บทที่ บทที่ 64 · Chapter LXIV

1_st Gent_. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.

2_d Gent_. Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright

The coming pest with border fortresses,

Or catch your carp with subtle argument.

All force is twain in one: cause is not cause

Unless effect be there; and action’s self

Must needs contain a passive. So command

Exists but with obedience.

Even if Lydgate had been inclined to be quite open about his affairs,

he knew that it would have hardly been in Mr. Farebrother’s power to

give him the help he immediately wanted. With the year’s bills coming

in from his tradesmen, with Dover’s threatening hold on his furniture,

and with nothing to depend on but slow dribbling payments from patients

who must not be offended—for the handsome fees he had had from Freshitt

Hall and Lowick Manor had been easily absorbed—nothing less than a

thousand pounds would have freed him from actual embarrassment, and

left a residue which, according to the favorite phrase of hopefulness

in such circumstances, would have given him “time to look about him.”

Naturally, the merry Christmas bringing the happy New Year, when

fellow-citizens expect to be paid for the trouble and goods they have

smilingly bestowed on their neighbors, had so tightened the pressure of

sordid cares on Lydgate’s mind that it was hardly possible for him to

think unbrokenly of any other subject, even the most habitual and

soliciting. He was not an ill-tempered man; his intellectual activity,

the ardent kindness of his heart, as well as his strong frame, would

always, under tolerably easy conditions, have kept him above the petty

uncontrolled susceptibilities which make bad temper. But he was now a

prey to that worst irritation which arises not simply from annoyances,

but from the second consciousness underlying those annoyances, of

wasted energy and a degrading preoccupation, which was the reverse of

all his former purposes. “_This_ is what I am thinking of; and _that_

is what I might have been thinking of,” was the bitter incessant murmur

within him, making every difficulty a double goad to impatience.

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general

discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their

great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self

and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate’s

discontent was much harder to bear: it was the sense that there was a

grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while

his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic

fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears. His

troubles will perhaps appear miserably sordid, and beneath the

attention of lofty persons who can know nothing of debt except on a

magnificent scale. Doubtless they were sordid; and for the majority,

who are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but by being free

from money-craving, with all its base hopes and temptations, its

watching for death, its hinted requests, its horse-dealer’s desire to

make bad work pass for good, its seeking for function which ought to be

another’s, its compulsion often to long for Luck in the shape of a wide

calamity.

It was because Lydgate writhed under the idea of getting his neck

beneath this vile yoke that he had fallen into a bitter moody state

which was continually widening Rosamond’s alienation from him. After

the first disclosure about the bill of sale, he had made many efforts

to draw her into sympathy with him about possible measures for

narrowing their expenses, and with the threatening approach of

Christmas his propositions grew more and more definite. “We two can do

with only one servant, and live on very little,” he said, “and I shall

manage with one horse.” For Lydgate, as we have seen, had begun to

reason, with a more distinct vision, about the expenses of living, and

any share of pride he had given to appearances of that sort was meagre

compared with the pride which made him revolt from exposure as a

debtor, or from asking men to help him with their money.

“Of course you can dismiss the other two servants, if you like,” said

Rosamond; “but I should have thought it would be very injurious to your

position for us to live in a poor way. You must expect your practice to

be lowered.”

“My dear Rosamond, it is not a question of choice. We have begun too

expensively. Peacock, you know, lived in a much smaller house than

this. It is my fault: I ought to have known better, and I deserve a

thrashing—if there were anybody who had a right to give it me—for

bringing you into the necessity of living in a poorer way than you have

been used to. But we married because we loved each other, I suppose.

And that may help us to pull along till things get better. Come, dear,

put down that work and come to me.”

He was really in chill gloom about her at that moment, but he dreaded a

future without affection, and was determined to resist the oncoming of

division between them. Rosamond obeyed him, and he took her on his

knee, but in her secret soul she was utterly aloof from him. The poor

thing saw only that the world was not ordered to her liking, and

Lydgate was part of that world. But he held her waist with one hand and

laid the other gently on both of hers; for this rather abrupt man had

much tenderness in his manners towards women, seeming to have always

present in his imagination the weakness of their frames and the

delicate poise of their health both in body and mind. And he began

again to speak persuasively.

