米德尔马契 英文版 Middlemarch
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER LXVIII.
"What suit of grace hath Virtue to put onIf Vice shall wear as good, and do as well?If Wrong, if Craft, if IndiscretionAct as fair parts with ends as laudable?Which all this mighty volume of eventsThe world, the universal map of deeds,Strongly controls, and proves from all descents,That the directest course still best succeeds.For should not grave and learn'd ExperienceThat looks with the eyes of all the world beside,And with all ages holds intelligence,Go safer than Deceit without a guide!--DANIEL: Musophilus.
Bulstrode again."havediscussed together?"desired, namely, that in caseof Bulstrode's departure from Middlemarch for an indefinite.
That change of plan and shifting of interest which Bulstrode statedor betrayed in his conversation with Lydgate, had been determined in himby some severe experience which he had gone through since the epochof Mr. Larcher's sale, when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw,and when the banker had in vain attempted an act of restitutionwhich might move Divine Providence to arrest painful consequences.
His certainty that Raffles, unless he were dead, would return toMiddlemarch before long, had been justified. On Christmas Eve hehad reappeared at The Shrubs. Bulstrode was at home to receive him,and hinder his communication with the rest of the family, but hecould not altogether hinder the circumstances of the visit fromcompromising himself and alarming his wife. Raffles proved moreunmanageable than he had shown himself to be in his former appearances,his chronic state of mental restlessness, the growing effectof habitual intemperance, quickly shaking off every impressionfrom what was said to him. He insisted on staying in the house,and Bulstrode, weighing two sets of evils, felt that this wasat least not a worse alternative than his going into the town.He kept him in his own room for the evening and saw him to bed,Raffles all the while amusing himself with the annoyance he wascausing this decent and highly prosperous fellow-sinner, an amusementwhich he facetiously expressed as sympathy with his friend's pleasurein entertaining a man who had been serviceable to him, and who hadnot had all his earnings. There was a cunning calculation under thisnoisy joking--a cool resolve to extract something the handsomerfrom Bulstrode as payment for release from this new applicationof torture. But his cunning had a little overcast its mark.
Bulstrode was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre of Raffles couldenable him to imagine. He had told his wife that he was simply takingcare of this wretched creature, the victim of vice, who might otherwiseinjure himself; he implied, without the direct form of falsehood,that there was a family tie which bound him to this care, and thatthere were signs of mental alienation in Raffles which urged caution.He would himself drive the unfortunate being away the next morning.In these hints he felt that he was supplying Mrs. Bulstrodewith precautionary information for his daughters and servants,and accounting for his allowing no one but himself to enter the roomeven with food and drink. But he sat in an agony of fear lest Rafflesshould be overheard in his loud and plain references to past facts--lest Mrs. Bulstrode should be even tempted to listen at the door.How could he hinder her, how betray his terror by opening the doorto detect her? She was a woman of honest direct habits, and littlelikely to take so low a course in order to arrive at painful knowledge;but fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.
In this way Raffles had pushed the torture too far, and producedan effect which had not been in his plan. By showing himselfhopelessly unmanageable he had made Bulstrode feel that a strongdefiance was the only resource left. After taking Raffles to bedthat night the banker ordered his closed carriage to be ready athalf-past seven the next morning. At six o'clock he had alreadybeen long dressed, and had spent some of his wretchedness in prayer,pleading his motives for averting the worst evil if in anything he hadused falsity and spoken what was not true before God. For Bulstrodeshrank from a direct lie with an intensity disproportionate to thenumber of his more indirect misdeeds. But many of these misdeedswere like the subtle muscular movements which are not taken accountof in the consciousness, though they bring about the end that wefix our mind on and desire. And it is only what we are vividlyconscious of that we can vividly imagine to be seen by Omniscience.
Bulstrode carried his candle to the bedside of Raffles, who wasapparently in a painful dream. He stood silent, hoping that the presenceof the light would serve to waken the sleeper gradually and gently,for he feared some noise as the consequence of a too sudden awakening.He had watched for a couple of minutes or more the shudderingsand pantings which seemed likely to end in waking, when Raffles,with a long half-stifled moan, started up and stared round himin terror, trembling and gasping. But he made no further noise,and Bulstrode, setting down the candle, awaited his recovery.
It was a quarter of an hour later before Bulstrode, with a coldperemptoriness of manner which he had not before shown, said, "I cameto call you thus early, Mr. Raffles, because I have ordered the carriageto be ready at half-past seven, and intend myself to conduct you as faras Ilsely, where you can either take the railway or await a coach."Raffles was about to speak, but Bulstrode anticipated him imperiouslywith the words, "Be silent, sir, and hear what I have to say.I shall supply you with money now, and I will furnish you with areasonable sum from time to time, on your application to me by letter;but if you choose to present yourself here again, if you returnto Middlemarch, if you use your tongue in a manner injurious to me,you will have to live on such fruits as your malice can bring you,without help from me. Nobody will pay you well for blasting my name:I know the worst you can do against me, and I shall brave it if youdare to thrust yourself upon me again. Get up, sir, and do as Iorder you, without noise, or I will send for a policeman to takeyou off my premises, and you may carry your stories into everypothouse in the town, but you shall have no sixpence from me to payyour expenses there."
