Chapter LXII
He was a squyer of lowe degre,
That loved the king's daughter of Hungrie.
Old Romance.
Will Ladislaw's mind was now wholly bent on seeing
Dorothea again, and forthwith quitting Middlemarch. The
morning after his agitating scene with Bulstrode he wrote a
brief letter to her, saying that various causes had detained
him in the neighborhood longer than he had expected, and
asking her permission to call again at Lowick at some hour
which she would mention on the earliest possible day, he
being anxious to depart, but unwilling to do so until she
had granted him an interview. He left the letter at the
office, ordering the messenger to carry it to Lowick Manor,
and wait for an answer.
Ladislaw felt the awkwardness of asking for more last
words. His former farewell had been made in the hearing of
Sir James Chettam, and had been announced as final even to
the butler. It is certainly trying to a man's dignity to
reappear when he is not expected to do so: a first farewell
has pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends an
opening to comedy, and it was possible even that there might
be bitter sneers afloat about Will's motives for lingering.
Still
it was on the whole more satisfactory to his
feeling to take the directest means of seeing Dorothea, than
to use any device which might give an air of chance to a
meeting of which he wished her to understand that it was
what he earnestly sought. When he had parted from her
before, he had been in ignorance of facts which gave a new
aspect to the relation between them, and made a more
absolute severance than he had then believed in. He knew
nothing of Dorothea's private fortune, and being little used
to reflect on such matters, took it for granted that
according to Mr. Casaubon's arrangement marriage to him,
Will Ladislaw, would mean that she consented to be
penniless. That was not what he could wish for even in his
secret heart, or even if she had been ready to meet such
hard contrast for his sake. And then, too, there was the
fresh smart of that disclosure about his mother's family,
which if known would be an added reason why Dorothea's
friends should look down upon him as utterly below her. The
secret hope that after some years he might come back with
the sense that he had at least a personal value equal to her
wealth, seemed now the dreamy continuation of a dream. This
change would surely justify him in asking Dorothea to
receive him once more.
But Dorothea on that morning was not at home to receive
Will's note. In consequence of a letter from her uncle
announcing his intention to be at home in a week, she had
driven first to Freshitt to carry the news, meaning to go on
to the Grange to deliver some orders with which her uncle
had intrusted her — thinking, as he said, " a little mental
occupation of this sort good for a widow."
If Will Ladislaw could have overheard some of the talk
at Freshitt that morning, he would have felt all his
suppositions confirmed as to the readiness of certain people
to sneer at his lingering in the neighborhood. Sir James,
indeed, though much relieved concerning Dorothea, had been
on the watch to learn Ladislaw's movements, and had an
instructed informant in Mr. Standish, who was necessarily in
his confidence on this matter. That Ladislaw had stayed in
Middlemarch nearly two months after he had declared that he
was going imme
diately, was a fact to embitter Sir
James's suspicions, or at least to justify his aversion to a
"young fellow" whom ho represented to himself as slight,
volatile, and likely enough to show such recklessness as
naturally went along with a position unriveted by family
ties or a strict profession. But he had just heard
something from Standish which, while it justified these
surmises about Will, offered a means of nullifying all
danger with regard to Dorothea.
Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike
ourselves: there are conditions under which the most
majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are
liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner. Good
Sir James was this morning so far unlike himself that he was
irritably anxious to say something to Dorothea on a subject
which he usually avoided as if it had been a matter of shame
to them both. He could not use Celia as a medium, because
he did not choose that she should know the kind of gossip he
had in his mind; and before Dorothea happened to arrive he
had been trying to imagine how, with his shyness and unready
tongue, he could ever manage to introduce his communication.
Her unexpected presence brought him to utter hopelessness in
his own power of saying anything unpleasant; but desperation
suggested a resource; he sent the groom on an unsaddled
horse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs.
Cadwallader, who already knew the gossip, and would think it
no compromise of herself to repeat it as often as required.
Dorothea was detained on the good pretext that Mr.
Garth, whom she wanted to see, was expected at the hall
within the hour, and she was still talking to Caleb on the
gravel when Sir James, on the watch for the rector's wife,
saw her coming and met her with the needful hints.
