"Can you not see, Rosamond," he began again, trying to be simplygrave and not bitter, "that nothing can be so fatal as a want of opennessand confidence between us? It has happened again and again that I haveexpressed a decided wish, and you have seemed to assent, yet after thatyou have secretly disobeyed my wish. In that way I can never know whatI have to trust to. There would be some hope for us if you would admitthis. Am I such an unreasonable, furious brute? Why should you not beopen with me?" Still silence.
"Will you only say that you have been mistaken, and that I maydepend on your not acting secretly in future?" said Lydgate, urgently, butwith something of request in his tone which Rosamond was quick toperceive. She spoke with coolness.
"I cannot possibly make admissions or promises in answer to suchwords as you have used towards me. I have not been accustomed tolanguage of that kind. You have spoken of my 'secret meddling,' and my'interfering ignorance,' and my 'false assent.' I have never expressedmyself in that way to you, and I think that you ought to apologize. Youspoke of its being impossible to live with me. Certainly you have notmade my life pleasant to me of late. I think it was to be expected that Ishould try to avert some of the hardships which our marriage hasbrought on me." Another tear fell as Rosamond ceased speaking, and shepressed it away as quietly as the first.
Lydgate flung himself into a chair, feeling checkmated. What placewas there in her mind for a remonstrance to lodge in? He laid down hishat, flung an arm over the back of his chair, and looked down for somemoments without speaking. Rosamond had the double purchase over himof insensibility to the point of justice in his reproach, and of sensibilityto the undeniable hardships now present in her married life. Althoughher duplicity in the affair of the house had exceeded what he knew, andhad really hindered the Plymdales from knowing of it, she had noconsciousness that her action could rightly be called false. We are notobliged to identify our own acts according to a strict classification, anymore than the materials of our grocery and clothes. Rosamond felt thatshe was aggrieved, and that this was what Lydgate had to recognize.
As for him, the need of accommodating himself to her nature, whichwas inflexible in proportion to its negations, held him as with pincers.He had begun to have an alarmed foresight of her irrevocable loss of lovefor him, and the consequent dreariness of their life. The ready fulness ofhis emotions made this dread alternate quickly with the first violentmovements of his anger. It would assuredly have been a vain boast inhim to say that he was her master.
"You have not made my life pleasant to me of late"—"the hardshipswhich our marriage has brought on me"—these words were stinging hisimagination as a pain makes an exaggerated dream. If he were not onlyto sink from his highest resolve, but to sink into the hideous fettering ofdomestic hate?
"Rosamond," he said, turning his eyes on her with a melancholy look,"you should allow for a man's words when he is disappointed andprovoked. You and I cannot have opposite interests. I cannot part myhappiness from yours. If I am angry with you, it is that you seem not tosee how any concealment divides us. How could I wish to make anythinghard to you either by my words or conduct? When I hurt you, I hurt partof my own life. I should never be angry with you if you would be quiteopen with me."
"I have only wished to prevent you from hurrying us intowretchedness without any necessity," said Rosamond, the tears comingagain from a softened feeling now that her husband had softened. "It isso very hard to be disgraced here among all the people we know, and tolive in such a miserable way. I wish I had died with the baby."
She spoke and wept with that gentleness which makes such wordsand tears omnipotent over a loving-hearted man. Lydgate drew his chairnear to hers and pressed her delicate head against his cheek with hispowerful tender hand. He only caressed her; he did not say anything; forwhat was there to say? He could not promise to shield her from thedreaded wretchedness, for he could see no sure means of doing so. Whenhe left her to go out again, he told himself that it was ten times harderfor her than for him: he had a life away from home, and constantappeals to his activity on behalf of others. He wished to excuseeverything in her if he could—but it was inevitable that in that excusingmood he should think of her as if she were an animal of another andfeebler species. Nevertheless she had mastered him.
CHAPTER LXVI.
"'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall."
—Measure for Measure.
Lydgate certainly had good reason to reflect on the service hispractice did him in counteracting his personal cares. He had no longerfree energy enough for spontaneous research and speculative thinking,but by the bedside of patients, the direct external calls on his judgmentand sympathies brought the added impulse needed to draw him out ofhimself. It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine whichenables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly—itwas a perpetual claim on the immediate fresh application of thought, andon the consideration of another's need and trial. Many of us looking backthrough life would say that the kindest man we have ever known hasbeen a medical man, or perhaps that surgeon whose fine tact, directed bydeeply informed perception, has come to us in our need with a moresublime beneficence than that of miracle-workers. Some of that twice-blessed mercy was always with Lydgate in his work at the Hospital or inprivate houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet and sustain himunder his anxieties and his sense of mental degeneracy.
