Chapter LXXIII
"Pity the laden one; this wandering woe
May visit you and me."
When Lydgate had allayed Mrs. Bulstrode's anxiety by
telling her that her husband had been seized with faintness
at the meeting, but that he trusted soon to see him better
and would call again the next day, unless she-sent for him
earlier, he went directly home, got on his horse, and rode
three miles out of the town for the sake of being out of
reach.
He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if
raging under the pain of stings: he was ready to curse the
day on which he had come to Middlemarch. Everything that
bad happened to him there seemed a mere preparation for this
hateful fatality, which had come as a blight on his
honorable ambition, and must make even people who had only
vulgar standards regard his reputation as irrevocably
damaged. In such moments a man can hardly escape being
unloving. Lydgate thought of himself as the sufferer, and
of others as the agents who had injured his lot. He had
meant everything to turn out differently; and others had
thrust themselves into his life and thwarted his purposes.
His marriage seemed an unmitigated calamity; and he was
afraid of going to Rosamond before he had vented himself in
this solitary rage, lest the
mere sight of her should
exasperate him and make him behave unwarrantably. There are
episodes in most men's lives in which their highest
qualities can only east a deterring shadow over the objects
that fill their inward vision: Lydgate's tenderheartedness
was present just then only as a dread lest he should offend
against it, not as an emotion that swayed him to tenderness.
For he was very miserable. Only those who know the
supremacy of the intellectual life — the life which has a
seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it — can
understand the grief of one who falls from that serene
activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with
worldly annoyances.
How was he to live on without vindicating himself among
people who suspected him of baseness? How could he go
silently away from Middlemarch as if he were retreating
before a just condemnation? And yet how was he to set about
vindicating himself?
For that scene at the meeting, which he had just
witnessed, although it had told him no particulars, had been
enough to make his own situation thoroughly clear to him.
Bulstrode had been in dread of scandalous disclosures on the
part of Raffles. Lydgate could now construct all the
probabilities of the case. "He was afraid of some betrayal
in my hearing: all he wanted was to bind me to him by a
strong obligation: that was why he passed on a sudden from
hardness to liberality. And he may have tampered with the
patient — he may have disobeyed my orders. I fear he did.
But whether he did or not, the world believes that he
somehow or other poisoned the man and that I winked at the
crime, if I didn't help in it. And yet — and yet he may not
be guilty of the last offence; and it is just possible that
the change towards me may have been a genuine relenting — the
effect of second thoughts such as he alleged. What we call
the `just possible' is sometimes true and the thing we find
it easier to believe is grossly false. In his last dealings
with this man Bulstrode may have kept his hands pure, in
spite of my suspicion to the contrary."
There was a benumbing cruelty in his position. Even if
he renounced every other consideration than that of
justifying
himself — if he met shrugs, cold glances, and
avoidance as an accusation, and made a public statement of
all the facts as he knew them, who would be convinced? It
would be playing the part of a fool to offer his own
testimony on behalf of himself, and say, "I did not take the
money as a bribe." The circumstances would always be
stronger than his assertion. And besides, to come forward
and tell everything about himself must include declarations
about Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions of others
against him. He must tell that he had not known of
Raffles's existence when he first mentioned his pressing
need of money to Bulstrode, and that he took the money
innocently as a result of that communication, not knowing
that a new motive for the loan might have arisen on his
being called in to this man. And after all, the suspicion
of Bulstrode's motives might be unjust.
But then came the question whether he should have acted
in precisely the same way if he had not taken the money?
Certainly, if Raffles had continued alive and susceptible of
further treatment when he arrived, and he had then imagined
any disobedience to his orders on the part of Bulstrode, he
would have made a strict inquiry, and if his conjecture had
been verified he would have thrown up the case, in spite of
his recent heavy obligation. But if he had not received any
money — if Bulstrode had never revoked his cold
recommendation of bankruptcy — would he, Lydgate, have
abstained from all inquiry even on finding the man dead? —
would the shrinking from an insult to Bulstrode — would the
dubiousness of all medical treatment and the argument that
his own treatment would pass for the wrong with most members
of his profession — have had just the same force or
significance with him?
That was the uneasy corner of Lydgate's consciousness
while he was reviewing the facts and resisting all reproach.
If he had been independent, this matter of a patient's
treatment and the distinct rule that he must do or see done
that which he believed best for the life committed to him,
would have been the point on which he would have been the
sturdiest. As it was, he had rested in the consideration
that disobedience to his orders, however it might have
arisen, could not be consid
ered a crime, that in the
dominant opinion obedience to his orders was just as likely
to be fatal, and that the affair was simply one of
etiquette. Whereas, again and again, in his time of
freedom, he had denounced the perversion of pathological
doubt into moral doubt and had said — "the purest experiment
in treatment may still be conscientious: my business is to
take care of life, and to do the best I can think of for it.
Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives
a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a
contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive."
Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing
company of money obligation and selfish respects.
"Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who
would question himself as I do?" said poor Lydgate, with a
renewed outburst of rebellion against the oppression of his
lot. "And yet they will all feel warranted in making a wide
space between me and them, as if I were a leper! My
practice and my reputation are utterly damned — I can see
that. Even if I could be cleared by valid evidence, it
would make little difference to the blessed world here. I
have been set down as tainted and should be cheapened to
them all the same."
Already there had been abundant signs which had hitherto
puzzled him, that just when he had been paying off his debts
and getting cheerfully on his feet, the townsmen were
avoiding him or looking strangely. at him, and in two
instances it came to his knowledge that patients of his had
called in another practitioner. The reasons were too plain
now. The general black-balling had begun.
No wonder that in Lydgate's energetic nature the sense
of a hopeless misconstruction easily turned into a dogged
resistance. The scowl which occasionally showed itself on
his square brow was not a meaningless accident. Already
when he was re-entering the town after that ride taken in
the first hours of stinging pain, he was setting his mind on
remaining in Middlemarch in spite of the worst that could be
done against him. He would not retreat before calumny, as
if he submitted to it. He would face it to the utmost, and
no act of his should
show that he was afraid. It
belonged to the generosity as well as defiant force of his
nature that he resolved not to shrink from showing to the
full his sense of obligation to Bulstrode. It was true that
the association with this man had been fatal to him — true
that if he had had the thousand pounds still in his hands
with all his debts unpaid he would have returned the money
to Bulstrode, and taken beggary rather than the rescue which
had been sullied with the suspicion of a bribe (for,
remember, he was one of the proudest among the sons of
men) — nevertheless, he would not turn away from this crushed
fellow-mortal whose aid he had used, and make a pitiful
effort to get acquittal for himself by howling against
another. "I shall do as I think right, and explain to
nobody. They will try to starve me out, but — " he was going
on with an obstinate resolve, but he was getting near home,
and the thought of Rosamond urged itself again into that
chief place from which it had been thrust by the agonized
struggles of wounded honor and pride.
How would Rosamond take it all? Here was another weight
of chain to drag, and poor Lydgate was in a bad mood for
bearing her dumb mastery. He had no impulse to tell her the
trouble which must soon be common to them both. He
preferred waiting for the incidental disclosure which events
must soon bring about.