Middlemarch
separate from that of the Infirmary depends on you, or, at least, on
the good which you are encouraged to hope for from having it under your
control. And I am sure you will not refuse to tell me exactly what you
think.”
“You want to decide whether you should give a generous support to the
Hospital,” said Lydgate. “I cannot conscientiously advise you to do it
in dependence on any activity of mine. I may be obliged to leave the
town.”
He spoke curtly, feeling the ache of despair as to his being able to
carry out any purpose that Rosamond had set her mind against.
“Not because there is no one to believe in you?” said Dorothea, pouring
out her words in clearness from a full heart. “I know the unhappy
mistakes about you. I knew them from the first moment to be mistakes.
You have never done anything vile. You would not do anything
dishonorable.”
It was the first assurance of belief in him that had fallen on
Lydgate’s ears. He drew a deep breath, and said, “Thank you.” He could
say no more: it was something very new and strange in his life that
these few words of trust from a woman should be so much to him.
“I beseech you to tell me how everything was,” said Dorothea,
fearlessly. “I am sure that the truth would clear you.”
Lydgate started up from his chair and went towards the window,
forgetting where he was. He had so often gone over in his mind the
possibility of explaining everything without aggravating appearances
that would tell, perhaps unfairly, against Bulstrode, and had so often
decided against it—he had so often said to himself that his assertions
would not change people’s impressions—that Dorothea’s words sounded
like a temptation to do something which in his soberness he had
pronounced to be unreasonable.
“Tell me, pray,” said Dorothea, with simple earnestness; “then we can
consult together. It is wicked to let people think evil of any one
falsely, when it can be hindered.”
Lydgate turned, remembering where he was, and saw Dorothea’s face
looking up at him with a sweet trustful gravity. The presence of a
noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes
the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger,
quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in
the wholeness of our character. That influence was beginning to act on
Lydgate, who had for many days been seeing all life as one who is
dragged and struggling amid the throng. He sat down again, and felt
that he was recovering his old self in the consciousness that he was
with one who believed in it.
“I don’t want,” he said, “to bear hard on Bulstrode, who has lent me
money of which I was in need—though I would rather have gone without it
now. He is hunted down and miserable, and has only a poor thread of
life in him. But I should like to tell you everything. It will be a
comfort to me to speak where belief has gone beforehand, and where I
shall not seem to be offering assertions of my own honesty. You will
feel what is fair to another, as you feel what is fair to me.”
“Do trust me,” said Dorothea; “I will not repeat anything without your
leave. But at the very least, I could say that you have made all the
circumstances clear to me, and that I know you are not in any way
guilty. Mr. Farebrother would believe me, and my uncle, and Sir James
Chettam. Nay, there are persons in Middlemarch to whom I could go;
although they don’t know much of me, they would believe me. They would
know that I could have no other motive than truth and justice. I would
take any pains to clear you. I have very little to do. There is nothing
better that I can do in the world.”
Dorothea’s voice, as she made this childlike picture of what she would
do, might have been almost taken as a proof that she could do it
effectively. The searching tenderness of her woman’s tones seemed made
for a defence against ready accusers. Lydgate did not stay to think
that she was Quixotic: he gave himself up, for the first time in his
life, to the exquisite sense of leaning entirely on a generous
sympathy, without any check of proud reserve. And he told her
everything, from the time when, under the pressure of his difficulties,
he unwillingly made his first application to Bulstrode; gradually, in
the relief of speaking, getting into a more thorough utterance of what
had gone on in his mind—entering fully into the fact that his treatment
of the patient was opposed to the dominant practice, into his doubts at
the last, his ideal of medical duty, and his uneasy consciousness that
the acceptance of the money had made some difference in his private
inclination and professional behavior, though not in his fulfilment of
any publicly recognized obligation.
“It has come to my knowledge since,” he added, “that Hawley sent some
one to examine the housekeeper at Stone Court, and she said that she
gave the patient all the opium in the phial I left, as well as a good
deal of brandy. But that would not have been opposed to ordinary
prescriptions, even of first-rate men. The suspicions against me had no
hold there: they are grounded on the knowledge that I took money, that
Bulstrode had strong motives for wishing the man to die, and that he
gave me the money as a bribe to concur in some malpractices or other
against the patient—that in any case I accepted a bribe to hold my
tongue. They are just the suspicions that cling the most obstinately,
because they lie in people’s inclination and can never be disproved.
How my orders came to be disobeyed is a question to which I don’t know
the answer. It is still possible that Bulstrode was innocent of any
criminal intention—even possible that he had nothing to do with the
disobedience, and merely abstained from mentioning it. But all that has
nothing to do with the public belief. It is one of those cases on which
a man is condemned on the ground of his character—it is believed that
he has committed a crime in some undefined way, because he had the
motive for doing it; and Bulstrode’s character has enveloped me,
because I took his money. I am simply blighted—like a damaged ear of
corn—the business is done and can’t be undone.”
