米德尔马契 英文版 Middlemarch
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER LXI. Page 1
"Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right,but imputed to man they may both be true."--Rasselas.
The same night, when Mr. Bulstrode returned from a journey toBrassing on business, his good wife met him in the entrance-halland drew him into his private sitting-room.
"Nicholas," she said, fixing her honest eyes upon him anxiously,"there has been such a disagreeable man here asking for you--it hasmade me quite uncomfortable."
turned out of the way to cometo Middlemarch, just to look about him and see whether the neighborhoodwould suit him to live .
"What kind of man, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, dreadfully certainof the answer.
"A red-faced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in his manner.He declared he was an old friend of yours, and said you would besorry not to see him. He wanted to wait for you here, but I toldhim he could see you at the Bank to-morrow morning. Most impudenthe was!--stared at me, and said his friend Nick had luck in wives.I don't believe he would have gone away, if Blucher had nothappened to break his chain and come running round on the gravel--for I was in the garden; so I said, `You'd better go away--the dogis very fierce, and I can't hold him.' Do you really know anythingof such a man?"
"I believe I know who he is, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode,in his usual subdued voice, "an unfortunate dissolute wretch,whom I helped too much in days gone by. However, I presume you willnot be troubled by him again. He will probably come to the Bank--to beg, doubtless."
No more was said on the subject until the next day, when Mr. Bulstrodehad returned from the town and was dressing for dinner. His wife,not sure that he was come home, looked into his dressing-roomand saw him with his coat and cravat off, leaning one armon a chest of drawers and staring absently at the ground.He started nervously and looked up as she entered.
"You look very ill, Nicholas. Is there anything the matter?"
"I have a good deal of pain in my head," said Mr. Bulstrode,who was so frequently ailing that his wife was always readyto believe in this cause of depression.
"Sit down and let me sponge it with vinegar."
Physically Mr. Bulstrode did not want the vinegar, but morallythe affectionate attention soothed him. Though always polite,it was his habit to receive such services with marital coolness,as his wife's duty. But to-day, while she was bending over him,he said, "You are very good, Harriet," in a tone which had somethingnew in it to her ear; she did not know exactly what the novelty was,but her woman's solicitude shaped itself into a darting thought that hemight be going to have an illness.
"Has anything worried you?" she said. "Did that man come to youat the Bank?"
"Yes; it was as I had supposed. He is a man who at one time mighthave done better. But he has sunk into a drunken debauched creature."
"Is he quite gone away?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, anxiously but forcertain reasons she refrained from adding, "It was very disagreeableto hear him calling himself a friend of yours." At that moment shewould not have liked to say anything which implied her habitualconsciousness that her husband's earlier connections were not quiteon a level with her own. Not that she knew much about them.That her husband had at first been employed in a bank, that hehad afterwards entered into what he called city business and gaineda fortune before he was three-and-thirty, that he had marrieda widow who was much older than himself--a Dissenter, and in otherways probably of that disadvantageous quality usually perceptiblein a first wife if inquired into with the dispassionate judgmentof a second--was almost as much as she had cared to learn beyondthe glimpses which Mr. Bulstrode's narrative occasionally gave ofhis early bent towards religion, his inclination to be a preacher,and his association with missionary and philanthropic efforts.She believed in him as an excellent man whose piety carrieda peculiar eminence in belonging to a layman, whose influencehad turned her own mind toward seriousness, and whose share ofperishable good had been the means of raising her own position.But she also liked to think that it was well in every sensefor Mr. Bulstrode to have won the hand of Harriet Vincy;whose family was undeniable in a Middlemarch light--a better lightsurely than any thrown in London thoroughfares or dissentingchapel-yards. The unreformed provincial mind distrusted London;and while true religion was everywhere saving, honest Mrs. Bulstrodewas convinced that to be saved in the Church was more respectable.She so much wished to ignore towards others that her husbandhad ever been a London Dissenter, that she liked to keep it outof sight even in talking to him. He was quite aware of this;indeed in some respects he was rather afraid of this ingenuous wife,whose imitative piety and native worldliness were equally sincere,who had nothing to be ashamed of, and whom he had married out ofa thorough inclination still subsisting. But his fears were suchas belong to a man who cares to maintain his recognized supremacy:the loss of high consideration from his wife, as from every oneelse who did not clearly hate him out of enmity to the truth,would be as the beginning of death to him. When she said--
"Is he quite gone away?"
frequently ailing that his wife was always readyto believe in this cause of.
"Oh, I trust so," he answered, with an effort to throw as muchsober unconcern into his tone as possible!
