บทที่ บทที่ 58 · Chapter LVIII

“For there can live no hatred in thine eye,

Therefore in that I cannot know thy change:

In many’s looks the false heart’s history

Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange:

But Heaven in thy creation did decree

That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell:

Whate’er thy thoughts or thy heart’s workings be

Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell.”

—SHAKESPEARE: _Sonnets_.

At the time when Mr. Vincy uttered that presentiment about Rosamond,

she herself had never had the idea that she should be driven to make

the sort of appeal which he foresaw. She had not yet had any anxiety

about ways and means, although her domestic life had been expensive as

well as eventful. Her baby had been born prematurely, and all the

embroidered robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness. This

misfortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted in going out

on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to do so; but

it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or

rudely told him that she would do as she liked.

What led her particularly to desire horse-exercise was a visit from

Captain Lydgate, the baronet’s third son, who, I am sorry to say, was

detested by our Tertius of that name as a vapid fop “parting his hair

from brow to nape in a despicable fashion” (not followed by Tertius

himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper

thing to say on every topic. Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly that

he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to his uncle’s on the

wedding-tour, and he made himself rather disagreeable to Rosamond by

saying so in private. For to Rosamond this visit was a source of

unprecedented but gracefully concealed exultation. She was so intensely

conscious of having a cousin who was a baronet’s son staying in the

house, that she imagined the knowledge of what was implied by his

presence to be diffused through all other minds; and when she

introduced Captain Lydgate to her guests, she had a placid sense that

his rank penetrated them as if it had been an odor. The satisfaction

was enough for the time to melt away some disappointment in the

conditions of marriage with a medical man even of good birth: it seemed

now that her marriage was visibly as well as ideally floating her above

the Middlemarch level, and the future looked bright with letters and

visits to and from Quallingham, and vague advancement in consequence

for Tertius. Especially as, probably at the Captain’s suggestion, his

married sister, Mrs. Mengan, had come with her maid, and stayed two

nights on her way from town. Hence it was clearly worth while for

Rosamond to take pains with her music and the careful selection of her

lace.

As to Captain Lydgate himself, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on

one side, and his rather heavy utterance, might have been

disadvantageous in any young gentleman who had not a military bearing

and mustache to give him what is doted on by some flower-like blond

heads as “style.” He had, moreover, that sort of high-breeding which

consists in being free from the petty solicitudes of middle-class

gentility, and he was a great critic of feminine charms. Rosamond

delighted in his admiration now even more than she had done at

Quallingham, and he found it easy to spend several hours of the day in

flirting with her. The visit altogether was one of the pleasantest

larks he had ever had, not the less so perhaps because he suspected

that his queer cousin Tertius wished him away: though Lydgate, who

would rather (hyperbolically speaking) have died than have failed in

polite hospitality, suppressed his dislike, and only pretended

generally not to hear what the gallant officer said, consigning the

task of answering him to Rosamond. For he was not at all a jealous

husband, and preferred leaving a feather-headed young gentleman alone

with his wife to bearing him company.

“I wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner, Tertius,” said

Rosamond, one evening when the important guest was gone to Loamford to

see some brother officers stationed there. “You really look so absent

sometimes—you seem to be seeing through his head into something behind

it, instead of looking at him.”

“My dear Rosy, you don’t expect me to talk much to such a conceited ass

as that, I hope,” said Lydgate, brusquely. “If he got his head broken,

I might look at it with interest, not before.”

“I cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so

contemptuously,” said Rosamond, her fingers moving at her work while

she spoke with a mild gravity which had a touch of disdain in it.

“Ask Ladislaw if he doesn’t think your Captain the greatest bore he

ever met with. Ladislaw has almost forsaken the house since he came.”

Rosamond thought she knew perfectly well why Mr. Ladislaw disliked the

Captain: he was jealous, and she liked his being jealous.

“It is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons,” she

answered, “but in my opinion Captain Lydgate is a thorough gentleman,

and I think you ought not, out of respect to Sir Godwin, to treat him

with neglect.”

“No, dear; but we have had dinners for him. And he comes in and goes

out as he likes. He doesn’t want me.”

“Still, when he is in the room, you might show him more attention. He

may not be a phoenix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is

different; but it would be all the better for you to talk a little on

his subjects. _I_ think his conversation is quite agreeable. And he is

anything but an unprincipled man.”

