CHAPTER LXI.
"Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right, but imputed
to man they may both be true."--Rasselas.
The same night, when Mr. Bulstrode returned from a journey to
Brassing on business, his good wife met him in the entrance-hall
and drew him into his private sitting-room.
"Nicholas," she said, fixing her honest eyes upon him anxiously,
"there has been such a disagreeable man here asking for you--it has
made me quite uncomfortable."
"What kind of man, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, dreadfully certain
of the answer.
"A red-faced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in his manner.
He declared he was an old friend of yours, and said you would be
sorry not to see him. He wanted to wait for you here, but I told
him he could see you at the Bank to-morrow morning. Most impudent
he was!--stared at me, and said his friend Nick had luck in wives.
I don't believe he would have gone away, if Blucher had not
happened to break his chain and come running round on the gravel--
for I was in the garden; so I said, `You'd better go away--the dog
is very fierce, and I can't hold him.' Do you really know anything
of such a man?"
"I believe I know who he is, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode,
in his usual subdued voice, "an unfortunate dissolute wretch,
whom I helped too much in days gone by. However, I presume you will
not be troubled by him again. He will probably come to the Bank--
to beg, doubtless."
No more was said on the subject until the next day, when Mr. Bulstrode
had returned from the town and was dressing for dinner. His wife,
not sure that he was come home, looked into his dressing-room
and saw him with his coat and cravat off, leaning one arm
on a chest of drawers and staring absently at the ground.
He started nervously and looked up as she entered.
"You look very ill, Nicholas. Is there anything the matter?"
"I have a good deal of pain in my head," said Mr. Bulstrode,
who was so frequently ailing that his wife was always ready
to believe in this cause of depression.
"Sit down and let me sponge it with vinegar."
Physically Mr. Bulstrode did not want the vinegar, but morally
the affectionate attention soothed him. Though always polite,
it was his habit to receive such services with marital coolness,
as his wife's duty. But to-day, while she was bending over him,
he said, "You are very good, Harriet," in a tone which had something
new in it to her ear; she did not know exactly what the novelty was,
but her woman's solicitude shaped itself into a darting thought that he
might be going to have an illness.
"Has anything worried you?" she said. "Did that man come to you
at the Bank?"
"Yes; it was as I had supposed. He is a man who at one time might
have done better. But he has sunk into a drunken debauched creature."
"Is he quite gone away?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, anxiously but for
certain reasons she refrained from adding, "It was very disagreeable
to hear him calling himself a friend of yours." At that moment she
would not have liked to say anything which implied her habitual
consciousness that her husband's earlier connections were not quite
on a level with her own. Not that she knew much about them.
That her husband had at first been employed in a bank, that he
had afterwards entered into what he called city business and gained
a fortune before he was three-and-thirty, that he had married
a widow who was much older than himself--a Dissenter, and in other
ways probably of that disadvantageous quality usually perceptible
in a first wife if inquired into with the dispassionate judgment
of a second--was almost as much as she had cared to learn beyond
the glimpses which Mr. Bulstrode's narrative occasionally gave of
his early bent towards religion, his inclination to be a preacher,
and his association with missionary and philanthropic efforts.
She believed in him as an excellent man whose piety carried
a peculiar eminence in belonging to a layman, whose influence
had turned her own mind toward seriousness, and whose share of
perishable good had been the means of raising her own position.
But she also liked to think that it was well in every sense
for Mr. Bulstrode to have won the hand of Harriet Vincy;
whose family was undeniable in a Middlemarch light--a better light
surely than any thrown in London thoroughfares or dissenting
chapel-yards. The unreformed provincial mind distrusted London;
and while true religion was everywhere saving, honest Mrs. Bulstrode
was convinced that to be saved in the Church was more respectable.
