Chương Chương 68 · Chapter LXVIII

What suit of grace hath Virtue to put on

If Vice shall wear as good, and do as well?

If Wrong, if Craft, if Indiscretion

Act as fair parts with ends as laudable?

Which all this mighty volume of events

The world, the universal map of deeds,

Strongly controls, and proves from all descents,

That the directest course still best succeeds.

For should not grave and learn’d Experience

That looks with the eyes of all the world beside,

And with all ages holds intelligence,

Go safer than Deceit without a guide!

—DANIEL: _Musophilus_.

That change of plan and shifting of interest which Bulstrode stated or

betrayed in his conversation with Lydgate, had been determined in him

by some severe experience which he had gone through since the epoch of

Mr. Larcher’s sale, when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw, and when

the banker had in vain attempted an act of restitution which might move

Divine Providence to arrest painful consequences.

His certainty that Raffles, unless he were dead, would return to

Middlemarch before long, had been justified. On Christmas Eve he had

reappeared at The Shrubs. Bulstrode was at home to receive him, and

hinder his communication with the rest of the family, but he could not

altogether hinder the circumstances of the visit from compromising

himself and alarming his wife. Raffles proved more unmanageable than he

had shown himself to be in his former appearances, his chronic state of

mental restlessness, the growing effect of habitual intemperance,

quickly shaking off every impression from what was said to him. He

insisted on staying in the house, and Bulstrode, weighing two sets of

evils, felt that this was at least not a worse alternative than his

going into the town. He kept him in his own room for the evening and

saw him to bed, Raffles all the while amusing himself with the

annoyance he was causing this decent and highly prosperous

fellow-sinner, an amusement which he facetiously expressed as sympathy

with his friend’s pleasure in entertaining a man who had been

serviceable to him, and who had not had all his earnings. There was a

cunning calculation under this noisy joking—a cool resolve to extract

something the handsomer from Bulstrode as payment for release from this

new application of torture. But his cunning had a little overcast its

mark.

Bulstrode was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre of Raffles

could enable him to imagine. He had told his wife that he was simply

taking care of this wretched creature, the victim of vice, who might

otherwise injure himself; he implied, without the direct form of

falsehood, that there was a family tie which bound him to this care,

and that there were signs of mental alienation in Raffles which urged

caution. He would himself drive the unfortunate being away the next

morning. In these hints he felt that he was supplying Mrs. Bulstrode

with precautionary information for his daughters and servants, and

accounting for his allowing no one but himself to enter the room even

with food and drink. But he sat in an agony of fear lest Raffles should

be overheard in his loud and plain references to past facts—lest Mrs.

Bulstrode should be even tempted to listen at the door. How could he

hinder her, how betray his terror by opening the door to detect her?

She was a woman of honest direct habits, and little likely to take so

low a course in order to arrive at painful knowledge; but fear was

stronger than the calculation of probabilities.

In this way Raffles had pushed the torture too far, and produced an

effect which had not been in his plan. By showing himself hopelessly

unmanageable he had made Bulstrode feel that a strong defiance was the

only resource left. After taking Raffles to bed that night the banker

ordered his closed carriage to be ready at half-past seven the next

morning. At six o’clock he had already been long dressed, and had spent

some of his wretchedness in prayer, pleading his motives for averting

the worst evil if in anything he had used falsity and spoken what was

not true before God. For Bulstrode shrank from a direct lie with an

intensity disproportionate to the number of his more indirect misdeeds.

But many of these misdeeds were like the subtle muscular movements

which are not taken account of in the consciousness, though they bring

about the end that we fix our mind on and desire. And it is only what

we are vividly conscious of that we can vividly imagine to be seen by

Omniscience.

Bulstrode carried his candle to the bedside of Raffles, who was

apparently in a painful dream. He stood silent, hoping that the

presence of the light would serve to waken the sleeper gradually and

gently, for he feared some noise as the consequence of a too sudden

awakening. He had watched for a couple of minutes or more the

shudderings and pantings which seemed likely to end in waking, when

Raffles, with a long half-stifled moan, started up and stared round him

in terror, trembling and gasping. But he made no further noise, and

Bulstrode, setting down the candle, awaited his recovery.

It was a quarter of an hour later before Bulstrode, with a cold

peremptoriness of manner which he had not before shown, said, “I came

to call you thus early, Mr. Raffles, because I have ordered the

carriage to be ready at half-past seven, and intend myself to conduct

you as far as Ilsely, where you can either take the railway or await a

coach.” Raffles was about to speak, but Bulstrode anticipated him

imperiously with the words, “Be silent, sir, and hear what I have to

say. I shall supply you with money now, and I will furnish you with a

reasonable sum from time to time, on your application to me by letter;

but if you choose to present yourself here again, if you return to

Middlemarch, if you use your tongue in a manner injurious to me, you

will have to live on such fruits as your malice can bring you, without

help from me. Nobody will pay you well for blasting my name: I know the

worst you can do against me, and I shall brave it if you dare to thrust

yourself upon me again. Get up, sir, and do as I order you, without

noise, or I will send for a policeman to take you off my premises, and

you may carry your stories into every pothouse in the town, but you

shall have no sixpence from me to pay your expenses there.”

