第 七十四 章 · Chapter LXXIV

“Mercifully grant that we may grow aged together.”

—BOOK OF TOBIT: _Marriage Prayer_.

In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant that the town held

a bad opinion of her husband. No feminine intimate might carry her

friendship so far as to make a plain statement to the wife of the

unpleasant fact known or believed about her husband; but when a woman

with her thoughts much at leisure got them suddenly employed on

something grievously disadvantageous to her neighbors, various moral

impulses were called into play which tended to stimulate utterance.

Candor was one. To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use

an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take

a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position;

and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion. Then,

again, there was the love of truth—a wide phrase, but meaning in this

relation, a lively objection to seeing a wife look happier than her

husband’s character warranted, or manifest too much satisfaction in her

lot—the poor thing should have some hint given her that if she knew the

truth she would have less complacency in her bonnet, and in light

dishes for a supper-party. Stronger than all, there was the regard for

a friend’s moral improvement, sometimes called her soul, which was

likely to be benefited by remarks tending to gloom, uttered with the

accompaniment of pensive staring at the furniture and a manner implying

that the speaker would not tell what was on her mind, from regard to

the feelings of her hearer. On the whole, one might say that an ardent

charity was at work setting the virtuous mind to make a neighbor

unhappy for her good.

There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose matrimonial

misfortunes would in different ways be likely to call forth more of

this moral activity than Rosamond and her aunt Bulstrode. Mrs.

Bulstrode was not an object of dislike, and had never consciously

injured any human being. Men had always thought her a handsome

comfortable woman, and had reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode’s

hypocrisy that he had chosen a red-blooded Vincy, instead of a ghastly

and melancholy person suited to his low esteem for earthly pleasure.

When the scandal about her husband was disclosed they remarked of

her—“Ah, poor woman! She’s as honest as the day—_she_ never suspected

anything wrong in him, you may depend on it.” Women, who were intimate

with her, talked together much of “poor Harriet,” imagined what her

feelings must be when she came to know everything, and conjectured how

much she had already come to know. There was no spiteful disposition

towards her; rather, there was a busy benevolence anxious to ascertain

what it would be well for her to feel and do under the circumstances,

which of course kept the imagination occupied with her character and

history from the times when she was Harriet Vincy till now. With the

review of Mrs. Bulstrode and her position it was inevitable to

associate Rosamond, whose prospects were under the same blight with her

aunt’s. Rosamond was more severely criticised and less pitied, though

she too, as one of the good old Vincy family who had always been known

in Middlemarch, was regarded as a victim to marriage with an

interloper. The Vincys had their weaknesses, but then they lay on the

surface: there was never anything bad to be “found out” concerning

them. Mrs. Bulstrode was vindicated from any resemblance to her

husband. Harriet’s faults were her own.

“She has always been showy,” said Mrs. Hackbutt, making tea for a small

party, “though she has got into the way of putting her religion

forward, to conform to her husband; she has tried to hold her head up

above Middlemarch by making it known that she invites clergymen and

heaven-knows-who from Riverston and those places.”

“We can hardly blame her for that,” said Mrs. Sprague; “because few of

the best people in the town cared to associate with Bulstrode, and she

must have somebody to sit down at her table.”

“Mr. Thesiger has always countenanced him,” said Mrs. Hackbutt. “I

think he must be sorry now.”

“But he was never fond of him in his heart—that every one knows,” said

Mrs. Tom Toller. “Mr. Thesiger never goes into extremes. He keeps to

the truth in what is evangelical. It is only clergymen like Mr. Tyke,

who want to use Dissenting hymn-books and that low kind of religion,

who ever found Bulstrode to their taste.”

“I understand, Mr. Tyke is in great distress about him,” said Mrs.

Hackbutt. “And well he may be: they say the Bulstrodes have half kept

the Tyke family.”

“And of course it is a discredit to his doctrines,” said Mrs. Sprague,

who was elderly, and old-fashioned in her opinions.

“People will not make a boast of being methodistical in Middlemarch for

a good while to come.”

“I think we must not set down people’s bad actions to their religion,”

said falcon-faced Mrs. Plymdale, who had been listening hitherto.

“Oh, my dear, we are forgetting,” said Mrs. Sprague. “We ought not to

be talking of this before you.”

“I am sure I have no reason to be partial,” said Mrs. Plymdale,

coloring. “It’s true Mr. Plymdale has always been on good terms with

Mr. Bulstrode, and Harriet Vincy was my friend long before she married

him. But I have always kept my own opinions and told her where she was

wrong, poor thing. Still, in point of religion, I must say, Mr.

