Middlemarch, Page 74

  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 helda bad opinion of her husband. No feminine intimate might carry herfriendship so far as to make a plain statement to the wife of theunpleasant fact known or believed about her husband; but when a womanwith her thoughts much at leisure got them suddenly employed onsomething grievously disadvantageous to her neighbors, various moralimpulses were called into play which tended to stimulate utterance.Candor was one. To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, touse an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did nottake a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or theirposition; 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 inthis relation, a lively objection to seeing a wife look happier thanher husband's character warranted, or manifest too much satisfaction inher lot--the poor thing should have some hint given her that if sheknew the truth she would have less complacency in her bonnet, and inlight dishes for a supper-party. Stronger than all, there was theregard for a friend's moral improvement, sometimes called her soul,which was likely to be benefited by remarks tending to gloom, utteredwith the accompaniment of pensive staring at the furniture and a mannerimplying that the speaker would not tell what was on her mind, fromregard to the feelings of her hearer. On the whole, one might say thatan ardent charity was at work setting the virtuous mind to make aneighbor unhappy for her good.

  There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose matrimonialmisfortunes would in different ways be likely to call forth more ofthis moral activity than Rosamond and her aunt Bulstrode. Mrs.Bulstrode was not an object of dislike, and had never consciouslyinjured any human being. Men had always thought her a handsomecomfortable woman, and had reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode'shypocrisy that he had chosen a red-blooded Vincy, instead of a ghastlyand melancholy person suited to his low esteem for earthly pleasure.When the scandal about her husband was disclosed they remarked ofher--"Ah, poor woman! She's as honest as the day--_she_ neversuspected anything wrong in him, you may depend on it." Women, whowere 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 nospiteful disposition towards her; rather, there was a busy benevolenceanxious to ascertain what it would be well for her to feel and do underthe circumstances, which of course kept the imagination occupied withher character and history from the times when she was Harriet Vincytill now. With the review of Mrs. Bulstrode and her position it wasinevitable to associate Rosamond, whose prospects were under the sameblight with her aunt's. Rosamond was more severely criticised and lesspitied, though she too, as one of the good old Vincy family who hadalways been known in Middlemarch, was regarded as a victim to marriagewith an interloper. The Vincys had their weaknesses, but then they layon the surface: there was never anything bad to be "found out"concerning them. Mrs. Bulstrode was vindicated from any resemblance toher husband. Harriet's faults were her own.

  "She has always been showy," said Mrs. Hackbutt, making tea for a smallparty, "though she has got into the way of putting her religionforward, to conform to her husband; she has tried to hold her head upabove Middlemarch by making it known that she invites clergymen andheaven-knows-who from Riverston and those places."

  "We can hardly blame her for that," said Mrs. Sprague; "because few ofthe best people in the town cared to associate with Bulstrode, and shemust have somebody to sit down at her table."

  "Mr. Thesiger has always countenanced him," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "Ithink he must be sorry now."

  "But he was never fond of him in his heart--that every one knows," saidMrs. Tom Toller. "Mr. Thesiger never goes into extremes. He keeps tothe 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 keptthe 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 fora 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 tobe 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 withMr. Bulstrode, and Harriet Vincy was my friend long before she marriedhim. But I have always kept my own opinions and told her where she waswrong, poor thing. Still, in point of religion, I must say, Mr.Bulstrode might have done what he has, and worse, and yet have been aman of no religion. I don't say that there has not been a little toomuch of that--I like moderation myself. But truth is truth. The mentried at the assizes are not all over-religious, I suppose."

  "Well," said Mrs. Hackbutt, wheeling adroitly, "all I can say is, thatI think she ought to separate from him."

  "I can't say that," said Mrs. Sprague. "She took him for better orworse, you know."

  "But 'worse' can never mean finding out that your husband is fit forNewgate," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "Fancy living with such a man! I shouldexpect to be poisoned."

  "Yes, I think myself it is an encouragement to crime if such men are tobe taken care of and waited on by good wives," said Mrs. Tom Toller.

  "And a good wife poor Harriet has been," said Mrs. Plymdale. "Shethinks her husband the first of men. It's true he has never denied heranything."

  "Well, we shall see what she will do," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "I supposeshe knows nothing yet, poor creature. I do hope and trust I shall notsee her, for I should be frightened to death lest I should say anythingabout her husband. Do you think any hint has reached her?"

  "I should hardly think so," said Mrs. Tom Toller. "We hear that he isill, and has never stirred out of the house since the meeting onThursday; but she was with her girls at church yesterday, and they hadnew Tuscan bonnets. Her own had a feather in it. I have never seenthat her religion made any difference in her dress."

  "She wears very neat patterns always," said Mrs. Plymdale, a littlestung. "And that feather I know she got dyed a pale lavender onpurpose to be consistent. I must say it of Harriet that she wishes todo 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 themeeting. It will be a great blow to him. There is his daughter aswell as his sister."

