Middlemarch: Book 7

“Not much, I am sorry to say,” answered the Vicar, accustomed to parry Mr. Toller’s banter about his belief in the new medical light.

She says Lydgate is indefatigable, and is making a fine thing of Bulstrode’s institution.

Mrs. Vincy, in her fullest matronly bloom, looked at Mary’s little figure, rough wavy hair, and visage quite without lilies and roses, and wondered; trying unsuccessfully to fancy herself caring about Mary’s appearance in wedding clothes, or feeling complacency in grandchildren who would “feature” the Garths.

“This is what I am thinking of; and that is what I might have been thinking of,” was the bitter incessant murmur within him, making every difficulty a double goad to impatience.

Lydgate’s anger rose: he was prepared to be indulgent towards feminine weakness, but not towards feminine dictation. The shallowness of a waternixie’s soul may have a charm until she becomes didactic.

But he controlled himself, and only said, with a touch of despotic firmness—
“What I am to do in my practice, Rosy, it is for me to judge..."

He begged her to do him the honor to take a seat, and stood before her trimming and comporting himself with an eager solicitude, which was chiefly benevolent.

“Well,” said Lydgate in a guessing tone, “it would take at least a thousand to set me at ease. But,” he added, incisively, “I have to consider what I shall do without it, not with it.”

Only half an hour before he had been fastening up her plaits for her, and talking the “little language” of affection, which Rosamond, though not returning it, accepted as if she had been a serene and lovely image, now and then miraculously dimpling towards her votary.

Only half an hour before he had been fastening up her plaits for her, and talking the “little language” of affection, which Rosamond, though not returning it, accepted as if she had been a serene and lovely image, now and then miraculously dimpling towards her votary.

He saw even more keenly than Rosamond did the dreariness of taking her into the small house in Bride Street, where she would have scanty furniture around her and discontent within: a life of privation and life with Rosamond were two images which had become more and more irreconcilable ever since the threat of privation had disclosed itself.

...his thought now began to turn upon gambling—not with appetite for its excitement, but with a sort of wistful inward gaze after that easy way of getting money, which implied no asking and brought no responsibility.

An incident which happened not very long after that airy notion of getting aid from his uncle had been excluded, was a strong sign of the effect that might have followed any extant opportunity of gambling.

But the last fortnight Mary had been staying at Lowick Parsonage with the ladies there, during Mr. Farebrother’s residence in Middlemarch, where he was carrying out some parochial plans; and Fred, not seeing anything more agreeable to do, had turned into the Green Dragon, partly to play at billiards, partly to taste the old flavor of discourse about horses, sport, and things in general, considered from a point of view which was not strenuously correct.

Still he went on, for his mind was as utterly narrowed into that precipitous crevice of play as if he had been the most ignorant lounger there. Fred observed that Lydgate was losing fast...

It was true that of late there had seemed to be a new languor of interest in Bulstrode about the Hospital; but his health had got worse, and showed signs of a deep-seated nervous affection.

He deferred the intention from day to day, his habit of acting on his conclusions being made infirm by his repugnance to every possible conclusion and its consequent act.

At one moment he thought, “I will write a letter: I prefer that to any circuitous talk;” at another he thought, “No; if I were talking to him, I could make a retreat before any signs of disinclination.”

He began spontaneously to consider whether it would be possible to carry out that puerile notion of Rosamond’s which had often made him angry, namely, that they should quit Middlemarch without seeing anything beyond that preface.

A hypochondriacal tendency had shown itself in the banker’s constitution of late; and a lack of sleep, which was really only a slight exaggeration of an habitual dyspeptic symptom, had been dwelt on by him as a sign of threatening insanity.

Also I think of changing my residence for a time: probably I shall close or let ‘The Shrubs,’ and take some place near the coast—under advice of course as to salubrity.

The change I mean is an amalgamation with the Infirmary, so that the New Hospital shall be regarded as a special addition to the elder institution, having the same directing board. It will be necessary, also, that the medical management of the two shall be combined.

Raffles proved more unmanageable than he had shown himself to be in his former appearances, his chronic state of mental restlessness, the growing effect of habitual intemperance, quickly shaking off every impression from what was said to him.

It succeeded in enforcing submission from the jaded man this morning: his empoisoned system at this moment quailed before Bulstrode’s cold, resolute bearing, and he was taken off quietly in the carriage before the family breakfast time.

But when, freed from his repulsive presence, Bulstrode returned to his quiet home, he brought with him no confidence that he had secured more than a respite.

Raffles denied this with solemn adjurations; the fact being that the links of consciousness were interrupted in him, and that his minute terror-stricken narrative to Caleb Garth had been delivered under a set of visionary impulses which had dropped back into darkness.

I have called you in, Mr. Lydgate, to an unfortunate man who was once in my employment, many years ago. Afterwards he went to America, and returned I fear to an idle dissolute life. Being destitute, he has a claim on me.

...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.

He could not but see the death of Raffles, and see in it his own deliverance.

Raffles dead was the image that brought release, and indirectly he prayed for that way of release, beseeching that, if it were possible, the rest of his days here below might be freed from the threat of an ignominy which would break him utterly as an instrument of God’s service.

The rebuff he had met with in his first attempt to win Lydgate’s confidence, disinclined him to a second; but this news of the execution being actually in the house, determined the Vicar to overcome his reluctance.

So our mercurial Ladislaw has a queer genealogy!

The business was felt to be so public and important that it required dinners to feed it, and many invitations were just then issued and accepted on the strength of this scandal concerning Bulstrode and Lydgate; wives, widows, and single ladies took their work and went out to tea oftener than usual; and all public conviviality, from the Green Dragon to Dollop’s, gathered a zest which could not be won from the question whether the Lords would throw out the Reform Bill.

As to any certainty that a particular method of treatment would either save or kill, Lydgate himself was constantly arguing against such dogmatism; he had no right to speak, and he had every motive for being silent.

...God had disowned him before men and left him unscreened to the triumphant scorn of those who were glad to have their hatred justified—the sense of utter futility in that equivocation with his conscience in dealing with the life of his accomplice, an equivocation which now turned venomously upon him with the full-grown fang of a discovered lie...

...all this rushed through him like the agony of terror which fails to kill, and leaves the ears still open to the returning wave of execration.

He dared not get up and say, “I am not guilty, the whole story is false”—even if he had dared this, it would have seemed to him, under his present keen sense of betrayal, as vain as to pull, for covering to his nakedness, a frail rag which would rend at every little strain.

As to Christian or unchristian, I repudiate your canting palavering Christianity; and as to the way in which I spend my income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves and cheat offspring of their due inheritance in order to support religion and set myself up as a saintly Killjoy.

As to Christian or unchristian, I repudiate your canting palavering Christianity; and as to the way in which I spend my income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves and cheat offspring of their due inheritance in order to support religion and set myself up as a saintly Killjoy.

I must so far concur with what has fallen from Mr. Hawley in expression of a general feeling, as to think it due to your Christian profession that you should clear yourself, if possible, from unhappy aspersions.