Chapter LXXI
Clown. . . . 'T was in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed, you
have a delight to sit, have you not?
Froth. I have so: because it is an open room, and good for
winter.
Clo. Why, very well then: I hope here be truths.
Measure for Measure.
Five days after the death of Raffles, Mr. Bambridge was
standing at his leisure under the large archway leading into
the yard of the Green Dragon. He was not fond of solitary
contemplation, but he had only just come out of the house,
and any human figure standing at ease under the archway in
the early afternoon was as certain to attract companionship
as a pigeon which has found something worth peeking at. In
this ease there was no material object to feed upon, but the
eye of reason saw a probability of mental sustenance in the
shape of gossip. Mr. Hopkins, the meek-mannered draper
opposite, was the first to act on this inward vision, being
the more ambitious of a little masculine talk because his
customers were chiefly women. Mr. Bambridge was rather curt
to the draper, feeling that Hopkins was of course glad to
talk to him, but that he was not going to waste much of
his talk on Hopkins. Soon, however, there was a small
cluster of more important listeners, who were either
deposited from the
passers-by, or had sauntered to the
spot expressly to see if there were anything going on at the
Green Dragon; and Mr. Bambridge was finding it worth his
while to say many impressive things about the fine studs he
had been seeing and the purchases he had made on a journey
in the north from which he had just returned. Gentlemen
present were assured that when they could show him anything
to cut out a blood mare, a bay, rising four, which was to be
seen at Doncaster if they chose to go and look at it, Mr.
Bambridge would gratify them by being shot " from here to
Hereford." Also, a pair of blacks which he was going to put
into the break recalled vividly to his mind a pair which he
had sold to Faulkner in '19, for a hundred guineas, and
which Faulkner had sold for a hundred and sixty two months
later — any gent who could disprove this statement being
offered the privilege of calling Mr. Bambridge by a very
ugly name until the exercise made his throat dry.
When the discourse was at this point of animation, came
up Mr. Frank Hawley. He was not a man to compromise his
dignity by lounging at the Green Dragon, but happening to
pass along the High Street and seeing Bambridge on the other
side, he took some of his long strides across to ask the
horsedealer whether he had found the first-rate gig-horse
which he had engaged to look for. Mr. Hawley was requested
to wait until he had seen a gray selected at Bilkley: if
that did not meet his wishes to a hair, Bambridge did not
know a horse when he saw it, which seemed to be the highest
conceivable unlikelihood. Mr. Hawley, standing with his
back to the street, was fixing a time for looking at the
gray and seeing it tried, when a horseman passed slowly by.
"Bulstrode!" said two or three voices at once in a low
tone, one of them, which was the draper's, respectfully
prefixing the "Mr.; " but nobody having more intention in
this interjectural naming than if they had said " the
Riverston coach " when that vehicle appeared in the
distance. Mr. Hawley gave a careless glance round at
Bulstrode's back, but as Bambridge's eyes followed it he
made a sarcastic grimace.
"By jingo! that reminds me," he began, lowering his
voice a little, " I picked up something else at Bilkley
besides your
gig-horse, Mr. Hawley. I picked up a fine
story about Bulstrode. Do you know how he came by his
fortune? Any gentleman wanting a bit of curious
information, I can give it him free of expense. If
everybody got their deserts, Bulstrode might have had to say
his prayers at Botany Bay."
"What do you mean?" said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his hands
into his pockets, and pushing a little forward under the
archway. If Bulstrode should turn out to be a rascal, Frank
Hawley had a prophetic soul.
"I had it from a party who was an old chum of Bulstrode
s. I'll tell you where I first picked him up," said
Bambridge, with a sudden gesture of his fore-finger. " He
was at Larcher's sale, but I knew nothing of him then — he
slipped through my fingers — was after Bulstrode, no doubt.
