บทที่ บทที่ 61 · Chapter LXI

“Inconsistencies,” answered Imlac, “cannot both be right, but imputed

to man they may both be true.”—_Rasselas_.

The same night, when Mr. Bulstrode returned from a journey to Brassing

on business, his good wife met him in the entrance-hall and drew him

into his private sitting-room.

“Nicholas,” she said, fixing her honest eyes upon him anxiously, “there

has been such a disagreeable man here asking for you—it has made me

quite uncomfortable.”

“What kind of man, my dear,” said Mr. Bulstrode, dreadfully certain of

the answer.

“A red-faced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in his manner.

He declared he was an old friend of yours, and said you would be sorry

not to see him. He wanted to wait for you here, but I told him he could

see you at the Bank to-morrow morning. Most impudent he was!—stared at

me, and said his friend Nick had luck in wives. I don’t believe he

would have gone away, if Blucher had not happened to break his chain

and come running round on the gravel—for I was in the garden; so I

said, ‘You’d better go away—the dog is very fierce, and I can’t hold

him.’ Do you really know anything of such a man?”

“I believe I know who he is, my dear,” said Mr. Bulstrode, in his usual

subdued voice, “an unfortunate dissolute wretch, whom I helped too much

in days gone by. However, I presume you will not be troubled by him

again. He will probably come to the Bank—to beg, doubtless.”

No more was said on the subject until the next day, when Mr. Bulstrode

had returned from the town and was dressing for dinner. His wife, not

sure that he was come home, looked into his dressing-room and saw him

with his coat and cravat off, leaning one arm on a chest of drawers and

staring absently at the ground. He started nervously and looked up as

she entered.

“You look very ill, Nicholas. Is there anything the matter?”

“I have a good deal of pain in my head,” said Mr. Bulstrode, who was so

frequently ailing that his wife was always ready to believe in this

cause of depression.

“Sit down and let me sponge it with vinegar.”

Physically Mr. Bulstrode did not want the vinegar, but morally the

affectionate attention soothed him. Though always polite, it was his

habit to receive such services with marital coolness, as his wife’s

duty. But to-day, while she was bending over him, he said, “You are

very good, Harriet,” in a tone which had something new in it to her

ear; she did not know exactly what the novelty was, but her woman’s

solicitude shaped itself into a darting thought that he might be going

to have an illness.

“Has anything worried you?” she said. “Did that man come to you at the

Bank?”

“Yes; it was as I had supposed. He is a man who at one time might have

done better. But he has sunk into a drunken debauched creature.”

“Is he quite gone away?” said Mrs. Bulstrode, anxiously; but for

certain reasons she refrained from adding, “It was very disagreeable to

hear him calling himself a friend of yours.” At that moment she would

not have liked to say anything which implied her habitual consciousness

that her husband’s earlier connections were not quite on a level with

her own. Not that she knew much about them. That her husband had at

first been employed in a bank, that he had afterwards entered into what

he called city business and gained a fortune before he was

three-and-thirty, that he had married a widow who was much older than

himself—a Dissenter, and in other ways probably of that disadvantageous

quality usually perceptible in a first wife if inquired into with the

dispassionate judgment of a second—was almost as much as she had cared

to learn beyond the glimpses which Mr. Bulstrode’s narrative

occasionally gave of his early bent towards religion, his inclination

to be a preacher, and his association with missionary and philanthropic

efforts. She believed in him as an excellent man whose piety carried a

peculiar eminence in belonging to a layman, whose influence had turned

her own mind toward seriousness, and whose share of perishable good had

been the means of raising her own position. But she also liked to think

that it was well in every sense for Mr. Bulstrode to have won the hand

of Harriet Vincy; whose family was undeniable in a Middlemarch light—a

better light surely than any thrown in London thoroughfares or

dissenting chapel-yards. The unreformed provincial mind distrusted

London; and while true religion was everywhere saving, honest Mrs.