“The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy,”

said Lydgate, in a sort of resigned murmur, with a smile which was not

exactly tender, and certainly not merry. Rosamond was silent and did

not smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked good-tempered

enough without smiling.

Those words of Lydgate’s were like a sad milestone marking how far he

had travelled from his old dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared

to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband’s

mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and

looking-glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his adored

wisdom alone. He had begun to distinguish between that imagined

adoration and the attraction towards a man’s talent because it gives

him prestige, and is like an order in his button-hole or an Honorable

before his name.

It might have been supposed that Rosamond had travelled too, since she

had found the pointless conversation of Mr. Ned Plymdale perfectly

wearisome; but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is

unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable—else,

indeed, what would become of social bonds? Captain Lydgate’s stupidity

was delicately scented, carried itself with “style,” talked with a good

accent, and was closely related to Sir Godwin. Rosamond found it quite

agreeable and caught many of its phrases.

Therefore since Rosamond, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were

plenty of reasons why she should be tempted to resume her riding when

Captain Lydgate, who had ordered his man with two horses to follow him

and put up at the “Green Dragon,” begged her to go out on the gray

which he warranted to be gentle and trained to carry a lady—indeed, he

had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to Quallingham.

Rosamond went out the first time without telling her husband, and came

back before his return; but the ride had been so thorough a success,

and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that he was

informed of it with full reliance on his consent that she should go

riding again.

On the contrary Lydgate was more than hurt—he was utterly confounded

that she had risked herself on a strange horse without referring the

matter to his wish. After the first almost thundering exclamations of

astonishment, which sufficiently warned Rosamond of what was coming, he

was silent for some moments.

“However, you have come back safely,” he said, at last, in a decisive

tone. “You will not go again, Rosy; that is understood. If it were the

quietest, most familiar horse in the world, there would always be the

chance of accident. And you know very well that I wished you to give up

riding the roan on that account.”

“But there is the chance of accident indoors, Tertius.”

“My darling, don’t talk nonsense,” said Lydgate, in an imploring tone;

“surely I am the person to judge for you. I think it is enough that I

say you are not to go again.”

Rosamond was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of

her head in the glass showed no change in its loveliness except a

little turning aside of the long neck. Lydgate had been moving about

with his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her, as if he

awaited some assurance.

“I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear,” said Rosamond, letting

her arms fall with a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of

standing there like a brute. Lydgate had often fastened the plaits

before, being among the deftest of men with his large finely formed

fingers. He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the

tall comb (to such uses do men come!); and what could he do then but

kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all its delicate curves? But

when we do what we have done before, it is often with a difference.

Lydgate was still angry, and had not forgotten his point.

“I shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known better than offer

you his horse,” he said, as he moved away.

“I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Tertius,” said Rosamond,

looking at him with something more marked than usual in her speech. “It

will be treating me as if I were a child. Promise that you will leave

the subject to me.”

There did seem to be some truth in her objection. Lydgate said, “Very

well,” with a surly obedience, and thus the discussion ended with his

promising Rosamond, and not with her promising him.

In fact, she had been determined not to promise. Rosamond had that

victorious obstinacy which never wastes its energy in impetuous

resistance. What she liked to do was to her the right thing, and all

her cleverness was directed to getting the means of doing it. She meant

to go out riding again on the gray, and she did go on the next

opportunity of her husband’s absence, not intending that he should know

until it was late enough not to signify to her. The temptation was

certainly great: she was very fond of the exercise, and the

gratification of riding on a fine horse, with Captain Lydgate, Sir

Godwin’s son, on another fine horse by her side, and of being met in

this position by any one but her husband, was something as good as her

dreams before marriage: moreover she was riveting the connection with

the family at Quallingham, which must be a wise thing to do.

But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being

felled on the edge of Halsell wood, took fright, and caused a worse

fright to Rosamond, leading finally to the loss of her baby. Lydgate

could not show his anger towards her, but he was rather bearish to the

Captain, whose visit naturally soon came to an end.

In all future conversations on the subject, Rosamond was mildly certain

that the ride had made no difference, and that if she had stayed at

home the same symptoms would have come on and would have ended in the

same way, because she had felt something like them before.

