Middlemarch

HAPTER LXV.

One of us two must bowen douteless,
And, sith a man is more reasonable
Than woman is, ye [men] moste be suffrable.
—CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales.

The bias of human nature to be slow in correspondence triumphs even
over the present quickening in the general pace of things: what wonder
then that in 1832 old Sir Godwin Lydgate was slow to write a letter
which was of consequence to others rather than to himself? Nearly three
weeks of the new year were gone, and Rosamond, awaiting an answer to
her winning appeal, was every day disappointed. Lydgate, in total
ignorance of her expectations, was seeing the bills come in, and
feeling that Dover’s use of his advantage over other creditors was
imminent. He had never mentioned to Rosamond his brooding purpose of
going to Quallingham: he did not want to admit what would appear to her
a concession to her wishes after indignant refusal, until the last
moment; but he was really expecting to set off soon. A slice of the
railway would enable him to manage the whole journey and back in four
days.

But one morning after Lydgate had gone out, a letter came addressed to
him, which Rosamond saw clearly to be from Sir Godwin. She was full of
hope. Perhaps there might be a particular note to her enclosed; but
Lydgate was naturally addressed on the question of money or other aid,
and the fact that he was written to, nay, the very delay in writing at
all, seemed to certify that the answer was thoroughly compliant. She
was too much excited by these thoughts to do anything but light
stitching in a warm corner of the dining-room, with the outside of this
momentous letter lying on the table before her. About twelve she heard
her husband’s step in the passage, and tripping to open the door, she
said in her lightest tones, “Tertius, come in here—here is a letter for
you.”

“Ah?” he said, not taking off his hat, but just turning her round
within his arm to walk towards the spot where the letter lay. “My uncle
Godwin!” he exclaimed, while Rosamond reseated herself, and watched him
as he opened the letter. She had expected him to be surprised.

While Lydgate’s eyes glanced rapidly over the brief letter, she saw his
face, usually of a pale brown, taking on a dry whiteness; with nostrils
and lips quivering he tossed down the letter before her, and said
violently—

“It will be impossible to endure life with you, if you will always be
acting secretly—acting in opposition to me and hiding your actions.”

He checked his speech and turned his back on her—then wheeled round and
walked about, sat down, and got up again restlessly, grasping hard the
objects deep down in his pockets. He was afraid of saying something
irremediably cruel.

Rosamond too had changed color as she read. The letter ran in this
way:—

“DEAR TERTIUS,—Don’t set your wife to write to me when you have
anything to ask. It is a roundabout wheedling sort of thing which I
should not have credited you with. I never choose to write to a woman
on matters of business. As to my supplying you with a thousand pounds,
or only half that sum, I can do nothing of the sort. My own family
drains me to the last penny. With two younger sons and three daughters,
I am not likely to have cash to spare. You seem to have got through
your own money pretty quickly, and to have made a mess where you are;
the sooner you go somewhere else the better. But I have nothing to do
with men of your profession, and can’t help you there. I did the best I
could for you as guardian, and let you have your own way in taking to
medicine. You might have gone into the army or the Church. Your money
would have held out for that, and there would have been a surer ladder
before you. Your uncle Charles has had a grudge against you for not
going into his profession, but not I. I have always wished you well,
but you must consider yourself on your own legs entirely now.

Your affectionate uncle,
GODWIN LYDGATE.”

When Rosamond had finished reading the letter she sat quite still, with
her hands folded before her, restraining any show of her keen
disappointment, and intrenching herself in quiet passivity under her
husband’s wrath. Lydgate paused in his movements, looked at her again,
and said, with biting severity—

“Will this be enough to convince you of the harm you may do by secret
meddling? Have you sense enough to recognize now your incompetence to
judge and act for me—to interfere with your ignorance in affairs which
it belongs to me to decide on?”

The words were hard; but this was not the first time that Lydgate had
been frustrated by her. She did not look at him, and made no reply.

“I had nearly resolved on going to Quallingham. It would have cost me
pain enough to do it, yet it might have been of some use. But it has
been of no use for me to think of anything. You have always been
counteracting me secretly. You delude me with a false assent, and then
I am at the mercy of your devices. If you mean to resist every wish I
express, say so and defy me. I shall at least know what I am doing
then.”