“I find, now I look into things a little, Rosy, that it is wonderful

what an amount of money slips away in our housekeeping. I suppose the

servants are careless, and we have had a great many people coming. But

there must be many in our rank who manage with much less: they must do

with commoner things, I suppose, and look after the scraps. It seems,

money goes but a little way in these matters, for Wrench has everything

as plain as possible, and he has a very large practice.”

“Oh, if you think of living as the Wrenches do!” said Rosamond, with a

little turn of her neck. “But I have heard you express your disgust at

that way of living.”

“Yes, they have bad taste in everything—they make economy look ugly. We

needn’t do that. I only meant that they avoid expenses, although Wrench

has a capital practice.”

“Why should not you have a good practice, Tertius? Mr. Peacock had. You

should be more careful not to offend people, and you should send out

medicines as the others do. I am sure you began well, and you got

several good houses. It cannot answer to be eccentric; you should think

what will be generally liked,” said Rosamond, in a decided little tone

of admonition.

Lydgate’s anger rose: he was prepared to be indulgent towards feminine

weakness, but not towards feminine dictation. The shallowness of a

waternixie’s soul may have a charm until she becomes didactic. But he

controlled himself, and only said, with a touch of despotic firmness—

“What I am to do in my practice, Rosy, it is for me to judge. That is

not the question between us. It is enough for you to know that our

income is likely to be a very narrow one—hardly four hundred, perhaps

less, for a long time to come, and we must try to re-arrange our lives

in accordance with that fact.”

Rosamond was silent for a moment or two, looking before her, and then

said, “My uncle Bulstrode ought to allow you a salary for the time you

give to the Hospital: it is not right that you should work for

nothing.”

“It was understood from the beginning that my services would be

gratuitous. That, again, need not enter into our discussion. I have

pointed out what is the only probability,” said Lydgate, impatiently.

Then checking himself, he went on more quietly—

“I think I see one resource which would free us from a good deal of the

present difficulty. I hear that young Ned Plymdale is going to be

married to Miss Sophy Toller. They are rich, and it is not often that a

good house is vacant in Middlemarch. I feel sure that they would be

glad to take this house from us with most of our furniture, and they

would be willing to pay handsomely for the lease. I can employ Trumbull

to speak to Plymdale about it.”

Rosamond left her husband’s knee and walked slowly to the other end of

the room; when she turned round and walked towards him it was evident

that the tears had come, and that she was biting her under-lip and

clasping her hands to keep herself from crying. Lydgate was

wretched—shaken with anger and yet feeling that it would be unmanly to

vent the anger just now.

“I am very sorry, Rosamond; I know this is painful.”

“I thought, at least, when I had borne to send the plate back and have

that man taking an inventory of the furniture—I should have thought

_that_ would suffice.”

“I explained it to you at the time, dear. That was only a security and

behind that security there is a debt. And that debt must be paid within

the next few months, else we shall have our furniture sold. If young

Plymdale will take our house and most of our furniture, we shall be

able to pay that debt, and some others too, and we shall be quit of a

place too expensive for us. We might take a smaller house: Trumbull, I

know, has a very decent one to let at thirty pounds a-year, and this is

ninety.” Lydgate uttered this speech in the curt hammering way with

which we usually try to nail down a vague mind to imperative facts.

Tears rolled silently down Rosamond’s cheeks; she just pressed her

handkerchief against them, and stood looking at the large vase on the

mantel-piece. It was a moment of more intense bitterness than she had

ever felt before. At last she said, without hurry and with careful

emphasis—

“I never could have believed that you would like to act in that way.”

“Like it?” burst out Lydgate, rising from his chair, thrusting his

hands in his pockets and stalking away from the hearth; “it’s not a

question of liking. Of course, I don’t like it; it’s the only thing I

can do.” He wheeled round there, and turned towards her.

“I should have thought there were many other means than that,” said

Rosamond. “Let us have a sale and leave Middlemarch altogether.”

“To do what? What is the use of my leaving my work in Middlemarch to go

where I have none? We should be just as penniless elsewhere as we are

here,” said Lydgate still more angrily.

“If we are to be in that position it will be entirely your own doing,

Tertius,” said Rosamond, turning round to speak with the fullest

conviction. “You will not behave as you ought to do to your own family.

You offended Captain Lydgate. Sir Godwin was very kind to me when we

were at Quallingham, and I am sure if you showed proper regard to him

and told him your affairs, he would do anything for you. But rather

than that, you like giving up our house and furniture to Mr. Ned

Plymdale.”

