Will, starting to his feet, moved backward a step, frowning, andsaying with some fierceness, "Yes, sir, it was. And what is that to you?"
It was in Will's nature that the first spark it threw out was a directanswer of the question and a challenge of the consequences. To havesaid, "What is that to you?" in the first instance, would have seemed likeshuffling—as if he minded who knew anything about his origin!
Raffles on his side had not the same eagerness for a collision whichwas implied in Ladislaw's threatening air. The slim young fellow with hisgirl's complexion looked like a tiger-cat ready to spring on him. Undersuch circumstances Mr. Raffles's pleasure in annoying his company waskept in abeyance.
"No offence, my good sir, no offence! I only remember your mother—knew her when she was a girl. But it is your father that you feature, sir. Ihad the pleasure of seeing your father too. Parents alive, Mr. Ladislaw?"
"No!" thundered Will, in the same attitude as before.
"Should be glad to do you a service, Mr. Ladislaw—by Jove, I should!Hope to meet again."
Hereupon Raffles, who had lifted his hat with the last words, turnedhimself round with a swing of his leg and walked away. Will looked afterhim a moment, and could see that he did not re-enter the auction-room,but appeared to be walking towards the road. For an instant he thoughtthat he had been foolish not to let the man go on talking;—but no! onthe whole he preferred doing without knowledge from that source.
Later in the evening, however, Raffles overtook him in the street,and appearing either to have forgotten the roughness of his formerreception or to intend avenging it by a forgiving familiarity, greeted himjovially and walked by his side, remarking at first on the pleasantness ofthe town and neighborhood. Will suspected that the man had beendrinking and was considering how to shake him off when Raffles said—
"I've been abroad myself, Mr. Ladislaw—I've seen the world—used toparley-vous a little. It was at Boulogne I saw your father—a mostuncommon likeness you are of him, by Jove! mouth—nose—eyes—hairturned off your brow just like his—a little in the foreign style. John Bulldoesn't do much of that. But your father was very ill when I saw him.Lord, lord! hands you might see through. You were a small youngsterthen. Did he get well?"
"No," said Will, curtly.
"Ah! Well! I've often wondered what became of your mother. She ranaway from her friends when she was a young lass—a proud-spirited lass,and pretty, by Jove! I knew the reason why she ran away," said Raffles,winking slowly as he looked sideways at Will.
"You know nothing dishonorable of her, sir," said Will, turning onhim rather savagely. But Mr. Raffles just now was not sensitive to shadesof manner.
"Not a bit!" said he, tossing his head decisively "She was a little toohonorable to like her friends—that was it!" Here Raffles again winkedslowly. "Lord bless you, I knew all about 'em—a little in what you maycall the respectable thieving line—the high style of receiving-house—none of your holes and corners—first-rate. Slap-up shop, high profits andno mistake. But Lord! Sarah would have known nothing about it—adashing young lady she was—fine boarding-school—fit for a lord's wife—only Archie Duncan threw it at her out of spite, because she would havenothing to do with him. And so she ran away from the whole concern. Itravelled for 'em, sir, in a gentlemanly way—at a high salary. They didn'tmind her running away at first—godly folks, sir, very godly—and shewas for the stage. The son was alive then, and the daughter was at adiscount. Hallo! here we are at the Blue Bull. What do you say, Mr.Ladislaw?—shall we turn in and have a glass?"
"No, I must say good evening," said Will, dashing up a passage whichled into Lowick Gate, and almost running to get out of Raffles's reach.
He walked a long while on the Lowick road away from the town,glad of the starlit darkness when it came. He felt as if he had had dirtcast on him amidst shouts of scorn. There was this to confirm thefellow's statement—that his mother never would tell him the reason whyshe had run away from her family.
Well! what was he, Will Ladislaw, the worse, supposing the truthabout that family to be the ugliest? His mother had braved hardship inorder to separate herself from it. But if Dorothea's friends had knownthis story—if the Chettams had known it—they would have had a finecolor to give their suspicions a welcome ground for thinking him unfit tocome near her. However, let them suspect what they pleased, they wouldfind themselves in the wrong. They would find out that the blood in hisveins was as free from the taint of meanness as theirs.
