Chapter LXXXIII
And now good-morrow to our waking souls
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere.
DR. DONNE.
On the second morning after Dorothea's visit to
Rosamond, she had had two nights of sound sleep, and had not
only lost all traces of fatigue, but felt as if she had a
great deal of superfluous strength — that is to say, more
strength than she could manage to concentrate on any
occupation. The day before, she had taken long walks
outside the grounds, and had paid two visits to the
Parsonage; but she never in her life told any one the reason
why she spent her time in that fruitless manner, and this
morning she was rather angry with herself for her childish
restlessness. To-day was to be spent quite differently.
What was there to be done in the village? Oh dear! nothing.
Everybody was well and had flannel; nobody's pig had died;
and it was Saturday morning, when there was a general
scrubbing of floors and door-stones, and when it was useless
to go into the school. But there were various subjects that
Dorothea was trying to get clear upon, and she resolved to
throw herself energetically into the gravest of all. She
sat down in the library before her particular little heap of
books on political economy and kindred matters, out of which
she was trying to get light as to the best way of spending
money so as not to injure one's neighbors, or — what comes to
the same thing — so as to do them the most good. Here was a
weighty subject which, if she could but lay hold of it,
would certainly keep her mind steady. Unhappily her mind
slipped off it for a whole hour; and at the end she found
herself reading sentences twice over with an intense
consciousness of many things, but not of any one thing
contained in the text. This was hopeless. Should she order
the carriage and
drive to Tipton? No; for some reason
or other she preferred staying at Lowick. But her vagrant
mind must be reduced to order: there was an art in self-discipline ; and she walked round and round the brown
library considering by what sort of manoeuvre she could
arrest her wandering thoughts. Perhaps a mere task was the
best means — something to which she must go doggedly. Was
there not the geography of Asia Minor, in which her
slackness had often been rebuked by Mr. Casaubon? She went
to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one: this morning she
might make herself finally sure that Paphlagonia was not on
the Levantine coast, and fix her total darkness about the
Chalybes firmly on the shores of the Euxine. A map was a
fine thing to study when you were disposed to think of
something else, being made up of names that would turn into
a chime if you went back upon them. Dorothea set earnestly
to work, bending close to her map, and uttering the names in
an audible, subdued tone, which often got into a chime. She
looked amusingly girlish after all her deep experience —
nodding her head and marking the names off on her fingers,
with a little pursing of her lip, and now and then breaking
off to put her hands on each side of her face and say, " Oh
dear! oh dear!"
There was no reason why this should end any more than a
merry-go-round; but it was at last interrupted by the
opening of the door and the announcement of Miss Noble.
The little old lady, whose bonnet hardly reached
Dorothea's shoulder, was warmly welcomed, but while her hand
was being pressed she made many of her beaver-like noises,
as if she had something difficult to say.
"Do sit down," said Dorothea, rolling a chair forward.
"Am I wanted for anything? I shall be so glad if I can do
anything."
"I will not stay," said Miss Noble, putting her hand
into her small basket, and holding some article inside it
nervously; " I have left a friend in the churchyard." She
lapsed into her inarticulate sounds, and unconsciously drew
forth the article which she was fingering. It was the
tortoise-shell lozenge-box, and Dorothea felt the color
mounting to her cheeks.
"Mr. Ladislaw," continued the timid little woman. "He
fears he has offended you, and has begged me to ask if you
will see him for a few minutes."
Dorothea did not answer on the instant: it was crossing
her mind that she could not receive him in this library,
where her husband's prohibition seemed to dwell. She looked
towards the window. Could she go out and meet him in the
grounds? The sky was heavy, and the trees had begun to
shiver as at a coming storm. Besides, she shrank from going
out to him.
"Do see him, Mrs. Casaubon," said Miss Noble,
pathetically; "else I must go back and say No, and that will
hurt him."
"Yes, I will see him," said Dorothea. "Pray tell him to
come."
What else was there to be done? There was nothing that
she longed for at that moment except to see Will: the
possibility of seeing him had thrust itself insistently
between her and every other object; and yet she had a
throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her — a sense that
she was doing something daringly defiant for his sake.
When the little lady had trotted away on her mission,
Dorothea stood in the middle of the library with her hands
falling clasped before her, making no attempt to compose
herself in an attitude of dignified unconsciousness. What
she was least conscious of just then was her own body: she
was thinking of what was likely to be in Will's mind, and of
the hard feelings that others had had about him. How could
any duty bind her to hardness? Resistance to unjust
dispraise had mingled with her feeling for him from the very
first, and now in the rebound of her heart after her anguish
the resistance was stronger than ever. "If I love him too
much it is because he has been used so ill: " — there was a
voice within her saying this to some imagined audience in
the library, when the door was opened, and she saw Will
before her.