Bulstrode was convinced that to be saved in the Church was more

respectable. She so much wished to ignore towards others that her

husband had ever been a London Dissenter, that she liked to keep it out

of sight even in talking to him. He was quite aware of this; indeed in

some respects he was rather afraid of this ingenuous wife, whose

imitative piety and native worldliness were equally sincere, who had

nothing to be ashamed of, and whom he had married out of a thorough

inclination still subsisting. But his fears were such as belong to a

man who cares to maintain his recognized supremacy: the loss of high

consideration from his wife, as from every one else who did not clearly

hate him out of enmity to the truth, would be as the beginning of death

to him. When she said—

“Is he quite gone away?”

“Oh, I trust so,” he answered, with an effort to throw as much sober

unconcern into his tone as possible!

But in truth Mr. Bulstrode was very far from a state of quiet trust. In

the interview at the Bank, Raffles had made it evident that his

eagerness to torment was almost as strong in him as any other greed. He

had frankly said that he had turned out of the way to come to

Middlemarch, just to look about him and see whether the neighborhood

would suit him to live in. He had certainly had a few debts to pay more

than he expected, but the two hundred pounds were not gone yet: a cool

five-and-twenty would suffice him to go away with for the present. What

he had wanted chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family, and know

all about the prosperity of a man to whom he was so much attached.

By-and-by he might come back for a longer stay. This time Raffles

declined to be “seen off the premises,” as he expressed it—declined to

quit Middlemarch under Bulstrode’s eyes. He meant to go by coach the

next day—if he chose.

Bulstrode felt himself helpless. Neither threats nor coaxing could

avail: he could not count on any persistent fear nor on any promise. On

the contrary, he felt a cold certainty at his heart that Raffles—unless

providence sent death to hinder him—would come back to Middlemarch

before long. And that certainty was a terror.

It was not that he was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary: he

was in danger only of seeing disclosed to the judgment of his neighbors

and the mournful perception of his wife certain facts of his past life

which would render him an object of scorn and an opprobrium of the

religion with which he had diligently associated himself. The terror of

being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over

that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in

general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a

zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man

to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened

wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn

preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose

from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing

shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

Into this second life Bulstrode’s past had now risen, only the

pleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality. Night and day,

without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect and

fear into a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life

coming between him and everything else, as obstinately as when we look

through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs

on are still before us, instead of the grass and the trees. The

successive events inward and outward were there in one view: though

each might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still kept their hold in the

consciousness.

Once more he saw himself the young banker’s clerk, with an agreeable

person, as clever in figures as he was fluent in speech and fond of

theological definition: an eminent though young member of a Calvinistic

dissenting church at Highbury, having had striking experience in

conviction of sin and sense of pardon. Again he heard himself called

for as Brother Bulstrode in prayer meetings, speaking on religious

platforms, preaching in private houses. Again he felt himself thinking

of the ministry as possibly his vocation, and inclined towards

missionary labor. That was the happiest time of his life: that was the

spot he would have chosen now to awake in and find the rest a dream.

The people among whom Brother Bulstrode was distinguished were very

few, but they were very near to him, and stirred his satisfaction the

more; his power stretched through a narrow space, but he felt its

effect the more intensely. He believed without effort in the peculiar

work of grace within him, and in the signs that God intended him for

special instrumentality.

Then came the moment of transition; it was with the sense of promotion

he had when he, an orphan educated at a commercial charity-school, was

invited to a fine villa belonging to Mr. Dunkirk, the richest man in

the congregation. Soon he became an intimate there, honored for his

piety by the wife, marked out for his ability by the husband, whose

wealth was due to a flourishing city and west-end trade. That was the

setting-in of a new current for his ambition, directing his prospects

of “instrumentality” towards the uniting of distinguished religious

gifts with successful business.

By-and-by came a decided external leading: a confidential subordinate

partner died, and nobody seemed to the principal so well fitted to fill

the severely felt vacancy as his young friend Bulstrode, if he would

become confidential accountant. The offer was accepted. The business

was a pawnbroker’s, of the most magnificent sort both in extent and

profits; and on a short acquaintance with it Bulstrode became aware

that one source of magnificent profit was the easy reception of any

goods offered, without strict inquiry as to where they came from. But

there was a branch house at the west end, and no pettiness or dinginess

to give suggestions of shame.