Bulstrode had rarely in his life spoken with such nervous energy: he

had been deliberating on this speech and its probable effects through a

large part of the night; and though he did not trust to its ultimately

saving him from any return of Raffles, he had concluded that it was the

best throw he could make. It succeeded in enforcing submission from the

jaded man this morning: his empoisoned system at this moment quailed

before Bulstrode’s cold, resolute bearing, and he was taken off quietly

in the carriage before the family breakfast time. The servants imagined

him to be a poor relation, and were not surprised that a strict man

like their master, who held his head high in the world, should be

ashamed of such a cousin and want to get rid of him. The banker’s drive

of ten miles with his hated companion was a dreary beginning of the

Christmas day; but at the end of the drive, Raffles had recovered his

spirits, and parted in a contentment for which there was the good

reason that the banker had given him a hundred pounds. Various motives

urged Bulstrode to this open-handedness, but he did not himself inquire

closely into all of them. As he had stood watching Raffles in his

uneasy sleep, it had certainly entered his mind that the man had been

much shattered since the first gift of two hundred pounds.

He had taken care to repeat the incisive statement of his resolve not

to be played on any more; and had tried to penetrate Raffles with the

fact that he had shown the risks of bribing him to be quite equal to

the risks of defying him. But when, freed from his repulsive presence,

Bulstrode returned to his quiet home, he brought with him no confidence

that he had secured more than a respite. It was as if he had had a

loathsome dream, and could not shake off its images with their hateful

kindred of sensations—as if on all the pleasant surroundings of his

life a dangerous reptile had left his slimy traces.

Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the

thoughts he believes other men to have about him, until that fabric of

opinion is threatened with ruin?

Bulstrode was only the more conscious that there was a deposit of

uneasy presentiment in his wife’s mind, because she carefully avoided

any allusion to it. He had been used every day to taste the flavor of

supremacy and the tribute of complete deference: and the certainty that

he was watched or measured with a hidden suspicion of his having some

discreditable secret, made his voice totter when he was speaking to

edification. Foreseeing, to men of Bulstrode’s anxious temperament, is

often worse than seeing; and his imagination continually heightened the

anguish of an imminent disgrace. Yes, imminent; for if his defiance of

Raffles did not keep the man away—and though he prayed for this result

he hardly hoped for it—the disgrace was certain. In vain he said to

himself that, if permitted, it would be a divine visitation, a

chastisement, a preparation; he recoiled from the imagined burning; and

he judged that it must be more for the Divine glory that he should

escape dishonor. That recoil had at last urged him to make preparations

for quitting Middlemarch. If evil truth must be reported of him, he

would then be at a less scorching distance from the contempt of his old

neighbors; and in a new scene, where his life would not have gathered

the same wide sensibility, the tormentor, if he pursued him, would be

less formidable. To leave the place finally would, he knew, be

extremely painful to his wife, and on other grounds he would have

preferred to stay where he had struck root. Hence he made his

preparations at first in a conditional way, wishing to leave on all

sides an opening for his return after brief absence, if any favorable

intervention of Providence should dissipate his fears. He was preparing

to transfer his management of the Bank, and to give up any active

control of other commercial affairs in the neighborhood, on the ground

of his failing health, but without excluding his future resumption of

such work. The measure would cause him some added expense and some

diminution of income beyond what he had already undergone from the

general depression of trade; and the Hospital presented itself as a

principal object of outlay on which he could fairly economize.

This was the experience which had determined his conversation with

Lydgate. But at this time his arrangements had most of them gone no

farther than a stage at which he could recall them if they proved to be

unnecessary. He continually deferred the final steps; in the midst of

his fears, like many a man who is in danger of shipwreck or of being

dashed from his carriage by runaway horses, he had a clinging

impression that something would happen to hinder the worst, and that to

spoil his life by a late transplantation might be over-hasty—especially

since it was difficult to account satisfactorily to his wife for the

project of their indefinite exile from the only place where she would

like to live.

Among the affairs Bulstrode had to care for, was the management of the

farm at Stone Court in case of his absence; and on this as well as on

all other matters connected with any houses and land he possessed in or

about Middlemarch, he had consulted Caleb Garth. Like every one else

who had business of that sort, he wanted to get the agent who was more

anxious for his employer’s interests than his own. With regard to Stone

Court, since Bulstrode wished to retain his hold on the stock, and to

have an arrangement by which he himself could, if he chose, resume his

favorite recreation of superintendence, Caleb had advised him not to

trust to a mere bailiff, but to let the land, stock, and implements

yearly, and take a proportionate share of the proceeds.

