Middlemarch
Sir James could say nothing as he accompanied her to the carriage. He
was altogether discontented with the result of a contrivance which had
cost him some secret humiliation beforehand.
Dorothea drove along between the berried hedgerows and the shorn
corn-fields, not seeing or hearing anything around. The tears came and
rolled down her cheeks, but she did not know it. The world, it seemed,
was turning ugly and hateful, and there was no place for her
trustfulness. “It is not true—it is not true!” was the voice within her
that she listened to; but all the while a remembrance to which there
had always clung a vague uneasiness would thrust itself on her
attention—the remembrance of that day when she had found Will Ladislaw
with Mrs. Lydgate, and had heard his voice accompanied by the piano.
“He said he would never do anything that I disapproved—I wish I could
have told him that I disapproved of that,” said poor Dorothea,
inwardly, feeling a strange alternation between anger with Will and the
passionate defence of him. “They all try to blacken him before me; but
I will care for no pain, if he is not to blame. I always believed he
was good.”—These were her last thoughts before she felt that the
carriage was passing under the archway of the lodge-gate at the Grange,
when she hurriedly pressed her handkerchief to her face and began to
think of her errands. The coachman begged leave to take out the horses
for half an hour as there was something wrong with a shoe; and
Dorothea, having the sense that she was going to rest, took off her
gloves and bonnet, while she was leaning against a statue in the
entrance-hall, and talking to the housekeeper. At last she said—
“I must stay here a little, Mrs. Kell. I will go into the library and
write you some memoranda from my uncle’s letter, if you will open the
shutters for me.”
“The shutters are open, madam,” said Mrs. Kell, following Dorothea, who
had walked along as she spoke. “Mr. Ladislaw is there, looking for
something.”
(Will had come to fetch a portfolio of his own sketches which he had
missed in the act of packing his movables, and did not choose to leave
behind.)
Dorothea’s heart seemed to turn over as if it had had a blow, but she
was not perceptibly checked: in truth, the sense that Will was there
was for the moment all-satisfying to her, like the sight of something
precious that one has lost. When she reached the door she said to Mrs.
Kell—
“Go in first, and tell him that I am here.”
Will had found his portfolio, and had laid it on the table at the far
end of the room, to turn over the sketches and please himself by
looking at the memorable piece of art which had a relation to nature
too mysterious for Dorothea. He was smiling at it still, and shaking
the sketches into order with the thought that he might find a letter
from her awaiting him at Middlemarch, when Mrs. Kell close to his elbow
said—
“Mrs. Casaubon is coming in, sir.”
Will turned round quickly, and the next moment Dorothea was entering.
As Mrs. Kell closed the door behind her they met: each was looking at
the other, and consciousness was overflowed by something that
suppressed utterance. It was not confusion that kept them silent, for
they both felt that parting was near, and there is no shamefacedness in
a sad parting.
She moved automatically towards her uncle’s chair against the
writing-table, and Will, after drawing it out a little for her, went a
few paces off and stood opposite to her.
“Pray sit down,” said Dorothea, crossing her hands on her lap; “I am
very glad you were here.” Will thought that her face looked just as it
did when she first shook hands with him in Rome; for her widow’s cap,
fixed in her bonnet, had gone off with it, and he could see that she
had lately been shedding tears. But the mixture of anger in her
agitation had vanished at the sight of him; she had been used, when
they were face to face, always to feel confidence and the happy freedom
which comes with mutual understanding, and how could other people’s
words hinder that effect on a sudden? Let the music which can take
possession of our frame and fill the air with joy for us, sound once
more—what does it signify that we heard it found fault with in its
absence?
“I have sent a letter to Lowick Manor to-day, asking leave to see you,”
said Will, seating himself opposite to her. “I am going away
immediately, and I could not go without speaking to you again.”
“I thought we had parted when you came to Lowick many weeks ago—you
thought you were going then,” said Dorothea, her voice trembling a
little.
“Yes; but I was in ignorance then of things which I know now—things
which have altered my feelings about the future. When I saw you before,
I was dreaming that I might come back some day. I don’t think I ever
shall—now.” Will paused here.
“You wished me to know the reasons?” said Dorothea, timidly.
“Yes,” said Will, impetuously, shaking his head backward, and looking
away from her with irritation in his face. “Of course I must wish it. I
have been grossly insulted in your eyes and in the eyes of others.
There has been a mean implication against my character. I wish you to
know that under no circumstances would I have lowered myself by—under
no circumstances would I have given men the chance of saying that I
sought money under the pretext of seeking—something else. There was no
need of other safeguard against me—the safeguard of wealth was enough.”
Will rose from his chair with the last word and went—he hardly knew
where; but it was to the projecting window nearest him, which had been
open as now about the same season a year ago, when he and Dorothea had
stood within it and talked together. Her whole heart was going out at
this moment in sympathy with Will’s indignation: she only wanted to
convince him that she had never done him injustice, and he seemed to
have turned away from her as if she too had been part of the unfriendly
world.