She did not move, and he came towards her with more
doubt and timidity in his face than she had ever seen
before. He was in a state of uncertainty which made him
afraid lest some look or word of his should condemn him to a
new distance from her; and Dorothea was afraid of her OWN
emotion. She
looked as if there were a spell upon her,
keeping her motionless and hindering her from unclasping her
hands, while some intense, grave yearning was imprisoned
within her eyes. Seeing that she did not put out her hand
as usual, Will paused a yard from her and said with
embarrassment, "I am so grateful to you for seeing me."
"I wanted to see you," said Dorothea, having no other
words at command. It did not occur to her to sit down, and
Will did not give a cheerful interpretation to this queenly
way of receiving him; but he went on to say what he had made
up his mind to say.
"I fear you think me foolish and perhaps wrong for
coming back so soon. I have been punished for my
impatience. You know — every one knows now — -a painful story
about my parentage. I knew of it before I went away, and I
always meant to tell you of it if — if we ever met again."
There was a slight movement in Dorothea, and she
unclasped her hands, but immediately folded them over each
other.
"But the affair is matter of gossip now," Will
continued. "I wished you to know that something connected
with it — something which happened before I went away, helped
to bring me down here again. At least I thought it excused
my coming. It was the idea of getting Bulstrode to apply
some money to a public purpose — some money which he had
thought of giving me. Perhaps it is rather to Bulstrode's
credit that he privately offered me compensation for an old
injury: he offered to give me a good income to make amends;
but I suppose you know the disagreeable story?"
Will looked doubtfully at Dorothea, but his manner was
gathering some of the defiant courage with which he always
thought of this fact in his destiny. He added, "You know
that it must be altogether painful to me."
"Yes — yes — I know," said Dorothea, hastily.
"I did not choose to accept an income from such a
source. I was sure that you would not think well of me if I
did so," said Will. Why should he mind saying anything of
that sort to her now? She knew that he had avowed his love
for her. "I felt that" — he broke off, nevertheless.
"You acted as I should have expected you to act," said
Dorothea, her face brightening and her head becoming a
little more erect on its beautiful stem.
"I did not believe that you would let any circumstance
of my birth create a prejudice in you against me, though it
was sure to do so in others," said Will, shaking his head
backward in his old way, and looking with a grave appeal
into her eyes.
"If it were a new hardship it would be a new reason for
me to cling to you," said Dorothea, fervidly. "Nothing
could have changed me but — " her heart was swelling, and it
was difficult to go on; she made a great effort over herself
to say in a low tremulous voice, " but thinking that you
were different — not so good as I had believed you to be."
"You are sure to believe me better than I am in
everything but one," said Will, giving way to his own
feeling in the evidence of hers. "I mean, in my truth to
you. When I thought you doubted of that, I didn't care
about anything that was left. I thought it was all over
with me, and there was nothing to try for — only things to
endure."
"I don't doubt you any longer," said Dorothea, putting
out her hand; a vague fear for him impelling her unutterable
affection.
He took her hand and raised it to his lips with
something like a sob. But he stood with his hat and gloves
in the other hand, and might have done for the portrait of a
Royalist. Still it was difficult to loose the hand, and
Dorothea, withdrawing it in a confusion that distressed her,
looked and moved away.
"See how dark the clouds have become, and how the trees
are tossed," she said, walking towards the window, yet
speaking and moving with only a dim sense of what she was
doing.
Will followed her at a little distance, and leaned
against the tall back of a leather chair, on which he
ventured now to lay his hat and gloves, and free himself
from the intolerable durance of formality to which he had
been for the first time condemned in Dorothea's presence.
It must be confessed that he felt very happy at that moment
leaning on the chair. He was not much afraid of anything
that she might feel now.
They stood silent, not looking at each other, but
looking at the evergreens which were being tossed, and were
showing the pale underside of their leaves against the
blackening sky. Will never enjoyed the prospect of a storm
so much: it delivered him from the necessity of going away.
Leaves and little branches were hurled about, and the
thunder was getting nearer. The light was more and more
sombre, but there came a flash of lightning which made them
start and look at each other, and then smile. Dorothea
began to say what she had been thinking of.