“Oh, it is hard!” said Dorothea. “I understand the difficulty there is
in your vindicating yourself. And that all this should have come to you
who had meant to lead a higher life than the common, and to find out
better ways—I cannot bear to rest in this as unchangeable. I know you
meant that. I remember what you said to me when you first spoke to me
about the hospital. There is no sorrow I have thought more about than
that—to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.”
“Yes,” said Lydgate, feeling that here he had found room for the full
meaning of his grief. “I had some ambition. I meant everything to be
different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the
most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.”
“Suppose,” said Dorothea, meditatively,—“suppose we kept on the
Hospital according to the present plan, and you stayed here though only
with the friendship and support of a few, the evil feeling towards you
would gradually die out; there would come opportunities in which people
would be forced to acknowledge that they had been unjust to you,
because they would see that your purposes were pure. You may still win
a great fame like the Louis and Laennec I have heard you speak of, and
we shall all be proud of you,” she ended, with a smile.
“That might do if I had my old trust in myself,” said Lydgate,
mournfully. “Nothing galls me more than the notion of turning round and
running away before this slander, leaving it unchecked behind me.
Still, I can’t ask any one to put a great deal of money into a plan
which depends on me.”
“It would be quite worth my while,” said Dorothea, simply. “Only think.
I am very uncomfortable with my money, because they tell me I have too
little for any great scheme of the sort I like best, and yet I have too
much. I don’t know what to do. I have seven hundred a-year of my own
fortune, and nineteen hundred a-year that Mr. Casaubon left me, and
between three and four thousand of ready money in the bank. I wished to
raise money and pay it off gradually out of my income which I don’t
want, to buy land with and found a village which should be a school of
industry; but Sir James and my uncle have convinced me that the risk
would be too great. So you see that what I should most rejoice at would
be to have something good to do with my money: I should like it to make
other people’s lives better to them. It makes me very uneasy—coming all
to me who don’t want it.”
A smile broke through the gloom of Lydgate’s face. The childlike
grave-eyed earnestness with which Dorothea said all this was
irresistible—blent into an adorable whole with her ready understanding
of high experience. (Of lower experience such as plays a great part in
the world, poor Mrs. Casaubon had a very blurred shortsighted
knowledge, little helped by her imagination.) But she took the smile as
encouragement of her plan.
“I think you see now that you spoke too scrupulously,” she said, in a
tone of persuasion. “The hospital would be one good; and making your
life quite whole and well again would be another.”
Lydgate’s smile had died away. “You have the goodness as well as the
money to do all that; if it could be done,” he said. “But—”
He hesitated a little while, looking vaguely towards the window; and
she sat in silent expectation. At last he turned towards her and said
impetuously—
“Why should I not tell you?—you know what sort of bond marriage is. You
will understand everything.”
Dorothea felt her heart beginning to beat faster. Had he that sorrow
too? But she feared to say any word, and he went on immediately.
“It is impossible for me now to do anything—to take any step without
considering my wife’s happiness. The thing that I might like to do if I
were alone, is become impossible to me. I can’t see her miserable. She
married me without knowing what she was going into, and it might have
been better for her if she had not married me.”
“I know, I know—you could not give her pain, if you were not obliged to
do it,” said Dorothea, with keen memory of her own life.
“And she has set her mind against staying. She wishes to go. The
troubles she has had here have wearied her,” said Lydgate, breaking off
again, lest he should say too much.
“But when she saw the good that might come of staying—” said Dorothea,
remonstrantly, looking at Lydgate as if he had forgotten the reasons
which had just been considered. He did not speak immediately.
“She would not see it,” he said at last, curtly, feeling at first that
this statement must do without explanation. “And, indeed, I have lost
all spirit about carrying on my life here.” He paused a moment and
then, following the impulse to let Dorothea see deeper into the
difficulty of his life, he said, “The fact is, this trouble has come
upon her confusedly. We have not been able to speak to each other about
it. I am not sure what is in her mind about it: she may fear that I
have really done something base. It is my fault; I ought to be more
open. But I have been suffering cruelly.”
“May I go and see her?” said Dorothea, eagerly. “Would she accept my
sympathy? I would tell her that you have not been blamable before any
one’s judgment but your own. I would tell her that you shall be cleared
in every fair mind. I would cheer her heart. Will you ask her if I may
go to see her? I did see her once.”
“I am sure you may,” said Lydgate, seizing the proposition with some
hope. “She would feel honored—cheered, I think, by the proof that you
at least have some respect for me. I will not speak to her about your
coming—that she may not connect it with my wishes at all. I know very