CHAPTER LXXX.
"Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face;
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong;
And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.
--WORDSWORTH: Ode to Duty.
When Dorothea had seen Mr. Farebrother in the morning, she had
promised to go and dine at the parsonage on her return from Freshitt.
There was a frequent interchange of visits between her and the
Farebrother family, which enabled her to say that she was not at
all lonely at the Manor, and to resist for the present the severe
prescription of a lady companion. When she reached home and remembered
her engagement, she was glad of it; and finding that she had still
an hour before she could dress for dinner, she walked straight
to the schoolhouse and entered into a conversation with the master
and mistress about the new bell, giving eager attention to their small
details and repetitions, and getting up a dramatic sense that her life
was very busy. She paused on her way back to talk to old Master
Bunney who was putting in some garden-seeds, and discoursed wisely
with that rural sage about the crops that would make the most return
on a perch of ground, and the result of sixty years' experience as
to soils--namely, that if your soil was pretty mellow it would do,
but if there came wet, wet, wet to make it all of a mummy, why then--
Finding that the social spirit had beguiled her into being rather late,
she dressed hastily and went over to the parsonage rather earlier
than was necessary. That house was never dull, Mr. Farebrother,
like another White of Selborne, having continually something new
to tell of his inarticulate guests and proteges, whom he was
teaching the boys not to torment; and he had just set up a pair
of beautiful goats to be pets of the village in general, and to
walk at large as sacred animals. The evening went by cheerfully
till after tea, Dorothea talking more than usual and dilating
with Mr. Farebrother on the possible histories of creatures that
converse compendiously with their antennae, and for aught we know
may hold reformed parliaments; when suddenly some inarticulate
little sounds were heard which called everybody's attention.
"Henrietta Noble," said Mrs. Farebrother, seeing her small sister
moving about the furniture-legs distressfully, "what is the matter?"
"I have lost my tortoise-shell lozenge-box. I fear the kitten has
rolled it away," said the tiny old lady, involuntarily coutinuing
her beaver-like notes.
"Is it a great treasure, aunt?" said Mr. Farebrother, putting up
his glasses and looking at the carpet.
"Mr. Ladislaw gave it me," said Miss Noble. "A German box--
very pretty, but if it falls it always spins away as far as it can."
"Oh, if it is Ladislaw's present," said Mr. Farebrother,
in a deep tone of comprehension, getting up and hunting.
The box was found at last under a chiffonier, and Miss Noble
grasped it with delight, saying, "it was under a fender the last time."
"That is an affair of the heart with my aunt," said Mr. Farebrother,
smiling at Dorothea, as he reseated himself.
"If Henrietta Noble forms an attachment to any one, Mrs. Casaubon,"
said his mother, emphatically,--"she is like a dog--she would take
their shoes for a pillow and sleep the better."
"Mr. Ladislaw's shoes, I would," said Henrietta Noble.
Dorothea made an attempt at smiling in return. She was surprised
and annoyed to find that her heart was palpitating violently,
and that it was quite useless to try after a recovery of her
former animation. Alarmed at herself--fearing some further betrayal
of a change so marked in its occasion, she rose and said in a low
voice with undisguised anxiety, "I must go; I have overtired myself."
Mr. Farebrother, quick in perception, rose and said, "It is true;
you must have half-exhausted yourself in talking about Lydgate.
That sort of work tells upon one after the excitement is over."
He gave her his arm back to the Manor, but Dorothea did not attempt
to speak, even when he said good-night.
The limit of resistance was reached, and she had sunk back helpless within
the clutch of inescapable anguish. Dismissing Tantripp with a few faint
words, she locked her door, and turning away from it towards the vacant
room she pressed her hands hard on the top of her head, and moaned out--
"Oh, I did love him!"
Then came the hour in which the waves of suffering shook her too
thoroughly to leave any power of thought. She could only cry
in loud whispers, between her sobs, after her lost belief which she
had planted and kept alive from a very little seed since the days
in Rome--after her lost joy of clinging with silent love and faith
to one who, misprized by others, was worthy in her thought--
after her lost woman's pride of reigning in his memory--after her sweet
dim perspective of hope, that along some pathway they should meet
with unchanged recognition and take up the backward years as a yesterday.
In that hour she repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude
have looked on for ages in the spiritual struggles of man--
she besought hardness and coldness and aching weariness to bring
her relief from the mysterious incorporeal might of her anguish:
she lay on the bare floor and let the night grow cold around her;
while her grand woman's frame was shaken by sobs as if she had been
a despairing child.
There were two images--two living forms that tore her heart in two,
as if it had been the heart of a mother who seems to see her child
divided by the sword, and presses one bleeding half to her breast
while her gaze goes forth in agony towards the half which is carried
away by the lying woman that has never known the mother's pang.
Here, with the nearness of an answering smile, here within the
vibrating bond of mutual speech, was the bright creature whom she
had trusted--who had come to her like the spirit of morning visiting
the dim vault where she sat as the bride of a worn-out life;
and now, with a full consciousness which had never awakened before,
she stretched out her arms towards him and cried with bitter
cries that their nearness was a parting vision: she discovered
her passion to herself in the unshrinking utterance of despair.