Lydgate could only say, “Poor, poor darling!”—but he secretly wondered

over the terrible tenacity of this mild creature. There was gathering

within him an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond. His

superior knowledge and mental force, instead of being, as he had

imagined, a shrine to consult on all occasions, was simply set aside on

every practical question. He had regarded Rosamond’s cleverness as

precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman. He was now

beginning to find out what that cleverness was—what was the shape into

which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent. No one

quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the

track of her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Lydgate’s

preeminence in Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively

tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have

advanced him; but for her, his professional and scientific ambition had

no other relation to these desirable effects than if they had been the

fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil. And that oil apart, with

which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in her own opinion

more than she did in his. Lydgate was astounded to find in numberless

trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding,

that affection did not make her compliant. He had no doubt that the

affection was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything

to repel it. For his own part he said to himself that he loved her as

tenderly as ever, and could make up his mind to her negations;

but—well! Lydgate was much worried, and conscious of new elements in

his life as noxious to him as an inlet of mud to a creature that has

been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in

the clearest of waters.

Rosamond was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying

drives in her father’s phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be

invited to Quallingham. She knew that she was a much more exquisite

ornament to the drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and

in reflecting that the gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps

sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see

themselves surpassed.

Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she

inwardly called his moodiness—a name which to her covered his

thoughtful preoccupation with other subjects than herself, as well as

that uneasy look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as if

they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really made a sort of

weather-glass to his vexation and foreboding. These latter states of

mind had one cause amongst others, which he had generously but

mistakenly avoided mentioning to Rosamond, lest it should affect her

health and spirits. Between him and her indeed there was that total

missing of each other’s mental track, which is too evidently possible

even between persons who are continually thinking of each other. To

Lydgate it seemed that he had been spending month after month in

sacrificing more than half of his best intent and best power to his

tenderness for Rosamond; bearing her little claims and interruptions

without impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of

bitterness to look through less and less of interfering illusion at the

blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to his ardor for the more

impersonal ends of his profession and his scientific study, an ardor

which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship as

sublime, though not in the least knowing why. But his endurance was

mingled with a self-discontent which, if we know how to be candid, we

shall confess to make more than half our bitterness under grievances,

wife or husband included. It always remains true that if we had been

greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us. Lydgate

was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more than

the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize

an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our

lives. And on Lydgate’s enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not a

simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading

care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort.

This was the care which he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to

Rosamond; and he believed, with some wonder, that it had never entered

her mind, though certainly no difficulty could be less mysterious. It

was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and had been easily

drawn by indifferent observers, that Lydgate was in debt; and he could

not succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was

every day getting deeper into that swamp, which tempts men towards it

with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure. It is wonderful how

soon a man gets up to his chin there—in a condition in which, in spite

of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he had a

scheme of the universe in his soul.

Eighteen months ago Lydgate was poor, but had never known the eager

want of small sums, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one who

descended a step in order to gain them. He was now experiencing

something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar

hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things

which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for,

though the demand for payment has become pressing.

How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or

knowledge of prices. When a man in setting up a house and preparing for

marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come to

between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay

for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses,

horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds

of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred

per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred,

chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he

minds it or not, he is in debt. Those were less expensive times than

our own, and provincial life was comparatively modest; but the ease

with which a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who thought

that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose table was supplied

without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and a high rent

for house and garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts,

can be conceived by any one who does not think these details beneath

his consideration. Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an

extravagant household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply

in ordering the best of everything—nothing else “answered;” and Lydgate

supposed that “if things were done at all, they must be done

properly”—he did not see how they were to live otherwise. If each head

of household expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would

have probably observed that “it could hardly come to much,” and if any

one had suggested a saving on a particular article—for example, the

substitution of cheap fish for dear—it would have appeared to him

simply a penny-wise, mean notion. Rosamond, even without such an

occasion as Captain Lydgate’s visit, was fond of giving invitations,

and Lydgate, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not

interfere. This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional

prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable. It is true Lydgate

was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his

prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by

this time ceased to be remarkable—is it not rather that we expect in

men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by

side and never compare them with each other? Expenditure—like ugliness

and errors—becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own

personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is

manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others. Lydgate

believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man

who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a

matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments—such things

were naturally ordered in sheaves. It must be remembered that he had

never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked by

habit, not by self-criticism. But the check had come.

