Middlemarch

CHAPTER LXXXII.

Will Ladislaw had exiled himself from Middlemarch with no stronger obstacle to his return than his own resolve, a state of mind liable to melt into other states of mind and to give place with polite facility. The months had made it more and more difficult to say why he should not run down—merely to hear something about Dorothea; and if by some strange coincidence he should meet her, there was no reason to be ashamed of having taken an innocent journey. And there had come a reason quite irrespective of Dorothea: Will had given attention to an intended settlement on a new plan in the Far West, and the need for funds to carry out a good design had set him debating whether it would not be a laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode. His repugnance to entering into any relation with the banker might have made him dismiss the question, but the probability that his judgment might be more safely determined by a visit to Middlemarch had risen in his imagination.

That was the stated object of his journey. He had meant to confide in Lydgate and discuss the money question with him, and amuse himself for the few evenings by having music and badinage with fair Rosamond, without neglecting his friends at Lowick Parsonage. But Will had become very hungry for the vision of a certain form and the sound of a certain voice. Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence how almost everything would be in his familiar little world. But he had found that humdrum world in a terribly dynamic condition in which even badinage and lyrism had turned explosive; and the first day of his visit had become the most fatal epoch of his life.

The next morning he feels so harassed with the nightmare of consequences that, seeing the arrival of the Riverston coach, he goes out hurriedly and takes his place on it, relieved for a day from the necessity of doing or saying anything. He had found Lydgate, for whom he had the sincerest respect, under circumstances which claimed his sympathy; the revelation that Rosamond had made her happiness dependent on him was a difficulty his outburst of rage had immeasurably increased. He hates his own cruelty and yet dreads showing the fullness of his relenting; he must go to her again; the friendship could not be put to a sudden end. But in the night he has debated whether he should not get on the coach for London. The strong cords pulling him back are the blight on his happiness in thinking of Dorothea, the crushing of his chief hope. He does nothing more decided than taking the Riverston coach, but he comes back by it while it is still daylight, having made up his mind that he must go to Lydgate’s that evening.

That evening, Rosamond receives Will with a languid coldness which Lydgate accounts for by her nervous exhaustion. Will is miserable in the necessity for playing the part of a friend while his thoughts are busy about yesterday. When Rosamond pours out the tea, she places a tiny bit of folded paper in his saucer. He secures it quickly. As he goes back to his inn he has no eagerness to unfold the paper. He reads it by his bed-candle: “I have told Mrs. Casaubon. She is not under any mistake about you. I told her because she came to see me and was very kind. You will have nothing to reproach me with now. I shall not have made any difference to you.”

The effect of these words is not quite all gladness. As Will dwells on them with excited imagination, he feels his cheeks and ears burning at the thought of what has occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond—at the uncertainty how far Dorothea may still feel her dignity wounded. There might still remain in her mind a changed association with him which makes an irremediable difference. Until that wretched yesterday—all their vision of each other had been as in a world apart where no evil lurked. But now—would Dorothea meet him in that world again?