CHAPTER 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?
