Middlemarch
by their brevity when Dorothea had to interpret them: he felt that in
her mind he had found his highest estimate.
And he was right there. In the months since their parting Dorothea had
felt a delicious though sad repose in their relation to each other, as
one which was inwardly whole and without blemish. She had an active
force of antagonism within her, when the antagonism turned on the
defence either of plans or persons that she believed in; and the wrongs
which she felt that Will had received from her husband, and the
external conditions which to others were grounds for slighting him,
only gave the more tenacity to her affection and admiring judgment. And
now with the disclosures about Bulstrode had come another fact
affecting Will’s social position, which roused afresh Dorothea’s inward
resistance to what was said about him in that part of her world which
lay within park palings.
“Young Ladislaw the grandson of a thieving Jew pawnbroker” was a phrase
which had entered emphatically into the dialogues about the Bulstrode
business, at Lowick, Tipton, and Freshitt, and was a worse kind of
placard on poor Will’s back than the “Italian with white mice.” Upright
Sir James Chettam was convinced that his own satisfaction was righteous
when he thought with some complacency that here was an added league to
that mountainous distance between Ladislaw and Dorothea, which enabled
him to dismiss any anxiety in that direction as too absurd. And perhaps
there had been some pleasure in pointing Mr. Brooke’s attention to this
ugly bit of Ladislaw’s genealogy, as a fresh candle for him to see his
own folly by. Dorothea had observed the animus with which Will’s part
in the painful story had been recalled more than once; but she had
uttered no word, being checked now, as she had not been formerly in
speaking of Will, by the consciousness of a deeper relation between
them which must always remain in consecrated secrecy. But her silence
shrouded her resistant emotion into a more thorough glow; and this
misfortune in Will’s lot which, it seemed, others were wishing to fling
at his back as an opprobrium, only gave something more of enthusiasm to
her clinging thought.
She entertained no visions of their ever coming into nearer union, and
yet she had taken no posture of renunciation. She had accepted her
whole relation to Will very simply as part of her marriage sorrows, and
would have thought it very sinful in her to keep up an inward wail
because she was not completely happy, being rather disposed to dwell on
the superfluities of her lot. She could bear that the chief pleasures
of her tenderness should lie in memory, and the idea of marriage came
to her solely as a repulsive proposition from some suitor of whom she
at present knew nothing, but whose merits, as seen by her friends,
would be a source of torment to her:—“somebody who will manage your
property for you, my dear,” was Mr. Brooke’s attractive suggestion of
suitable characteristics. “I should like to manage it myself, if I knew
what to do with it,” said Dorothea. No—she adhered to her declaration
that she would never be married again, and in the long valley of her
life which looked so flat and empty of waymarks, guidance would come as
she walked along the road, and saw her fellow-passengers by the way.
This habitual state of feeling about Will Ladislaw had been strong in
all her waking hours since she had proposed to pay a visit to Mrs.
Lydgate, making a sort of background against which she saw Rosamond’s
figure presented to her without hindrances to her interest and
compassion. There was evidently some mental separation, some barrier to
complete confidence which had arisen between this wife and the husband
who had yet made her happiness a law to him. That was a trouble which
no third person must directly touch. But Dorothea thought with deep
pity of the loneliness which must have come upon Rosamond from the
suspicions cast on her husband; and there would surely be help in the
manifestation of respect for Lydgate and sympathy with her.
“I shall talk to her about her husband,” thought Dorothea, as she was
being driven towards the town. The clear spring morning, the scent of
the moist earth, the fresh leaves just showing their creased-up wealth
of greenery from out their half-opened sheaths, seemed part of the
cheerfulness she was feeling from a long conversation with Mr.
Farebrother, who had joyfully accepted the justifying explanation of
Lydgate’s conduct. “I shall take Mrs. Lydgate good news, and perhaps
she will like to talk to me and make a friend of me.”
Dorothea had another errand in Lowick Gate: it was about a new
fine-toned bell for the school-house, and as she had to get out of her
carriage very near to Lydgate’s, she walked thither across the street,
having told the coachman to wait for some packages. The street door was
open, and the servant was taking the opportunity of looking out at the
carriage which was pausing within sight when it became apparent to her
that the lady who “belonged to it” was coming towards her.
“Is Mrs. Lydgate at home?” said Dorothea.
“I’m not sure, my lady; I’ll see, if you’ll please to walk in,” said
Martha, a little confused on the score of her kitchen apron, but
collected enough to be sure that “mum” was not the right title for this
queenly young widow with a carriage and pair. “Will you please to walk
in, and I’ll go and see.”
“Say that I am Mrs. Casaubon,” said Dorothea, as Martha moved forward
intending to show her into the drawing-room and then to go up-stairs to
see if Rosamond had returned from her walk.
They crossed the broader part of the entrance-hall, and turned up the
passage which led to the garden. The drawing-room door was unlatched,
and Martha, pushing it without looking into the room, waited for Mrs.
