But then came the question whether he should have acted in precisely the same way if he had not taken the money? Certainly, if Raffles had continued alive and susceptible of further treatment when he arrived, and he had then imagined any disobedience to his orders on the part of Bulstrode, he would have made a strict inquiry, and if his conjecture had been verified he would have thrown up the case, in spite of his recent heavy obligation. But if he had not received any money--if Bulstrode had never revoked his cold recommendation of bankruptcy--would he, Lydgate, have abstained from all inquiry even on finding the man dead?--would the shrinking from an insult to Bulstrode--would the dubiousness of all medical treatment and the argument that his own treatment would pass for the wrong with most members of his profession--have had just the same force or significance with him?
That was the uneasy corner of Lydgate's consciousness while he was reviewing the facts and resisting all reproach. If he had been independent, this matter of a patient's treatment and the distinct rule that he must do or see done that which he believed best for the life committed to him, would have been the point on which he would have been the sturdiest. As it was, he had rested in the consideration that disobedience to his orders, however it might have arisen, could not be considered a crime, that in the dominant opinion obedience to his orders was just as likely to be fatal, and that the affair was simply one of etiquette.
Whereas, again and again, in his time of freedom, he had denounced the perversion of pathological doubt into moral doubt and had said--"the purest experiment in treatment may still be conscientious:
my business is to take care of life, and to do the best I can think of for it. Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma.
Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive."Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects.
"Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who would question himself as I do?" said poor Lydgate, with a renewed outburst of rebellion against the oppression of his lot. "And yet they will all feel warranted in making a wide space between me and them, as if Iwere a leper! 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.
