Middlemarch
This had happened before the party on New Year’s Day, and no answer had
yet come from Sir Godwin. But on the morning of that day Lydgate had to
learn that Rosamond had revoked his order to Borthrop Trumbull. Feeling
it necessary that she should be gradually accustomed to the idea of
their quitting the house in Lowick Gate, he overcame his reluctance to
speak to her again on the subject, and when they were breakfasting
said—
“I shall try to see Trumbull this morning, and tell him to advertise
the house in the ‘Pioneer’ and the ‘Trumpet.’ If the thing were
advertised, some one might be inclined to take it who would not
otherwise have thought of a change. In these country places many people
go on in their old houses when their families are too large for them,
for want of knowing where they can find another. And Trumbull seems to
have got no bite at all.”
Rosamond knew that the inevitable moment was come. “I ordered Trumbull
not to inquire further,” she said, with a careful calmness which was
evidently defensive.
Lydgate stared at her in mute amazement. Only half an hour before he
had been fastening up her plaits for her, and talking the “little
language” of affection, which Rosamond, though not returning it,
accepted as if she had been a serene and lovely image, now and then
miraculously dimpling towards her votary. With such fibres still astir
in him, the shock he received could not at once be distinctly anger; it
was confused pain. He laid down the knife and fork with which he was
carving, and throwing himself back in his chair, said at last, with a
cool irony in his tone—
“May I ask when and why you did so?”
“When I knew that the Plymdales had taken a house, I called to tell him
not to mention ours to them; and at the same time I told him not to let
the affair go on any further. I knew that it would be very injurious to
you if it were known that you wished to part with your house and
furniture, and I had a very strong objection to it. I think that was
reason enough.”
“It was of no consequence then that I had told you imperative reasons
of another kind; of no consequence that I had come to a different
conclusion, and given an order accordingly?” said Lydgate, bitingly,
the thunder and lightning gathering about his brow and eyes.
The effect of any one’s anger on Rosamond had always been to make her
shrink in cold dislike, and to become all the more calmly correct, in
the conviction that she was not the person to misbehave whatever others
might do. She replied—
“I think I had a perfect right to speak on a subject which concerns me
at least as much as you.”
“Clearly—you had a right to speak, but only to me. You had no right to
contradict my orders secretly, and treat me as if I were a fool,” said
Lydgate, in the same tone as before. Then with some added scorn, “Is it
possible to make you understand what the consequences will be? Is it of
any use for me to tell you again why we must try to part with the
house?”
“It is not necessary for you to tell me again,” said Rosamond, in a
voice that fell and trickled like cold water-drops. “I remembered what
you said. You spoke just as violently as you do now. But that does not
alter my opinion that you ought to try every other means rather than
take a step which is so painful to me. And as to advertising the house,
I think it would be perfectly degrading to you.”
“And suppose I disregard your opinion as you disregard mine?”
“You can do so, of course. But I think you ought to have told me before
we were married that you would place me in the worst position, rather
than give up your own will.”
Lydgate did not speak, but tossed his head on one side, and twitched
the corners of his mouth in despair. Rosamond, seeing that he was not
looking at her, rose and set his cup of coffee before him; but he took
no notice of it, and went on with an inward drama and argument,
occasionally moving in his seat, resting one arm on the table, and
rubbing his hand against his hair. There was a conflux of emotions and
thoughts in him that would not let him either give thorough way to his
anger or persevere with simple rigidity of resolve. Rosamond took
advantage of his silence.
“When we were married everyone felt that your position was very high. I
could not have imagined then that you would want to sell our furniture,
and take a house in Bride Street, where the rooms are like cages. If we
are to live in that way let us at least leave Middlemarch.”
“These would be very strong considerations,” said Lydgate, half
ironically—still there was a withered paleness about his lips as he
looked at his coffee, and did not drink—“these would be very strong
considerations if I did not happen to be in debt.”
“Many persons must have been in debt in the same way, but if they are
respectable, people trust them. I am sure I have heard papa say that
the Torbits were in debt, and they went on very well. It cannot be good
to act rashly,” said Rosamond, with serene wisdom.
Lydgate sat paralyzed by opposing impulses: since no reasoning he could
apply to Rosamond seemed likely to conquer her assent, he wanted to
smash and grind some object on which he could at least produce an
impression, or else to tell her brutally that he was master, and she
must obey. But he not only dreaded the effect of such extremities on
their mutual life—he had a growing dread of Rosamond’s quiet elusive
obstinacy, which would not allow any assertion of power to be final;
and again, she had touched him in a spot of keenest feeling by implying
that she had been deluded with a false vision of happiness in marrying
him. As to saying that he was master, it was not the fact. The very
resolution to which he had wrought himself by dint of logic and
honorable pride was beginning to relax under her torpedo contact. He
swallowed half his cup of coffee, and then rose to go.