Bulstrode had rarely in his life spoken with such nervous energy:he had been deliberating on this speech and its probable effectsthrough a large part of the night; and though he did not trust to itsultimately saving him from any return of Raffles, he had concludedthat it was the best throw he could make. It succeeded in enforcingsubmission from the jaded man this morning: his empoisoned systemat this moment quailed before Bulstrode's cold, resolute bearing,and he was taken off quietly in the carriage before the familybreakfast time. The servants imagined him to be a poor relation,and were not surprised that a strict man like their master, who heldhis head high in the world, should be ashamed of such a cousinand want to get rid of him. The banker's drive of ten miles withhis hated companion was a dreary beginning of the Christmas day;but at the end of the drive, Raffles had recovered his spirits,and parted in a contentment for which there was the good reasonthat the banker had given him a hundred pounds. Various motivesurged Bulstrode to this open-handedness, but he did not himselfinquire closely into all of them. As he had stood watching Rafflesin his uneasy sleep, it had certainly entered his mind that the manhad been much shattered since the first gift of two hundred pounds.
He had taken care to repeat the incisive statement of his resolvenot to be played on any more; and had tried to penetrate Raffleswith the fact that he had shown the risks of bribing him to bequite equal to the risks of defying him. But when, freed from hisrepulsive presence, Bulstrode returned to his quiet home, he broughtwith him no confidence that he had secured more than a respite.It was as if he had had a loathsome dream, and could not shake offits images with their hateful kindred of sensations--as if on allthe pleasant surroundings of his life a dangerous reptile had lefthis slimy traces.
Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of thethoughts he believes other men to have about him, until that fabricof opinion is threatened with ruin?
Bulstrode was only the more conscious that there was a depositof uneasy presentiment in his wife's mind, because she carefullyavoided any allusion to it. He had been used every day to tastethe flavor of supremacy and the tribute of complete deference:and the certainty that he was watched or measured with a hiddensuspicion of his having some discreditable secret, made his voicetotter when he was speaking to edification. Foreseeing, to menof Bulstrode's anxious temperament, is often worse than seeing;and his imagination continually heightened the anguish of animminent disgrace. Yes, imminent; for if his defiance of Rafflesdid not keep the man away--and though he prayed for this result hehardly hoped for it--the disgrace was certain. In vain he saidto himself that, if permitted, it would be a divine visitation,a chastisement, a preparation; he recoiled from the imagined burning;and he judged that it must be more for the Divine glory that heshould escape dishonor. That recoil had at last urged him to makepreparations for quitting Middlemarch. If evil truth must be reportedof him, he would then be at a less scorching distance from thecontempt of his old neighbors; and in a new scene, where his lifewould not have gathered the same wide sensibility, the tormentor,if he pursued him, would be less formidable. To leave the placefinally would, he knew, be extremely painful to his wife, and on othergrounds he would have preferred to stay where he had struck root.Hence he made his preparations at first in a conditional way,wishing to leave on all sides an opening for his return afterbrief absence, if any favorable intervention of Providence shoulddissipate his fears. He was preparing to transfer his managementof the Bank, and to give up any active control of other commercialaffairs in the neighborhood, on the ground of his failing health,but without excluding his future resumption of such work. The measurewould cause him some added expense and some diminution of income beyondwhat he had already undergone from the general depression of trade;and the Hospital presented itself as a principal object of outlayon which he could fairly economize.
This was the experience which had determined his conversationwith Lydgate. But at this time his arrangements had most of themgone no farther than a stage at which he could recall them if theyproved to be unnecessary. He continually deferred the final steps;in the midst of his fears, like many a man who is in danger ofshipwreck or of being dashed from his carriage by runaway horses,he had a clinging impression that something would happen to hinderthe worst, and that to spoil his life by a late transplantationmight be over-hasty--especially since it was difficult to accountsatisfactorily to his wife for the project of their indefinite exilefrom the only place where she would like to live.
Among the affairs Bulstrode had to care for, was the managementof the farm at Stone Court in case of his absence; and on thisas well as on all other matters connected with any houses and landhe possessed in or about Middlemarch, he had consulted Caleb Garth.Like every one else who had business of that sort, he wanted to get theagent who was more anxious for his employer's interests than his own.With regard to Stone Court, since Bulstrode wished to retain his holdon the stock, and to have an arrangement by which he himself could,if he chose, resume his favorite recreation of superintendence,Caleb had advised him not to trust to a mere bailiff, but to letthe land, stock, and implements yearly, and take a proportionateshare of the proceeds.