Casaubon to enter and then turned away, the door having swung open and
swung back again without noise.
Dorothea had less of outward vision than usual this morning, being
filled with images of things as they had been and were going to be. She
found herself on the other side of the door without seeing anything
remarkable, but immediately she heard a voice speaking in low tones
which startled her as with a sense of dreaming in daylight, and
advancing unconsciously a step or two beyond the projecting slab of a
bookcase, she saw, in the terrible illumination of a certainty which
filled up all outlines, something which made her pause, motionless,
without self-possession enough to speak.
Seated with his back towards her on a sofa which stood against the wall
on a line with the door by which she had entered, she saw Will
Ladislaw: close by him and turned towards him with a flushed
tearfulness which gave a new brilliancy to her face sat Rosamond, her
bonnet hanging back, while Will leaning towards her clasped both her
upraised hands in his and spoke with low-toned fervor.
Rosamond in her agitated absorption had not noticed the silently
advancing figure; but when Dorothea, after the first immeasurable
instant of this vision, moved confusedly backward and found herself
impeded by some piece of furniture, Rosamond was suddenly aware of her
presence, and with a spasmodic movement snatched away her hands and
rose, looking at Dorothea who was necessarily arrested. Will Ladislaw,
starting up, looked round also, and meeting Dorothea’s eyes with a new
lightning in them, seemed changing to marble. But she immediately
turned them away from him to Rosamond and said in a firm voice—
“Excuse me, Mrs. Lydgate, the servant did not know that you were here.
I called to deliver an important letter for Mr. Lydgate, which I wished
to put into your own hands.”
She laid down the letter on the small table which had checked her
retreat, and then including Rosamond and Will in one distant glance and
bow, she went quickly out of the room, meeting in the passage the
surprised Martha, who said she was sorry the mistress was not at home,
and then showed the strange lady out with an inward reflection that
grand people were probably more impatient than others.
Dorothea walked across the street with her most elastic step and was
quickly in her carriage again.
“Drive on to Freshitt Hall,” she said to the coachman, and any one
looking at her might have thought that though she was paler than usual
she was never animated by a more self-possessed energy. And that was
really her experience. It was as if she had drunk a great draught of
scorn that stimulated her beyond the susceptibility to other feelings.
She had seen something so far below her belief, that her emotions
rushed back from it and made an excited throng without an object. She
needed something active to turn her excitement out upon. She felt power
to walk and work for a day, without meat or drink. And she would carry
out the purpose with which she had started in the morning, of going to
Freshitt and Tipton to tell Sir James and her uncle all that she wished
them to know about Lydgate, whose married loneliness under his trial
now presented itself to her with new significance, and made her more
ardent in readiness to be his champion. She had never felt anything
like this triumphant power of indignation in the struggle of her
married life, in which there had always been a quickly subduing pang;
and she took it as a sign of new strength.
“Dodo, how very bright your eyes are!” said Celia, when Sir James was
gone out of the room. “And you don’t see anything you look at, Arthur
or anything. You are going to do something uncomfortable, I know. Is it
all about Mr. Lydgate, or has something else happened?” Celia had been
used to watch her sister with expectation.
“Yes, dear, a great many things have happened,” said Dodo, in her full
tones.
“I wonder what,” said Celia, folding her arms cozily and leaning
forward upon them.
“Oh, all the troubles of all people on the face of the earth,” said
Dorothea, lifting her arms to the back of her head.
“Dear me, Dodo, are you going to have a scheme for them?” said Celia, a
little uneasy at this Hamlet-like raving.
But Sir James came in again, ready to accompany Dorothea to the Grange,
and she finished her expedition well, not swerving in her resolution
until she descended at her own door.
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
“Would it were yesterday and I i’ the grave,
With her sweet faith above for monument.”
Rosamond and Will stood motionless—they did not know how long—he
looking towards the spot where Dorothea had stood, and she looking
towards him with doubt. It seemed an endless time to Rosamond, in whose
inmost soul there was hardly so much annoyance as gratification from
what had just happened. Shallow natures dream of an easy sway over the
emotions of others, trusting implicitly in their own petty magic to
turn the deepest streams, and confident, by pretty gestures and
remarks, of making the thing that is not as though it were. She knew
that Will had received a severe blow, but she had been little used to
imagining other people’s states of mind except as a material cut into
shape by her own wishes; and she believed in her own power to soothe or
subdue. Even Tertius, that most perverse of men, was always subdued in
the long-run: events had been obstinate, but still Rosamond would have
said now, as she did before her marriage, that she never gave up what
she had set her mind on.
She put out her arm and laid the tips of her fingers on Will’s
coat-sleeve.
“Don’t touch me!” he said, with an utterance like the cut of a lash,
darting from her, and changing from pink to white and back again, as if
his whole frame were tingling with the pain of the sting. He wheeled
round to the other side of the room and stood opposite to her, with the
tips of his fingers in his pockets and his head thrown back, looking