prompt:
Chapter: "What suit of grace hath Virtue to put on
     If Vice shall wear as good, and do as well?
     If Wrong, if Craft, if Indiscretion
     Act as fair parts with ends as laudable?
     Which all this mighty volume of events
     The world, the universal map of deeds,
     Strongly controls, and proves from all descents,
     That the directest course still best succeeds.
     For should not grave and learn'd Experience
     That looks with the eyes of all the world beside,
     And with all ages holds intelligence,
     Go safer than Deceit without a guide!
                                --DANIEL: Musophilus.

That change of plan and shifting of interest which Bulstrode stated or
betrayed in his conversation with Lydgate, had been determined in him
by some severe experience which he had gone through since the epoch of
Mr. Larcher's sale, when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw, and when
the banker had in vain attempted an act of restitution which might move
Divine Providence to arrest painful consequences.

His certainty that Raffles, unless he were dead, would return to
Middlemarch before long, had been justified.  On Christmas Eve he had
reappeared at The Shrubs.  Bulstrode was at home to receive him, and
hinder his communication with the rest of the family, but he could not
altogether hinder the circumstances of the visit from compromising
himself and alarming his wife.  Raffles proved more unmanageable than
he had shown himself to be in his former appearances, his chronic state
of mental restlessness, the growing effect of habitual intemperance,
quickly shaking off every impression from what was said to him.  He
insisted on staying in the house, and Bulstrode, weighing two sets of
evils, felt that this was at least not a worse alternative than his
going into the town.  He kept him in his own room for the evening and
saw him to bed, Raffles all the while amusing himself with the
annoyance he was causing this decent and highly prosperous
fellow-sinner, an amusement which he facetiously expressed as sympathy
with his friend's pleasure in entertaining a man who had been
serviceable to him, and who had not had all his earnings.  There was a
cunning calculation under this noisy joking--a cool resolve to extract
something the handsomer from Bulstrode as payment for release from this
new application of torture.  But his cunning had a little overcast its
mark.

Bulstrode was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre of Raffles
could enable him to imagine.  He had told his wife that he was simply
taking care of this wretched creature, the victim of vice, who might
otherwise injure himself; he implied, without the direct form of
falsehood, that there was a family tie which bound him to this care,
and that there were signs of mental alienation in Raffles which urged
caution.  He would himself drive the unfortunate being away the next
morning.  In these hints he felt that he was supplying Mrs. Bulstrode
with precautionary information for his daughters and servants, and
accounting for his allowing no one but himself to enter the room even
with food and drink.  But he sat in an agony of fear lest Raffles
should be overheard in his loud and plain references to past facts--lest
Mrs. Bulstrode should be even tempted to listen at the door.  How
could he hinder her, how betray his terror by opening the door to
detect her?  She was a woman of honest direct habits, and little likely
to take so low a course in order to arrive at painful knowledge; but
fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.

In this way Raffles had pushed the torture too far, and produced an
effect which had not been in his plan.  By showing himself hopelessly
unmanageable he had made Bulstrode feel that a strong defiance was the
only resource left.  After taking Raffles to bed that night the banker
ordered his closed carriage to be ready at half-past seven the next
morning.  At six o'clock he had already been long dressed, and had
spent some of his wretchedness in prayer, pleading his motives for
averting the worst evil if in anything he had used falsity and spoken
what was not true before God.  For Bulstrode shrank from a direct lie
with an intensity disproportionate to the number of his more indirect
misdeeds.  But many of these misdeeds were like the subtle muscular
movements which are not taken account of in the consciousness, though
they bring about the end that we fix our mind on and desire.  And it is
only what we are vividly conscious of that we can vividly imagine to be
seen by Omniscience.

Bulstrode carried his candle to the bedside of Raffles, who was
apparently in a painful dream.  He stood silent, hoping that the
presence of the light would serve to waken the sleeper gradually and
gently, for he feared some noise as the consequence of a too sudden
awakening.  He had watched for a couple of minutes or more the
shudderings and pantings which seemed likely to end in waking, when
Raffles, with a long half-stifled moan, started up and stared round him
in terror, trembling and gasping.  But he made no further noise, and
Bulstrode, setting down the candle, awaited his recovery.

It was a quarter of an hour later before Bulstrode, with a cold
peremptoriness of manner which he had not before shown, said, "I came
to call you thus early, Mr. Raffles, because I have ordered the
carriage to be ready at half-past seven, and intend myself to conduct
you as far as Ilsely, where you can either take the railway or await a
coach." Raffles was about to speak, but Bulstrode anticipated him
imperiously with the words, "Be silent, sir, and hear what I have to
say.  I shall supply you with money now, and I will furnish you with a
reasonable sum from time to time, on your application to me by letter;
but if you choose to present yourself here again, if you return to
Middlemarch, if you use your tongue in a manner injurious to me, you
will have to live on such fruits as your malice can bring you, without
help from me.  Nobody will pay you well for blasting my name: I know
the worst you can do against me, and I shall brave it if you dare to
thrust yourself upon me again.  Get up, sir, and do as I order you,
without noise, or I will send for a policeman to take you off my
premises, and you may carry your stories into every pothouse in the
town, but you shall have no sixpence from me to pay your expenses
there."

Bulstrode had rarely in his life spoken with such nervous energy: he
had been deliberating on this speech and its probable effects through a
large part of the night; and though he did not trust to its ultimately
saving him from any return of Raffles, he had concluded that it was the
best throw he could make.  It succeeded in enforcing submission from
the jaded man this morning: his empoisoned system at this moment
quailed before Bulstrode's cold, resolute bearing, and he was taken off
quietly in the carriage before the family breakfast time.  The servants
imagined him to be a poor relation, and were not surprised that a
strict man like their master, who held his head high in the world,
should be ashamed of such a cousin and want to get rid of him.  The
banker's drive of ten miles with his hated companion was a dreary
beginning of the Christmas day; but at the end of the drive, Raffles
had recovered his spirits, and parted in a contentment for which there
was the good reason that the banker had given him a hundred pounds.
Various motives urged Bulstrode to this open-handedness, but he did not
himself inquire closely into all of them.  As he had stood watching
Raffles in his uneasy sleep, it had certainly entered his mind that the
man had been much shattered since the first gift of two hundred pounds.

He had taken care to repeat the incisive statement of his resolve not
to be played on any more; and had tried to penetrate Raffles with the
fact that he had shown the risks of bribing him to be quite equal to
the risks of defying him.  But when, freed from his repulsive presence,
Bulstrode returned to his quiet home, he brought with him no confidence
that he had secured more than a respite.  It was as if he had had a
loathsome dream, and could not shake off its images with their hateful
kindred of sensations--as if on all the pleasant surroundings of his
life a dangerous reptile had left his slimy traces.

Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the
thoughts he believes other men to have about him, until that fabric of
opinion is threatened with ruin?

Bulstrode was only the more conscious that there was a deposit of
uneasy presentiment in his wife's mind, because she carefully avoided
any allusion to it.  He had been used every day to taste the flavor of
supremacy and the tribute of complete deference: and the certainty that
he was watched or measured with a hidden suspicion of his having some
discreditable secret, made his voice totter when he was speaking to
edification.  Foreseeing, to men of Bulstrode's anxious temperament, is
often worse than seeing; and his imagination continually heightened the
anguish of an imminent disgrace.  Yes, imminent; for if his defiance of
Raffles did not keep the man away--and though he prayed for this result
he hardly hoped for it--the disgrace was certain.  In vain he said to
himself that, if permitted, it would be a divine visitation, a
chastisement, a preparation; he recoiled from the imagined burning; and
he judged that it must be more for the Divine glory that he should
escape dishonor.  That recoil had at last urged him to make
preparations for quitting Middlemarch.  If evil truth must be reported
of him, he would then be at a less scorching distance from the contempt
of his old neighbors; and in a new scene, where his life would not have
gathered the same wide sensibility, the tormentor, if he pursued him,
would be less formidable.  To leave the place finally would, he knew,
be extremely painful to his wife, and on other grounds he would have
preferred to stay where he had struck root.  Hence he made his
preparations at first in a conditional way, wishing to leave on all
sides an opening for his return after brief absence, if any favorable
intervention of Providence should dissipate his fears.  He was
preparing to transfer his management of the Bank, and to give up any
active control of other commercial affairs in the neighborhood, on the
ground of his failing health, but without excluding his future
resumption of such work.  The measure would cause him some added
expense and some diminution of income beyond what he had already
undergone from the general depression of trade; and the Hospital
presented itself as a principal object of outlay on which he could
fairly economize.

This was the experience which had determined his conversation with
Lydgate.  But at this time his arrangements had most of them gone no
farther than a stage at which he could recall them if they proved to be
unnecessary.  He continually deferred the final steps; in the midst of
his fears, like many a man who is in danger of shipwreck or of being
dashed from his carriage by runaway horses, he had a clinging
impression that something would happen to hinder the worst, and that to
spoil his life by a late transplantation might be over-hasty--especially
since it was difficult to account satisfactorily to his wife for the
project of their indefinite exile from the only place where she would
like to live.

Among the affairs Bulstrode had to care for, was the management of the
farm at Stone Court in case of his absence; and on this as well as on
all other matters connected with any houses and land he possessed in or
about Middlemarch, he had consulted Caleb Garth.  Like every one else
who had business of that sort, he wanted to get the agent who was more
anxious for his employer's interests than his own.  With regard to
Stone Court, since Bulstrode wished to retain his hold on the stock,
and to have an arrangement by which he himself could, if he chose,
resume his favorite recreation of superintendence, Caleb had advised
him not to trust to a mere bailiff, but to let the land, stock, and
implements yearly, and take a proportionate share of the proceeds.

"May I trust to you to find me a tenant on these terms, Mr. Garth?"
said Bulstrode.  "And will you mention to me the yearly sum which would
repay you for managing these affairs which we have discussed together?"

"I'll think about it," said Caleb, in his blunt way.  "I'll see how I
can make it out."

If it had not been that he had to consider Fred Vincy's future, Mr.
Garth would not probably have been glad of any addition to his work, of
which his wife was always fearing an excess for him as he grew older.
But on quitting Bulstrode after that conversation, a very alluring idea
occurred to him about this said letting of Stone Court.  What if
Bulstrode would agree to his placing Fred Vincy there on the
understanding that he, Caleb Garth, should be responsible for the
management?  It would be an excellent schooling for Fred; he might make
a modest income there, and still have time left to get knowledge by
helping in other business.  He mentioned his notion to Mrs. Garth with
such evident delight that she could not bear to chill his pleasure by
expressing her constant fear of his undertaking too much.

"The lad would be as happy as two," he said, throwing himself back in
his chair, and looking radiant, "if I could tell him it was all
settled.  Think; Susan!  His mind had been running on that place for
years before old Featherstone died.  And it would be as pretty a turn
of things as could be that he should hold the place in a good
industrious way after all--by his taking to business.  For it's likely
enough Bulstrode might let him go on, and gradually buy the stock.  He
hasn't made up his mind, I can see, whether or not he shall settle
somewhere else as a lasting thing.  I never was better pleased with a
notion in my life.  And then the children might be married by-and-by,
Susan."

"You will not give any hint of the plan to Fred, until you are sure
that Bulstrode would agree to the plan?" said Mrs. Garth, in a tone of
gentle caution.  "And as to marriage, Caleb, we old people need not
help to hasten it."

"Oh, I don't know," said Caleb, swinging his head aside.  "Marriage is
a taming thing.  Fred would want less of my bit and bridle.  However, I
shall say nothing till I know the ground I'm treading on.  I shall
speak to Bulstrode again."

He took his earliest opportunity of doing so.  Bulstrode had anything
but a warm interest in his nephew Fred Vincy, but he had a strong wish
to secure Mr. Garth's services on many scattered points of business at
which he was sure to be a considerable loser, if they were under less
conscientious management.  On that ground he made no objection to Mr.
Garth's proposal; and there was also another reason why he was not
sorry to give a consent which was to benefit one of the Vincy family.
It was that Mrs. Bulstrode, having heard of Lydgate's debts, had been
anxious to know whether her husband could not do something for poor
Rosamond, and had been much troubled on learning from him that
Lydgate's affairs were not easily remediable, and that the wisest plan
was to let them "take their course." Mrs. Bulstrode had then said for
the first time, "I think you are always a little hard towards my
family, Nicholas.  And I am sure I have no reason to deny any of my
relatives.  Too worldly they may be, but no one ever had to say that
they were not respectable."

"My dear Harriet," said Mr. Bulstrode, wincing under his wife's eyes,
which were filling with tears, "I have supplied your brother with a
great deal of capital.  I cannot be expected to take care of his
married children."

That seemed to be true, and Mrs. Bulstrode's remonstrance subsided into
pity for poor Rosamond, whose extravagant education she had always
foreseen the fruits of.

But remembering that dialogue, Mr. Bulstrode felt that when he had to
talk to his wife fully about his plan of quitting Middlemarch, he
should be glad to tell her that he had made an arrangement which might
be for the good of her nephew Fred.  At present he had merely mentioned
to her that he thought of shutting up The Shrubs for a few months, and
taking a house on the Southern Coast.

Hence Mr. Garth got the assurance he desired, namely, that in case of
Bulstrode's departure from Middlemarch for an indefinite time, Fred
Vincy should be allowed to have the tenancy of Stone Court on the terms
proposed.

