Chapter LXXIV
Mercifully grant that we may grow aged together.
BOOK OF TOBIT: Marriage Prayer.
In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant
that the town held a bad opinion of her husband. No
feminine intimate might carry her friendship so far as to
make a plain statement to the wife of the unpleasant fact
known or believed about her husband; but when a woman with
her thoughts
much at leisure got them suddenly employed
on something grievously disadvantageous to her neighbors,
various moral impulses were called into play which tended to
stimulate utterance. Candor was one. To be candid, in
Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity
of letting your friends know that you did not take a
cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their
position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for
its opinion. Then, again, there was the love of truth — a
wide phrase, but meaning in this relation, a lively
objection to seeing a wife look happier than her husband's
character warranted, or manifest too much satisfaction in
her lot-the poor thing should have some hint given her that
if she knew the truth she would have less complacency in her
bonnet, and in light dishes for a supper-party. Stronger
than all, there was the regard for a friend's moral
improvement, sometimes called her soul, which was likely to
be benefited by remarks tending to gloom, uttered with the
accompaniment of pensive staring at the furniture and a
manner implying that the speaker would not tell what was on
her mind, from regard to the feelings of her hearer. On the
whole, one might say that an ardent charity was at work
setting the virtuous mind to make a neighbor unhappy for her
good.
There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose
matrimonial misfortunes would in different ways be likely to
call forth more of this moral activity than Rosamond and her
aunt Bulstrode. Mrs. Bulstrode was not an object of
dislike, and had never consciously injured any human being.
Men had always thought her a handsome comfortable woman, and
had reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode's hypocrisy
that he had chosen a red-blooded Vincy, instead of a ghastly
and melancholy person suited to his low esteem for earthly
pleasure. When the scandal about her husband was disclosed
they remarked of her — " Ah, poor woman! She's as honest as
the day — she never suspected anything wrong in him, you
may depend on it." Women, who were intimate with her,
talked together much of " poor Harriet," imagined what her
feelings must be when she came to know everything, and
conjectured how much she had already come to know. There
was no
spiteful disposition towards her; rather, there
was a busy benevolence anxious to ascertain what it would be
well for her to feel and do under the circumstances, which
of course kept the imagination occupied with her character
and history from the times when she was Harriet Vincy till
now. With the review of Mrs. Bulstrode and her position it
was inevitable to associate Rosamond, whose prospects were
under the same blight with her aunt's. Rosamond was more
severely criticised and less pitied, though she too, as one
of the good old Vincy family who had always been known in
Middlemarch, was regarded as a victim to marriage with an
interloper. The Vincys had their weaknesses, but then they
lay on the surface: there was never anything bad to be "
found out " concerning them. Mrs. Bulstrode was vindicated
from any resemblance to her husband. Harriet's faults were
her own.
"She has always been showy," said Mrs. Hackbutt, making
tea for a small party, " though she has got into the way of
putting her religion forward, to conform to her husband; she
has tried to hold her head up above Middlemarch by making it
known that she invites clergymen and heaven-knows-who from
Riverston and those places."
"We can hardly blame her for that," said Mrs. Sprague; "
because few of the best people in the town cared to
associate with Balstrode, and she must have somebody to sit
down at her table."
"Mr. Thesiger has always countenanced him," said Mrs.
Hackbutt. "I think he must be sorry now."
"But he was never fond of him in his heart — that every
one knows," said Mrs. Tom Toller. "Mr. Thesiger never goes
into extremes. He keeps to the truth in what is
evangelical. It is only clergymen like Mr. Tyke, who want
to use Dissenting hymn-books and that low kind of religion,
who ever found Bulstrode to their taste."
"I understand, Mr. Tyke is in great distress about him,"
said Mrs. Hackbutt. "And well he may be: they say the
Bulstrodes have half kept the Tyke family."
"And of coarse it is a discredit to his doctrines," said
Mrs. Sprague, who was elderly, and old-fashioned in her
opinions.
"People will not make a boast of being methodistical in
Middlemarch for a good while to come."
"I think we must not set down people's bad actions to
their religion," said falcon-faced Mrs. Plymdale, who had
been listening hitherto.
"Oh, my dear, we are forgetting," said Mrs. Sprague.
"We ought not to be talking of this before you."
"I am sure I have no reason to be partial," said Mrs.
Plymdale, coloring. "It's true Mr. Plymdale has always been
on good terms with Mr. Bulstrode, and Harriet Vincy was my
friend long before she married him. But I have always kept
my own opinions and told her where she was wrong, poor
thing. Still, in point of religion, I must say, Mr.
Bulstrode might have done what he has, and worse, and yet
have been a man of no religion. I don't say that there has
not been a little too much of that — I like moderation
myself. But truth is truth. The men tried at the assizes
are not all over-religious, I suppose."
