As for Bulstrode—when Will was gone he
suffered a violent reaction, and wept like a woman.
It was the first time he had encountered an open
expression of scorn from any man higher than Raffles;
and with that scorn hurrying like venom through his
system, there was no sensibility left to consolations.
Rut the relief of weeping had to be checked.
His wife and daughters soon came home from hearing
the address of an Oriental missionary, and were full
of regret that papa had not heard, in the first instance,
the interesting things which they tried to repeat to
him.
Perhaps, through all other hidden thoughts, the one
that breathed most comfort was, that Will Ladislaw
at least was not likely to publish what had taken
place that evening.
“He was a squyer of lowe
degre,
That loved the king’s daughter of Hungrie.
—Old
Romance.
Will Ladislaw’s mind was now wholly bent on
seeing Dorothea again, and forthwith quitting Middlemarch.
The morning after his agitating scene with Bulstrode
he wrote a brief letter to her, saying that various
causes had detained him in the neighborhood longer
than he had expected, and asking her permission to
call again at Lowick at some hour which she would
mention on the earliest possible day, he being anxious
to depart, but unwilling to do so until she had granted
him an interview. He left the letter at the office,
ordering the messenger to carry it to Lowick Manor,
and wait for an answer.
Ladislaw felt the awkwardness of asking for more last
words. His former farewell had been made in the
hearing of Sir James Chettam, and had been announced
as final even to the butler. It is certainly
trying to a man’s dignity to reappear when he
is not expected to do so: a first farewell has
pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends
an opening to comedy, and it was possible even that
there might be bitter sneers afloat about Will’s
motives for lingering. Still it was on the whole
more satisfactory to his feeling to take the directest
means of seeing Dorothea, than to use any device which
might give an air of chance to a meeting of which he
wished her to understand that it was what he earnestly
sought. When he had parted from her before, he
had been in ignorance of facts which gave a new aspect
to the relation between them, and made a more absolute
severance than he had then believed in. He knew
nothing of Dorothea’s private fortune, and being
little used to reflect on such matters, took it for
granted that according to Mr. Casaubon’s arrangement
marriage to him, Will Ladislaw, would mean that she
consented to be penniless. That was not what
he could wish for even in his secret heart, or even
if she had been ready to meet such hard contrast for
his sake. And then, too, there was the fresh
smart of that disclosure about his mother’s
family, which if known would be an added reason why
Dorothea’s friends should look down upon him
as utterly below her. The secret hope that after
some years he might come back with the sense that
he had at least a personal value equal to her wealth,
seemed now the dreamy continuation of a dream.
This change would surely justify him in asking Dorothea
to receive him once more.