Caleb was so elated with his hope of this "neat turn" being given to
things, that if his self-control had not been braced by a little
affectionate wifely scolding, he would have betrayed everything to
Mary, wanting "to give the child comfort."  However, he restrained
himself, and kept in strict privacy from Fred certain visits which he
was making to Stone Court, in order to look more thoroughly into the
state of the land and stock, and take a preliminary estimate.  He was
certainly more eager in these visits than the probable speed of events
required him to be; but he was stimulated by a fatherly delight in
occupying his mind with this bit of probable happiness which he held in
store like a hidden birthday gift for Fred and Mary.

"But suppose the whole scheme should turn out to be a castle in the
air?" said Mrs. Garth.

"Well, well," replied Caleb; "the castle will tumble about nobody's
head."

    "If thou hast heard a word, let it die with thee."
                                       --Ecclesiasticus.

Mr. Bulstrode was still seated in his manager's room at the Bank, about
three o'clock of the same day on which he had received Lydgate there,
when the clerk entered to say that his horse was waiting, and also that
Mr. Garth was outside and begged to speak with him.

"By all means," said Bulstrode; and Caleb entered.  "Pray sit down, Mr.
Garth," continued the banker, in his suavest tone.

"I am glad that you arrived just in time to find me here.  I know you
count your minutes."

"Oh," said Caleb, gently, with a slow swing of his head on one side, as
he seated himself and laid his hat on the floor.

He looked at the ground, leaning forward and letting his long fingers
droop between his legs, while each finger moved in succession, as if it
were sharing some thought which filled his large quiet brow.

Mr. Bulstrode, like every one else who knew Caleb, was used to his
slowness in beginning to speak on any topic which he felt to be
important, and rather expected that he was about to recur to the buying
of some houses in Blindman's Court, for the sake of pulling them down,
as a sacrifice of property which would be well repaid by the influx of
air and light on that spot.  It was by propositions of this kind that
Caleb was sometimes troublesome to his employers; but he had usually
found Bulstrode ready to meet him in projects of improvement, and they
had got on well together.  When he spoke again, however, it was to say,
in rather a subdued voice--

"I have just come away from Stone Court, Mr. Bulstrode."

"You found nothing wrong there, I hope," said the banker; "I was there
myself yesterday.  Abel has done well with the lambs this year."

"Why, yes," said Caleb, looking up gravely, "there is something wrong--a
stranger, who is very ill, I think.  He wants a doctor, and I came to
tell you of that.  His name is Raffles."

He saw the shock of his words passing through Bulstrode's frame.  On
this subject the banker had thought that his fears were too constantly
on the watch to be taken by surprise; but he had been mistaken.

"Poor wretch!" he said in a compassionate tone, though his lips
trembled a little.  "Do you know how he came there?"

"I took him myself," said Caleb, quietly--"took him up in my gig.  He
had got down from the coach, and was walking a little beyond the
turning from the toll-house, and I overtook him.  He remembered seeing
me with you once before, at Stone Court, and he asked me to take him
on.  I saw he was ill: it seemed to me the right thing to do, to carry
him under shelter.  And now I think you should lose no time in getting
advice for him." Caleb took up his hat from the floor as he ended, and
rose slowly from his seat.

"Certainly," said Bulstrode, whose mind was very active at this moment.
"Perhaps you will yourself oblige me, Mr. Garth, by calling at Mr.
Lydgate's as you pass--or stay! he may at this hour probably be at the
Hospital.  I will first send my man on the horse there with a note this
instant, and then I will myself ride to Stone Court."

Bulstrode quickly wrote a note, and went out himself to give the
commission to his man.  When he returned, Caleb was standing as before
with one hand on the back of the chair, holding his hat with the other.
In Bulstrode's mind the dominant thought was, "Perhaps Raffles only
spoke to Garth of his illness.  Garth may wonder, as he must have done
before, at this disreputable fellow's claiming intimacy with me; but he
will know nothing.  And he is friendly to me--I can be of use to him."

He longed for some confirmation of this hopeful conjecture, but to have
asked any question as to what Raffles had said or done would have been
to betray fear.

"I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Garth," he said, in his usual
tone of politeness.  "My servant will be back in a few minutes, and I
shall then go myself to see what can be done for this unfortunate man.
Perhaps you had some other business with me?  If so, pray be seated."

"Thank you," said Caleb, making a slight gesture with his right hand to
waive the invitation.  "I wish to say, Mr. Bulstrode, that I must
request you to put your business into some other hands than mine.  I am
obliged to you for your handsome way of meeting me--about the letting
of Stone Court, and all other business.  But I must give it up."  A
sharp certainty entered like a stab into Bulstrode's soul.

"This is sudden, Mr. Garth," was all he could say at first.

"It is," said Caleb; "but it is quite fixed.  I must give it up."

He spoke with a firmness which was very gentle, and yet he could see
that Bulstrode seemed to cower under that gentleness, his face looking
dried and his eyes swerving away from the glance which rested on him.
Caleb felt a deep pity for him, but he could have used no pretexts to
account for his resolve, even if they would have been of any use.

"You have been led to this, I apprehend, by some slanders concerning me
uttered by that unhappy creature," said Bulstrode, anxious now to know
the utmost.

"That is true.  I can't deny that I act upon what I heard from him."

"You are a conscientious man, Mr. Garth--a man, I trust, who feels
himself accountable to God.  You would not wish to injure me by being
too ready to believe a slander," said Bulstrode, casting about for
pleas that might be adapted to his hearer's mind.  "That is a poor
reason for giving up a connection which I think I may say will be
mutually beneficial."

"I would injure no man if I could help it," said Caleb; "even if I
thought God winked at it.  I hope I should have a feeling for my
fellow-creature. But, sir--I am obliged to believe that this Raffles
has told me the truth.  And I can't be happy in working with you, or
profiting by you.  It hurts my mind.  I must beg you to seek another
agent."

"Very well, Mr. Garth.  But I must at least claim to know the worst
that he has told you.  I must know what is the foul speech that I am
liable to be the victim of," said Bulstrode, a certain amount of anger
beginning to mingle with his humiliation before this quiet man who
renounced his benefits.

"That's needless," said Caleb, waving his hand, bowing his head
slightly, and not swerving from the tone which had in it the merciful
intention to spare this pitiable man.  "What he has said to me will
never pass from my lips, unless something now unknown forces it from
me.  If you led a harmful life for gain, and kept others out of their
rights by deceit, to get the more for yourself, I dare say you
repent--you would like to go back, and can't: that must be a bitter
thing"--Caleb paused a moment and shook his head--"it is not for me to
make your life harder to you."

"But you do--you do make it harder to me," said Bulstrode constrained
into a genuine, pleading cry.  "You make it harder to me by turning
your back on me."

"That I'm forced to do," said Caleb, still more gently, lifting up his
hand.  "I am sorry.  I don't judge you and say, he is wicked, and I am
righteous.  God forbid.  I don't know everything.  A man may do wrong,
and his will may rise clear out of it, though he can't get his life
clear.  That's a bad punishment.  If it is so with you,--well, I'm
very sorry for you.  But I have that feeling inside me, that I can't go
on working with you.  That's all, Mr. Bulstrode.  Everything else is
buried, so far as my will goes.  And I wish you good-day."

"One moment, Mr. Garth!" said Bulstrode, hurriedly.  "I may trust then
to your solemn assurance that you will not repeat either to man or
woman what--even if it have any degree of truth in it--is yet a
malicious representation?"  Caleb's wrath was stirred, and he said,
indignantly--

"Why should I have said it if I didn't mean it?  I am in no fear of
you.  Such tales as that will never tempt my tongue."

"Excuse me--I am agitated--I am the victim of this abandoned man."

"Stop a bit! you have got to consider whether you didn't help to make
him worse, when you profited by his vices."

"You are wronging me by too readily believing him," said Bulstrode,
oppressed, as by a nightmare, with the inability to deny flatly what
Raffles might have said; and yet feeling it an escape that Caleb had
not so stated it to him as to ask for that flat denial.

"No," said Caleb, lifting his hand deprecatingly; "I am ready to
believe better, when better is proved.  I rob you of no good chance.
As to speaking, I hold it a crime to expose a man's sin unless I'm
clear it must be done to save the innocent.  That is my way of
thinking, Mr. Bulstrode, and what I say, I've no need to swear.  I wish
you good-day."

Some hours later, when he was at home, Caleb said to his wife,
incidentally, that he had had some little differences with Bulstrode,
and that in consequence, he had given up all notion of taking Stone
Court, and indeed had resigned doing further business for him.

"He was disposed to interfere too much, was he?" said Mrs. Garth,
imagining that her husband had been touched on his sensitive point, and
not been allowed to do what he thought right as to materials and modes
of work.

"Oh," said Caleb, bowing his head and waving his hand gravely.  And
Mrs. Garth knew that this was a sign of his not intending to speak
further on the subject.

As for Bulstrode, he had almost immediately mounted his horse and set
off for Stone Court, being anxious to arrive there before Lydgate.

His mind was crowded with images and conjectures, which were a language
to his hopes and fears, just as we hear tones from the vibrations which
shake our whole system.  The deep humiliation with which he had winced
under Caleb Garth's knowledge of his past and rejection of his
patronage, alternated with and almost gave way to the sense of safety
in the fact that Garth, and no other, had been the man to whom Raffles
had spoken.  It seemed to him a sort of earnest that Providence
intended his rescue from worse consequences; the way being thus left
open for the hope of secrecy.  That Raffles should be afflicted with
illness, that he should have been led to Stone Court rather than
elsewhere--Bulstrode's heart fluttered at the vision of probabilities
which these events conjured up.  If it should turn out that he was
freed from all danger of disgrace--if he could breathe in perfect
liberty--his life should be more consecrated than it had ever been
before.  He mentally lifted up this vow as if it would urge the result
he longed for--he tried to believe in the potency of that prayerful
resolution--its potency to determine death.  He knew that he ought to
say, "Thy will be done;" and he said it often.  But the intense desire
remained that the will of God might be the death of that hated man.

Yet when he arrived at Stone Court he could not see the change in
Raffles without a shock.  But for his pallor and feebleness, Bulstrode
would have called the change in him entirely mental.  Instead of his
loud tormenting mood, he showed an intense, vague terror, and seemed to
deprecate Bulstrode's anger, because the money was all gone--he had
been robbed--it had half of it been taken from him.  He had only come
here because he was ill and somebody was hunting him--somebody was
after him, he had told nobody anything, he had kept his mouth shut.
Bulstrode, not knowing the significance of these symptoms, interpreted
this new nervous susceptibility into a means of alarming Raffles into
true confessions, and taxed him with falsehood in saying that he had
not told anything, since he had just told the man who took him up in
his gig and brought him to Stone Court.  Raffles denied this with
solemn adjurations; the fact being that the links of consciousness were
interrupted in him, and that his minute terror-stricken narrative to
Caleb Garth had been delivered under a set of visionary impulses which
had dropped back into darkness.

Bulstrode's heart sank again at this sign that he could get no grasp
over the wretched man's mind, and that no word of Raffles could be
trusted as to the fact which he most wanted to know, namely, whether or
not he had really kept silence to every one in the neighborhood except
Caleb Garth.  The housekeeper had told him without the least constraint
of manner that since Mr. Garth left, Raffles had asked her for beer,
and after that had not spoken, seeming very ill.  On that side it might
be concluded that there had been no betrayal.  Mrs. Abel thought, like
the servants at The Shrubs, that the strange man belonged to the
unpleasant "kin" who are among the troubles of the rich; she had at
first referred the kinship to Mr. Rigg, and where there was property
left, the buzzing presence of such large blue-bottles seemed natural
enough.  How he could be "kin" to Bulstrode as well was not so clear,
but Mrs. Abel agreed with her husband that there was "no knowing," a
proposition which had a great deal of mental food for her, so that she
shook her head over it without further speculation.

In less than an hour Lydgate arrived.  Bulstrode met him outside the
wainscoted parlor, where Raffles was, and said--

"I have called you in, Mr. Lydgate, to an unfortunate man who was once
in my employment, many years ago.  Afterwards he went to America, and
returned I fear to an idle dissolute life.  Being destitute, he has a
claim on me.  He was slightly connected with Rigg, the former owner of
this place, and in consequence found his way here.  I believe he is
seriously ill: apparently his mind is affected.  I feel bound to do the
utmost for him."

Lydgate, who had the remembrance of his last conversation with
Bulstrode strongly upon him, was not disposed to say an unnecessary
word to him, and bowed slightly in answer to this account; but just
before entering the room he turned automatically and said, "What is his
name?"--to know names being as much a part of the medical man's
accomplishment as of the practical politician's.

"Raffles, John Raffles," said Bulstrode, who hoped that whatever became
of Raffles, Lydgate would never know any more of him.

When he had thoroughly examined and considered the patient, Lydgate
ordered that he should go to bed, and be kept there in as complete
quiet as possible, and then went with Bulstrode into another room.

"It is a serious case, I apprehend," said the banker, before Lydgate
began to speak.

"No--and yes," said Lydgate, half dubiously.  "It is difficult to
decide as to the possible effect of long-standing complications; but
the man had a robust constitution to begin with.  I should not expect
this attack to be fatal, though of course the system is in a ticklish
state.  He should be well watched and attended to."

"I will remain here myself," said Bulstrode.  "Mrs. Abel and her
husband are inexperienced.  I can easily remain here for the night, if
you will oblige me by taking a note for Mrs. Bulstrode."

"I should think that is hardly necessary," said Lydgate.  "He seems
tame and terrified enough.  He might become more unmanageable.  But
there is a man here--is there not?"

"I have more than once stayed here a few nights for the sake of
seclusion," said Bulstrode, indifferently; "I am quite disposed to do
so now.  Mrs. Abel and her husband can relieve or aid me, if necessary."

