“I only wish I had known before—I
wish he knew—then we could be quite happy
in thinking of each other, though we are forever parted.
And if I could but have given him the money, and made
things easier for him!”—were the
longings that came back the most persistently.
And yet, so heavily did the world weigh on her in spite
of her independent energy, that with this idea of
Will as in need of such help and at a disadvantage
with the world, there came always the vision of that
unfittingness of any closer relation between them which
lay in the opinion of every one connected with her.
She felt to the full all the imperativeness of the
motives which urged Will’s conduct. How
could he dream of her defying the barrier that her
husband had placed between them?—how could
she ever say to herself that she would defy it?
Will’s certainty as the carriage grew smaller
in the distance, had much more bitterness in it.
Very slight matters were enough to gall him in his
sensitive mood, and the sight of Dorothea driving
past him while he felt himself plodding along as a
poor devil seeking a position in a world which in
his present temper offered him little that he coveted,
made his conduct seem a mere matter of necessity,
and took away the sustainment of resolve. After
all, he had no assurance that she loved him: could
any man pretend that he was simply glad in such a
case to have the suffering all on his own side?
That evening Will spent with the Lydgates; the next
evening he was gone.
BOOK VII.
TWO TEMPTATIONS.
CHAPTER LXIII.
These little things are great
to little man.—GOLDSMITH.
“Have you seen much of your scientific phoenix,
Lydgate, lately?” said Mr. Toller at one of
his Christmas dinner-parties, speaking to Mr. Farebrother
on his right hand.
“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.
“I am out of the way and he is too busy.”
“Is he? I am glad to hear it,” said
Dr. Minchin, with mingled suavity and surprise.
“He gives a great deal of time to the New Hospital,”
said Mr. Farebrother, who had his reasons for continuing
the subject: “I hear of that from my neighbor,
Mrs. Casaubon, who goes there often. She says
Lydgate is indefatigable, and is making a fine thing
of Bulstrode’s institution. He is preparing
a new ward in case of the cholera coming to us.”
“And preparing theories of treatment to try
on the patients, I suppose,” said Mr. Toller.
“Come, Toller, be candid,” said Mr. Farebrother.
“You are too clever not to see the good of
a bold fresh mind in medicine, as well as in everything
else; and as to cholera, I fancy, none of you are very
sure what you ought to do. If a man goes a little
too far along a new road, it is usually himself that
he harms more than any one else.”
