Middlemarch

HAPTER LXVII.

Now is there civil war within the soul:
Resolve is thrust from off the sacred throne
By clamorous Needs, and Pride the grand-vizier
Makes humble compact, plays the supple part
Of envoy and deft-tongued apologist
For hungry rebels.

Happily Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiard-room, and brought
away no encouragement to make a raid on luck. On the contrary, he felt
unmixed disgust with himself the next day when he had to pay four or
five pounds over and above his gains, and he carried about with him a
most unpleasant vision of the figure he had made, not only rubbing
elbows with the men at the Green Dragon but behaving just as they did.
A philosopher fallen to betting is hardly distinguishable from a
Philistine under the same circumstances: the difference will chiefly be
found in his subsequent reflections, and Lydgate chewed a very
disagreeable cud in that way. His reason told him how the affair might
have been magnified into ruin by a slight change of scenery—if it had
been a gambling-house that he had turned into, where chance could be
clutched with both hands instead of being picked up with thumb and
fore-finger. Nevertheless, though reason strangled the desire to
gamble, there remained the feeling that, with an assurance of luck to
the needful amount, he would have liked to gamble, rather than take the
alternative which was beginning to urge itself as inevitable.

That alternative was to apply to Mr. Bulstrode. Lydgate had so many
times boasted both to himself and others that he was totally
independent of Bulstrode, to whose plans he had lent himself solely
because they enabled him to carry out his own ideas of professional
work and public benefit—he had so constantly in their personal
intercourse had his pride sustained by the sense that he was making a
good social use of this predominating banker, whose opinions he thought
contemptible and whose motives often seemed to him an absurd mixture of
contradictory impressions—that he had been creating for himself strong
ideal obstacles to the proffering of any considerable request to him on
his own account.

Still, early in March his affairs were at that pass in which men begin
to say that their oaths were delivered in ignorance, and to perceive
that the act which they had called impossible to them is becoming
manifestly possible. With Dover’s ugly security soon to be put in
force, with the proceeds of his practice immediately absorbed in paying
back debts, and with the chance, if the worst were known, of daily
supplies being refused on credit, above all with the vision of
Rosamond’s hopeless discontent continually haunting him, Lydgate had
begun to see that he should inevitably bend himself to ask help from
somebody or other. At first he had considered whether he should write
to Mr. Vincy; but on questioning Rosamond he found that, as he had
suspected, she had already applied twice to her father, the last time
being since the disappointment from Sir Godwin; and papa had said that
Lydgate must look out for himself. “Papa said he had come, with one bad
year after another, to trade more and more on borrowed capital, and had
had to give up many indulgences; he could not spare a single hundred
from the charges of his family. He said, let Lydgate ask Bulstrode:
they have always been hand and glove.”

Indeed, Lydgate himself had come to the conclusion that if he must end
by asking for a free loan, his relations with Bulstrode, more at least
than with any other man, might take the shape of a claim which was not
purely personal. Bulstrode had indirectly helped to cause the failure
of his practice, and had also been highly gratified by getting a
medical partner in his plans:—but who among us ever reduced himself to
the sort of dependence in which Lydgate now stood, without trying to
believe that he had claims which diminished the humiliation of asking?
It was true that of late there had seemed to be a new languor of
interest in Bulstrode about the Hospital; but his health had got worse,
and showed signs of a deep-seated nervous affection. In other respects
he did not appear to be changed: he had always been highly polite, but
Lydgate had observed in him from the first a marked coldness about his
marriage and other private circumstances, a coldness which he had
hitherto preferred to any warmth of familiarity between them. He
deferred the intention from day to day, his habit of acting on his
conclusions being made infirm by his repugnance to every possible
conclusion and its consequent act. He saw Mr. Bulstrode often, but he
did not try to use any occasion for his private purpose. At one moment
he thought, “I will write a letter: I prefer that to any circuitous
talk;” at another he thought, “No; if I were talking to him, I could
make a retreat before any signs of disinclination.”

Still the days passed and no letter was written, no special interview
sought. In his shrinking from the humiliation of a dependent attitude
towards Bulstrode, he began to familiarize his imagination with another
step even more unlike his remembered self. He began spontaneously to
consider whether it would be possible to carry out that puerile notion
of Rosamond’s which had often made him angry, namely, that they should
quit Middlemarch without seeing anything beyond that preface. The
question came—“Would any man buy the practice of me even now, for as
little as it is worth? Then the sale might happen as a necessary
preparation for going away.”

