Middlemarch
enough for him, he was forced to take Old Harry into his counsel, and
Old Harry’s been too many for him.”
“Ay, ay, he’s a ’complice you can’t send out o’ the country,” said Mr.
Crabbe, the glazier, who gathered much news and groped among it dimly.
“But by what I can make out, there’s them says Bulstrode was for
running away, for fear o’ being found out, before now.”
“He’ll be drove away, whether or no,” said Mr. Dill, the barber, who
had just dropped in. “I shaved Fletcher, Hawley’s clerk, this
morning—he’s got a bad finger—and he says they’re all of one mind to
get rid of Bulstrode. Mr. Thesiger is turned against him, and wants him
out o’ the parish. And there’s gentlemen in this town says they’d as
soon dine with a fellow from the hulks. ‘And a deal sooner I would,’
says Fletcher; ‘for what’s more against one’s stomach than a man coming
and making himself bad company with his religion, and giving out as the
Ten Commandments are not enough for him, and all the while he’s worse
than half the men at the tread-mill?’ Fletcher said so himself.”
“It’ll be a bad thing for the town though, if Bulstrode’s money goes
out of it,” said Mr. Limp, quaveringly.
“Ah, there’s better folks spend their money worse,” said a firm-voiced
dyer, whose crimson hands looked out of keeping with his good-natured
face.
“But he won’t keep his money, by what I can make out,” said the
glazier. “Don’t they say as there’s somebody can strip it off him? By
what I can understan’, they could take every penny off him, if they
went to lawing.”
“No such thing!” said the barber, who felt himself a little above his
company at Dollop’s, but liked it none the worse. “Fletcher says it’s
no such thing. He says they might prove over and over again whose child
this young Ladislaw was, and they’d do no more than if they proved I
came out of the Fens—he couldn’t touch a penny.”
“Look you there now!” said Mrs. Dollop, indignantly. “I thank the Lord
he took my children to Himself, if that’s all the law can do for the
motherless. Then by that, it’s o’ no use who your father and mother is.
But as to listening to what one lawyer says without asking another—I
wonder at a man o’ your cleverness, Mr. Dill. It’s well known there’s
always two sides, if no more; else who’d go to law, I should like to
know? It’s a poor tale, with all the law as there is up and down, if
it’s no use proving whose child you are. Fletcher may say that if he
likes, but I say, don’t Fletcher _me_!”
Mr. Dill affected to laugh in a complimentary way at Mrs. Dollop, as a
woman who was more than a match for the lawyers; being disposed to
submit to much twitting from a landlady who had a long score against
him.
“If they come to lawing, and it’s all true as folks say, there’s more
to be looked to nor money,” said the glazier. “There’s this poor
creetur as is dead and gone; by what I can make out, he’d seen the day
when he was a deal finer gentleman nor Bulstrode.”
“Finer gentleman! I’ll warrant him,” said Mrs. Dollop; “and a far
personabler man, by what I can hear. As I said when Mr. Baldwin, the
tax-gatherer, comes in, a-standing where you sit, and says, ‘Bulstrode
got all his money as he brought into this town by thieving and
swindling,’—I said, ‘You don’t make me no wiser, Mr. Baldwin: it’s set
my blood a-creeping to look at him ever sin’ here he came into
Slaughter Lane a-wanting to buy the house over my head: folks don’t
look the color o’ the dough-tub and stare at you as if they wanted to
see into your backbone for nothingk.’ That was what I said, and Mr.
Baldwin can bear me witness.”
“And in the rights of it too,” said Mr. Crabbe. “For by what I can make
out, this Raffles, as they call him, was a lusty, fresh-colored man as
you’d wish to see, and the best o’ company—though dead he lies in
Lowick churchyard sure enough; and by what I can understan’, there’s
them knows more than they _should_ know about how he got there.”
“I’ll believe you!” said Mrs. Dollop, with a touch of scorn at Mr.
Crabbe’s apparent dimness. “When a man’s been ’ticed to a lone house,
and there’s them can pay for hospitals and nurses for half the
country-side choose to be sitters-up night and day, and nobody to come
near but a doctor as is known to stick at nothingk, and as poor as he
can hang together, and after that so flush o’ money as he can pay off
Mr. Byles the butcher as his bill has been running on for the best o’
joints since last Michaelmas was a twelvemonth—I don’t want anybody to
come and tell me as there’s been more going on nor the Prayer-book’s
got a service for—I don’t want to stand winking and blinking and
thinking.”
Mrs. Dollop looked round with the air of a landlady accustomed to
dominate her company. There was a chorus of adhesion from the more
courageous; but Mr. Limp, after taking a draught, placed his flat hands
together and pressed them hard between his knees, looking down at them
with blear-eyed contemplation, as if the scorching power of Mrs.
Dollop’s speech had quite dried up and nullified his wits until they
could be brought round again by further moisture.
“Why shouldn’t they dig the man up and have the Crowner?” said the
dyer. “It’s been done many and many’s the time. If there’s been foul
play they might find it out.”