There was something like fierceness in Lydgate’s eyes, as he answered

with new violence, “Well, then, if you will have it so, I do like it. I

admit that I like it better than making a fool of myself by going to

beg where it’s of no use. Understand then, that it is what I _like to

do._”

There was a tone in the last sentence which was equivalent to the

clutch of his strong hand on Rosamond’s delicate arm. But for all that,

his will was not a whit stronger than hers. She immediately walked out

of the room in silence, but with an intense determination to hinder

what Lydgate liked to do.

He went out of the house, but as his blood cooled he felt that the

chief result of the discussion was a deposit of dread within him at the

idea of opening with his wife in future subjects which might again urge

him to violent speech. It was as if a fracture in delicate crystal had

begun, and he was afraid of any movement that might make it fatal. His

marriage would be a mere piece of bitter irony if they could not go on

loving each other. He had long ago made up his mind to what he thought

was her negative character—her want of sensibility, which showed itself

in disregard both of his specific wishes and of his general aims. The

first great disappointment had been borne: the tender devotedness and

docile adoration of the ideal wife must be renounced, and life must be

taken up on a lower stage of expectation, as it is by men who have lost

their limbs. But the real wife had not only her claims, she had still a

hold on his heart, and it was his intense desire that the hold should

remain strong. In marriage, the certainty, “She will never love me

much,” is easier to bear than the fear, “I shall love her no more.”

Hence, after that outburst, his inward effort was entirely to excuse

her, and to blame the hard circumstances which were partly his fault.

He tried that evening, by petting her, to heal the wound he had made in

the morning, and it was not in Rosamond’s nature to be repellent or

sulky; indeed, she welcomed the signs that her husband loved her and

was under control. But this was something quite distinct from loving

_him_. Lydgate would not have chosen soon to recur to the plan of

parting with the house; he was resolved to carry it out, and say as

little more about it as possible. But Rosamond herself touched on it at

breakfast by saying, mildly—

“Have you spoken to Trumbull yet?”

“No,” said Lydgate, “but I shall call on him as I go by this morning.

No time must be lost.” He took Rosamond’s question as a sign that she

withdrew her inward opposition, and kissed her head caressingly when he

got up to go away.

As soon as it was late enough to make a call, Rosamond went to Mrs.

Plymdale, Mr. Ned’s mother, and entered with pretty congratulations

into the subject of the coming marriage. Mrs. Plymdale’s maternal view

was, that Rosamond might possibly now have retrospective glimpses of

her own folly; and feeling the advantages to be at present all on the

side of her son, was too kind a woman not to behave graciously.

“Yes, Ned is most happy, I must say. And Sophy Toller is all I could

desire in a daughter-in-law. Of course her father is able to do

something handsome for her—that is only what would be expected with a

brewery like his. And the connection is everything we should desire.

But that is not what I look at. She is such a very nice girl—no airs,

no pretensions, though on a level with the first. I don’t mean with the

titled aristocracy. I see very little good in people aiming out of

their own sphere. I mean that Sophy is equal to the best in the town,

and she is contented with that.”

“I have always thought her very agreeable,” said Rosamond.

“I look upon it as a reward for Ned, who never held his head too high,

that he should have got into the very best connection,” continued Mrs.

Plymdale, her native sharpness softened by a fervid sense that she was

taking a correct view. “And such particular people as the Tollers are,

they might have objected because some of our friends are not theirs. It

is well known that your aunt Bulstrode and I have been intimate from

our youth, and Mr. Plymdale has been always on Mr. Bulstrode’s side.

And I myself prefer serious opinions. But the Tollers have welcomed Ned

all the same.”

“I am sure he is a very deserving, well-principled young man,” said

Rosamond, with a neat air of patronage in return for Mrs. Plymdale’s

wholesome corrections.

“Oh, he has not the style of a captain in the army, or that sort of

carriage as if everybody was beneath him, or that showy kind of

talking, and singing, and intellectual talent. But I am thankful he has

not. It is a poor preparation both for here and Hereafter.”

“Oh dear, yes; appearances have very little to do with happiness,” said

Rosamond. “I think there is every prospect of their being a happy

couple. What house will they take?”