Bulstrode might have done what he has, and worse, and yet have been a

man of no religion. I don’t say that there has not been a little too

much of that—I like moderation myself. But truth is truth. The men

tried at the assizes are not all over-religious, I suppose.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Hackbutt, wheeling adroitly, “all I can say is, that

I think she ought to separate from him.”

“I can’t say that,” said Mrs. Sprague. “She took him for better or

worse, you know.”

“But ‘worse’ can never mean finding out that your husband is fit for

Newgate,” said Mrs. Hackbutt. “Fancy living with such a man! I should

expect to be poisoned.”

“Yes, I think myself it is an encouragement to crime if such men are to

be taken care of and waited on by good wives,” said Mrs. Tom Toller.

“And a good wife poor Harriet has been,” said Mrs. Plymdale. “She

thinks her husband the first of men. It’s true he has never denied her

anything.”

“Well, we shall see what she will do,” said Mrs. Hackbutt. “I suppose

she knows nothing yet, poor creature. I do hope and trust I shall not

see her, for I should be frightened to death lest I should say anything

about her husband. Do you think any hint has reached her?”

“I should hardly think so,” said Mrs. Tom Toller. “We hear that _he_ is

ill, and has never stirred out of the house since the meeting on

Thursday; but she was with her girls at church yesterday, and they had

new Tuscan bonnets. Her own had a feather in it. I have never seen that

her religion made any difference in her dress.”

“She wears very neat patterns always,” said Mrs. Plymdale, a little

stung. “And that feather I know she got dyed a pale lavender on purpose

to be consistent. I must say it of Harriet that she wishes to do

right.”

“As to her knowing what has happened, it can’t be kept from her long,”

said Mrs. Hackbutt. “The Vincys know, for Mr. Vincy was at the meeting.

It will be a great blow to him. There is his daughter as well as his

sister.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Sprague. “Nobody supposes that Mr. Lydgate can

go on holding up his head in Middlemarch, things look so black about

the thousand pounds he took just at that man’s death. It really makes

one shudder.”

“Pride must have a fall,” said Mrs. Hackbutt.

“I am not so sorry for Rosamond Vincy that was as I am for her aunt,”

said Mrs. Plymdale. “She needed a lesson.”

“I suppose the Bulstrodes will go and live abroad somewhere,” said Mrs.

Sprague. “That is what is generally done when there is anything

disgraceful in a family.”

“And a most deadly blow it will be to Harriet,” said Mrs. Plymdale. “If

ever a woman was crushed, she will be. I pity her from my heart. And

with all her faults, few women are better. From a girl she had the

neatest ways, and was always good-hearted, and as open as the day. You

might look into her drawers when you would—always the same. And so she

has brought up Kate and Ellen. You may think how hard it will be for

her to go among foreigners.”

“The doctor says that is what he should recommend the Lydgates to do,”

said Mrs. Sprague. “He says Lydgate ought to have kept among the

French.”

“That would suit _her_ well enough, I dare say,” said Mrs. Plymdale;

“there is that kind of lightness about her. But she got that from her

mother; she never got it from her aunt Bulstrode, who always gave her

good advice, and to my knowledge would rather have had her marry

elsewhere.”

Mrs. Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some complication of

feeling. There had been not only her intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode, but

also a profitable business relation of the great Plymdale dyeing house

with Mr. Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have inclined her to

desire that the mildest view of his character should be the true one,

but on the other, made her the more afraid of seeming to palliate his

culpability. Again, the late alliance of her family with the Tollers

had brought her in connection with the best circle, which gratified her

in every direction except in the inclination to those serious views

which she believed to be the best in another sense. The sharp little

woman’s conscience was somewhat troubled in the adjustment of these

opposing “bests,” and of her griefs and satisfactions under late

events, which were likely to humble those who needed humbling, but also

to fall heavily on her old friend whose faults she would have preferred

seeing on a background of prosperity.

Poor Mrs. Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further shaken by the

oncoming tread of calamity than in the busier stirring of that secret

uneasiness which had always been present in her since the last visit of

Raffles to The Shrubs. That the hateful man had come ill to Stone

Court, and that her husband had chosen to remain there and watch over

him, she allowed to be explained by the fact that Raffles had been

employed and aided in earlier-days, and that this made a tie of

benevolence towards him in his degraded helplessness; and she had been

since then innocently cheered by her husband’s more hopeful speech

about his own health and ability to continue his attention to business.

The calm was disturbed when Lydgate had brought him home ill from the

meeting, and in spite of comforting assurances during the next few

days, she cried in private from the conviction that her husband was not

suffering from bodily illness merely, but from something that afflicted

his mind. He would not allow her to read to him, and scarcely to sit

with him, alleging nervous susceptibility to sounds and movements; yet

she suspected that in shutting himself up in his private room he wanted

to be busy with his papers. Something, she felt sure, had happened.