She so much wished to ignore towards others that her husband
had ever been a London Dissenter, that she liked to keep it out
of sight even in talking to him. He was quite aware of this;
indeed in some respects he was rather afraid of this ingenuous wife,
whose imitative piety and native worldliness were equally sincere,
who had nothing to be ashamed of, and whom he had married out of
a thorough inclination still subsisting. But his fears were such
as belong to a man who cares to maintain his recognized supremacy:
the loss of high consideration from his wife, as from every one
else who did not clearly hate him out of enmity to the truth,
would be as the beginning of death to him. When she said--
"Is he quite gone away?"
"Oh, I trust so," he answered, with an effort to throw as much
sober unconcern into his tone as possible!
But in truth Mr. Bulstrode was very far from a state of quiet trust.
In the interview at the Bank, Raffles had made it evident that his
eagerness to torment was almost as strong in him as any other greed.
He had frankly said that he had turned out of the way to come
to Middlemarch, just to look about him and see whether the neighborhood
would suit him to live in. He had certainly had a few debts to pay
more than he expected, but the two hundred pounds were not gone yet:
a cool five-and-twenty would suffice him to go away with for the present.
What he had wanted chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family,
and know all about the prosperity of a man to whom he was so
much attached. By-and-by he might come back for a longer stay.
This time Raffles declined to be "seen off the premises," as he
expressed it--declined to quit Middlemarch under Bulstrode's eyes.
He meant to go by coach the next day--if he chose.
Bulstrode felt himself helpless. Neither threats nor coaxing
could avail: he could not count on any persistent fear nor on
any promise. On the contrary, he felt a cold certainty at his
heart that Raffles--unless providence sent death to hinder him--
would come back to Middlemarch before long. And that certainty
was a terror.
It was not that he was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary:
he was in danger only of seeing disclosed to the judgment of his
neighbors and the mournful perception of his wife certain facts of his
past life which would render him an object of scorn and an opprobrium
of the religion with which he had diligently associated himself.
The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable
glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually
recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life
is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay;
but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past.
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is
not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present:
it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still
quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and
the tinglings of a merited shame.
Into this second life Bulstrode's past had now risen, only the
pleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality. Night and day,
without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect
and fear into a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier
life coming between him and everything else, as obstinately as when we
look through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turn
our backs on are still before us, instead of the grass and the trees
The successive events inward and outward were there in one view:
though each might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still kept their
hold in the consciousness.
Once more he saw himself the young banker's clerk, with an
agreeable person, as clever in figures as he was fluent in speech
and fond of theological definition: an eminent though young member
of a Calvinistic dissenting church at Highbury, having had striking
experience in conviction of sin and sense of pardon. Again he
heard himself called for as Brother Bulstrode in prayer meetings,
speaking on religious platforms, preaching in private houses.
Again he felt himself thinking of the ministry as possibly his vocation,
and inclined towards missionary labor. That was the happiest time
of his life: that was the spot he would have chosen now to awake
in and find the rest a dream. The people among whom Brother
Bulstrode was distinguished were very few, but they were very near
to him, and stirred his satisfaction the more; his power stretched
through a narrow space, but he felt its effect the more intensely.
He believed without effort in the peculiar work of grace within him,
and in the signs that God intended him for special instrumentality.
Then came the moment of transition; it was with the sense of promotion
he had when he, an orphan educated at a commercial charity-school,
was invited to a fine villa belonging to Mr. Dunkirk, the richest man
in the congregation. Soon he became an intimate there, honored for
his piety by the wife, marked out for his ability by the husband,
whose wealth was due to a flourishing city and west-end trade.
That was the setting-in of a new current for his ambition,
directing his prospects of "instrumentality" towards the uniting
of distinguished religious gifts with successful business.
By-and-by came a decided external leading: a confidential subordinate
partner died, and nobody seemed to the principal so well fitted
to fill the severely felt vacancy as his young friend Bulstrode,
if he would become confidential accountant. The offer was accepted.
The business was a pawnbroker's, of the most magnificent sort both
in extent and profits; and on a short acquaintance with it Bulstrode
became aware that one source of magnificent profit was the easy
reception of any goods offered, without strict inquiry as to where
they came from. But there was a branch house at the west end,
and no pettiness or dinginess to give suggestions of shame.
