บทที่ บทที่ 62 · Chapter LXII

He was a squyer of lowe degre,

That loved the king’s daughter of Hungrie.

—_Old Romance_.

Will Ladislaw’s mind was now wholly bent on seeing Dorothea again, and

forthwith quitting Middlemarch. The morning after his agitating scene

with Bulstrode he wrote a brief letter to her, saying that various

causes had detained him in the neighborhood longer than he had

expected, and asking her permission to call again at Lowick at some

hour which she would mention on the earliest possible day, he being

anxious to depart, but unwilling to do so until she had granted him an

interview. He left the letter at the office, ordering the messenger to

carry it to Lowick Manor, and wait for an answer.

Ladislaw felt the awkwardness of asking for more last words. His former

farewell had been made in the hearing of Sir James Chettam, and had

been announced as final even to the butler. It is certainly trying to a

man’s dignity to reappear when he is not expected to do so: a first

farewell has pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends an

opening to comedy, and it was possible even that there might be bitter

sneers afloat about Will’s motives for lingering. Still it was on the

whole more satisfactory to his feeling to take the directest means of

seeing Dorothea, than to use any device which might give an air of

chance to a meeting of which he wished her to understand that it was

what he earnestly sought. When he had parted from her before, he had

been in ignorance of facts which gave a new aspect to the relation

between them, and made a more absolute severance than he had then

believed in. He knew nothing of Dorothea’s private fortune, and being

little used to reflect on such matters, took it for granted that

according to Mr. Casaubon’s arrangement marriage to him, Will Ladislaw,

would mean that she consented to be penniless. That was not what he

could wish for even in his secret heart, or even if she had been ready

to meet such hard contrast for his sake. And then, too, there was the

fresh smart of that disclosure about his mother’s family, which if

known would be an added reason why Dorothea’s friends should look down

upon him as utterly below her. The secret hope that after some years he

might come back with the sense that he had at least a personal value

equal to her wealth, seemed now the dreamy continuation of a dream.

This change would surely justify him in asking Dorothea to receive him

once more.

But Dorothea on that morning was not at home to receive Will’s note. In

consequence of a letter from her uncle announcing his intention to be

at home in a week, she had driven first to Freshitt to carry the news,

meaning to go on to the Grange to deliver some orders with which her

uncle had intrusted her—thinking, as he said, “a little mental

occupation of this sort good for a widow.”

If Will Ladislaw could have overheard some of the talk at Freshitt that

morning, he would have felt all his suppositions confirmed as to the

readiness of certain people to sneer at his lingering in the

neighborhood. Sir James, indeed, though much relieved concerning

Dorothea, had been on the watch to learn Ladislaw’s movements, and had

an instructed informant in Mr. Standish, who was necessarily in his

confidence on this matter. That Ladislaw had stayed in Middlemarch

nearly two months after he had declared that he was going immediately,

was a fact to embitter Sir James’s suspicions, or at least to justify

his aversion to a “young fellow” whom he represented to himself as

slight, volatile, and likely enough to show such recklessness as

naturally went along with a position unriveted by family ties or a

strict profession. But he had just heard something from Standish which,

while it justified these surmises about Will, offered a means of

nullifying all danger with regard to Dorothea.

Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there

are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to

sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same

incongruous manner. Good Sir James was this morning so far unlike

himself that he was irritably anxious to say something to Dorothea on a

subject which he usually avoided as if it had been a matter of shame to

them both. He could not use Celia as a medium, because he did not

choose that she should know the kind of gossip he had in his mind; and

before Dorothea happened to arrive he had been trying to imagine how,

with his shyness and unready tongue, he could ever manage to introduce

his communication. Her unexpected presence brought him to utter

hopelessness in his own power of saying anything unpleasant; but

desperation suggested a resource; he sent the groom on an unsaddled

horse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs. Cadwallader, who

already knew the gossip, and would think it no compromise of herself to

repeat it as often as required.

Dorothea was detained on the good pretext that Mr. Garth, whom she

wanted to see, was expected at the hall within the hour, and she was

still talking to Caleb on the gravel when Sir James, on the watch for

the rector’s wife, saw her coming and met her with the needful hints.