Perhaps it was some great loss of money; and she was kept in the dark.

Not daring to question her husband, she said to Lydgate, on the fifth

day after the meeting, when she had not left home except to go to

church—

“Mr. Lydgate, pray be open with me: I like to know the truth. Has

anything happened to Mr. Bulstrode?”

“Some little nervous shock,” said Lydgate, evasively. He felt that it

was not for him to make the painful revelation.

“But what brought it on?” said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking directly at him

with her large dark eyes.

“There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms,” said

Lydgate. “Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people in proportion

to the delicacy of their systems. It is often impossible to account for

the precise moment of an attack—or rather, to say why the strength

gives way at a particular moment.”

Mrs. Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer. There remained in

her the belief that some calamity had befallen her husband, of which

she was to be kept in ignorance; and it was in her nature strongly to

object to such concealment. She begged leave for her daughters to sit

with their father, and drove into the town to pay some visits,

conjecturing that if anything were known to have gone wrong in Mr.

Bulstrode’s affairs, she should see or hear some sign of it.

She called on Mrs. Thesiger, who was not at home, and then drove to

Mrs. Hackbutt’s on the other side of the churchyard. Mrs. Hackbutt saw

her coming from an up-stairs window, and remembering her former alarm

lest she should meet Mrs. Bulstrode, felt almost bound in consistency

to send word that she was not at home; but against that, there was a

sudden strong desire within her for the excitement of an interview in

which she was quite determined not to make the slightest allusion to

what was in her mind.

Hence Mrs. Bulstrode was shown into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Hackbutt

went to her, with more tightness of lip and rubbing of her hands than

was usually observable in her, these being precautions adopted against

freedom of speech. She was resolved not to ask how Mr. Bulstrode was.

“I have not been anywhere except to church for nearly a week,” said

Mrs. Bulstrode, after a few introductory remarks. “But Mr. Bulstrode

was taken so ill at the meeting on Thursday that I have not liked to

leave the house.”

Mrs. Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other

held against her chest, and let her eyes ramble over the pattern on the

rug.

“Was Mr. Hackbutt at the meeting?” persevered Mrs. Bulstrode.

“Yes, he was,” said Mrs. Hackbutt, with the same attitude. “The land is

to be bought by subscription, I believe.”

“Let us hope that there will be no more cases of cholera to be buried

in it,” said Mrs. Bulstrode. “It is an awful visitation. But I always

think Middlemarch a very healthy spot. I suppose it is being used to it

from a child; but I never saw the town I should like to live at better,

and especially our end.”

“I am sure I should be glad that you always should live at Middlemarch,

Mrs. Bulstrode,” said Mrs. Hackbutt, with a slight sigh. “Still, we

must learn to resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be cast. Though I

am sure there will always be people in this town who will wish you

well.”

Mrs. Hackbutt longed to say, “if you take my advice you will part from

your husband,” but it seemed clear to her that the poor woman knew

nothing of the thunder ready to bolt on her head, and she herself could

do no more than prepare her a little. Mrs. Bulstrode felt suddenly

rather chill and trembling: there was evidently something unusual

behind this speech of Mrs. Hackbutt’s; but though she had set out with

the desire to be fully informed, she found herself unable now to pursue

her brave purpose, and turning the conversation by an inquiry about the

young Hackbutts, she soon took her leave saying that she was going to

see Mrs. Plymdale. On her way thither she tried to imagine that there

might have been some unusually warm sparring at the meeting between Mr.

Bulstrode and some of his frequent opponents—perhaps Mr. Hackbutt might

have been one of them. That would account for everything.

But when she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that comforting

explanation seemed no longer tenable. “Selina” received her with a

pathetic affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers on

the commonest topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary

quarrel of which the most important consequence was a perturbation of

Mr. Bulstrode’s health. Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought that she

would sooner question Mrs. Plymdale than any one else; but she found to

her surprise that an old friend is not always the person whom it is

easiest to make a confidant of: there was the barrier of remembered

communication under other circumstances—there was the dislike of being

pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow her the

superiority. For certain words of mysterious appropriateness that Mrs.

Plymdale let fall about her resolution never to turn her back on her

friends, convinced Mrs. Bulstrode that what had happened must be some

kind of misfortune, and instead of being able to say with her native

directness, “What is it that you have in your mind?” she found herself

anxious to get away before she had heard anything more explicit. She

began to have an agitating certainty that the misfortune was something

more than the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitive to the fact

that Selina now, just as Mrs. Hackbutt had done before, avoided

noticing what she said about her husband, as they would have avoided

noticing a personal blemish.