He remembered his first moments of shrinking. They were private,
and were filled with arguments; some of these taking the form
of prayer. The business was established and had old roots;
is it not one thing to set up a new gin-palace and another to accept
an investment in an old one? The profits made out of lost souls--
where can the line be drawn at which they begin in human transactions?
Was it not even God's way of saving His chosen? "Thou knowest,"--
the young Bulstrode had said then, as the older Bulstrode was saying now--
"Thou knowest how loose my soul sits from these things--how I view
them all as implements for tilling Thy garden rescued here and there
from the wilderness."
Metaphors and precedents were not wanting; peculiar spiritual
experiences were not wanting which at last made the retention
of his position seem a service demanded of him: the vista of
a fortune had already opened itself, and Bulstrode's shrinking
remained private. Mr. Dunkirk had never expected that there
would be any shrinking at all: he had never conceived that trade
had anything to do with the scheme of salvation. And it was true
that Bulstrode found himself carrying on two distinct lives;
his religious activity could not be incompatible with his business
as soon as he had argued himself into not feeling it incompatible.
Mentally surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode had the
same pleas--indeed, the years had been perpetually spinning them
into intricate thickness, like masses of spider-web, padding
the moral sensibility; nay, as age made egoism more eager but
less enjoying, his soul had become more saturated with the belief
that he did everything for God's sake, being indifferent to it
for his own. And yet--if he could be back in that far-off spot
with his youthful poverty--why, then he would choose to be a missionary.
But the train of causes in which he had locked himself went on.
There was trouble in the fine villa at Highbury. Years before,
the only daughter had run away, defied her parents, and gone on the stage;
and now the only boy died, and after a short time Mr. Dunkirk died also.
The wife, a simple pious woman, left with all the wealth in and out
of the magnificent trade, of which she never knew the precise nature,
had come to believe in Bulstrode, and innocently adore him as women
often adore their priest or "man-made" minister. It was natural
that after a time marriage should have been thought of between them.
But Mrs. Dunkirk had qualms and yearnings about her daughter,
who had long been regarded as lost both to God and her parents.
It was known that the daughter had married, but she was utterly
gone out of sight. The mother, having lost her boy, imagined
a grandson, and wished in a double sense to reclaim her daughter.
If she were found, there would be a channel for property--
perhaps a wide one--in the provision for several grandchildren.
Efforts to find her must be made before Mrs. Dunkirk would marry again.
Bulstrode concurred; but after advertisement as well as other modes
of inquiry had been tried, the mother believed that her daughter
was not to be found, and consented to marry without reservation
of property.
The daughter had been found; but only one man besides Bulstrode knew it,
and he was paid for keeping silence and carrying himself away.
That was the bare fact which Bulstrode was now forced to see in
the rigid outline with which acts present themselves onlookers.
But for himself at that distant time, and even now in burning memory,
the fact was broken into little sequences, each justified as it came
by reasonings which seemed to prove it righteous. Bulstrode's course up
to that time had, he thought, been sanctioned by remarkable providences,
appearing to point the way for him to be the agent in making the
best use of a large property and withdrawing it from perversion.
Death and other striking dispositions, such as feminine trustfulness,
had come; and Bulstrode would have adopted Cromwell's words--
"Do you call these bare events? The Lord pity you!" The events
were comparatively small, but the essential condition was there--
namely, that they were in favor of his own ends. It was easy
for him to settle what was due from him to others by inquiring
what were God's intentions with regard to himself. Could it be
for God's service that this fortune should in any considerable
proportion go to a young woman and her husband who were given up
to the lightest pursuits, and might scatter it abroad in triviality--
people who seemed to lie outside the path of remarkable providences?
Bulstrode had never said to himself beforehand, "The daughter
shall not be found"--nevertheless when the moment came he kept
her existence hidden; and when other moments followed, he soothed
the mother with consolation in the probability that the unhappy
young woman might be no more.
