第 八十三 章 · Chapter LXXXIII

“And now good-morrow to our waking souls

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room, an everywhere.”

—DR. DONNE.

On the second morning after Dorothea’s visit to Rosamond, she had had

two nights of sound sleep, and had not only lost all traces of fatigue,

but felt as if she had a great deal of superfluous strength—that is to

say, more strength than she could manage to concentrate on any

occupation. The day before, she had taken long walks outside the

grounds, and had paid two visits to the Parsonage; but she never in her

life told any one the reason why she spent her time in that fruitless

manner, and this morning she was rather angry with herself for her

childish restlessness. To-day was to be spent quite differently. What

was there to be done in the village? Oh dear! nothing. Everybody was

well and had flannel; nobody’s pig had died; and it was Saturday

morning, when there was a general scrubbing of doors and door-stones,

and when it was useless to go into the school. But there were various

subjects that Dorothea was trying to get clear upon, and she resolved

to throw herself energetically into the gravest of all. She sat down in

the library before her particular little heap of books on political

economy and kindred matters, out of which she was trying to get light

as to the best way of spending money so as not to injure one’s

neighbors, or—what comes to the same thing—so as to do them the most

good. Here was a weighty subject which, if she could but lay hold of

it, would certainly keep her mind steady. Unhappily her mind slipped

off it for a whole hour; and at the end she found herself reading

sentences twice over with an intense consciousness of many things, but

not of any one thing contained in the text. This was hopeless. Should

she order the carriage and drive to Tipton? No; for some reason or

other she preferred staying at Lowick. But her vagrant mind must be

reduced to order: there was an art in self-discipline; and she walked

round and round the brown library considering by what sort of manoeuvre

she could arrest her wandering thoughts. Perhaps a mere task was the

best means—something to which she must go doggedly. Was there not the

geography of Asia Minor, in which her slackness had often been rebuked

by Mr. Casaubon? She went to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one: this

morning she might make herself finally sure that Paphlagonia was not on

the Levantine coast, and fix her total darkness about the Chalybes

firmly on the shores of the Euxine. A map was a fine thing to study

when you were disposed to think of something else, being made up of

names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them. Dorothea

set earnestly to work, bending close to her map, and uttering the names

in an audible, subdued tone, which often got into a chime. She looked

amusingly girlish after all her deep experience—nodding her head and

marking the names off on her fingers, with a little pursing of her lip,

and now and then breaking off to put her hands on each side of her face

and say, “Oh dear! oh dear!”

There was no reason why this should end any more than a merry-go-round;

but it was at last interrupted by the opening of the door and the

announcement of Miss Noble.

The little old lady, whose bonnet hardly reached Dorothea’s shoulder,

was warmly welcomed, but while her hand was being pressed she made many

of her beaver-like noises, as if she had something difficult to say.

“Do sit down,” said Dorothea, rolling a chair forward. “Am I wanted for

anything? I shall be so glad if I can do anything.”

“I will not stay,” said Miss Noble, putting her hand into her small

basket, and holding some article inside it nervously; “I have left a

friend in the churchyard.” She lapsed into her inarticulate sounds, and

unconsciously drew forth the article which she was fingering. It was

the tortoise-shell lozenge-box, and Dorothea felt the color mounting to

her cheeks.

“Mr. Ladislaw,” continued the timid little woman. “He fears he has

offended you, and has begged me to ask if you will see him for a few

minutes.”

Dorothea did not answer on the instant: it was crossing her mind that

she could not receive him in this library, where her husband’s

prohibition seemed to dwell. She looked towards the window. Could she

go out and meet him in the grounds? The sky was heavy, and the trees

had begun to shiver as at a coming storm. Besides, she shrank from

going out to him.

“Do see him, Mrs. Casaubon,” said Miss Noble, pathetically; “else I

must go back and say No, and that will hurt him.”

“Yes, I will see him,” said Dorothea. “Pray tell him to come.”

What else was there to be done? There was nothing that she longed for

at that moment except to see Will: the possibility of seeing him had

thrust itself insistently between her and every other object; and yet

she had a throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her—a sense that she

was doing something daringly defiant for his sake.

When the little lady had trotted away on her mission, Dorothea stood in

the middle of the library with her hands falling clasped before her,

making no attempt to compose herself in an attitude of dignified

unconsciousness. What she was least conscious of just then was her own

body: she was thinking of what was likely to be in Will’s mind, and of

the hard feelings that others had had about him. How could any duty

bind her to hardness? Resistance to unjust dispraise had mingled with

her feeling for him from the very first, and now in the rebound of her

heart after her anguish the resistance was stronger than ever. “If I

love him too much it is because he has been used so ill:”—there was a

voice within her saying this to some imagined audience in the library,

when the door was opened, and she saw Will before her.