“Oh, as for that, they must put up with what they can get. They have

been looking at the house in St. Peter’s Place, next to Mr. Hackbutt’s;

it belongs to him, and he is putting it nicely in repair. I suppose

they are not likely to hear of a better. Indeed, I think Ned will

decide the matter to-day.”

“I should think it is a nice house; I like St. Peter’s Place.”

“Well, it is near the Church, and a genteel situation. But the windows

are narrow, and it is all ups and downs. You don’t happen to know of

any other that would be at liberty?” said Mrs. Plymdale, fixing her

round black eyes on Rosamond with the animation of a sudden thought in

them.

“Oh no; I hear so little of those things.”

Rosamond had not foreseen that question and answer in setting out to

pay her visit; she had simply meant to gather any information which

would help her to avert the parting with her own house under

circumstances thoroughly disagreeable to her. As to the untruth in her

reply, she no more reflected on it than she did on the untruth there

was in her saying that appearances had very little to do with

happiness. Her object, she was convinced, was thoroughly justifiable:

it was Lydgate whose intention was inexcusable; and there was a plan in

her mind which, when she had carried it out fully, would prove how very

false a step it would have been for him to have descended from his

position.

She returned home by Mr. Borthrop Trumbull’s office, meaning to call

there. It was the first time in her life that Rosamond had thought of

doing anything in the form of business, but she felt equal to the

occasion. That she should be obliged to do what she intensely disliked,

was an idea which turned her quiet tenacity into active invention. Here

was a case in which it could not be enough simply to disobey and be

serenely, placidly obstinate: she must act according to her judgment,

and she said to herself that her judgment was right—“indeed, if it had

not been, she would not have wished to act on it.”

Mr. Trumbull was in the back-room of his office, and received Rosamond

with his finest manners, not only because he had much sensibility to

her charms, but because the good-natured fibre in him was stirred by

his certainty that Lydgate was in difficulties, and that this

uncommonly pretty woman—this young lady with the highest personal

attractions—was likely to feel the pinch of trouble—to find herself

involved in circumstances beyond her control. He begged her to do him

the honor to take a seat, and stood before her trimming and comporting

himself with an eager solicitude, which was chiefly benevolent.

Rosamond’s first question was, whether her husband had called on Mr.

Trumbull that morning, to speak about disposing of their house.

“Yes, ma’am, yes, he did; he did so,” said the good auctioneer, trying

to throw something soothing into his iteration. “I was about to fulfil

his order, if possible, this afternoon. He wished me not to

procrastinate.”

“I called to tell you not to go any further, Mr. Trumbull; and I beg of

you not to mention what has been said on the subject. Will you oblige

me?”

“Certainly I will, Mrs. Lydgate, certainly. Confidence is sacred with

me on business or any other topic. I am then to consider the commission

withdrawn?” said Mr. Trumbull, adjusting the long ends of his blue

cravat with both hands, and looking at Rosamond deferentially.

“Yes, if you please. I find that Mr. Ned Plymdale has taken a house—the

one in St. Peter’s Place next to Mr. Hackbutt’s. Mr. Lydgate would be

annoyed that his orders should be fulfilled uselessly. And besides

that, there are other circumstances which render the proposal

unnecessary.”

“Very good, Mrs. Lydgate, very good. I am at your commands, whenever

you require any service of me,” said Mr. Trumbull, who felt pleasure in

conjecturing that some new resources had been opened. “Rely on me, I

beg. The affair shall go no further.”

That evening Lydgate was a little comforted by observing that Rosamond

was more lively than she had usually been of late, and even seemed

interested in doing what would please him without being asked. He

thought, “If she will be happy and I can rub through, what does it all

signify? It is only a narrow swamp that we have to pass in a long

journey. If I can get my mind clear again, I shall do.”

He was so much cheered that he began to search for an account of

experiments which he had long ago meant to look up, and had neglected

out of that creeping self-despair which comes in the train of petty

anxieties. He felt again some of the old delightful absorption in a

far-reaching inquiry, while Rosamond played the quiet music which was

as helpful to his meditation as the plash of an oar on the evening

lake. It was rather late; he had pushed away all the books, and was

looking at the fire with his hands clasped behind his head in

forgetfulness of everything except the construction of a new

controlling experiment, when Rosamond, who had left the piano and was

leaning back in her chair watching him, said—

“Mr. Ned Plymdale has taken a house already.”

