Middlemarch
unrighteous; but how could he go back? He had mental exercises, called
himself nought, laid hold on redemption, and went on in his course of
instrumentality. And after five years Death again came to widen his
path, by taking away his wife. He did gradually withdraw his capital,
but he did not make the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the
business, which was carried on for thirteen years afterwards before it
finally collapsed. Meanwhile Nicholas Bulstrode had used his hundred
thousand discreetly, and was become provincially, solidly important—a
banker, a Churchman, a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in
trading concerns, in which his ability was directed to economy in the
raw material, as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy’s silk.
And now, when this respectability had lasted undisturbed for nearly
thirty years—when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the
consciousness—that past had risen and immersed his thought as if with
the terrible irruption of a new sense overburthening the feeble being.
Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had learned something
momentous, something which entered actively into the struggle of his
longings and terrors. There, he thought, lay an opening towards
spiritual, perhaps towards material rescue.
The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There may be
coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the
sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was
simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic
beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his
desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be
hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all,
to whatever confession we belong, and whether we believe in the future
perfection of our race or in the nearest date fixed for the end of the
world; whether we regard the earth as a putrefying nidus for a saved
remnant, including ourselves, or have a passionate belief in the
solidarity of mankind.
The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through life
the ground he alleged to himself for his choice of action: it had been
the motive which he had poured out in his prayers. Who would use money
and position better than he meant to use them? Who could surpass him in
self-abhorrence and exaltation of God’s cause? And to Mr. Bulstrode
God’s cause was something distinct from his own rectitude of conduct:
it enforced a discrimination of God’s enemies, who were to be used
merely as instruments, and whom it would be as well if possible to keep
out of money and consequent influence. Also, profitable investments in
trades where the power of the prince of this world showed its most
active devices, became sanctified by a right application of the profits
in the hands of God’s servant.
This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical
belief than the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar to
Englishmen. There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating
out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct
fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.
But a man who believes in something else than his own greed, has
necessarily a conscience or standard to which he more or less adapts
himself. Bulstrode’s standard had been his serviceableness to God’s
cause: “I am sinful and nought—a vessel to be consecrated by use—but
use me!”—had been the mould into which he had constrained his immense
need of being something important and predominating. And now had come a
moment in which that mould seemed in danger of being broken and utterly
cast away.
What if the acts he had reconciled himself to because they made him a
stronger instrument of the divine glory, were to become the pretext of
the scoffer, and a darkening of that glory? If this were to be the
ruling of Providence, he was cast out from the temple as one who had
brought unclean offerings.
He had long poured out utterances of repentance. But today a repentance
had come which was of a bitterer flavor, and a threatening Providence
urged him to a kind of propitiation which was not simply a doctrinal
transaction. The divine tribunal had changed its aspect for him;
self-prostration was no longer enough, and he must bring restitution in
his hand. It was really before his God that Bulstrode was about to
attempt such restitution as seemed possible: a great dread had seized
his susceptible frame, and the scorching approach of shame wrought in
him a new spiritual need. Night and day, while the resurgent
threatening past was making a conscience within him, he was thinking by
what means he could recover peace and trust—by what sacrifice he could
stay the rod. His belief in these moments of dread was, that if he
spontaneously did something right, God would save him from the
consequences of wrong-doing. For religion can only change when the
emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal fear
remains nearly at the level of the savage.
He had seen Raffles actually going away on the Brassing coach, and this
was a temporary relief; it removed the pressure of an immediate dread,
but did not put an end to the spiritual conflict and the need to win
protection. At last he came to a difficult resolve, and wrote a letter
to Will Ladislaw, begging him to be at the Shrubs that evening for a
private interview at nine o’clock. Will had felt no particular surprise
at the request, and connected it with some new notions about the
“Pioneer;” but when he was shown into Mr. Bulstrode’s private room, he
was struck with the painfully worn look on the banker’s face, and was
going to say, “Are you ill?” when, checking himself in that abruptness,
he only inquired after Mrs. Bulstrode, and her satisfaction with the
picture bought for her.
“Thank you, she is quite satisfied; she has gone out with her daughters
this evening. I begged you to come, Mr. Ladislaw, because I have a
communication of a very private—indeed, I will say, of a sacredly
confidential nature, which I desire to make to you. Nothing, I dare
say, has been farther from your thoughts than that there had been
important ties in the past which could connect your history with mine.”