He remembered his first moments of shrinking. They were private, and

were filled with arguments; some of these taking the form of prayer.

The business was established and had old roots; is it not one thing to

set up a new gin-palace and another to accept an investment in an old

one? The profits made out of lost souls—where can the line be drawn at

which they begin in human transactions? Was it not even God’s way of

saving His chosen? “Thou knowest,”—the young Bulstrode had said then,

as the older Bulstrode was saying now—“Thou knowest how loose my soul

sits from these things—how I view them all as implements for tilling

Thy garden rescued here and there from the wilderness.”

Metaphors and precedents were not wanting; peculiar spiritual

experiences were not wanting which at last made the retention of his

position seem a service demanded of him: the vista of a fortune had

already opened itself, and Bulstrode’s shrinking remained private. Mr.

Dunkirk had never expected that there would be any shrinking at all: he

had never conceived that trade had anything to do with the scheme of

salvation. And it was true that Bulstrode found himself carrying on two

distinct lives; his religious activity could not be incompatible with

his business as soon as he had argued himself into not feeling it

incompatible.

Mentally surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode had the same

pleas—indeed, the years had been perpetually spinning them into

intricate thickness, like masses of spider-web, padding the moral

sensibility; nay, as age made egoism more eager but less enjoying, his

soul had become more saturated with the belief that he did everything

for God’s sake, being indifferent to it for his own. And yet—if he

could be back in that far-off spot with his youthful poverty—why, then

he would choose to be a missionary.

But the train of causes in which he had locked himself went on. There

was trouble in the fine villa at Highbury. Years before, the only

daughter had run away, defied her parents, and gone on the stage; and

now the only boy died, and after a short time Mr. Dunkirk died also.

The wife, a simple pious woman, left with all the wealth in and out of

the magnificent trade, of which she never knew the precise nature, had

come to believe in Bulstrode, and innocently adore him as women often

adore their priest or “man-made” minister. It was natural that after a

time marriage should have been thought of between them. But Mrs.

Dunkirk had qualms and yearnings about her daughter, who had long been

regarded as lost both to God and her parents. It was known that the

daughter had married, but she was utterly gone out of sight. The

mother, having lost her boy, imagined a grandson, and wished in a

double sense to reclaim her daughter. If she were found, there would be

a channel for property—perhaps a wide one—in the provision for several

grandchildren. Efforts to find her must be made before Mrs. Dunkirk

would marry again. Bulstrode concurred; but after advertisement as well

as other modes of inquiry had been tried, the mother believed that her

daughter was not to be found, and consented to marry without

reservation of property.

The daughter had been found; but only one man besides Bulstrode knew

it, and he was paid for keeping silence and carrying himself away.

That was the bare fact which Bulstrode was now forced to see in the

rigid outline with which acts present themselves to onlookers. But for

himself at that distant time, and even now in burning memory, the fact

was broken into little sequences, each justified as it came by

reasonings which seemed to prove it righteous. Bulstrode’s course up to

that time had, he thought, been sanctioned by remarkable providences,

appearing to point the way for him to be the agent in making the best

use of a large property and withdrawing it from perversion. Death and

other striking dispositions, such as feminine trustfulness, had come;

and Bulstrode would have adopted Cromwell’s words—“Do you call these

bare events? The Lord pity you!” The events were comparatively small,

but the essential condition was there—namely, that they were in favor

of his own ends. It was easy for him to settle what was due from him to

others by inquiring what were God’s intentions with regard to himself.

Could it be for God’s service that this fortune should in any

considerable proportion go to a young woman and her husband who were

given up to the lightest pursuits, and might scatter it abroad in

triviality—people who seemed to lie outside the path of remarkable

providences? Bulstrode had never said to himself beforehand, “The

daughter shall not be found”—nevertheless when the moment came he kept

her existence hidden; and when other moments followed, he soothed the

mother with consolation in the probability that the unhappy young woman

might be no more.