But against his taking this step, which he still felt to be a
contemptible relinquishment of present work, a guilty turning aside
from what was a real and might be a widening channel for worthy
activity, to start again without any justified destination, there was
this obstacle, that the purchaser, if procurable at all, might not be
quickly forthcoming. And afterwards? Rosamond in a poor lodging, though
in the largest city or most distant town, would not find the life that
could save her from gloom, and save him from the reproach of having
plunged her into it. For when a man is at the foot of the hill in his
fortunes, he may stay a long while there in spite of professional
accomplishment. In the British climate there is no incompatibility
between scientific insight and furnished lodgings: the incompatibility
is chiefly between scientific ambition and a wife who objects to that
kind of residence.

But in the midst of his hesitation, opportunity came to decide him. A
note from Mr. Bulstrode requested Lydgate to call on him at the Bank. A
hypochondriacal tendency had shown itself in the banker’s constitution
of late; and a lack of sleep, which was really only a slight
exaggeration of an habitual dyspeptic symptom, had been dwelt on by him
as a sign of threatening insanity. He wanted to consult Lydgate without
delay on that particular morning, although he had nothing to tell
beyond what he had told before. He listened eagerly to what Lydgate had
to say in dissipation of his fears, though this too was only
repetition; and this moment in which Bulstrode was receiving a medical
opinion with a sense of comfort, seemed to make the communication of a
personal need to him easier than it had been in Lydgate’s contemplation
beforehand. He had been insisting that it would be well for Mr.
Bulstrode to relax his attention to business.

“One sees how any mental strain, however slight, may affect a delicate
frame,” said Lydgate at that stage of the consultation when the remarks
tend to pass from the personal to the general, “by the deep stamp which
anxiety will make for a time even on the young and vigorous. I am
naturally very strong; yet I have been thoroughly shaken lately by an
accumulation of trouble.”

“I presume that a constitution in the susceptible state in which mine
at present is, would be especially liable to fall a victim to cholera,
if it visited our district. And since its appearance near London, we
may well besiege the Mercy-seat for our protection,” said Mr.
Bulstrode, not intending to evade Lydgate’s allusion, but really
preoccupied with alarms about himself.

“You have at all events taken your share in using good practical
precautions for the town, and that is the best mode of asking for
protection,” said Lydgate, with a strong distaste for the broken
metaphor and bad logic of the banker’s religion, somewhat increased by
the apparent deafness of his sympathy. But his mind had taken up its
long-prepared movement towards getting help, and was not yet arrested.
He added, “The town has done well in the way of cleansing, and finding
appliances; and I think that if the cholera should come, even our
enemies will admit that the arrangements in the Hospital are a public
good.”

“Truly,” said Mr. Bulstrode, with some coldness. “With regard to what
you say, Mr. Lydgate, about the relaxation of my mental labor, I have
for some time been entertaining a purpose to that effect—a purpose of a
very decided character. I contemplate at least a temporary withdrawal
from the management of much business, whether benevolent or commercial.
Also I think of changing my residence for a time: probably I shall
close or let ‘The Shrubs,’ and take some place near the coast—under
advice of course as to salubrity. That would be a measure which you
would recommend?”

“Oh yes,” said Lydgate, falling backward in his chair, with
ill-repressed impatience under the banker’s pale earnest eyes and
intense preoccupation with himself.

“I have for some time felt that I should open this subject with you in
relation to our Hospital,” continued Bulstrode. “Under the
circumstances I have indicated, of course I must cease to have any
personal share in the management, and it is contrary to my views of
responsibility to continue a large application of means to an
institution which I cannot watch over and to some extent regulate. I
shall therefore, in case of my ultimate decision to leave Middlemarch,
consider that I withdraw other support to the New Hospital than that
which will subsist in the fact that I chiefly supplied the expenses of
building it, and have contributed further large sums to its successful
working.”

Lydgate’s thought, when Bulstrode paused according to his wont, was,
“He has perhaps been losing a good deal of money.” This was the most
plausible explanation of a speech which had caused rather a startling
change in his expectations. He said in reply—

“The loss to the Hospital can hardly be made up, I fear.”

“Hardly,” returned Bulstrode, in the same deliberate, silvery tone;
“except by some changes of plan. The only person who may be certainly
counted on as willing to increase her contributions is Mrs. Casaubon. I
have had an interview with her on the subject, and I have pointed out
to her, as I am about to do to you, that it will be desirable to win a
more general support to the New Hospital by a change of system.”
Another pause, but Lydgate did not speak.

“The change I mean is an amalgamation with the Infirmary, so that the
New Hospital shall be regarded as a special addition to the elder
institution, having the same directing board. It will be necessary,
also, that the medical management of the two shall be combined. In this
way any difficulty as to the adequate maintenance of our new
establishment will be removed; the benevolent interests of the town
will cease to be divided.”

Mr. Bulstrode had lowered his eyes from Lydgate’s face to the buttons
of his coat as he again paused.

