"I suppose you did know of my mother's existence, and knew whereshe might have been found."
Bulstrode shrank—there was a visible quivering in his face andhands. He was totally unprepared to have his advances met in this way,or to find himself urged into more revelation than he had beforehand setdown as needful. But at that moment he dared not tell a lie, and he feltsuddenly uncertain of his ground which he had trodden with someconfidence before.
"I will not deny that you conjecture rightly," he answered, with afaltering in his tone. "And I wish to make atonement to you as the onestill remaining who has suffered a loss through me. You enter, I trust,into my purpose, Mr. Ladislaw, which has a reference to higher thanmerely human claims, and as I have already said, is entirely independentof any legal compulsion. I am ready to narrow my own resources and theprospects of my family by binding myself to allow you five hundredpounds yearly during my life, and to leave you a proportional capital atmy death—nay, to do still more, if more should be definitely necessaryto any laudable project on your part." Mr. Bulstrode had gone on toparticulars in the expectation that these would work strongly onLadislaw, and merge other feelings in grateful acceptance.
But Will was looking as stubborn as possible, with his lip poutingand his fingers in his side-pockets. He was not in the least touched, andsaid firmly,—
"Before I make any reply to your proposition, Mr. Bulstrode, I mustbeg you to answer a question or two. Were you connected with thebusiness by which that fortune you speak of was originally made?"
Mr. Bulstrode's thought was, "Raffles has told him." How could herefuse to answer when he had volunteered what drew forth the question?He answered, "Yes."
"And was that business—or was it not—a thoroughly dishonorableone—nay, one that, if its nature had been made public, might haveranked those concerned in it with thieves and convicts?"
Will's tone had a cutting bitterness: he was moved to put hisquestion as nakedly as he could.
Bulstrode reddened with irrepressible anger. He had been preparedfor a scene of self-abasement, but his intense pride and his habit ofsupremacy overpowered penitence, and even dread, when this youngman, whom he had meant to benefit, turned on him with the air of ajudge.
"The business was established before I became connected with it, sir;nor is it for you to institute an inquiry of that kind," he answered, notraising his voice, but speaking with quick defiantness.
"Yes, it is," said Will, starting up again with his hat in his hand. "It iseminently mine to ask such questions, when I have to decide whether Iwill have transactions with you and accept your money. My unblemishedhonor is important to me. It is important to me to have no stain on mybirth and connections. And now I find there is a stain which I can't help.My mother felt it, and tried to keep as clear of it as she could, and sowill I. You shall keep your ill-gotten money. If I had any fortune of myown, I would willingly pay it to any one who could disprove what youhave told me. What I have to thank you for is that you kept the moneytill now, when I can refuse it. It ought to lie with a man's self that he is agentleman. Good-night, sir."
Bulstrode was going to speak, but Will, with determined quickness,was out of the room in an instant, and in another the hall-door hadclosed behind him. He was too strongly possessed with passionaterebellion against this inherited blot which had been thrust on hisknowledge to reflect at present whether he had not been too hard onBulstrode—too arrogantly merciless towards a man of sixty, who wasmaking efforts at retrieval when time had rendered them vain.
No third person listening could have thoroughly understood theimpetuosity of Will's repulse or the bitterness of his words. No one buthimself then knew how everything connected with the sentiment of hisown dignity had an immediate bearing for him on his relation toDorothea and to Mr. Casaubon's treatment of him. And in the rush ofimpulses by which he flung back that offer of Bulstrode's there wasmingled the sense that it would have been impossible for him ever to tellDorothea that he had accepted it.
As for Bulstrode—when Will was gone he suffered a violent reaction,and wept like a woman. It was the first time he had encountered an openexpression of scorn from any man higher than Raffles; and with thatscorn hurrying like venom through his system, there was no sensibilityleft to consolations. Rut the relief of weeping had to be checked. His wifeand daughters soon came home from hearing the address of an Orientalmissionary, and were full of regret that papa had not heard, in the firstinstance, the interesting things which they tried to repeat to him.
Perhaps, through all other hidden thoughts, the one that breathedmost comfort was, that Will Ladislaw at least was not likely to publishwhat had taken place that evening.