There were hours in which Bulstrode felt that his action was

unrighteous; but how could he go back? He had mental exercises, called

himself nought, laid hold on redemption, and went on in his course of

instrumentality. And after five years Death again came to widen his

path, by taking away his wife. He did gradually withdraw his capital,

but he did not make the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the

business, which was carried on for thirteen years afterwards before it

finally collapsed. Meanwhile Nicholas Bulstrode had used his hundred

thousand discreetly, and was become provincially, solidly important—a

banker, a Churchman, a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in

trading concerns, in which his ability was directed to economy in the

raw material, as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy’s silk.

And now, when this respectability had lasted undisturbed for nearly

thirty years—when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the

consciousness—that past had risen and immersed his thought as if with

the terrible irruption of a new sense overburthening the feeble being.

Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had learned something

momentous, something which entered actively into the struggle of his

longings and terrors. There, he thought, lay an opening towards

spiritual, perhaps towards material rescue.

The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There may be

coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the

sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was

simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic

beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his

desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be

hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all,

to whatever confession we belong, and whether we believe in the future

perfection of our race or in the nearest date fixed for the end of the

world; whether we regard the earth as a putrefying nidus for a saved

remnant, including ourselves, or have a passionate belief in the

solidarity of mankind.

The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through life

the ground he alleged to himself for his choice of action: it had been

the motive which he had poured out in his prayers. Who would use money

and position better than he meant to use them? Who could surpass him in

self-abhorrence and exaltation of God’s cause? And to Mr. Bulstrode

God’s cause was something distinct from his own rectitude of conduct:

it enforced a discrimination of God’s enemies, who were to be used

merely as instruments, and whom it would be as well if possible to keep

out of money and consequent influence. Also, profitable investments in

trades where the power of the prince of this world showed its most

active devices, became sanctified by a right application of the profits

in the hands of God’s servant.

This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical

belief than the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar to

Englishmen. There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating

out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct

fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.

But a man who believes in something else than his own greed, has

necessarily a conscience or standard to which he more or less adapts

himself. Bulstrode’s standard had been his serviceableness to God’s

cause: “I am sinful and nought—a vessel to be consecrated by use—but

use me!”—had been the mould into which he had constrained his immense

need of being something important and predominating. And now had come a

moment in which that mould seemed in danger of being broken and utterly

cast away.

What if the acts he had reconciled himself to because they made him a

stronger instrument of the divine glory, were to become the pretext of

the scoffer, and a darkening of that glory? If this were to be the

ruling of Providence, he was cast out from the temple as one who had

brought unclean offerings.

He had long poured out utterances of repentance. But today a repentance

had come which was of a bitterer flavor, and a threatening Providence

urged him to a kind of propitiation which was not simply a doctrinal

transaction. The divine tribunal had changed its aspect for him;

self-prostration was no longer enough, and he must bring restitution in

his hand. It was really before his God that Bulstrode was about to

attempt such restitution as seemed possible: a great dread had seized

his susceptible frame, and the scorching approach of shame wrought in

him a new spiritual need. Night and day, while the resurgent

threatening past was making a conscience within him, he was thinking by

what means he could recover peace and trust—by what sacrifice he could

stay the rod. His belief in these moments of dread was, that if he

spontaneously did something right, God would save him from the

consequences of wrong-doing. For religion can only change when the

emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal fear

remains nearly at the level of the savage.

He had seen Raffles actually going away on the Brassing coach, and this

was a temporary relief; it removed the pressure of an immediate dread,

but did not put an end to the spiritual conflict and the need to win

protection. At last he came to a difficult resolve, and wrote a letter

to Will Ladislaw, begging him to be at the Shrubs that evening for a

private interview at nine o’clock. Will had felt no particular surprise

at the request, and connected it with some new notions about the

“Pioneer;” but when he was shown into Mr. Bulstrode’s private room, he

was struck with the painfully worn look on the banker’s face, and was

going to say, “Are you ill?” when, checking himself in that abruptness,

he only inquired after Mrs. Bulstrode, and her satisfaction with the

picture bought for her.