"Well," said Mrs. Hackbutt, wheeling adroitly, " all I
can say is, that I think she ought to separate from him."
"I can't say that," said Mrs. Sprague. "She took him
for better or worse, you know."
"But 'worse' can never mean finding out that your
husband is fit for Newgate," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "Fancy
living with such a man! I should expect to be poisoned."
"Yes, I think myself it is an encouragement to crime if
such men are to be taken care of and waited on by good
wives," said Mrs. Tom Toller.
"And a good wife poor Harriet has been," said Mrs.
Plymdale. "She thinks her husband the first of men. It's
true he has never denied her anything."
"Well, we shall see what she will do," said Mrs.
Hackbutt. "I suppose she knows nothing yet, poor creature.
I do hope and trust I shall not see her, for I should be
frightened to death lest I should say anything about her
husband. Do you think any hint has reached her?"
"I should hardly think so," said Mrs. Tom Toller. "We
hear that he is ill, and has never stirred out of the house
since
the meeting on Thursday; but she was with her
girls at church yesterday, and they had new Tuscan bonnets.
Her own had a feather in it. I have never seen that her
religion made any difference in her dress."
"She wears very neat patterns always," said Mrs.
Plymdale, a little stung. "And that feather I know she got
dyed a pale lavender on purpose to be consistent. I must
say it of Harriet that she wishes to do right."
"As to her knowing what has happened, it can't be kept
from her long," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "The Vincys know, for
Mr. Vincy was at the meeting. It will he a great blow to
him. There is his daughter as well as his sister."
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Sprague. "Nobody supposes that
Mr. Lydgate can go on holding up his head in Middlemarch,
things look so black about the thousand pounds he took just
at that man's death. It really makes one shudder."
"Pride must have a fall," said Mrs. Hackbutt.
"I am not so sorry for Rosamond Vincy that was as I am
for her aunt," said Mrs. Plymdale. "She needed a lesson."
"I suppose the Bulstrodes will go and live abroad
somewhere," said Mrs. Sprague. "That is what is generally
done when there is anything disgraceful in a family."
"And a most deadly blow it will be to Harriet," said
Mrs. Plymdale. "If ever a woman was crushed, she will be.
I pity her from my heart. And with all her faults, few
women are better. From a girl she had the neatest ways, and
was always good-hearted, and as open as the day. You might
look into her drawers when you would — always the same. And
so she has brought up Kate and Ellen. You may think how
hard it will be for her to go among foreigners."
"The doctor says that is what he should recommend the
Lydgates to do," said Mrs. Sprague. "He says Lydgate ought
to have kept among the French."
"That would suit her well enough, I dare say," said
Mrs. Plymdale; " there is that kind of lightness about her.
But she got that from her mother; she never got it from her
aunt Bulstrode, who always gave her good advice, and to my
knowledge would rather have had her marry elsewhere."
Mrs. Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some
complication of feeling. There had been not only her
intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode, but also a profitable business
relation of the great Plymdale dyeing house with Mr.
Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have inclined her to
desire that the mildest view of his character should be the
true one, but on the other, made her the more afraid of
seeming to palliate his culpability. Again, the late
alliance of her family with the Tollers had brought her in
connection with the best circle, which gratified her in
every direction except in the inclination to those serious
views which she believed to be the best in another sense.
The sharp little woman's conscience was somewhat troubled in
the adjustment of these opposing "bests," and of her griefs
and satisfactions under late events, which were likely to
humble those who needed humbling, but also to fall heavily
on her old friend whose faults she would have preferred
seeing on a background of prosperity.
Poor Mrs. Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further
shaken by the oncoming tread of calamity than in the busier
stirring of that secret uneasiness which had always been
present in her since the last visit of Raffles to The
Shrubs. That the hateful man had come ill to Stone Court,
and that her husband had chosen to remain there and watch
over him, she allowed to be explained by the fact that
Raffles had been employed and aided in earlier-days, and
that this made a tie of benevolence towards him in his
degraded helplessness; and she had been since then
innocently cheered by her husband's more hopeful speech
about his own health and ability to continue his attention
to business. The calm was disturbed when Lydgate had
brought him home ill from the meeting, and in spite of
comforting assurances during the next few days, she cried in
private from the conviction that her husband was not
suffering from bodily illness merely, but from something
that afflicted his mind. He would not allow her to read to
him, and scarcely to sit with him, alleging nervous
susceptibility to sounds and movements; yet she suspected
that in shutting himself up in his private room he wanted to
be busy with his papers. Something, she felt sure, had
happened. Perhaps it
was some great loss of money; and
she was kept in the dark. Not daring to question her
husband, she said to Lydgate, on the fifth day after the
meeting, when she had not left home except to go to church —
"Mr. Lydgate, pray be open with me: I like to know the
truth. Has anything happened to Mr. Bulstrode?"