She said good-by with nervous haste, and told the coachman to drive to

Mr. Vincy’s warehouse. In that short drive her dread gathered so much

force from the sense of darkness, that when she entered the private

counting-house where her brother sat at his desk, her knees trembled

and her usually florid face was deathly pale. Something of the same

effect was produced in him by the sight of her: he rose from his seat

to meet her, took her by the hand, and said, with his impulsive

rashness—

“God help you, Harriet! you know all.”

That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after. It contained

that concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion reveals

the bias of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which will

end an intermediate struggle. Without that memory of Raffles she might

still have thought only of monetary ruin, but now along with her

brother’s look and words there darted into her mind the idea of some

guilt in her husband—then, under the working of terror came the image

of her husband exposed to disgrace—and then, after an instant of

scorching shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world, with one

leap of her heart she was at his side in mournful but unreproaching

fellowship with shame and isolation. All this went on within her in a

mere flash of time—while she sank into the chair, and raised her eyes

to her brother, who stood over her. “I know nothing, Walter. What is

it?” she said, faintly.

He told her everything, very inartificially, in slow fragments, making

her aware that the scandal went much beyond proof, especially as to the

end of Raffles.

“People will talk,” he said. “Even if a man has been acquitted by a

jury, they’ll talk, and nod and wink—and as far as the world goes, a

man might often as well be guilty as not. It’s a breakdown blow, and it

damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode. I don’t pretend to say what is

the truth. I only wish we had never heard the name of either Bulstrode

or Lydgate. You’d better have been a Vincy all your life, and so had

Rosamond.” Mrs. Bulstrode made no reply.

“But you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet. People don’t blame

_you_. And I’ll stand by you whatever you make up your mind to do,”

said the brother, with rough but well-meaning affectionateness.

“Give me your arm to the carriage, Walter,” said Mrs. Bulstrode. “I

feel very weak.”

And when she got home she was obliged to say to her daughter, “I am not

well, my dear; I must go and lie down. Attend to your papa. Leave me in

quiet. I shall take no dinner.”

She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her

maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk

steadily to the place allotted her. A new searching light had fallen on

her husband’s character, and she could not judge him leniently: the

twenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated him by

virtue of his concealments came back with particulars that made them

seem an odious deceit. He had married her with that bad past life

hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his innocence

of the worst that was imputed to him. Her honest ostentatious nature

made the sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any

mortal.

But this imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and habits were an odd

patchwork, had a loyal spirit within her. The man whose prosperity she

had shared through nearly half a life, and who had unvaryingly

cherished her—now that punishment had befallen him it was not possible

to her in any sense to forsake him. There is a forsaking which still

sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken

soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. She knew, when she

locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down to her

unhappy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will

mourn and not reproach. But she needed time to gather up her strength;

she needed to sob out her farewell to all the gladness and pride of her

life. When she had resolved to go down, she prepared herself by some

little acts which might seem mere folly to a hard onlooker; they were

her way of expressing to all spectators visible or invisible that she

had begun a new life in which she embraced humiliation. She took off

all her ornaments and put on a plain black gown, and instead of wearing

her much-adorned cap and large bows of hair, she brushed her hair down

and put on a plain bonnet-cap, which made her look suddenly like an

early Methodist.

Bulstrode, who knew that his wife had been out and had come in saying

that she was not well, had spent the time in an agitation equal to

hers. He had looked forward to her learning the truth from others, and

had acquiesced in that probability, as something easier to him than any

confession. But now that he imagined the moment of her knowledge come,

he awaited the result in anguish. His daughters had been obliged to

consent to leave him, and though he had allowed some food to be brought

to him, he had not touched it. He felt himself perishing slowly in

unpitied misery. Perhaps he should never see his wife’s face with

affection in it again. And if he turned to God there seemed to be no

answer but the pressure of retribution.

It was eight o’clock in the evening before the door opened and his wife

entered. He dared not look up at her. He sat with his eyes bent down,

and as she went towards him she thought he looked smaller—he seemed so

withered and shrunken. A movement of new compassion and old tenderness

went through her like a great wave, and putting one hand on his which

rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on his shoulder, she

said, solemnly but kindly—

“Look up, Nicholas.”

He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her half amazed

for a moment: her pale face, her changed, mourning dress, the trembling

about her mouth, all said, “I know;” and her hands and eyes rested

gently on him. He burst out crying and they cried together, she sitting

at his side. They could not yet speak to each other of the shame which

she was bearing with him, or of the acts which had brought it down on

them. His confession was silent, and her promise of faithfulness was

silent. Open-minded as she was, she nevertheless shrank from the words

which would have expressed their mutual consciousness, as she would

have shrunk from flakes of fire. She could not say, “How much is only

slander and false suspicion?” and he did not say, “I am innocent.”