Will felt something like an electric shock. He was already in a state
of keen sensitiveness and hardly allayed agitation on the subject of
ties in the past, and his presentiments were not agreeable. It seemed
like the fluctuations of a dream—as if the action begun by that loud
bloated stranger were being carried on by this pale-eyed sickly looking
piece of respectability, whose subdued tone and glib formality of
speech were at this moment almost as repulsive to him as their
remembered contrast. He answered, with a marked change of color—
“No, indeed, nothing.”
“You see before you, Mr. Ladislaw, a man who is deeply stricken. But
for the urgency of conscience and the knowledge that I am before the
bar of One who seeth not as man seeth, I should be under no compulsion
to make the disclosure which has been my object in asking you to come
here to-night. So far as human laws go, you have no claim on me
whatever.”
Will was even more uncomfortable than wondering. Mr. Bulstrode had
paused, leaning his head on his hand, and looking at the floor. But he
now fixed his examining glance on Will and said—
“I am told that your mother’s name was Sarah Dunkirk, and that she ran
away from her friends to go on the stage. Also, that your father was at
one time much emaciated by illness. May I ask if you can confirm these
statements?”
“Yes, they are all true,” said Will, struck with the order in which an
inquiry had come, that might have been expected to be preliminary to
the banker’s previous hints. But Mr. Bulstrode had to-night followed
the order of his emotions; he entertained no doubt that the opportunity
for restitution had come, and he had an overpowering impulse towards
the penitential expression by which he was deprecating chastisement.
“Do you know any particulars of your mother’s family?” he continued.
“No; she never liked to speak of them. She was a very generous,
honorable woman,” said Will, almost angrily.
“I do not wish to allege anything against her. Did she never mention
her mother to you at all?”
“I have heard her say that she thought her mother did not know the
reason of her running away. She said ‘poor mother’ in a pitying tone.”
“That mother became my wife,” said Bulstrode, and then paused a moment
before he added, “you have a claim on me, Mr. Ladislaw: as I said
before, not a legal claim, but one which my conscience recognizes. I
was enriched by that marriage—a result which would probably not have
taken place—certainly not to the same extent—if your grandmother could
have discovered her daughter. That daughter, I gather, is no longer
living!”
“No,” said Will, feeling suspicion and repugnance rising so strongly
within him, that without quite knowing what he did, he took his hat
from the floor and stood up. The impulse within him was to reject the
disclosed connection.
“Pray be seated, Mr. Ladislaw,” said Bulstrode, anxiously. “Doubtless
you are startled by the suddenness of this discovery. But I entreat
your patience with one who is already bowed down by inward trial.”
Will reseated himself, feeling some pity which was half contempt for
this voluntary self-abasement of an elderly man.
“It is my wish, Mr. Ladislaw, to make amends for the deprivation which
befell your mother. I know that you are without fortune, and I wish to
supply you adequately from a store which would have probably already
been yours had your grandmother been certain of your mother’s existence
and been able to find her.”
Mr. Bulstrode paused. He felt that he was performing a striking piece
of scrupulosity in the judgment of his auditor, and a penitential act
in the eyes of God. He had no clew to the state of Will Ladislaw’s
mind, smarting as it was from the clear hints of Raffles, and with its
natural quickness in construction stimulated by the expectation of
discoveries which he would have been glad to conjure back into
darkness. Will made no answer for several moments, till Mr. Bulstrode,
who at the end of his speech had cast his eyes on the floor, now raised
them with an examining glance, which Will met fully, saying—
“I suppose you did know of my mother’s existence, and knew where she
might have been found.”
Bulstrode shrank—there was a visible quivering in his face and hands.
He was totally unprepared to have his advances met in this way, or to
find himself urged into more revelation than he had beforehand set down
as needful. But at that moment he dared not tell a lie, and he felt
suddenly uncertain of his ground which he had trodden with some
confidence before.
“I will not deny that you conjecture rightly,” he answered, with a
faltering in his tone. “And I wish to make atonement to you as the one
still remaining who has suffered a loss through me. You enter, I trust,
into my purpose, Mr. Ladislaw, which has a reference to higher than
merely human claims, and as I have already said, is entirely
independent of any legal compulsion. I am ready to narrow my own
resources and the prospects of my family by binding myself to allow you
five hundred pounds yearly during my life, and to leave you a
proportional capital at my death—nay, to do still more, if more should
be definitely necessary to any laudable project on your part.” Mr.
Bulstrode had gone on to particulars in the expectation that these
would work strongly on Ladislaw, and merge other feelings in grateful
acceptance.
But Will was looking as stubborn as possible, with his lip pouting and
his fingers in his side-pockets. He was not in the least touched, and