But in truth Mr. Bulstrode was very far from a state of quiet trust.In the interview at the Bank, Raffles had made it evident that hiseagerness to torment was almost as strong in him as any other greed.He had frankly said that he had turned out of the way to cometo Middlemarch, just to look about him and see whether the neighborhoodwould suit him to live in. He had certainly had a few debts to paymore than he expected, but the two hundred pounds were not gone yet:a cool five-and-twenty would suffice him to go away with for the present.What he had wanted chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family,and know all about the prosperity of a man to whom he was somuch attached. By-and-by he might come back for a longer stay.This time Raffles declined to be "seen off the premises," as heexpressed it--declined to quit Middlemarch under Bulstrode's eyes.He meant to go by coach the next day--if he chose.
Bulstrode felt himself helpless. Neither threats nor coaxingcould avail: he could not count on any persistent fear nor onany promise. On the contrary, he felt a cold certainty at hisheart that Raffles--unless providence sent death to hinder him--would come back to Middlemarch before long. And that certaintywas a terror.
It was not that he was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary:he was in danger only of seeing disclosed to the judgment of hisneighbors and the mournful perception of his wife certain facts of hispast life which would render him an object of scorn and an opprobriumof the religion with which he had diligently associated himself.The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitableglare over that long-unvisited past which has been habituallyrecalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the lifeis bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay;but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past.With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past isnot simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present:it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a stillquivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors andthe tinglings of a merited shame.
Into this second life Bulstrode's past had now risen, only thepleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality. Night and day,without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospectand fear into a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlierlife coming between him and everything else, as obstinately as when welook through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turnour backs on are still before us, instead of the grass and the treesThe successive events inward and outward were there in one view:though each might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still kept theirhold in the consciousness.
Once more he saw himself the young banker's clerk, with anagreeable person, as clever in figures as he was fluent in speechand fond of theological definition: an eminent though young memberof a Calvinistic dissenting church at Highbury, having had strikingexperience in conviction of sin and sense of pardon. Again heheard himself called for as Brother Bulstrode in prayer meetings,speaking on religious platforms, preaching in private houses.Again he felt himself thinking of the ministry as possibly his vocation,and inclined towards missionary labor. That was the happiest timeof his life: that was the spot he would have chosen now to awakein and find the rest a dream. The people among whom BrotherBulstrode was distinguished were very few, but they were very nearto him, and stirred his satisfaction the more; his power stretchedthrough a narrow space, but he felt its effect the more intensely.He believed without effort in the peculiar work of grace within him,and in the signs that God intended him for special instrumentality.
Then came the moment of transition; it was with the sense of promotionhe had when he, an orphan educated at a commercial charity-school,was invited to a fine villa belonging to Mr. Dunkirk, the richest manin the congregation. Soon he became an intimate there, honored forhis piety by the wife, marked out for his ability by the husband,whose wealth was due to a flourishing city and west-end trade.That was the setting-in of a new current for his ambition,directing his prospects of "instrumentality" towards the unitingof distinguished religious gifts with successful business.
By-and-by came a decided external leading: a confidential subordinatepartner died, and nobody seemed to the principal so well fittedto fill the severely felt vacancy as his young friend Bulstrode,if he would become confidential accountant. The offer was accepted.The business was a pawnbroker's, of the most magnificent sort bothin extent and profits; and on a short acquaintance with it Bulstrodebecame aware that one source of magnificent profit was the easyreception of any goods offered, without strict inquiry as to wherethey came from. But there was a branch house at the west end,and no pettiness or dinginess to give suggestions of shame.
He remembered his first moments of shrinking. They were private,and were filled with arguments; some of these taking the formof prayer. The business was established and had old roots;is it not one thing to set up a new gin-palace and another to acceptan investment in an old one? The profits made out of lost souls--where can the line be drawn at which they begin in human transactions?Was it not even God's way of saving His chosen? "Thou knowest,"--the young Bulstrode had said then, as the older Bulstrode was saying now--"Thou knowest how loose my soul sits from these things--how I viewthem all as implements for tilling Thy garden rescued here and therefrom the wilderness."
Metaphors and precedents were not wanting; peculiar spiritualexperiences were not wanting which at last made the retentionof his position seem a service demanded of him: the vista ofa fortune had already opened itself, and Bulstrode's shrinkingremained private. Mr. Dunkirk had never expected that therewould be any shrinking at all: he had never conceived that tradehad anything to do with the scheme of salvation. And it was truethat Bulstrode found himself carrying on two distinct lives;his religious activity could not be incompatible with his businessas soon as he had argued himself into not feeling it incompatible.
Mentally surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode had thesame pleas--indeed, the years had been perpetually spinning theminto intricate thickness, like masses of spider-web, paddingthe moral sensibility; nay, as age made egoism more eager butless enjoying, his soul had become more saturated with the beliefthat he did everything for God's sake, being indifferent to itfor his own. And yet--if he could be back in that far-off spotwith his youthful poverty--why, then he would choose to be a missionary.