He tells me he can tap Bulstrode to any amount, knows all
his secrets. However, he blabbed to me at Bilkley: he takes
a stiff glass. Damme if I think he meant to turn king's
evidence; but he's that sort of bragging fellow, the
bragging runs over hedge and ditch with him, till he'd brag
of a spavin as if it 'ud fetch money. A man should know
when to pull up." Mr. Bambridge made this remark with an
air of disgust, satisfied that his own bragging showed a
fine sense of the marketable.
"What's the man's name? Where can he be found?" said
Mr. Hawley.
"As to where he is to be found, I left him to it at the
Saracen's Head; but his name is Raffles."
"Raffles!" exclaimed Mr. Hopkins. " I furnished his
funeral yesterday. He was buried at Lowick. Mr. Bulstrode
followed him. A very decent funeral."
There was a strong sensation among the listeners. Mr.
Bambridge gave an ejaculation in which " brimstone " was the
mildest word, and Mr. Hawley, knitting his brows and bending
his head forward, exclaimed, "What? — where did the man die?"
"At Stone Court," said the draper. " The housekeeper
said he was a relation of the master's. He came there ill
on Friday."
"Why, it was on Wednesday I took a glass with him,"
interposed Bambridge.
"Did any doctor attend him?" said Mr. Hawley
"Yes. Mr. Lydgate. Mr. Bulstrode sat up with him one
night. He died the third morning."
"Go on, Bambridge," said Mr. Hawley, insistently. "
What did this fellow say about Bulstrode?"
The group had already become larger, the town-clerk's
presence being a guarantee that something worth listening to
was going on there; and Mr. Bambridge delivered his
narrative in the hearing of seven. It was mainly what we
know, including the fact about Will Ladislaw, with some
local color and circumstance added: it was what Bulstrode
had dreaded the betrayal of — and hoped to have buried
forever with the corpse of Raffles — it was that haunting
ghost of his earlier life which as he rode past the archway
of the Green Dragon he was trusting that Providence had
delivered him from Yes, Providence. He had not confessed to
himself yet that he had done anything in the way of
contrivance to this end; he had accepted what seemed to have
been offered. It was impossible to prove that he had done
anything which hastened the departure of that man's soul.
But this gossip about Bulstrode spread through
Middlemarch like the smell of fire. Mr. Frank Hawley
followed up his information by sending a clerk whom he could
trust to Stone Court on a pretext of inquiring about hay,
but really to gather all that could be learned about Raffles
and his illness from Mrs. Abel. In this way it came to his
knowledge that Mr. Garth had carried the man to Stone Court
in his gig; and Mr. Hawley in consequence took an
opportunity of seeing Caleb, calling at his office to ask
whether he had time to undertake an arbitration if it were
required, and then asking him incidentally about Raffles.
Caleb was betrayed into no word injurious to Bulstrode
beyond the fact which he was forced to admit, that he had
given up acting for him within the last week. Mr Hawley
drew his inferences, and feeling convinced that Raffles had
told his story to Garth, and that Garth had given up
Bulstrode's affairs in consequence, said
so a few hours
later to Mr. Toller. The statement was passed on until it
had quite lost the stamp of an inference, and was taken as
information coming straight from Garth, so that even a
diligent historian might have concluded Caleb to be the
chief publisher of Bulstrode's misdemeanors.
Mr. Hawley was not slow to perceive that there was no
handle for the law either in the revelations made by Raffles
or in the circumstances of his death. He had himself ridden
to Lowick village that he might look at the register and
talk over the whole matter with Mr. Farebrother, who was not
more surprised than the lawyer that an ugly secret should
have come to light about Bulstrode, though he had always had
justice enough in him to hinder his antipathy from turning
into conclusions. But while they were talking another
combination was silently going forward in Mr. Farebrother's
mind, which foreshadowed what was soon to be loudly spoken
of in Middlemarch as a necessary " putting of two and two
together." With the reasons which kept Bulstrode in dread
of Raffles there flashed the thought that the dread might
have something to do with his munificence towards his
medical man; and though he resisted the suggestion that it
had been consciously accepted in any way as a bribe, he had
a foreboding that this complication of things might be of
malignant effect on Lydgate's reputation. He perceived that
Mr. Hawley knew nothing at present of the sudden relief from
debt, and he himself was careful to glide away from all
approaches towards the subject.
