Middlemarch, Page 80

  CHAPTER LXXX.

  "Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face; Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong; And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong. --WORDSWORTH: Ode to Duty.

  When Dorothea had seen Mr. Farebrother in the morning, she had promisedto go and dine at the parsonage on her return from Freshitt. There wasa frequent interchange of visits between her and the Farebrotherfamily, which enabled her to say that she was not at all lonely at theManor, and to resist for the present the severe prescription of a ladycompanion. When she reached home and remembered her engagement, shewas glad of it; and finding that she had still an hour before she coulddress for dinner, she walked straight to the schoolhouse and enteredinto a conversation with the master and mistress about the new bell,giving eager attention to their small details and repetitions, andgetting up a dramatic sense that her life was very busy. She paused onher way back to talk to old Master Bunney who was putting in somegarden-seeds, and discoursed wisely with that rural sage about thecrops that would make the most return on a perch of ground, and theresult of sixty years' experience as to soils--namely, that if yoursoil was pretty mellow it would do, but if there came wet, wet, wet tomake it all of a mummy, why then--

  Finding that the social spirit had beguiled her into being rather late,she dressed hastily and went over to the parsonage rather earlier thanwas necessary. That house was never dull, Mr. Farebrother, likeanother White of Selborne, having continually something new to tell ofhis inarticulate guests and proteges, whom he was teaching the boys notto torment; and he had just set up a pair of beautiful goats to be petsof the village in general, and to walk at large as sacred animals. Theevening went by cheerfully till after tea, Dorothea talking more thanusual and dilating with Mr. Farebrother on the possible histories ofcreatures that converse compendiously with their antennae, and foraught we know may hold reformed parliaments; when suddenly someinarticulate little sounds were heard which called everybody'sattention.

  "Henrietta Noble," said Mrs. Farebrother, seeing her small sistermoving about the furniture-legs distressfully, "what is the matter?"

  "I have lost my tortoise-shell lozenge-box. I fear the kitten hasrolled it away," said the tiny old lady, involuntarily continuing herbeaver-like notes.

  "Is it a great treasure, aunt?" said Mr. Farebrother, putting up hisglasses and looking at the carpet.

  "Mr. Ladislaw gave it me," said Miss Noble. "A German box--verypretty, but if it falls it always spins away as far as it can."

  "Oh, if it is Ladislaw's present," said Mr. Farebrother, in a deep toneof comprehension, getting up and hunting. The box was found at lastunder a chiffonier, and Miss Noble grasped it with delight, saying, "itwas under a fender the last time."

  "That is an affair of the heart with my aunt," said Mr. Farebrother,smiling at Dorothea, as he reseated himself.

  "If Henrietta Noble forms an attachment to any one, Mrs. Casaubon,"said his mother, emphatically,--"she is like a dog--she would taketheir shoes for a pillow and sleep the better."

  "Mr. Ladislaw's shoes, I would," said Henrietta Noble.

  Dorothea made an attempt at smiling in return. She was surprised andannoyed to find that her heart was palpitating violently, and that itwas quite useless to try after a recovery of her former animation.Alarmed at herself--fearing some further betrayal of a change so markedin its occasion, she rose and said in a low voice with undisguisedanxiety, "I must go; I have overtired myself."

  Mr. Farebrother, quick in perception, rose and said, "It is true; youmust have half-exhausted yourself in talking about Lydgate. That sortof work tells upon one after the excitement is over."

  He gave her his arm back to the Manor, but Dorothea did not attempt tospeak, even when he said good-night.

  The limit of resistance was reached, and she had sunk back helplesswithin the clutch of inescapable anguish. Dismissing Tantripp with afew faint words, she locked her door, and turning away from it towardsthe vacant room she pressed her hands hard on the top of her head, andmoaned out--

  "Oh, I did love him!"

  Then came the hour in which the waves of suffering shook her toothoroughly to leave any power of thought. She could only cry in loudwhispers, between her sobs, after her lost belief which she had plantedand kept alive from a very little seed since the days in Rome--afterher lost joy of clinging with silent love and faith to one who,misprized by others, was worthy in her thought--after her lost woman'spride of reigning in his memory--after her sweet dim perspective ofhope, that along some pathway they should meet with unchangedrecognition and take up the backward years as a yesterday.

  In that hour she repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude havelooked on for ages in the spiritual struggles of man--she besoughthardness and coldness and aching weariness to bring her relief from themysterious incorporeal might of her anguish: she lay on the bare floorand let the night grow cold around her; while her grand woman's framewas shaken by sobs as if she had been a despairing child.

  There were two images--two living forms that tore her heart in two, asif it had been the heart of a mother who seems to see her child dividedby the sword, and presses one bleeding half to her breast while hergaze goes forth in agony towards the half which is carried away by thelying woman that has never known the mother's pang.

  Here, with the nearness of an answering smile, here within thevibrating bond of mutual speech, was the bright creature whom she hadtrusted--who had come to her like the spirit of morning visiting thedim vault where she sat as the bride of a worn-out life; and now, witha full consciousness which had never awakened before, she stretched outher arms towards him and cried with bitter cries that their nearnesswas a parting vision: she discovered her passion to herself in theunshrinking utterance of despair.