But the train of causes in which he had locked himself went on.There was trouble in the fine villa at Highbury. Years before,the only daughter had run away, defied her parents, and gone on the stage;and now the only boy died, and after a short time Mr. Dunkirk died also.The wife, a simple pious woman, left with all the wealth in and outof the magnificent trade, of which she never knew the precise nature,had come to believe in Bulstrode, and innocently adore him as womenoften adore their priest or "man-made" minister. It was naturalthat after a time marriage should have been thought of between them.But Mrs. Dunkirk had qualms and yearnings about her daughter,who had long been regarded as lost both to God and her parents.It was known that the daughter had married, but she was utterlygone out of sight. The mother, having lost her boy, imagineda grandson, and wished in a double sense to reclaim her daughter.If she were found, there would be a channel for property--perhaps a wide one--in the provision for several grandchildren.Efforts to find her must be made before Mrs. Dunkirk would marry again.Bulstrode concurred; but after advertisement as well as other modesof inquiry had been tried, the mother believed that her daughterwas not to be found, and consented to marry without reservationof property.
going to have an illness.me sponge it with vinegar."theological definition: an eminent though young memberof a Calvinistic dissenting church!
The daughter had been found; but only one man besides Bulstrode knew it,and he was paid for keeping silence and carrying himself away.
That was the bare fact which Bulstrode was now forced to see inthe rigid outline with which acts present themselves onlookers.But for himself at that distant time, and even now in burning memory,the fact was broken into little sequences, each justified as it cameby reasonings which seemed to prove it righteous. Bulstrode's course upto that time had, he thought, been sanctioned by remarkable providences,appearing to point the way for him to be the agent in making thebest use of a large property and withdrawing it from perversion.Death and other striking dispositions, such as feminine trustfulness,had come; and Bulstrode would have adopted Cromwell's words--"Do you call these bare events? The Lord pity you!" The eventswere comparatively small, but the essential condition was there--namely, that they were in favor of his own ends. It was easyfor him to settle what was due from him to others by inquiringwhat were God's intentions with regard to himself. Could it befor God's service that this fortune should in any considerableproportion go to a young woman and her husband who were given upto the lightest pursuits, and might scatter it abroad in triviality--people who seemed to lie outside the path of remarkable providences?Bulstrode had never said to himself beforehand, "The daughtershall not be found"--nevertheless when the moment came he kepther existence hidden; and when other moments followed, he soothedthe mother with consolation in the probability that the unhappyyoung woman might be no more.
There were hours in which Bulstrode felt that his actionwas unrighteous; but how could he go back? He had mental exercises,called himself nought laid hold on redemption, and went on in hiscourse of instrumentality. And after five years Death again cameto widen his path, by taking away his wife. He did graduallywithdraw his capital, but he did not make the sacrifices requisiteto put an end to the business, which was carried on for thirteenyears afterwards before it finally collapsed. Meanwhile NicholasBulstrode had used his hundred thousand discreetly, and wasbecome provincially, solidly important--a banker, a Churchman,a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in trading concerns,in which his ability was directed to economy in the raw material,as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy's silk. And now,when this respectability had lasted undisturbed for nearly thirty years--when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the consciousness--that past had risen and immersed his thought as if with the terribleirruption of a new sense overburthening the feeble being.
Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had learnedsomething momentous, something which entered actively intothe struggle of his longings and terrors. There, he thought,lay an opening towards spiritual, perhaps towards material rescue.
The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There maybe coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotionsfor the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them.He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than histheoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratificationof his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs.If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionallyin us all, to whatever confession we belong, and whether webelieve in the future perfection of our race or in the nearestdate fixed for the end of the world; whether we regard the earthas a putrefying nidus for a saved remnant, including ourselves,or have a passionate belief in the solidarity of mankind.
The service he could do to the cause of religion had been throughlife the ground he alleged to himself for his choice of action:it had been the motive which he had poured out in his prayers.Who would use money and position better than he meant to use them?Who could surpass him in self-abhorrence and exaltation of God's cause?And to Mr. Bulstrode God's cause was something distinct from his ownrectitude of conduct: it enforced a discrimination of God's enemies,who were to be used merely as instruments, and whom it would beas well if possible to keep out of money and consequent influence.Also, profitable investments in trades where the power of the princeof this world showed its most active devices, became sanctified by aright application of the profits in the hands of God's servant.
This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelicalbelief than the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiarto Englishmen. There is no general doctrine which is not capableof eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habitof direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.
But a man who believes in something else than his own greed,has necessarily a conscience or standard to which he more or lessadapts himself. Bulstrode's standard had been his serviceablenessto God's cause: "I am sinful and nought--a vessel to be consecratedby use--but use me!"--had been the mould into which he had constrainedhis immense need of being something important and predominating.And now had come a moment in which that mould seemed in dangerof being broken and utterly cast away.
What if the acts he had reconciled himself to because they madehim a stronger instrument of the divine glory, were to becomethe pretext of the scoffer, and a darkening of that glory?If this were to be the ruling of Providence, he was cast out fromthe temple as one who had brought unclean offerings.