"Well," he said, with a deep breath, wanting to wind up
the illimitable discussion of what might have been, though
nothing could be legally proven, " it is a strange story.
So our mercurial Ladislaw has a queer genealogy! A high-spirited young lady and a musical Polish patriot made a
likely enough stock for him to spring from, but I should
never have suspected a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker.
However, there's no knowing what a mixture will turn out
beforehand. Some sorts of dirt serve to clarify."
"It's just what I should have expected," said Mr.
Hawley, mounting his horse. " Any cursed alien blood, Jew,
Corsican, or Gypsy."
"I know he's one of your black sheep, Hawley. But he is
really a disinterested, unworldly fellow," said Mr.
Farebrother, smiling.
"Ay, ay, that is your Whiggish twist," said Mr. Hawley,
who had been in the habit of saying apologetically that
Farebrother was such a damned pleasant good-hearted fellow
you would mistake him for a Tory.
Mr. Hawley rode home without thinking of Lydgate's
attendance on Raffles in any other light than as a piece of
evidence on the side of Bulstrode. But the news that
Lydgate had all at once become able not only to get rid of
the execution in his house but to pay all his debts in
Middlemarch was spreading fast, gathering round it
conjectures and comments which gave it new body and impetus,
and soon filling the ears of other persons besides Mr.
Hawley, who were not slow to see a significant relation
between this sudden command of money and Bulstrode's desire
to stifle the scandal of Raffles. That the money came from
Bulstrode would infallibly have been guessed even if there
had been no direct evidence of it; for it had beforehand
entered into the gossip about Lydgate s affairs, that
neither his father-in-law nor his own family would do
anything for him, and direct evidence was furnished not only
by a clerk at the Bank, but by innocent Mrs. Bulstrode
herself, who mentioned the loan to Mrs. Plymdale, who
mentioned it to her daughter-in-law of the house of Toller,
who mentioned it generally. The business was felt to be so
public and important that it required dinners to feed it,
and many invitations were just then issued and accepted on
the strength of this scandal concerning Bulstrode and
Lydgate; wives, widows, and single ladies took their work
and went out to tea oftener than usual; and all public
conviviality, from the Green Dragon to Dollop's, gathered a
zest which could not be won from the question whether the
Lords would throw out the Reform Bill.
For hardly anybody doubted that some scandalous reason
or other was at the bottom of Bulstrode's liberality to
Lydgate. Mr. Hawley indeed, in the first instance, invited
a select party, including the two physicians, with Mr Toller
and Mr. Wrench,
expressly to hold a close discussion as
to the probabilities of Raffles's illness, reciting to them
all the particulars which had been gathered from Mrs. Abel
in connection with Lydgate's certificate, that the death was
due to
delirium tremens; and the medical gentlemen, who
all stood undisturbedly on the old paths in relation to this
disease, declared that they could see nothing in these
particulars which could be transformed into a positive
ground of suspicion. But the moral grounds of suspicion
remained: the strong motives Bulstrode clearly had for
wishing to be rid of Raffles, and the fact that at this
critical moment he had given Lydgate the help which he must
for some time have known the need for; the disposition,
moreover, to believe that Bulstrode would be unscrupulous,
and the absence of any indisposition to believe that Lydgate
might be as easily bribed as other haughty-minded men when
they have found themselves in want of money. Even if the
money had been given merely to make him hold his tongue
about the scandal of Bulstrode's earlier life, the fact
threw an odious light on Lydgate, who had long been sneered
at as making himself subservient to the banker for the sake
of working himself into predominance, and discrediting the
elder members of his profession. Hence, in spite of the
negative as to any direct sign of guilt in relation to the
death at Stone Court, Mr. Hawley's select party broke up
with the sense that the affair had " an ugly look."
