Middlemarch
bringing in their verdict of guilty, who pities Faithful? That is a
rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have not attained, to know
ourselves guiltless before a condemning crowd—to be sure that what we
are denounced for is solely the good in us. The pitiable lot is that of
the man who could not call himself a martyr even though he were to
persuade himself that the men who stoned him were but ugly passions
incarnate—who knows that he is stoned, not for professing the Right,
but for not being the man he professed to be.
This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he
made his preparations for departing from Middlemarch, and going to end
his stricken life in that sad refuge, the indifference of new faces.
The duteous merciful constancy of his wife had delivered him from one
dread, but it could not hinder her presence from being still a tribunal
before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy. His
equivocations with himself about the death of Raffles had sustained the
conception of an Omniscience whom he prayed to, yet he had a terror
upon him which would not let him expose them to judgment by a full
confession to his wife: the acts which he had washed and diluted with
inward argument and motive, and for which it seemed comparatively easy
to win invisible pardon—what name would she call them by? That she
should ever silently call his acts Murder was what he could not bear.
He felt shrouded by her doubt: he got strength to face her from the
sense that she could not yet feel warranted in pronouncing that worst
condemnation on him. Some time, perhaps—when he was dying—he would tell
her all: in the deep shadow of that time, when she held his hand in the
gathering darkness, she might listen without recoiling from his touch.
Perhaps: but concealment had been the habit of his life, and the
impulse to confession had no power against the dread of a deeper
humiliation.
He was full of timid care for his wife, not only because he deprecated
any harshness of judgment from her, but because he felt a deep distress
at the sight of her suffering. She had sent her daughters away to board
at a school on the coast, that this crisis might be hidden from them as
far as possible. Set free by their absence from the intolerable
necessity of accounting for her grief or of beholding their frightened
wonder, she could live unconstrainedly with the sorrow that was every
day streaking her hair with whiteness and making her eyelids languid.
“Tell me anything that you would like to have me do, Harriet,”
Bulstrode had said to her; “I mean with regard to arrangements of
property. It is my intention not to sell the land I possess in this
neighborhood, but to leave it to you as a safe provision. If you have
any wish on such subjects, do not conceal it from me.”
A few days afterwards, when she had returned from a visit to her
brother’s, she began to speak to her husband on a subject which had for
some time been in her mind.
“I _should_ like to do something for my brother’s family, Nicholas; and
I think we are bound to make some amends to Rosamond and her husband.
Walter says Mr. Lydgate must leave the town, and his practice is almost
good for nothing, and they have very little left to settle anywhere
with. I would rather do without something for ourselves, to make some
amends to my poor brother’s family.”
Mrs. Bulstrode did not wish to go nearer to the facts than in the
phrase “make some amends;” knowing that her husband must understand
her. He had a particular reason, which she was not aware of, for
wincing under her suggestion. He hesitated before he said—
“It is not possible to carry out your wish in the way you propose, my
dear. Mr. Lydgate has virtually rejected any further service from me.
He has returned the thousand pounds which I lent him. Mrs. Casaubon
advanced him the sum for that purpose. Here is his letter.”
The letter seemed to cut Mrs. Bulstrode severely. The mention of Mrs.
Casaubon’s loan seemed a reflection of that public feeling which held
it a matter of course that every one would avoid a connection with her
husband. She was silent for some time; and the tears fell one after the
other, her chin trembling as she wiped them away. Bulstrode, sitting
opposite to her, ached at the sight of that grief-worn face, which two
months before had been bright and blooming. It had aged to keep sad
company with his own withered features. Urged into some effort at
comforting her, he said—
“There is another means, Harriet, by which I might do a service to your
brother’s family, if you like to act in it. And it would, I think, be
beneficial to you: it would be an advantageous way of managing the land
which I mean to be yours.”
She looked attentive.
“Garth once thought of undertaking the management of Stone Court in
order to place your nephew Fred there. The stock was to remain as it
is, and they were to pay a certain share of the profits instead of an
ordinary rent. That would be a desirable beginning for the young man,
in conjunction with his employment under Garth. Would it be a
satisfaction to you?”
“Yes, it would,” said Mrs. Bulstrode, with some return of energy. “Poor
Walter is so cast down; I would try anything in my power to do him some
good before I go away. We have always been brother and sister.”
“You must make the proposal to Garth yourself, Harriet,” said Mr.
Bulstrode, not liking what he had to say, but desiring the end he had
in view, for other reasons besides the consolation of his wife. “You
must state to him that the land is virtually yours, and that he need
have no transactions with me. Communications can be made through
Standish. I mention this, because Garth gave up being my agent. I can
put into your hands a paper which he himself drew up, stating
conditions; and you can propose his renewed acceptance of them. I think
it is not unlikely that he will accept when you propose the thing for
the sake of your nephew.”
CHAPTER LXXXVI.