“Enough! I understand,”—said Mrs. Cadwallader. “You shall be innocent.

I am such a blackamoor that I cannot smirch myself.”

“I don’t mean that it’s of any consequence,” said Sir James, disliking

that Mrs. Cadwallader should understand too much. “Only it is desirable

that Dorothea should know there are reasons why she should not receive

him again; and I really can’t say so to her. It will come lightly from

you.”

It came very lightly indeed. When Dorothea quitted Caleb and turned to

meet them, it appeared that Mrs. Cadwallader had stepped across the

park by the merest chance in the world, just to chat with Celia in a

matronly way about the baby. And so Mr. Brooke was coming back?

Delightful!—coming back, it was to be hoped, quite cured of

Parliamentary fever and pioneering. Apropos of the “Pioneer”—somebody

had prophesied that it would soon be like a dying dolphin, and turn all

colors for want of knowing how to help itself, because Mr. Brooke’s

protege, the brilliant young Ladislaw, was gone or going. Had Sir James

heard that?

The three were walking along the gravel slowly, and Sir James, turning

aside to whip a shrub, said he had heard something of that sort.

“All false!” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “He is not gone, or going,

apparently; the ‘Pioneer’ keeps its color, and Mr. Orlando Ladislaw is

making a sad dark-blue scandal by warbling continually with your Mr.

Lydgate’s wife, who they tell me is as pretty as pretty can be. It

seems nobody ever goes into the house without finding this young

gentleman lying on the rug or warbling at the piano. But the people in

manufacturing towns are always disreputable.”

“You began by saying that one report was false, Mrs. Cadwallader, and I

believe this is false too,” said Dorothea, with indignant energy; “at

least, I feel sure it is a misrepresentation. I will not hear any evil

spoken of Mr. Ladislaw; he has already suffered too much injustice.”

Dorothea when thoroughly moved cared little what any one thought of her

feelings; and even if she had been able to reflect, she would have held

it petty to keep silence at injurious words about Will from fear of

being herself misunderstood. Her face was flushed and her lip trembled.

Sir James, glancing at her, repented of his stratagem; but Mrs.

Cadwallader, equal to all occasions, spread the palms of her hands

outward and said—“Heaven grant it, my dear!—I mean that all bad tales

about anybody may be false. But it is a pity that young Lydgate should

have married one of these Middlemarch girls. Considering he’s a son of

somebody, he might have got a woman with good blood in her veins, and

not too young, who would have put up with his profession. There’s Clara

Harfager, for instance, whose friends don’t know what to do with her;

and she has a portion. Then we might have had her among us.

However!—it’s no use being wise for other people. Where is Celia? Pray

let us go in.”

“I am going on immediately to Tipton,” said Dorothea, rather haughtily.

“Good-by.”

Sir James could say nothing as he accompanied her to the carriage. He

was altogether discontented with the result of a contrivance which had

cost him some secret humiliation beforehand.

Dorothea drove along between the berried hedgerows and the shorn

corn-fields, not seeing or hearing anything around. The tears came and

rolled down her cheeks, but she did not know it. The world, it seemed,

was turning ugly and hateful, and there was no place for her

trustfulness. “It is not true—it is not true!” was the voice within her

that she listened to; but all the while a remembrance to which there

had always clung a vague uneasiness would thrust itself on her

attention—the remembrance of that day when she had found Will Ladislaw

with Mrs. Lydgate, and had heard his voice accompanied by the piano.

“He said he would never do anything that I disapproved—I wish I could

have told him that I disapproved of that,” said poor Dorothea,

inwardly, feeling a strange alternation between anger with Will and the

passionate defence of him. “They all try to blacken him before me; but

I will care for no pain, if he is not to blame. I always believed he

was good.”—These were her last thoughts before she felt that the

carriage was passing under the archway of the lodge-gate at the Grange,

when she hurriedly pressed her handkerchief to her face and began to

think of her errands. The coachman begged leave to take out the horses

for half an hour as there was something wrong with a shoe; and

Dorothea, having the sense that she was going to rest, took off her

gloves and bonnet, while she was leaning against a statue in the

entrance-hall, and talking to the housekeeper. At last she said—

“I must stay here a little, Mrs. Kell. I will go into the library and

write you some memoranda from my uncle’s letter, if you will open the

shutters for me.”

