Poor Lydgate, his mind struggling under the terrible
clutch of this revelation, was all the while morally
forced to take Mr. Bulstrode to the Bank, send a man
off for his carriage, and wait to accompany him home.
Meanwhile the business of the meeting was despatched,
and fringed off into eager discussion among various
groups concerning this affair of Bulstrode—and
Lydgate.
Mr. Brooke, who had before heard only imperfect hints
of it, and was very uneasy that he had “gone
a little too far” in countenancing Bulstrode,
now got himself fully informed, and felt some benevolent
sadness in talking to Mr. Farebrother about the ugly
light in which Lydgate had come to be regarded.
Mr. Farebrother was going to walk back to Lowick.
“Step into my carriage,” said Mr. Brooke.
“I am going round to see Mrs. Casaubon.
She was to come back from Yorkshire last night.
She will like to see me, you know.”
So they drove along, Mr. Brooke chatting with good-natured
hope that there had not really been anything black
in Lydgate’s behavior— a young fellow
whom he had seen to be quite above the common mark,
when he brought a letter from his uncle Sir Godwin.
Mr. Farebrother said little: he was deeply mournful:
with a keen perception of human weakness, he could
not be confident that under the pressure of humiliating
needs Lydgate had not fallen below himself.
When the carriage drove up to the gate of the Manor,
Dorothea was out on the gravel, and came to greet
them.
“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Brooke, “we
have just come from a meeting— a sanitary
meeting, you know.”
“Was Mr. Lydgate there?” said Dorothea,
who looked full of health and animation, and stood
with her head bare under the gleaming April lights.
“I want to see him and have a great consultation
with him about the Hospital. I have engaged with
Mr. Bulstrode to do so.”
“Oh, my dear,” said Mr. Brooke, “we
have been hearing bad news— bad news, you
know.”
They walked through the garden towards the churchyard
gate, Mr. Farebrother wanting to go on to the parsonage;
and Dorothea heard the whole sad story.
She listened with deep interest, and begged to hear
twice over the facts and impressions concerning Lydgate.
After a short silence, pausing at the churchyard
gate, and addressing Mr. Farebrother, she said energetically—
“You don’t believe that Mr. Lydgate is
guilty of anything base? I will not believe it.
Let us find out the truth and clear him!”
SUNSET AND SUNRISE.
Full souls are double mirrors,
making still
An endless vista of fair things
before,
Repeating things behind.
Dorothea’s impetuous generosity, which would
have leaped at once to the vindication of Lydgate
from the suspicion of having accepted money as a bribe,
underwent a melancholy check when she came to consider
all the circumstances of the case by the light of
Mr. Farebrother’s experience.