And there, aloof, yet persistently with her, moving wherever
she moved, was the Will Ladislaw' who was a changed belief
exhausted of hope, a detected illusion--no, a living man towards
whom there could not yet struggle any wail of regretful pity,
from the midst of scorn and indignation and jealous offended pride.
The fire of Dorothea's anger was not easily spent, and it flamed
out in fitful returns of spurning reproach. Why had he come
obtruding his life into hers, hers that might have been whole
enough without him? Why had he brought his cheap regard and his
lip-born words to her who had nothing paltry to give in exchange?
He knew that he was deluding her--wished, in the very moment
of farewell, to make her believe that he gave her the whole
price of her heart, and knew that he had spent it half before.
Why had he not stayed among the crowd of whom she asked nothing--
but only prayed that they might be less contemptible?
But she lost energy at last even for her loud-whispered cries
and moans: she subsided into helpless sobs, and on the cold floor
she sobbed herself to sleep.
In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim
around her, she awoke--not with any amazed wondering where she
was or what had happened, but with the clearest consciousness
that she was looking into the eyes of sorrow. She rose,
and wrapped warm things around her, and seated
herself in a great chair where she had often watched before.
She was vigorous enough to have borne that hard night without feeling
ill in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but she had waked
to a new condition: she felt as if her soul had been liberated from
its terrible conflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief,
but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer
in her thoughts. For now the thoughts came thickly. It was not
in Dorothea's nature, for longer than the duration of a paroxysm,
to sit in the narrow cell of her calamity, in the besotted misery
of a consciousness that only sees another's lot as an accident
of its own.
She began now to live through that yesterday morning deliberately again,
forcing herself to dwell on every detail and its possible meaning.
Was she alone in that scene? Was it her event only? She forced
herself to think of it as bound up with another woman's life--a woman
towards whom she had set out with a longing to carry some clearness
and comfort into her beclouded youth. In her first outleap of jealous
indignation and disgust, when quitting the hateful room, she had
flung away all the mercy with which she had undertaken that visit.
She had enveloped both Will and Rosamond in her burning scorn, and it
seemed to her as if Rosamond were burned out of her sight forever.
But that base prompting which makes a women more cruel to a rival
than to a faithless lover, could have no strength of recurrence
in Dorothea when the dominant spirit of justice within her had once
overcome the tumult and had once shown her the truer measure of things.
All the active thought with which she had before been representing to
herself the trials of Lydgate's lot, and this young marriage union which,
like her own, seemed to have its hidden as well as evident troubles--
all this vivid sympathetic experience returned to her now as a power:
it asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will
not let us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance. She said
to her own irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful,
instead of driving her back from effort.
And what sort of crisis might not this be in three lives whose
contact with hers laid an obligation on her as if they had been
suppliants bearing the sacred branch? The objects of her rescue
were not to be sought out by her fancy: they were chosen for her.
She yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might make a
throne within her, and rule her errant will. "What should I do--
how should I act now, this very day, if I could clutch my own pain,
and compel it to silence, and think of those three?"
It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was
light piercing into the room. She opened her curtains, and looked
out towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond
outside the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle
on his back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could
see figures moving--perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off
in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness
of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance.
She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could
neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator,
nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining.
What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear,
but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching
murmur which would soon gather distinctness. She took off the clothes
which seemed to have some of the weariness of a hard watching in them,
and began to make her toilet. Presently she rang for Tantripp,
who came in her dressing-gown.
"Why, madam, you've never been in bed this blessed night,"
burst out Tantripp, looking first at the bed and then at Dorothea's face,
which in spite of bathing had the pale cheeks and pink eyelids of a
mater dolorosa. "You'll kill yourself, you WILL. Anybody
might think now you had a right to give yourself a little comfort."
"Don't be alarmed, Tantripp," said Dorothea, smiling. "I have slept;
I am not ill. I shall be glad of a cup of coffee as soon as possible.
And I want you to bring me my new dress; and most likely I shall want
my new bonnet to-day."
"They've lain there a month and more ready for you, madam,
and most thankful I shall be to see you with a couple o' pounds'
worth less of crape," said Tantripp, stooping to light the fire.
"There's a reason in mourning, as I've always said; and three folds
at the bottom of your skirt and a plain quilling in your bonnet--
and if ever anybody looked like an angel, it's you in a net quilling--
is what's consistent for a second year. At least, that's MY
thinking," ended Tantripp, looking anxiously at the fire;
"and if anybody was to marry me flattering himself I should wear
those hijeous weepers two years for him, he'd be deceived by his
own vanity, that's all."
"The fire will do, my good Tan," said Dorothea, speaking as she
used to do in the old Lausanne days, only with a very low voice;
"get me the coffee."
She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against
it in fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp went away wondering
at this strange contrariness in her young mistress--that just the
morning when she had more of a widow's face than ever, she should
have asked for her lighter mourning which she had waived before.
Tantripp would never have found the clew to this mystery.
Dorothea wished to acknowledge that she had not the less an
active life before her because she had buried a private joy;
and the tradition that fresh garments belonged to all initiation,
haunting her mind, made her grasp after even that slight outward
help towards calm resolve. For the resolve was not easy.
Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking towards Middlemarch,
having made up her mind that she would make as quietly and unnoticeably
as possible her second attempt to see and save Rosamond.
