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 promised to go and dine at the parsonage on her
return from Freshitt. There was a frequent interchange of
visits between her and the Farebrother family, which enabled
her to say that she was not at all lonely at the Manor, and
to resist for the present the severe prescription of a lady
companion. When she reached home and remembered her
engagement, she was glad of it; and finding that she had
still an hour before she could dress for dinner, she walked
straight to the schoolhouse and entered into a conversation
with the master and mistress about the new bell, giving
eager attention to their small details and repetitions, and
getting up a dramatic sense that her life was very busy.
She paused on her way back to talk to old Master Bunney who
was putting in some garden-seeds, and discoursed wisely with
that rural sage about the crops that would make the most
return on a perch of ground, and the result of sixty years'
experience as to soils — namely, that if your soil was pretty
mellow it would do, but if there came wet, wet, wet to make
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 than was necessary. That house was
never dull, Mr. Farebrother, like another White of Selborne,
having continually something new to tell of his inarticulate
guests and
proteges, whom he was teaching the boys
not to torment; and he had just set up a pair of beautiful
goats to be pets of the village in general, and to walk at
large as sacred animals. The evening went by cheerfully
till after tea, Dorothea talking more than usual and
dilating with Mr. Farebrother on the possible histories of
creatures that converse compendiously with their antennae,
and for aught we know may hold reformed parliaments; when
suddenly some inarticulate little sounds were heard which
called everybody's attention.
"Henrietta Noble," said Mrs. Farebrother, seeing her
small sister moving about the furniture-legs distressfully,
" what is the matter?"
"I have lost my tortoise-shell lozenge-box. I fear the
kitten has rolled it away," said the tiny old lady,
involuntarily coutinuing her beaver-like notes.
"Is it a great treasure, aunt?" said Mr. Farebrother,
putting up his glasses and looking at the carpet.
"Mr. Ladislaw gave it me," said Miss Noble. "A German
box — very pretty, 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 tone of comprehension, getting up and hunting.
The box was found at last under a chiffonier, and Miss Noble
grasped it with delight, saying, " it was 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 take their 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 and annoyed to find that her heart was palpitating
violently, and that it was quite useless to try after a
recovery of her former animation. Alarmed at herself —
fearing some further betrayal of a change so marked in its
occasion, she rose and said in a low voice with undisguised
anxiety, "I must go; I have overtired myself."
Mr. Farebrother, quick in perception, rose and said, "It
is true; you must have half-exhausted yourself in talking
about Lydgate. That sort of work tells upon one after the
excitement is over."
He gave her his arm back to the Manor, but Dorothea did
not attempt to speak, even when he said good-night.
The limit of resistance was reached, and she had sunk
back helpless within the clutch of inescapable anguish.
Dismissing Tantripp with a few faint words, she locked her
door, and turning away from it towards the vacant room she
pressed her hands hard on the top of her head, and moaned
out —
"Oh, I did love him!"
Then came the hour in which the waves of suffering shook
her too thoroughly to leave any power of thought. She could
only cry in loud whispers, between her sobs, after her lost
belief which she had planted and kept alive from a very
little seed since the days in Rome — after her lost joy of
clinging with silent love and faith to one who, misprized by
others, was worthy in her thought — after her lost woman's
pride of reigning in his memory — after her sweet dim
perspective of hope, that along some pathway they should
meet with unchanged recognition and take up the backward
years as a yesterday.
In that hour she repeated what the merciful eyes of
solitude have looked on for ages in the spiritual struggles
of man — she besought hardness and coldness and aching
weariness to bring her relief from the mysterious
incorporeal might of her anguish: she lay on the bare floor
and let the night grow cold around her; while her grand
woman's frame was shaken by sobs as if she had been a
despairing child.
There were two images — two living forms that tore her
heart in two, as if it had been the heart of a mother who
seems to see her child divided by the sword, and presses one
bleeding half to her breast while her gaze goes forth in
agony towards the half which is carried away by the lying
woman that has never known the mother's pang.
Here, with the nearness of an answering smile, here
within the vibrating bond of mutual speech, was the bright
creature whom she had trusted — who had come to her like the
spirit
of morning visiting the dim vault where she sat
as the bride of a worn-out life; and now, with a full
consciousness which had never awakened before, she stretched
out her arms towards him and cried with bitter cries that
their nearness was a parting vision: she discovered her
passion to herself in the unshrinking 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, a detected illusion — no, a living
man towards whom there could not yet struggle any wail of
regretful pity, from the midst of scorn and indignation and
jealous offended pride. The fire of Dorothea's anger was
not easily spent, and it flamed out in fitful returns of
spurning reproach. Why had he come obtruding his life into
hers, hers that might have been whole enough without him?