Its novelty made it the more irritating. He was amazed, disgusted that

conditions so foreign to all his purposes, so hatefully disconnected

with the objects he cared to occupy himself with, should have lain in

ambush and clutched him when he was unaware. And there was not only the

actual debt; there was the certainty that in his present position he

must go on deepening it. Two furnishing tradesmen at Brassing, whose

bills had been incurred before his marriage, and whom uncalculated

current expenses had ever since prevented him from paying, had

repeatedly sent him unpleasant letters which had forced themselves on

his attention. This could hardly have been more galling to any

disposition than to Lydgate’s, with his intense pride—his dislike of

asking a favor or being under an obligation to any one. He had scorned

even to form conjectures about Mr. Vincy’s intentions on money matters,

and nothing but extremity could have induced him to apply to his

father-in-law, even if he had not been made aware in various indirect

ways since his marriage that Mr. Vincy’s own affairs were not

flourishing, and that the expectation of help from him would be

resented. Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it had

never in the former part of his life occurred to Lydgate that he should

need to do so: he had never thought what borrowing would be to him; but

now that the idea had entered his mind, he felt that he would rather

incur any other hardship. In the mean time he had no money or prospects

of money; and his practice was not getting more lucrative.

No wonder that Lydgate had been unable to suppress all signs of inward

trouble during the last few months, and now that Rosamond was regaining

brilliant health, he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on

his difficulties. New conversance with tradesmen’s bills had forced his

reasoning into a new channel of comparison: he had begun to consider

from a new point of view what was necessary and unnecessary in goods

ordered, and to see that there must be some change of habits. How could

such a change be made without Rosamond’s concurrence? The immediate

occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her was forced upon him.

Having no money, and having privately sought advice as to what security

could possibly be given by a man in his position, Lydgate had offered

the one good security in his power to the less peremptory creditor, who

was a silversmith and jeweller, and who consented to take on himself

the upholsterer’s credit also, accepting interest for a given term. The

security necessary was a bill of sale on the furniture of his house,

which might make a creditor easy for a reasonable time about a debt

amounting to less than four hundred pounds; and the silversmith, Mr.

Dover, was willing to reduce it by taking back a portion of the plate

and any other article which was as good as new. “Any other article” was

a phrase delicately implying jewellery, and more particularly some

purple amethysts costing thirty pounds, which Lydgate had bought as a

bridal present.

Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in making this present: some

may think that it was a graceful attention to be expected from a man

like Lydgate, and that the fault of any troublesome consequences lay in

the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that time, which offered

no conveniences for professional people whose fortune was not

proportioned to their tastes; also, in Lydgate’s ridiculous

fastidiousness about asking his friends for money.

However, it had seemed a question of no moment to him on that fine

morning when he went to give a final order for plate: in the presence

of other jewels enormously expensive, and as an addition to orders of

which the amount had not been exactly calculated, thirty pounds for

ornaments so exquisitely suited to Rosamond’s neck and arms could

hardly appear excessive when there was no ready cash for it to exceed.

But at this crisis Lydgate’s imagination could not help dwelling on the

possibility of letting the amethysts take their place again among Mr.

Dover’s stock, though he shrank from the idea of proposing this to

Rosamond. Having been roused to discern consequences which he had never

been in the habit of tracing, he was preparing to act on this

discernment with some of the rigor (by no means all) that he would have

applied in pursuing experiment. He was nerving himself to this rigor as

he rode from Brassing, and meditated on the representations he must

make to Rosamond.

It was evening when he got home. He was intensely miserable, this

strong man of nine-and-twenty and of many gifts. He was not saying

angrily within himself that he had made a profound mistake; but the

mistake was at work in him like a recognized chronic disease, mingling

its uneasy importunities with every prospect, and enfeebling every

thought. As he went along the passage to the drawing-room, he heard the

piano and singing. Of course, Ladislaw was there. It was some weeks

since Will had parted from Dorothea, yet he was still at the old post

in Middlemarch. Lydgate had no objection in general to Ladislaw’s

coming, but just now he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth

free. When he opened the door the two singers went on towards the

key-note, raising their eyes and looking at him indeed, but not

regarding his entrance as an interruption. To a man galled with his

harness as poor Lydgate was, it is not soothing to see two people

warbling at him, as he comes in with the sense that the painful day has

still pains in store. His face, already paler than usual, took on a

scowl as he walked across the room and flung himself into a chair.