There were hours in which Bulstrode felt that his action
was unrighteous; but how could he go back? He had mental exercises,
called himself nought laid hold on redemption, and went on in his
course of instrumentality. And after five years Death again came
to widen his path, by taking away his wife. He did gradually
withdraw his capital, but he did not make the sacrifices requisite
to put an end to the business, which was carried on for thirteen
years afterwards before it finally collapsed. Meanwhile Nicholas
Bulstrode had used his hundred thousand discreetly, and was
become provincially, solidly important--a banker, a Churchman,
a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in trading concerns,
in which his ability was directed to economy in the raw material,
as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy's silk. And now,
when this respectability had lasted undisturbed for nearly thirty years--
when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the consciousness--
that past had risen and immersed his thought as if with the terrible
irruption of a new sense overburthening the feeble being.
Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had learned
something momentous, something which entered actively into
the struggle of his longings and terrors. There, he thought,
lay an opening towards spiritual, perhaps towards material rescue.
The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There may
be coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions
for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them.
He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his
theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification
of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs.
If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally
in us all, to whatever confession we belong, and whether we
believe in the future perfection of our race or in the nearest
date fixed for the end of the world; whether we regard the earth
as a putrefying nidus for a saved remnant, including ourselves,
or have a passionate belief in the solidarity of mankind.
The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through
life the ground he alleged to himself for his choice of action:
it had been the motive which he had poured out in his prayers.
Who would use money and position better than he meant to use them?
Who could surpass him in self-abhorrence and exaltation of God's cause?
And to Mr. Bulstrode God's cause was something distinct from his own
rectitude of conduct: it enforced a discrimination of God's enemies,
who were to be used merely as instruments, and whom it would be
as well if possible to keep out of money and consequent influence.
Also, profitable investments in trades where the power of the prince
of this world showed its most active devices, became sanctified by a
right application of the profits in the hands of God's servant.
This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical
belief than the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar
to Englishmen. There is no general doctrine which is not capable
of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit
of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.
But a man who believes in something else than his own greed,
has necessarily a conscience or standard to which he more or less
adapts himself. Bulstrode's standard had been his serviceableness
to God's cause: "I am sinful and nought--a vessel to be consecrated
by use--but use me!"--had been the mould into which he had constrained
his immense need of being something important and predominating.
And now had come a moment in which that mould seemed in danger
of being broken and utterly cast away.
What if the acts he had reconciled himself to because they made
him a stronger instrument of the divine glory, were to become
the pretext of the scoffer, and a darkening of that glory?
If this were to be the ruling of Providence, he was cast out from
the temple as one who had brought unclean offerings.
He had long poured out utterances of repentance. But today a
repentance had come which was of a bitterer flavor, and a threatening
Providence urged him to a kind of propitiation which was not simply
a doctrinal transaction. The divine tribunal had changed its
aspect for him; self-prostration was no longer enough, and he must
bring restitution in his hand. It was really before his God that
Bulstrode was about to attempt such restitution as seemed possible:
a great dread had seized his susceptible frame, and the scorching
approach of shame wrought in him a new spiritual need. Night and day,
while the resurgent threatening past was making a conscience within him,
he was thinking by what means he could recover peace and trust--
by what sacrifice he could stay the rod. His belief in these
moments of dread was, that if he spontaneously did something right,
God would save him from the consequences of wrong-doing. For religion
can only change when the emotions which fill it are changed; and the
religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.
He had seen Raffles actually going away on the Brassing coach,
and this was a temporary relief; it removed the pressure of an
immediate dread, but did not put an end to the spiritual conflict and
the need to win protection. At last he came to a difficult resolve,
and wrote a letter to Will Ladislaw, begging him to be at the
Shrubs that evening for a private interview at nine o'clock. Will
had felt no particular surprise at the request, and connected it
with some new notions about the "Pioneer;" but when he was shown
into Mr. Bulstrode's private room, he was struck with the painfully
worn look on the banker's face, and was going to say, "Are you ill?"
when, checking himself in that abruptness, he only inquired after
Mrs. Bulstrode, and her satisfaction with the picture bought for her.
