CHAPTER 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.