CHAPTER LXII.
"He was a squyer of lowe degre,
That loved the king's daughter of Hungrie.
—Old Romance.
Will Ladislaw's mind was now wholly bent on seeing Dorothea again,and forthwith quitting Middlemarch. The morning after his agitatingscene with Bulstrode he wrote a brief letter to her, saying that variouscauses had detained him in the neighborhood longer than he hadexpected, and asking her permission to call again at Lowick at some hourwhich she would mention on the earliest possible day, he being anxiousto depart, but unwilling to do so until she had granted him an interview.He left the letter at the office, ordering the messenger to carry it toLowick Manor, and wait for an answer.
Ladislaw felt the awkwardness of asking for more last words. Hisformer farewell had been made in the hearing of Sir James Chettam, andhad been announced as final even to the butler. It is certainly trying to aman's dignity to reappear when he is not expected to do so: a firstfarewell has pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends an openingto comedy, and it was possible even that there might be bitter sneersafloat about Will's motives for lingering. Still it was on the whole moresatisfactory to his feeling to take the directest means of seeing Dorothea,than to use any device which might give an air of chance to a meeting ofwhich he wished her to understand that it was what he earnestly sought.When he had parted from her before, he had been in ignorance of factswhich gave a new aspect to the relation between them, and made a moreabsolute severance than he had then believed in. He knew nothing ofDorothea's private fortune, and being little used to reflect on suchmatters, took it for granted that according to Mr. Casaubon'sarrangement marriage to him, Will Ladislaw, would mean that sheconsented to be penniless. That was not what he could wish for even inhis secret heart, or even if she had been ready to meet such hardcontrast for his sake. And then, too, there was the fresh smart of thatdisclosure about his mother's family, which if known would be an addedreason why Dorothea's friends should look down upon him as utterlybelow her. The secret hope that after some years he might come backwith the sense that he had at least a personal value equal to her wealth,seemed now the dreamy continuation of a dream. This change wouldsurely justify him in asking Dorothea to receive him once more.
But Dorothea on that morning was not at home to receive Will's note.In consequence of a letter from her uncle announcing his intention to beat home in a week, she had driven first to Freshitt to carry the news,meaning to go on to the Grange to deliver some orders with which heruncle had intrusted her—thinking, as he said, "a little mental occupationof this sort good for a widow."
If Will Ladislaw could have overheard some of the talk at Freshittthat morning, he would have felt all his suppositions confirmed as to thereadiness of certain people to sneer at his lingering in the neighborhood.Sir James, indeed, though much relieved concerning Dorothea, had beenon the watch to learn Ladislaw's movements, and had an instructedinformant in Mr. Standish, who was necessarily in his confidence on thismatter. That Ladislaw had stayed in Middlemarch nearly two monthsafter he had declared that he was going immediately, was a fact toembitter Sir James's suspicions, or at least to justify his aversion to a"young fellow" whom he represented to himself as slight, volatile, andlikely enough to show such recklessness as naturally went along with aposition unriveted by family ties or a strict profession. But he had justheard something from Standish which, while it justified these surmisesabout Will, offered a means of nullifying all danger with regard toDorothea.
Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves:there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged tosneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the sameincongruous manner. Good Sir James was this morning so far unlikehimself that he was irritably anxious to say something to Dorothea on asubject which he usually avoided as if it had been a matter of shame tothem both. He could not use Celia as a medium, because he did notchoose that she should know the kind of gossip he had in his mind; andbefore Dorothea happened to arrive he had been trying to imagine how,with his shyness and unready tongue, he could ever manage to introducehis communication. Her unexpected presence brought him to utterhopelessness in his own power of saying anything unpleasant; butdesperation suggested a resource; he sent the groom on an unsaddledhorse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs. Cadwallader, whoalready knew the gossip, and would think it no compromise of herself torepeat it as often as required.
Dorothea was detained on the good pretext that Mr. Garth, whomshe wanted to see, was expected at the hall within the hour, and she wasstill talking to Caleb on the gravel when Sir James, on the watch for therector's wife, saw her coming and met her with the needful hints.
