Middlemarch

CHAPTER XLIV.

Walking the laurel-planted plots of the Hospital, Lydgate explained to Dorothea the fight against the New Hospital: Bulstrode’s unpopularity, professional jealousy, the petty but stubborn opposition of half the town. Dorothea listened with bright eyes and pledged two hundred a year on the spot. “I wish I could awake with that knowledge every morning,” she added, with a melancholy cadence. “There seems to be so much trouble taken that one can hardly see the good of it.” That evening she told Casaubon; he acquiesced, only remarking that the sum might be disproportionate. But he felt sure she had wished to know what Lydgate had said of his health. The assurance — “She knows that I know” — only thrust further off any confidence between them. What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?

CHAPTER XLV.

The opposition to the New Fever Hospital was, like all oppositions, to be viewed in many lights. Mrs. Dollop at the Tankard in Slaughter Lane became more and more convinced that Lydgate meant to let the people die, if not to poison them, for the sake of cutting them up — Mrs. Goby of Parley Street was a known “fac” — and if that were not reason, what was? The Tankard’s Benefit Club had actually voted on whether to cashier Doctor Gambit in favour of this new resurrection-man. Then there was the matter of drugs. Lydgate did not dispense them, and had said as much, injudiciously, to Mr. Mawmsey the Top Market grocer, who went home and told Mrs. Mawmsey that the new doctor said physic was of no use. Mrs. Mawmsey, who could not get through Fair time without the pink mixture, was deeply offended. The tale travelled to Doctor Gambit, who lifted his eyebrows and observed, “How will he cure his patients, then?” Mr. Toller, of the highest practice in town, took it smilingly over Mr. Hackbutt’s dinner wine; Mr. Wrench drank freely that evening and grew sharp about the impertinence of innovators fouling their own nest. Lydgate was partly saved by what mortals rashly call good fortune. Nancy Nash, the charwoman — pronounced by Dr. Minchin to have a tumour the size of a duck’s egg — Lydgate in an undertone diagnosed as cramp and cured with a blister, and the legend roared through Churchyard Lane. Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, the auctioneer, was so flattered to be made the intelligent partner in his own pneumonia that he went about telling every one Lydgate “knew a thing or two more than the rest of the doctors.” Bulstrode meanwhile framed his plan: Lydgate to be chief medical superintendent with free authority; five directors associated with himself, voting in the ratio of their contributions, no mob of small contributors admitted. Every medical man in town refused to be a visitor. Lydgate told Bulstrode he would weather it. He took Farebrother’s two cautions that evening — keep yourself separable from Bulstrode; and, experto crede, take care not to get hampered about money — cordially, though he had lately made some debts. Home again, Rosamond at the piano, he spoke of Vesalius and his midnight grave-robbing; she shuddered and said she often wished he had not been a medical man. “Nay, Rosy, don’t say that,” said Lydgate, drawing her closer. “That is like saying you wish you had married another man.”

CHAPTER XLVI.

A Spanish proverb: Since we cannot get what we like, let us like what we can get. While Lydgate fought for medical reform, Middlemarch was caught up in the national struggle for political Reform. Lord John Russell’s measure was being debated; a new political animation stirred the town. Will Ladislaw talked to Mr. Brooke as a reason for congratulation that he had not yet tried his strength at the hustings. “Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year,” said Will. The public temper would soon be at a cometary heat. Brooke wished somebody had a pocket-borough to give him, and accepted Will’s comparison to Burke with that secret pleasure a man feels when, after long dwelling in silence, his phrase at last is noticed. It is undeniable that but for the desire to be where Dorothea was, Will would not at this time have been meditating on the needs of the English people. Town opinion was tending to confirm Mr. Casaubon’s view: Mr. Hawley said Brooke had taken him up because no man in his senses could have expected it; Mr. Keck of the Trumpet hinted that Ladislaw was crack-brained and called his speech the violence of an energumen, a word he explained to Dr. Sprague as having come up in the French Revolution. To offset this, Will led little hatless boys out to Halsell Wood at nutting-time, and stretched himself at full length on the rug in drawing-rooms, to the scandal of stricter callers. But the house where he lay most often on the rug was Lydgate’s. One evening in March, Rosamond sat at the tea-table in her cherry-coloured dress; Lydgate read the Pioneer sideways in his chair with a troubled brow; Will hummed on the rug the notes of “When first I saw thy face,” and the house spaniel looked from between his paws at the usurper with silent but strong objection. They sparred on. Lydgate called political writers cry-babies who exalted men who were part of the very disease; Will countered that one could not wait for immaculate men; Lydgate, checkmated by a move he had often used himself, said if one did not work with such men as were at hand, things must come to a deadlock. Will nettled: “My personal independence is as important to me as yours is to you.” Lydgate, surprised, begged his pardon. “How very unpleasant you both are this evening!” said Rosamond, mildly neutral. When Will was gone she asked what had put Lydgate out of temper. He caressed her penitently. “Outdoor things — business.” It was really a letter insisting on the payment of a bill for furniture. But Rosamond was expecting a baby, and Lydgate wished to save her from any perturbation.