“May I trust to you to find me a tenant on these terms, Mr. Garth?”

said Bulstrode. “And will you mention to me the yearly sum which would

repay you for managing these affairs which we have discussed together?”

“I’ll think about it,” said Caleb, in his blunt way. “I’ll see how I

can make it out.”

If it had not been that he had to consider Fred Vincy’s future, Mr.

Garth would not probably have been glad of any addition to his work, of

which his wife was always fearing an excess for him as he grew older.

But on quitting Bulstrode after that conversation, a very alluring idea

occurred to him about this said letting of Stone Court. What if

Bulstrode would agree to his placing Fred Vincy there on the

understanding that he, Caleb Garth, should be responsible for the

management? It would be an excellent schooling for Fred; he might make

a modest income there, and still have time left to get knowledge by

helping in other business. He mentioned his notion to Mrs. Garth with

such evident delight that she could not bear to chill his pleasure by

expressing her constant fear of his undertaking too much.

“The lad would be as happy as two,” he said, throwing himself back in

his chair, and looking radiant, “if I could tell him it was all

settled. Think; Susan! His mind had been running on that place for

years before old Featherstone died. And it would be as pretty a turn of

things as could be that he should hold the place in a good industrious

way after all—by his taking to business. For it’s likely enough

Bulstrode might let him go on, and gradually buy the stock. He hasn’t

made up his mind, I can see, whether or not he shall settle somewhere

else as a lasting thing. I never was better pleased with a notion in my

life. And then the children might be married by-and-by, Susan.”

“You will not give any hint of the plan to Fred, until you are sure

that Bulstrode would agree to the plan?” said Mrs. Garth, in a tone of

gentle caution. “And as to marriage, Caleb, we old people need not help

to hasten it.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Caleb, swinging his head aside. “Marriage is a

taming thing. Fred would want less of my bit and bridle. However, I

shall say nothing till I know the ground I’m treading on. I shall speak

to Bulstrode again.”

He took his earliest opportunity of doing so. Bulstrode had anything

but a warm interest in his nephew Fred Vincy, but he had a strong wish

to secure Mr. Garth’s services on many scattered points of business at

which he was sure to be a considerable loser, if they were under less

conscientious management. On that ground he made no objection to Mr.

Garth’s proposal; and there was also another reason why he was not

sorry to give a consent which was to benefit one of the Vincy family.

It was that Mrs. Bulstrode, having heard of Lydgate’s debts, had been

anxious to know whether her husband could not do something for poor

Rosamond, and had been much troubled on learning from him that

Lydgate’s affairs were not easily remediable, and that the wisest plan

was to let them “take their course.” Mrs. Bulstrode had then said for

the first time, “I think you are always a little hard towards my

family, Nicholas. And I am sure I have no reason to deny any of my

relatives. Too worldly they may be, but no one ever had to say that

they were not respectable.”

“My dear Harriet,” said Mr. Bulstrode, wincing under his wife’s eyes,

which were filling with tears, “I have supplied your brother with a

great deal of capital. I cannot be expected to take care of his married

children.”

That seemed to be true, and Mrs. Bulstrode’s remonstrance subsided into

pity for poor Rosamond, whose extravagant education she had always

foreseen the fruits of.

But remembering that dialogue, Mr. Bulstrode felt that when he had to

talk to his wife fully about his plan of quitting Middlemarch, he

should be glad to tell her that he had made an arrangement which might

be for the good of her nephew Fred. At present he had merely mentioned

to her that he thought of shutting up The Shrubs for a few months, and

taking a house on the Southern Coast.

Hence Mr. Garth got the assurance he desired, namely, that in case of

Bulstrode’s departure from Middlemarch for an indefinite time, Fred

Vincy should be allowed to have the tenancy of Stone Court on the terms

proposed.

Caleb was so elated with his hope of this “neat turn” being given to

things, that if his self-control had not been braced by a little

affectionate wifely scolding, he would have betrayed everything to

Mary, wanting “to give the child comfort.” However, he restrained

himself, and kept in strict privacy from Fred certain visits which he

was making to Stone Court, in order to look more thoroughly into the

state of the land and stock, and take a preliminary estimate. He was

certainly more eager in these visits than the probable speed of events

required him to be; but he was stimulated by a fatherly delight in

occupying his mind with this bit of probable happiness which he held in

store like a hidden birthday gift for Fred and Mary.

“But suppose the whole scheme should turn out to be a castle in the

air?” said Mrs. Garth.

“Well, well,” replied Caleb; “the castle will tumble about nobody’s

head.”