"May I trust to you to find me a tenant on these terms, Mr. Garth?"said Bulstrode. "And will you mention to me the yearly sumwhich would repay you for managing these affairs which we havediscussed together?"
"I'll think about it," said Caleb, in his blunt way. "I'll seehow I can make it out."
If it had not been that he had to consider Fred Vincy's future,Mr. Garth would not probably have been glad of any addition to his work,of which his wife was always fearing an excess for him as he grew older.But on quitting Bulstrode after that conversation, a very alluringidea occurred to him about this said letting of Stone Court.What if Bulstrode would agree to his placing Fred Vincy thereon the understanding that he, Caleb Garth, should be responsiblefor the management? It would be an excellent schooling for Fred;he might make a modest income there, and still have time left to getknowledge by helping in other business. He mentioned his notionto Mrs. Garth with such evident delight that she could not bearto chill his pleasure by expressing her constant fear of hisundertaking too much.
Caleb, in his blunt way. "I'll seehow I can make it out."can make it out."tumble about nobody's head." of his resolvenot.
"The lad would be as happy as two," he said, throwing himselfback in his chair, and looking radiant, "if I could tell him itwas all settled. Think; Susan! His mind had been running onthat place for years before old Featherstone died. And it wouldbe as pretty a turn of things as could be that he should holdthe place in a good industrious way after all--by his takingto business. For it's likely enough Bulstrode might let him go on,and gradually buy the stock. He hasn't made up his mind, I can see,whether or not he shall settle somewhere else as a lasting thing.I never was better pleased with a notion in my life. And thenthe children might be married by-and-by, Susan."
"You will not give any hint of the plan to Fred, until you aresure that Bulstrode would agree to the plan?" said Mrs. Garth,in a tone of gentle caution. "And as to marriage, Caleb, we oldpeople need not help to hasten it."
"Oh, I don't know," said Caleb, swinging his head aside."Marriage is a taming thing. Fred would want less of my bitand bridle. However, I shall say nothing till I know the groundI'm treading on. I shall speak to Bulstrode again."
He took his earliest opportunity of doing so. Bulstrode had anythingbut a warm interest in his nephew Fred Vincy, but he had a strongwish to secure Mr. Garth's services on many scattered points ofbusiness at which he was sure to be a considerable loser, if theywere under less conscientious management. On that ground he madeno objection to Mr. Garth's proposal; and there was also anotherreason why he was not sorry to give a consent which was to benefitone of the Vincy family. It was that Mrs. Bulstrode, having heardof Lydgate's debts, had been anxious to know whether her husband couldnot do something for poor Rosamond, and had been much troubled onlearning from him that Lydgate's affairs were not easily remediable,and that the wisest plan was to let them "take their course."Mrs. Bulstrode had then said for the first time, "I think you arealways a little hard towards my family, Nicholas. And I am sure Ihave no reason to deny any of my relatives. Too worldly they may be,but no one ever had to say that they were not respectable."
"My dear Harriet," said Mr. Bulstrode, wincing under his wife's eyes,which were filling with tears, "I have supplied your brotherwith a great deal of capital. I cannot be expected to take careof his married children."
That seemed to be true, and Mrs. Bulstrode's remonstrance subsidedinto pity for poor Rosamond, whose extravagant education she hadalways foreseen the fruits of.
But remembering that dialogue, Mr. Bulstrode felt that when he hadto talk to his wife fully about his plan of quitting Middlemarch,he should be glad to tell her that he had made an arrangementwhich might be for the good of her nephew Fred. At present he hadmerely mentioned to her that he thought of shutting up The Shrubsfor a few months, and taking a house on the Southern Coast.
Hence Mr. Garth got the assurance he desired, namely, that in caseof Bulstrode's departure from Middlemarch for an indefinite time,Fred Vincy should be allowed to have the tenancy of Stone Court onthe terms proposed.
Caleb was so elated with his hope of this "neat turn" being givento things, that if his self-control had not been braced by a littleaffectionate wifely scolding, he would have betrayed everything to Mary,wanting "to give the child comfort." However, he restrained himself,and kept in strict privacy from Fred certain visits which hewas making to Stone Court, in order to look more thoroughly intothe state of the land and stock, and take a preliminary estimate.He was certainly more eager in these visits than the probable speedof events required him to be; but he was stimulated by a fatherlydelight in occupying his mind with this bit of probable happinesswhich he held in store like a hidden birthday gift for Fred and Mary.
"But suppose the whole scheme should turn out to be a castlein the air?" said Mrs. Garth.
"Well, well," replied Caleb; "the castle will tumble about nobody's head."