“The shutters are open, madam,” said Mrs. Kell, following Dorothea, who

had walked along as she spoke. “Mr. Ladislaw is there, looking for

something.”

(Will had come to fetch a portfolio of his own sketches which he had

missed in the act of packing his movables, and did not choose to leave

behind.)

Dorothea’s heart seemed to turn over as if it had had a blow, but she

was not perceptibly checked: in truth, the sense that Will was there

was for the moment all-satisfying to her, like the sight of something

precious that one has lost. When she reached the door she said to Mrs.

Kell—

“Go in first, and tell him that I am here.”

Will had found his portfolio, and had laid it on the table at the far

end of the room, to turn over the sketches and please himself by

looking at the memorable piece of art which had a relation to nature

too mysterious for Dorothea. He was smiling at it still, and shaking

the sketches into order with the thought that he might find a letter

from her awaiting him at Middlemarch, when Mrs. Kell close to his elbow

said—

“Mrs. Casaubon is coming in, sir.”

Will turned round quickly, and the next moment Dorothea was entering.

As Mrs. Kell closed the door behind her they met: each was looking at

the other, and consciousness was overflowed by something that

suppressed utterance. It was not confusion that kept them silent, for

they both felt that parting was near, and there is no shamefacedness in

a sad parting.

She moved automatically towards her uncle’s chair against the

writing-table, and Will, after drawing it out a little for her, went a

few paces off and stood opposite to her.

“Pray sit down,” said Dorothea, crossing her hands on her lap; “I am

very glad you were here.” Will thought that her face looked just as it

did when she first shook hands with him in Rome; for her widow’s cap,

fixed in her bonnet, had gone off with it, and he could see that she

had lately been shedding tears. But the mixture of anger in her

agitation had vanished at the sight of him; she had been used, when

they were face to face, always to feel confidence and the happy freedom

which comes with mutual understanding, and how could other people’s

words hinder that effect on a sudden? Let the music which can take

possession of our frame and fill the air with joy for us, sound once

more—what does it signify that we heard it found fault with in its

absence?

“I have sent a letter to Lowick Manor to-day, asking leave to see you,”

said Will, seating himself opposite to her. “I am going away

immediately, and I could not go without speaking to you again.”

“I thought we had parted when you came to Lowick many weeks ago—you

thought you were going then,” said Dorothea, her voice trembling a

little.

“Yes; but I was in ignorance then of things which I know now—things

which have altered my feelings about the future. When I saw you before,

I was dreaming that I might come back some day. I don’t think I ever

shall—now.” Will paused here.

“You wished me to know the reasons?” said Dorothea, timidly.

“Yes,” said Will, impetuously, shaking his head backward, and looking

away from her with irritation in his face. “Of course I must wish it. I

have been grossly insulted in your eyes and in the eyes of others.

There has been a mean implication against my character. I wish you to

know that under no circumstances would I have lowered myself by—under

no circumstances would I have given men the chance of saying that I

sought money under the pretext of seeking—something else. There was no

need of other safeguard against me—the safeguard of wealth was enough.”

Will rose from his chair with the last word and went—he hardly knew

where; but it was to the projecting window nearest him, which had been

open as now about the same season a year ago, when he and Dorothea had

stood within it and talked together. Her whole heart was going out at

this moment in sympathy with Will’s indignation: she only wanted to

convince him that she had never done him injustice, and he seemed to

have turned away from her as if she too had been part of the unfriendly

world.

“It would be very unkind of you to suppose that I ever attributed any

meanness to you,” she began. Then in her ardent way, wanting to plead

with him, she moved from her chair and went in front of him to her old

place in the window, saying, “Do you suppose that I ever disbelieved in

you?”