"Thank you, she is quite satisfied; she has gone out with her daughters
this evening. I begged you to come, Mr. Ladislaw, because I have
a communication of a very private--indeed, I will say, of a sacredly
confidential nature, which I desire to make to you. Nothing, I dare say,
has been farther from your thoughts than that there had been
important ties in the past which could connect your history with mine."
Will felt something like an electric shock. He was already in a state
of keen sensitiveness and hardly allayed agitation on the subject
of ties in the past, and his presentiments were not agreeable.
It seemed like the fluctuations of a dream--as if the action begun
by that loud bloated stranger were being carried on by this pale-eyed
sickly looking piece of respectability, whose subdued tone and glib
formality of speech were at this moment almost as repulsive to him
as their remembered contrast. He answered, with a marked change
of color--
"No, indeed, nothing."
"You see before you, Mr. Ladislaw, a man who is deeply stricken.
But for the urgency of conscience and the knowledge that I am
before the bar of One who seeth not as man seeth, I should be under
no compulsion to make the disclosure which has been my object
in asking you to come here to-night. So far as human laws go,
you have no claim on me whatever."
Will was even more uncomfortable than wondering. Mr. Bulstrode
had paused, leaning his head on his hand, and looking at the floor.
But he now fixed his examining glance on Will and said--
"I am told that your mother's name was Sarah Dunkirk, and that she
ran away from her friends to go on the stage. Also, that your
father was at one time much emaciated by illness. May I ask
if you can confirm these statements?"
"Yes, they are all true," said Will, struck with the order in which
an inquiry had come, that might have been expected to be preliminary
to the banker's previous hints. But Mr. Bulstrode had to-night followed
the order of his emotions; he entertained no doubt that the opportunity
for restitution had come, and he had an overpowering impulse towards
the penitential expression by which he was deprecating chastisement.
"Do you know any particulars of your mother's family?" he continued.
"No; she never liked to speak of them. She was a very generous,
honorable woman," said Will, almost angrily.
"I do not wish to allege anything against her. Did she never mention
her mother to you at all?"
"I have heard her say that she thought her mother did not know the
reason of her running away. She said `poor mother' in a pitying tone."
"That mother became my wife," said Bulstrode, and then paused a
moment before he added, "you have a claim on me, Mr. Ladislaw: as I
said before, not a legal claim, but one which my conscience recognizes.
I was enriched by that marriage--a result which would probably
not have taken place--certainly not to the same extent--if your
grandmother could have discovered her daughter. That daughter,
I gather, is no longer living!"
"No," said Will, feeling suspicion and repugnance rising so strongly
within him, that without quite knowing what he did, he took his hat
from the floor and stood up. The impulse within him was to reject
the disclosed connection.
"Pray be seated, Mr. Ladislaw," said Bulstrode, anxiously.
"Doubtless you are startled by the suddenness of this discovery.
But I entreat your patience with one who is already bowed down
by inward trial."
Will reseated himself, feeling some pity which was half contempt
for this voluntary self-abasement of an elderly man.
"It is my wish, Mr. Ladislaw, to make amends for the deprivation
which befell your mother. I know that you are without fortune,
and I wish to supply you adequately from a store which would have
probably already been yours had your grandmother been certain
of your mother's existence and been able to find her."
Mr. Bulstrode paused. He felt that he was performing a striking piece
of scrupulosity in the judgment of his auditor, and a penitential
act in the eyes of God. He had no clew to the state of Will
Ladislaw's mind, smarting as it was from the clear hints of Raffles,
and with its natural quickness in construction stimulated by the
expectation of discoveries which he would have been glad to conjure
back into darkness. Will made no answer for several moments,
till Mr. Bulstrode, who at the end of his speech had cast his
eyes on the floor, now raised them with an examining glance,
which Will met fully, saying--
"I suppose you did know of my mother's existence, and knew where she
might have been found."
Bulstrode shrank--there was a visible quivering in his face and hands.
