verycoroner without bias as to the coats of the stomach, but he had notmeant to be personal. This was one of the difficulties of moving in goodMiddlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as aqualification for any salaried office. Fred Vincy had called Lydgate a prig,and now Mr. Chichely was inclined to call him prick-eared; especiallywhen, in the drawing-room, he seemed to be making himself eminentlyagreeable to Rosamond, whom he had easily monopolized in a tete-a-tete,since Mrs. Vincy herself sat at the tea-table. She resigned no domesticfunction to her daughter; and the matron's blooming good-natured face,with the two volatile pink strings floating from her fine throat, and hercheery manners to husband and children, was certainly among the greatattractions of the Vincy house—attractions which made it all the easierto fall in love with the daughter. The tinge of unpretentious, inoffensivevulgarity in Mrs. Vincy gave more effect to Rosamond's refinement,which was beyond what Lydgate had expected.
Certainly, small feet and perfectly turned shoulders aid theimpression of refined manners, and the right thing said seems quiteastonishingly right when it is accompanied with exquisite curves of lipand eyelid. And Rosamond could say the right thing; for she was cleverwith that sort of cleverness which catches every tone except thehumorous. Happily she never attempted to joke, and this perhaps wasthe most decisive mark of her cleverness.
She and Lydgate readily got into conversation. He regretted that hehad not heard her sing the other day at Stone Court. The only pleasurehe allowed himself during the latter part of his stay in Paris was to goand hear music.
"You have studied music, probably?" said Rosamond.
"No, I know the notes of many birds, and I know many melodies byear; but the music that I don't know at all, and have no notion about,delights me—affects me. How stupid the world is that it does not makemore use of such a pleasure within its reach!"
"Yes, and you will find Middlemarch very tuneless. There are hardlyany good musicians. I only know two gentlemen who sing at all well."
"I suppose it is the fashion to sing comic songs in a rhythmic way,leaving you to fancy the tune—very much as if it were tapped on adrum?"
"Ah, you have heard Mr. Bowyer," said Rosamond, with one of herrare smiles. "But we are speaking very ill of our neighbors."
Lydgate was almost forgetting that he must carry on theconversation, in thinking how lovely this creature was, her garmentseeming to be made out of the faintest blue sky, herself so immaculatelyblond, as if the petals of some gigantic flower had just opened anddisclosed her; and yet with this infantine blondness showing so muchready, self-possessed grace. Since he had had the memory of Laure,Lydgate had lost all taste for large-eyed silence: the divine cow no longerattracted him, and Rosamond was her very opposite. But he recalledhimself.
"You will let me hear some music to-night, I hope."
"I will let you hear my attempts, if you like," said Rosamond. "Papa issure to insist on my singing. But I shall tremble before you, who haveheard the best singers in Paris. I have heard very little: I have only oncebeen to London. But our organist at St. Peter's is a good musician, and Igo on studying with him."
"Tell me what you saw in London."
"Very little." (A more naive girl would have said, "Oh, everything!"But Rosamond knew better.) "A few of the ordinary sights, such as rawcountry girls are always taken to."
