Bab Bab 82 · Chapter LXXXII

“My grief lies onward and my joy behind.”

—SHAKESPEARE: _Sonnets_.

Exiles notoriously feed much on hopes, and are unlikely to stay in

banishment unless they are obliged. When Will Ladislaw exiled himself

from Middlemarch he had placed no stronger obstacle to his return than

his own resolve, which was by no means an iron barrier, but simply a

state of mind liable to melt into a minuet with other states of mind,

and to find itself bowing, smiling, and giving place with polite

facility. As the months went on, it had seemed more and more difficult

to him to say why he should not run down to Middlemarch—merely for the

sake of hearing something about Dorothea; and if on such a flying visit

he should chance by some strange coincidence to meet with her, there

was no reason for him to be ashamed of having taken an innocent journey

which he had beforehand supposed that he should not take. Since he was

hopelessly divided from her, he might surely venture into her

neighborhood; and as to the suspicious friends who kept a dragon watch

over her—their opinions seemed less and less important with time and

change of air.

And there had come a reason quite irrespective of Dorothea, which

seemed to make a journey to Middlemarch a sort of philanthropic duty.

Will had given a disinterested attention to an intended settlement on a

new plan in the Far West, and the need for funds in order to carry out

a good design had set him on debating with himself whether it would not

be a laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode, to urge the

application of that money which had been offered to himself as a means

of carrying out a scheme likely to be largely beneficial. The question

seemed a very dubious one to Will, and his repugnance to again entering

into any relation with the banker might have made him dismiss it

quickly, if there had not arisen in his imagination the probability

that his judgment might be more safely determined by a visit to

Middlemarch.

That was the object which Will stated to himself as a reason for coming

down. He had meant to confide in Lydgate, and discuss the money

question with him, and he had meant to amuse himself for the few

evenings of his stay by having a great deal of music and badinage with

fair Rosamond, without neglecting his friends at Lowick Parsonage:—if

the Parsonage was close to the Manor, that was no fault of his. He had

neglected the Farebrothers before his departure, from a proud

resistance to the possible accusation of indirectly seeking interviews

with Dorothea; but hunger tames us, and Will had become very hungry for

the vision of a certain form and the sound of a certain voice. Nothing

had done instead—not the opera, or the converse of zealous politicians,

or the flattering reception (in dim corners) of his new hand in leading

articles.

Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence how almost everything

would be in his familiar little world; fearing, indeed, that there

would be no surprises in his visit. But he had found that humdrum world

in a terribly dynamic condition, in which even badinage and lyrism had

turned explosive; and the first day of this visit had become the most

fatal epoch of his life. The next morning he felt so harassed with the

nightmare of consequences—he dreaded so much the immediate issues

before him—that seeing while he breakfasted the arrival of the

Riverston coach, he went out hurriedly and took his place on it, that

he might be relieved, at least for a day, from the necessity of doing

or saying anything in Middlemarch. Will Ladislaw was in one of those

tangled crises which are commoner in experience than one might imagine,

from the shallow absoluteness of men’s judgments. He had found Lydgate,

for whom he had the sincerest respect, under circumstances which

claimed his thorough and frankly declared sympathy; and the reason why,

in spite of that claim, it would have been better for Will to have

avoided all further intimacy, or even contact, with Lydgate, was

precisely of the kind to make such a course appear impossible. To a

creature of Will’s susceptible temperament—without any neutral region

of indifference in his nature, ready to turn everything that befell him

into the collisions of a passionate drama—the revelation that Rosamond

had made her happiness in any way dependent on him was a difficulty

which his outburst of rage towards her had immeasurably increased for

him. He hated his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded to show the fulness

of his relenting: he must go to her again; the friendship could not be

put to a sudden end; and her unhappiness was a power which he dreaded.

And all the while there was no more foretaste of enjoyment in the life

before him than if his limbs had been lopped off and he was making his

fresh start on crutches. In the night he had debated whether he should

not get on the coach, not for Riverston, but for London, leaving a note

to Lydgate which would give a makeshift reason for his retreat. But

there were strong cords pulling him back from that abrupt departure:

the blight on his happiness in thinking of Dorothea, the crushing of

that chief hope which had remained in spite of the acknowledged

necessity for renunciation, was too fresh a misery for him to resign

himself to it and go straightway into a distance which was also

despair.

Thus he did nothing more decided than taking the Riverston coach. He

came back again by it while it was still daylight, having made up his

mind that he must go to Lydgate’s that evening. The Rubicon, we know,

was a very insignificant stream to look at; its significance lay

entirely in certain invisible conditions. Will felt as if he were

forced to cross his small boundary ditch, and what he saw beyond it was

not empire, but discontented subjection.

But it is given to us sometimes even in our every-day life to witness

the saving influence of a noble nature, the divine efficacy of rescue

that may lie in a self-subduing act of fellowship. If Dorothea, after

her night’s anguish, had not taken that walk to Rosamond—why, she

perhaps would have been a woman who gained a higher character for

discretion, but it would certainly not have been as well for those

three who were on one hearth in Lydgate’s house at half-past seven that

evening.

Rosamond had been prepared for Will’s visit, and she received him with

a languid coldness which Lydgate accounted for by her nervous

exhaustion, of which he could not suppose that it had any relation to

Will. And when she sat in silence bending over a bit of work, he

innocently apologized for her in an indirect way by begging her to lean

backward and rest. Will was miserable in the necessity for playing the

part of a friend who was making his first appearance and greeting to

Rosamond, while his thoughts were busy about her feeling since that

scene of yesterday, which seemed still inexorably to enclose them both,

like the painful vision of a double madness. It happened that nothing

called Lydgate out of the room; but when Rosamond poured out the tea,

and Will came near to fetch it, she placed a tiny bit of folded paper

in his saucer. He saw it and secured it quickly, but as he went back to

his inn he had no eagerness to unfold the paper. What Rosamond had

written to him would probably deepen the painful impressions of the

evening. Still, he opened and read it by his bed-candle. There were

only these few words in her neatly flowing hand:—

“I have told Mrs. Casaubon. She is not under any mistake about you. I

told her because she came to see me and was very kind. You will have

nothing to reproach me with now. I shall not have made any difference

to you.”

The effect of these words was not quite all gladness. As Will dwelt on

them with excited imagination, he felt his cheeks and ears burning at

the thought of what had occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond—at the

uncertainty how far Dorothea might still feel her dignity wounded in

having an explanation of his conduct offered to her. There might still

remain in her mind a changed association with him which made an

irremediable difference—a lasting flaw. With active fancy he wrought

himself into a state of doubt little more easy than that of the man who

has escaped from wreck by night and stands on unknown ground in the

darkness. Until that wretched yesterday—except the moment of vexation

long ago in the very same room and in the very same presence—all their

vision, all their thought of each other, had been as in a world apart,

where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies, where no evil lurked, and

no other soul entered. But now—would Dorothea meet him in that world

again?