"Some little nervous shock," said Lydgate, evasively.
He felt that it was not for him to make the painful
revelation.
"But what brought it on?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking
directly at him with her large dark eyes.
"There is often something poisonous in the air of public
rooms," said Lydgate. "Strong men can stand it, but it
tells on people in proportion to the delicacy of their
systems. It is often impossible to account for the precise
moment of an attack — or rather, to say why the strength
gives way at a particular moment."
Mrs. Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer.
There remained in her the belief that some calamity had
befallen her husband, of which she was to be kept in
ignorance; and it was in her nature strongly to object to
such concealment. She begged leave for her daughters to sit
with their father, and drove into the town to pay some
visits, conjecturing that if anything were known to have
gone wrong in Mr. Bulstrode's affairs, she should see or
hear some sign of it.
She called on Mrs. Thesiger, who was not at home, and
then drove to Mrs. Hackbutt's on the other side of the
churchyard. Mrs. Hackbutt saw her coming from an up-stairs
window, and remembering her former alarm lest she should
meet Mrs. Bulstrode, felt almost bound in consistency to
send word that she was not at home; but against that, there
was a sudden strong desire within her for the excitement of
an interview in which she was quite determined not to make
the slightest allusion to what was in her mind.
Hence Mrs. Bulstrode was shown into the drawing-room,
and Mrs. Hackbutt went to her, with more tightness of lip
and rubbing of her hands than was usually observable in her,
these being precautions adopted against freedom of speech
She was resolved not to ask how Mr. Bulstrode was.
"I have not been anywhere except to church for nearly a
week," said Mrs. Bulstrode, after a few introductory
remarks. "But Mr. Bulstrode was taken so ill at the meeting
on Thursday that I have not liked to leave the house."
Mrs. Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm
of the other held against her chest, and let her eyes ramble
over the pattern on the rug.
"Was Mr. Hackbutt at the meeting?" persevered Mrs.
Bulstrode.
"Yes, he was," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with the same
attitude " The land is to be bought by subscription, I
believe."
"Let us hope that there will be no more cases of cholera
to be buried in it," said Mrs. Bulstrode. "It is an awful
visitation. But I always think Middlemarch a very healthy
spot. I suppose it is being used to it from a child; but I
never saw the town I should like to live at better, and
especially our end."
"I am sure I should be glad that you always should live
at Middlemarch, Mrs. Bulstrode," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with a
slight sigh. "Still, we must learn to resign ourselves,
wherever our lot may be east. Though I am sure there will
always be people in this town who will wish you well."
Mrs. Hackbutt longed to say, "if you take my advice you
will part from your husband," but it seemed clear to her
that the poor woman knew nothing of the thunder ready to
bolt on her head, and she herself could do no more than
prepare her a little. Mrs. Bulstrode felt suddenly rather
chill and trembling: there was evidently something unusual
behind this speech of Mrs. Hackbutt's; but though she had
set out with the desire to be fully informed, she found
herself unable now to pursue her brave purpose, and turning
the conversation by an inquiry about the young Hackbutts,
she soon took her leave saying that she was going to see
Mrs. Plymdale. On her way thither she tried to imagine that
there might have been some unusually warm sparring at the
meeting between Mr. Bulstrode and some of his frequent
opponents — perhaps Mr. Hackbutt might have been one of them.
That would account for everything.
But when she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that
comforting explanation seemed no longer tenable. "Selina"
received her with a pathetic affectionateness and a
disposition to give edifying answers on the commonest
topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary
quarrel of which the most important consequence was a
perturbation of Mr. Bulstrode's health. Beforehand Mrs.
Bulstrode had thought that she would sooner question Mrs.
Plymdale than any one else; but she found to her surprise
that an old friend is not always the person whom it is
easiest to make a confidant of: there was the barrier of
remembered communication under other circumstances — there
was the dislike of being pitied and informed by one who had
been long wont to allow her the superiority. For certain
words of mysterious appropriateness that Mrs. Plymdale let
fall about her resolution never to turn her back on her
friends, convinced Mrs. Bulstrode that what had happened
must be some kind of misfortune, and instead of being able
to say with her native directness, " What is it that you
have in your mind?" she found herself anxious to get away
before she had heard anything more explicit. She began to
have an agitating certainty that the misfortune was
something more than the mere loss of money, being keenly
sensitive to the fact that Selina now, just as Mrs. Hackbutt
had done before, avoided noticing what she said about her
husband, as they would have avoided noticing a personal
blemish.
She said good-by with nervous haste, and told the
coachman to drive to Mr. Vincy's warehouse. In that short
drive her dread gathered so much force from the sense of
darkness, that when she entered the private counting-house
where her brother sat at his desk, her knees trembled and
her usually florid face was deathly pale. Something of the
same effect was produced in him by the sight of her: he rose
from his seat to meet her, took her by the hand, and said,
with his impulsive rashness —
"God help you, Harriet! you know all."