Why had he brought his cheap regard and his lip-born words
to her who had nothing paltry to give in exchange? He knew
that he was deluding her — wished, in the very moment of
farewell, to make her believe that he gave her the whole
price of her heart, and knew that he had spent it half
before. Why had he not stayed among the crowd of whom she
asked nothing — but only prayed that they might be less
contemptible?
But she lost energy at last even for her loud-whispered
cries and moans: she subsided into helpless sobs, and on the
cold floor she sobbed herself to sleep.
In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was
dim around her, she awoke — not with any amazed wondering
where she was or what had happened, but with the clearest
consciousness that she was looking into the eyes of sorrow.
She rose, and wrapped warm things around her, and seated
herself in a great chair where she had often watched
before. She was vigorous enough to have borne that hard
night without feeling ill in body, beyond some aching and
fatigue; but she had waked to a new condition: she felt as
if her soul had been liberated from its terrible conflict;
she was no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sit
down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in
her thoughts. For now the thoughts came thickly. It was
not in Dorothea's
nature, for longer than the duration
of a paroxysm, to sit in the narrow cell of her calamity, in
the besotted misery of a consciousness that only sees
another's lot as an accident of its own.
She began now to live through that yesterday morning
deliberately again, forcing herself to dwell on every detail
and its possible meaning. Was she alone in that scene? Was
it her event only? She forced herself to think of it as
bound up with another woman's life — a woman towards whom she
had set out with a longing to carry some clearness and
comfort into her beclouded youth. In her first outleap of
jealous indignation and disgust, when quitting the hateful
room, she had flung away all the mercy with which she had
undertaken that visit. She had enveloped both Will and
Rosamond in her burning scorn. and it seemed to her as if
Rosamond were burned out of her sight forever. But that
base prompting which makes a women more cruel to a rival
than to a faithless lover, could have no strength of
recurrence in Dorothea when the dominant spirit of justice
within her had once overcome the tumult and had once shown
her the truer measure of things. All the active thought
with which she had before been representing to herself the
trials of Lydgate's lot, and this young marriage union
which, like her own, seemed to have its hidden as well as
evident troubles — all this vivid sympathetic experience
returned to her now as a power: it asserted itself as
acquired knowledge asserts itself and will not let us see as
we saw in the day of our ignorance. She said to her own
irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful,
instead of driving her back from effort.
And what sort of-crisis might not this be in three lives
whose contact with hers laid an obligation on her as if they
had been suppliants bearing the sacred branch? The objects
of her rescue were not to be sought out by her fancy: they
were chosen for her. She yearned towards the perfect Right,
that it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant
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 of those three?"
It had taken long for her to come to that question, and
there was light piercing into the room. She opened her
curtains, and looked out towards the bit of road that lay in
view, with fields beyond outside the entrance-gates. On the
road there was a man with a bundle on his back and a woman
carrying her baby; in the field she could see figures
moving — perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off in the
bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness
of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and
endurance. She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating
life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious
shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish
complaining.
What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem
quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred
her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather
distinctness. She took off the clothes which seemed to have
some of the weariness of a hard watching in them, and began
to make her toilet. Presently she rang for Tantripp, who
came in her dressing-gown.
"Why, madam, you've never been in bed this blessed
night," burst out Tantripp, looking first at the bed and
then at Dorothea's face, which in spite of bathing had the
pale cheeks and pink eyelids of a mater dolorosa.
"You'll kill yourself, you will. Anybody might think
now you had a right to give yourself a little comfort."
"Don't be alarmed, Tantripp," said Dorothea, smiling.
"I have slept; I am 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 want my new bonnet to-day."
"They've lain there a month and more ready for you,
madam, and most thankful I shall be to see you with a couple
o' pounds' worth less of crape," said Tantripp, stooping to
light the fire. "There's a reason in mourning, as I've
always said; and three folds at the bottom of your skirt and
a plain quilling in your bonnet — and if ever anybody looked
like an angel, it's you in a net quilling — is what's
consistent for a second year. At least, that's my
thinking," ended Tantripp, looking anxiously at the fire;
"and if anybody was to marry
me flattering himself I
should wear those hijeous weepers two years for him, he'd be
deceived by his own vanity, that's all."
"The fire will do, my good Tan," said Dorothea, speaking
as she used to do in the old Lausanne days, only with a very
low voice; " get me the coffee."
She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her
head against it in fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp went
away wondering at this strange contrariness in her young
mistress — that just the morning when she had more of a
widow's face than ever, she should have asked for her
lighter mourning which she had waived before. Tantripp
would never have found the clew to this mystery. Dorothea
wished to acknowledge that she had not the less an active
life before her because she had buried a private joy; and
the tradition that fresh garments belonged to all
initiation, haunting her mind, made her grasp after even
that slight 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 unnoticeably as possible her second attempt to
see and save Rosamond.