He was totally unprepared to have his advances met in this way,
or to find himself urged into more revelation than he had beforehand
set down as needful. But at that moment he dared not tell a lie,
and he felt suddenly uncertain of his ground which he had trodden
with some confidence before.
"I will not deny that you conjecture rightly," he answered,
with a faltering in his tone. "And I wish to make atonement to you
as the one still remaining who has suffered a loss through me.
You enter, I trust, into my purpose, Mr. Ladislaw, which has a reference
to higher than merely human claims, and as I have already said,
is entirely independent of any legal compulsion. I am ready to
narrow my own resources and the prospects of my family by binding
myself to allow you five hundred pounds yearly during my life,
and to leave you a proportional capital at my death--nay, to do
still more, if more should be definitely necessary to any laudable
project on your part." Mr. Bulstrode had gone on to particulars
in the expectation that these would work strongly on Ladislaw,
and merge other feelings in grateful acceptance.
But Will was looking as stubborn as possible, with his lip pouting
and his fingers in his side-pockets. He was not in the least touched,
and said firmly,--
"Before I make any reply to your proposition, Mr. Bulstrode, I must
beg you to answer a question or two. Were you connected with the
business by which that fortune you speak of was originally made?"
Mr. Bulstrode's thought was, "Raffles has told him." How could he
refuse to answer when he had volunteered what drew forth the question?
He answered, "Yes."
"And was that business--or was it not--a thoroughly dishonorable one--
nay, one that, if its nature had been made public, might have
ranked those concerned in it with thieves and convicts?"
Will's tone had a cutting bitterness: he was moved to put his
question as nakedly as he could.
Bulstrode reddened with irrepressible anger. He had been prepared
for a scene of self-abasement, but his intense pride and his habit
of supremacy overpowered penitence, and even dread, when this young man,
whom he had meant to benefit, turned on him with the air of a judge.
"The business was established before I became connected with it,
sir; nor is it for you to institute an inquiry of that kind,"
he answered, not raising his voice, but speaking with quick defiantness.
"Yes, it is," said Will, starting up again with his hat in his hand.
"It is eminently mine to ask such questions, when I have to decide
whether I will have transactions with you and accept your money.
My unblemished honor is important to me. It is important to me
to have no stain on my birth and connections. And now I find there
is a stain which I can't help. My mother felt it, and tried
to keep as clear of it as she could, and so will I. You shall keep
your ill-gotten money. If I had any fortune of my own, I would
willingly pay it to any one who could disprove what you have told me.
What I have to thank you for is that you kept the money till now,
when I can refuse it. It ought to lie with a man's self that he is
a gentleman. Good-night, sir."
Bulstrode was going to speak, but Will, with determined quickness,
was out of the room in an instant, and in another the hall-door had
closed behind him. He was too strongly possessed with passionate
rebellion against this inherited blot which had been thrust on his
knowledge to reflect at present whether he had not been too hard
on Bulstrode--too arrogantly merciless towards a man of sixty,
who was making efforts at retrieval when time had rendered them vain.
No third person listening could have thoroughly understood the
impetuosity of Will's repulse or the bitterness of his words.
No one but himself then knew how everything connected with the
sentiment of his own dignity had an immediate bearing for him on
his relation to Dorothea and to Mr. Casaubon's treatment of him.
And in the rush of impulses by which he flung back that offer
of Bulstrode's there was mingled the sense that it would have been
impossible for him ever to tell Dorothea that he had accepted it.
As for Bulstrode--when Will was gone he suffered a violent reaction,
and wept like a woman. It was the first time he had encountered
an open expression of scorn from any man higher than Raffles;
and with that scorn hurrying like venom through his system,
there was no sensibility left to consolations. Rut the relief
of weeping had to be checked. His wife and daughters soon came
home from hearing the address of an Oriental missionary, and were
full of regret that papa had not heard, in the first instance,
the interesting things which they tried to repeat to him.
Perhaps, through all other hidden thoughts, the one that breathed
most comfort was, that Will Ladislaw at least was not likely
to publish what had taken place that evening.