“No doubt that is a good device as to ways and means,” said Lydgate,
with an edge of irony in his tone. “But I can’t be expected to rejoice
in it at once, since one of the first results will be that the other
medical men will upset or interrupt my methods, if it were only because
they are mine.”

“I myself, as you know, Mr. Lydgate, highly valued the opportunity of
new and independent procedure which you have diligently employed: the
original plan, I confess, was one which I had much at heart, under
submission to the Divine Will. But since providential indications
demand a renunciation from me, I renounce.”

Bulstrode showed a rather exasperating ability in this conversation.
The broken metaphor and bad logic of motive which had stirred his
hearer’s contempt were quite consistent with a mode of putting the
facts which made it difficult for Lydgate to vent his own indignation
and disappointment. After some rapid reflection, he only asked—

“What did Mrs. Casaubon say?”

“That was the further statement which I wished to make to you,” said
Bulstrode, who had thoroughly prepared his ministerial explanation.
“She is, you are aware, a woman of most munificent disposition, and
happily in possession—not I presume of great wealth, but of funds which
she can well spare. She has informed me that though she has destined
the chief part of those funds to another purpose, she is willing to
consider whether she cannot fully take my place in relation to the
Hospital. But she wishes for ample time to mature her thoughts on the
subject, and I have told her that there is no need for haste—that, in
fact, my own plans are not yet absolute.”

Lydgate was ready to say, “If Mrs. Casaubon would take your place,
there would be gain, instead of loss.” But there was still a weight on
his mind which arrested this cheerful candor. He replied, “I suppose,
then, that I may enter into the subject with Mrs. Casaubon.”

“Precisely; that is what she expressly desires. Her decision, she says,
will much depend on what you can tell her. But not at present: she is,
I believe, just setting out on a journey. I have her letter here,” said
Mr. Bulstrode, drawing it out, and reading from it. “‘I am immediately
otherwise engaged,’ she says. ‘I am going into Yorkshire with Sir James
and Lady Chettam; and the conclusions I come to about some land which I
am to see there may affect my power of contributing to the Hospital.’
Thus, Mr. Lydgate, there is no haste necessary in this matter; but I
wished to apprise you beforehand of what may possibly occur.”

Mr. Bulstrode returned the letter to his side-pocket, and changed his
attitude as if his business were closed. Lydgate, whose renewed hope
about the Hospital only made him more conscious of the facts which
poisoned his hope, felt that his effort after help, if made at all,
must be made now and vigorously.

“I am much obliged to you for giving me full notice,” he said, with a
firm intention in his tone, yet with an interruptedness in his delivery
which showed that he spoke unwillingly. “The highest object to me is my
profession, and I had identified the Hospital with the best use I can
at present make of my profession. But the best use is not always the
same with monetary success. Everything which has made the Hospital
unpopular has helped with other causes—I think they are all connected
with my professional zeal—to make me unpopular as a practitioner. I get
chiefly patients who can’t pay me. I should like them best, if I had
nobody to pay on my own side.” Lydgate waited a little, but Bulstrode
only bowed, looking at him fixedly, and he went on with the same
interrupted enunciation—as if he were biting an objectional leek.

“I have slipped into money difficulties which I can see no way out of,
unless some one who trusts me and my future will advance me a sum
without other security. I had very little fortune left when I came
here. I have no prospects of money from my own family. My expenses, in
consequence of my marriage, have been very much greater than I had
expected. The result at this moment is that it would take a thousand
pounds to clear me. I mean, to free me from the risk of having all my
goods sold in security of my largest debt—as well as to pay my other
debts—and leave anything to keep us a little beforehand with our small
income. I find that it is out of the question that my wife’s father
should make such an advance. That is why I mention my position to—to
the only other man who may be held to have some personal connection
with my prosperity or ruin.”

Lydgate hated to hear himself. But he had spoken now, and had spoken
with unmistakable directness. Mr. Bulstrode replied without haste, but
also without hesitation.

“I am grieved, though, I confess, not surprised by this information,
Mr. Lydgate. For my own part, I regretted your alliance with my
brother-in-law’s family, which has always been of prodigal habits, and
which has already been much indebted to me for sustainment in its
present position. My advice to you, Mr. Lydgate, would be, that instead
of involving yourself in further obligations, and continuing a doubtful
struggle, you should simply become a bankrupt.”

“That would not improve my prospect,” said Lydgate, rising and speaking
bitterly, “even if it were a more agreeable thing in itself.”

“It is always a trial,” said Mr. Bulstrode; “but trial, my dear sir, is
our portion here, and is a needed corrective. I recommend you to weigh
the advice I have given.”

“Thank you,” said Lydgate, not quite knowing what he said. “I have
occupied you too long. Good-day.”