"Very well.  Then I need give my directions only to you," said Lydgate,
not feeling surprised at a little peculiarity in Bulstrode.

"You think, then, that the case is hopeful?" said Bulstrode, when
Lydgate had ended giving his orders.

"Unless there turn out to be further complications, such as I have not
at present detected--yes," said Lydgate.  "He may pass on to a worse
stage; but I should not wonder if he got better in a few days, by
adhering to the treatment I have prescribed.  There must be firmness.
Remember, if he calls for liquors of any sort, not to give them to him.
In my opinion, men in his condition are oftener killed by treatment
than by the disease.  Still, new symptoms may arise.  I shall come
again to-morrow morning."

After waiting for the note to be carried to Mrs. Bulstrode, Lydgate
rode away, forming no conjectures, in the first instance, about the
history of Raffles, but rehearsing the whole argument, which had lately
been much stirred by the publication of Dr. Ware's abundant experience
in America, as to the right way of treating cases of alcoholic
poisoning such as this.  Lydgate, when abroad, had already been
interested in this question: he was strongly convinced against the
prevalent practice of allowing alcohol and persistently administering
large doses of opium; and he had repeatedly acted on this conviction
with a favorable result.

"The man is in a diseased state," he thought, "but there's a good deal
of wear in him still.  I suppose he is an object of charity to
Bulstrode.  It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie
side by side in men's dispositions.  Bulstrode seems the most
unsympathetic fellow I ever saw about some people, and yet he has taken
no end of trouble, and spent a great deal of money, on benevolent
objects.  I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven
cares for--he has made up his mind that it doesn't care for me."

This streak of bitterness came from a plenteous source, and kept
widening in the current of his thought as he neared Lowick Gate.  He
had not been there since his first interview with Bulstrode in the
morning, having been found at the Hospital by the banker's messenger;
and for the first time he was returning to his home without the vision
of any expedient in the background which left him a hope of raising
money enough to deliver him from the coming destitution of everything
which made his married life tolerable--everything which saved him and
Rosamond from that bare isolation in which they would be forced to
recognize how little of a comfort they could be to each other.  It was
more bearable to do without tenderness for himself than to see that his
own tenderness could make no amends for the lack of other things to
her.  The sufferings of his own pride from humiliations past and to
come were keen enough, yet they were hardly distinguishable to himself
from that more acute pain which dominated them--the pain of foreseeing
that Rosamond would come to regard him chiefly as the cause of
disappointment and unhappiness to her.  He had never liked the
makeshifts of poverty, and they had never before entered into his
prospects for himself; but he was beginning now to imagine how two
creatures who loved each other, and had a stock of thoughts in common,
might laugh over their shabby furniture, and their calculations how far
they could afford butter and eggs.  But the glimpse of that poetry
seemed as far off from him as the carelessness of the golden age; in
poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look
small in.  He got down from his horse in a very sad mood, and went into
the house, not expecting to be cheered except by his dinner, and
reflecting that before the evening closed it would be wise to tell
Rosamond of his application to Bulstrode and its failure.  It would be
well not to lose time in preparing her for the worst.

But his dinner waited long for him before he was able to eat it.  For
on entering he found that Dover's agent had already put a man in the
house, and when he asked where Mrs. Lydgate was, he was told that she
was in her bedroom.  He went up and found her stretched on the bed pale
and silent, without an answer even in her face to any word or look of
his.  He sat down by the bed and leaning over her said with almost a
cry of prayer--

"Forgive me for this misery, my poor Rosamond!  Let us only love one
another."

She looked at him silently, still with the blank despair on her face;
but then the tears began to fill her blue eyes, and her lip trembled.
The strong man had had too much to bear that day.  He let his head fall
beside hers and sobbed.

He did not hinder her from going to her father early in the morning--it
seemed now that he ought not to hinder her from doing as she
pleased.  In half an hour she came back, and said that papa and mamma
wished her to go and stay with them while things were in this miserable
state.  Papa said he could do nothing about the debt--if he paid this,
there would be half-a-dozen more.  She had better come back home again
till Lydgate had got a comfortable home for her.  "Do you object,
Tertius?"

"Do as you like," said Lydgate.  "But things are not coming to a crisis
immediately.  There is no hurry."

"I should not go till to-morrow," said Rosamond; "I shall want to pack
my clothes."

"Oh, I would wait a little longer than to-morrow--there is no knowing
what may happen," said Lydgate, with bitter irony.  "I may get my neck
broken, and that may make things easier to you."

It was Lydgate's misfortune and Rosamond's too, that his tenderness
towards her, which was both an emotional prompting and a
well-considered resolve, was inevitably interrupted by these outbursts
of indignation either ironical or remonstrant.  She thought them
totally unwarranted, and the repulsion which this exceptional severity
excited in her was in danger of making the more persistent tenderness
unacceptable.

"I see you do not wish me to go," she said, with chill mildness; "why
can you not say so, without that kind of violence?  I shall stay until
you request me to do otherwise."

Lydgate said no more, but went out on his rounds.  He felt bruised and
shattered, and there was a dark line under his eyes which Rosamond had
not seen before.  She could not bear to look at him.  Tertius had a way
of taking things which made them a great deal worse for her.

    Our deeds still travel with us from afar,
    And what we have been makes us what we are."

Bulstrode's first object after Lydgate had left Stone Court was to
examine Raffles's pockets, which he imagined were sure to carry signs
in the shape of hotel-bills of the places he had stopped in, if he had
not told the truth in saying that he had come straight from Liverpool
because he was ill and had no money.  There were various bills crammed
into his pocketbook, but none of a later date than Christmas at any
other place, except one, which bore date that morning.  This was
crumpled up with a hand-bill about a horse-fair in one of his
tail-pockets, and represented the cost of three days' stay at an inn at
Bilkley, where the fair was held--a town at least forty miles from
Middlemarch.  The bill was heavy, and since Raffles had no luggage with
him, it seemed probable that he had left his portmanteau behind in
payment, in order to save money for his travelling fare; for his purse
was empty, and he had only a couple of sixpences and some loose pence
in his pockets.

Bulstrode gathered a sense of safety from these indications that
Raffles had really kept at a distance from Middlemarch since his
memorable visit at Christmas.  At a distance and among people who were
strangers to Bulstrode, what satisfaction could there be to Raffles's
tormenting, self-magnifying vein in telling old scandalous stories
about a Middlemarch banker?  And what harm if he did talk?  The chief
point now was to keep watch over him as long as there was any danger of
that intelligible raving, that unaccountable impulse to tell, which
seemed to have acted towards Caleb Garth; and Bulstrode felt much
anxiety lest some such impulse should come over him at the sight of
Lydgate.  He sat up alone with him through the night, only ordering the
housekeeper to lie down in her clothes, so as to be ready when he
called her, alleging his own indisposition to sleep, and his anxiety to
carry out the doctor's orders.  He did carry them out faithfully,
although Raffles was incessantly asking for brandy, and declaring that
he was sinking away--that the earth was sinking away from under him.
He was restless and sleepless, but still quailing and manageable.  On
the offer of the food ordered by Lydgate, which he refused, and the
denial of other things which he demanded, he seemed to concentrate all
his terror on Bulstrode, imploringly deprecating his anger, his revenge
on him by starvation, and declaring with strong oaths that he had never
told any mortal a word against him.  Even this Bulstrode felt that he
would not have liked Lydgate to hear; but a more alarming sign of
fitful alternation in his delirium was, that in-the morning twilight
Raffles suddenly seemed to imagine a doctor present, addressing him and
declaring that Bulstrode wanted to starve him to death out of revenge
for telling, when he never had told.

Bulstrode's native imperiousness and strength of determination served
him well.  This delicate-looking man, himself nervously perturbed,
found the needed stimulus in his strenuous circumstances, and through
that difficult night and morning, while he had the air of an animated
corpse returned to movement without warmth, holding the mastery by its
chill impassibility his mind was intensely at work thinking of what he
had to guard against and what would win him security.  Whatever prayers
he might lift up, whatever statements he might inwardly make of this
man's wretched spiritual condition, and the duty he himself was under
to submit to the punishment divinely appointed for him rather than to
wish for evil to another--through all this effort to condense words
into a solid mental state, there pierced and spread with irresistible
vividness the images of the events he desired.  And in the train of
those images came their apology.  He could not but see the death of
Raffles, and see in it his own deliverance.  What was the removal of
this wretched creature?  He was impenitent--but were not public
criminals impenitent?--yet the law decided on their fate.  Should
Providence in this case award death, there was no sin in contemplating
death as the desirable issue--if he kept his hands from hastening
it--if he scrupulously did what was prescribed.  Even here there might
be a mistake: human prescriptions were fallible things: Lydgate had
said that treatment had hastened death,--why not his own method of
treatment?  But of course intention was everything in the question of
right and wrong.

And Bulstrode set himself to keep his intention separate from his
desire.  He inwardly declared that he intended to obey orders.  Why
should he have got into any argument about the validity of these
orders?  It was only the common trick of desire--which avails itself of
any irrelevant scepticism, finding larger room for itself in all
uncertainty about effects, in every obscurity that looks like the
absence of law.  Still, he did obey the orders.

His anxieties continually glanced towards Lydgate, and his remembrance
of what had taken place between them the morning before was accompanied
with sensibilities which had not been roused at all during the actual
scene.  He had then cared but little about Lydgate's painful
impressions with regard to the suggested change in the Hospital, or
about the disposition towards himself which what he held to be his
justifiable refusal of a rather exorbitant request might call forth.
He recurred to the scene now with a perception that he had probably
made Lydgate his enemy, and with an awakened desire to propitiate him,
or rather to create in him a strong sense of personal obligation.  He
regretted that he had not at once made even an unreasonable
money-sacrifice. For in case of unpleasant suspicions, or even
knowledge gathered from the raving of Raffles, Bulstrode would have
felt that he had a defence in Lydgate's mind by having conferred a
momentous benefit on him.  But the regret had perhaps come too late.

Strange, piteous conflict in the soul of this unhappy man, who had
longed for years to be better than he was--who had taken his selfish
passions into discipline and clad them in severe robes, so that he had
walked with them as a devout choir, till now that a terror had risen
among them, and they could chant no longer, but threw out their common
cries for safety.

It was nearly the middle of the day before Lydgate arrived: he had
meant to come earlier, but had been detained, he said; and his
shattered looks were noticed by Balstrode.  But he immediately threw
himself into the consideration of the patient, and inquired strictly
into all that had occurred.  Raffles was worse, would take hardly any
food, was persistently wakeful and restlessly raving; but still not
violent.  Contrary to Bulstrode's alarmed expectation, he took little
notice of Lydgate's presence, and continued to talk or murmur
incoherently.

"What do you think of him?" said Bulstrode, in private.

"The symptoms are worse."

"You are less hopeful?"

"No; I still think he may come round.  Are you going to stay here
yourself?" said Lydgate, looking at Bulstrode with an abrupt question,
which made him uneasy, though in reality it was not due to any
suspicious conjecture.

"Yes, I think so," said Bulstrode, governing himself and speaking with
deliberation.  "Mrs. Bulstrode is advised of the reasons which detain
me.  Mrs. Abel and her husband are not experienced enough to be left
quite alone, and this kind of responsibility is scarcely included in
their service of me.  You have some fresh instructions, I presume."

The chief new instruction that Lydgate had to give was on the
administration of extremely moderate doses of opium, in case of the
sleeplessness continuing after several hours.  He had taken the
precaution of bringing opium in his pocket, and he gave minute
directions to Bulstrode as to the doses, and the point at which they
should cease.  He insisted on the risk of not ceasing; and repeated his
order that no alcohol should be given.

"From what I see of the case," he ended, "narcotism is the only thing I
should be much afraid of.  He may wear through even without much food.
There's a good deal of strength in him."

"You look ill yourself, Mr. Lydgate--a most unusual, I may say
unprecedented thing in my knowledge of you," said Bulstrode, showing a
solicitude as unlike his indifference the day before, as his present
recklessness about his own fatigue was unlike his habitual
self-cherishing anxiety.  "I fear you are harassed."

"Yes, I am," said Lydgate, brusquely, holding his hat, and ready to go.

"Something new, I fear," said Bulstrode, inquiringly.  "Pray be seated."

"No, thank you," said Lydgate, with some hauteur. "I mentioned to you
yesterday what was the state of my affairs.  There is nothing to add,
except that the execution has since then been actually put into my
house.  One can tell a good deal of trouble in a short sentence.  I
will say good morning."

"Stay, Mr. Lydgate, stay," said Bulstrode; "I have been reconsidering
this subject.  I was yesterday taken by surprise, and saw it
superficially.  Mrs. Bulstrode is anxious for her niece, and I myself
should grieve at a calamitous change in your position.  Claims on me
are numerous, but on reconsideration, I esteem it right that I should
incur a small sacrifice rather than leave you unaided.  You said, I
think, that a thousand pounds would suffice entirely to free you from
your burthens, and enable you to recover a firm stand?"

"Yes," said Lydgate, a great leap of joy within him surmounting every
other feeling; "that would pay all my debts, and leave me a little on
hand.  I could set about economizing in our way of living.  And
by-and-by my practice might look up."

"If you will wait a moment, Mr. Lydgate, I will draw a check to that
amount.  I am aware that help, to be effectual in these cases, should
be thorough."

While Bulstrode wrote, Lydgate turned to the window thinking of his
home--thinking of his life with its good start saved from frustration,
its good purposes still unbroken.