But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt, which
was enough to keep up much head-shaking and biting innuendo
even among substantial professional seniors, had for the
general mind all the superior power of mystery over fact.
Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than
simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more confident
than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the
incompatible. Even the more definite scandal concerning
Bulstrode's earlier life was, for some minds, melted into
the mass of mystery, as so much lively metal to be poured
out in dialogue, and to take such fantastic shapes as heaven
pleased.
This was the tone of thought chiefly sanctioned by Mrs.
Dollop, the spirited landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter
Lane, who had often to resist the shallow pragmatism of
customers disposed to think that their reports from the
outer world were of equal force with what had " come up " in
her mind. How it had been brought to her she didn't know,
but it was there before her as if it had been scored with
the chalk on the chimney-board — " as Bulstrode should say,
his inside was
that black as if the hairs of his head
knowed the thoughts of his heart, he'd tear 'em up by the
roots."
"That's odd," said Mr. Limp, a meditative shoemaker,
with weak eyes and a piping voice. " Why, I read in the '
Trumpet ' that was what the Duke of Wellington said when he
turned his coat and went over to the Romans."
"Very like," said Mrs. Dollop. " If one raskill said
it, it's more reason why another should. But hypo crite
as he's been, and holding things with that high hand, as
there was no parson i' the country good enough for him, he
was forced to take Old Harry into his counsel, and Old
Harry's been too many for him."
"Ay, ay, he's a 'complice you can't send out o' the
country," said Mr. Crabbe, the glazier, who gathered much
news and groped among it dimly. " But by what I can make
out, there's them says Bulstrode was for running away, for
fear o' being found out, before now."
"He'll be drove away, whether or no," said Mr. Dill, the
barber, who had just dropped in. " I shaved Fletcher,
Hawley's clerk, this morning — he's got a bad finger — and he
says they're all of one mind to get rid of Balstrode. Mr.
Thesiger is turned against him, and wants him out o' the
parish. And there's gentlemen in this town says they'd as
soon dine with a fellow from the hulks. `And a deal sooner
I would,' says Fletcher; `for what's more against one's
stomach than a man coming and making himself bad company
with his religion, and giving out as the Ten Commandments
are not enough for him, and all the while he's worse than
half the men at the tread-mill?' Fletcher said so himself."
"It'll be a bad thing for the town though, if
Bulstrode's money goes out of it," said Mr. Limp,
quaveringly.
"Ah, there's better folks spend their money worse," said
a firm-voiced dyer, whose crimson hands looked out of
keeping with his good-natured face.
"But he won't keep his money, by what I can make out,"
said the glazier. "Don't they say as there's somebody can
strip it off him? By what I can understan', they could take
every penny off him, if they went to lawing."
"No such thing!" said the barber, who felt himself a
little above his company at Dollop's, but liked it none the
worse. " Fletcher says it's no such thing. He says they
might prove over and over again whose child this young
Ladislaw was, and they'd do no more than if they proved I
came out of the Fens — he couldn't touch a penny."
"Look you there now!" said Mrs. Dollop, indignantly. "
I thank the Lord he took my children to Himself, if that's
all the law can do for the motherless. Then by that, it's
o' no use who your father and mother is. But as to
listening to what one lawyer says without asking another — I
wonder at a man o' your cleverness, Mr. Dill. It's well
known there's always two sides, if no more; else who'd go to
law, I should like to know? It's a poor tale, with all the
law as there is up and down, if it's no use proving whose
child you are. Fletcher may say that if he likes, but I
say, don't Fletcher me!"
Mr. Dill affected to laugh in a complimentary way at
Mrs. Dollop, as a woman who was more than a match for the
lawyers; being disposed to submit to much twitting from a
landlady who had a long score against him.
"If they come to lawing, and it's all true as folks say,
there's more to be looked to nor money," said the glazier.
"There's this poor creetur as is dead and gone; by what I
can make out, he'd seen the day when he was a deal finer
gentleman nor Bulstrode."