“Thank you, she is quite satisfied; she has gone out with her daughters

this evening. I begged you to come, Mr. Ladislaw, because I have a

communication of a very private—indeed, I will say, of a sacredly

confidential nature, which I desire to make to you. Nothing, I dare

say, has been farther from your thoughts than that there had been

important ties in the past which could connect your history with mine.”

Will felt something like an electric shock. He was already in a state

of keen sensitiveness and hardly allayed agitation on the subject of

ties in the past, and his presentiments were not agreeable. It seemed

like the fluctuations of a dream—as if the action begun by that loud

bloated stranger were being carried on by this pale-eyed sickly looking

piece of respectability, whose subdued tone and glib formality of

speech were at this moment almost as repulsive to him as their

remembered contrast. He answered, with a marked change of color—

“No, indeed, nothing.”

“You see before you, Mr. Ladislaw, a man who is deeply stricken. But

for the urgency of conscience and the knowledge that I am before the

bar of One who seeth not as man seeth, I should be under no compulsion

to make the disclosure which has been my object in asking you to come

here to-night. So far as human laws go, you have no claim on me

whatever.”

Will was even more uncomfortable than wondering. Mr. Bulstrode had

paused, leaning his head on his hand, and looking at the floor. But he

now fixed his examining glance on Will and said—

“I am told that your mother’s name was Sarah Dunkirk, and that she ran

away from her friends to go on the stage. Also, that your father was at

one time much emaciated by illness. May I ask if you can confirm these

statements?”

“Yes, they are all true,” said Will, struck with the order in which an

inquiry had come, that might have been expected to be preliminary to

the banker’s previous hints. But Mr. Bulstrode had to-night followed

the order of his emotions; he entertained no doubt that the opportunity

for restitution had come, and he had an overpowering impulse towards

the penitential expression by which he was deprecating chastisement.

“Do you know any particulars of your mother’s family?” he continued.

“No; she never liked to speak of them. She was a very generous,

honorable woman,” said Will, almost angrily.

“I do not wish to allege anything against her. Did she never mention

her mother to you at all?”

“I have heard her say that she thought her mother did not know the

reason of her running away. She said ‘poor mother’ in a pitying tone.”

“That mother became my wife,” said Bulstrode, and then paused a moment

before he added, “you have a claim on me, Mr. Ladislaw: as I said

before, not a legal claim, but one which my conscience recognizes. I

was enriched by that marriage—a result which would probably not have

taken place—certainly not to the same extent—if your grandmother could

have discovered her daughter. That daughter, I gather, is no longer

living!”

“No,” said Will, feeling suspicion and repugnance rising so strongly

within him, that without quite knowing what he did, he took his hat

from the floor and stood up. The impulse within him was to reject the

disclosed connection.

“Pray be seated, Mr. Ladislaw,” said Bulstrode, anxiously. “Doubtless

you are startled by the suddenness of this discovery. But I entreat

your patience with one who is already bowed down by inward trial.”

Will reseated himself, feeling some pity which was half contempt for

this voluntary self-abasement of an elderly man.

“It is my wish, Mr. Ladislaw, to make amends for the deprivation which

befell your mother. I know that you are without fortune, and I wish to

supply you adequately from a store which would have probably already

been yours had your grandmother been certain of your mother’s existence

and been able to find her.”

Mr. Bulstrode paused. He felt that he was performing a striking piece

of scrupulosity in the judgment of his auditor, and a penitential act

in the eyes of God. He had no clew to the state of Will Ladislaw’s

mind, smarting as it was from the clear hints of Raffles, and with its

natural quickness in construction stimulated by the expectation of

discoveries which he would have been glad to conjure back into

darkness. Will made no answer for several moments, till Mr. Bulstrode,

who at the end of his speech had cast his eyes on the floor, now raised

them with an examining glance, which Will met fully, saying—

“I suppose you did know of my mother’s existence, and knew where she

might have been found.”

Bulstrode shrank—there was a visible quivering in his face and hands.