When Will saw her there, he gave a start and moved backward out of the

window, without meeting her glance. Dorothea was hurt by this movement

following up the previous anger of his tone. She was ready to say that

it was as hard on her as on him, and that she was helpless; but those

strange particulars of their relation which neither of them could

explicitly mention kept her always in dread of saying too much. At this

moment she had no belief that Will would in any case have wanted to

marry her, and she feared using words which might imply such a belief.

She only said earnestly, recurring to his last word—

“I am sure no safeguard was ever needed against you.”

Will did not answer. In the stormy fluctuation of his feelings these

words of hers seemed to him cruelly neutral, and he looked pale and

miserable after his angry outburst. He went to the table and fastened

up his portfolio, while Dorothea looked at him from the distance. They

were wasting these last moments together in wretched silence. What

could he say, since what had got obstinately uppermost in his mind was

the passionate love for her which he forbade himself to utter? What

could she say, since she might offer him no help—since she was forced

to keep the money that ought to have been his?—since to-day he seemed

not to respond as he used to do to her thorough trust and liking?

But Will at last turned away from his portfolio and approached the

window again.

“I must go,” he said, with that peculiar look of the eyes which

sometimes accompanies bitter feeling, as if they had been tired and

burned with gazing too close at a light.

“What shall you do in life?” said Dorothea, timidly. “Have your

intentions remained just the same as when we said good-by before?”

“Yes,” said Will, in a tone that seemed to waive the subject as

uninteresting. “I shall work away at the first thing that offers. I

suppose one gets a habit of doing without happiness or hope.”

“Oh, what sad words!” said Dorothea, with a dangerous tendency to sob.

Then trying to smile, she added, “We used to agree that we were alike

in speaking too strongly.”

“I have not spoken too strongly now,” said Will, leaning back against

the angle of the wall. “There are certain things which a man can only

go through once in his life; and he must know some time or other that

the best is over with him. This experience has happened to me while I

am very young—that is all. What I care more for than I can ever care

for anything else is absolutely forbidden to me—I don’t mean merely by

being out of my reach, but forbidden me, even if it were within my

reach, by my own pride and honor—by everything I respect myself for. Of

course I shall go on living as a man might do who had seen heaven in a

trance.”

Will paused, imagining that it would be impossible for Dorothea to

misunderstand this; indeed he felt that he was contradicting himself

and offending against his self-approval in speaking to her so plainly;

but still—it could not be fairly called wooing a woman to tell her that

he would never woo her. It must be admitted to be a ghostly kind of

wooing.

But Dorothea’s mind was rapidly going over the past with quite another

vision than his. The thought that she herself might be what Will most

cared for did throb through her an instant, but then came doubt: the

memory of the little they had lived through together turned pale and

shrank before the memory which suggested how much fuller might have

been the intercourse between Will and some one else with whom he had

had constant companionship. Everything he had said might refer to that

other relation, and whatever had passed between him and herself was

thoroughly explained by what she had always regarded as their simple

friendship and the cruel obstruction thrust upon it by her husband’s

injurious act. Dorothea stood silent, with her eyes cast down dreamily,

while images crowded upon her which left the sickening certainty that

Will was referring to Mrs. Lydgate. But why sickening? He wanted her to

know that here too his conduct should be above suspicion.

Will was not surprised at her silence. His mind also was tumultuously

busy while he watched her, and he was feeling rather wildly that

something must happen to hinder their parting—some miracle, clearly

nothing in their own deliberate speech. Yet, after all, had she any

love for him?—he could not pretend to himself that he would rather

believe her to be without that pain. He could not deny that a secret

longing for the assurance that she loved him was at the root of all his

words.

Neither of them knew how long they stood in that way. Dorothea was

raising her eyes, and was about to speak, when the door opened and her

footman came to say—

“The horses are ready, madam, whenever you like to start.”

“Presently,” said Dorothea. Then turning to Will, she said, “I have

some memoranda to write for the housekeeper.”

“I must go,” said Will, when the door had closed again—advancing

towards her. “The day after to-morrow I shall leave Middlemarch.”

“You have acted in every way rightly,” said Dorothea, in a low tone,

feeling a pressure at her heart which made it difficult to speak.

She put out her hand, and Will took it for an instant without speaking,

for her words had seemed to him cruelly cold and unlike herself. Their

eyes met, but there was discontent in his, and in hers there was only

sadness. He turned away and took his portfolio under his arm.

