Middlemarch
with all her faults, few women are better. From a girl she had the
neatest ways, and was always good-hearted, and as open as the day. You
might look into her drawers when you would—always the same. And so she
has brought up Kate and Ellen. You may think how hard it will be for
her to go among foreigners.”
“The doctor says that is what he should recommend the Lydgates to do,”
said Mrs. Sprague. “He says Lydgate ought to have kept among the
French.”
“That would suit _her_ well enough, I dare say,” said Mrs. Plymdale;
“there is that kind of lightness about her. But she got that from her
mother; she never got it from her aunt Bulstrode, who always gave her
good advice, and to my knowledge would rather have had her marry
elsewhere.”
Mrs. Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some complication of
feeling. There had been not only her intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode, but
also a profitable business relation of the great Plymdale dyeing house
with Mr. Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have inclined her to
desire that the mildest view of his character should be the true one,
but on the other, made her the more afraid of seeming to palliate his
culpability. Again, the late alliance of her family with the Tollers
had brought her in connection with the best circle, which gratified her
in every direction except in the inclination to those serious views
which she believed to be the best in another sense. The sharp little
woman’s conscience was somewhat troubled in the adjustment of these
opposing “bests,” and of her griefs and satisfactions under late
events, which were likely to humble those who needed humbling, but also
to fall heavily on her old friend whose faults she would have preferred
seeing on a background of prosperity.
Poor Mrs. Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further shaken by the
oncoming tread of calamity than in the busier stirring of that secret
uneasiness which had always been present in her since the last visit of
Raffles to The Shrubs. That the hateful man had come ill to Stone
Court, and that her husband had chosen to remain there and watch over
him, she allowed to be explained by the fact that Raffles had been
employed and aided in earlier-days, and that this made a tie of
benevolence towards him in his degraded helplessness; and she had been
since then innocently cheered by her husband’s more hopeful speech
about his own health and ability to continue his attention to business.
The calm was disturbed when Lydgate had brought him home ill from the
meeting, and in spite of comforting assurances during the next few
days, she cried in private from the conviction that her husband was not
suffering from bodily illness merely, but from something that afflicted
his mind. He would not allow her to read to him, and scarcely to sit
with him, alleging nervous susceptibility to sounds and movements; yet
she suspected that in shutting himself up in his private room he wanted
to be busy with his papers. Something, she felt sure, had happened.
Perhaps it was some great loss of money; and she was kept in the dark.
Not daring to question her husband, she said to Lydgate, on the fifth
day after the meeting, when she had not left home except to go to
church—
“Mr. Lydgate, pray be open with me: I like to know the truth. Has
anything happened to Mr. Bulstrode?”
“Some little nervous shock,” said Lydgate, evasively. He felt that it
was not for him to make the painful revelation.
“But what brought it on?” said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking directly at him
with her large dark eyes.
“There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms,” said
Lydgate. “Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people in proportion
to the delicacy of their systems. It is often impossible to account for
the precise moment of an attack—or rather, to say why the strength
gives way at a particular moment.”
Mrs. Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer. There remained in
her the belief that some calamity had befallen her husband, of which
she was to be kept in ignorance; and it was in her nature strongly to
object to such concealment. She begged leave for her daughters to sit
with their father, and drove into the town to pay some visits,
conjecturing that if anything were known to have gone wrong in Mr.
Bulstrode’s affairs, she should see or hear some sign of it.
She called on Mrs. Thesiger, who was not at home, and then drove to
Mrs. Hackbutt’s on the other side of the churchyard. Mrs. Hackbutt saw
her coming from an up-stairs window, and remembering her former alarm
lest she should meet Mrs. Bulstrode, felt almost bound in consistency
to send word that she was not at home; but against that, there was a
sudden strong desire within her for the excitement of an interview in
which she was quite determined not to make the slightest allusion to
what was in her mind.
Hence Mrs. Bulstrode was shown into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Hackbutt
went to her, with more tightness of lip and rubbing of her hands than
was usually observable in her, these being precautions adopted against
freedom of speech. She was resolved not to ask how Mr. Bulstrode was.
“I have not been anywhere except to church for nearly a week,” said
Mrs. Bulstrode, after a few introductory remarks. “But Mr. Bulstrode
was taken so ill at the meeting on Thursday that I have not liked to
leave the house.”
Mrs. Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other
held against her chest, and let her eyes ramble over the pattern on the
rug.
“Was Mr. Hackbutt at the meeting?” persevered Mrs. Bulstrode.
“Yes, he was,” said Mrs. Hackbutt, with the same attitude. “The land is
to be bought by subscription, I believe.”
