Middlemarch, Page 78

  CHAPTER LXXVIII.

  "Would it were yesterday and I i' the grave, With her sweet faith above for monument"

  Rosamond and Will stood motionless--they did not know how long--helooking towards the spot where Dorothea had stood, and she lookingtowards him with doubt. It seemed an endless time to Rosamond, inwhose inmost soul there was hardly so much annoyance as gratificationfrom what had just happened. Shallow natures dream of an easy swayover the emotions of others, trusting implicitly in their own pettymagic to turn the deepest streams, and confident, by pretty gesturesand remarks, of making the thing that is not as though it were. Sheknew that Will had received a severe blow, but she had been little usedto imagining other people's states of mind except as a material cutinto shape by her own wishes; and she believed in her own power tosoothe or subdue. Even Tertius, that most perverse of men, was alwayssubdued in the long-run: events had been obstinate, but still Rosamondwould have said now, as she did before her marriage, that she nevergave up what she had set her mind on.

  She put out her arm and laid the tips of her fingers on Will'scoat-sleeve.

  "Don't touch me!" he said, with an utterance like the cut of a lash,darting from her, and changing from pink to white and back again, as ifhis whole frame were tingling with the pain of the sting. He wheeledround to the other side of the room and stood opposite to her, with thetips of his fingers in his pockets and his head thrown back, lookingfiercely not at Rosamond but at a point a few inches away from her.

  She was keenly offended, but the Signs she made of this were such asonly Lydgate was used to interpret. She became suddenly quiet andseated herself, untying her hanging bonnet and laying it down with hershawl. Her little hands which she folded before her were very cold.

  It would have been safer for Will in the first instance to have takenup his hat and gone away; but he had felt no impulse to do this; on thecontrary, he had a horrible inclination to stay and shatter Rosamondwith his anger. It seemed as impossible to bear the fatality she haddrawn down on him without venting his fury as it would be to a pantherto bear the javelin-wound without springing and biting. And yet--howcould he tell a woman that he was ready to curse her? He was fumingunder a repressive law which he was forced to acknowledge: he wasdangerously poised, and Rosamond's voice now brought the decisivevibration. In flute-like tones of sarcasm she said--

  "You can easily go after Mrs. Casaubon and explain your preference."

  "Go after her!" he burst out, with a sharp edge in his voice. "Do youthink she would turn to look at me, or value any word I ever uttered toher again at more than a dirty feather?--Explain! How can a manexplain at the expense of a woman?"

  "You can tell her what you please," said Rosamond with more tremor.

  "Do you suppose she would like me better for sacrificing you? She isnot a woman to be flattered because I made myself despicable--tobelieve that I must be true to her because I was a dastard to you."

  He began to move about with the restlessness of a wild animal that seesprey but cannot reach it. Presently he burst out again--

  "I had no hope before--not much--of anything better to come. But I hadone certainty--that she believed in me. Whatever people had said ordone about me, she believed in me.--That's gone! She'll never againthink me anything but a paltry pretence--too nice to take heavenexcept upon flattering conditions, and yet selling myself for anydevil's change by the sly. She'll think of me as an incarnate insultto her, from the first moment we--"

  Will stopped as if he had found himself grasping something that mustnot be thrown and shattered. He found another vent for his rage bysnatching up Rosamond's words again, as if they were reptiles to bethrottled and flung off.

  "Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain mypreference! I never had a _preference_ for her, any more than I have apreference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. Iwould rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch anyother woman's living."

  Rosamond, while these poisoned weapons were being hurled at her, wasalmost losing the sense of her identity, and seemed to be waking intosome new terrible existence. She had no sense of chill resoluterepulsion, of reticent self-justification such as she had known underLydgate's most stormy displeasure: all her sensibility was turned intoa bewildering novelty of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under alash never experienced before. What another nature felt in oppositionto her own was being burnt and bitten into her consciousness. WhenWill had ceased to speak she had become an image of sickened misery:her lips were pale, and her eyes had a tearless dismay in them. If ithad been Tertius who stood opposite to her, that look of misery wouldhave been a pang to him, and he would have sunk by her side to comforther, with that strong-armed comfort which, she had often held verycheap.

  Let it be forgiven to Will that he had no such movement of pity. Hehad felt no bond beforehand to this woman who had spoiled the idealtreasure of his life, and he held himself blameless. He knew that hewas cruel, but he had no relenting in him yet.

  After he had done speaking, he still moved about, half in absence ofmind, and Rosamond sat perfectly still. At length Will, seeming tobethink himself, took up his hat, yet stood some moments irresolute.He had spoken to her in a way that made a phrase of common politenessdifficult to utter; and yet, now that he had come to the point of goingaway from her without further speech, he shrank from it as a brutality;he felt checked and stultified in his anger. He walked towards themantel-piece and leaned his arm on it, and waited in silence for--hehardly knew what. The vindictive fire was still burning in him, and hecould utter no word of retractation; but it was nevertheless in hismind that having come back to this hearth where he had enjoyed acaressing friendship he had found calamity seated there--he had hadsuddenly revealed to him a trouble that lay outside the home as well aswithin it. And what seemed a foreboding was pressing upon him as withslow pincers:--that his life might come to be enslaved by this helplesswoman who had thrown herself upon him in the dreary sadness of herheart. But he was in gloomy rebellion against the fact that his quickapprehensiveness foreshadowed to him, and when his eyes fell onRosamond's blighted face it seemed to him that he was the more pitiableof the two; for pain must enter into its glorified life of memorybefore it can turn into compassion.

  And so they remained for many minutes, opposite each other, far apart,in silence; Will's face still possessed by a mute rage, and Rosamond'sby a mute misery. The poor thing had no force to fling out any passionin return; the terrible collapse of the illusion towards which all herhope had been strained was a stroke which had too thoroughly shakenher: her little world was in ruins, and she felt herself tottering inthe midst as a lonely bewildered consciousness.

  Will wished that she would speak and bring some mitigating shadowacross his own cruel speech, which seemed to stand staring at them bothin mockery of any attempt at revived fellowship. But she said nothing,and at last with a desperate effort over himself, he asked, "Shall Icome in and see Lydgate this evening?"

  "If you like," Rosamond answered, just audibly.

  And then Will went out of the house, Martha never knowing that he hadbeen in.

  After he was gone, Rosamond tried to get up from her seat, but fellback fainting. When she came to herself again, she felt too ill tomake the exertion of rising to ring the bell, and she remained helplessuntil the girl, surprised at her long absence, thought for the firsttime of looking for her in all the down-stairs rooms. Rosamond saidthat she had felt suddenly sick and faint, and wanted to be helpedup-stairs. When there she threw herself on the bed with her clothes on,and lay in apparent torpor, as she had done once before on a memorableday of grief.

  Lydgate came home earlier than he had expected, about half-past five,and found her there. The perception that she was ill threw every otherthought into the background. When he felt her pulse, her eyes restedon him with more persistence than they had done for a long while, as ifshe felt some content that he was there.
He perceived the differencein a moment, and seating himself by her put his arm gently under her,and bending over her said, "My poor Rosamond! has something agitatedyou?" Clinging to him she fell into hysterical sobbings and cries, andfor the next hour he did nothing but soothe and tend her. He imaginedthat Dorothea had been to see her, and that all this effect on hernervous system, which evidently involved some new turning towardshimself, was due to the excitement of the new impressions which thatvisit had raised.