"You can give me a note of hand for this, Mr. Lydgate," said the
banker, advancing towards him with the check.  "And by-and-by, I hope,
you may be in circumstances gradually to repay me.  Meanwhile, I have
pleasure in thinking that you will be released from further difficulty."

"I am deeply obliged to you," said Lydgate.  "You have restored to me
the prospect of working with some happiness and some chance of good."

It appeared to him a very natural movement in Bulstrode that he should
have reconsidered his refusal: it corresponded with the more munificent
side of his character.  But as he put his hack into a canter, that he
might get the sooner home, and tell the good news to Rosamond, and get
cash at the bank to pay over to Dover's agent, there crossed his mind,
with an unpleasant impression, as from a dark-winged flight of evil
augury across his vision, the thought of that contrast in himself which
a few months had brought--that he should be overjoyed at being under a
strong personal obligation--that he should be overjoyed at getting
money for himself from Bulstrode.

The banker felt that he had done something to nullify one cause of
uneasiness, and yet he was scarcely the easier.  He did not measure the
quantity of diseased motive which had made him wish for Lydgate's
good-will, but the quantity was none the less actively there, like an
irritating agent in his blood.  A man vows, and yet will not cast away
the means of breaking his vow.  Is it that he distinctly means to break
it?  Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in
him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his
muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the
reasons for his vow.  Raffles, recovering quickly, returning to the
free use of his odious powers--how could Bulstrode wish for that?
Raffles dead was the image that brought release, and indirectly he
prayed for that way of release, beseeching that, if it were possible,
the rest of his days here below might be freed from the threat of an
ignominy which would break him utterly as an instrument of God's
service.  Lydgate's opinion was not on the side of promise that this
prayer would be fulfilled; and as the day advanced, Bulstrode felt
himself getting irritated at the persistent life in this man, whom he
would fain have seen sinking into the silence of death: imperious will
stirred murderous impulses towards this brute life, over which will, by
itself, had no power.  He said inwardly that he was getting too much
worn; he would not sit up with the patient to-night, but leave him to
Mrs. Abel, who, if necessary, could call her husband.

At six o'clock, Raffles, having had only fitful perturbed snatches of
sleep, from which he waked with fresh restlessness and perpetual cries
that he was sinking away, Bulstrode began to administer the opium
according to Lydgate's directions.  At the end of half an hour or more
he called Mrs. Abel and told her that he found himself unfit for
further watching.  He must now consign the patient to her care; and he
proceeded to repeat to her Lydgate's directions as to the quantity of
each dose.  Mrs. Abel had not before known anything of Lydgate's
prescriptions; she had simply prepared and brought whatever Bulstrode
ordered, and had done what he pointed out to her.  She began now to ask
what else she should do besides administering the opium.

"Nothing at present, except the offer of the soup or the soda-water:
you can come to me for further directions.  Unless there is any
important change, I shall not come into the room again to-night. You
will ask your husband for help if necessary.  I must go to bed early."

"You've much need, sir, I'm sure," said Mrs. Abel, "and to take
something more strengthening than what you've done."

Bulstrode went away now without anxiety as to what Raffles might say in
his raving, which had taken on a muttering incoherence not likely to
create any dangerous belief.  At any rate he must risk this.  He went
down into the wainscoted parlor first, and began to consider whether he
would not have his horse saddled and go home by the moonlight, and give
up caring for earthly consequences.  Then, he wished that he had begged
Lydgate to come again that evening.  Perhaps he might deliver a
different opinion, and think that Raffles was getting into a less
hopeful state.  Should he send for Lydgate?  If Raffles were really
getting worse, and slowly dying, Bulstrode felt that he could go to bed
and sleep in gratitude to Providence.  But was he worse?  Lydgate might
come and simply say that he was going on as he expected, and predict
that he would by-and-by fall into a good sleep, and get well.  What was
the use of sending for him?  Bulstrode shrank from that result.  No
ideas or opinions could hinder him from seeing the one probability to
be, that Raffles recovered would be just the same man as before, with
his strength as a tormentor renewed, obliging him to drag away his wife
to spend her years apart from her friends and native place, carrying an
alienating suspicion against him in her heart.

He had sat an hour and a half in this conflict by the firelight only,
when a sudden thought made him rise and light the bed-candle, which he
had brought down with him.  The thought was, that he had not told Mrs.
Abel when the doses of opium must cease.

He took hold of the candlestick, but stood motionless for a long while.
She might already have given him more than Lydgate had prescribed.  But
it was excusable in him, that he should forget part of an order, in his
present wearied condition.  He walked up-stairs, candle in hand, not
knowing whether he should straightway enter his own room and go to bed,
or turn to the patient's room and rectify his omission.  He paused in
the passage, with his face turned towards Raffles's room, and he could
hear him moaning and murmuring.  He was not asleep, then.  Who could
know that Lydgate's prescription would not be better disobeyed than
followed, since there was still no sleep?

He turned into his own room.  Before he had quite undressed, Mrs. Abel
rapped at the door; he opened it an inch, so that he could hear her
speak low.

"If you please, sir, should I have no brandy nor nothing to give the
poor creetur?  He feels sinking away, and nothing else will he
swaller--and but little strength in it, if he did--only the opium.  And
he says more and more he's sinking down through the earth."

To her surprise, Mr. Bulstrode did not answer.  A struggle was going on
within him.

"I think he must die for want o' support, if he goes on in that way.
When I nursed my poor master, Mr. Robisson, I had to give him port-wine
and brandy constant, and a big glass at a time," added Mrs. Abel, with
a touch of remonstrance in her tone.

But again Mr. Bulstrode did not answer immediately, and she continued,
"It's not a time to spare when people are at death's door, nor would
you wish it, sir, I'm sure.  Else I should give him our own bottle o'
rum as we keep by us.  But a sitter-up so as you've been, and doing
everything as laid in your power--"

Here a key was thrust through the inch of doorway, and Mr. Bulstrode
said huskily, "That is the key of the wine-cooler. You will find plenty
of brandy there."

Early in the morning--about six--Mr. Bulstrode rose and spent some time
in prayer.  Does any one suppose that private prayer is necessarily
candid--necessarily goes to the roots of action?  Private prayer is
inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can represent
himself just as he is, even in his own reflections?  Bulstrode had not
yet unravelled in his thought the confused promptings of the last
four-and-twenty hours.

He listened in the passage, and could hear hard stertorous breathing.
Then he walked out in the garden, and looked at the early rime on the
grass and fresh spring leaves.  When he re-entered the house, he felt
startled at the sight of Mrs. Abel.

"How is your patient--asleep, I think?" he said, with an attempt at
cheerfulness in his tone.

"He's gone very deep, sir," said Mrs. Abel.  "He went off gradual
between three and four o'clock.  Would you please to go and look at
him?  I thought it no harm to leave him.  My man's gone afield, and the
little girl's seeing to the kettles."

Bulstrode went up.  At a glance he knew that Raffles was not in the
sleep which brings revival, but in the sleep which streams deeper and
deeper into the gulf of death.

He looked round the room and saw a bottle with some brandy in it, and
the almost empty opium phial.  He put the phial out of sight, and
carried the brandy-bottle down-stairs with him, locking it again in the
wine-cooler.

While breakfasting he considered whether he should ride to Middlemarch
at once, or wait for Lydgate's arrival.  He decided to wait, and told
Mrs. Abel that she might go about her work--he could watch in the
bed-chamber.

As he sat there and beheld the enemy of his peace going irrevocably
into silence, he felt more at rest than he had done for many months.
His conscience was soothed by the enfolding wing of secrecy, which
seemed just then like an angel sent down for his relief.  He drew out
his pocket-book to review various memoranda there as to the
arrangements he had projected and partly carried out in the prospect of
quitting Middlemarch, and considered how far he would let them stand or
recall them, now that his absence would be brief.  Some economies which
he felt desirable might still find a suitable occasion in his temporary
withdrawal from management, and he hoped still that Mrs. Casaubon would
take a large share in the expenses of the Hospital.  In that way the
moments passed, until a change in the stertorous breathing was marked
enough to draw his attention wholly to the bed, and forced him to think
of the departing life, which had once been subservient to his
own--which he had once been glad to find base enough for him to act on
as he would.  It was his gladness then which impelled him now to be
glad that the life was at an end.

And who could say that the death of Raffles had been hastened?  Who
knew what would have saved him?

Lydgate arrived at half-past ten, in time to witness the final pause of
the breath.  When he entered the room Bulstrode observed a sudden
expression in his face, which was not so much surprise as a recognition
that he had not judged correctly.  He stood by the bed in silence for
some time, with his eyes turned on the dying man, but with that subdued
activity of expression which showed that he was carrying on an inward
debate.

"When did this change begin?" said he, looking at Bulstrode.

"I did not watch by him last night," said Bulstrode.  "I was over-worn,
and left him under Mrs. Abel's care.  She said that he sank into sleep
between three and four o'clock.  When I came in before eight he was
nearly in this condition."

Lydgate did not ask another question, but watched in silence until he
said, "It's all over."

This morning Lydgate was in a state of recovered hope and freedom.  He
had set out on his work with all his old animation, and felt himself
strong enough to bear all the deficiencies of his married life.  And he
was conscious that Bulstrode had been a benefactor to him.  But he was
uneasy about this case.  He had not expected it to terminate as it had
done.  Yet he hardly knew how to put a question on the subject to
Bulstrode without appearing to insult him; and if he examined the
housekeeper--why, the man was dead.  There seemed to be no use in
implying that somebody's ignorance or imprudence had killed him.  And
after all, he himself might be wrong.

He and Bulstrode rode back to Middlemarch together, talking of many
things--chiefly cholera and the chances of the Reform Bill in the House
of Lords, and the firm resolve of the political Unions.  Nothing was
said about Raffles, except that Bulstrode mentioned the necessity of
having a grave for him in Lowick churchyard, and observed that, so far
as he knew, the poor man had no connections, except Rigg, whom he had
stated to be unfriendly towards him.

On returning home Lydgate had a visit from Mr. Farebrother.  The Vicar
had not been in the town the day before, but the news that there was an
execution in Lydgate's house had got to Lowick by the evening, having
been carried by Mr. Spicer, shoemaker and parish-clerk, who had it from
his brother, the respectable bell-hanger in Lowick Gate.  Since that
evening when Lydgate had come down from the billiard room with Fred
Vincy, Mr. Farebrother's thoughts about him had been rather gloomy.
Playing at the Green Dragon once or oftener might have been a trifle in
another man; but in Lydgate it was one of several signs that he was
getting unlike his former self.  He was beginning to do things for
which he had formerly even an excessive scorn.  Whatever certain
dissatisfactions in marriage, which some silly tinklings of gossip had
given him hints of, might have to do with this change, Mr. Farebrother
felt sure that it was chiefly connected with the debts which were being
more and more distinctly reported, and he began to fear that any notion
of Lydgate's having resources or friends in the background must be
quite illusory.  The rebuff he had met with in his first attempt to win
Lydgate's confidence, disinclined him to a second; but this news of the
execution being actually in the house, determined the Vicar to overcome
his reluctance.

Lydgate had just dismissed a poor patient, in whom he was much
interested, and he came forward to put out his hand--with an open
cheerfulness which surprised Mr. Farebrother.  Could this too be a
proud rejection of sympathy and help?  Never mind; the sympathy and
help should be offered.

"How are you, Lydgate?  I came to see you because I had heard something
which made me anxious about you," said the Vicar, in the tone of a good
brother, only that there was no reproach in it.  They were both seated
by this time, and Lydgate answered immediately--

"I think I know what you mean.  You had heard that there was an
execution in the house?"

"Yes; is it true?"

"It was true," said Lydgate, with an air of freedom, as if he did not
mind talking about the affair now.  "But the danger is over; the debt
is paid.  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.

    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.

When the discourse was at this point of animation, came up Mr. Frank
Hawley.  He was not a man to compromise his dignity by lounging at the
Green Dragon, but happening to pass along the High Street and seeing
Bambridge on the other side, he took some of his long strides across to
ask the horsedealer whether he had found the first-rate gig-horse which
he had engaged to look for.  Mr. Hawley was requested to wait until he
had seen a gray selected at Bilkley: if that did not meet his wishes to
a hair, Bambridge did not know a horse when he saw it, which seemed to
be the highest conceivable unlikelihood.  Mr. Hawley, standing with his
back to the street, was fixing a time for looking at the gray and
seeing it tried, when a horseman passed slowly by.

"Bulstrode!" said two or three voices at once in a low tone, one of
them, which was the draper's, respectfully prefixing the "Mr.;" but
nobody having more intention in this interjectural naming than if they
had said "the Riverston coach" when that vehicle appeared in the
distance.  Mr. Hawley gave a careless glance round at Bulstrode's back,
but as Bambridge's eyes followed it he made a sarcastic grimace.

"By jingo! that reminds me," he began, lowering his voice a little, "I
picked up something else at Bilkley besides your gig-horse, Mr. Hawley.
I picked up a fine story about Bulstrode.  Do you know how he came by
his fortune?  Any gentleman wanting a bit of curious information, I can
give it him free of expense.  If everybody got their deserts, Bulstrode
might have had to say his prayers at Botany Bay."

"What do you mean?" said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his hands into his
pockets, and pushing a little forward under the archway.  If Bulstrode
should turn out to be a rascal, Frank Hawley had a prophetic soul.