He was totally unprepared to have his advances met in this way, or to

find himself urged into more revelation than he had beforehand set down

as needful. But at that moment he dared not tell a lie, and he felt

suddenly uncertain of his ground which he had trodden with some

confidence before.

“I will not deny that you conjecture rightly,” he answered, with a

faltering in his tone. “And I wish to make atonement to you as the one

still remaining who has suffered a loss through me. You enter, I trust,

into my purpose, Mr. Ladislaw, which has a reference to higher than

merely human claims, and as I have already said, is entirely

independent of any legal compulsion. I am ready to narrow my own

resources and the prospects of my family by binding myself to allow you

five hundred pounds yearly during my life, and to leave you a

proportional capital at my death—nay, to do still more, if more should

be definitely necessary to any laudable project on your part.” Mr.

Bulstrode had gone on to particulars in the expectation that these

would work strongly on Ladislaw, and merge other feelings in grateful

acceptance.

But Will was looking as stubborn as possible, with his lip pouting and

his fingers in his side-pockets. He was not in the least touched, and

said firmly,—

“Before I make any reply to your proposition, Mr. Bulstrode, I must beg

you to answer a question or two. Were you connected with the business

by which that fortune you speak of was originally made?”

Mr. Bulstrode’s thought was, “Raffles has told him.” How could he

refuse to answer when he had volunteered what drew forth the question?

He answered, “Yes.”

“And was that business—or was it not—a thoroughly dishonorable one—nay,

one that, if its nature had been made public, might have ranked those

concerned in it with thieves and convicts?”

Will’s tone had a cutting bitterness: he was moved to put his question

as nakedly as he could.

Bulstrode reddened with irrepressible anger. He had been prepared for a

scene of self-abasement, but his intense pride and his habit of

supremacy overpowered penitence, and even dread, when this young man,

whom he had meant to benefit, turned on him with the air of a judge.

“The business was established before I became connected with it, sir;

nor is it for you to institute an inquiry of that kind,” he answered,

not raising his voice, but speaking with quick defiantness.

“Yes, it is,” said Will, starting up again with his hat in his hand.

“It is eminently mine to ask such questions, when I have to decide

whether I will have transactions with you and accept your money. My

unblemished honor is important to me. It is important to me to have no

stain on my birth and connections. And now I find there is a stain

which I can’t help. My mother felt it, and tried to keep as clear of it

as she could, and so will I. You shall keep your ill-gotten money. If I

had any fortune of my own, I would willingly pay it to any one who

could disprove what you have told me. What I have to thank you for is

that you kept the money till now, when I can refuse it. It ought to lie

with a man’s self that he is a gentleman. Good-night, sir.”

Bulstrode was going to speak, but Will, with determined quickness, was

out of the room in an instant, and in another the hall-door had closed

behind him. He was too strongly possessed with passionate rebellion

against this inherited blot which had been thrust on his knowledge to

reflect at present whether he had not been too hard on Bulstrode—too

arrogantly merciless towards a man of sixty, who was making efforts at

retrieval when time had rendered them vain.

No third person listening could have thoroughly understood the

impetuosity of Will’s repulse or the bitterness of his words. No one

but himself then knew how everything connected with the sentiment of

his own dignity had an immediate bearing for him on his relation to

Dorothea and to Mr. Casaubon’s treatment of him. And in the rush of

impulses by which he flung back that offer of Bulstrode’s there was

mingled the sense that it would have been impossible for him ever to

tell Dorothea that he had accepted it.

As for Bulstrode—when Will was gone he suffered a violent reaction, and

wept like a woman. It was the first time he had encountered an open

expression of scorn from any man higher than Raffles; and with that

scorn hurrying like venom through his system, there was no sensibility

left to consolations. But the relief of weeping had to be checked. His

wife and daughters soon came home from hearing the address of an

Oriental missionary, and were full of regret that papa had not heard,

in the first instance, the interesting things which they tried to

repeat to him.

Perhaps, through all other hidden thoughts, the one that breathed most

comfort was, that Will Ladislaw at least was not likely to publish what

had taken place that evening.