"Enough! I understand," — said Mrs. Cadwallader. " You
shall be innocent. I am such a blackamoor that I cannot
smirch myself."
"I don't mean that it's of any consequence," said Sir
James, disliking that Mrs. Cadwallader should understand too
much. " Only it is desirable that Dorothea should know
there are
reasons why she should not receive him again;
and I really can't say so to her. It will come lightly from
you."
It came very lightly indeed. When Dorothea quitted
Caleb and turned to meet them, it appeared that Mrs.
Cadwallader had stepped across the park by the merest chance
in the world, just to chat with Celia in a matronly way
about the baby. And so Mr. Brooke was coming back?
Delightful ! — coming back, it was to be hoped, quite cured
of Parliamentary fever and pioneering. Apropos of the "
Pioneer " — somebody had prophesied that it would soon be
like a dying dolphin, and turn all colors for want of
knowing how to help itself, because Mr. Brooke's
protege, the brilliant young Ladislaw, was gone or
going. Had Sir James heard that?
The three were walking along the gravel slowly, and Sir
James, turning aside to whip a shrub, said he had heard
something of that sort.
"All false!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "He is not gone, or
going, apparently; the `Pioneer' keeps its color, and Mr.
Orlando Ladislaw is making a sad dark-blue scandal by
warbling continually with your Mr. Lydgate's wife, who they
tell me is as pretty as pretty can be. It seems nobody ever
goes into the house without finding this young gentleman
lying on the rug or warbling at the piano. But the people
in manufacturing towns are always disreputable."
"You began by saying that one report was false, Mrs.
Cadwallader, and I believe this is false too," said
Dorothea, with indignant energy; " at least, I feel sure it
is a misrepresentation. I will not hear any evil spoken of
Mr. Ladislaw; he' has already suffered too much injustice."
Dorothea when thoroughly moved eared little what any one
thought of her feelings; and even if she had been able to
reflect, she would have held it petty to keep silence at
injurious words about Will from fear of being herself
misunderstood. Her face was flushed and her lip trembled.
Sir James, glancing at her, repented of his stratagem;
but Mrs. Cadwallader, equal to all occasions, spread the
palms of her hands outward and said — " Heaven grant it, my
dear ! — I mean that all bad tales about anybody may be
false. But
it is a pity that young Lydgate should have
married one of these Middlemarch girls. Considering he's a
son of somebody, he might have got a woman with good blood
in her veins, and not too young, who would have put up with
his profession. There's Clara Harfager, for instance, whose
friends don't know what to do with her; and she has a
portion. Then we might have had her among us. However! — it's
no use being wise for other people. Where is Celia? Pray
let us go in."
"I am going on immediately to Tipton," said Dorothea,
rather haughtily. "Good-by."
Sir James could say nothing as he accompanied her to the
carriage. He was altogether discontented with the result of
a contrivance which had cost him some secret humiliation
beforehand.
Dorothea drove along between the berried hedgerows and
the shorn corn-fields, not seeing or hearing anything
around. The tears came and rolled down her cheeks, but she
did not know it. The world, it seemed, was turning ugly and
hateful, and there was no place for her trustfulness. " It
is not true — it is not true!" was the voice within her that
she listened to; but all the while a remembrance to which
there had always clung a vague uneasiness would thrust
itself on her attention — the remembrance of that day when
she had found Will Ladislaw with Mrs. Lydgate, and had heard
his voice accompanied by the piano.
"He said he would never do anything that I disapproved —
I wish I could have told him that I disapproved of that,"
said poor Dorothea, inwardly, feeling a strange alternation
between anger with Will and the passionate defence of him.
" They all try to blacken him before me; but I will care for
no pain, if he is not to blame. I always believed he was
good. " — These were her last thoughts before she felt that
the carriage was passing under the archway of the lodge-gate
at the Grange, when she hurriedly pressed her handkerchief
to her face and began to think of her errands. The coachman
begged leave to take out the horses for half an hour as
there was something wrong with a shoe; and Dorothea, having
the sense that she was going to rest, took off her
gloves and bonnet, while she was leaning against a statue in
the entrance-hall, and talking to the housekeeper. At last
she said —
"I must stay here a little, Mrs. Kell. I will go into
the library and write you some memoranda from my uncle's
letter, if you will open the shutters for me."
