"No; I prefer that there should be no interval left for wavering.
I am no longer sure enough of myself--I mean of what it would be possible for me to do under the changed circumstances of my life.
It would be dishonorable to let others engage themselves to anything serious in dependence on me. I might be obliged to go away after all;I see little chance of anything else. The whole thing is too problematic;I cannot consent to be the cause of your goodness being wasted.
No--let the new Hospital be joined with the old Infirmary, and everything go on as it might have done if I had never come.
I have kept a valuable register since I have been there; I shall send it to a man who will make use of it," he ended bitterly.
"I can think of nothing for a long while but getting an income.""It hurts me very much to hear you speak so hopelessly," said Dorothea.
"It would be a happiness to your friends, who believe in your future, in your power to do great things, if you would let them save you from that. Think how much money I have; it would be like taking a burthen from me if you took some of it every year till you got free from this fettering want of income. Why should not people do these things? It is so difficult to make shares at all even.
This is one way."
"God bless you, Mrs. Casaubon!" said Lydgate, rising as if with the same impulse that made his words energetic, and resting his arm on the back of the great leather chair he had been sitting in.
"It is good that you should have such feelings. But I am not the man who ought to allow himself to benefit by them. I have not given guarantees enough. I must not at least sink into the degradation of being pensioned for work that I never achieved. It is very clear to me that I must not count on anything else than getting away from Middlemarch as soon as I can manage it. I should not be able for a long while, at the very best, to get an income here, and--and it is easier to make necessary changes in a new place.
I must do as other men do, and think what will please the world and bring in money; look for a little opening in the London crowd, and push myself; set up in a watering-place, or go to some southern town where there are plenty of idle English, and get myself puffed,--that is the sort of shell I must creep into and try to keep my soul alive in.""Now that is not brave," said Dorothea,--"to give up the fight.""No, it is not brave," said Lydgate, "but if a man is afraid of creeping paralysis?" Then, in another tone, "Yet you have made a great difference in my courage by believing in me. Everything seems more bearable since I have talked to you; and if you can clear me in a few other minds, especially in Farebrother's, I shall be deeply grateful. The point I wish you not to mention is the fact of disobedience to my orders. That would soon get distorted.
After all, there is no evidence for me but people's opinion of me beforehand. You can only repeat my own report of myself.""Mr. Farebrother will believe--others will believe," said Dorothea.
"I can say of you what will make it stupidity to suppose that you would be bribed to do a wickedness.""I don't know," said Lydgate, with something like a groan in his voice. "I have not taken a bribe yet. But there is a pale shade of bribery which is sometimes called prosperity.
You will do me another great kindness, then, and come to see my wife?""Yes, I will. I remember how pretty she is," said Dorothea, into whose mind every impression about Rosamond had cut deep.
"I hope she will like me."
As Lydgate rode away, he thought, "This young creature has a heart large enough for the Virgin Mary. She evidently thinks nothing of her own future, and would pledge away half her income at once, as if she wanted nothing for herself but a chair to sit in from which she can look down with those clear eyes at the poor mortals who pray to her. She seems to have what I never saw in any woman before--a fountain of friendship towards men--a man can make a friend of her.
Casaubon must have raised some heroic hallucination in her.
I wonder if she could have any other sort of passion for a man?
Ladislaw?--there was certainly an unusual feeling between them.
And Casaubon must have had a notion of it. Well--her love might help a man more than her money."Dorothea on her side had immediately formed a plan of relieving Lydgate from his obligation to Bulstrode, which she felt sure was a part, though small, of the galling pressure he had to bear.
She sat down at once under the inspiration of their interview, and wrote a brief note, in which she pleaded that she had more claim than Mr. Bulstrode had to the satisfaction of providing the money which had been serviceable to Lydgate--that it would be unkind in Lydgate not to grant her the position of being his helper in this small matter, the favor being entirely to her who had so little that was plainly marked out for her to do with her superfluous money. He might call her a creditor or by any other name if it did but imply that he granted her request. She enclosed a check for a thousand pounds, and determined to take the letter with her the next day when she went to see Rosamond.
