Chapter LXVIII
What suit of grace hath Virtue to put on
If Vice shall wear as good, and do as well?
If Wrong, if Craft, if Indiscretion
Act as fair parts with ends as laudable?
Which all this mighty volume of events
The world, the universal map of deeds,
Strongly controls, and proves from all descents,
That the directest course still best succeeds.
For should not grave and learn'd Experience
That looks with the eyes of all the world beside,
And with all ages holds intelligence,
Go safer than Deceit without a guide!
DANIEL: Musophilus.
That change of plan and shifting of interest which
Bulstrode stated or betrayed in his conversation with
Lydgate, had been determined in him by some severe
experience which he had gone through since the epoch of Mr.
Larcher's sale, when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw,
and when the banker had in vain attempted an act of
restitution which might move Divine Providence to arrest
painful consequences.
His certainty that Raffles, unless he were dead, would
return to Middlemarch before long, had been justified. On
Christmas Eve he had reappeared at The Shrubs. Bulstrode
was at home to receive him, and hinder his communication
with the rest of the family, but he could not altogether
hinder the circumstances of the visit from compromising
himself and alarming his wife. Raffles proved more
unmanageable than he had shown himself to be in his former
appearances, his chronic state of mental restlessness, the
growing effect of habitual intemperance, quickly shaking off
every impression from what was said to him. He insisted on
staying in the house, and Bulstrode, weighing two sets of
evils, felt that this was at least not a worse alternative
than his going into the town. He kept him in his own room
for the evening and saw him to bed, Raffles all the while
amusing himself with the annoyance he was causing this
decent and highly prosperous fellow-sinner, an amusement
which he facetiously expressed as sympathy with his friend's
pleasure in entertaining a man who had been serviceable to
him, and who had not had all his earnings. There was a
cunning calculation under this noisy joking — a cool resolve
to extract something the handsomer from Bulstrode as payment
for release from this new application of torture. But his
cunning had a little overcast its mark.
Bulstrode was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre
of Raffles could enable him to imagine. He had told his
wife that he was simply taking care of this wretched
creature, the victim of vice, who might otherwise injure
himself; he implied, without the direct form of falsehood,
that there was a family tie which bound him to this care,
and that there were signs of mental alienation in Raffles
which urged caution. He would himself drive the unfortunate
being away the next morning. In these hints he felt that he
was supplying Mrs. Bulstrode with precautionary information
for his daughters and servants, and accounting for his
allowing no one but himself to enter the room even with food
and drink. But he sat in an agony of fear lest Raffles
should be overheard in his loud and plain references to past
facts — lest Mrs. Bulstrode should be even tempted to listen
at the door. How could he hinder her, how
betray his
terror by opening the door to detect her? She was a woman
of honest direct habits, and little likely to take so low a
course in order to arrive at painful knowledge; but fear was
stronger than the calculation of probabilities.
In this way Raffles had pushed the torture too far, and
produced an effect which had not been in his plan. By
showing himself hopelessly unmanageable he had made
Bulstrode feel that a strong defiance was the only resource
left. After taking Raffles to bed that night the banker
ordered his closed carriage to be ready at half-past seven
the next morning. At six o'clock he had already been long
dressed, and had spent some of his wretchedness in prayer,
pleading his motives for averting the worst evil if in
anything he had used falsity and spoken what was not true
before God. For Bulstrode shrank from a direct lie with an
intensity disproportionate to the number of his more
indirect misdeeds. But many of these misdeeds were like the
subtle muscular movements which are not taken account of in
the consciousness, though they bring about the end that we
fix our mind on and desire. And it is only what we are
vividly conscious of that we can vividly imagine to be seen
by Omniscience.
Bulstrode carried his candle to the bedside of Raffles,
who was apparently in a painful dream. He stood silent,
hoping that the presence of the light would serve to waken
the sleeper gradually and gently, for he feared some noise
as the consequence of a too sudden awakening. He had
watched for a couple of minutes or more the shudderings and
pantings which seemed likely to end in waking, when Raffles,
with a long half-stifled moan, started up and stared round
him in terror, trembling and gasping. But he made no
further noise, and Bulstrode, setting down the candle,
awaited his recovery.
It was a quarter of an hour later before Bulstrode, with
a cold peremptoriness of manner which he had not before
shown, said, " I came to call you thus early, Mr. Raffles,
because I have ordered the carriage to be ready at half-past
seven, and intend myself to conduct you as far as Ilsely,
where you can either take the railway or await a coach."
