Chapter LXXXII
My grief lies onward and my joy behind.
SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets
Exiles notoriously feed much on hopes, and are unlikely
to stay in banishment unless they are obliged. When Will
Ladislaw exiled himself from Middlemarch he had placed no
stronger obstacle to his return than his own resolve, which
was by no means an iron barrier, but simply a state of mind
liable to melt into a minuet with other states of mind, and
to find itself bowing, smiling, and giving place with polite
facility. As the months went on, it had seemed more and
more difficult to him to say why he should not run down to
Middlemarch — merely for the sake of hearing something about
Dorothea; and if on such a flying visit he should chance by
some strange coincidence to meet with her, there was no
reason for him to be ashamed of having taken an innocent
journey which he had beforehand supposed that he should not
take. Since he was hopelessly divided from her, he might
surely venture into her neighborhood; and as to the
suspicious friends who kept a dragon watch over her — their
opinions seemed less and less important with time and change
of air.
And there had come a reason quite irrespective of
Dorothea, which seemed to make a journey to Middlemarch a
sort of philanthropic duty. Will had given a disinterested
attention to an intended settlement on a new plan in the Far
West, and the need for funds in order to carry out a good
design had set him on debating with himself whether it would
not be a laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode, to
urge the application of that money which had been offered to
himself as a means of carrying out a scheme likely to be
largely beneficial. The question seemed a very dubious one
to Will, and his repugnance to again entering into any
relation with the banker might have made him dismiss it
quickly, if there had not arisen
in his imagination the
probability that his judgment might be more safely
determined by a visit to Middlemarch.
That was the object which Will stated to himself as a
reason for coming down. He had meant to confide in Lydgate,
and discuss the money question with him, and he had meant to
amuse himself for the few evenings of his stay by having a
great deal of music and badinage with fair Rosamond, without
neglecting his friends at Lowick Parsonage: — if the
Parsonage was close to the Manor, that was no fault of his.
He had neglected the Farebrothers before his departure, from
a proud resistance to the possible accusation of indirectly
seeking interviews with Dorothea; but hunger tames us, and
Will had become very hungry for the vision of a certain form
and the sound of a certain voice. Nothing, had done
instead — not the opera, or the converse of zealous
politicians, or the flattering reception (in dim corners) of
his new hand in leading articles.
Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence how
almost everything would be in his familiar little world;
fearing, indeed, that there would be no surprises in his
visit. But he had found that humdrum world in a terribly
dynamic condition, in which even badinage and lyrism had
turned explosive; and the first day of this visit had become
the most fatal epoch of his life. The next morning he felt
so harassed with the nightmare of consequences — he dreaded
so much the immediate issues before him — that seeing while
he breakfasted the arrival of the Riverston coach, he went
out hurriedly and took his place on it, that he might be
relieved, at least for a day, from the necessity of doing or
saying anything in Middlemarch. Will Ladislaw was in one of
those tangled crises which are commoner in experience than
one might imagine, from the shallow absoluteness of men's
judgments. He had found Lydgate, for whom he had the
sincerest respect, under circumstances which claimed his
thorough and frankly declared sympathy; and the reason why,
in spite of that claim, it would have been better for Will
to have avoided all further intimacy, or even contact, with
Lydgate, was precisely of the kind to make such a course
appear impossible. To a creature of Will's susceptible
temperament — without any neutral region of
indifference
in his nature, ready to turn everything that befell him into
the collisions of a passionate drama — the revelation that
Rosamond had made her happiness in any way dependent on him
was a difficulty which his outburst of rage towards her had
immeasurably increased for him. He hated his own cruelty,
and yet he dreaded to show the fulness of his relenting: he
must go to her again; the friendship could not be put to a
sudden end; and her unhappiness was a power which he
dreaded. And all the while there was no more foretaste of
enjoyment in the life before him than if his limbs had been
lopped off and he was making his fresh start on crutches.
In the night he had debated whether he should not get on the
coach, not for Riverston, but for London, leaving a note to
Lydgate which would give a makeshift reason for his retreat.
But there were strong cords pulling him back from that
abrupt departure: the blight on his happiness in thinking of
Dorothea, the crushing of that chief hope which had remained
in spite of the acknowledged necessity for renunciation, was
too fresh a misery for him to resign himself to it and go
straightway into a distance which was also despair.
Thus he did nothing more decided than taking the
Riverston coach. He came back again by it while it was
still daylight, having made up his mind that he must go to
Lydgate's that evening. The Rubicon, we know, was a very
insignificant stream to look at; its significance lay
entirely in certain invisible conditions. Will felt as if
he were forced to cross his small boundary ditch, and what
he saw beyond it was not empire, but discontented
subjection.
But it is given to us sometimes even in our every-day
life to witness the saving influence of a noble nature, the
divine efficacy of rescue that may lie in a self-subduing
act of fellowship. If Dorothea, after her night's anguish,
had not taken that walk to Rosamond — why, she perhaps would
have been a woman who gained a higher character for
discretion, but it would certainly not have been as well for
those three who were on one hearth in Lydgate's house at
half-past seven that evening.
Rosamond had been prepared for Will's visit, and she
received him with a languid coldness which Lydgate accounted
for by her nervous exhaustion, of which he could not
suppose that it had any relation to Will. And when she sat
in silence bending over a bit of work, he innocently
apologized for her in an indirect way by begging her to lean
backward and rest. Will was miserable in the necessity for
playing the part of a friend who was making his first
appearance and greeting to Rosamond, while his thoughts were
busy about her feeling since that scene of yesterday, which
seemed still inexorably to enclose them both, like the
painful vision of a double madness. It happened that
nothing called Lydgate out of the room; but when Rosamond
poured out the tea, and Will came near to fetch it, she
placed a tiny bit of folded paper in his saucer. He saw it
and secured it quickly, but as he went back to his inn he
had no eagerness to unfold the paper. What Rosamond had
written to him would probably deepen the painful impressions
of the evening. Still, he opened and read it by his bed-candle. There were only these few words in her neatly
flowing hand: —
"I have told Mrs. Casaubon. She is not under any
mistake about you. I told her because she came to see me
and was very kind. You will have nothing to reproach me
with now. I shall not have made any difference to you."
The effect of these words was not quite all gladness.
As Will dwelt on them with excited imagination, he felt his
cheeks and ears burning at the thought of what had occurred
between Dorothea and Rosamond — at the uncertainty how far
Dorothea might still feel her dignity wounded in having an
explanation of his conduct offered to her. There might
still remain in her mind a changed association with him
which made an irremediable difference — a lasting flaw. With
active fancy he wrought himself into a state of doubt little
more easy than that of the man who has escaped from wreck by
night and stands on unknown ground in the darkness. Until
that wretched yesterday — except the moment of vexation long
ago in the very same room and in the very same presence — all
their vision, all their thought of each other, had been as
in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white
lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered.
But now — would Dorothea meet him in that world again?