“Le cœur se sature d’amour comme d’un sel divin qui le conserve; de là
l’incorruptible adhérence de ceux qui se sont aimés dès l’aube de la
vie, et la fraîcheur des vielles amours prolongées. Il existe un
embaumement d’amour. C’est de Daphnis et Chloé que sont faits Philémon
et Baucis. Cette vieillesse-là, ressemblance du soir avec
l’aurore.”—VICTOR HUGO: _L’homme qui rit_.
Mrs. Garth, hearing Caleb enter the passage about tea-time, opened the
parlor-door and said, “There you are, Caleb. Have you had your dinner?”
(Mr. Garth’s meals were much subordinated to “business.”)
“Oh yes, a good dinner—cold mutton and I don’t know what. Where is
Mary?”
“In the garden with Letty, I think.”
“Fred is not come yet?”
“No. Are you going out again without taking tea, Caleb?” said Mrs.
Garth, seeing that her absent-minded husband was putting on again the
hat which he had just taken off.
“No, no; I’m only going to Mary a minute.”
Mary was in a grassy corner of the garden, where there was a swing
loftily hung between two pear-trees. She had a pink kerchief tied over
her head, making a little poke to shade her eyes from the level
sunbeams, while she was giving a glorious swing to Letty, who laughed
and screamed wildly.
Seeing her father, Mary left the swing and went to meet him, pushing
back the pink kerchief and smiling afar off at him with the involuntary
smile of loving pleasure.
“I came to look for you, Mary,” said Mr. Garth. “Let us walk about a
bit.”
Mary knew quite well that her father had something particular to say:
his eyebrows made their pathetic angle, and there was a tender gravity
in his voice: these things had been signs to her when she was Letty’s
age. She put her arm within his, and they turned by the row of
nut-trees.
“It will be a sad while before you can be married, Mary,” said her
father, not looking at her, but at the end of the stick which he held
in his other hand.
“Not a sad while, father—I mean to be merry,” said Mary, laughingly. “I
have been single and merry for four-and-twenty years and more: I
suppose it will not be quite as long again as that.” Then, after a
little pause, she said, more gravely, bending her face before her
father’s, “If you are contented with Fred?”
Caleb screwed up his mouth and turned his head aside wisely.
“Now, father, you did praise him last Wednesday. You said he had an
uncommon notion of stock, and a good eye for things.”
“Did I?” said Caleb, rather slyly.
“Yes, I put it all down, and the date, _anno Domini_, and everything,”
said Mary. “You like things to be neatly booked. And then his behavior
to you, father, is really good; he has a deep respect for you; and it
is impossible to have a better temper than Fred has.”
“Ay, ay; you want to coax me into thinking him a fine match.”
“No, indeed, father. I don’t love him because he is a fine match.”
“What for, then?”
“Oh, dear, because I have always loved him. I should never like
scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in
a husband.”
“Your mind is quite settled, then, Mary?” said Caleb, returning to his
first tone. “There’s no other wish come into it since things have been
going on as they have been of late?” (Caleb meant a great deal in that
vague phrase;) “because, better late than never. A woman must not force
her heart—she’ll do a man no good by that.”
“My feelings have not changed, father,” said Mary, calmly. “I shall be
constant to Fred as long as he is constant to me. I don’t think either
of us could spare the other, or like any one else better, however much
we might admire them. It would make too great a difference to us—like
seeing all the old places altered, and changing the name for
everything. We must wait for each other a long while; but Fred knows
that.”
Instead of speaking immediately, Caleb stood still and screwed his
stick on the grassy walk. Then he said, with emotion in his voice,
“Well, I’ve got a bit of news. What do you think of Fred going to live
at Stone Court, and managing the land there?”
“How can that ever be, father?” said Mary, wonderingly.
“He would manage it for his aunt Bulstrode. The poor woman has been to
me begging and praying. She wants to do the lad good, and it might be a
fine thing for him. With saving, he might gradually buy the stock, and
he has a turn for farming.”
“Oh, Fred would be so happy! It is too good to believe.”
“Ah, but mind you,” said Caleb, turning his head warningly, “I must
take it on _my_ shoulders, and be responsible, and see after
everything; and that will grieve your mother a bit, though she mayn’t
say so. Fred had need be careful.”
“Perhaps it is too much, father,” said Mary, checked in her joy. “There
would be no happiness in bringing you any fresh trouble.”
“Nay, nay; work is my delight, child, when it doesn’t vex your mother.
And then, if you and Fred get married,” here Caleb’s voice shook just
perceptibly, “he’ll be steady and saving; and you’ve got your mother’s
cleverness, and mine too, in a woman’s sort of way; and you’ll keep him
in order. He’ll be coming by-and-by, so I wanted to tell you first,
because I think you’d like to tell _him_ by yourself. After that, I
could talk it well over with him, and we could go into business and the
nature of things.”
“Oh, you dear good father!” cried Mary, putting her hands round her
father’s neck, while he bent his head placidly, willing to be caressed.
“I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the
world!”
“Nonsense, child; you’ll think your husband better.”
“Impossible,” said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; “husbands are
an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order.”
When they were entering the house with Letty, who had run to join them,