CHAPTER LXXIII.
Pity the laden one; this wandering woe
May visit you and me.
When Lydgate had allayed Mrs. Bulstrode's anxiety by telling her
that her husband had been seized with faintness at the meeting,
but that he trusted soon to see him better and would call again
the next day, unless she-sent for him earlier, he went directly home,
got on his horse, and rode three miles out of the town for the sake
of being out of reach.
He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if raging
under the pain of stings: he was ready to curse the day on
which he had come to Middlemarch. Everything that bad happened
to him there seemed a mere preparation for this hateful fatality,
which had come as a blight on his honorable ambition, and must make
even people who had only vulgar standards regard his reputation
as irrevocably damaged. In such moments a man can hardly escape
being unloving. Lydgate thought of himself as the sufferer,
and of others as the agents who had injured his lot. He had meant
everything to turn out differently; and others had thrust themselves
into his life and thwarted his purposes. His marriage seemed an
unmitigated calamity; and he was afraid of going to Rosamond before
he had vented himself in this solitary rage, lest the mere sight
of her should exasperate him and make him behave unwarrantably.
There are episodes in most men's lives in which their highest
qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the objects that fill
their inward vision: Lydgate's tenderheartedness was present just
then only as a dread lest he should offend against it, not as an
emotion that swayed him to tenderness. For he was very miserable.
Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life--
the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it--
can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity
into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.
How was he to live on without vindicating himself among people
who suspected him of baseness? How could he go silently away from
Middlemarch as if he were retreating before a just condemnation?
And yet how was he to set about vindicating himself?
For that scene at the meeting, which he had just witnessed,
although it had told him no particulars, had been enough to make
his own situation thoroughly clear to him. Bulstrode had been
in dread of scandalous disclosures on the part of Raffles.
Lydgate could now construct all the probabilities of the case.
"He was afraid of some betrayal in my hearing: all he wanted was
to bind me to him by a strong obligation: that was why he passed
on a sudden from hardness to liberality. And he may have tampered
with the patient--he may have disobeyed my orders. I fear he did.
But whether he did or not, the world believes that he somehow or other
poisoned the man and that I winked at the crime, if I didn't help
in it. And yet--and yet he may not be guilty of the last offence;
and it is just possible that the change towards me may have been a
genuine relenting--the effect of second thoughts such as he alleged.
What we call the `just possible' is sometimes true and the thing we
find it easier to believe is grossly false. In his last dealings
with this man Bulstrode may have kept his hands pure, in spite of my
suspicion to the contrary."
There was a benumbing cruelty in his position. Even if he renounced
every other consideration than that of justifying himself--
if he met shrugs, cold glances, and avoidance as an accusation,
and made a public statement of all the facts as he knew them,
who would be convinced? It would be playing the part of a fool
to offer his own testimony on behalf of himself, and say, "I did
not take the money as a bribe." The circumstances would always
be stronger than his assertion. And besides, to come forward
and tell everything about himself must include declarations about
Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions of others against him.
He must tell that he had not known of Raffles's existence when he
first mentioned his pressing need of money to Bulstrode, and that
he took the money innocently as a result of that communication,
not knowing that a new motive for the loan might have arisen on
his being called in to this man. And after all, the suspicion
of Bulstrode's motives might be unjust.
But then came the question whether he should have acted in precisely
the same way if he had not taken the money? Certainly, if Raffles had
continued alive and susceptible of further treatment when he arrived,
and he had then imagined any disobedience to his orders on the part
of Bulstrode, he would have made a strict inquiry, and if his conjecture
had been verified he would have thrown up the case, in spite of his
recent heavy obligation. But if he had not received any money--
if Bulstrode had never revoked his cold recommendation of bankruptcy--
would he, Lydgate, have abstained from all inquiry even on finding
the man dead?--would the shrinking from an insult to Bulstrode--
would the dubiousness of all medical treatment and the argument
that his own treatment would pass for the wrong with most members
of his profession--have had just the same force or significance
with him?
That was the uneasy corner of Lydgate's consciousness while he
was reviewing the facts and resisting all reproach. If he
had been independent, this matter of a patient's treatment
and the distinct rule that he must do or see done that which he
believed best for the life committed to him, would have been
the point on which he would have been the sturdiest. As it was,
he had rested in the consideration that disobedience to his orders,
however it might have arisen, could not be considered a crime,
that in the dominant opinion obedience to his orders was just as
likely to be fatal, and that the affair was simply one of etiquette.
Whereas, again and again, in his time of freedom, he had denounced
the perversion of pathological doubt into moral doubt and had said--
"the purest experiment in treatment may still be conscientious:
my business is to take care of life, and to do the best I can
think of for it. Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma.
Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science
is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive."
Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of
money obligation and selfish respects.
"Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who would question
himself as I do?" said poor Lydgate, with a renewed outburst of
rebellion against the oppression of his lot. "And yet they will all
feel warranted in making a wide space between me and them, as if I
were a leper! My practice and my reputation are utterly damned--
I can see that. Even if I could be cleared by valid evidence,
it would make little difference to the blessed world here.
I have been set down as tainted and should be cheapened to them
all the same."
Already there had been abundant signs which had hitherto puzzled him,
that just when he had been paying off his debts and getting cheerfully
on his feet, the townsmen were avoiding him or looking strangely.
at him, and in two instances it came to his knowledge that patients
of his had called in another practitioner. The reasons were too
plain now. The general black-balling had begun.
No wonder that in Lydgate's energetic nature the sense of a
hopeless misconstruction easily turned into a dogged resistance.
The scowl which occasionally showed itself on his square brow was not
a meaningless accident. Already when he was re-entering the town
after that ride taken in the first hours of stinging pain, he was
setting his mind on remaining in Middlemarch in spite of the worst
that could be done against him. He would not retreat before calumny,
as if he submitted to it. He would face it to the utmost, and no act
of his should show that he was afraid. It belonged to the generosity
as well as defiant force of his nature that he resolved not to shrink
from showing to the full his sense of obligation to Bulstrode.
It was true that the association with this man had been fatal to him--
true that if he had had the thousand pounds still in his hands with
all his debts unpaid he would have returned the money to Bulstrode,
and taken beggary rather than the rescue which had been sullied with
the suspicion of a bribe (for, remember, he was one of the proudest
among the sons of men)--nevertheless, he would not turn away from
this crushed fellow-mortal whose aid he had used, and make a pitiful
effort to get acquittal for himself by howling against another.
"I shall do as I think right, and explain to nobody. They will try
to starve me out, but--" he was going on with an obstinate resolve,
but he was getting near home, and the thought of Rosamond urged
itself again into that chief place from which it had been thrust
by the agonized struggles of wounded honor and pride.
How would Rosamond take it all? Here was another weight of chain to drag,
and poor Lydgate was in a bad mood for bearing her dumb mastery.
He had no impulse to tell her the trouble which must soon be common
to them both. He preferred waiting for the incidental disclosure
which events must soon bring about.