It is a terrible moment in young lives when the closeness of love’s
bond has turned to this power of galling. In spite of Rosamond’s
self-control a tear fell silently and rolled over her lips. She still
said nothing; but under that quietude was hidden an intense effect: she
was in such entire disgust with her husband that she wished she had
never seen him. Sir Godwin’s rudeness towards her and utter want of
feeling ranged him with Dover and all other creditors—disagreeable
people who only thought of themselves, and did not mind how annoying
they were to her. Even her father was unkind, and might have done more
for them. In fact there was but one person in Rosamond’s world whom she
did not regard as blameworthy, and that was the graceful creature with
blond plaits and with little hands crossed before her, who had never
expressed herself unbecomingly, and had always acted for the best—the
best naturally being what she best liked.

Lydgate pausing and looking at her began to feel that half-maddening
sense of helplessness which comes over passionate people when their
passion is met by an innocent-looking silence whose meek victimized air
seems to put them in the wrong, and at last infects even the justest
indignation with a doubt of its justice. He needed to recover the full
sense that he was in the right by moderating his words.

“Can you not see, Rosamond,” he began again, trying to be simply grave
and not bitter, “that nothing can be so fatal as a want of openness and
confidence between us? It has happened again and again that I have
expressed a decided wish, and you have seemed to assent, yet after that
you have secretly disobeyed my wish. In that way I can never know what
I have to trust to. There would be some hope for us if you would admit
this. Am I such an unreasonable, furious brute? Why should you not be
open with me?” Still silence.

“Will you only say that you have been mistaken, and that I may depend
on your not acting secretly in future?” said Lydgate, urgently, but
with something of request in his tone which Rosamond was quick to
perceive. She spoke with coolness.

“I cannot possibly make admissions or promises in answer to such words
as you have used towards me. I have not been accustomed to language of
that kind. You have spoken of my ‘secret meddling,’ and my ‘interfering
ignorance,’ and my ‘false assent.’ I have never expressed myself in
that way to you, and I think that you ought to apologize. You spoke of
its being impossible to live with me. Certainly you have not made my
life pleasant to me of late. I think it was to be expected that I
should try to avert some of the hardships which our marriage has
brought on me.” Another tear fell as Rosamond ceased speaking, and she
pressed it away as quietly as the first.

Lydgate flung himself into a chair, feeling checkmated. What place was
there in her mind for a remonstrance to lodge in? He laid down his hat,
flung an arm over the back of his chair, and looked down for some
moments without speaking. Rosamond had the double purchase over him of
insensibility to the point of justice in his reproach, and of
sensibility to the undeniable hardships now present in her married
life. Although her duplicity in the affair of the house had exceeded
what he knew, and had really hindered the Plymdales from knowing of it,
she had no consciousness that her action could rightly be called false.
We are not obliged to identify our own acts according to a strict
classification, any more than the materials of our grocery and clothes.
Rosamond felt that she was aggrieved, and that this was what Lydgate
had to recognize.

As for him, the need of accommodating himself to her nature, which was
inflexible in proportion to its negations, held him as with pincers. He
had begun to have an alarmed foresight of her irrevocable loss of love
for him, and the consequent dreariness of their life. The ready fulness
of his emotions made this dread alternate quickly with the first
violent movements of his anger. It would assuredly have been a vain
boast in him to say that he was her master.

“You have not made my life pleasant to me of late”—“the hardships which
our marriage has brought on me”—these words were stinging his
imagination as a pain makes an exaggerated dream. If he were not only
to sink from his highest resolve, but to sink into the hideous
fettering of domestic hate?

“Rosamond,” he said, turning his eyes on her with a melancholy look,
“you should allow for a man’s words when he is disappointed and
provoked. You and I cannot have opposite interests. I cannot part my
happiness from yours. If I am angry with you, it is that you seem not
to see how any concealment divides us. How could I wish to make
anything hard to you either by my words or conduct? When I hurt you, I
hurt part of my own life. I should never be angry with you if you would
be quite open with me.”

“I have only wished to prevent you from hurrying us into wretchedness
without any necessity,” said Rosamond, the tears coming again from a
softened feeling now that her husband had softened. “It is so very hard
to be disgraced here among all the people we know, and to live in such
a miserable way. I wish I had died with the baby.”

She spoke and wept with that gentleness which makes such words and
tears omnipotent over a loving-hearted man. Lydgate drew his chair near
to hers and pressed her delicate head against his cheek with his
powerful tender hand. He only caressed her; he did not say anything;
for what was there to say? He could not promise to shield her from the
dreaded wretchedness, for he could see no sure means of doing so. When
he left her to go out again, he told himself that it was ten times
harder for her than for him: he had a life away from home, and constant
appeals to his activity on behalf of others. He wished to excuse
everything in her if he could—but it was inevitable that in that
excusing mood he should think of her as if she were an animal of
another and feebler species. Nevertheless she had mastered him.