But the best use is not always the same with monetary success.
Everything which has made the Hospital unpopular has helped with other causes—I think they are all connected with my professional zeal—to make me unpopular as a practitioner.
I get chiefly patients who can't pay me.
I should like them best, if I had nobody to pay on my own side."
Lydgate waited a little, but Bulstrode only bowed, looking at him fixedly, and he went on with the same interrupted enunciation—as if he were biting an objectional leek. "I have slipped into money difficulties which I can see no way out of, unless some one who trusts me and my future will advance me a sum without other security.
I had very little fortune left when I came here.
I have no prospects of money from my own family.
My expenses, in consequence of my marriage, have been very much greater than I had expected.
The result at this moment is that it would take a thousand pounds to clear me.
I mean, to free me from the risk of having all my goods sold in security of my largest debt—as well as to pay my other debts—and leave anything to keep us a little beforehand with our small income.
I find that it is out of the question that my wife's father should make such an advance.
That is why I mention my position to—to the only other man who may be held to have some personal connection with my prosperity or ruin."
Lydgate hated to hear himself.
But he had spoken now, and had spoken with unmistakable directness.
Mr. Bulstrode replied without haste, but also without hesitation.
"I am grieved, though, I confess, not surprised by this information, Mr. Lydgate.
For my own part, I regretted your alliance with my brother-in-law's family, which has always been of prodigal habits, and which has already been much indebted to me for sustainment in its present position.
My advice to you, Mr. Lydgate, would be, that instead of involving yourself in further obligations, and continuing a doubtful struggle, you should simply become a bankrupt."
"That would not improve my prospect," said Lydgate, rising and speaking bitterly, "even if it were a more agreeable thing in itself."
"It is always a trial," said Mr. Bulstrode; "but trial, my dear sir, is our portion here, and is a needed corrective.
I recommend you to weigh the advice I have given."
"Thank you," said Lydgate, not quite knowing what he said.
"I have occupied you too long.
Good-day."
CHAPTER LXVIII.
"What suit of grace hath Virtue to put on
If Vice shall wear as good, and do as well?
If Wrong, if Craft, if Indiscretion
Act as fair parts with ends as laudable?
Which all this mighty volume of events
The world, the universal map of deeds,
Strongly controls, and proves from all descents,
That the directest course still best succeeds.
For should not grave and learn'd Experience
That looks with the eyes of all the world beside,
And with all ages holds intelligence,
Go safer than Deceit without a guide!
—DANIEL: Musophilus.
That change of plan and shifting of interest which Bulstrode stated or betrayed in his conversation with Lydgate, had been determined in him by some severe experience which he had gone through since the epoch of Mr. Larcher's sale, when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw, and when the banker had in vain attempted an act of restitution which might move Divine Providence to arrest painful consequences.
His certainty that Raffles, unless he were dead, would return to Middlemarch before long, had been justified.
On Christmas Eve he had reappeared at The Shrubs.
Bulstrode was at home to receive him, and hinder his communication with the rest of the family, but he could not altogether hinder the circumstances of the visit from compromising himself and alarming his wife.
Raffles proved more unmanageable than he had shown himself to be in his former appearances, his chronic state of mental restlessness, the growing effect of habitual intemperance, quickly shaking off every impression from what was said to him.
He insisted on staying in the house, and Bulstrode, weighing two sets of evils, felt that this was at least not a worse alternative than his going into the town.
He kept him in his own room for the evening and saw him to bed, Raffles all the while amusing himself with the annoyance he was causing this decent and highly prosperous fellow-sinner, an amusement which he facetiously expressed as sympathy with his friend's pleasure in entertaining a man who had been serviceable to him, and who had not had all his earnings.
There was a cunning calculation under this noisy joking—a cool resolve to extract something the handsomer from Bulstrode as payment for release from this new application of torture.
But his cunning had a little overcast its mark.
Bulstrode was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre of Raffles could enable him to imagine.
He had told his wife that he was simply taking care of this wretched creature, the victim of vice, who might otherwise injure himself; he implied, without the direct form of falsehood, that there was a family tie which bound him to this care, and that there were signs of mental alienation in Raffles which urged caution.
He would himself drive the unfortunate being away the next morning.