Lydgate, startled and jarred, looked up in silence for a moment, like a

man who has been disturbed in his sleep. Then flushing with an

unpleasant consciousness, he asked—

“How do you know?”

“I called at Mrs. Plymdale’s this morning, and she told me that he had

taken the house in St. Peter’s Place, next to Mr. Hackbutt’s.”

Lydgate was silent. He drew his hands from behind his head and pressed

them against the hair which was hanging, as it was apt to do, in a mass

on his forehead, while he rested his elbows on his knees. He was

feeling bitter disappointment, as if he had opened a door out of a

suffocating place and had found it walled up; but he also felt sure

that Rosamond was pleased with the cause of his disappointment. He

preferred not looking at her and not speaking, until he had got over

the first spasm of vexation. After all, he said in his bitterness, what

can a woman care about so much as house and furniture? a husband

without them is an absurdity. When he looked up and pushed his hair

aside, his dark eyes had a miserable blank non-expectance of sympathy

in them, but he only said, coolly—

“Perhaps some one else may turn up. I told Trumbull to be on the

look-out if he failed with Plymdale.”

Rosamond made no remark. She trusted to the chance that nothing more

would pass between her husband and the auctioneer until some issue

should have justified her interference; at any rate, she had hindered

the event which she immediately dreaded. After a pause, she said—

“How much money is it that those disagreeable people want?”

“What disagreeable people?”

“Those who took the list—and the others. I mean, how much money would

satisfy them so that you need not be troubled any more?”

Lydgate surveyed her for a moment, as if he were looking for symptoms,

and then said, “Oh, if I could have got six hundred from Plymdale for

furniture and as premium, I might have managed. I could have paid off

Dover, and given enough on account to the others to make them wait

patiently, if we contracted our expenses.”

“But I mean how much should you want if we stayed in this house?”

“More than I am likely to get anywhere,” said Lydgate, with rather a

grating sarcasm in his tone. It angered him to perceive that Rosamond’s

mind was wandering over impracticable wishes instead of facing possible

efforts.

“Why should you not mention the sum?” said Rosamond, with a mild

indication that she did not like his manners.

“Well,” said Lydgate in a guessing tone, “it would take at least a

thousand to set me at ease. But,” he added, incisively, “I have to

consider what I shall do without it, not with it.”

Rosamond said no more.

But the next day she carried out her plan of writing to Sir Godwin

Lydgate. Since the Captain’s visit, she had received a letter from him,

and also one from Mrs. Mengan, his married sister, condoling with her

on the loss of her baby, and expressing vaguely the hope that they

should see her again at Quallingham. Lydgate had told her that this

politeness meant nothing; but she was secretly convinced that any

backwardness in Lydgate’s family towards him was due to his cold and

contemptuous behavior, and she had answered the letters in her most

charming manner, feeling some confidence that a specific invitation

would follow. But there had been total silence. The Captain evidently

was not a great penman, and Rosamond reflected that the sisters might

have been abroad. However, the season was come for thinking of friends

at home, and at any rate Sir Godwin, who had chucked her under the

chin, and pronounced her to be like the celebrated beauty, Mrs. Croly,

who had made a conquest of him in 1790, would be touched by any appeal

from her, and would find it pleasant for her sake to behave as he ought

to do towards his nephew. Rosamond was naively convinced of what an old

gentleman ought to do to prevent her from suffering annoyance. And she

wrote what she considered the most judicious letter possible—one which

would strike Sir Godwin as a proof of her excellent sense—pointing out

how desirable it was that Tertius should quit such a place as

Middlemarch for one more fitted to his talents, how the unpleasant

character of the inhabitants had hindered his professional success, and

how in consequence he was in money difficulties, from which it would

require a thousand pounds thoroughly to extricate him. She did not say

that Tertius was unaware of her intention to write; for she had the

idea that his supposed sanction of her letter would be in accordance

with what she did say of his great regard for his uncle Godwin as the

relative who had always been his best friend. Such was the force of

Poor Rosamond’s tactics now she applied them to affairs.

