Middlemarch

CHAPTER LXVIII. – CHAPTER LXXIII.

An epigraph from Daniel’s Musophilus opens this stretch of Middlemarch’s most turbulent weeks, asking what advantage virtue holds if vice wears the same mask, achieves the same ends by the same means, and affirming that the straightest path is the one that wins out in the world’s great ledger of deeds. That question hangs over the banker Nicholas Bulstrode like a curse, as he moves through the days following his desperate, failed attempt to silence his blackmailer John Raffles.

It had been on Christmas Eve that Raffles had reappeared at Bulstrode’s home, The Shrubs, loud, unmanageable, and determined to extract every farthing he could from the man who had built his fortune on the secrets Raffles held. Bulstrode had tried to keep him hidden from his wife and daughters, but the stress of the visit had left him trembling with fear that his carefully constructed pious identity would crumble. The next morning, he had driven Raffles ten miles to Ilsely, paid him a hundred pounds to stay away from Middlemarch forever, and returned home with no peace, only the gnawing certainty that the danger was not gone. He had already begun planning to quit the town, to take his wife to Cheltenham under the pretense of seeking spiritual and physical refreshment, and had struck a deal with the honest land agent Caleb Garth to tenant Stone Court to Garth’s nephew Fred Vincy, a plan that had made the kindly Garth glow with hope for the young man’s future—until Raffles, ill and destitute, had stumbled onto Stone Court, and Caleb, who had picked him up in his gig, recognized him, and went straight to Bulstrode to resign his agency, refusing to profit from or work for a man whose past was stained with deceit. Bulstrode had pleaded, but Caleb was firm: he believed Raffles’ story of Bulstrode’s misdeeds, and could not in good conscience continue their partnership.

Desperate to cover his tracks, Bulstrode called for Tertius Lydgate, the young doctor whose debts he had callously refused to help the day before, to tend to the ailing Raffles. Lydgate, his own spirits low with the threat of bailiffs in his home, examined Raffles and declared the case grave but not fatal, ordering strict quiet, no alcohol, and only moderate doses of opium to calm his delirium. Before he left, Bulstrode, his mind racing with the need to bind Lydgate to him as insurance against whatever Raffles might say, suddenly reversed himself, and offered the thousand pound loan he had previously denied. Grateful, overjoyed, and too worn down by worry to question the timing, Lydgate accepted, seeing a way to pay off his debts, save his home, and rebuild his practice. He rode home to tell Rosamond the good news, never guessing that Bulstrode’s generosity was a bribe, bought to ensure Lydgate’s silence if Raffles spoke, or to make him complicit by obligation if the blackmailer died.

That night, Bulstrode sat up with Raffles alone, his own conscience at war with his secret, desperate desire for the man to die and take his secrets to the grave. He followed Lydgate’s orders at first, but when Mrs. Abel, the housekeeper, begged for brandy to ease Raffles’ suffering, Bulstrode hesitated, then silently handed her the key to the wine cooler, and left her to watch the patient, forgetting to tell her when to stop administering the opium doses. By six the next morning, Raffles was dead. Lydgate arrived shortly after, confirmed the death, noted the half-empty opium bottle and nearly full brandy bottle by the bed, but said nothing: there was no proof of foul play, and the man’s constitution had been ruined by years of intemperance anyway. The two rode back to Middlemarch together, making small talk of cholera outbreaks and the Reform Bill’s chances in the House of Lords, neither mentioning Raffles.

Lydgate was elated to be free of debt, but his cheer was short-lived. Mr. Farebrother, the vicar who had long worried about Lydgate’s recent decline and the ruin of his practice, came to visit, and Lydgate proudly told him the debt was paid, thanks to a loan from Bulstrode. Farebrother’s smile was tight—he had long cautioned Lydgate against entangling himself with the self-righteous banker, and the sudden generosity sat uneasily with him, but he said nothing to spoil his friend’s relief.

Five days after Raffles’ funeral, the scandal exploded. It started at the Green Dragon tavern, where the horse dealer Frank Bambridge told lawyer Frank Hawley that Raffles had been bragging in Bilkley about Bulstrode’s secret past: his ill-gotten fortune, his role in disinheriting Will Ladislaw, his shady deals to seize property from his first wife’s family. Hawley sent a clerk to question Mrs. Abel at Stone Court, who let slip that Bulstrode had sat up with Raffles one night, and that Lydgate had been the attending doctor. The rumor spread like wildfire through every stratum of Middlemarch: to Lowick Parsonage, where Farebrother put two and two together and realized the loan would look like a bribe to silence Lydgate about Raffles’ treatment; to Tipton Grange, where Mr. Brooke panicked that he had countenanced a scoundrel; to the Vincy household, where Rosamond’s family dreaded the shame of being tied to the scandal; even to Mrs. Dollop’s working-class tavern, where patrons speculated that Bulstrode had poisoned Raffles and bribed Lydgate to cover it up, that the doctor had used undetectable drugs to silence the old man.

The tension boiled over at the town hall sanitary meeting, called to discuss a new burial ground for a recent cholera outbreak. Bulstrode, a member of the sanitary board, showed up planning to push for private subscription for the land, but before he could speak, Hawley stood up, backed by eight fellow townsmen, and demanded he either publicly refute Raffles’ accusations or resign all his public positions, that no honest man would work alongside a man whose character was stained with suspected nefariousness and possible murder. Bulstrode, pale and trembling, lashed back with a bitter, accusatory speech, attacking his accusers’ own moral failings, but the chairman, Mr. Thesiger, rebuked him, and ordered him to leave the room. Too weak to walk unassisted, Bulstrode leaned on Lydgate’s arm as he was led out—and in that moment, Lydgate’s blood ran cold. He realized the thousand pound loan was a bribe, that Bulstrode had probably tampered with Raffles’ treatment to silence him, that the whole town believed he was complicit. He helped Bulstrode into his carriage and waited with him until he was driven home, his own heart heavy with the knowledge that his reputation was already in tatters, no matter his innocence.