The singers feeling themselves excused by the fact that they had only

three bars to sing, now turned round.

“How are you, Lydgate?” said Will, coming forward to shake hands.

Lydgate took his hand, but did not think it necessary to speak.

“Have you dined, Tertius? I expected you much earlier,” said Rosamond,

who had already seen that her husband was in a “horrible humor.” She

seated herself in her usual place as she spoke.

“I have dined. I should like some tea, please,” said Lydgate, curtly,

still scowling and looking markedly at his legs stretched out before

him.

Will was too quick to need more. “I shall be off,” he said, reaching

his hat.

“Tea is coming,” said Rosamond; “pray don’t go.”

“Yes, Lydgate is bored,” said Will, who had more comprehension of

Lydgate than Rosamond had, and was not offended by his manner, easily

imagining outdoor causes of annoyance.

“There is the more need for you to stay,” said Rosamond, playfully, and

in her lightest accent; “he will not speak to me all the evening.”

“Yes, Rosamond, I shall,” said Lydgate, in his strong baritone. “I have

some serious business to speak to you about.”

No introduction of the business could have been less like that which

Lydgate had intended; but her indifferent manner had been too

provoking.

“There! you see,” said Will. “I’m going to the meeting about the

Mechanics’ Institute. Good-by;” and he went quickly out of the room.

Rosamond did not look at her husband, but presently rose and took her

place before the tea-tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him

so disagreeable. Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched her as

she delicately handled the tea-service with her taper fingers, and

looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face

disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all

people with unpleasant manners. For the moment he lost the sense of his

wound in a sudden speculation about this new form of feminine

impassibility revealing itself in the sylph-like frame which he had

once interpreted as the sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness. His

mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Rosamond, he said

inwardly, “Would _she_ kill me because I wearied her?” and then, “It is

the way with all women.” But this power of generalizing which gives men

so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals, was

immediately thwarted by Lydgate’s memory of wondering impressions from

the behavior of another woman—from Dorothea’s looks and tones of

emotion about her husband when Lydgate began to attend him—from her

passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose

sake it seemed as if she must quell every impulse in her except the

yearnings of faithfulness and compassion. These revived impressions

succeeded each other quickly and dreamily in Lydgate’s mind while the

tea was being brewed. He had shut his eyes in the last instant of

reverie while he heard Dorothea saying, “Advise me—think what I can

do—he has been all his life laboring and looking forward. He minds

about nothing else—and I mind about nothing else.”

That voice of deep-souled womanhood had remained within him as the

enkindling conceptions of dead and sceptred genius had remained within

him (is there not a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over

human spirits and their conclusions?); the tones were a music from

which he was falling away—he had really fallen into a momentary doze,

when Rosamond said in her silvery neutral way, “Here is your tea,

Tertius,” setting it on the small table by his side, and then moved

back to her place without looking at him. Lydgate was too hasty in

attributing insensibility to her; after her own fashion, she was

sensitive enough, and took lasting impressions. Her impression now was

one of offence and repulsion. But then, Rosamond had no scowls and had

never raised her voice: she was quite sure that no one could justly

find fault with her.

Perhaps Lydgate and she had never felt so far off each other before;

but there were strong reasons for not deferring his revelation, even if

he had not already begun it by that abrupt announcement; indeed some of

the angry desire to rouse her into more sensibility on his account

which had prompted him to speak prematurely, still mingled with his

pain in the prospect of her pain. But he waited till the tray was gone,

the candles were lit, and the evening quiet might be counted on: the

interval had left time for repelled tenderness to return into the old

course. He spoke kindly.

“Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit by me,” he said, gently,

pushing away the table, and stretching out his arm to draw a chair near

his own.

Rosamond obeyed. As she came towards him in her drapery of transparent

faintly tinted muslin, her slim yet round figure never looked more

graceful; as she sat down by him and laid one hand on the elbow of his

chair, at last looking at him and meeting his eyes, her delicate neck

and cheek and purely cut lips never had more of that untarnished beauty

which touches as in spring-time and infancy and all sweet freshness. It

touched Lydgate now, and mingled the early moments of his love for her

with all the other memories which were stirred in this crisis of deep

trouble. He laid his ample hand softly on hers, saying—

“Dear!” with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the word.