"Finer gentleman! I'll warrant him," said Mrs. Dollop;
" and a far personabler man, by what I can hear. As I said
when Mr. Baldwin, the tax-gatherer, comes in, a-standing
where you sit, and says, ' Bulstrode got all his money as he
brought into this town by thieving and swindling,' — I said,
"You don't make me no wiser, Mr. Baldwin: it's set my
blood a-creeping to look at him ever sin' here he came into
Slaughter Lane a-wanting to buy the house over my head:
folks don't look the color o' the dough-tub and stare at you
as if they wanted to see into your backbone for nothingk.'
That was what I said, and Mr. Baldwin can bear me witness."
"And in the rights of it too," said Mr. Crabbe. "For by
what I can make out, this Raffles, as they call him, was a
lusty, fresh-colored man as you'd wish to see, and the best
o' company — though dead he lies in Lowick churchyard sure
enough; and by what I can understan', there's them knows
more than they should know about how he got there."
"I'll believe you!" said Mrs. Dallop, with a touch of
scorn at Mr. Crabbe's apparent dimness. " When a man's been
'ticed to a lone house, and there's them can pay for
hospitals and nurses for half the country-side choose to be
sitters-up night and day, and nobody to come near but a
doctor as is known to stick at nothingk, and as poor as he
can hang together, and after that so flush o' money as he
can pay off Mr. Byles the butcher as his bill has been
running on for the best o' joints since last Michaelmas was
a twelvemonth — I don't want anybody to come and tell me as
there's been more going on nor the Prayer-book's got a
service for — I don't want to stand winking and blinking and
thinking."
Mrs. Dollop looked round with the air of a landlady
accustomed to dominate her company. There was a chorus of
adhesion from the more courageous; but Mr. Limp, after
taking a draught, placed his fiat hands together and pressed
them hard between his knees, looking down at them with
blear-eyed contemplation, as if the scorching power of Mrs.
Dollop's speech had quite dried up and nullified his wits
until they could be brought round again by further moisture.
"Why shouldn't they dig the man up and have the
Crowner?" said the dyer. " It's been done many and many's
the time. If there's been foul play they might find it
out."
"Not they, Mr. Jonas!" said Mrs Dollop, emphatically. "
I know what doctors are. They're a deal too cunning to be
found out. And this Doctor Lydgate that's been for cutting
up everybody before the breath was well out o' their
body — it's plain enough what use he wanted to make o'
looking into respectable people's insides. He knows drugs,
you may be sure, as you can neither smell nor see, neither
before they're swallowed nor after. Why, I've seen drops
myself ordered by Doctor Gambit, as is our club doctor and a
good charikter, and has brought more live children into the
world nor ever another i' Middlemarch — I say I've seen drops
myself as made no difference whether they was in the glass
or out, and yet have griped you the next day. So I'll leave
your own sense to judge. Don't tell me! All I say is, it's
a mercy they didn't take this Doctor Lydgate on to our club.
There's many a mother's child might ha' rued it."
The heads of this discussion at "Dollop's" had been the
common theme among all classes in the town, had been carried
to Lowick Parsonage on one side and to Tipton Grange on the
other, had come fully to the ears of the Vincy family, and
had been discussed with sad reference to "poor Harriet " by
all Mrs. Bulstrode's friends, before Lydgate knew distinctly
why people were looking strangely at him, and before
Bulstrode himself suspected the betrayal of his secrets. He
had not been accustomed to very cordial relations with his
neighbors, and hence he could not miss the signs of
cordiality; moreover, he had been taking journeys on
business of various kinds, having now made up his mind that
he need not quit Middlemarch, and feeling able consequently
to determine on matters which he had before left in
suspense.
"We will make a journey to Cheltenham in the course of a
month or two," he had said to his wife. "There are great
spiritual advantages to be had in that town along with the
air and the waters, and six weeks there will be eminently
refreshing to us."
