I am out of my difficulties now: I shall be freed from debts, and able, I hope, to start afresh on a better plan."
"I am very thankful to hear it," said the Vicar, falling back in his chair, and speaking with that low-toned quickness which often follows the removal of a load.
"I like that better than all the news in the
'Times.'
I confess I came to you with a heavy heart."
"Thank you for coming," said Lydgate, cordially.
"I can enjoy the kindness all the more because I am happier.
I have certainly been a good deal crushed.
I'm afraid I shall find the bruises still painful by-and by," he added, smiling rather sadly; "but just now I can only feel that the torture-screw is off."
Mr. Farebrother was silent for a moment, and then said earnestly,
"My dear fellow, let me ask you one question.
Forgive me if I take a liberty."
"I don't believe you will ask anything that ought to offend me."
"Then—this is necessary to set my heart quite at rest—you have not—have you?—in order to pay your debts, incurred another debt which may harass you worse hereafter?"
"No," said Lydgate, coloring slightly.
"There is no reason why I should not tell you—since the fact is so—that the person to whom I am indebted is Bulstrode.
He has made me a very handsome advance—a thousand pounds—and he can afford to wait for repayment."
"Well, that is generous," said Mr. Farebrother, compelling himself to approve of the man whom he disliked.
His delicate feeling shrank from dwelling even in his thought on the fact that he had always urged Lydgate to avoid any personal entanglement with Bulstrode. He added immediately,
"And Bulstrode must naturally feel an interest in your welfare, after you have worked with him in a way which has probably reduced your income instead of adding to it.
I am glad to think that he has acted accordingly."
Lydgate felt uncomfortable under these kindly suppositions.
They made more distinct within him the uneasy consciousness which had shown its first dim stirrings only a few hours before, that Bulstrode's motives for his sudden beneficence following close upon the chillest indifference might be merely selfish.
He let the kindly suppositions pass.
He could not tell the history of the loan, but it was more vividly present with him than ever, as well as the fact which the Vicar delicately ignored—that this relation of personal indebtedness to Bulstrode was what he had once been most resolved to avoid.
He began, instead of answering, to speak of his projected economies, and of his having come to look at his life from a different point of view.
"I shall set up a surgery," he said.
"I really think I made a mistaken effort in that respect.
And if Rosamond will not mind, I shall take an apprentice.
I don't like these things, but if one carries them out faithfully they are not really lowering.
I have had a severe galling to begin with: that will make the small rubs seem easy."
Poor Lydgate! the "if Rosamond will not mind," which had fallen from him involuntarily as part of his thought, was a significant mark of the yoke he bore.
But Mr. Farebrother, whose hopes entered strongly into the same current with Lydgate's, and who knew nothing about him that could now raise a melancholy presentiment, left him with affectionate congratulation.
CHAPTER LXXI.
Clown. . . .
'Twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed,
you have a delight to sit, have you not?
Froth.
I have so: because it is an open room, and good for winter.
Clo.
Why, very well then: I hope here be truths.
—Measure for Measure.
Five days after the death of Raffles, Mr. Bambridge was standing at his leisure under the large archway leading into the yard of the Green Dragon.
He was not fond of solitary contemplation, but he had only just come out of the house, and any human figure standing at ease under the archway in the early afternoon was as certain to attract companionship as a pigeon which has found something worth pecking at.
In this case there was no material object to feed upon, but the eye of reason saw a probability of mental sustenance in the shape of gossip.
Mr. Hopkins, the meek-mannered draper opposite, was the first to act on this inward vision, being the more ambitious of a little masculine talk because his customers were chiefly women.
Mr. Bambridge was rather curt to the draper, feeling that Hopkins was of course glad to talk to him, but that he was not going to waste much of his talk on Hopkins.
Soon, however, there was a small cluster of more important listeners, who were either deposited from the passers-by, or had sauntered to the spot expressly to see if there were anything going on at the Green Dragon; and Mr. Bambridge was finding it worth his while to say many impressive things about the fine studs he had been seeing and the purchases he had made on a journey in the north from which he had just returned.
Gentlemen present were assured that when they could show him anything to cut out a blood mare, a bay, rising four, which was to be seen at Doncaster if they chose to go and look at it, Mr. Bambridge would gratify them by being shot "from here to Hereford."
Also, a pair of blacks which he was going to put into the break recalled vividly to his mind a pair which he had sold to Faulkner in '19, for a hundred guineas, and which Faulkner had sold for a hundred and sixty two months later—any gent who could disprove this statement being offered the privilege of calling Mr. Bambridge by a very ugly name until the exercise made his throat dry.