Middlemarch

HAPTER LXXXII.

“My grief lies onward and my joy behind.”
—SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.

Exiles notoriously feed much on hopes, and are unlikely to stay in
banishment unless they are obliged. When Will Ladislaw exiled himself
from Middlemarch he had placed no stronger obstacle to his return than
his own resolve, which was by no means an iron barrier, but simply a
state of mind liable to melt into a minuet with other states of mind,
and to find itself bowing, smiling, and giving place with polite
facility. As the months went on, it had seemed more and more difficult
to him to say why he should not run down to Middlemarch—merely for the
sake of hearing something about Dorothea; and if on such a flying visit
he should chance by some strange coincidence to meet with her, there
was no reason for him to be ashamed of having taken an innocent journey
which he had beforehand supposed that he should not take. Since he was
hopelessly divided from her, he might surely venture into her
neighborhood; and as to the suspicious friends who kept a dragon watch
over her—their opinions seemed less and less important with time and
change of air.

And there had come a reason quite irrespective of Dorothea, which
seemed to make a journey to Middlemarch a sort of philanthropic duty.
Will had given a disinterested attention to an intended settlement on a
new plan in the Far West, and the need for funds in order to carry out
a good design had set him on debating with himself whether it would not
be a laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode, to urge the
application of that money which had been offered to himself as a means
of carrying out a scheme likely to be largely beneficial. The question
seemed a very dubious one to Will, and his repugnance to again entering
into any relation with the banker might have made him dismiss it
quickly, if there had not arisen in his imagination the probability
that his judgment might be more safely determined by a visit to
Middlemarch.

That was the object which Will stated to himself as a reason for coming
down. He had meant to confide in Lydgate, and discuss the money
question with him, and he had meant to amuse himself for the few
evenings of his stay by having a great deal of music and badinage with
fair Rosamond, without neglecting his friends at Lowick Parsonage:—if
the Parsonage was close to the Manor, that was no fault of his. He had
neglected the Farebrothers before his departure, from a proud
resistance to the possible accusation of indirectly seeking interviews
with Dorothea; but hunger tames us, and Will had become very hungry for
the vision of a certain form and the sound of a certain voice. Nothing
had done instead—not the opera, or the converse of zealous politicians,
or the flattering reception (in dim corners) of his new hand in leading
articles.

Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence how almost everything
would be in his familiar little world; fearing, indeed, that there
would be no surprises in his visit. But he had found that humdrum world
in a terribly dynamic condition, in which even badinage and lyrism had
turned explosive; and the first day of this visit had become the most
fatal epoch of his life. The next morning he felt so harassed with the
nightmare of consequences—he dreaded so much the immediate issues
before him—that seeing while he breakfasted the arrival of the
Riverston coach, he went out hurriedly and took his place on it, that
he might be relieved, at least for a day, from the necessity of doing
or saying anything in Middlemarch. Will Ladislaw was in one of those
tangled crises which are commoner in experience than one might imagine,
from the shallow absoluteness of men’s judgments. He had found Lydgate,
for whom he had the sincerest respect, under circumstances which
claimed his thorough and frankly declared sympathy; and the reason why,
in spite of that claim, it would have been better for Will to have
avoided all further intimacy, or even contact, with Lydgate, was
precisely of the kind to make such a course appear impossible. To a
creature of Will’s susceptible temperament—without any neutral region
of indifference in his nature, ready to turn everything that befell him
into the collisions of a passionate drama—the revelation that Rosamond
had made her happiness in any way dependent on him was a difficulty
which his outburst of rage towards her had immeasurably increased for
him. He hated his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded to show the fulness
of his relenting: he must go to her again; the friendship could not be
put to a sudden end; and her unhappiness was a power which he dreaded.
And all the while there was no more foretaste of enjoyment in the life
before him than if his limbs had been lopped off and he was making his
fresh start on crutches. In the night he had debated whether he should
not get on the coach, not for Riverston, but for London, leaving a note
to Lydgate which would give a makeshift reason for his retreat. But
there were strong cords pulling him back from that abrupt departure:
the blight on his happiness in thinking of Dorothea, the crushing of
that chief hope which had remained in spite of the acknowledged
necessity for renunciation, was too fresh a misery for him to resign
himself to it and go straightway into a distance which was also
despair.

Thus he did nothing more decided than taking the Riverston coach. He
came back again by it while it was still daylight, having made up his
mind that he must go to Lydgate’s that evening. The Rubicon, we know,
was a very insignificant stream to look at; its significance lay
entirely in certain invisible conditions. Will felt as if he were
forced to cross his small boundary ditch, and what he saw beyond it was
not empire, but discontented subjection.

But it is given to us sometimes even in our every-day life to witness
the saving influence of a noble nature, the divine efficacy of rescue
that may lie in a self-subduing act of fellowship. If Dorothea, after
her night’s anguish, had not taken that walk to Rosamond—why, she
perhaps would have been a woman who gained a higher character for
discretion, but it would certainly not have been as well for those
three who were on one hearth in Lydgate’s house at half-past seven that
evening.

Rosamond had been prepared for Will’s visit, and she received him with
a languid coldness which Lydgate accounted for by her nervous
exhaustion, of which he could not suppose that it had any relation to
Will. And when she sat in silence bending over a bit of work, he
innocently apologized for her in an indirect way by begging her to lean
backward and rest. Will was miserable in the necessity for playing the
part of a friend who was making his first appearance and greeting to
Rosamond, while his thoughts were busy about her feeling since that
scene of yesterday, which seemed still inexorably to enclose them both,
like the painful vision of a double madness. It happened that nothing
called Lydgate out of the room; but when Rosamond poured out the tea,
and Will came near to fetch it, she placed a tiny bit of folded paper
in his saucer. He saw it and secured it quickly, but as he went back to
his inn he had no eagerness to unfold the paper. What Rosamond had
written to him would probably deepen the painful impressions of the
evening. Still, he opened and read it by his bed-candle. There were
only these few words in her neatly flowing hand:—

“I have told Mrs. Casaubon. She is not under any mistake about you. I
told her because she came to see me and was very kind. You will have
nothing to reproach me with now. I shall not have made any difference
to you.”

The effect of these words was not quite all gladness. As Will dwelt on
them with excited imagination, he felt his cheeks and ears burning at
the thought of what had occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond—at the
uncertainty how far Dorothea might still feel her dignity wounded in
having an explanation of his conduct offered to her. There might still
remain in her mind a changed association with him which made an
irremediable difference—a lasting flaw. With active fancy he wrought
himself into a state of doubt little more easy than that of the man who
has escaped from wreck by night and stands on unknown ground in the
darkness. Until that wretched yesterday—except the moment of vexation
long ago in the very same room and in the very same presence—all their
vision, all their thought of each other, had been as in a world apart,
where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies, where no evil lurked, and
no other soul entered. But now—would Dorothea meet him in that world
again?