Middlemarch
through since the last evening, made him feel abjectly in the power of
this loud invulnerable man. At that moment he snatched at a temporary
repose to be won on any terms. He was rising to do what Raffles
suggested, when the latter said, lifting up his finger as if with a
sudden recollection—
“I did have another look after Sarah again, though I didn’t tell you;
I’d a tender conscience about that pretty young woman. I didn’t find
her, but I found out her husband’s name, and I made a note of it. But
hang it, I lost my pocketbook. However, if I heard it, I should know it
again. I’ve got my faculties as if I was in my prime, but names wear
out, by Jove! Sometimes I’m no better than a confounded tax-paper
before the names are filled in. However, if I hear of her and her
family, you shall know, Nick. You’d like to do something for her, now
she’s your step-daughter.”
“Doubtless,” said Mr. Bulstrode, with the usual steady look of his
light-gray eyes; “though that might reduce my power of assisting you.”
As he walked out of the room, Raffles winked slowly at his back, and
then turned towards the window to watch the banker riding
away—virtually at his command. His lips first curled with a smile and
then opened with a short triumphant laugh.
“But what the deuce was the name?” he presently said, half aloud,
scratching his head, and wrinkling his brows horizontally. He had not
really cared or thought about this point of forgetfulness until it
occurred to him in his invention of annoyances for Bulstrode.
“It began with L; it was almost all l’s I fancy,” he went on, with a
sense that he was getting hold of the slippery name. But the hold was
too slight, and he soon got tired of this mental chase; for few men
were more impatient of private occupation or more in need of making
themselves continually heard than Mr. Raffles. He preferred using his
time in pleasant conversation with the bailiff and the housekeeper,
from whom he gathered as much as he wanted to know about Mr.
Bulstrode’s position in Middlemarch.
After all, however, there was a dull space of time which needed
relieving with bread and cheese and ale, and when he was seated alone
with these resources in the wainscoted parlor, he suddenly slapped his
knee, and exclaimed, “Ladislaw!” That action of memory which he had
tried to set going, and had abandoned in despair, had suddenly
completed itself without conscious effort—a common experience,
agreeable as a completed sneeze, even if the name remembered is of no
value. Raffles immediately took out his pocket-book, and wrote down the
name, not because he expected to use it, but merely for the sake of not
being at a loss if he ever did happen to want it. He was not going to
tell Bulstrode: there was no actual good in telling, and to a mind like
that of Mr. Raffles there is always probable good in a secret.
He was satisfied with his present success, and by three o’clock that
day he had taken up his portmanteau at the turnpike and mounted the
coach, relieving Mr. Bulstrode’s eyes of an ugly black spot on the
landscape at Stone Court, but not relieving him of the dread that the
black spot might reappear and become inseparable even from the vision
of his hearth.
BOOK VI.
THE WIDOW AND THE WIFE.
CHAPTER LIV.
“Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore;
Per che si fa gentil ciò ch’ella mira:
Ov’ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira,
E cui saluta fa tremar lo core.
Sicchè, bassando il viso, tutto smore,
E d’ogni suo difetto allor sospira:
Fuggon dinanzi a lei Superbia ed Ira:
Aiutatemi, donne, a farle onore.
Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile
Nasce nel core a chi parlar la sente;
Ond’è beato chi prima la vide.
Quel ch’ella par quand’ un poco sorride,
Non si può dicer, nè tener a mente,
Si è nuovo miracolo gentile.”
—DANTE: _La Vita Nuova_.
By that delightful morning when the hay-ricks at Stone Court were
scenting the air quite impartially, as if Mr. Raffles had been a guest
worthy of finest incense, Dorothea had again taken up her abode at
Lowick Manor. After three months Freshitt had become rather oppressive:
to sit like a model for Saint Catherine looking rapturously at Celia’s
baby would not do for many hours in the day, and to remain in that
momentous babe’s presence with persistent disregard was a course that
could not have been tolerated in a childless sister. Dorothea would
have been capable of carrying baby joyfully for a mile if there had
been need, and of loving it the more tenderly for that labor; but to an
aunt who does not recognize her infant nephew as Bouddha, and has
nothing to do for him but to admire, his behavior is apt to appear
monotonous, and the interest of watching him exhaustible. This
possibility was quite hidden from Celia, who felt that Dorothea’s
childless widowhood fell in quite prettily with the birth of little
Arthur (baby was named after Mr. Brooke).
“Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having anything of her
own—children or anything!” said Celia to her husband. “And if she had
had a baby, it never could have been such a dear as Arthur. Could it,
James?
“Not if it had been like Casaubon,” said Sir James, conscious of some
indirectness in his answer, and of holding a strictly private opinion
as to the perfections of his first-born.
“No! just imagine! Really it was a mercy,” said Celia; “and I think it
is very nice for Dodo to be a widow. She can be just as fond of our
baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions of her own
as she likes.”