Rosamond too was still under the power of that same past, and her

husband was still in part the Lydgate whose approval had stirred

delight. She put his hair lightly away from his forehead, then laid her

other hand on his, and was conscious of forgiving him.

“I am obliged to tell you what will hurt you, Rosy. But there are

things which husband and wife must think of together. I dare say it has

occurred to you already that I am short of money.”

Lydgate paused; but Rosamond turned her neck and looked at a vase on

the mantel-piece.

“I was not able to pay for all the things we had to get before we were

married, and there have been expenses since which I have been obliged

to meet. The consequence is, there is a large debt at Brassing—three

hundred and eighty pounds—which has been pressing on me a good while,

and in fact we are getting deeper every day, for people don’t pay me

the faster because others want the money. I took pains to keep it from

you while you were not well; but now we must think together about it,

and you must help me.”

“What can _I_ do, Tertius?” said Rosamond, turning her eyes on him

again. That little speech of four words, like so many others in all

languages, is capable by varied vocal inflections of expressing all

states of mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumentative

perception, from the completest self-devoting fellowship to the most

neutral aloofness. Rosamond’s thin utterance threw into the words “What

can—I—do!” as much neutrality as they could hold. They fell like a

mortal chill on Lydgate’s roused tenderness. He did not storm in

indignation—he felt too sad a sinking of the heart. And when he spoke

again it was more in the tone of a man who forces himself to fulfil a

task.

“It is necessary for you to know, because I have to give security for a

time, and a man must come to make an inventory of the furniture.”

Rosamond colored deeply. “Have you not asked papa for money?” she said,

as soon as she could speak.

“No.”

“Then I must ask him!” she said, releasing her hands from Lydgate’s,

and rising to stand at two yards’ distance from him.

“No, Rosy,” said Lydgate, decisively. “It is too late to do that. The

inventory will be begun to-morrow. Remember it is a mere security: it

will make no difference: it is a temporary affair. I insist upon it

that your father shall not know, unless I choose to tell him,” added

Lydgate, with a more peremptory emphasis.

This certainly was unkind, but Rosamond had thrown him back on evil

expectation as to what she would do in the way of quiet steady

disobedience. The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her: she was not

given to weeping and disliked it, but now her chin and lips began to

tremble and the tears welled up. Perhaps it was not possible for

Lydgate, under the double stress of outward material difficulty and of

his own proud resistance to humiliating consequences, to imagine fully

what this sudden trial was to a young creature who had known nothing

but indulgence, and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence, more

exactly to her taste. But he did wish to spare her as much as he could,

and her tears cut him to the heart. He could not speak again

immediately; but Rosamond did not go on sobbing: she tried to conquer

her agitation and wiped away her tears, continuing to look before her

at the mantel-piece.

“Try not to grieve, darling,” said Lydgate, turning his eyes up towards

her. That she had chosen to move away from him in this moment of her

trouble made everything harder to say, but he must absolutely go on.

“We must brace ourselves to do what is necessary. It is I who have been

in fault: I ought to have seen that I could not afford to live in this

way. But many things have told against me in my practice, and it really

just now has ebbed to a low point. I may recover it, but in the mean

time we must pull up—we must change our way of living. We shall weather

it. When I have given this security I shall have time to look about me;

and you are so clever that if you turn your mind to managing you will

school me into carefulness. I have been a thoughtless rascal about

squaring prices—but come, dear, sit down and forgive me.”

Lydgate was bowing his neck under the yoke like a creature who had

talons, but who had Reason too, which often reduces us to meekness.

When he had spoken the last words in an imploring tone, Rosamond

returned to the chair by his side. His self-blame gave her some hope

that he would attend to her opinion, and she said—

“Why can you not put off having the inventory made? You can send the

men away to-morrow when they come.”

“I shall not send them away,” said Lydgate, the peremptoriness rising

again. Was it of any use to explain?

“If we left Middlemarch? there would of course be a sale, and that

would do as well.”

“But we are not going to leave Middlemarch.”

“I am sure, Tertius, it would be much better to do so. Why can we not

go to London? Or near Durham, where your family is known?”

“We can go nowhere without money, Rosamond.”

“Your friends would not wish you to be without money. And surely these

odious tradesmen might be made to understand that, and to wait, if you

would make proper representations to them.”

“This is idle Rosamond,” said Lydgate, angrily. “You must learn to take

my judgment on questions you don’t understand. I have made necessary

arrangements, and they must be carried out. As to friends, I have no

expectations whatever from them, and shall not ask them for anything.”