CHAPTER LXI.
"Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right, but imputed
to man they may both be true."—Rasselas.
The same night, when Mr. Bulstrode returned from a journey toBrassing on business, his good wife met him in the entrance-hall anddrew him into his private sitting-room.
"Nicholas," she said, fixing her honest eyes upon him anxiously,"there has been such a disagreeable man here asking for you—it hasmade me quite uncomfortable."
"What kind of man, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, dreadfully certainof the answer.
"A red-faced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in hismanner. He declared he was an old friend of yours, and said you wouldbe sorry not to see him. He wanted to wait for you here, but I told himhe could see you at the Bank to-morrow morning. Most impudent hewas!—stared at me, and said his friend Nick had luck in wives. I don'tbelieve he would have gone away, if Blucher had not happened to breakhis chain and come running round on the gravel—for I was in thegarden; so I said, 'You'd better go away—the dog is very fierce, and Ican't hold him.' Do you really know anything of such a man?"
"I believe I know who he is, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, in hisusual subdued voice, "an unfortunate dissolute wretch, whom I helpedtoo much in days gone by. However, I presume you will not be troubledby him again. He will probably come to the Bank—to beg, doubtless."
No more was said on the subject until the next day, when Mr.Bulstrode had returned from the town and was dressing for dinner. Hiswife, not sure that he was come home, looked into his dressing-room andsaw him with his coat and cravat off, leaning one arm on a chest ofdrawers and staring absently at the ground. He started nervously andlooked up as she entered.
"You look very ill, Nicholas. Is there anything the matter?"
"I have a good deal of pain in my head," said Mr. Bulstrode, who wasso frequently ailing that his wife was always ready to believe in thiscause of depression.
"Sit down and let me sponge it with vinegar."
Physically Mr. Bulstrode did not want the vinegar, but morally theaffectionate attention soothed him. Though always polite, it was hishabit to receive such services with marital coolness, as his wife's duty.But to-day, while she was bending over him, he said, "You are very good,Harriet," in a tone which had something new in it to her ear; she did notknow exactly what the novelty was, but her woman's solicitude shapeditself into a darting thought that he might be going to have an illness.
"Has anything worried you?" she said. "Did that man come to you atthe Bank?"
"Yes; it was as I had supposed. He is a man who at one time mighthave done better. But he has sunk into a drunken debauched creature."
"Is he quite gone away?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, anxiously but forcertain reasons she refrained from adding, "It was very disagreeable tohear him calling himself a friend of yours." At that moment she wouldnot have liked to say anything which implied her habitual consciousnessthat her husband's earlier connections were not quite on a level with herown. Not that she knew much about them. That her husband had at firstbeen employed in a bank, that he had afterwards entered into what hecalled city business and gained a fortune before he was three-and-thirty,that he had married a widow who was much older than himself—aDissenter, and in other ways probably of that disadvantageous qualityusually perceptible in a first wife if inquired into with the dispassionatejudgment of a second—was almost as much as she had cared to learnbeyond the glimpses which Mr. Bulstrode's narrative occasionally gave ofhis early bent towards religion, his inclination to be a preacher, and hisassociation with missionary and philanthropic efforts. She believed inhim as an excellent man whose piety carried a peculiar eminence inbelonging to a layman, whose influence had turned her own mind towardseriousness, and whose share of perishable good had been the means ofraising her own position. But she also liked to think that it was well inevery sense for Mr. Bulstrode to have won the hand of Harriet Vincy;whose family was undeniable in a Middlemarch light—a better lightsurely than any thrown in London thoroughfares or dissenting chapel-yards. The unreformed provincial mind distrusted London; and whiletrue religion was everywhere saving, honest Mrs. Bulstrode wasconvinced that to be saved in the Church was more respectable. She somuch wished to ignore towards others that her husband had ever been aLondon Dissenter, that she liked to keep it out of sight even in talking tohim. He was quite aware of this; indeed in some respects he was ratherafraid of this ingenuous wife, whose imitative piety and nativeworldliness were equally sincere, who had nothing to be ashamed of, andwhom he had married out of a thorough inclination still subsisting. Buthis fears were such as belong to a man who cares to maintain hisrecognized supremacy: the loss of high consideration from his wife, asfrom every one else who did not clearly hate him out of enmity to thetruth, would be as the beginning of death to him. When she said—
"Is he quite gone away?"