"Enough! I understand,"—said Mrs. Cadwallader. "You shall beinnocent. I am such a blackamoor that I cannot smirch myself."
"I don't mean that it's of any consequence," said Sir James, dislikingthat Mrs. Cadwallader should understand too much. "Only it is desirablethat Dorothea should know there are reasons why she should not receivehim again; and I really can't say so to her. It will come lightly from you."
It came very lightly indeed. When Dorothea quitted Caleb and turnedto meet them, it appeared that Mrs. Cadwallader had stepped across thepark by the merest chance in the world, just to chat with Celia in amatronly way about the baby. And so Mr. Brooke was coming back?Delightful!—coming back, it was to be hoped, quite cured ofParliamentary fever and pioneering. Apropos of the "Pioneer"—somebodyhad prophesied that it would soon be like a dying dolphin, and turn allcolors for want of knowing how to help itself, because Mr. Brooke'sprotege, the brilliant young Ladislaw, was gone or going. Had Sir Jamesheard that?
The three were walking along the gravel slowly, and Sir James,turning aside to whip a shrub, said he had heard something of that sort.
"All false!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "He is not gone, or going,apparently; the 'Pioneer' keeps its color, and Mr. Orlando Ladislaw ismaking a sad dark-blue scandal by warbling continually with your Mr.Lydgate's wife, who they tell me is as pretty as pretty can be. It seemsnobody ever goes into the house without finding this young gentlemanlying on the rug or warbling at the piano. But the people inmanufacturing towns are always disreputable."
"You began by saying that one report was false, Mrs. Cadwallader,and I believe this is false too," said Dorothea, with indignant energy; "atleast, I feel sure it is a misrepresentation. I will not hear any evil spokenof Mr. Ladislaw; he has already suffered too much injustice."
Dorothea when thoroughly moved cared little what any one thoughtof her feelings; and even if she had been able to reflect, she would haveheld it petty to keep silence at injurious words about Will from fear ofbeing herself misunderstood. Her face was flushed and her lip trembled.
Sir James, glancing at her, repented of his stratagem; but Mrs.Cadwallader, equal to all occasions, spread the palms of her handsoutward and said—"Heaven grant it, my dear!—I mean that all bad talesabout anybody may be false. But it is a pity that young Lydgate shouldhave married one of these Middlemarch girls. Considering he's a son ofsomebody, he might have got a woman with good blood in her veins, andnot too young, who would have put up with his profession. There's ClaraHarfager, for instance, whose friends don't know what to do with her;and she has a portion. Then we might have had her among us.However!—it's no use being wise for other people. Where is Celia? Praylet us go in."
"I am going on immediately to Tipton," said Dorothea, ratherhaughtily. "Good-by."
Sir James could say nothing as he accompanied her to the carriage.He was altogether discontented with the result of a contrivance whichhad cost him some secret humiliation beforehand.
Dorothea drove along between the berried hedgerows and the shorncorn-fields, not seeing or hearing anything around. The tears came androlled down her cheeks, but she did not know it. The world, it seemed,was turning ugly and hateful, and there was no place for hertrustfulness. "It is not true—it is not true!" was the voice within her thatshe listened to; but all the while a remembrance to which there hadalways clung a vague uneasiness would thrust itself on her attention—the remembrance of that day when she had found Will Ladislaw withMrs. Lydgate, and had heard his voice accompanied by the piano.
"He said he would never do anything that I disapproved—I wish Icould have told him that I disapproved of that," said poor Dorothea,inwardly, feeling a strange alternation between anger with Will and thepassionate defence of him. "They all try to blacken him before me; but Iwill care for no pain, if he is not to blame. I always believed he wasgood."—These were her last thoughts before she felt that the carriagewas passing under the archway of the lodge-gate at the Grange, whenshe hurriedly pressed her handkerchief to her face and began to think ofher errands. The coachman begged leave to take out the horses for halfan hour as there was something wrong with a shoe; and Dorothea,having the sense that she was going to rest, took off her gloves andbonnet, while she was leaning against a statue in the entrance-hall, andtalking to the housekeeper. At last she said—