“It would be very unkind of you to suppose that I ever attributed any
meanness to you,” she began. Then in her ardent way, wanting to plead
with him, she moved from her chair and went in front of him to her old
place in the window, saying, “Do you suppose that I ever disbelieved in
you?”
When Will saw her there, he gave a start and moved backward out of the
window, without meeting her glance. Dorothea was hurt by this movement
following up the previous anger of his tone. She was ready to say that
it was as hard on her as on him, and that she was helpless; but those
strange particulars of their relation which neither of them could
explicitly mention kept her always in dread of saying too much. At this
moment she had no belief that Will would in any case have wanted to
marry her, and she feared using words which might imply such a belief.
She only said earnestly, recurring to his last word—
“I am sure no safeguard was ever needed against you.”
Will did not answer. In the stormy fluctuation of his feelings these
words of hers seemed to him cruelly neutral, and he looked pale and
miserable after his angry outburst. He went to the table and fastened
up his portfolio, while Dorothea looked at him from the distance. They
were wasting these last moments together in wretched silence. What
could he say, since what had got obstinately uppermost in his mind was
the passionate love for her which he forbade himself to utter? What
could she say, since she might offer him no help—since she was forced
to keep the money that ought to have been his?—since to-day he seemed
not to respond as he used to do to her thorough trust and liking?
But Will at last turned away from his portfolio and approached the
window again.
“I must go,” he said, with that peculiar look of the eyes which
sometimes accompanies bitter feeling, as if they had been tired and
burned with gazing too close at a light.
“What shall you do in life?” said Dorothea, timidly. “Have your
intentions remained just the same as when we said good-by before?”
“Yes,” said Will, in a tone that seemed to waive the subject as
uninteresting. “I shall work away at the first thing that offers. I
suppose one gets a habit of doing without happiness or hope.”
“Oh, what sad words!” said Dorothea, with a dangerous tendency to sob.
Then trying to smile, she added, “We used to agree that we were alike
in speaking too strongly.”
“I have not spoken too strongly now,” said Will, leaning back against
the angle of the wall. “There are certain things which a man can only
go through once in his life; and he must know some time or other that
the best is over with him. This experience has happened to me while I
am very young—that is all. What I care more for than I can ever care
for anything else is absolutely forbidden to me—I don’t mean merely by
being out of my reach, but forbidden me, even if it were within my
reach, by my own pride and honor—by everything I respect myself for. Of
course I shall go on living as a man might do who had seen heaven in a
trance.”
Will paused, imagining that it would be impossible for Dorothea to
misunderstand this; indeed he felt that he was contradicting himself
and offending against his self-approval in speaking to her so plainly;
but still—it could not be fairly called wooing a woman to tell her that
he would never woo her. It must be admitted to be a ghostly kind of
wooing.
But Dorothea’s mind was rapidly going over the past with quite another
vision than his. The thought that she herself might be what Will most
cared for did throb through her an instant, but then came doubt: the
memory of the little they had lived through together turned pale and
shrank before the memory which suggested how much fuller might have
been the intercourse between Will and some one else with whom he had
had constant companionship. Everything he had said might refer to that
other relation, and whatever had passed between him and herself was
thoroughly explained by what she had always regarded as their simple
friendship and the cruel obstruction thrust upon it by her husband’s
injurious act. Dorothea stood silent, with her eyes cast down dreamily,
while images crowded upon her which left the sickening certainty that
Will was referring to Mrs. Lydgate. But why sickening? He wanted her to
know that here too his conduct should be above suspicion.
Will was not surprised at her silence. His mind also was tumultuously
busy while he watched her, and he was feeling rather wildly that
something must happen to hinder their parting—some miracle, clearly
nothing in their own deliberate speech. Yet, after all, had she any
love for him?—he could not pretend to himself that he would rather
believe her to be without that pain. He could not deny that a secret
longing for the assurance that she loved him was at the root of all his
words.
Neither of them knew how long they stood in that way. Dorothea was
raising her eyes, and was about to speak, when the door opened and her
footman came to say—
“The horses are ready, madam, whenever you like to start.”
“Presently,” said Dorothea. Then turning to Will, she said, “I have
some memoranda to write for the housekeeper.”
“I must go,” said Will, when the door had closed again—advancing
towards her. “The day after to-morrow I shall leave Middlemarch.”
“You have acted in every way rightly,” said Dorothea, in a low tone,
feeling a pressure at her heart which made it difficult to speak.
She put out her hand, and Will took it for an instant without speaking,
for her words had seemed to him cruelly cold and unlike herself. Their
eyes met, but there was discontent in his, and in hers there was only
sadness. He turned away and took his portfolio under his arm.
“I have never done you injustice. Please remember me,” said Dorothea,
repressing a rising sob.