"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 ****** 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.