He really believed in the spiritual advantages, and
meant that his life henceforth should be the more devoted
because of those later sins which he represented to himself
as hypothetic, praying hypothetically for their pardon: — "if
I have herein transgressed."
as to the Hospital, he avoided saying anything further to
Lydgate, fearing to manifest a too sudden change of
plans immediately on the death of Raffles. In his secret
soul he believed that Lydgate suspected his orders to have
been intentionally disobeyed, and suspecting this he must
also suspect a motive. But nothing had been betrayed to him
as to the history of Raffles, and Bulstrode was anxious not
to do anything which would give emphasis to his undefined
suspicions. As to any certainty that a particular method of
treatment would either save or kill, Lydgate himself was
constantly arguing against such dogmatism; he had no right
to speak, and he had every motive for being silent. Hence
Bulstrode felt himself providentially secured. The only
incident he had strongly winced under had been an occasional
encounter with Caleb Garth, who, however, had raised his hat
with mild gravity.
Meanwhile, on the part of the principal townsmen a
strong determination was growing against him.
A meeting was to be held in the Town-Hall on a sanitary
question which had risen into pressing importance by the
occurrence of a cholera ease in the town. Since the Act of
Parliament, which had been hurriedly passed, authorizing
assessments for sanitary measures, there had been a Board
for the superintendence of such measures appointed in
Middlemarch, and much cleansing and preparation had been
concurred in by Whigs and Tories. The question now was,
whether a piece of ground outside the town should be secured
as a burial-ground by means of assessment or by private
subscription. The meeting was to be open, and almost
everybody of importance in the town was expected to be
there.
Mr. Bulstrode was a member of the Board, and just before
twelve o'clock he started from the Bank with the intention
of urging the plan of private subscription. Under the
hesitation of his projects, he had for some time kept
himself in the background, and he felt that he should this
morning resume his old position as a man of action and
influence in the public affairs of the town where he
expected to end his days. Among the various persons going
in the same direction, he saw Lydgate; they joined, talked
over the object of the meeting, and entered it together.
It seemed that everybody of mark had been earlier than
they. But there were still spaces left near the head of the
large central table, and they made their way thither. Mr.
Farebrother sat opposite, not far from Mr. Hawley; all the
medical men were there; Mr. Thesiger was in the chair, and
Mr. Brooke of Tipton was on his right hand.
Lydgate noticed a peculiar interchange of glances when
he and Bulstrode took their seats.
After the business had been fully opened by the
chairman, who pointed out the advantages of purchasing by
subscription a piece of ground large enough to be ultimately
used as a general cemetery, Mr. Bulstrode, whose rather
high-pitched but subdued and fluent voice the town was used
to at meetings of this sort, rose and asked leave to deliver
his opinion. Lydgate could see again the peculiar
interchange of glances before Mr. Hawley started up, and
said in his firm resonant voice, " Mr. Chairman, I request
that before any one delivers his opinion on this point I may
be permitted to speak on a question of public feeling, which
not only by myself, but by many gentlemen present, is
regarded as preliminary."
Mr. Hawley's mode of speech, even when public decorum
repressed his "awful language," was formidable in its
curtness and self-possession. Mr. Thesiger sanctioned the
request, Mr. Bulstrode sat down, and Mr. Hawley continued.
"In what I have to say, Mr. Chairman, I am not speaking
simply on my own behalf: I am speaking with the concurrence
and at the express request of no fewer than eight of my
fellow-townsmen, who are immediately around us. It is our
united sentiment that Mr. Bulstrode should be called upon —
and I do now call upon him — to resign public positions which
he holds not simply as a tax-payer, but as a gentleman among
gentlemen. There are practices and there are acts which,
owing to circumstances, the law cannot visit, though they
may be worse than many things which are legally punishable.
Honest men and gentlemen, if they don't want the company of
people who perpetrate such acts, have got to defend
themselves as they best can, and that is what I and the
friends whom I may call my clients in this affair are
determined to
do. I don't say that Mr. Bulstrode has
been guilty of shameful acts, but I call upon him either
publicly to deny and confute the scandalous statements made
against him by a man now dead, and who died in his house —
the statement that he was for many years engaged in
nefarious practices, and that he won his fortune by
dishonest procedures — or else to withdraw from positions
which could only have been allowed him as a gentleman among
gentlemen."