Rosamond sat perfectly still. The thought in her mind was that if she

had known how Lydgate would behave, she would never have married him.

“We have no time to waste now on unnecessary words, dear,” said

Lydgate, trying to be gentle again. “There are some details that I want

to consider with you. Dover says he will take a good deal of the plate

back again, and any of the jewellery we like. He really behaves very

well.”

“Are we to go without spoons and forks then?” said Rosamond, whose very

lips seemed to get thinner with the thinness of her utterance. She was

determined to make no further resistance or suggestions.

“Oh no, dear!” said Lydgate. “But look here,” he continued, drawing a

paper from his pocket and opening it; “here is Dover’s account. See, I

have marked a number of articles, which if we returned them would

reduce the amount by thirty pounds and more. I have not marked any of

the jewellery.” Lydgate had really felt this point of the jewellery

very bitter to himself; but he had overcome the feeling by severe

argument. He could not propose to Rosamond that she should return any

particular present of his, but he had told himself that he was bound to

put Dover’s offer before her, and her inward prompting might make the

affair easy.

“It is useless for me to look, Tertius,” said Rosamond, calmly; “you

will return what you please.” She would not turn her eyes on the paper,

and Lydgate, flushing up to the roots of his hair, drew it back and let

it fall on his knee. Meanwhile Rosamond quietly went out of the room,

leaving Lydgate helpless and wondering. Was she not coming back? It

seemed that she had no more identified herself with him than if they

had been creatures of different species and opposing interests. He

tossed his head and thrust his hands deep into his pockets with a sort

of vengeance. There was still science—there were still good objects to

work for. He must give a tug still—all the stronger because other

satisfactions were going.

But the door opened and Rosamond re-entered. She carried the leather

box containing the amethysts, and a tiny ornamental basket which

contained other boxes, and laying them on the chair where she had been

sitting, she said, with perfect propriety in her air—

“This is all the jewellery you ever gave me. You can return what you

like of it, and of the plate also. You will not, of course, expect me

to stay at home to-morrow. I shall go to papa’s.”

To many women the look Lydgate cast at her would have been more

terrible than one of anger: it had in it a despairing acceptance of the

distance she was placing between them.

“And when shall you come back again?” he said, with a bitter edge on

his accent.

“Oh, in the evening. Of course I shall not mention the subject to

mamma.” Rosamond was convinced that no woman could behave more

irreproachably than she was behaving; and she went to sit down at her

work-table. Lydgate sat meditating a minute or two, and the result was

that he said, with some of the old emotion in his tone—

“Now we have been united, Rosy, you should not leave me to myself in

the first trouble that has come.”

“Certainly not,” said Rosamond; “I shall do everything it becomes me to

do.”

“It is not right that the thing should be left to servants, or that I

should have to speak to them about it. And I shall be obliged to go

out—I don’t know how early. I understand your shrinking from the

humiliation of these money affairs. But, my dear Rosamond, as a

question of pride, which I feel just as much as you can, it is surely

better to manage the thing ourselves, and let the servants see as

little of it as possible; and since you are my wife, there is no

hindering your share in my disgraces—if there were disgraces.”

Rosamond did not answer immediately, but at last she said, “Very well,

I will stay at home.”

“I shall not touch these jewels, Rosy. Take them away again. But I will

write out a list of plate that we may return, and that can be packed up

and sent at once.”

“The servants will know _that_,” said Rosamond, with the slightest

touch of sarcasm.

“Well, we must meet some disagreeables as necessities. Where is the

ink, I wonder?” said Lydgate, rising, and throwing the account on the

larger table where he meant to write.

Rosamond went to reach the inkstand, and after setting it on the table

was going to turn away, when Lydgate, who was standing close by, put

his arm round her and drew her towards him, saying—

“Come, darling, let us make the best of things. It will only be for a

time, I hope, that we shall have to be stingy and particular. Kiss me.”

His native warm-heartedness took a great deal of quenching, and it is a

part of manliness for a husband to feel keenly the fact that an

inexperienced girl has got into trouble by marrying him. She received

his kiss and returned it faintly, and in this way an appearance of

accord was recovered for the time. But Lydgate could not help looking

forward with dread to the inevitable future discussions about

expenditure and the necessity for a complete change in their way of

living.