"That was a wrong thing for you to say, that you would
have had nothing to try for. If we had lost our own chief
good, other people's good would remain, and that is worth
trying for. Some can be happy. I seemed to see that more
clearly than ever, when I was the most wretched. I can
hardly think how I could have borne the trouble, if that
feeling had not come to me to make strength."
"You have never felt the sort of misery I felt," said
Will; " the misery of knowing that you must despise me."
"But I have felt worse — it was worse to think ill — "
Dorothea had begun impetuously, but broke off.
Will colored. He had the sense that whatever she said
was uttered in the vision of a fatality that kept them
apart. He was silent a moment, and then said passionately —
"We may at least have the comfort of speaking to each
other without disguise. Since I must go away — since we must
always be divided — you may think of me as one on the brink
of the grave."
While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of
lightning which lit each of them up for the other — and the
light seemed to be the terror of a hopeless love. Dorothea
darted instantaneously from the window; Will followed her,
seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement; and so they
stood, with their hands clasped, like two children, looking
out on the storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack
and roll above them, and the rain began to pour down. Then
they turned their faces towards each other, with the memory
of his last words in them, and they did not loose each
other's hands.
"There is no hope for me," said Will. "Even if you
loved me as well as I love you — even if I were everything to
you — I shall most likely always be very poor: on a sober
calculation, one can count on nothing but a creeping lot.
It is impossible for us ever to belong to each other. It is
perhaps base of me to have asked for a word from you. I
meant to go away into silence, but I have not been able to
do what I meant."
"Don't be sorry," said Dorothea, in her clear tender
tones. "I would rather share all the trouble of our
parting."
Her lips trembled, and so did his. It was never known
which lips were the first to move towards the other lips;
but they kissed tremblingly, and then they moved apart.
The rain was dashing against the window-panes as if an
angry spirit were within it, and behind it was the great
swoop of the wind; it was one of those moments in which both
the busy and the idle pause with a certain awe.
Dorothea sat down on the seat nearest to her, a long low
ottoman in the middle of the room, and with her hands folded
over each other on her lap, looked at the drear outer world.
Will stood still an instant looking at her, then seated
himself beside her, and laid his hand on hers, which turned
itself upward to be clasped. They sat in that way without
looking at each other, until the rain abated and began to
fall in stillness. Each had been full of thoughts which
neither of them could begin to utter.
But when the rain was quiet, Dorothea turned to look at
Will. With passionate exclamation, as if some torture screw
were threatening him, he started up and said, "It is
impossible!"
He went and leaned on the back of the chair again, and
seemed to be battling with his own anger, while she looked
towards him sadly.
"It is as fatal as a murder or any other horror that
divides people," he burst out again; " it is more
intolerable — to have our life maimed by petty accidents."
"No — don't say that — your life need not be maimed," said
Dorothea, gently.
"Yes, it must," said Will, angrily. "It is cruel of you
to speak in that way — as if there were any comfort. You may
see beyond the misery of it, but I don't. It is unkind — it
is throwing back my love for you as if it were a trifle, to
speak in that way in the face of the fact. We can never be
married."
"Some time — we might," said Dorothea, in a trembling
voice.
"When?" said Will, bitterly. "What is the use of
counting on any success of mine? It is a mere toss up
whether I shall ever do more than keep myself decently,
unless I choose to sell myself as a mere pen and a
mouthpiece. I can see that clearly enough. I could not
offer myself to any woman, even if she had no luxuries to
renounce."
There was silence. Dorothea's heart was full of
something that she wanted to say, and yet the words were too
difficult. She was wholly possessed by them: at that moment
debate was mute within her. And it was very hard that she
could not say what she wanted to say. Will was looking out
of the window angrily. If he would have looked at her and
not gone away from her side, she thought everything would
have been easier. At last he turned, still resting against
the chair, and stretching his hand automatically towards his
hat, said with a sort of exasperation, "Good-by."
"Oh, I cannot bear it — my heart will break," said
Dorothea, starting from her seat, the flood of her young
passion bearing down all the obstructions which had kept her
silent — the great tears rising and falling in an instant: "
I don't mind about poverty — I hate my wealth."
In an instant Will was close to her and had his arms
round her, but she drew her head back and held his away
gently that she might go on speaking, her large tear-filled
eyes looking at his very simply, while she said in a sobbing
childlike way, " We could live quite well on my own
fortune — it is too much — seven hundred a-year — I want so
little — no new clothes — and I will learn what everything
costs."