That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after.
It contained that concentrated experience which in great
crises of emotion reveals the bias of a nature, and is
prophetic of the ultimate act which will end an intermediate
struggle. With
out that memory of Raffles she might
still have thought only of monetary ruin, but now along with
her brother's look and words there darted into her mind the
idea of some guilt in her husband — then, under the working
of terror came the image of her husband exposed to
disgrace — and then, after an instant of scorching shame in
which she felt only the eyes of the world, with one leap of
her heart she was at his side in mournful but unreproaching
fellowship with shame and isolation. All this went on
within her in a mere flash of time — while she sank into the
chair, and raised her eyes to her brother, who stood over
her. "I know nothing, Walter. What is it?" she said,
faintly.
He told her everything, very inartificially, in slow
fragments, making her aware that the scandal went much
beyond proof, especially as to the end of Raffles.
"People will talk," he said. "Even if a man has been
acquitted by a jury, they'll talk, and nod and wink — and as
far as the world goes, a man might often as well be guilty
as not. -It's a breakdown blow, and it damages Lydgate as
much as Bulstrode. I don't pretend to say what is the
truth. I only wish we had never heard the name of either
Bulstrode or Lydgate. You'd better have been a Vincy all
your life, and so had Rosamond."
Mrs. Bulstrode made no reply.
"But you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet.
People don't blame you. And I'll stand by you whatever
you make up your mind to do," said the brother, with rough
but well-meaning affectionateness.
"Give me your arm to the carriage, Walter," said Mrs.
Bulstrode. "I feel very weak."
And when she got home she was obliged to say to her
daughter, " I am not well, my dear; I must go and lie down.
Attend to your papa. Leave me in quiet. I shall take no
dinner."
She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get
used to her maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life,
before she could walk steadily to the place allotted her. A
new searching light had fallen on her husband's character,
and she could not judge him leniently: the twenty years in
which she
had believed in him and venerated him by
virtue of his concealments came back with particulars that
made them seem an odious deceit. He had married her with
that bad past life hidden behind him, and she had no faith
left to protest his innocence of the worst that was imputed
to him. Her honest ostentatious nature made the sharing of
a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any mortal.
But this imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and
habits were an odd patchwork, had a loyal spirit within her.
The man whose prosperity she had shared through nearly half
a life, and who had unvaryingly cherished her — now that
punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in
any sense to forsake him. There is a forsaking which still
sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the
forsaken soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity.
She knew, when she locked her door, that she should unlock
it ready to go down to her unhappy husband and espouse his
sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will mourn and not reproach.
But she needed time to gather up her strength; she needed to
sob out her farewell to all the gladness and pride of her
life. When she had resolved to go down, she prepared
herself by some little acts which might seem mere folly to a
hard onlooker; they were her way of expressing to all
spectators visible or invisible that she had begun a new
life in which she embraced humiliation. She took off all
her ornaments and put on a plain black gown, and instead of
wearing her much-adorned cap and large bows of hair, she
brushed her hair down and put on a plain bonnet-cap, which
made her look suddenly like an early Methodist.
Bulstrode, who knew that his wife had been out and had
come in saying that she was not well, had spent the time in
an agitation equal to hers. He had looked forward to her
learning the truth from others, and had acquiesced in that
probability, as something easier to him than any confession.
But now that he imagined the moment of her knowledge come,
he awaited the result in anguish. His daughters had been
obliged to consent to leave hi-m, and though he had allowed
some food to be brought to him, he had not touched it. He
felt himself perishing slowly in unpitied misery.
Perhaps he should never see his wife's face with affection
in it again. And if he turned to God there seemed to be no
answer but the pressure of retribution.
It was eight o'clock in the evening before the door
opened and his wife entered. He dared not look up at her.
He sat with his eyes bent down, and as she went towards him
she thought he looked smaller — he seemed so withered and
shrunken. A movement of new compassion and old tenderness
went through her like a great wave, and putting one hand on
his which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on
his shoulder, she said, solemnly but kindly —
"Look up, Nicholas."
He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her
half amazed for a moment: her pale face, her changed,
mourning dress, the trembling about her mouth, all said, " I
know; " and her hands and eyes rested gently on him. He
burst out crying and they cried together, she sitting at his
side. They could not yet speak to each other of the shame
which she was bearing with him, or of the acts which had
brought it down on them. His confession was silent, and her
promise of faithfulness was silent. Open-minded as she was,
she nevertheless shrank from the words which would have
expressed their mutual consciousness, as she would have
shrunk from flakes of fire. She could not say, " How much
is only slander and false suspicion?" and he did not say, "
I am innocent."