Middlemarch
“Ask Ladislaw if he doesn’t think your Captain the greatest bore he
ever met with. Ladislaw has almost forsaken the house since he came.”
Rosamond thought she knew perfectly well why Mr. Ladislaw disliked the
Captain: he was jealous, and she liked his being jealous.
“It is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons,” she
answered, “but in my opinion Captain Lydgate is a thorough gentleman,
and I think you ought not, out of respect to Sir Godwin, to treat him
with neglect.”
“No, dear; but we have had dinners for him. And he comes in and goes
out as he likes. He doesn’t want me.”
“Still, when he is in the room, you might show him more attention. He
may not be a phoenix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is
different; but it would be all the better for you to talk a little on
his subjects. _I_ think his conversation is quite agreeable. And he is
anything but an unprincipled man.”
“The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy,”
said Lydgate, in a sort of resigned murmur, with a smile which was not
exactly tender, and certainly not merry. Rosamond was silent and did
not smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked good-tempered
enough without smiling.
Those words of Lydgate’s were like a sad milestone marking how far he
had travelled from his old dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared
to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband’s
mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and
looking-glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his adored
wisdom alone. He had begun to distinguish between that imagined
adoration and the attraction towards a man’s talent because it gives
him prestige, and is like an order in his button-hole or an Honorable
before his name.
It might have been supposed that Rosamond had travelled too, since she
had found the pointless conversation of Mr. Ned Plymdale perfectly
wearisome; but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is
unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable—else,
indeed, what would become of social bonds? Captain Lydgate’s stupidity
was delicately scented, carried itself with “style,” talked with a good
accent, and was closely related to Sir Godwin. Rosamond found it quite
agreeable and caught many of its phrases.
Therefore since Rosamond, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were
plenty of reasons why she should be tempted to resume her riding when
Captain Lydgate, who had ordered his man with two horses to follow him
and put up at the “Green Dragon,” begged her to go out on the gray
which he warranted to be gentle and trained to carry a lady—indeed, he
had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to Quallingham.
Rosamond went out the first time without telling her husband, and came
back before his return; but the ride had been so thorough a success,
and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that he was
informed of it with full reliance on his consent that she should go
riding again.
On the contrary Lydgate was more than hurt—he was utterly confounded
that she had risked herself on a strange horse without referring the
matter to his wish. After the first almost thundering exclamations of
astonishment, which sufficiently warned Rosamond of what was coming, he
was silent for some moments.
“However, you have come back safely,” he said, at last, in a decisive
tone. “You will not go again, Rosy; that is understood. If it were the
quietest, most familiar horse in the world, there would always be the
chance of accident. And you know very well that I wished you to give up
riding the roan on that account.”
“But there is the chance of accident indoors, Tertius.”
“My darling, don’t talk nonsense,” said Lydgate, in an imploring tone;
“surely I am the person to judge for you. I think it is enough that I
say you are not to go again.”
Rosamond was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of
her head in the glass showed no change in its loveliness except a
little turning aside of the long neck. Lydgate had been moving about
with his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her, as if he
awaited some assurance.
“I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear,” said Rosamond, letting
her arms fall with a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of
standing there like a brute. Lydgate had often fastened the plaits
before, being among the deftest of men with his large finely formed
fingers. He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the
tall comb (to such uses do men come!); and what could he do then but
kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all its delicate curves? But
when we do what we have done before, it is often with a difference.
Lydgate was still angry, and had not forgotten his point.
“I shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known better than offer
you his horse,” he said, as he moved away.
“I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Tertius,” said Rosamond,
looking at him with something more marked than usual in her speech. “It
will be treating me as if I were a child. Promise that you will leave
the subject to me.”
There did seem to be some truth in her objection. Lydgate said, “Very
well,” with a surly obedience, and thus the discussion ended with his
promising Rosamond, and not with her promising him.
In fact, she had been determined not to promise. Rosamond had that
victorious obstinacy which never wastes its energy in impetuous
resistance. What she liked to do was to her the right thing, and all
her cleverness was directed to getting the means of doing it. She meant
to go out riding again on the gray, and she did go on the next
opportunity of her husband’s absence, not intending that he should know
until it was late enough not to signify to her. The temptation was
certainly great: she was very fond of the exercise, and the
gratification of riding on a fine horse, with Captain Lydgate, Sir
Godwin’s son, on another fine horse by her side, and of being met in
this position by any one but her husband, was something as good as her
dreams before marriage: moreover she was riveting the connection with
the family at Quallingham, which must be a wise thing to do.
But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being
felled on the edge of Halsell wood, took fright, and caused a worse
fright to Rosamond, leading finally to the loss of her baby. Lydgate
could not show his anger towards her, but he was rather bearish to the
Captain, whose visit naturally soon came to an end.
In all future conversations on the subject, Rosamond was mildly certain
that the ride had made no difference, and that if she had stayed at
home the same symptoms would have come on and would have ended in the
same way, because she had felt something like them before.
Lydgate could only say, “Poor, poor darling!”—but he secretly wondered
over the terrible tenacity of this mild creature. There was gathering
within him an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond. His
superior knowledge and mental force, instead of being, as he had
imagined, a shrine to consult on all occasions, was simply set aside on
every practical question. He had regarded Rosamond’s cleverness as
precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman. He was now
beginning to find out what that cleverness was—what was the shape into
which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent. No one
quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the
track of her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Lydgate’s
preeminence in Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively
tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have
advanced him; but for her, his professional and scientific ambition had
no other relation to these desirable effects than if they had been the
fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil. And that oil apart, with
which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in her own opinion
more than she did in his. Lydgate was astounded to find in numberless
trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding,
that affection did not make her compliant. He had no doubt that the
affection was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything
to repel it. For his own part he said to himself that he loved her as
tenderly as ever, and could make up his mind to her negations;
but—well! Lydgate was much worried, and conscious of new elements in
his life as noxious to him as an inlet of mud to a creature that has
been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in
the clearest of waters.
Rosamond was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying
drives in her father’s phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be
invited to Quallingham. She knew that she was a much more exquisite
ornament to the drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and
in reflecting that the gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps
sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see
themselves surpassed.
Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she
inwardly called his moodiness—a name which to her covered his
thoughtful preoccupation with other subjects than herself, as well as
that uneasy look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as if
they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really made a sort of
weather-glass to his vexation and foreboding. These latter states of
mind had one cause amongst others, which he had generously but
mistakenly avoided mentioning to Rosamond, lest it should affect her
health and spirits. Between him and her indeed there was that total
missing of each other’s mental track, which is too evidently possible
even between persons who are continually thinking of each other. To
Lydgate it seemed that he had been spending month after month in
sacrificing more than half of his best intent and best power to his
tenderness for Rosamond; bearing her little claims and interruptions
without impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of
bitterness to look through less and less of interfering illusion at the
blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to his ardor for the more
impersonal ends of his profession and his scientific study, an ardor
which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship as
sublime, though not in the least knowing why. But his endurance was
mingled with a self-discontent which, if we know how to be candid, we
shall confess to make more than half our bitterness under grievances,
wife or husband included. It always remains true that if we had been
greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us. Lydgate
was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more than
the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize
an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our
lives. And on Lydgate’s enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not a
simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading
care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort.
This was the care which he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to
Rosamond; and he believed, with some wonder, that it had never entered
her mind, though certainly no difficulty could be less mysterious. It
was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and had been easily
drawn by indifferent observers, that Lydgate was in debt; and he could
not succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was
every day getting deeper into that swamp, which tempts men towards it
with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure. It is wonderful how
soon a man gets up to his chin there—in a condition in which, in spite