“It is a pity she was not a queen,” said the devout Sir James.
“But what should we have been then? We must have been something else,”
said Celia, objecting to so laborious a flight of imagination. “I like
her better as she is.”
Hence, when she found that Dorothea was making arrangements for her
final departure to Lowick, Celia raised her eyebrows with
disappointment, and in her quiet unemphatic way shot a needle-arrow of
sarcasm.
“What will you do at Lowick, Dodo? You say yourself there is nothing to
be done there: everybody is so clean and well off, it makes you quite
melancholy. And here you have been so happy going all about Tipton with
Mr. Garth into the worst backyards. And now uncle is abroad, you and
Mr. Garth can have it all your own way; and I am sure James does
everything you tell him.”
“I shall often come here, and I shall see how baby grows all the
better,” said Dorothea.
“But you will never see him washed,” said Celia; “and that is quite the
best part of the day.” She was almost pouting: it did seem to her very
hard in Dodo to go away from the baby when she might stay.
“Dear Kitty, I will come and stay all night on purpose,” said Dorothea;
“but I want to be alone now, and in my own home. I wish to know the
Farebrothers better, and to talk to Mr. Farebrother about what there is
to be done in Middlemarch.”
Dorothea’s native strength of will was no longer all converted into
resolute submission. She had a great yearning to be at Lowick, and was
simply determined to go, not feeling bound to tell all her reasons. But
every one around her disapproved. Sir James was much pained, and
offered that they should all migrate to Cheltenham for a few months
with the sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle: at that period a man
could hardly know what to propose if Cheltenham were rejected.
The Dowager Lady Chettam, just returned from a visit to her daughter in
town, wished, at least, that Mrs. Vigo should be written to, and
invited to accept the office of companion to Mrs. Casaubon: it was not
credible that Dorothea as a young widow would think of living alone in
the house at Lowick. Mrs. Vigo had been reader and secretary to royal
personages, and in point of knowledge and sentiments even Dorothea
could have nothing to object to her.
Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, “You will certainly go mad in that
house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert
ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as
other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who
have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care
of then. But you must not run into that. I dare say you are a little
bored here with our good dowager; but think what a bore you might
become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing
tragedy queen and taking things sublimely. Sitting alone in that
library at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must
get a few people round you who wouldn’t believe you if you told them.
That is a good lowering medicine.”
“I never called everything by the same name that all the people about
me did,” said Dorothea, stoutly.
“But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear,” said Mrs.
Cadwallader, “and that is a proof of sanity.”
Dorothea was aware of the sting, but it did not hurt her. “No,” she
said, “I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken
about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the
greater part of the world has often had to come round from its
opinion.”
Mrs. Cadwallader said no more on that point to Dorothea, but to her
husband she remarked, “It will be well for her to marry again as soon
as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people. Of course
the Chettams would not wish it. But I see clearly a husband is the best
thing to keep her in order. If we were not so poor I would invite Lord
Triton. He will be marquis some day, and there is no denying that she
would make a good marchioness: she looks handsomer than ever in her
mourning.”
“My dear Elinor, do let the poor woman alone. Such contrivances are of
no use,” said the easy Rector.
“No use? How are matches made, except by bringing men and women
together? And it is a shame that her uncle should have run away and
shut up the Grange just now. There ought to be plenty of eligible
matches invited to Freshitt and the Grange. Lord Triton is precisely
the man: full of plans for making the people happy in a soft-headed
sort of way. That would just suit Mrs. Casaubon.”
“Let Mrs. Casaubon choose for herself, Elinor.”
“That is the nonsense you wise men talk! How can she choose if she has
no variety to choose from? A woman’s choice usually means taking the
only man she can get. Mark my words, Humphrey. If her friends don’t
exert themselves, there will be a worse business than the Casaubon
business yet.”
“For heaven’s sake don’t touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a very sore
point with Sir James. He would be deeply offended if you entered on it
to him unnecessarily.”
“I have never entered on it,” said Mrs Cadwallader, opening her hands.
“Celia told me all about the will at the beginning, without any asking
of mine.”
“Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand that the
young fellow is going out of the neighborhood.”
Mrs. Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her husband three significant
nods, with a very sarcastic expression in her dark eyes.
Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion. So
by the end of June the shutters were all opened at Lowick Manor, and
the morning gazed calmly into the library, shining on the rows of
note-books as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge stones,
the mute memorial of a forgotten faith; and the evening laden with
roses entered silently into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose
oftenest to sit. At first she walked into every room, questioning the
eighteen months of her married life, and carrying on her thoughts as if
they were a speech to be heard by her husband. Then, she lingered in
the library and could not be at rest till she had carefully ranged all
the note-books as she imagined that he would wish to see them, in