All eyes in the room were turned on Mr. Bulstrode, who,
since the first mention of his name, had been going through
a crisis of feeling almost too violent for his delicate
frame to support. Lydgate, who himself was undergoing a
shock as from the terrible practical interpretation of some
faint augury, felt, nevertheless, that his own movement of
resentful hatred was checked by that instinct of the Healer
which thinks first of bringing rescue or relief to the
sufferer, when he looked at the shrunken misery of
Bulstrode's livid face.
The quick vision that his life was after all a failure,
that he was a dishonored man, and must quail before the
glance of those towards whom he had habitually assumed the
attitude of a reprover — that God had disowned him before men
and left him unscreened to the triumphant scorn of those who
were glad to have their hatred justified — the sense of utter
futility in that equivocation with his conscience in dealing
with the life of his accomplice, an equivocation which now
turned venomously upon him with the full-grown fang of a
discovered lie: — all this rushed through him like the agony
of terror which fails to kill, and leaves the ears still
open to the returning wave of execration. The sudden sense
of exposure after the re-established sense of safety came —
not to the coarse organization of a criminal but to — the
susceptible nerve of a man whose intensest being lay in such
mastery and predominance as the conditions of his life had
shaped for him.
But in that intense being lay the strength of reaction.
Through all his bodily infirmity there ran a tenacious nerve
of ambitious self-preserving will, which had continually
leaped out like a flame, scattering all doctrinal fears, and
which, even while he sat an object of compassion for the
merciful, was
beginning to stir and glow under his ashy
paleness. Before the last words were out of Mr. Hawley's
mouth, Bulstrode felt that he should answer, and that his
answer would be a retort. He dared not get up and say, " I
am not guilty, the whole story is false" — even if he had
dared this, it would have seemed to him, under his present
keen sense of betrayal, as vain as to pull, for covering to
his nakedness, a frail rag which would rend at every little
strain.
For a few moments there was total silence, while every
man in the room was looking at Bulstrode. He sat perfectly
still, leaning hard against the back of his chair; he could
not venture to rise, and when he began to speak he pressed
his hands upon the seat on each side of him. But his voice
was perfectly audible, though hoarser than usual, and his
words were distinctly pronounced, though he paused between
sentence as if short of breath. He said, turning first
toward Mr. Thesiger, and then looking at Mr. Hawley —
"I protest before you, sir, as a Christian minister,
against the sanction of proceedings towards me which are
dictated by virulent hatred. Those who are hostile to me
are glad to believe any libel uttered by a loose tongue
against me. And their consciences become strict against me.
Say that the evil-speaking of which I am to be made the
victim accuses me of malpractices — " here Bulstrode's voice
rose and took on a more biting accent, till it seemed a low
cry — "who shall be my accuser? Not men whose own lives are
unchristian, nay, scandalous — not men who themselves use low
instruments to carry out their ends — whose profession is a
tissue of chicanery — who have been spending their income on
their own sensual enjoyments, while I have been devoting
mine to advance the best objects with regard to this life
and the next."
After the word chicanery there was a growing noise, half
of murmurs and half of hisses, while four persons started up
at once — Mr. Hawley, Mr. Toller, Mr. Chichely, and Mr.
Hackbutt; but Mr. Hawley's outburst was instantaneous, and
left the others behind in silence.
"If you mean me, sir, I call you and every one else to
the
inspection of my professional life. As to
Christian or unchristian, I repudiate your canting
palavering Christianity; and as to the way in which I spend
my income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves and
cheat offspring of their due inheritance in order to support
religion and set myself up as a saintly Killjoy. I affect
no niceness of conscience — I have not found any nice
standards necessary yet to measure your actions by, sir.
And I again call upon you to enter into satisfactory
explanations concerning the scandals against you, or else to
withdraw from posts in which we at any rate decline you as a
colleague. I say, sir, we decline to co-operate with a man
whose character is not cleared from infamous lights cast
upon it, not only by reports but by recent actions."