She did not move, and he came towards her with more doubt and timidity

in his face than she had ever seen before. He was in a state of

uncertainty which made him afraid lest some look or word of his should

condemn him to a new distance from her; and Dorothea was afraid of her

_own_ emotion. She looked as if there were a spell upon her, keeping

her motionless and hindering her from unclasping her hands, while some

intense, grave yearning was imprisoned within her eyes. Seeing that she

did not put out her hand as usual, Will paused a yard from her and said

with embarrassment, “I am so grateful to you for seeing me.”

“I wanted to see you,” said Dorothea, having no other words at command.

It did not occur to her to sit down, and Will did not give a cheerful

interpretation to this queenly way of receiving him; but he went on to

say what he had made up his mind to say.

“I fear you think me foolish and perhaps wrong for coming back so soon.

I have been punished for my impatience. You know—every one knows now—a

painful story about my parentage. I knew of it before I went away, and

I always meant to tell you of it if—if we ever met again.”

There was a slight movement in Dorothea, and she unclasped her hands,

but immediately folded them over each other.

“But the affair is matter of gossip now,” Will continued. “I wished you

to know that something connected with it—something which happened

before I went away, helped to bring me down here again. At least I

thought it excused my coming. It was the idea of getting Bulstrode to

apply some money to a public purpose—some money which he had thought of

giving me. Perhaps it is rather to Bulstrode’s credit that he privately

offered me compensation for an old injury: he offered to give me a good

income to make amends; but I suppose you know the disagreeable story?”

Will looked doubtfully at Dorothea, but his manner was gathering some

of the defiant courage with which he always thought of this fact in his

destiny. He added, “You know that it must be altogether painful to me.”

“Yes—yes—I know,” said Dorothea, hastily.

“I did not choose to accept an income from such a source. I was sure

that you would not think well of me if I did so,” said Will. Why should

he mind saying anything of that sort to her now? She knew that he had

avowed his love for her. “I felt that”—he broke off, nevertheless.

“You acted as I should have expected you to act,” said Dorothea, her

face brightening and her head becoming a little more erect on its

beautiful stem.

“I did not believe that you would let any circumstance of my birth

create a prejudice in you against me, though it was sure to do so in

others,” said Will, shaking his head backward in his old way, and

looking with a grave appeal into her eyes.

“If it were a new hardship it would be a new reason for me to cling to

you,” said Dorothea, fervidly. “Nothing could have changed me but—” her

heart was swelling, and it was difficult to go on; she made a great

effort over herself to say in a low tremulous voice, “but thinking that

you were different—not so good as I had believed you to be.”

“You are sure to believe me better than I am in everything but one,”

said Will, giving way to his own feeling in the evidence of hers. “I

mean, in my truth to you. When I thought you doubted of that, I didn’t

care about anything that was left. I thought it was all over with me,

and there was nothing to try for—only things to endure.”

“I don’t doubt you any longer,” said Dorothea, putting out her hand; a

vague fear for him impelling her unutterable affection.

He took her hand and raised it to his lips with something like a sob.

But he stood with his hat and gloves in the other hand, and might have

done for the portrait of a Royalist. Still it was difficult to loose

the hand, and Dorothea, withdrawing it in a confusion that distressed

her, looked and moved away.

“See how dark the clouds have become, and how the trees are tossed,”

she said, walking towards the window, yet speaking and moving with only

a dim sense of what she was doing.

Will followed her at a little distance, and leaned against the tall

back of a leather chair, on which he ventured now to lay his hat and

gloves, and free himself from the intolerable durance of formality to

which he had been for the first time condemned in Dorothea’s presence.

It must be confessed that he felt very happy at that moment leaning on

the chair. He was not much afraid of anything that she might feel now.

They stood silent, not looking at each other, but looking at the

evergreens which were being tossed, and were showing the pale underside

of their leaves against the blackening sky. Will never enjoyed the

prospect of a storm so much: it delivered him from the necessity of

going away. Leaves and little branches were hurled about, and the

thunder was getting nearer. The light was more and more sombre, but

there came a flash of lightning which made them start and look at each

other, and then smile. Dorothea began to say what she had been thinking

of.