“I have never done you injustice. Please remember me,” said Dorothea,

repressing a rising sob.

“Why should you say that?” said Will, with irritation. “As if I were

not in danger of forgetting everything else.”

He had really a movement of anger against her at that moment, and it

impelled him to go away without pause. It was all one flash to

Dorothea—his last words—his distant bow to her as he reached the

door—the sense that he was no longer there. She sank into the chair,

and for a few moments sat like a statue, while images and emotions were

hurrying upon her. Joy came first, in spite of the threatening train

behind it—joy in the impression that it was really herself whom Will

loved and was renouncing, that there was really no other love less

permissible, more blameworthy, which honor was hurrying him away from.

They were parted all the same, but—Dorothea drew a deep breath and felt

her strength return—she could think of him unrestrainedly. At that

moment the parting was easy to bear: the first sense of loving and

being loved excluded sorrow. It was as if some hard icy pressure had

melted, and her consciousness had room to expand: her past was come

back to her with larger interpretation. The joy was not the

less—perhaps it was the more complete just then—because of the

irrevocable parting; for there was no reproach, no contemptuous wonder

to imagine in any eye or from any lips. He had acted so as to defy

reproach, and make wonder respectful.

Any one watching her might have seen that there was a fortifying

thought within her. Just as when inventive power is working with glad

ease some small claim on the attention is fully met as if it were only

a cranny opened to the sunlight, it was easy now for Dorothea to write

her memoranda. She spoke her last words to the housekeeper in cheerful

tones, and when she seated herself in the carriage her eyes were bright

and her cheeks blooming under the dismal bonnet. She threw back the

heavy “weepers,” and looked before her, wondering which road Will had

taken. It was in her nature to be proud that he was blameless, and

through all her feelings there ran this vein—“I was right to defend

him.”

The coachman was used to drive his grays at a good pace, Mr. Casaubon

being unenjoying and impatient in everything away from his desk, and

wanting to get to the end of all journeys; and Dorothea was now bowled

along quickly. Driving was pleasant, for rain in the night had laid the

dust, and the blue sky looked far off, away from the region of the

great clouds that sailed in masses. The earth looked like a happy place

under the vast heavens, and Dorothea was wishing that she might

overtake Will and see him once more.

After a turn of the road, there he was with the portfolio under his

arm; but the next moment she was passing him while he raised his hat,

and she felt a pang at being seated there in a sort of exaltation,

leaving him behind. She could not look back at him. It was as if a

crowd of indifferent objects had thrust them asunder, and forced them

along different paths, taking them farther and farther away from each

other, and making it useless to look back. She could no more make any

sign that would seem to say, “Need we part?” than she could stop the

carriage to wait for him. Nay, what a world of reasons crowded upon her

against any movement of her thought towards a future that might reverse

the decision of this day!

“I only wish I had known before—I wish he knew—then we could be quite

happy in thinking of each other, though we are forever parted. And if I

could but have given him the money, and made things easier for

him!”—were the longings that came back the most persistently. And yet,

so heavily did the world weigh on her in spite of her independent

energy, that with this idea of Will as in need of such help and at a

disadvantage with the world, there came always the vision of that

unfittingness of any closer relation between them which lay in the

opinion of every one connected with her. She felt to the full all the

imperativeness of the motives which urged Will’s conduct. How could he

dream of her defying the barrier that her husband had placed between

them?—how could she ever say to herself that she would defy it?

Will’s certainty as the carriage grew smaller in the distance, had much

more bitterness in it. Very slight matters were enough to gall him in

his sensitive mood, and the sight of Dorothea driving past him while he

felt himself plodding along as a poor devil seeking a position in a

world which in his present temper offered him little that he coveted,

made his conduct seem a mere matter of necessity, and took away the

sustainment of resolve. After all, he had no assurance that she loved

him: could any man pretend that he was simply glad in such a case to

have the suffering all on his own side?

That evening Will spent with the Lydgates; the next evening he was

gone.

BOOK VII.

TWO TEMPTATIONS.