Chapter: "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."

 Most women in Middlemarch feel sorriest for the wives of Mr. Bulstrode and Lydgate, since they have to bear the brunt of their husbands' humiliation. They feel sorrier for Mrs. Bulstrode than they do for her niece, Rosamond, though, because Mrs. Bulstrode has always been a cheerful, friendly woman, while Rosamond is kind of snooty. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bulstrode has no idea what's going on - her husband is sick, and no one will tell her what happened. Finally, she goes to her brother, Mr. Vincy, and he gives her the scoop on her husband. When she gets home, she locks herself in her room for a while, to get used to the idea of living in humiliation for the rest of her life. But she's not about to abandon her husband, now that he's publicly shamed; she's too loyal for that. Once she's calmer, she puts on a mourning dress , and goes to her husband. They have a good cry together, and make an unspoken agreement to stick it out as a team.