Raffles was about to speak, but Bulstrode anticipated him
imperiously with the words, " Be silent, sir, and hear
what I have to say. I shall supply you with money now, and
I will furnish you with a reasonable sum from time to time,
on your application to me by letter; but if you choose to
present yourself here again, if you return to Middlemarch,
if you use your tongue in a manner injurious to me, you will
have to live on such fruits as your malice can bring you,
without help from me. Nobody will pay you well for blasting
my name: I know the worst you can do against me, and I shall
brave it if you dare to thrust yourself upon me again. Get
up, sir, and do as I order you, without noise, or I will
send for a policeman to take you off my premises, and you
may carry your stories into every pothouse in the town, but
you shall have no sixpence from me to pay your expenses
there."
Bulstrode had rarely in his life spoken with such
nervous energy: he had been deliberating on this speech and
its probable effects through a large part of the night; and
though he did not trust to its ultimately saving him from
any return of Raffles, he had concluded that it was the best
throw he could make. It succeeded in enforcing submission
from the jaded man this morning: his empoisoned system at
this moment quailed before Bulstrode's cold, resolute
bearing, and he was taken off quietly in the carriage before
the family breakfast time. The servants imagined him to be
a poor relation, and were not surprised that a strict man
like their master, who held his head high in the world,
should be ashamed of such a cousin and want to get rid of
him. The banker's drive of ten miles with his hated
companion was a dreary beginning of the Christmas day; but
at the end of the drive, Raffles had recovered his spirits,
and parted in a contentment for which there was the good
reason that the banker had given him a hundred pounds.
Various motives urged Bulstrode to this open-handedness, but
he did not himself inquire closely into all of them. As he
had stood watching Raffles in his uneasy sleep, it had
certainly entered his mind that the man had been much
shattered since the first gift of two hundred pounds.
He had taken care to repeat the incisive statement of
his resolve not to be played on any more; and had tried to
pene
trate Raffles with the fact that he had shown the
risks of bribing him to be quite equal to the risks of
defying him. But when, freed from his repulsive presence,
Bulstrode returned to his quiet home, he brought with him no
confidence that he had secured more than a respite. It was
as if he had had a loathsome dream, and could not shake off
its images with their hateful kindred of sensations — as if
on all the pleasant surroundings of his life a dangerous
reptile had left his slimy traces.
Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up
of the thoughts he believes other men to have about him,
until that fabric of opinion is threatened with ruin?
Bulstrode was only the more conscious that there was a
deposit of uneasy presentiment in his wife's mind, because
she carefully avoided any allusion to it. He had been used
every day to taste the flavor of supremacy and the tribute
of. complete deference: and the certainty that he was
watched or measured with a hidden suspicion of his having
some discreditable secret, made his voice totter when he was
speaking to edification. Foreseeing, to men of Bulstrode's
anxious temperament, is often worse than seeing; and his
imagination continually heightened the anguish of an
imminent disgrace. Yes, imminent; for if his defiance of
Raffles did not keep the man away — and though he prayed for
this result he hardly hoped for it — the disgrace was
certain. In vain he said to himself that, if permitted, it
would be a divine visitation, a chastisement, a preparation;
he recoiled from the imagined burning; and he judged that it
must be more for the Divine glory that he should escape
dishonor. That recoil had at last urged him to make
preparations for quitting Middlemarch. If evil truth must
be reported of him, he would then be at a less scorching
distance from the contempt of his old neighbors; and in a
new scene, where his life would not have gathered the same
wide sensibility, the tormentor, if he pursued him, would be
less formidable. To leave the place finally would, he knew,
be extremely painful to his wife, and on other grounds he
would have preferred to stay where he had struck root.
Hence he made his preparations at first in a conditional
way, wishing to leave on all sides an opening for his
return after brief absence, if any favorable intervention of
Providence should dissipate his fears. He was preparing to
transfer his management of the Bank, and to give up any
active control of other commercial affairs in the
neighborhood, on the ground of his failing health, but
without excluding his future resumption of such work. The
measure would cause him some added expense and some
diminution of income beyond what he had already undergone
from the general depression of trade; and the Hospital
presented itself as a principal object of outlay on which he
could fairly economize.
This was the experience which had determined his
conversation with Lydgate. But at this time his
arrangements had most of them gone no farther than a stage
at which he could recall them if they proved to be
unnecessary. He continually deferred the final steps; in
the midst of his fears, like many a man who is in danger of
shipwreck or of being dashed from his carriage by runaway
horses, he had a clinging impression that something would
happen to hinder the worst, and that to spoil his life by a
late transplantation might be over-hasty — especially since
it was difficult to account satisfactorily to his wife for
the project of their indefinite exile from the only place
where she would like to live.
Among the affairs Bulstrode had to care for, was the
management of the farm at Stone Court in case of his
absence; and on this as well as on all other matters
connected with any houses and land he possessed in or about
Middlemarch, he had consulted Caleb Garth. Like every one
else who had business of that sort, he wanted to get the
agent who was more anxious for his employer's interests than
his own. With regard to Stone Court, since Bulstrode wished
to retain his hold on the stock, and to have an arrangement
by which he himself could, if he chose, resume his favorite
recreation of superintendence, Caleb had advised him not to
trust to a mere bailiff, but to let the land, stock, and
implements yearly, and take a proportionate share of the
proceeds.