"The shutters are open, madam," said Mrs. Kell,
following Dorothea, who had walked along as she spoke. "
Mr. Ladislaw is there, looking for something."
(Will had come to fetch a portfolio of his own sketches
which he had missed in the act of packing his movables, and
did not choose to leave behind.)
Dorothea's heart seemed to turn over as if it had had a
blow, but she was not perceptibly checked: in truth, the
sense that Will was there was for the moment all-satisfying
to her, like the sight of something precious that one has
lost. When she reached the door she said to Mrs. Kell —
"Go in first, and tell him that I am here."
Will had found his portfolio, and had laid it on the
table at the far end of the room, to turn over the sketches
and please himself by looking at the memorable piece of art
which had a relation to nature too mysterious for Dorothea.
He was smiling at it still, and shaking the sketches into
order with the thought that he might find a letter from her
awaiting him at Middlemarch, when Mrs. Kell close to his
elbow said —
"Mrs. Casaubon is coming in, sir."
Will turned round quickly, and the next moment Dorothea
was entering. As Mrs. Kell closed the door behind her they
met: each was looking at the other, and consciousness was
overflowed by something that suppressed utterance. It was
not confusion that kept them silent, for they both felt that
parting was near, and there is no shamefacedness in a sad
parting.
She moved automatically towards her uncle's chair
against the writing-table, and Will, after drawing it out a
little for her, went a few paces off and stood opposite to
her.
"Pray sit down," said Dorothea, crossing her hands on
her
lap; "I am very glad you were here." Will thought
that her face looked just as it did when she first shook
hands with him in Rome; for her widow's cap, fixed in her
bonnet, had gone off with it, and he could see that she had
lately been shedding tears. But the mixture of anger in her
agitation had vanished at the sight of him; she had been
used, when they were face to face, always to feel confidence
and the happy freedom which comes with mutual understanding,
and how could other people's words hinder that effect on a
sudden? Let the music which can take possession of our
frame and fill the air with joy for us, sound once more —
what does it signify that we heard it found fault with in
its absence?
"I have sent a letter to Lowick Manor to-day, asking
leave to see you," said Will, seating himself opposite to
her. "I am going away immediately, and I could not go
without speaking to you again."
"I thought we had parted when you came to Lowick many
weeks ago — you thought you were going then," said Dorothea,
her voice trembling a little.
"Yes; but I was in ignorance then of things which I know
now — things which have altered my feelings about the future.
When I saw you before, I was dreaming that I might come back
some day. I don't think I ever shall — now." Will paused
here.
"You wished me to know the reasons?" said Dorothea,
timidly.
"Yes," said Will, impetuously, shaking his head
backward, and looking away from her with irritation in his
face. "Of course I must wish it. I have been grossly
insulted in your eyes and in the eyes of others. There has
been a mean implication against my character. I wish you to
know that under no circumstances would I have lowered myself
by — under no circumstances would I have given men the chance
of saying that I sought money under the pretext of seeking —
something else. There was no need of other safeguard
against me — the safeguard of wealth was enough."
Will rose from his chair with the last word and went — he
hardly knew where; but it was to the projecting window
near
est him, which had been open as now about the same
season a year ago, when he and Dorothea had stood within it
and talked together. Her whole heart was going out at this
moment in sympathy with Will's indignation: she only wanted
to convince him that she had never done him injustice, and
he seemed to have turned away from her as if she too had
been part of the unfriendly world.
"It would be very unkind of you to suppose that I ever
attributed any meanness to you," she began. Then in her
ardent way, wanting to plead with him, she moved from her
chair and went in front of him to her old place in the
window, saying, " Do you suppose that I ever disbelieved in
you?"
When Will saw her there, he gave a start and moved
backward out of the window, without meeting her glance.