"I had it from a party who was an old chum of Bulstrode's.  I'll tell
you where I first picked him up," said Bambridge, with a sudden gesture
of his fore-finger. "He was at Larcher's sale, but I knew nothing of
him then--he slipped through my fingers--was after Bulstrode, no
doubt.  He tells me he can tap Bulstrode to any amount, knows all his
secrets.  However, he blabbed to me at Bilkley: he takes a stiff glass.
Damme if I think he meant to turn king's evidence; but he's that sort
of bragging fellow, the bragging runs over hedge and ditch with him,
till he'd brag of a spavin as if it 'ud fetch money.  A man should know
when to pull up." Mr. Bambridge made this remark with an air of
disgust, satisfied that his own bragging showed a fine sense of the
marketable.

"What's the man's name?  Where can he be found?" said Mr. Hawley.

"As to where he is to be found, I left him to it at the Saracen's Head;
but his name is Raffles."

"Raffles!" exclaimed Mr. Hopkins.  "I furnished his funeral yesterday.
He was buried at Lowick.  Mr. Bulstrode followed him.  A very decent
funeral."  There was a strong sensation among the listeners.  Mr.
Bambridge gave an ejaculation in which "brimstone" was the mildest
word, and Mr. Hawley, knitting his brows and bending his head forward,
exclaimed, "What?--where did the man die?"

"At Stone Court," said the draper.  "The housekeeper said he was a
relation of the master's. He came there ill on Friday."

"Why, it was on Wednesday I took a glass with him," interposed
Bambridge.

"Did any doctor attend him?" said Mr. Hawley

"Yes.  Mr. Lydgate.  Mr. Bulstrode sat up with him one night.  He died
the third morning."

"Go on, Bambridge," said Mr. Hawley, insistently.  "What did this
fellow say about Bulstrode?"

The group had already become larger, the town-clerk's presence being a
guarantee that something worth listening to was going on there; and Mr.
Bambridge delivered his narrative in the hearing of seven.  It was
mainly what we know, including the fact about Will Ladislaw, with some
local color and circumstance added: it was what Bulstrode had dreaded
the betrayal of--and hoped to have buried forever with the corpse of
Raffles--it was that haunting ghost of his earlier life which as he
rode past the archway of the Green Dragon he was trusting that
Providence had delivered him from.  Yes, Providence.  He had not
confessed to himself yet that he had done anything in the way of
contrivance to this end; he had accepted what seemed to have been
offered.  It was impossible to prove that he had done anything which
hastened the departure of that man's soul.

But this gossip about Bulstrode spread through Middlemarch like the
smell of fire.  Mr. Frank Hawley followed up his information by sending
a clerk whom he could trust to Stone Court on a pretext of inquiring
about hay, but really to gather all that could be learned about Raffles
and his illness from Mrs. Abel.  In this way it came to his knowledge
that Mr. Garth had carried the man to Stone Court in his gig; and Mr.
Hawley in consequence took an opportunity of seeing Caleb, calling at
his office to ask whether he had time to undertake an arbitration if it
were required, and then asking him incidentally about Raffles.  Caleb
was betrayed into no word injurious to Bulstrode beyond the fact which
he was forced to admit, that he had given up acting for him within the
last week.  Mr Hawley drew his inferences, and feeling convinced that
Raffles had told his story to Garth, and that Garth had given up
Bulstrode's affairs in consequence, said so a few hours later to Mr.
Toller.  The statement was passed on until it had quite lost the stamp
of an inference, and was taken as information coming straight from
Garth, so that even a diligent historian might have concluded Caleb to
be the chief publisher of Bulstrode's misdemeanors.

Mr. Hawley was not slow to perceive that there was no handle for the
law either in the revelations made by Raffles or in the circumstances
of his death.  He had himself ridden to Lowick village that he might
look at the register and talk over the whole matter with Mr.
Farebrother, who was not more surprised than the lawyer that an ugly
secret should have come to light about Bulstrode, though he had always
had justice enough in him to hinder his antipathy from turning into
conclusions.  But while they were talking another combination was
silently going forward in Mr. Farebrother's mind, which foreshadowed
what was soon to be loudly spoken of in Middlemarch as a necessary
"putting of two and two together."  With the reasons which kept
Bulstrode in dread of Raffles there flashed the thought that the dread
might have something to do with his munificence towards his medical
man; and though he resisted the suggestion that it had been consciously
accepted in any way as a bribe, he had a foreboding that this
complication of things might be of malignant effect on Lydgate's
reputation.  He perceived that Mr. Hawley knew nothing at present of
the sudden relief from debt, and he himself was careful to glide away
from all approaches towards the subject.

"Well," he said, with a deep breath, wanting to wind up the illimitable
discussion of what might have been, though nothing could be legally
proven, "it is a strange story.  So our mercurial Ladislaw has a queer
genealogy!  A high-spirited young lady and a musical Polish patriot
made a likely enough stock for him to spring from, but I should never
have suspected a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker.  However, there's no
knowing what a mixture will turn out beforehand.  Some sorts of dirt
serve to clarify."

"It's just what I should have expected," said Mr. Hawley, mounting his
horse.  "Any cursed alien blood, Jew, Corsican, or Gypsy."

"I know he's one of your black sheep, Hawley.  But he is really a
disinterested, unworldly fellow," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling.

"Ay, ay, that is your Whiggish twist," said Mr. Hawley, who had been in
the habit of saying apologetically that Farebrother was such a damned
pleasant good-hearted fellow you would mistake him for a Tory.

Mr. Hawley rode home without thinking of Lydgate's attendance on
Raffles in any other light than as a piece of evidence on the side of
Bulstrode.  But the news that Lydgate had all at once become able not
only to get rid of the execution in his house but to pay all his debts
in Middlemarch was spreading fast, gathering round it conjectures and
comments which gave it new body and impetus, and soon filling the ears
of other persons besides Mr. Hawley, who were not slow to see a
significant relation between this sudden command of money and
Bulstrode's desire to stifle the scandal of Raffles.  That the money
came from Bulstrode would infallibly have been guessed even if there
had been no direct evidence of it; for it had beforehand entered into
the gossip about Lydgate's affairs, that neither his father-in-law nor
his own family would do anything for him, and direct evidence was
furnished not only by a clerk at the Bank, but by innocent Mrs.
Bulstrode herself, who mentioned the loan to Mrs. Plymdale, who
mentioned it to her daughter-in-law of the house of Toller, who
mentioned it generally.  The business was felt to be so public and
important that it required dinners to feed it, and many invitations
were just then issued and accepted on the strength of this scandal
concerning Bulstrode and Lydgate; wives, widows, and single ladies took
their work and went out to tea oftener than usual; and all public
conviviality, from the Green Dragon to Dollop's, gathered a zest which
could not be won from the question whether the Lords would throw out
the Reform Bill.

For hardly anybody doubted that some scandalous reason or other was at
the bottom of Bulstrode's liberality to Lydgate.  Mr. Hawley indeed, in
the first instance, invited a select party, including the two
physicians, with Mr Toller and Mr. Wrench, expressly to hold a close
discussion as to the probabilities of Raffles's illness, reciting to
them all the particulars which had been gathered from Mrs. Abel in
connection with Lydgate's certificate, that the death was due to
delirium tremens; and the medical gentlemen, who all stood
undisturbedly on the old paths in relation to this disease, declared
that they could see nothing in these particulars which could be
transformed into a positive ground of suspicion.  But the moral grounds
of suspicion remained: the strong motives Bulstrode clearly had for
wishing to be rid of Raffles, and the fact that at this critical moment
he had given Lydgate the help which he must for some time have known
the need for; the disposition, moreover, to believe that Bulstrode
would be unscrupulous, and the absence of any indisposition to believe
that Lydgate might be as easily bribed as other haughty-minded men when
they have found themselves in want of money.  Even if the money had
been given merely to make him hold his tongue about the scandal of
Bulstrode's earlier life, the fact threw an odious light on Lydgate,
who had long been sneered at as making himself subservient to the
banker for the sake of working himself into predominance, and
discrediting the elder members of his profession.  Hence, in spite of
the negative as to any direct sign of guilt in relation to the death at
Stone Court, Mr. Hawley's select party broke up with the sense that the
affair had "an ugly look."

But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt, which was enough to
keep up much head-shaking and biting innuendo even among substantial
professional seniors, had for the general mind all the superior power
of mystery over fact.  Everybody liked better to conjecture how the
thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more
confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the
incompatible.  Even the more definite scandal concerning Bulstrode's
earlier life was, for some minds, melted into the mass of mystery, as
so much lively metal to be poured out in dialogue, and to take such
fantastic shapes as heaven pleased.

This was the tone of thought chiefly sanctioned by Mrs. Dollop, the
spirited landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane, who had often to
resist the shallow pragmatism of customers disposed to think that their
reports from the outer world were of equal force with what had "come
up" in her mind.  How it had been brought to her she didn't know, but
it was there before her as if it had been "scored with the chalk on the
chimney-board--" as Bulstrode should say, "his inside was _that black_
as if the hairs of his head knowed the thoughts of his heart, he'd tear
'em up by the roots."

"That's odd," said Mr. Limp, a meditative shoemaker, with weak eyes and
a piping voice.  "Why, I read in the 'Trumpet' that was what the Duke
of Wellington said when he turned his coat and went over to the Romans."

"Very like," said Mrs. Dollop.  "If one raskill said it, it's more
reason why another should.  But hypo_crite_ as he's been, and holding
things with that high hand, as there was no parson i' the country good
enough for him, he was forced to take Old Harry into his counsel, and
Old Harry's been too many for him."

"Ay, ay, he's a 'complice you can't send out o' the country," said Mr.
Crabbe, the glazier, who gathered much news and groped among it dimly.
"But by what I can make out, there's them says Bulstrode was for
running away, for fear o' being found out, before now."

"He'll be drove away, whether or no," said Mr. Dill, the barber, who
had just dropped in.  "I shaved Fletcher, Hawley's clerk, this
morning--he's got a bad finger--and he says they're all of one mind to
get rid of Bulstrode.  Mr. Thesiger is turned against him, and wants
him out o' the parish.  And there's gentlemen in this town says they'd
as soon dine with a fellow from the hulks.  'And a deal sooner I
would,' says Fletcher; 'for what's more against one's stomach than a
man coming and making himself bad company with his religion, and giving
out as the Ten Commandments are not enough for him, and all the while
he's worse than half the men at the tread-mill?' Fletcher said so
himself."

"It'll be a bad thing for the town though, if Bulstrode's money goes
out of it," said Mr. Limp, quaveringly.

"Ah, there's better folks spend their money worse," said a firm-voiced
dyer, whose crimson hands looked out of keeping with his good-natured
face.

"But he won't keep his money, by what I can make out," said the
glazier.  "Don't they say as there's somebody can strip it off him?  By
what I can understan', they could take every penny off him, if they
went to lawing."

"No such thing!" said the barber, who felt himself a little above his
company at Dollop's, but liked it none the worse.  "Fletcher says it's
no such thing.  He says they might prove over and over again whose
child this young Ladislaw was, and they'd do no more than if they
proved I came out of the Fens--he couldn't touch a penny."

"Look you there now!" said Mrs. Dollop, indignantly.  "I thank the Lord
he took my children to Himself, if that's all the law can do for the
motherless.  Then by that, it's o' no use who your father and mother
is.  But as to listening to what one lawyer says without asking
another--I wonder at a man o' your cleverness, Mr. Dill.  It's well
known there's always two sides, if no more; else who'd go to law, I
should like to know?  It's a poor tale, with all the law as there is up
and down, if it's no use proving whose child you are.  Fletcher may say
that if he likes, but I say, don't Fletcher _me_!"

Mr. Dill affected to laugh in a complimentary way at Mrs. Dollop, as a
woman who was more than a match for the lawyers; being disposed to
submit to much twitting from a landlady who had a long score against
him.

"If they come to lawing, and it's all true as folks say, there's more
to be looked to nor money," said the glazier.  "There's this poor
creetur as is dead and gone; by what I can make out, he'd seen the day
when he was a deal finer gentleman nor Bulstrode."

"Finer gentleman!  I'll warrant him," said Mrs. Dollop; "and a far
personabler man, by what I can hear.  As I said when Mr. Baldwin, the
tax-gatherer, comes in, a-standing where you sit, and says, 'Bulstrode
got all his money as he brought into this town by thieving and
swindling,'--I said, 'You don't make me no wiser, Mr. Baldwin: it's set
my blood a-creeping to look at him ever sin' here he came into
Slaughter Lane a-wanting to buy the house over my head: folks don't
look the color o' the dough-tub and stare at you as if they wanted to
see into your backbone for nothingk.'  That was what I said, and Mr.
Baldwin can bear me witness."

"And in the rights of it too," said Mr. Crabbe.  "For by what I can
make out, this Raffles, as they call him, was a lusty, fresh-colored
man as you'd wish to see, and the best o' company--though dead he lies
in Lowick churchyard sure enough; and by what I can understan', there's
them knows more than they _should_ know about how he got there."

"I'll believe you!" said Mrs. Dallop, with a touch of scorn at Mr.
Crabbe's apparent dimness.  "When a man's been 'ticed to a lone house,
and there's them can pay for hospitals and nurses for half the
country-side choose to be sitters-up night and day, and nobody to come
near but a doctor as is known to stick at nothingk, and as poor as he
can hang together, and after that so flush o' money as he can pay off
Mr. Byles the butcher as his bill has been running on for the best o'
joints since last Michaelmas was a twelvemonth--I don't want anybody to
come and tell me as there's been more going on nor the Prayer-book's
got a service for--I don't want to stand winking and blinking and
thinking."

