Middlemarch
within him, making every difficulty a double goad to impatience.
Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general
discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their
great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self
and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate’s
discontent was much harder to bear: it was the sense that there was a
grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while
his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic
fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears. His
troubles will perhaps appear miserably sordid, and beneath the
attention of lofty persons who can know nothing of debt except on a
magnificent scale. Doubtless they were sordid; and for the majority,
who are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but by being free
from money-craving, with all its base hopes and temptations, its
watching for death, its hinted requests, its horse-dealer’s desire to
make bad work pass for good, its seeking for function which ought to be
another’s, its compulsion often to long for Luck in the shape of a wide
calamity.
It was because Lydgate writhed under the idea of getting his neck
beneath this vile yoke that he had fallen into a bitter moody state
which was continually widening Rosamond’s alienation from him. After
the first disclosure about the bill of sale, he had made many efforts
to draw her into sympathy with him about possible measures for
narrowing their expenses, and with the threatening approach of
Christmas his propositions grew more and more definite. “We two can do
with only one servant, and live on very little,” he said, “and I shall
manage with one horse.” For Lydgate, as we have seen, had begun to
reason, with a more distinct vision, about the expenses of living, and
any share of pride he had given to appearances of that sort was meagre
compared with the pride which made him revolt from exposure as a
debtor, or from asking men to help him with their money.
“Of course you can dismiss the other two servants, if you like,” said
Rosamond; “but I should have thought it would be very injurious to your
position for us to live in a poor way. You must expect your practice to
be lowered.”
“My dear Rosamond, it is not a question of choice. We have begun too
expensively. Peacock, you know, lived in a much smaller house than
this. It is my fault: I ought to have known better, and I deserve a
thrashing—if there were anybody who had a right to give it me—for
bringing you into the necessity of living in a poorer way than you have
been used to. But we married because we loved each other, I suppose.
And that may help us to pull along till things get better. Come, dear,
put down that work and come to me.”
He was really in chill gloom about her at that moment, but he dreaded a
future without affection, and was determined to resist the oncoming of
division between them. Rosamond obeyed him, and he took her on his
knee, but in her secret soul she was utterly aloof from him. The poor
thing saw only that the world was not ordered to her liking, and
Lydgate was part of that world. But he held her waist with one hand and
laid the other gently on both of hers; for this rather abrupt man had
much tenderness in his manners towards women, seeming to have always
present in his imagination the weakness of their frames and the
delicate poise of their health both in body and mind. And he began
again to speak persuasively.
“I find, now I look into things a little, Rosy, that it is wonderful
what an amount of money slips away in our housekeeping. I suppose the
servants are careless, and we have had a great many people coming. But
there must be many in our rank who manage with much less: they must do
with commoner things, I suppose, and look after the scraps. It seems,
money goes but a little way in these matters, for Wrench has everything
as plain as possible, and he has a very large practice.”
“Oh, if you think of living as the Wrenches do!” said Rosamond, with a
little turn of her neck. “But I have heard you express your disgust at
that way of living.”
“Yes, they have bad taste in everything—they make economy look ugly. We
needn’t do that. I only meant that they avoid expenses, although Wrench
has a capital practice.”
“Why should not you have a good practice, Tertius? Mr. Peacock had. You
should be more careful not to offend people, and you should send out
medicines as the others do. I am sure you began well, and you got
several good houses. It cannot answer to be eccentric; you should think
what will be generally liked,” said Rosamond, in a decided little tone
of admonition.
Lydgate’s anger rose: he was prepared to be indulgent towards feminine
weakness, but not towards feminine dictation. The shallowness of a
waternixie’s soul may have a charm until she becomes didactic. But he
controlled himself, and only said, with a touch of despotic firmness—
“What I am to do in my practice, Rosy, it is for me to judge. That is
not the question between us. It is enough for you to know that our
income is likely to be a very narrow one—hardly four hundred, perhaps
less, for a long time to come, and we must try to re-arrange our lives
in accordance with that fact.”
Rosamond was silent for a moment or two, looking before her, and then
said, “My uncle Bulstrode ought to allow you a salary for the time you
give to the Hospital: it is not right that you should work for
nothing.”
“It was understood from the beginning that my services would be
gratuitous. That, again, need not enter into our discussion. I have
pointed out what is the only probability,” said Lydgate, impatiently.
Then checking himself, he went on more quietly—
“I think I see one resource which would free us from a good deal of the
present difficulty. I hear that young Ned Plymdale is going to be
married to Miss Sophy Toller. They are rich, and it is not often that a
good house is vacant in Middlemarch. I feel sure that they would be
glad to take this house from us with most of our furniture, and they
would be willing to pay handsomely for the lease. I can employ Trumbull
to speak to Plymdale about it.”