  "Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Sprague. "Nobody supposes that Mr. Lydgatecan go on holding up his head in Middlemarch, things look so blackabout the thousand pounds he took just at that man's death. It reallymakes 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 anythingdisgraceful 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 theneatest ways, and was always good-hearted, and as open as the day. Youmight look into her drawers when you would--always the same. And soshe has brought up Kate and Ellen. You may think how hard it will befor 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 amon
g theFrench."

  "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 hermother; she never got it from her aunt Bulstrode, who always gave hergood advice, and to my knowledge would rather have had her marryelsewhere."

  Mrs. Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some complication offeeling. There had been not only her intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode, butalso a profitable business relation of the great Plymdale dyeing housewith Mr. Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have inclined her todesire 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 hisculpability. Again, the late alliance of her family with the Tollershad brought her in connection with the best circle, which gratified herin every direction except in the inclination to those serious viewswhich she believed to be the best in another sense. The sharp littlewoman's conscience was somewhat troubled in the adjustment of theseopposing "bests," and of her griefs and satisfactions under lateevents, which were likely to humble those who needed humbling, but alsoto fall heavily on her old friend whose faults she would have preferredseeing on a background of prosperity.

  Poor Mrs. Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further shaken by theoncoming tread of calamity than in the busier stirring of that secretuneasiness which had always been present in her since the last visit ofRaffles to The Shrubs. That the hateful man had come ill to StoneCourt, and that her husband had chosen to remain there and watch overhim, she allowed to be explained by the fact that Raffles had beenemployed and aided in earlier-days, and that this made a tie ofbenevolence towards him in his degraded helplessness; and she had beensince then innocently cheered by her husband's more hopeful speechabout his own health and ability to continue his attention to business.The calm was disturbed when Lydgate had brought him home ill from themeeting, and in spite of comforting assurances during the next fewdays, she cried in private from the conviction that her husband was notsuffering from bodily illness merely, but from something that afflictedhis mind. He would not allow her to read to him, and scarcely to sitwith him, alleging nervous susceptibility to sounds and movements; yetshe suspected that in shutting himself up in his private room he wantedto 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 fifthday after the meeting, when she had not left home except to go tochurch--

  "Mr. Lydgate, pray be open with me: I like to know the truth. Hasanything happened to Mr. Bulstrode?"

  "Some little nervous shock," said Lydgate, evasively. He felt that itwas not for him to make the painful revelation.

  "But what brought it on?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking directly at himwith her large dark eyes.

  "There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms," saidLydgate. "Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people inproportion to the delicacy of their systems. It is often impossible toaccount for the precise moment of an attack--or rather, to say why thestrength gives way at a particular moment."

  Mrs. Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer. There remained inher the belief that some calamity had befallen her husband, of whichshe was to be kept in ignorance; and it was in her nature strongly toobject to such concealment. She begged leave for her daughters to sitwith 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 toMrs. Hackbutt's on the other side of the churchyard. Mrs. Hackbutt sawher coming from an up-stairs window, and remembering her former alarmlest she should meet Mrs. Bulstrode, felt almost bound in consistencyto send word that she was not at home; but against that, there was asudden strong desire within her for the excitement of an interview inwhich she was quite determined not to make the slightest allusion towhat was in her mind.

  Hence Mrs. Bulstrode was shown into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Hackbuttwent to her, with more tightness of lip and rubbing of her hands thanwas usually observable in her, these being precautions adopted againstfreedom of speech. She was resolved not to ask how Mr. Bulstrode was.

  "I have not been anywhere except to church for nearly a week," saidMrs. Bulstrode, after a few introductory remarks. "But Mr. Bulstrodewas taken so ill at the meeting on Thursday that I have not liked toleave the house."

  Mrs. Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the otherheld against her chest, and let her eyes ramble over the pattern on therug.

  "Was Mr. Hackbutt at the meeting?" persevered Mrs. Bulstrode.

  "Yes, he was," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with the same attitude. "The landis to be bought by subscription, I believe."

  "Let us hope that there will be no more cases of cholera to be buriedin it," said Mrs. Bulstrode. "It is an awful visitation. But I alwaysthink Middlemarch a very healthy spot. I suppose it is being used toit from a child; but I never saw the town I should like to live atbetter, 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, wemust learn to resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be cast. Though Iam sure there will always be people in this town who will wish youwell."

  Mrs. Hackbutt longed to say, "if you take my advice you will part fromyour husband," but it seemed clear to her that the poor woman knewnothing of the thunder ready to bolt on her head, and she herself coulddo no more than prepare her a little. Mrs. Bulstrode felt suddenlyrather chill and trembling: there was evidently something unusualbehind this speech of Mrs. Hackbutt's; but though she had set out withthe desire to be fully informed, she found herself unable now to pursueher brave purpose, and turning the conversation by an inquiry about theyoung Hackbutts, she soon took her leave saying that she was going tosee Mrs. Plymdale. On her way thither she tried to imagine that theremight have been some unusually warm sparring at the meeting between Mr.Bulstrode and some of his frequent opponents--perhaps Mr. Hackbuttmight have been one of them. That would account for everything.