Mr. Farebrother's suspicion as to the opiate was true, however.Under the first galling pressure of foreseen difficulties, and the firstperception that his marriage, if it were not to be a yoked loneliness, mustbe a state of effort to go on loving without too much care about beingloved, he had once or twice tried a dose of opium. But he had nohereditary constitutional craving after such transient escapes from thehauntings of misery. He was strong, could drink a great deal of wine, butdid not care about it; and when the men round him were drinkingspirits, he took sugar and water, having a contemptuous pity even for theearliest stages of excitement from drink. It was the same with gambling.He had looked on at a great deal of gambling in Paris, watching it as if ithad been a disease. He was no more tempted by such winning than hewas by drink. He had said to himself that the only winning he cared formust be attained by a conscious process of high, difficult combinationtending towards a beneficent result. The power he longed for could notbe represented by agitated fingers clutching a heap of coin, or by thehalf-barbarous, half-idiotic triumph in the eyes of a man who sweepswithin his arms the ventures of twenty chapfallen companions.
But just as he had tried opium, so his thought now began to turnupon gambling—not with appetite for its excitement, but with a sort ofwistful inward gaze after that easy way of getting money, which impliedno asking and brought no responsibility. If he had been in London orParis at that time, it is probable that such thoughts, seconded byopportunity, would have taken him into a gambling-house, no longer towatch the gamblers, but to watch with them in kindred eagerness.Repugnance would have been surmounted by the immense need to win,if chance would be kind enough to let him. An incident which happenednot very long after that airy notion of getting aid from his uncle had beenexcluded, was a strong sign of the effect that might have followed anyextant opportunity of gambling.
The billiard-room at the Green Dragon was the constant resort of acertain set, most of whom, like our acquaintance Mr. Bambridge, wereregarded as men of pleasure. It was here that poor Fred Vincy had madepart of his memorable debt, having lost money in betting, and beenobliged to borrow of that gay companion. It was generally known inMiddlemarch that a good deal of money was lost and won in this way;and the consequent repute of the Green Dragon as a place of dissipationnaturally heightened in some quarters the temptation to go there.Probably its regular visitants, like the initiates of freemasonry, wishedthat there were something a little more tremendous to keep tothemselves concerning it; but they were not a closed community, andmany decent seniors as well as juniors occasionally turned into thebilliard-room to see what was going on. Lydgate, who had the muscularaptitude for billiards, and was fond of the game, had once or twice in theearly days after his arrival in Middlemarch taken his turn with the cue atthe Green Dragon; but afterwards he had no leisure for the game, and noinclination for the socialities there. One evening, however, he hadoccasion to seek Mr. Bambridge at that resort. The horsedealer hadengaged to get him a customer for his remaining good horse, for whichLydgate had determined to substitute a cheap hack, hoping by thisreduction of style to get perhaps twenty pounds; and he cared now forevery small sum, as a help towards feeding the patience of histradesmen. To run up to the billiard-room, as he was passing, wouldsave time.
Mr. Bambridge was not yet come, bat would be sure to arrive by-and-by, said his friend Mr. Horrock; and Lydgate stayed, playing a gamefor the sake of passing the time. That evening he had the peculiar light inthe eyes and the unusual vivacity which had been once noticed in him byMr. Farebrother. The exceptional fact of his presence was much noticedin the room, where there was a good deal of Middlemarch company; andseveral lookers-on, as well as some of the players, were betting withanimation. Lydgate was playing well, and felt confident; the bets weredropping round him, and with a swift glancing thought of the probablegain which might double the sum he was saving from his horse, he beganto bet on his own play, and won again and again. Mr. Bambridge hadcome in, but Lydgate did not notice him. He was not only excited withhis play, but visions were gleaming on him of going the next day toBrassing, where there was gambling on a grander scale to be had, andwhere, by one powerful snatch at the devil's bait, he might carry it offwithout the hook, and buy his rescue from his daily solicitings.
