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.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
"Mercifully grant that we may grow aged together."
—BOOK OF TOBIT: Marriage Prayer.
In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant that the town held a bad opinion of her husband.
No feminine intimate might carry her friendship so far as to make a plain statement to the wife of the unpleasant fact known or believed about her husband; but when a woman with her thoughts much at leisure got them suddenly employed on something grievously disadvantageous to her neighbors, various moral impulses were called into play which tended to stimulate utterance.
Candor was one.
To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.
Then, again, there was the love of truth—a wide phrase, but meaning in this relation, a lively objection to seeing a wife look happier than her husband's character warranted, or manifest too much satisfaction in her lot—the poor thing should have some hint given her that if she knew the truth she would have less complacency in her bonnet, and in light dishes for a supper-party.
Stronger than all, there was the regard for a friend's moral improvement, sometimes called her soul, which was likely to be benefited by remarks tending to gloom, uttered with the accompaniment of pensive staring at the furniture and a manner implying that the speaker would not tell what was on her mind, from regard to the feelings of her hearer.
On the whole, one might say that an ardent charity was at work setting the virtuous mind to make a neighbor unhappy for her good.
There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose matrimonial misfortunes would in different ways be likely to call forth more of this moral activity than Rosamond and her aunt Bulstrode.
Mrs. Bulstrode was not an object of dislike, and had never consciously injured any human being.
Men had always thought her a handsome comfortable woman, and had reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode's hypocrisy that he had chosen a red-blooded Vincy, instead of a ghastly and melancholy person suited to his low esteem for earthly pleasure.
When the scandal about her husband was disclosed they remarked of her—"Ah, poor woman!
She's as honest as the day—she never suspected anything wrong in him, you may depend on it."
Women, who were intimate with her, talked together much of "poor Harriet," imagined what her feelings must be when she came to know everything, and conjectured how much she had already come to know.
There was no spiteful disposition towards her; rather, there was a busy benevolence anxious to ascertain what it would be well for her to feel and do under the circumstances, which of course kept the imagination occupied with her character and history from the times when she was Harriet Vincy till now.
With the review of Mrs. Bulstrode and her position it was inevitable to associate Rosamond, whose prospects were under the same blight with her aunt's.
Rosamond was more severely criticised and less pitied, though she too, as one of the good old Vincy family who had always been known in Middlemarch, was regarded as a victim to marriage with an interloper.
The Vincys had their weaknesses, but then they lay on the surface: there was never anything bad to be "found out" concerning them.
Mrs. Bulstrode was vindicated from any resemblance to her husband.
Harriet's faults were her own.
"She has always been showy," said Mrs. Hackbutt, making tea for a small party, "though she has got into the way of putting her religion forward, to conform to her husband; she has tried to hold her head up above Middlemarch by making it known that she invites clergymen and heaven-knows-who from Riverston and those places."
"We can hardly blame her for that," said Mrs. Sprague; "because few of the best people in the town cared to associate with Bulstrode, and she must have somebody to sit down at her table."
"Mr. Thesiger has always countenanced him," said Mrs. Hackbutt.
"I think he must be sorry now."
"But he was never fond of him in his heart—that every one knows," said Mrs. Tom Toller.
"Mr. Thesiger never goes into extremes.
He keeps to the truth in what is evangelical.
It is only clergymen like Mr. Tyke, who want to use Dissenting hymn-books and that low kind of religion, who ever found Bulstrode to their taste."
"I understand, Mr. Tyke is in great distress about him," said Mrs. Hackbutt.
"And well he may be: they say the Bulstrodes have half kept the Tyke family."