"Oh, I trust so," he answered, with an effort to throw as much soberunconcern into his tone as possible!
But in truth Mr. Bulstrode was very far from a state of quiet trust. Inthe interview at the Bank, Raffles had made it evident that his eagernessto torment was almost as strong in him as any other greed. He hadfrankly said that he had turned out of the way to come to Middlemarch,just to look about him and see whether the neighborhood would suit himto live in. He had certainly had a few debts to pay more than heexpected, but the two hundred pounds were not gone yet: a cool five-and-twenty would suffice him to go away with for the present. What hehad wanted chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family, and know allabout the prosperity of a man to whom he was so much attached. By-and-by he might come back for a longer stay. This time Raffles declinedto be "seen off the premises," as he expressed it—declined to quitMiddlemarch under Bulstrode's eyes. He meant to go by coach the nextday—if he chose.
Bulstrode felt himself helpless. Neither threats nor coaxing couldavail: he could not count on any persistent fear nor on any promise. Onthe contrary, he felt a cold certainty at his heart that Raffles—unlessprovidence sent death to hinder him—would come back to Middlemarchbefore long. And that certainty was a terror.
It was not that he was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary:he was in danger only of seeing disclosed to the judgment of hisneighbors and the mournful perception of his wife certain facts of hispast life which would render him an object of scorn and an opprobriumof the religion with which he had diligently associated himself. The terrorof being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare overthat long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only ingeneral phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by azone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces aman to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like areopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outwornpreparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose fromthe life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders andbitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.
Into this second life Bulstrode's past had now risen, only thepleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality. Night and day, withoutinterruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect and fear intoa fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life coming betweenhim and everything else, as obstinately as when we look through thewindow from a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs on are stillbefore us, instead of the grass and the trees The successive eventsinward and outward were there in one view: though each might be dwelton in turn, the rest still kept their hold in the consciousness.
Once more he saw himself the young banker's clerk, with anagreeable person, as clever in figures as he was fluent in speech and fondof theological definition: an eminent though young member of aCalvinistic dissenting church at Highbury, having had striking experiencein conviction of sin and sense of pardon. Again he heard himself calledfor as Brother Bulstrode in prayer meetings, speaking on religiousplatforms, preaching in private houses. Again he felt himself thinking ofthe ministry as possibly his vocation, and inclined towards missionarylabor. That was the happiest time of his life: that was the spot he wouldhave chosen now to awake in and find the rest a dream. The peopleamong whom Brother Bulstrode was distinguished were very few, butthey were very near to him, and stirred his satisfaction the more; hispower stretched through a narrow space, but he felt its effect the moreintensely. He believed without effort in the peculiar work of grace withinhim, and in the signs that God intended him for special instrumentality.
Then came the moment of transition; it was with the sense ofpromotion he had when he, an orphan educated at a commercial charity-school, was invited to a fine villa belonging to Mr. Dunkirk, the richestman in the congregation. Soon he became an intimate there, honored forhis piety by the wife, marked out for his ability by the husband, whosewealth was due to a flourishing city and west-end trade. That was thesetting-in of a new current for his ambition, directing his prospects of"instrumentality" towards the uniting of distinguished religious gifts withsuccessful business.
By-and-by came a decided external leading: a confidentialsubordinate partner died, and nobody seemed to the principal so wellfitted to fill the severely felt vacancy as his young friend Bulstrode, if hewould become confidential accountant. The offer was accepted. Thebusiness was a pawnbroker's, of the most magnificent sort both in extentand profits; and on a short acquaintance with it Bulstrode became awarethat one source of magnificent profit was the easy reception of any goodsoffered, without strict inquiry as to where they came from. But there wasa branch house at the west end, and no pettiness or dinginess to givesuggestions of shame.