  And there, aloof, yet persistently with her, moving wherever she moved,was the Will Ladislaw who was a changed belief exhausted of hope, adetected illusion--no, a living man towards whom there could not yetstruggle any wail of regretful pity, from the midst of scorn andindignation and jealous offended pride. The fire of Dorothea's angerwas not easily spent, and it flamed out in fitful returns of spurningreproach. Why had he come obtruding his life into hers, hers thatmight have been whole enough without him? Why had he brought his cheapregard and his lip-born words to her who had nothing paltry to give inexchange? He knew that he was deluding her--wished, in the very momentof farewell, to make her believe that he gave her the whole price ofher heart, and knew that he had spent it half before. Why had he notstayed among the crowd of whom she asked nothing--but only prayed thatthey might be less contemptible?

  But she lost energy at last even for her loud-whispered cries andmoans: she subsided into helpless sobs, and on the cold floor shesobbed herself to sleep.

  In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim aroundher, she awoke--not with any amazed wondering where she was or what hadhappened, but with the clearest consciousness that she was looking intothe eyes of sorrow. She rose, and wrapped warm things around her, andseated herself in a great chair where she had often watched before.She was vigorous enough to have borne that hard night without feelingill in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but she had waked to a newcondition: she felt as if her soul had been liberated from its terribleconflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sitdown with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in herthoughts. For now the thoughts came thickly. It was not in Dorothea'snature, for longer than the duration of a paroxysm, to sit in thenarrow cell of her calamity, in the besotted misery of a consciousnessthat only sees another's lot as an accident of its own.

  She began now to live through that yesterday morning deliberatelyagain, forcing herself to dwell on every detail and its possiblemeaning. Was she alo
ne in that scene? Was it her event only? Sheforced herself to think of it as bound up with another woman's life--awoman towards whom she had set out with a longing to carry someclearness and comfort into her beclouded youth. In her first outleapof jealous indignation and disgust, when quitting the hateful room, shehad flung away all the mercy with which she had undertaken that visit.She had enveloped both Will and Rosamond in her burning scorn, and itseemed to her as if Rosamond were burned out of her sight forever. Butthat base prompting which makes a women more cruel to a rival than to afaithless lover, could have no strength of recurrence in Dorothea whenthe dominant spirit of justice within her had once overcome the tumultand had once shown her the truer measure of things. All the activethought with which she had before been representing to herself thetrials of Lydgate's lot, and this young marriage union which, like herown, seemed to have its hidden as well as evident troubles--all thisvivid sympathetic experience returned to her now as a power: itasserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will not letus see as we saw in the day of our ignorance. She said to her ownirremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful, instead ofdriving her back from effort.

  And what sort of crisis might not this be in three lives whose contactwith hers laid an obligation on her as if they had been suppliantsbearing the sacred branch? The objects of her rescue were not to besought out by her fancy: they were chosen for her. She yearned towardsthe perfect Right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule hererrant will. "What should I do--how should I act now, this very day,if I could clutch my own pain, and compel it to silence, and think ofthose three?"

  It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was lightpiercing into the room. She opened her curtains, and looked outtowards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond outsidethe entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle on hisback and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could see figuresmoving--perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off in the bending skywas the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and themanifold wakings of men to labor and endurance. She was a part of thatinvoluntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it fromher luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfishcomplaining.

  What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, butsomething that she could achieve stirred her as with an approachingmurmur which would soon gather distinctness. She took off the clotheswhich seemed to have some of the weariness of a hard watching in them,and began to make her toilet. Presently she rang for Tantripp, whocame in her dressing-gown.

  "Why, madam, you've never been in bed this blessed night," burst outTantripp, looking first at the bed and then at Dorothea's face, whichin spite of bathing had the pale cheeks and pink eyelids of a materdolorosa. "You'll kill yourself, you _will_. Anybody might think nowyou had a right to give yourself a little comfort."

  "Don't be alarmed, Tantripp," said Dorothea, smiling. "I have slept; Iam not ill. I shall be glad of a cup of coffee as soon as possible.And I want you to bring me my new dress; and most likely I shall wantmy new bonnet to-day."

  "They've lain there a month and more ready for you, madam, and mostthankful I shall be to see you with a couple o' pounds' worth less ofcrape," said Tantripp, stooping to light the fire. "There's a reasonin mourning, as I've always said; and three folds at the bottom of yourskirt and a plain quilling in your bonnet--and if ever anybody lookedlike an angel, it's you in a net quilling--is what's consistent for asecond year. At least, that's _my_ thinking," ended Tantripp, lookinganxiously at the fire; "and if anybody was to marry me flatteringhimself I should wear those hijeous weepers two years for him, he'd bedeceived by his own vanity, that's all."

  "The fire will do, my good Tan," said Dorothea, speaking as she used todo in the old Lausanne days, only with a very low voice; "get me thecoffee."

  She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against itin fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp went away wondering at thisstrange contrariness in her young mistress--that just the morning whenshe had more of a widow's face than ever, she should have asked for herlighter mourning which she had waived before. Tantripp would neverhave found the clew to this mystery. Dorothea wished to acknowledgethat she had not the less an active life before her because she hadburied a private joy; and the tradition that fresh garments belonged toall initiation, haunting her mind, made her grasp after even thatslight outward help towards calm resolve. For the resolve was not easy.

  Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking towards Middlemarch,having made up her mind that she would make as quietly and unnoticeablyas possible her second attempt to see and save Rosamond.