Mrs. Dollop looked round with the air of a landlady accustomed to
dominate her company.  There was a chorus of adhesion from the more
courageous; but Mr. Limp, after taking a draught, placed his flat hands
together and pressed them hard between his knees, looking down at them
with blear-eyed contemplation, as if the scorching power of Mrs.
Dollop's speech had quite dried up and nullified his wits until they
could be brought round again by further moisture.

"Why shouldn't they dig the man up and have the Crowner?" said the
dyer.  "It's been done many and many's the time.  If there's been foul
play they might find it out."

"Not they, Mr. Jonas!" said Mrs Dollop, emphatically.  "I know what
doctors are.  They're a deal too cunning to be found out.  And this
Doctor Lydgate that's been for cutting up everybody before the breath
was well out o' their body--it's plain enough what use he wanted to
make o' looking into respectable people's insides.  He knows drugs, you
may be sure, as you can neither smell nor see, neither before they're
swallowed nor after.  Why, I've seen drops myself ordered by Doctor
Gambit, as is our club doctor and a good charikter, and has brought
more live children into the world nor ever another i' Middlemarch--I
say I've seen drops myself as made no difference whether they was in
the glass or out, and yet have griped you the next day.  So I'll leave
your own sense to judge.  Don't tell me!  All I say is, it's a mercy
they didn't take this Doctor Lydgate on to our club.  There's many a
mother's child might ha' rued it."

The heads of this discussion at "Dollop's" had been the common theme
among all classes in the town, had been carried to Lowick Parsonage on
one side and to Tipton Grange on the other, had come fully to the ears
of the Vincy family, and had been discussed with sad reference to "poor
Harriet" by all Mrs. Bulstrode's friends, before Lydgate knew
distinctly why people were looking strangely at him, and before
Bulstrode himself suspected the betrayal of his secrets.  He had not
been accustomed to very cordial relations with his neighbors, and hence
he could not miss the signs of cordiality; moreover, he had been taking
journeys on business of various kinds, having now made up his mind that
he need not quit Middlemarch, and feeling able consequently to
determine on matters which he had before left in suspense.

"We will make a journey to Cheltenham in the course of a month or two,"
he had said to his wife.  "There are great spiritual advantages to be
had in that town along with the air and the waters, and six weeks there
will be eminently refreshing to us."

He really believed in the spiritual advantages, and meant that his life
henceforth should be the more devoted because of those later sins which
he represented to himself as hypothetic, praying hypothetically for
their pardon:--"if I have herein transgressed."

As to the Hospital, he avoided saying anything further to Lydgate,
fearing to manifest a too sudden change of plans immediately on the
death of Raffles.  In his secret soul he believed that Lydgate
suspected his orders to have been intentionally disobeyed, and
suspecting this he must also suspect a motive. But nothing had been
betrayed to him as to the history of Raffles, and Bulstrode was anxious
not to do anything which would give emphasis to his undefined
suspicions.  As to any certainty that a particular method of treatment
would either save or kill, Lydgate himself was constantly arguing
against such dogmatism; he had no right to speak, and he had every
motive for being silent.  Hence Bulstrode felt himself providentially
secured.  The only incident he had strongly winced under had been an
occasional encounter with Caleb Garth, who, however, had raised his hat
with mild gravity.

Meanwhile, on the part of the principal townsmen a strong determination
was growing against him.

A meeting was to be held in the Town-Hall on a sanitary question which
had risen into pressing importance by the occurrence of a cholera case
in the town.  Since the Act of Parliament, which had been hurriedly
passed, authorizing assessments for sanitary measures, there had been a
Board for the superintendence of such measures appointed in
Middlemarch, and much cleansing and preparation had been concurred in
by Whigs and Tories.  The question now was, whether a piece of ground
outside the town should be secured as a burial-ground by means of
assessment or by private subscription.  The meeting was to be open, and
almost everybody of importance in the town was expected to be there.

Mr. Bulstrode was a member of the Board, and just before twelve o'clock
he started from the Bank with the intention of urging the plan of
private subscription.  Under the hesitation of his projects, he had for
some time kept himself in the background, and he felt that he should
this morning resume his old position as a man of action and influence
in the public affairs of the town where he expected to end his days.
Among the various persons going in the same direction, he saw Lydgate;
they joined, talked over the object of the meeting, and entered it
together.

It seemed that everybody of mark had been earlier than they.  But there
were still spaces left near the head of the large central table, and
they made their way thither.  Mr. Farebrother sat opposite, not far
from Mr. Hawley; all the medical men were there; Mr. Thesiger was in
the chair, and Mr. Brooke of Tipton was on his right hand.

Lydgate noticed a peculiar interchange of glances when he and Bulstrode
took their seats.

After the business had been fully opened by the chairman, who pointed
out the advantages of purchasing by subscription a piece of ground
large enough to be ultimately used as a general cemetery, Mr.
Bulstrode, whose rather high-pitched but subdued and fluent voice the
town was used to at meetings of this sort, rose and asked leave to
deliver his opinion.  Lydgate could see again the peculiar interchange
of glances before Mr. Hawley started up, and said in his firm resonant
voice, "Mr. Chairman, I request that before any one delivers his
opinion on this point I may be permitted to speak on a question of
public feeling, which not only by myself, but by many gentlemen
present, is regarded as preliminary."

Mr. Hawley's mode of speech, even when public decorum repressed his
"awful language," was formidable in its curtness and self-possession.
Mr. Thesiger sanctioned the request, Mr. Bulstrode sat down, and Mr.
Hawley continued.

"In what I have to say, Mr. Chairman, I am not speaking simply on my
own behalf: I am speaking with the concurrence and at the express
request of no fewer than eight of my fellow-townsmen, who are
immediately around us.  It is our united sentiment that Mr. Bulstrode
should be called upon--and I do now call upon him--to resign public
positions which he holds not simply as a tax-payer, but as a gentleman
among gentlemen.  There are practices and there are acts which, owing
to circumstances, the law cannot visit, though they may be worse than
many things which are legally punishable.  Honest men and gentlemen, if
they don't want the company of people who perpetrate such acts, have
got to defend themselves as they best can, and that is what I and the
friends whom I may call my clients in this affair are determined to do.
I don't say that Mr. Bulstrode has been guilty of shameful acts, but I
call upon him either publicly to deny and confute the scandalous
statements made against him by a man now dead, and who died in his
house--the statement that he was for many years engaged in nefarious
practices, and that he won his fortune by dishonest procedures--or else
to withdraw from positions which could only have been allowed him as a
gentleman among gentlemen."

All eyes in the room were turned on Mr. Bulstrode, who, since the first
mention of his name, had been going through a crisis of feeling almost
too violent for his delicate frame to support.  Lydgate, who himself
was undergoing a shock as from the terrible practical interpretation of
some faint augury, felt, nevertheless, that his own movement of
resentful hatred was checked by that instinct of the Healer which
thinks first of bringing rescue or relief to the sufferer, when he
looked at the shrunken misery of Bulstrode's livid face.

The quick vision that his life was after all a failure, that he was a
dishonored man, and must quail before the glance of those towards whom
he had habitually assumed the attitude of a reprover--that God had
disowned him before men and left him unscreened to the triumphant scorn
of those who were glad to have their hatred justified--the sense of
utter futility in that equivocation with his conscience in dealing with
the life of his accomplice, an equivocation which now turned venomously
upon him with the full-grown fang of a discovered lie:--all this
rushed through him like the agony of terror which fails to kill, and
leaves the ears still open to the returning wave of execration.  The
sudden sense of exposure after the re-established sense of safety
came--not to the coarse organization of a criminal but to--the
susceptible nerve of a man whose intensest being lay in such mastery
and predominance as the conditions of his life had shaped for him.

But in that intense being lay the strength of reaction.  Through all
his bodily infirmity there ran a tenacious nerve of ambitious
self-preserving will, which had continually leaped out like a flame,
scattering all doctrinal fears, and which, even while he sat an object
of compassion for the merciful, was beginning to stir and glow under
his ashy paleness.  Before the last words were out of Mr. Hawley's
mouth, Bulstrode felt that he should answer, and that his answer would
be a retort.  He dared not get up and say, "I am not guilty, the whole
story is false"--even if he had dared this, it would have seemed to
him, under his present keen sense of betrayal, as vain as to pull, for
covering to his nakedness, a frail rag which would rend at every little
strain.

For a few moments there was total silence, while every man in the room
was looking at Bulstrode.  He sat perfectly still, leaning hard against
the back of his chair; he could not venture to rise, and when he began
to speak he pressed his hands upon the seat on each side of him.  But
his voice was perfectly audible, though hoarser than usual, and his
words were distinctly pronounced, though he paused between sentence as
if short of breath.  He said, turning first toward Mr. Thesiger, and
then looking at Mr. Hawley--

"I protest before you, sir, as a Christian minister, against the
sanction of proceedings towards me which are dictated by virulent
hatred.  Those who are hostile to me are glad to believe any libel
uttered by a loose tongue against me.  And their consciences become
strict against me.  Say that the evil-speaking of which I am to be made
the victim accuses me of malpractices--" here Bulstrode's voice rose
and took on a more biting accent, till it seemed a low cry--"who shall
be my accuser?  Not men whose own lives are unchristian, nay,
scandalous--not men who themselves use low instruments to carry out
their ends--whose profession is a tissue of chicanery--who have been
spending their income on their own sensual enjoyments, while I have
been devoting mine to advance the best objects with regard to this life
and the next."

After the word chicanery there was a growing noise, half of murmurs and
half of hisses, while four persons started up at once--Mr. Hawley, Mr.
Toller, Mr. Chichely, and Mr. Hackbutt; but Mr. Hawley's outburst was
instantaneous, and left the others behind in silence.

"If you mean me, sir, I call you and every one else to the inspection
of my professional life.  As to Christian or unchristian, I repudiate
your canting palavering Christianity; and as to the way in which I
spend my income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves and cheat
offspring of their due inheritance in order to support religion and set
myself up as a saintly Killjoy.  I affect no niceness of conscience--I
have not found any nice standards necessary yet to measure your actions
by, sir.  And I again call upon you to enter into satisfactory
explanations concerning the scandals against you, or else to withdraw
from posts in which we at any rate decline you as a colleague.  I say,
sir, we decline to co-operate with a man whose character is not cleared
from infamous lights cast upon it, not only by reports but by recent
actions."

"Allow me, Mr. Hawley," said the chairman; and Mr. Hawley, still
fuming, bowed half impatiently, and sat down with his hands thrust deep
in his pockets.

"Mr. Bulstrode, it is not desirable, I think, to prolong the present
discussion," said Mr. Thesiger, turning to the pallid trembling man; "I
must so far concur with what has fallen from Mr. Hawley in expression
of a general feeling, as to think it due to your Christian profession
that you should clear yourself, if possible, from unhappy aspersions.
I for my part should be willing to give you full opportunity and
hearing.  But I must say that your present attitude is painfully
inconsistent with those principles which you have sought to identify
yourself with, and for the honor of which I am bound to care.  I
recommend you at present, as your clergyman, and one who hopes for your
reinstatement in respect, to quit the room, and avoid further hindrance
to business."

Bulstrode, after a moment's hesitation, took his hat from the floor and
slowly rose, but he grasped the corner of the chair so totteringly that
Lydgate felt sure there was not strength enough in him to walk away
without support.  What could he do?  He could not see a man sink close
to him for want of help.  He rose and gave his arm to Bulstrode, and in
that way led him out of the room; yet this act, which might have been
one of gentle duty and pure compassion, was at this moment unspeakably
bitter to him.  It seemed as if he were putting his sign-manual to that
association of himself with Bulstrode, of which he now saw the full
meaning as it must have presented itself to other minds.  He now felt
the conviction that this man who was leaning tremblingly on his arm,
had given him the thousand pounds as a bribe, and that somehow the
treatment of Raffles had been tampered with from an evil motive.  The
inferences were closely linked enough; the town knew of the loan,
believed it to be a bribe, and believed that he took it as a bribe.

Poor Lydgate, his mind struggling under the terrible clutch of this
revelation, was all the while morally forced to take Mr. Bulstrode to
the Bank, send a man off for his carriage, and wait to accompany him
home.

Meanwhile the business of the meeting was despatched, and fringed off
into eager discussion among various groups concerning this affair of
Bulstrode--and Lydgate.

Mr. Brooke, who had before heard only imperfect hints of it, and was
very uneasy that he had "gone a little too far" in countenancing
Bulstrode, now got himself fully informed, and felt some benevolent
sadness in talking to Mr. Farebrother about the ugly light in which
Lydgate had come to be regarded.  Mr. Farebrother was going to walk
back to Lowick.

"Step into my carriage," said Mr. Brooke.  "I am going round to see
Mrs. Casaubon.  She was to come back from Yorkshire last night.  She
will like to see me, you know."

So they drove along, Mr. Brooke chatting with good-natured hope that
there had not really been anything black in Lydgate's behavior--a
young fellow whom he had seen to be quite above the common mark, when
he brought a letter from his uncle Sir Godwin.  Mr. Farebrother said
little: he was deeply mournful: with a keen perception of human
weakness, he could not be confident that under the pressure of
humiliating needs Lydgate had not fallen below himself.

When the carriage drove up to the gate of the Manor, Dorothea was out
on the gravel, and came to greet them.

"Well, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have just come from a meeting--a
sanitary meeting, you know."

"Was Mr. Lydgate there?" said Dorothea, who looked full of health and
animation, and stood with her head bare under the gleaming April
lights.  "I want to see him and have a great consultation with him
about the Hospital.  I have engaged with Mr. Bulstrode to do so."

"Oh, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have been hearing bad news--bad
news, you know."