This had happened before the party on New Year’s Day, and no answer had

yet come from Sir Godwin. But on the morning of that day Lydgate had to

learn that Rosamond had revoked his order to Borthrop Trumbull. Feeling

it necessary that she should be gradually accustomed to the idea of

their quitting the house in Lowick Gate, he overcame his reluctance to

speak to her again on the subject, and when they were breakfasting

said—

“I shall try to see Trumbull this morning, and tell him to advertise

the house in the ‘Pioneer’ and the ‘Trumpet.’ If the thing were

advertised, some one might be inclined to take it who would not

otherwise have thought of a change. In these country places many people

go on in their old houses when their families are too large for them,

for want of knowing where they can find another. And Trumbull seems to

have got no bite at all.”

Rosamond knew that the inevitable moment was come. “I ordered Trumbull

not to inquire further,” she said, with a careful calmness which was

evidently defensive.

Lydgate stared at her in mute amazement. Only half an hour before he

had been fastening up her plaits for her, and talking the “little

language” of affection, which Rosamond, though not returning it,

accepted as if she had been a serene and lovely image, now and then

miraculously dimpling towards her votary. With such fibres still astir

in him, the shock he received could not at once be distinctly anger; it

was confused pain. He laid down the knife and fork with which he was

carving, and throwing himself back in his chair, said at last, with a

cool irony in his tone—

“May I ask when and why you did so?”

“When I knew that the Plymdales had taken a house, I called to tell him

not to mention ours to them; and at the same time I told him not to let

the affair go on any further. I knew that it would be very injurious to

you if it were known that you wished to part with your house and

furniture, and I had a very strong objection to it. I think that was

reason enough.”

“It was of no consequence then that I had told you imperative reasons

of another kind; of no consequence that I had come to a different

conclusion, and given an order accordingly?” said Lydgate, bitingly,

the thunder and lightning gathering about his brow and eyes.

The effect of any one’s anger on Rosamond had always been to make her

shrink in cold dislike, and to become all the more calmly correct, in

the conviction that she was not the person to misbehave whatever others

might do. She replied—

“I think I had a perfect right to speak on a subject which concerns me

at least as much as you.”

“Clearly—you had a right to speak, but only to me. You had no right to

contradict my orders secretly, and treat me as if I were a fool,” said

Lydgate, in the same tone as before. Then with some added scorn, “Is it

possible to make you understand what the consequences will be? Is it of

any use for me to tell you again why we must try to part with the

house?”

“It is not necessary for you to tell me again,” said Rosamond, in a

voice that fell and trickled like cold water-drops. “I remembered what

you said. You spoke just as violently as you do now. But that does not

alter my opinion that you ought to try every other means rather than

take a step which is so painful to me. And as to advertising the house,

I think it would be perfectly degrading to you.”

“And suppose I disregard your opinion as you disregard mine?”

“You can do so, of course. But I think you ought to have told me before

we were married that you would place me in the worst position, rather

than give up your own will.”

Lydgate did not speak, but tossed his head on one side, and twitched

the corners of his mouth in despair. Rosamond, seeing that he was not

looking at her, rose and set his cup of coffee before him; but he took

no notice of it, and went on with an inward drama and argument,

occasionally moving in his seat, resting one arm on the table, and

rubbing his hand against his hair. There was a conflux of emotions and

thoughts in him that would not let him either give thorough way to his

anger or persevere with simple rigidity of resolve. Rosamond took

advantage of his silence.

“When we were married everyone felt that your position was very high. I

could not have imagined then that you would want to sell our furniture,

and take a house in Bride Street, where the rooms are like cages. If we

are to live in that way let us at least leave Middlemarch.”

“These would be very strong considerations,” said Lydgate, half

ironically—still there was a withered paleness about his lips as he

looked at his coffee, and did not drink—“these would be very strong

considerations if I did not happen to be in debt.”

“Many persons must have been in debt in the same way, but if they are

respectable, people trust them. I am sure I have heard papa say that

the Torbits were in debt, and they went on very well. It cannot be good

to act rashly,” said Rosamond, with serene wisdom.

Lydgate sat paralyzed by opposing impulses: since no reasoning he could

apply to Rosamond seemed likely to conquer her assent, he wanted to

smash and grind some object on which he could at least produce an

impression, or else to tell her brutally that he was master, and she

must obey. But he not only dreaded the effect of such extremities on

their mutual life—he had a growing dread of Rosamond’s quiet elusive

obstinacy, which would not allow any assertion of power to be final;

and again, she had touched him in a spot of keenest feeling by implying

that she had been deluded with a false vision of happiness in marrying

him. As to saying that he was master, it was not the fact. The very

resolution to which he had wrought himself by dint of logic and

honorable pride was beginning to relax under her torpedo contact. He

swallowed half his cup of coffee, and then rose to go.