"May I trust to you to find me a tenant on these terms,
Mr. Garth?" said Bulstrode. " And will you mention to me
the
yearly sum which would repay you for managing these
affairs which we have discussed together?"
"I'll think about it," said Caleb, in his blunt way.
"I'll see how I can make it out."
If it had not been that he had to consider Fred Vincy's
future, Mr. Garth would not probably have been glad of any
addition to his work, of which his wife was always fearing
an excess for him as he grew older. But on quitting
Bulstrode after that conversation, a very alluring idea
occurred to him about this said letting of Stone Court.
What if Bulstrode would agree to his placing Fred Vincy
there on the understanding that he, Caleb Garth, should be
responsible for the management? It would be an excellent
schooling for Fred; he might make a modest income there, and
still have time left to get knowledge by helping in other
business. He mentioned his notion to Mrs.. Garth with such
evident delight that she could not bear to chill his
pleasure by expressing her constant fear of his undertaking
too much.
"The lad would be as happy as two," he said, throwing
himself back in his chair, and looking radiant, " if I could
tell him it was all settled. Think; Susan! His mind had
been running on that place for years before old Featherstone
died. And it would be as pretty a turn of things as could
be that he should hold the place in a good industrious way
after all — by his taking to business. For it's likely
enough Bulstrode might let him go on, and gradually buy the
stock. He hasn't made up his mind, I can see, whether or
not he shall settle somewhere else as a lasting thing. I
never was better pleased with a notion in my life. And then
the children might be married by-and-by, Susan."
"You will not give any hint of the plan to Fred, until
you are sure that Bulstrode would agree to the plan?" said
Mrs. Garth, in a tone of gentle caution. "And as to
marriage, Caleb, we old people need not help to hasten it."
"Oh, I don't know," said Caleb, swinging his head aside.
"Marriage is a taming thing. Fred would want less of my bit
and bridle. However, I shall say nothing till I know the
ground I'm treading on. I shall speak to Bulstrode again."
He took his earliest opportunity of doing so. Bulstrode
had anything but a warm interest in his nephew Fred Vincy,
but he had a strong wish to secure Mr. Garth's services on
many scattered points of business at which he was sure to be
a considerable loser, if they were under less conscientious
management. On that ground he made no objection to Mr.
Garth's proposal; and there was also another reason why he
was not sorry to give a consent which was to benefit one of
the Vincy family. It was that Mrs. Bulstrode, having heard
of Lydgate's debts, had been anxious to know whether her
husband could not do something for poor Rosamond, and had
been much troubled on learning from him that Lydgate's
affairs were not easily remediable, and that the wisest plan
was to let them "take their course." Mrs. Bulstrode had
then said for the first time, " I think you are always a
little hard towards my family, Nicholas. And I am sure I
have no reason to deny any of my relatives. Too worldly
they may be, but no one ever had to say that they were not
respectable."
"My dear Harriet," said Mr. Bulstrode, wincing under his
wife's eyes, which were filling with tears, "I have supplied
your brother with a great deal of capital. I cannot be
expected to take care of his married children."
That seemed to be true, and Mrs. Bulstrode's
remonstrance subsided into pity for poor Rosamond, whose
extravagant education she had always foreseen the fruits of.
But remembering that dialogue, Mr. Bulstrode felt that
when he had to talk to his wife fully about his plan of
quitting Middlemarch, he should be glad to tell her that he
had made an arrangement which might be for the good of her
nephew Fred. At present he had merely mentioned to her that
he thought of shutting up The Shrubs for a few months, and
taking a house on the Southern Coast.
Hence Mr. Garth got the assurance he desired, namely,
that in ease of Bulstrode's departure from Middlemarch for
an indefinite time, Fred Vincy should be allowed to have the
tenancy of Stone Court on the terms proposed.
Caleb was so elated with his hope of this " neat turn "
being given to things, that if his self-control had not been
braced by
a little affectionate wifely scolding, he
would have betrayed everything to Mary, wanting " to give
the child comfort." However, he restrained himself, and
kept in strict privacy from Fred certain visits which he was
making to Stone Court, in order to look more thoroughly into
the state of the land and stock, and take a preliminary
estimate. He was certainly more eager in these visits than
the probable speed of events required him to be; but he was
stimulated by a fatherly delight in occupying his mind with
this bit of probable happiness which he held in store like a
hidden birthday gift for Fred and Mary.
"But suppose the whole scheme should turn out to be a
castle in the air?" said Mrs. Garth.
"Well, well," replied Caleb; " the castle will tumble
about nobody's head."