Dorothea was hurt by this movement following up the previous
anger of his tone. She was ready to say that it was as hard
on her as on him, and that she was helpless; but those
strange particulars of their relation which neither of them
could explicitly mention kept her always in dread of saying
too much. At this moment she had no belief that Will would
in any case have wanted to marry her, and she feared using
words which might imply such a belief. She only said
earnestly, recurring to his last word —
"I am sure no safeguard was ever needed against you."
Will did not answer. In the stormy fluctuation of his
feelings these words of hers seemed to him cruelly neutral,
and he looked pale and miserable after his angry outburst.
He went to the table and fastened up his portfolio, while
Dorothea looked at him from the distance. They were wasting
these last moments together in wretched silence. What could
he say, since what had got obstinately uppermost in his mind
was the passionate love for her which he forbade himself to
utter? What could she say, since she might offer him no
help — since she was forced to keep the money that ought to
have been his? — since to-day he seemed not to respond as he
used to do to her thorough trust and liking?
But Will at last turned away from his portfolio and
approached the window again.
"I must go," he said, with that peculiar look of the
eyes which sometimes accompanies bitter feeling, as if they
had been tired and burned with gazing too close at a light.
"What shall you do in life?" said Dorothea, timidly.
"Have your intentions remained just the same as when we said
good-by before?"
"Yes," said Will, in a tone that seemed to waive the
subject as uninteresting. "I shall work away at the first
thing that offers. I suppose one gets a habit of doing
without happiness or hope."
"Oh, what sad words!" said Dorothea, with a dangerous
tendency to sob. Then trying to smile, she added, " We used
to agree that we were alike in speaking too strongly."
"I have not spoken too strongly now," said Will, leaning
back against the angle of the wall. " There are certain
things which a man can only go through once in his life; and
he must know some time or other that the best is over with
him. This experience has happened to me while I am very
young — that is all. What I care more for than I can ever
care for anything else is absolutely forbidden to me — I
don't mean merely by being out of my reach, but forbidden
me, even if it were within my reach, by my own pride and
honor — by everything I respect myself for. Of course I
shall go on living as a man might do who had seen heaven in
a trance."
Will paused, imagining that it would be impossible for
Dorothea to misunderstand this; indeed he felt that he was
contradicting himself and offending against his self-approval in speaking to her so plainly; but still — it could
not be fairly called wooing a woman to tell her that he
would never woo her. It must be admitted to be a ghostly
kind of wooing.
But Dorothea's mind was rapidly going over the past with
quite another vision than his. The thought that she herself
might be what Will most cared for did throb through her an
instant, but then came doubt: the memory of the little they
had lived through together turned pale and shrank before the
memory which suggested how much fuller might have been the
intercourse between Will and some one else with whom he had
had constant companionship. Everything he had said
might refer to that other relation, and whatever had
passed between him and herself was thoroughly explained by
what she had always regarded as their simple friendship and
the cruel obstruction thrust upon it by her husband's
injurious act. Dorothea stood silent, with her eyes east
down dreamily, while images crowded upon her which left the
sickening certainty that Will was referring to Mrs. Lydgate.
But why sickening? He wanted her to know that here too his
conduct should be above suspicion.
Will was not surprised at her silence. His mind also
was tumultuously busy while he watched her, and he was
feeling rather wildly that something must happen to hinder
their parting — some miracle, clearly nothing in their own
deliberate speech. Yet, after all, had she any love for
him? — he could not pretend to himself that he would rather
believe her to be without that pain. He could not deny that
a secret longing for the assurance that she loved him was at
the root of all his words.
Neither of them knew how long they stood in that way.
Dorothea was raising her eyes, and was about to speak, when
the door opened and her footman came to say —
"The horses are ready, madam, whenever you like to
start."
"Presently," said Dorothea. Then turning to Will, she
said, "I have some memoranda to write for the housekeeper."
"I must go," said Will, when the door had closed again —
advancing towards her. "The day after to-morrow I shall
leave Middlemarch."
"You have acted in every way rightly," said Dorothea, in
a low tone, feeling a pressure at her heart which made it
difficult to speak.