“I may at least request that you will not go to Trumbull at
present—until it has been seen that there are no other means,” said
Rosamond. Although she was not subject to much fear, she felt it safer
not to betray that she had written to Sir Godwin. “Promise me that you
will not go to him for a few weeks, or without telling me.”
Lydgate gave a short laugh. “I think it is I who should exact a promise
that you will do nothing without telling me,” he said, turning his eyes
sharply upon her, and then moving to the door.
“You remember that we are going to dine at papa’s,” said Rosamond,
wishing that he should turn and make a more thorough concession to her.
But he only said “Oh yes,” impatiently, and went away. She held it to
be very odious in him that he did not think the painful propositions he
had had to make to her were enough, without showing so unpleasant a
temper. And when she put the moderate request that he would defer going
to Trumbull again, it was cruel in him not to assure her of what he
meant to do. She was convinced of her having acted in every way for the
best; and each grating or angry speech of Lydgate’s served only as an
addition to the register of offences in her mind. Poor Rosamond for
months had begun to associate her husband with feelings of
disappointment, and the terribly inflexible relation of marriage had
lost its charm of encouraging delightful dreams. It had freed her from
the disagreeables of her father’s house, but it had not given her
everything that she had wished and hoped. The Lydgate with whom she had
been in love had been a group of airy conditions for her, most of which
had disappeared, while their place had been taken by every-day details
which must be lived through slowly from hour to hour, not floated
through with a rapid selection of favorable aspects. The habits of
Lydgate’s profession, his home preoccupation with scientific subjects,
which seemed to her almost like a morbid vampire’s taste, his peculiar
views of things which had never entered into the dialogue of
courtship—all these continually alienating influences, even without the
fact of his having placed himself at a disadvantage in the town, and
without that first shock of revelation about Dover’s debt, would have
made his presence dull to her. There was another presence which ever
since the early days of her marriage, until four months ago, had been
an agreeable excitement, but that was gone: Rosamond would not confess
to herself how much the consequent blank had to do with her utter
ennui; and it seemed to her (perhaps she was right) that an invitation
to Quallingham, and an opening for Lydgate to settle elsewhere than in
Middlemarch—in London, or somewhere likely to be free from
unpleasantness—would satisfy her quite well, and make her indifferent
to the absence of Will Ladislaw, towards whom she felt some resentment
for his exaltation of Mrs. Casaubon.
That was the state of things with Lydgate and Rosamond on the New
Year’s Day when they dined at her father’s, she looking mildly neutral
towards him in remembrance of his ill-tempered behavior at breakfast,
and he carrying a much deeper effect from the inward conflict in which
that morning scene was only one of many epochs. His flushed effort
while talking to Mr. Farebrother—his effort after the cynical pretence
that all ways of getting money are essentially the same, and that
chance has an empire which reduces choice to a fool’s illusion—was but
the symptom of a wavering resolve, a benumbed response to the old
stimuli of enthusiasm.
What was he to do? He saw even more keenly than Rosamond did the
dreariness of taking her into the small house in Bride Street, where
she would have scanty furniture around her and discontent within: a
life of privation and life with Rosamond were two images which had
become more and more irreconcilable ever since the threat of privation
had disclosed itself. But even if his resolves had forced the two
images into combination, the useful preliminaries to that hard change
were not visibly within reach. And though he had not given the promise
which his wife had asked for, he did not go again to Trumbull. He even
began to think of taking a rapid journey to the North and seeing Sir
Godwin. He had once believed that nothing would urge him into making an
application for money to his uncle, but he had not then known the full
pressure of alternatives yet more disagreeable. He could not depend on
the effect of a letter; it was only in an interview, however
disagreeable this might be to himself, that he could give a thorough
explanation and could test the effectiveness of kinship. No sooner had
Lydgate begun to represent this step to himself as the easiest than
there was a reaction of anger that he—he who had long ago determined to
live aloof from such abject calculations, such self-interested anxiety
about the inclinations and the pockets of men with whom he had been
proud to have no aims in common—should have fallen not simply to their
level, but to the level of soliciting them.
CHAPTER LXV.
One of us two must bowen douteless,
And, sith a man is more reasonable
Than woman is, ye [men] moste be suffrable.
—CHAUCER: _Canterbury Tales_.
The bias of human nature to be slow in correspondence triumphs even
over the present quickening in the general pace of things: what wonder
then that in 1832 old Sir Godwin Lydgate was slow to write a letter
which was of consequence to others rather than to himself? Nearly three
weeks of the new year were gone, and Rosamond, awaiting an answer to
her winning appeal, was every day disappointed. Lydgate, in total
ignorance of her expectations, was seeing the bills come in, and
feeling that Dover’s use of his advantage over other creditors was
imminent. He had never mentioned to Rosamond his brooding purpose of
going to Quallingham: he did not want to admit what would appear to her