He was still winning when two new visitors entered. One of themwas a young Hawley, just come from his law studies in town, and theother was Fred Vincy, who had spent several evenings of late at this oldhaunt of his. Young Hawley, an accomplished billiard-player, brought acool fresh hand to the cue. But Fred Vincy, startled at seeing Lydgate,and astonished to see him betting with an excited air, stood aside, andkept out of the circle round the table.
Fred had been rewarding resolution by a little laxity of late. He hadbeen working heartily for six months at all outdoor occupations underMr. Garth, and by dint of severe practice had nearly mastered thedefects of his handwriting, this practice being, perhaps, a little the lesssevere that it was often carried on in the evening at Mr. Garth's underthe eyes of Mary. But the last fortnight Mary had been staying at LowickParsonage with the ladies there, during Mr. Farebrother's residence inMiddlemarch, where he was carrying out some parochial plans; andFred, not seeing anything more agreeable to do, had turned into theGreen Dragon, partly to play at billiards, partly to taste the old flavor ofdiscourse about horses, sport, and things in general, considered from apoint of view which was not strenuously correct. He had not been outhunting once this season, had had no horse of his own to ride, and hadgone from place to place chiefly with Mr. Garth in his gig, or on thesober cob which Mr. Garth could lend him. It was a little too bad, Fredbegan to think, that he should be kept in the traces with more severitythan if he had been a clergyman. "I will tell you what, Mistress Mary—itwill be rather harder work to learn surveying and drawing plans than itwould have been to write sermons," he had said, wishing her toappreciate what he went through for her sake; "and as to Hercules andTheseus, they were nothing to me. They had sport, and never learned towrite a bookkeeping hand." And now, Mary being out of the way for alittle while, Fred, like any other strong dog who cannot slip his collar,had pulled up the staple of his chain and made a small escape, not ofcourse meaning to go fast or far. There could be no reason why heshould not play at billiards, but he was determined not to bet. As tomoney just now, Fred had in his mind the heroic project of saving almostall of the eighty pounds that Mr. Garth offered him, and returning it,which he could easily do by giving up all futile money-spending, since hehad a superfluous stock of clothes, and no expense in his board. In thatway he could, in one year, go a good way towards repaying the ninetypounds of which he had deprived Mrs. Garth, unhappily at a time whenshe needed that sum more than she did now. Nevertheless, it must beacknowledged that on this evening, which was the fifth of his recentvisits to the billiard-room, Fred had, not in his pocket, but in his mind,the ten pounds which he meant to reserve for himself from his half-year'ssalary (having before him the pleasure of carrying thirty to Mrs. Garthwhen Mary was likely to be come home again)—he had those ten poundsin his mind as a fund from which he might risk something, if there werea chance of a good bet. Why? Well, when sovereigns were flying about,why shouldn't he catch a few? He would never go far along that roadagain; but a man likes to assure himself, and men of pleasure generally,what he could do in the way of mischief if he chose, and that if heabstains from making himself ill, or beggaring himself, or talking withthe utmost looseness which the narrow limits of human capacity willallow, it is not because he is a spooney. Fred did not enter into formalreasons, which are a very artificial, inexact way of representing thetingling returns of old habit, and the caprices of young blood: but therewas lurking in him a prophetic sense that evening, that when he began toplay he should also begin to bet—that he should enjoy some punch-drinking, and in general prepare himself for feeling "rather seedy" in themorning. It is in such indefinable movements that action often begins. But the last thing likely to have entered Fred's expectation was thathe should see his brother-in-law Lydgate—of whom he had never quitedropped the old opinion that he was a prig, and tremendously consciousof his superiority—looking excited and betting, just as he himself mighthave done. Fred felt a shock greater than he could quite account for bythe vague knowledge that Lydgate was in debt, and that his father hadrefused to help him; and his own inclination to enter into the play wassuddenly checked. It was a strange reversal of attitudes: Fred's blondface and blue eyes, usually bright and careless, ready to give attention toanything that held out a promise of amusement, looking involuntarilygrave and almost embarrassed as if by the sight of something unfitting;while Lydgate, who had habitually an air of self-possessed strength, anda certain meditativeness that seemed to lie behind his most observantattention, was acting, watching, speaking with that excited narrowconsciousness which reminds one of an animal with fierce eyes andretractile claws.