“Let us hope that there will be no more cases of cholera to be buried
in it,” said Mrs. Bulstrode. “It is an awful visitation. But I always
think Middlemarch a very healthy spot. I suppose it is being used to it
from a child; but I never saw the town I should like to live at better,
and especially our end.”
“I am sure I should be glad that you always should live at Middlemarch,
Mrs. Bulstrode,” said Mrs. Hackbutt, with a slight sigh. “Still, we
must learn to resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be cast. Though I
am sure there will always be people in this town who will wish you
well.”
Mrs. Hackbutt longed to say, “if you take my advice you will part from
your husband,” but it seemed clear to her that the poor woman knew
nothing of the thunder ready to bolt on her head, and she herself could
do no more than prepare her a little. Mrs. Bulstrode felt suddenly
rather chill and trembling: there was evidently something unusual
behind this speech of Mrs. Hackbutt’s; but though she had set out with
the desire to be fully informed, she found herself unable now to pursue
her brave purpose, and turning the conversation by an inquiry about the
young Hackbutts, she soon took her leave saying that she was going to
see Mrs. Plymdale. On her way thither she tried to imagine that there
might have been some unusually warm sparring at the meeting between Mr.
Bulstrode and some of his frequent opponents—perhaps Mr. Hackbutt might
have been one of them. That would account for everything.
But when she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that comforting
explanation seemed no longer tenable. “Selina” received her with a
pathetic affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers on
the commonest topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary
quarrel of which the most important consequence was a perturbation of
Mr. Bulstrode’s health. Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought that she
would sooner question Mrs. Plymdale than any one else; but she found to
her surprise that an old friend is not always the person whom it is
easiest to make a confidant of: there was the barrier of remembered
communication under other circumstances—there was the dislike of being
pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow her the
superiority. For certain words of mysterious appropriateness that Mrs.
Plymdale let fall about her resolution never to turn her back on her
friends, convinced Mrs. Bulstrode that what had happened must be some
kind of misfortune, and instead of being able to say with her native
directness, “What is it that you have in your mind?” she found herself
anxious to get away before she had heard anything more explicit. She
began to have an agitating certainty that the misfortune was something
more than the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitive to the fact
that Selina now, just as Mrs. Hackbutt had done before, avoided
noticing what she said about her husband, as they would have avoided
noticing a personal blemish.
She said good-by with nervous haste, and told the coachman to drive to
Mr. Vincy’s warehouse. In that short drive her dread gathered so much
force from the sense of darkness, that when she entered the private
counting-house where her brother sat at his desk, her knees trembled
and her usually florid face was deathly pale. Something of the same
effect was produced in him by the sight of her: he rose from his seat
to meet her, took her by the hand, and said, with his impulsive
rashness—
“God help you, Harriet! you know all.”
That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after. It contained
that concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion reveals
the bias of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which will
end an intermediate struggle. Without that memory of Raffles she might
still have thought only of monetary ruin, but now along with her
brother’s look and words there darted into her mind the idea of some
guilt in her husband—then, under the working of terror came the image
of her husband exposed to disgrace—and then, after an instant of
scorching shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world, with one
leap of her heart she was at his side in mournful but unreproaching
fellowship with shame and isolation. All this went on within her in a
mere flash of time—while she sank into the chair, and raised her eyes
to her brother, who stood over her. “I know nothing, Walter. What is
it?” she said, faintly.
He told her everything, very inartificially, in slow fragments, making
her aware that the scandal went much beyond proof, especially as to the
end of Raffles.
“People will talk,” he said. “Even if a man has been acquitted by a
jury, they’ll talk, and nod and wink—and as far as the world goes, a
man might often as well be guilty as not. It’s a breakdown blow, and it
damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode. I don’t pretend to say what is
the truth. I only wish we had never heard the name of either Bulstrode
or Lydgate. You’d better have been a Vincy all your life, and so had
Rosamond.” Mrs. Bulstrode made no reply.
“But you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet. People don’t blame
_you_. And I’ll stand by you whatever you make up your mind to do,”
said the brother, with rough but well-meaning affectionateness.
“Give me your arm to the carriage, Walter,” said Mrs. Bulstrode. “I
feel very weak.”
And when she got home she was obliged to say to her daughter, “I am not
well, my dear; I must go and lie down. Attend to your papa. Leave me in
quiet. I shall take no dinner.”
She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her
maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk
steadily to the place allotted her. A new searching light had fallen on
her husband’s character, and she could not judge him leniently: the
twenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated him by
virtue of his concealments came back with particulars that made them
seem an odious deceit. He had married her with that bad past life
hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his innocence