  But when she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that comfortingexplanation seemed no longer tenable. "Selina" received her with apathetic affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers onthe commonest topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinaryquarrel of which the most important consequence was a perturbation ofMr. Bulstrode's health. Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought that shewould sooner question Mrs. Plymdale than any one else; but she found toher surprise that an old friend is not always the person whom it iseasiest to make a confidant of: there was the barrier of rememberedcommunication under other circumstances--there was the dislike ofbeing pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow herthe superiority. For certain words of mysterious appropriateness thatMrs. Plymdale let fall about her resolution never to turn her back onher friends, convinced Mrs. Bulstrode that what had happened must besome kind of misfortune, and instead of being able to say with hernative directness, "What is it that you have in your mind?" she foundherself anxious to get away before she had heard anything moreexplicit. She began to have an agitating certainty that the misfortunewas something more than the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitiveto the fact that Selina now, just as Mrs. Hackbutt had done before,avoided noticing what she said about her husband, as they would haveavoided noticing a personal blemish.

  She said good-by with nervous haste, and told the coachman to drive toMr. Vincy's warehouse. In that short drive her dread gathered so muchforce from the sense of darkness, that when she entered the privatecounting-house where her brother sat at his desk, her knees trembledand her usually florid face was deathly pale. Something of the sameeffect was produced in him by the sight of her: he rose from his seatto meet her, took her by the hand, and said, with his impulsiverashness--

  "God help you
, Harriet! you know all."

  That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after. It containedthat concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion revealsthe bias of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which willend an intermediate struggle. Without that memory of Raffles she mightstill have thought only of monetary ruin, but now along with herbrother's look and words there darted into her mind the idea of someguilt in her husband--then, under the working of terror came the imageof her husband exposed to disgrace--and then, after an instant ofscorching shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world, with oneleap of her heart she was at his side in mournful but unreproachingfellowship with shame and isolation. All this went on within her in amere flash of time--while she sank into the chair, and raised her eyesto her brother, who stood over her. "I know nothing, Walter. What isit?" she said, faintly.

  He told her everything, very inartificially, in slow fragments, makingher aware that the scandal went much beyond proof, especially as to theend of Raffles.

  "People will talk," he said. "Even if a man has been acquitted by ajury, they'll talk, and nod and wink--and as far as the world goes, aman might often as well be guilty as not. It's a breakdown blow, andit damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode. I don't pretend to say whatis the truth. I only wish we had never heard the name of eitherBulstrode 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. "Ifeel very weak."

  And when she got home she was obliged to say to her daughter, "I am notwell, my dear; I must go and lie down. Attend to your papa. Leave mein quiet. I shall take no dinner."

  She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to hermaimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walksteadily to the place allotted her. A new searching light had fallenon her husband's character, and she could not judge him leniently: thetwenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated him byvirtue of his concealments came back with particulars that made themseem an odious deceit. He had married her with that bad past lifehidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his innocenceof the worst that was imputed to him. Her honest ostentatious naturemade the sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to anymortal.

  But this imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and habits were an oddpatchwork, had a loyal spirit within her. The man whose prosperity shehad shared through nearly half a life, and who had unvaryinglycherished her--now that punishment had befallen him it was not possibleto her in any sense to forsake him. There is a forsaking which stillsits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsakensoul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. She knew, when shelocked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down to herunhappy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I willmourn 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 herlife. When she had resolved to go down, she prepared herself by somelittle acts which might seem mere folly to a hard onlooker; they wereher way of expressing to all spectators visible or invisible that shehad begun a new life in which she embraced humiliation. She took offall her ornaments and put on a plain black gown, and instead of wearingher much-adorned cap and large bows of hair, she brushed her hair downand put on a plain bonnet-cap, which made her look suddenly like anearly Methodist.

  Bulstrode, who knew that his wife had been out and had come in sayingthat she was not well, had spent the time in an agitation equal tohers. He had looked forward to her learning the truth from others, andhad acquiesced in that probability, as something easier to him than anyconfession. But now that he imagined the moment of her knowledge come,he awaited the result in anguish. His daughters had been obliged toconsent to leave him, and though he had allowed some food to be broughtto him, he had not touched it. He felt himself perishing slowly inunpitied misery. Perhaps he should never see his wife's face withaffection in it again. And if he turned to God there seemed to be noanswer but the pressure of retribution.

  It was eight o'clock in the evening before the door opened and his wifeentered. 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 seemedso withered and shrunken. A movement of new compassion and oldtenderness went through her like a great wave, and putting one hand onhis which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on hisshoulder, she said, solemnly but kindly--

  "Look up, Nicholas."

  He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her half amazedfor a moment: her pale face, her changed, mourning dress, the tremblingabout her mouth, all said, "I know;" and her hands and eyes restedgently on him. He burst out crying and they cried together, shesitting at his side. They could not yet speak to each other of theshame which she was bearing with him, or of the acts which had broughtit down on them. His confession was silent, and her promise offaithfulness was silent. Open-minded as she was, she neverthelessshrank from the words which would have expressed their mutualconsciousness, as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire. She couldnot say, "How much is only slander and false suspicion?" and he did notsay, "I am innocent."