“I may at least request that you will not go to Trumbull at

present—until it has been seen that there are no other means,” said

Rosamond. Although she was not subject to much fear, she felt it safer

not to betray that she had written to Sir Godwin. “Promise me that you

will not go to him for a few weeks, or without telling me.”

Lydgate gave a short laugh. “I think it is I who should exact a promise

that you will do nothing without telling me,” he said, turning his eyes

sharply upon her, and then moving to the door.

“You remember that we are going to dine at papa’s,” said Rosamond,

wishing that he should turn and make a more thorough concession to her.

But he only said “Oh yes,” impatiently, and went away. She held it to

be very odious in him that he did not think the painful propositions he

had had to make to her were enough, without showing so unpleasant a

temper. And when she put the moderate request that he would defer going

to Trumbull again, it was cruel in him not to assure her of what he

meant to do. She was convinced of her having acted in every way for the

best; and each grating or angry speech of Lydgate’s served only as an

addition to the register of offences in her mind. Poor Rosamond for

months had begun to associate her husband with feelings of

disappointment, and the terribly inflexible relation of marriage had

lost its charm of encouraging delightful dreams. It had freed her from

the disagreeables of her father’s house, but it had not given her

everything that she had wished and hoped. The Lydgate with whom she had

been in love had been a group of airy conditions for her, most of which

had disappeared, while their place had been taken by every-day details

which must be lived through slowly from hour to hour, not floated

through with a rapid selection of favorable aspects. The habits of

Lydgate’s profession, his home preoccupation with scientific subjects,

which seemed to her almost like a morbid vampire’s taste, his peculiar

views of things which had never entered into the dialogue of

courtship—all these continually alienating influences, even without the

fact of his having placed himself at a disadvantage in the town, and

without that first shock of revelation about Dover’s debt, would have

made his presence dull to her. There was another presence which ever

since the early days of her marriage, until four months ago, had been

an agreeable excitement, but that was gone: Rosamond would not confess

to herself how much the consequent blank had to do with her utter

ennui; and it seemed to her (perhaps she was right) that an invitation

to Quallingham, and an opening for Lydgate to settle elsewhere than in

Middlemarch—in London, or somewhere likely to be free from

unpleasantness—would satisfy her quite well, and make her indifferent

to the absence of Will Ladislaw, towards whom she felt some resentment

for his exaltation of Mrs. Casaubon.

That was the state of things with Lydgate and Rosamond on the New

Year’s Day when they dined at her father’s, she looking mildly neutral

towards him in remembrance of his ill-tempered behavior at breakfast,

and he carrying a much deeper effect from the inward conflict in which

that morning scene was only one of many epochs. His flushed effort

while talking to Mr. Farebrother—his effort after the cynical pretence

that all ways of getting money are essentially the same, and that

chance has an empire which reduces choice to a fool’s illusion—was but

the symptom of a wavering resolve, a benumbed response to the old

stimuli of enthusiasm.

What was he to do? He saw even more keenly than Rosamond did the

dreariness of taking her into the small house in Bride Street, where

she would have scanty furniture around her and discontent within: a

life of privation and life with Rosamond were two images which had

become more and more irreconcilable ever since the threat of privation

had disclosed itself. But even if his resolves had forced the two

images into combination, the useful preliminaries to that hard change

were not visibly within reach. And though he had not given the promise

which his wife had asked for, he did not go again to Trumbull. He even

began to think of taking a rapid journey to the North and seeing Sir

Godwin. He had once believed that nothing would urge him into making an

application for money to his uncle, but he had not then known the full

pressure of alternatives yet more disagreeable. He could not depend on

the effect of a letter; it was only in an interview, however

disagreeable this might be to himself, that he could give a thorough

explanation and could test the effectiveness of kinship. No sooner had

Lydgate begun to represent this step to himself as the easiest than

there was a reaction of anger that he—he who had long ago determined to

live aloof from such abject calculations, such self-interested anxiety

about the inclinations and the pockets of men with whom he had been

proud to have no aims in common—should have fallen not simply to their

level, but to the level of soliciting them.