“Not they, Mr. Jonas!” said Mrs Dollop, emphatically. “I know what
doctors are. They’re a deal too cunning to be found out. And this
Doctor Lydgate that’s been for cutting up everybody before the breath
was well out o’ their body—it’s plain enough what use he wanted to make
o’ looking into respectable people’s insides. He knows drugs, you may
be sure, as you can neither smell nor see, neither before they’re
swallowed nor after. Why, I’ve seen drops myself ordered by Doctor
Gambit, as is our club doctor and a good charikter, and has brought
more live children into the world nor ever another i’ Middlemarch—I say
I’ve seen drops myself as made no difference whether they was in the
glass or out, and yet have griped you the next day. So I’ll leave your
own sense to judge. Don’t tell me! All I say is, it’s a mercy they
didn’t take this Doctor Lydgate on to our club. There’s many a mother’s
child might ha’ rued it.”
The heads of this discussion at “Dollop’s” had been the common theme
among all classes in the town, had been carried to Lowick Parsonage on
one side and to Tipton Grange on the other, had come fully to the ears
of the Vincy family, and had been discussed with sad reference to “poor
Harriet” by all Mrs. Bulstrode’s friends, before Lydgate knew
distinctly why people were looking strangely at him, and before
Bulstrode himself suspected the betrayal of his secrets. He had not
been accustomed to very cordial relations with his neighbors, and hence
he could not miss the signs of cordiality; moreover, he had been taking
journeys on business of various kinds, having now made up his mind that
he need not quit Middlemarch, and feeling able consequently to
determine on matters which he had before left in suspense.
“We will make a journey to Cheltenham in the course of a month or two,”
he had said to his wife. “There are great spiritual advantages to be
had in that town along with the air and the waters, and six weeks there
will be eminently refreshing to us.”
He really believed in the spiritual advantages, and meant that his life
henceforth should be the more devoted because of those later sins which
he represented to himself as hypothetic, praying hypothetically for
their pardon:—“if I have herein transgressed.”
As to the Hospital, he avoided saying anything further to Lydgate,
fearing to manifest a too sudden change of plans immediately on the
death of Raffles. In his secret soul he believed that Lydgate suspected
his orders to have been intentionally disobeyed, and suspecting this he
must also suspect a motive. But nothing had been betrayed to him as to
the history of Raffles, and Bulstrode was anxious not to do anything
which would give emphasis to his undefined suspicions. As to any
certainty that a particular method of treatment would either save or
kill, Lydgate himself was constantly arguing against such dogmatism; he
had no right to speak, and he had every motive for being silent. Hence
Bulstrode felt himself providentially secured. The only incident he had
strongly winced under had been an occasional encounter with Caleb
Garth, who, however, had raised his hat with mild gravity.
Meanwhile, on the part of the principal townsmen a strong determination
was growing against him.
A meeting was to be held in the Town-Hall on a sanitary question which
had risen into pressing importance by the occurrence of a cholera case
in the town. Since the Act of Parliament, which had been hurriedly
passed, authorizing assessments for sanitary measures, there had been a
Board for the superintendence of such measures appointed in
Middlemarch, and much cleansing and preparation had been concurred in
by Whigs and Tories. The question now was, whether a piece of ground
outside the town should be secured as a burial-ground by means of
assessment or by private subscription. The meeting was to be open, and
almost everybody of importance in the town was expected to be there.
Mr. Bulstrode was a member of the Board, and just before twelve o’clock
he started from the Bank with the intention of urging the plan of
private subscription. Under the hesitation of his projects, he had for
some time kept himself in the background, and he felt that he should
this morning resume his old position as a man of action and influence
in the public affairs of the town where he expected to end his days.
Among the various persons going in the same direction, he saw Lydgate;
they joined, talked over the object of the meeting, and entered it
together.
It seemed that everybody of mark had been earlier than they. But there
were still spaces left near the head of the large central table, and
they made their way thither. Mr. Farebrother sat opposite, not far from
Mr. Hawley; all the medical men were there; Mr. Thesiger was in the
chair, and Mr. Brooke of Tipton was on his right hand.
Lydgate noticed a peculiar interchange of glances when he and Bulstrode
took their seats.
After the business had been fully opened by the chairman, who pointed
out the advantages of purchasing by subscription a piece of ground
large enough to be ultimately used as a general cemetery, Mr.
Bulstrode, whose rather high-pitched but subdued and fluent voice the
town was used to at meetings of this sort, rose and asked leave to
deliver his opinion. Lydgate could see again the peculiar interchange
of glances before Mr. Hawley started up, and said in his firm resonant
voice, “Mr. Chairman, I request that before any one delivers his
opinion on this point I may be permitted to speak on a question of
public feeling, which not only by myself, but by many gentlemen
present, is regarded as preliminary.”
Mr. Hawley’s mode of speech, even when public decorum repressed his
“awful language,” was formidable in its curtness and self-possession.
Mr. Thesiger sanctioned the request, Mr. Bulstrode sat down, and Mr.
Hawley continued.
“In what I have to say, Mr. Chairman, I am not speaking simply on my
own behalf: I am speaking with the concurrence and at the express
request of no fewer than eight of my fellow-townsmen, who are
immediately around us. It is our united sentiment that Mr. Bulstrode
should be called upon—and I do now call upon him—to resign public
positions which he holds not simply as a tax-payer, but as a gentleman
among gentlemen. There are practices and there are acts which, owing to
circumstances, the law cannot visit, though they may be worse than many
things which are legally punishable. Honest men and gentlemen, if they