They walked through the garden towards the churchyard gate, Mr.
Farebrother wanting to go on to the parsonage; and Dorothea heard the
whole sad story.

She listened with deep interest, and begged to hear twice over the
facts and impressions concerning Lydgate.  After a short silence,
pausing at the churchyard gate, and addressing Mr. Farebrother, she
said energetically--

"You don't believe that Mr. Lydgate is guilty of anything base?  I will
not believe it.  Let us find out the truth and clear him!"

BOOK VIII.

SUNSET AND SUNRISE.

    Full souls are double mirrors, making still
    An endless vista of fair things before,
    Repeating things behind.

Dorothea's impetuous generosity, which would have leaped at once to the
vindication of Lydgate from the suspicion of having accepted money as a
bribe, underwent a melancholy check when she came to consider all the
circumstances of the case by the light of Mr. Farebrother's experience.

"It is a delicate matter to touch," he said.  "How can we begin to
inquire into it?  It must be either publicly by setting the magistrate
and coroner to work, or privately by questioning Lydgate.  As to the
first proceeding there is no solid ground to go upon, else Hawley would
have adopted it; and as to opening the subject with Lydgate, I confess
I should shrink from it.  He would probably take it as a deadly insult.
I have more than once experienced the difficulty of speaking to him on
personal matters.  And--one should know the truth about his conduct
beforehand, to feel very confident of a good result."

"I feel convinced that his conduct has not been guilty: I believe that
people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are,"
said Dorothea.  Some of her intensest experience in the last two years
had set her mind strongly in opposition to any unfavorable construction
of others; and for the first time she felt rather discontented with Mr.
Farebrother.  She disliked this cautious weighing of consequences,
instead of an ardent faith in efforts of justice and mercy, which would
conquer by their emotional force.  Two days afterwards, he was dining
at the Manor with her uncle and the Chettams, and when the dessert was
standing uneaten, the servants were out of the room, and Mr. Brooke was
nodding in a nap, she returned to the subject with renewed vivacity.

"Mr. Lydgate would understand that if his friends hear a calumny about
him their first wish must be to justify him.  What do we live for, if
it is not to make life less difficult to each other?  I cannot be
indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in _my_ trouble,
and attended me in my illness."

Dorothea's tone and manner were not more energetic than they had been
when she was at the head of her uncle's table nearly three years
before, and her experience since had given her more right to express a
decided opinion.  But Sir James Chettam was no longer the diffident and
acquiescent suitor: he was the anxious brother-in-law, with a devout
admiration for his sister, but with a constant alarm lest she should
fall under some new illusion almost as bad as marrying Casaubon.  He
smiled much less; when he said "Exactly" it was more often an
introduction to a dissentient opinion than in those submissive bachelor
days; and Dorothea found to her surprise that she had to resolve not to
be afraid of him--all the more because he was really her best friend.
He disagreed with her now.

"But, Dorothea," he said, remonstrantly, "you can't undertake to manage
a man's life for him in that way.  Lydgate must know--at least he will
soon come to know how he stands.  If he can clear himself, he will.  He
must act for himself."

"I think his friends must wait till they find an opportunity," added
Mr. Farebrother.  "It is possible--I have often felt so much weakness
in myself that I can conceive even a man of honorable disposition, such
as I have always believed Lydgate to be, succumbing to such a
temptation as that of accepting money which was offered more or less
indirectly as a bribe to insure his silence about scandalous facts long
gone by.  I say, I can conceive this, if he were under the pressure of
hard circumstances--if he had been harassed as I feel sure Lydgate has
been.  I would not believe anything worse of him except under stringent
proof.  But there is the terrible Nemesis following on some errors,
that it is always possible for those who like it to interpret them into
a crime: there is no proof in favor of the man outside his own
consciousness and assertion."

"Oh, how cruel!" said Dorothea, clasping her hands.  "And would you not
like to be the one person who believed in that man's innocence, if the
rest of the world belied him?  Besides, there is a man's character
beforehand to speak for him."

"But, my dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling gently at
her ardor, "character is not cut in marble--it is not something solid
and unalterable.  It is something living and changing, and may become
diseased as our bodies do."

"Then it may be rescued and healed," said Dorothea "I should not be
afraid of asking Mr. Lydgate to tell me the truth, that I might help
him.  Why should I be afraid?  Now that I am not to have the land,
James, I might do as Mr. Bulstrode proposed, and take his place in
providing for the Hospital; and I have to consult Mr. Lydgate, to know
thoroughly what are the prospects of doing good by keeping up the
present plans.  There is the best opportunity in the world for me to
ask for his confidence; and he would be able to tell me things which
might make all the circumstances clear.  Then we would all stand by him
and bring him out of his trouble.  People glorify all sorts of bravery
except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest
neighbors."  Dorothea's eyes had a moist brightness in them, and the
changed tones of her voice roused her uncle, who began to listen.

"It is true that a woman may venture on some efforts of sympathy which
would hardly succeed if we men undertook them," said Mr. Farebrother,
almost converted by Dorothea's ardor.

"Surely, a woman is bound to be cautious and listen to those who know
the world better than she does."  said Sir James, with his little
frown.  "Whatever you do in the end, Dorothea, you should really keep
back at present, and not volunteer any meddling with this Bulstrode
business.  We don't know yet what may turn up.  You must agree with
me?" he ended, looking at Mr. Farebrother.

"I do think it would be better to wait," said the latter.

"Yes, yes, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, not quite knowing at what point
the discussion had arrived, but coming up to it with a contribution
which was generally appropriate.  "It is easy to go too far, you know.
You must not let your ideas run away with you.  And as to being in a
hurry to put money into schemes--it won't do, you know.  Garth has
drawn me in uncommonly with repairs, draining, that sort of thing: I'm
uncommonly out of pocket with one thing or another.  I must pull up.
As for you, Chettam, you are spending a fortune on those oak fences
round your demesne."

Dorothea, submitting uneasily to this discouragement, went with Celia
into the library, which was her usual drawing-room.

"Now, Dodo, do listen to what James says," said Celia, "else you will
be getting into a scrape.  You always did, and you always will, when
you set about doing as you please.  And I think it is a mercy now after
all that you have got James to think for you.  He lets you have your
plans, only he hinders you from being taken in.  And that is the good
of having a brother instead of a husband.  A husband would not let you
have your plans."

"As if I wanted a husband!" said Dorothea.  "I only want not to have my
feelings checked at every turn."  Mrs. Casaubon was still undisciplined
enough to burst into angry tears.

"Now, really, Dodo," said Celia, with rather a deeper guttural than
usual, "you _are_ contradictory: first one thing and then another.  You
used to submit to Mr. Casaubon quite shamefully: I think you would have
given up ever coming to see me if he had asked you."

"Of course I submitted to him, because it was my duty; it was my
feeling for him," said Dorothea, looking through the prism of her tears.

"Then why can't you think it your duty to submit a little to what James
wishes?" said Celia, with a sense of stringency in her argument.
"Because he only wishes what is for your own good.  And, of course, men
know best about everything, except what women know better." Dorothea
laughed and forgot her tears.

"Well, I mean about babies and those things," explained Celia.  "I
should not give up to James when I knew he was wrong, as you used to do
to Mr. Casaubon."

    Pity the laden one; this wandering woe
    May visit you and me.

When Lydgate had allayed Mrs. Bulstrode's anxiety by telling her that
her husband had been seized with faintness at the meeting, but that he
trusted soon to see him better and would call again the next day,
unless she sent for him earlier, he went directly home, got on his
horse, and rode three miles out of the town for the sake of being out
of reach.

He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if raging under
the pain of stings: he was ready to curse the day on which he had come
to Middlemarch.  Everything that bad happened to him there seemed a
mere preparation for this hateful fatality, which had come as a blight
on his honorable ambition, and must make even people who had only
vulgar standards regard his reputation as irrevocably damaged.  In such
moments a man can hardly escape being unloving.  Lydgate thought of
himself as the sufferer, and of others as the agents who had injured
his lot.  He had meant everything to turn out differently; and others
had thrust themselves into his life and thwarted his purposes.  His
marriage seemed an unmitigated calamity; and he was afraid of going to
Rosamond before he had vented himself in this solitary rage, lest the
mere sight of her should exasperate him and make him behave
unwarrantably.  There are episodes in most men's lives in which their
highest qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the objects
that fill their inward vision: Lydgate's tenderheartedness was present
just then only as a dread lest he should offend against it, not as an
emotion that swayed him to tenderness.  For he was very miserable.
Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life--the life
which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it--can
understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into
the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

How was he to live on without vindicating himself among people who
suspected him of baseness?  How could he go silently away from
Middlemarch as if he were retreating before a just condemnation?  And
yet how was he to set about vindicating himself?

For that scene at the meeting, which he had just witnessed, although it
had told him no particulars, had been enough to make his own situation
thoroughly clear to him.  Bulstrode had been in dread of scandalous
disclosures on the part of Raffles.  Lydgate could now construct all
the probabilities of the case.  "He was afraid of some betrayal in my
hearing: all he wanted was to bind me to him by a strong obligation:
that was why he passed on a sudden from hardness to liberality.  And he
may have tampered with the patient--he may have disobeyed my orders.  I
fear he did.  But whether he did or not, the world believes that he
somehow or other poisoned the man and that I winked at the crime, if I
didn't help in it.  And yet--and yet he may not be guilty of the last
offence; and it is just possible that the change towards me may have
been a genuine relenting--the effect of second thoughts such as he
alleged.  What we call the 'just possible' is sometimes true and the
thing we find it easier to believe is grossly false.  In his last
dealings with this man Bulstrode may have kept his hands pure, in spite
of my suspicion to the contrary."

There was a benumbing cruelty in his position.  Even if he renounced
every other consideration than that of justifying himself--if he met
shrugs, cold glances, and avoidance as an accusation, and made a public
statement of all the facts as he knew them, who would be convinced?  It
would be playing the part of a fool to offer his own testimony on
behalf of himself, and say, "I did not take the money as a bribe."  The
circumstances would always be stronger than his assertion.  And
besides, to come forward and tell everything about himself must include
declarations about Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions of
others against him.  He must tell that he had not known of Raffles's
existence when he first mentioned his pressing need of money to
Bulstrode, and that he took the money innocently as a result of that
communication, not knowing that a new motive for the loan might have
arisen on his being called in to this man.  And after all, the
suspicion of Bulstrode's motives might be unjust.

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 I were
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.

    "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."

"And of course it is a discredit to his doctrines," said Mrs. Sprague,
who was elderly, and old-fashioned in her opinions.

"People will not make a boast of being methodistical in Middlemarch for
a good while to come."

"I think we must not set down people's bad actions to their religion,"
said falcon-faced Mrs. Plymdale, who had been listening hitherto.

"Oh, my dear, we are forgetting," said Mrs. Sprague.  "We ought not to
be talking of this before you."

"I am sure I have no reason to be partial," said Mrs. Plymdale,
coloring.  "It's true Mr. Plymdale has always been on good terms with
Mr. Bulstrode, and Harriet Vincy was my friend long before she married
him.  But I have always kept my own opinions and told her where she was
wrong, poor thing.  Still, in point of religion, I must say, Mr.
Bulstrode might have done what he has, and worse, and yet have been a
man of no religion.  I don't say that there has not been a little too
much of that--I like moderation myself.  But truth is truth.  The men
tried at the assizes are not all over-religious, I suppose."

"Well," said Mrs. Hackbutt, wheeling adroitly, "all I can say is, that
I think she ought to separate from him."

"I can't say that," said Mrs. Sprague.  "She took him for better or
worse, you know."

"But 'worse' can never mean finding out that your husband is fit for
Newgate," said Mrs. Hackbutt.  "Fancy living with such a man!  I should
expect to be poisoned."

"Yes, I think myself it is an encouragement to crime if such men are to
be taken care of and waited on by good wives," said Mrs. Tom Toller.

"And a good wife poor Harriet has been," said Mrs. Plymdale.  "She
thinks her husband the first of men.  It's true he has never denied her
anything."

"Well, we shall see what she will do," said Mrs. Hackbutt.  "I suppose
she knows nothing yet, poor creature.  I do hope and trust I shall not
see her, for I should be frightened to death lest I should say anything
about her husband.  Do you think any hint has reached her?"

"I should hardly think so," said Mrs. Tom Toller.  "We hear that he is
ill, and has never stirred out of the house since the meeting on
Thursday; but she was with her girls at church yesterday, and they had
new Tuscan bonnets.  Her own had a feather in it.  I have never seen
that her religion made any difference in her dress."

"She wears very neat patterns always," said Mrs. Plymdale, a little
stung.  "And that feather I know she got dyed a pale lavender on
purpose to be consistent.  I must say it of Harriet that she wishes to
do right."

"As to her knowing what has happened, it can't be kept from her long,"
said Mrs. Hackbutt.  "The Vincys know, for Mr. Vincy was at the
meeting.  It will be a great blow to him.  There is his daughter as
well as his sister."

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Sprague.  "Nobody supposes that Mr. Lydgate
can go on holding up his head in Middlemarch, things look so black
about the thousand pounds he took just at that man's death.  It really
makes one shudder."

"Pride must have a fall," said Mrs. Hackbutt.

"I am not so sorry for Rosamond Vincy that was as I am for her aunt,"
said Mrs. Plymdale.  "She needed a lesson."

"I suppose the Bulstrodes will go and live abroad somewhere," said Mrs.
Sprague.  "That is what is generally done when there is anything
disgraceful in a family."