She put out her hand, and Will took it for an instant
with. out speaking, for her words had seemed to him cruelly
cold and unlike herself. Their eyes met, but there was
discontent in his, and in hers there was only sadness. He
turned away and took his portfolio under his arm.
"I have never done you injustice. Please remember me,"
said Dorothea, repressing a rising sob.
"Why should you say that?" said Will, with irritation.
"As if I were not in danger of forgetting everything else."
He had really a movement of anger against her at that
moment, and it impelled him to go away without pause. It
was all one flash to Dorothea — his last words — his distant
bow to her as he reached the door — the sense that he was no
longer there. She sank into the chair, and for a few
moments sat like a statue, while images and emotions were
hurrying upon her. Joy came first, in spite of the
threatening train behind it — joy in the impression that it
was really herself whom Will loved and was renouncing, that
there was really no other love less permissible, more
blameworthy, which honor was hurrying him away from. They
were parted all the same, but — Dorothea drew a deep breath
and felt her strength return — she could think of him
unrestrainedly. At that moment the parting was easy to
bear: the first sense of loving and being loved excluded
sorrow. It was as if some hard icy pressure had melted, and
her consciousness had room to expand: her past was come back
to her with larger interpretation. The joy was not the
less — perhaps it was the more complete just then — because of
the irrevocable parting; for there was no reproach, no
contemptuous wonder to imagine in any eye or from any lips.
He had acted so as to defy reproach, and make wonder
respectful.
Any one watching her might have seen that there was a
fortifying thought within her. Just as when inventive power
is working with glad ease some small claim on the attention
is fully met as if it were only a cranny opened to the
sunlight, it was easy now for Dorothea to write her
memoranda. She spoke her last words to the housekeeper in
cheerful tones, and when she seated herself in the carriage
her eyes were bright and her cheeks blooming under the
dismal bonnet. She threw back the heavy " weepers," and
looked before her, wondering which road Will had taken. It
was in her nature to be proud that he was blameless, and
through all her feelings there ran this vein — "I was right
to defend him."
The coachman was used to drive his grays at a good pane,
Mr. Casaubon being unenjoying and impatient in everything
away from his desk, and wanting to get to the end of
all journeys; and Dorothea was now bowled along quickly.
Driving was pleasant, for rain in the night had laid the
dust, and the blue sky looked far off, away from the region
of the great clouds that sailed in masses. The earth looked
like a happy place under the vast heavens, and Dorothea was
wishing that she might overtake Will and see him once more.
After a turn of the road, there he was with the
portfolio under his arm; but the next moment she was passing
him while he raised his hat, and she felt a pang at being
seated there in a sort of exaltation, leaving him behind.
She could not look back at him. It was as if a crowd of
indifferent objects had thrust them asunder, and forced them
along different paths, taking them farther and farther away
from each other, and making it useless to look back. She
could no more make any sign that would seem to say, " Need
we part?" than she could stop the carriage to wait for him.
Nay, what a world of reasons crowded upon her against any
movement of her thought towards a future that might reverse
the decision of this day!
"I only wish I had known before — I wish he knew — then we
could be quite happy in thinking of each other, though we
are forever parted. And if I could but have given him the
money, and made things easier for him!" — were the longings
that came back the most persistently. And yet, so heavily
did the world weigh on her in spite of her independent
energy, that with this idea of Will as in need of such help
and at a disadvantage with the world, there came always the
vision of that unfittingness of any closer relation between
them which lay in the opinion of every one connected with
her. She felt to the full all the imperativeness of the
motives which urged Will's conduct. How could he dream of
her defying the barrier that her husband had placed between
them? — how could she ever say to herself that she would defy
it?
Will's certainty as the carriage grew smaller in the
distance, had much more bitterness in it. Very slight
matters were enough to gall him in his sensitive mood, and
the sight of Dorothea driving past him while he felt himself
plodding
along as a poor devil seeking a position in a
world which in his present temper offered him little that he
coveted, made his conduct seem a mere matter of necessity,
and took away the sustainment of resolve. After all, he had
no assurance that she loved him: could any man pretend that
he was simply glad in such a case to have the suffering all
on his own side?
That evening Will spent with the Lydgates; the next
evening he was gone.