Rosamond left her husband’s knee and walked slowly to the other end of
the room; when she turned round and walked towards him it was evident
that the tears had come, and that she was biting her under-lip and
clasping her hands to keep herself from crying. Lydgate was
wretched—shaken with anger and yet feeling that it would be unmanly to
vent the anger just now.
“I am very sorry, Rosamond; I know this is painful.”
“I thought, at least, when I had borne to send the plate back and have
that man taking an inventory of the furniture—I should have thought
_that_ would suffice.”
“I explained it to you at the time, dear. That was only a security and
behind that security there is a debt. And that debt must be paid within
the next few months, else we shall have our furniture sold. If young
Plymdale will take our house and most of our furniture, we shall be
able to pay that debt, and some others too, and we shall be quit of a
place too expensive for us. We might take a smaller house: Trumbull, I
know, has a very decent one to let at thirty pounds a-year, and this is
ninety.” Lydgate uttered this speech in the curt hammering way with
which we usually try to nail down a vague mind to imperative facts.
Tears rolled silently down Rosamond’s cheeks; she just pressed her
handkerchief against them, and stood looking at the large vase on the
mantel-piece. It was a moment of more intense bitterness than she had
ever felt before. At last she said, without hurry and with careful
emphasis—
“I never could have believed that you would like to act in that way.”
“Like it?” burst out Lydgate, rising from his chair, thrusting his
hands in his pockets and stalking away from the hearth; “it’s not a
question of liking. Of course, I don’t like it; it’s the only thing I
can do.” He wheeled round there, and turned towards her.
“I should have thought there were many other means than that,” said
Rosamond. “Let us have a sale and leave Middlemarch altogether.”
“To do what? What is the use of my leaving my work in Middlemarch to go
where I have none? We should be just as penniless elsewhere as we are
here,” said Lydgate still more angrily.
“If we are to be in that position it will be entirely your own doing,
Tertius,” said Rosamond, turning round to speak with the fullest
conviction. “You will not behave as you ought to do to your own family.
You offended Captain Lydgate. Sir Godwin was very kind to me when we
were at Quallingham, and I am sure if you showed proper regard to him
and told him your affairs, he would do anything for you. But rather
than that, you like giving up our house and furniture to Mr. Ned
Plymdale.”
There was something like fierceness in Lydgate’s eyes, as he answered
with new violence, “Well, then, if you will have it so, I do like it. I
admit that I like it better than making a fool of myself by going to
beg where it’s of no use. Understand then, that it is what I _like to
do._”
There was a tone in the last sentence which was equivalent to the
clutch of his strong hand on Rosamond’s delicate arm. But for all that,
his will was not a whit stronger than hers. She immediately walked out
of the room in silence, but with an intense determination to hinder
what Lydgate liked to do.
He went out of the house, but as his blood cooled he felt that the
chief result of the discussion was a deposit of dread within him at the
idea of opening with his wife in future subjects which might again urge
him to violent speech. It was as if a fracture in delicate crystal had
begun, and he was afraid of any movement that might make it fatal. His
marriage would be a mere piece of bitter irony if they could not go on
loving each other. He had long ago made up his mind to what he thought
was her negative character—her want of sensibility, which showed itself
in disregard both of his specific wishes and of his general aims. The
first great disappointment had been borne: the tender devotedness and
docile adoration of the ideal wife must be renounced, and life must be
taken up on a lower stage of expectation, as it is by men who have lost
their limbs. But the real wife had not only her claims, she had still a
hold on his heart, and it was his intense desire that the hold should
remain strong. In marriage, the certainty, “She will never love me
much,” is easier to bear than the fear, “I shall love her no more.”
Hence, after that outburst, his inward effort was entirely to excuse
her, and to blame the hard circumstances which were partly his fault.
He tried that evening, by petting her, to heal the wound he had made in
the morning, and it was not in Rosamond’s nature to be repellent or
sulky; indeed, she welcomed the signs that her husband loved her and
was under control. But this was something quite distinct from loving
_him_. Lydgate would not have chosen soon to recur to the plan of
parting with the house; he was resolved to carry it out, and say as
little more about it as possible. But Rosamond herself touched on it at
breakfast by saying, mildly—
“Have you spoken to Trumbull yet?”
“No,” said Lydgate, “but I shall call on him as I go by this morning.
No time must be lost.” He took Rosamond’s question as a sign that she
withdrew her inward opposition, and kissed her head caressingly when he
got up to go away.
As soon as it was late enough to make a call, Rosamond went to Mrs.
Plymdale, Mr. Ned’s mother, and entered with pretty congratulations
into the subject of the coming marriage. Mrs. Plymdale’s maternal view
was, that Rosamond might possibly now have retrospective glimpses of