"And a most deadly blow it will be to Harriet," said Mrs. Plymdale.
"If ever a woman was crushed, she will be.  I pity her from my heart.
And with all her faults, few women are better.  From a girl she had the
neatest ways, and was always good-hearted, and as open as the day.  You
might look into her drawers when you would--always the same.  And so
she has brought up Kate and Ellen.  You may think how hard it will be
for her to go among foreigners."

"The doctor says that is what he should recommend the Lydgates to do,"
said Mrs. Sprague.  "He says Lydgate ought to have kept among the
French."

"That would suit _her_ well enough, I dare say," said Mrs. Plymdale;
"there is that kind of lightness about her.  But she got that from her
mother; she never got it from her aunt Bulstrode, who always gave her
good advice, and to my knowledge would rather have had her marry
elsewhere."

Mrs. Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some complication of
feeling.  There had been not only her intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode, but
also a profitable business relation of the great Plymdale dyeing house
with Mr. Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have inclined her to
desire that the mildest view of his character should be the true one,
but on the other, made her the more afraid of seeming to palliate his
culpability.  Again, the late alliance of her family with the Tollers
had brought her in connection with the best circle, which gratified her
in every direction except in the inclination to those serious views
which she believed to be the best in another sense.  The sharp little
woman's conscience was somewhat troubled in the adjustment of these
opposing "bests," and of her griefs and satisfactions under late
events, which were likely to humble those who needed humbling, but also
to fall heavily on her old friend whose faults she would have preferred
seeing on a background of prosperity.

Poor Mrs. Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further shaken by the
oncoming tread of calamity than in the busier stirring of that secret
uneasiness which had always been present in her since the last visit of
Raffles to The Shrubs.  That the hateful man had come ill to Stone
Court, and that her husband had chosen to remain there and watch over
him, she allowed to be explained by the fact that Raffles had been
employed and aided in earlier-days, and that this made a tie of
benevolence towards him in his degraded helplessness; and she had been
since then innocently cheered by her husband's more hopeful speech
about his own health and ability to continue his attention to business.
The calm was disturbed when Lydgate had brought him home ill from the
meeting, and in spite of comforting assurances during the next few
days, she cried in private from the conviction that her husband was not
suffering from bodily illness merely, but from something that afflicted
his mind.  He would not allow her to read to him, and scarcely to sit
with him, alleging nervous susceptibility to sounds and movements; yet
she suspected that in shutting himself up in his private room he wanted
to be busy with his papers.  Something, she felt sure, had happened.
Perhaps it was some great loss of money; and she was kept in the dark.
Not daring to question her husband, she said to Lydgate, on the fifth
day after the meeting, when she had not left home except to go to
church--

"Mr. Lydgate, pray be open with me: I like to know the truth.  Has
anything happened to Mr. Bulstrode?"

"Some little nervous shock," said Lydgate, evasively.  He felt that it
was not for him to make the painful revelation.

"But what brought it on?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking directly at him
with her large dark eyes.

"There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms," said
Lydgate.  "Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people in
proportion to the delicacy of their systems.  It is often impossible to
account for the precise moment of an attack--or rather, to say why the
strength gives way at a particular moment."

Mrs. Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer.  There remained in
her the belief that some calamity had befallen her husband, of which
she was to be kept in ignorance; and it was in her nature strongly to
object to such concealment.  She begged leave for her daughters to sit
with their father, and drove into the town to pay some visits,
conjecturing that if anything were known to have gone wrong in Mr.
Bulstrode's affairs, she should see or hear some sign of it.

She called on Mrs. Thesiger, who was not at home, and then drove to
Mrs. Hackbutt's on the other side of the churchyard.  Mrs. Hackbutt saw
her coming from an up-stairs window, and remembering her former alarm
lest she should meet Mrs. Bulstrode, felt almost bound in consistency
to send word that she was not at home; but against that, there was a
sudden strong desire within her for the excitement of an interview in
which she was quite determined not to make the slightest allusion to
what was in her mind.

Hence Mrs. Bulstrode was shown into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Hackbutt
went to her, with more tightness of lip and rubbing of her hands than
was usually observable in her, these being precautions adopted against
freedom of speech.  She was resolved not to ask how Mr. Bulstrode was.

"I have not been anywhere except to church for nearly a week," said
Mrs. Bulstrode, after a few introductory remarks.  "But Mr. Bulstrode
was taken so ill at the meeting on Thursday that I have not liked to
leave the house."

Mrs. Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other
held against her chest, and let her eyes ramble over the pattern on the
rug.

"Was Mr. Hackbutt at the meeting?" persevered Mrs. Bulstrode.

"Yes, he was," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with the same attitude.  "The land
is to be bought by subscription, I believe."

"Let us hope that there will be no more cases of cholera to be buried
in it," said Mrs. Bulstrode.  "It is an awful visitation.  But I always
think Middlemarch a very healthy spot.  I suppose it is being used to
it from a child; but I never saw the town I should like to live at
better, and especially our end."

"I am sure I should be glad that you always should live at Middlemarch,
Mrs. Bulstrode," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with a slight sigh.  "Still, we
must learn to resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be cast.  Though I
am sure there will always be people in this town who will wish you
well."

Mrs. Hackbutt longed to say, "if you take my advice you will part from
your husband," but it seemed clear to her that the poor woman knew
nothing of the thunder ready to bolt on her head, and she herself could
do no more than prepare her a little.  Mrs. Bulstrode felt suddenly
rather chill and trembling: there was evidently something unusual
behind this speech of Mrs. Hackbutt's; but though she had set out with
the desire to be fully informed, she found herself unable now to pursue
her brave purpose, and turning the conversation by an inquiry about the
young Hackbutts, she soon took her leave saying that she was going to
see Mrs. Plymdale.  On her way thither she tried to imagine that there
might have been some unusually warm sparring at the meeting between Mr.
Bulstrode and some of his frequent opponents--perhaps Mr. Hackbutt
might have been one of them.  That would account for everything.

But when she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that comforting
explanation seemed no longer tenable.  "Selina" received her with a
pathetic affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers on
the commonest topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary
quarrel of which the most important consequence was a perturbation of
Mr. Bulstrode's health.  Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought that she
would sooner question Mrs. Plymdale than any one else; but she found to
her surprise that an old friend is not always the person whom it is
easiest to make a confidant of: there was the barrier of remembered
communication under other circumstances--there was the dislike of
being pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow her
the superiority.  For certain words of mysterious appropriateness that
Mrs. Plymdale let fall about her resolution never to turn her back on
her friends, convinced Mrs. Bulstrode that what had happened must be
some kind of misfortune, and instead of being able to say with her
native directness, "What is it that you have in your mind?" she found
herself anxious to get away before she had heard anything more
explicit.  She began to have an agitating certainty that the misfortune
was something more than the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitive
to the fact that Selina now, just as Mrs. Hackbutt had done before,
avoided noticing what she said about her husband, as they would have
avoided noticing a personal blemish.

She said good-by with nervous haste, and told the coachman to drive to
Mr. Vincy's warehouse.  In that short drive her dread gathered so much
force from the sense of darkness, that when she entered the private
counting-house where her brother sat at his desk, her knees trembled
and her usually florid face was deathly pale.  Something of the same
effect was produced in him by the sight of her: he rose from his seat
to meet her, took her by the hand, and said, with his impulsive
rashness--

"God help you, Harriet! you know all."

That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after.  It contained
that concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion reveals
the bias of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which will
end an intermediate struggle.  Without that memory of Raffles she might
still have thought only of monetary ruin, but now along with her
brother's look and words there darted into her mind the idea of some
guilt in her husband--then, under the working of terror came the image
of her husband exposed to disgrace--and then, after an instant of
scorching shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world, with one
leap of her heart she was at his side in mournful but unreproaching
fellowship with shame and isolation.  All this went on within her in a
mere flash of time--while she sank into the chair, and raised her eyes
to her brother, who stood over her.  "I know nothing, Walter.  What is
it?" she said, faintly.

He told her everything, very inartificially, in slow fragments, making
her aware that the scandal went much beyond proof, especially as to the
end of Raffles.

"People will talk," he said.  "Even if a man has been acquitted by a
jury, they'll talk, and nod and wink--and as far as the world goes, a
man might often as well be guilty as not.  It's a breakdown blow, and
it damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode.  I don't pretend to say what
is the truth.  I only wish we had never heard the name of either
Bulstrode or Lydgate.  You'd better have been a Vincy all your life,
and so had Rosamond."  Mrs. Bulstrode made no reply.

"But you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet.  People don't blame
_you_. And I'll stand by you whatever you make up your mind to do,"
said the brother, with rough but well-meaning affectionateness.

"Give me your arm to the carriage, Walter," said Mrs. Bulstrode.  "I
feel very weak."

And when she got home she was obliged to say to her daughter, "I am not
well, my dear; I must go and lie down.  Attend to your papa.  Leave me
in quiet.  I shall take no dinner."

She locked herself in her room.  She needed time to get used to her
maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk
steadily to the place allotted her.  A new searching light had fallen
on her husband's character, and she could not judge him leniently: the
twenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated him by
virtue of his concealments came back with particulars that made them
seem an odious deceit.  He had married her with that bad past life
hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his innocence
of the worst that was imputed to him.  Her honest ostentatious nature
made the sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any
mortal.

But this imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and habits were an odd
patchwork, had a loyal spirit within her.  The man whose prosperity she
had shared through nearly half a life, and who had unvaryingly
cherished her--now that punishment had befallen him it was not possible
to her in any sense to forsake him.  There is a forsaking which still
sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken
soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity.  She knew, when she
locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down to her
unhappy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will
mourn and not reproach.  But she needed time to gather up her strength;
she needed to sob out her farewell to all the gladness and pride of her
life.  When she had resolved to go down, she prepared herself by some
little acts which might seem mere folly to a hard onlooker; they were
her way of expressing to all spectators visible or invisible that she
had begun a new life in which she embraced humiliation.  She took off
all her ornaments and put on a plain black gown, and instead of wearing
her much-adorned cap and large bows of hair, she brushed her hair down
and put on a plain bonnet-cap, which made her look suddenly like an
early Methodist.

Bulstrode, who knew that his wife had been out and had come in saying
that she was not well, had spent the time in an agitation equal to
hers.  He had looked forward to her learning the truth from others, and
had acquiesced in that probability, as something easier to him than any
confession.  But now that he imagined the moment of her knowledge come,
he awaited the result in anguish.  His daughters had been obliged to
consent to leave him, and though he had allowed some food to be brought
to him, he had not touched it.  He felt himself perishing slowly in
unpitied misery.  Perhaps he should never see his wife's face with
affection in it again.  And if he turned to God there seemed to be no
answer but the pressure of retribution.

It was eight o'clock in the evening before the door opened and his wife
entered.  He dared not look up at her.  He sat with his eyes bent down,
and as she went towards him she thought he looked smaller--he seemed
so withered and shrunken.  A movement of new compassion and old
tenderness went through her like a great wave, and putting one hand on
his which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on his
shoulder, she said, solemnly but kindly--

"Look up, Nicholas."

He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her half amazed
for a moment: her pale face, her changed, mourning dress, the trembling
about her mouth, all said, "I know;" and her hands and eyes rested
gently on him.  He burst out crying and they cried together, she
sitting at his side.  They could not yet speak to each other of the
shame which she was bearing with him, or of the acts which had brought
it down on them.  His confession was silent, and her promise of
faithfulness was silent.  Open-minded as she was, she nevertheless
shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual
consciousness, as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire.  She could
not say, "How much is only slander and false suspicion?" and he did not
say, "I am innocent."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Raffles shows up at Bulstrode's on Christmas Eve, drunk, and Bulstrode hides him in his room. He tells his wife he is taking care of a poor man who has a claim on him. Once more he pays Raffles to leave town, but Bulstrode is emotionally going over the edge. . Mr. Garth tries to make a deal with Bulstrode to have Fred manage Stone Court, and Bulstrode is suddenly flexible, hoping to build up support in town. But suddenly, Garth visits Bulstrode to announce that he has a visitor at Stone Court, a Mr. Raffles, who is very ill. Garth resigns his position with Bulstrode because Raffles has told him about his past. Garth promises to say nothing to anyone else about it. . Bulstrode is humiliated by Garth's resignation and goes to Stone Court. Raffles is very ill and delirious; Lydgate is called in. Bulstrode says he will care for Raffles himself, and Lydgate leaves instructions he is not to have any liquor because of the heavy dosage of opium. . Meanwhile Lydgate weeps when his wife says she will go to her parents until he can provide her a proper home. Bulstrode sees Lydgate's trouble and offers him a thousand pounds, the loan that he had refused the day before. Lydgate takes it gratefully without a thought why he is giving it. . Bulstrode leaves Raffles in the care of the housekeeper but purposely does not tell her about the prohibition of liquor. When Raffles asks for liquor, she gives it to him, and he dies. Lydgate is surprised, having thought Raffles would recover. . At the Green Dragon, the gossip begins to go around putting all the pieces together, since Raffles had told all the details about Bulstrode to Mr. Bambridge a few days before his death. Farebrother figures out Bulstrode was bribing Lydgate to keep him quiet, so Lydgate is now implicated in his crime. . At a public meeting, Bulstrode is denounced by his fellow citizens, and he is helped home by Lydgate, who decides he will not retreat, since he did nothing wrong. When Dorothea hears of the scandal, she decides to help clear Lydgate's name. No one will tell Harriet Bulstrode what has happened until her brother, Mr. Vincy, tells her. She goes home, takes off her jewels, puts on black, embracing her new humility, resolving to be loyal to her husband, and they cry together over the shame. . .