And you will be so poor.
I could give you half my things, only how can I, when I never see you?"
"Bless you, Kitty," said Dorothea, with gentle warmth.
"Take comfort: perhaps James will forgive me some time."
"But it would be much better if you would not be married," said Celia, drying her eyes, and returning to her argument; "then there would be nothing uncomfortable.
And you would not do what nobody thought you could do.
James always said you ought to be a queen; but this is not at all being like a queen.
You know what mistakes you have always been making, Dodo, and this is another.
Nobody thinks Mr. Ladislaw a proper husband for you.
And you said you would never be married again."
"It is quite true that I might be a wiser person, Celia," said Dorothea, "and that I might have done something better, if I had been better.
But this is what I am going to do.
I have promised to marry Mr. Ladislaw; and I am going to marry him."
The tone in which Dorothea said this was a note that Celia had long learned to recognize.
She was silent a few moments, and then said, as if she had dismissed all contest,
"Is he very fond of you, Dodo?"
"I hope so.
I am very fond of him."
"That is nice," said Celia, comfortably.
"Only I rather you had such a sort of husband as James is, with a place very near, that I could drive to."
Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative.
Presently she said,
"I cannot think how it all came about."
Celia thought it would be pleasant to hear the story.
"I dare say not," said-Dorothea, pinching her sister's chin.
"If you knew how it came about, it would not seem wonderful to you."
"Can't you tell me?" said Celia, settling her arms cozily.
"No, dear, you would have to feel with me, else you would never know."
CHAPTER LXXXV.
"Then went the jury out whose names were Mr. Blindman, Mr. No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-light, Mr. Implacable, who every one gave in his private verdict against him among themselves, and afterwards unanimously concluded to bring him in guilty before the judge.
And first among themselves, Mr. Blindman, the foreman, said, I see clearly that this man is a heretic.
Then said Mr. No-good, Away with such a fellow from the earth!
Ay, said Mr. Malice, for I hate the very look of him.
Then said Mr. Love-lust, I could never endure him.
Nor I, said Mr. Live-loose; for he would be always condemning my way.
Hang him, hang him, said Mr. Heady.
A sorry scrub, said Mr. High-mind.
My heart riseth against him, said Mr. Enmity.
He is a rogue, said Mr. Liar.
Hanging is too good for him, said Mr. Cruelty.
Let us despatch him out of the way said Mr. Hate-light.
Then said Mr. Implacable, Might I have all the world given me, I could not be reconciled to him; therefore let us forthwith bring him in guilty of death."—Pilgrim's Progress.
When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the persecuting passions bringing in their verdict of guilty, who pities Faithful?
That is a rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have not attained, to know ourselves guiltless before a condemning crowd—to be sure that what we are denounced for is solely the good in us.
The pitiable lot is that of the man who could not call himself a martyr even though he were to persuade himself that the men who stoned him were but ugly passions incarnate—who knows that he is stoned, not for professing the Right, but for not being the man he professed to be.
This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he made his preparations for departing from Middlemarch, and going to end his stricken life in that sad refuge, the indifference of new faces.
The duteous merciful constancy of his wife had delivered him from one dread, but it could not hinder her presence from being still a tribunal before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy.
His equivocations with himself about the death of Raffles had sustained the conception of an Omniscience whom he prayed to, yet he had a terror upon him which would not let him expose them to judgment by a full confession to his wife: the acts which he had washed and diluted with inward argument and motive, and for which it seemed comparatively easy to win invisible pardon—what name would she call them by?
That she should ever silently call his acts Murder was what he could not bear.
He felt shrouded by her doubt: he got strength to face her from the sense that she could not yet feel warranted in pronouncing that worst condemnation on him.