“That was a wrong thing for you to say, that you would have had nothing

to try for. If we had lost our own chief good, other people’s good

would remain, and that is worth trying for. Some can be happy. I seemed

to see that more clearly than ever, when I was the most wretched. I can

hardly think how I could have borne the trouble, if that feeling had

not come to me to make strength.”

“You have never felt the sort of misery I felt,” said Will; “the misery

of knowing that you must despise me.”

“But I have felt worse—it was worse to think ill—” Dorothea had begun

impetuously, but broke off.

Will colored. He had the sense that whatever she said was uttered in

the vision of a fatality that kept them apart. He was silent a moment,

and then said passionately—

“We may at least have the comfort of speaking to each other without

disguise. Since I must go away—since we must always be divided—you may

think of me as one on the brink of the grave.”

While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of lightning which lit

each of them up for the other—and the light seemed to be the terror of

a hopeless love. Dorothea darted instantaneously from the window; Will

followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement; and so they

stood, with their hands clasped, like two children, looking out on the

storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack and roll above them,

and the rain began to pour down. Then they turned their faces towards

each other, with the memory of his last words in them, and they did not

loose each other’s hands.

“There is no hope for me,” said Will. “Even if you loved me as well as

I love you—even if I were everything to you—I shall most likely always

be very poor: on a sober calculation, one can count on nothing but a

creeping lot. It is impossible for us ever to belong to each other. It

is perhaps base of me to have asked for a word from you. I meant to go

away into silence, but I have not been able to do what I meant.”

“Don’t be sorry,” said Dorothea, in her clear tender tones. “I would

rather share all the trouble of our parting.”

Her lips trembled, and so did his. It was never known which lips were

the first to move towards the other lips; but they kissed tremblingly,

and then they moved apart.

The rain was dashing against the window-panes as if an angry spirit

were within it, and behind it was the great swoop of the wind; it was

one of those moments in which both the busy and the idle pause with a

certain awe.

Dorothea sat down on the seat nearest to her, a long low ottoman in the

middle of the room, and with her hands folded over each other on her

lap, looked at the drear outer world. Will stood still an instant

looking at her, then seated himself beside her, and laid his hand on

hers, which turned itself upward to be clasped. They sat in that way

without looking at each other, until the rain abated and began to fall

in stillness. Each had been full of thoughts which neither of them

could begin to utter.

But when the rain was quiet, Dorothea turned to look at Will. With

passionate exclamation, as if some torture screw were threatening him,

he started up and said, “It is impossible!”

He went and leaned on the back of the chair again, and seemed to be

battling with his own anger, while she looked towards him sadly.

“It is as fatal as a murder or any other horror that divides people,”

he burst out again; “it is more intolerable—to have our life maimed by

petty accidents.”

“No—don’t say that—your life need not be maimed,” said Dorothea,

gently.

“Yes, it must,” said Will, angrily. “It is cruel of you to speak in

that way—as if there were any comfort. You may see beyond the misery of

it, but I don’t. It is unkind—it is throwing back my love for you as if

it were a trifle, to speak in that way in the face of the fact. We can

never be married.”

“Some time—we might,” said Dorothea, in a trembling voice.

“When?” said Will, bitterly. “What is the use of counting on any

success of mine? It is a mere toss up whether I shall ever do more than

keep myself decently, unless I choose to sell myself as a mere pen and

a mouthpiece. I can see that clearly enough. I could not offer myself

to any woman, even if she had no luxuries to renounce.”

There was silence. Dorothea’s heart was full of something that she

wanted to say, and yet the words were too difficult. She was wholly

possessed by them: at that moment debate was mute within her. And it

was very hard that she could not say what she wanted to say. Will was

looking out of the window angrily. If he would have looked at her and

not gone away from her side, she thought everything would have been

easier. At last he turned, still resting against the chair, and

stretching his hand automatically towards his hat, said with a sort of

exasperation, “Good-by.”

“Oh, I cannot bear it—my heart will break,” said Dorothea, starting

from her seat, the flood of her young passion bearing down all the

obstructions which had kept her silent—the great tears rising and

falling in an instant: “I don’t mind about poverty—I hate my wealth.”

In an instant Will was close to her and had his arms round her, but she

drew her head back and held his away gently that she might go on

speaking, her large tear-filled eyes looking at his very simply, while

she said in a sobbing childlike way, “We could live quite well on my

own fortune—it is too much—seven hundred a-year—I want so little—no new

clothes—and I will learn what everything costs.”