"Allow me, Mr. Hawley," said the chairman; and Mr.
Hawley, still fuming, bowed half impatiently, and sat down
with his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
"Mr. Bulstrode, it is not desirable, I think, to prolong
the present discussion," said Mr. Thesiger, turning to the
pallid trembling man; " I must so far concur with what has
fallen from Mr. Hawley in expression of a general feeling,
as to think it due to your Christian profession that you
should clear yourself, if possible, from unhappy aspersions.
I for my part should be willing to give you full opportunity
and hearing. But I must say that your present attitude is
painfully inconsistent with those principles which you have
sought to identify yourself with, and for the honor of which
I am bound to care. I recommend you at present, as your
clergyman, and one who hopes for your reinstatement in
respect, to quit the room, and avoid further hindrance to
business."
Bulstrode, after a moment's hesitation, took his hat
from the floor and slowly rose, but he grasped the corner of
the chair so totteringly that Lydgate felt sure there was
not strength enough in him to walk away without support.
What could he do? He could not see a man sink close to him
for want of help. He rose and gave his arm to Bulstrode,
and in that way led him out of the room; yet this act, which
might have been one of gentle duty and pure compassion, was
at this moment unspeakably bitter to him. It seemed as if
he
were putting his sign-manual to that association of
himself with Bulstrode, of which he now saw the full meaning
as it must have presented itself to other minds. He now
felt the conviction that this man who was leaning
tremblingly on his arm, had given him the thousand pounds as
a bribe, and that somehow the treatment of Raffles had been
tampered with from an evil motive. The inferences were
closely linked enough; the town knew of the loan, believed
it to be a bribe, and believed that he took it as a bribe.
Poor Lydgate, his mind struggling under the terrible
clutch of this revelation, was all the while morally forced
to take Mr. Bulstrode to the Bank, send a man off for his
carriage, and wait to accompany him home.
Meanwhile the business of the meeting was despatched,
and fringed off into eager discussion among various groups
concerning this affair of Bulstrode — and Lydgate.
Mr. Brooke, who had before heard only imperfect hints of
it, and was very uneasy that he had " gone a little too far
" in countenancing Bulstrode, now got himself fully
informed, and felt some benevolent sadness in talking to Mr.
Farebrother about the ugly light in which Lydgate had come
to be regarded. Mr. Farebrother was going to walk back to
Lowick.
"Step into my carriage," said Mr. Brooke. " I am going
round to see Mrs. Casaubon. She was to come back from
Yorkshire last night. She will like to see me, you know."
So they drove along, Mr. Brooke chatting with good-natured hope that there had not really been anything black
in Lydgate's behavior — a young fellow whom he had seen to be
quite above the common mark, when he brought a letter from
his uncle Sir Godwin. Mr. Farebrother said little: he was
deeply mournful: with a keen perception of human weakness,
he could not be confident that under the pressure of
humiliating needs Lydgate had not fallen below himself.
When the carriage drove up to the gate of the Manor,
Dorothea was out on the gravel, and came to greet them.
"Well, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have just come
from a meeting — a sanitary meeting, you know."
"Was Mr. Lydgate there?" said Dorothea, who looked full
of health and animation, and stood with her head bare under
the gleaming April lights. "I want to see him and have a
great consultation with him about the Hospital. I have
engaged with Mr. Bulstrode to do so."
"Oh, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have been hearing
bad news — bad news, you know."
They walked through the garden towards the churchyard
gate, Mr. Farebrother wanting to go on to the parsonage; and
Dorothea heard the whole sad story.
She listened with deep interest, and begged to hear
twice over the facts and impressions concerning Lydgate.
After a short silence, pausing at the churchyard gate, and
addressing Mr. Farebrother, she said energetically —
"You don't believe that Mr. Lydgate is guilty of
anything base? I will not believe it. Let us find out the
truth and clear him!"