Middlemarch George Eliot (essential reading txt) 📖

is not true!” was the voice within her that she listened to; but all the while a remembrance to which there had always clung a vague uneasiness would thrust itself on her attention⁠—the remembrance of that day when she had found Will Ladislaw with Mrs. Lydgate, and had heard his voice accompanied by the piano.

“He said he would never do anything that I disapproved⁠—I wish I could have told him that I disapproved of that,” said poor Dorothea, inwardly, feeling a strange alternation between anger with Will and the passionate defence of him. “They all try to blacken him before me; but I will care for no pain, if he is not to blame. I always believed he was good.”⁠—These were her last thoughts before she felt that the carriage was passing under the archway of the lodge-gate at the Grange, when she hurriedly pressed her handkerchief to her face and began to think of her errands. The coachman begged leave to take out the horses for half an hour as there was something wrong with a shoe; and Dorothea, having the sense that she was going to rest, took off her gloves and bonnet, while she was leaning against a statue in the entrance-hall, and talking to the housekeeper. At last she said⁠—

“I must stay here a little, Mrs. Kell. I will go into the library and write you some memoranda from my uncle’s letter, if you will open the shutters for me.”

“The shutters are open, madam,” said Mrs. Kell, following Dorothea, who had walked along as she spoke. “Mr. Ladislaw is there, looking for something.”

(Will had come to fetch a portfolio of his own sketches which he had missed in the act of packing his movables, and did not choose to leave behind.)

Dorothea’s heart seemed to turn over as if it had had a blow, but she was not perceptibly checked: in truth, the sense that Will was there was for the moment all-satisfying to her, like the sight of something precious that one has lost. When she reached the door she said to Mrs. Kell⁠—

“Go in first, and tell him that I am here.”

Will had found his portfolio, and had laid it on the table at the far end of the room, to turn over the sketches and please himself by looking at the memorable piece of art which had a relation to nature too mysterious for Dorothea. He was smiling at it still, and shaking the sketches into order with the thought that he might find a letter from her awaiting him at Middlemarch, when Mrs. Kell close to his elbow said⁠—

“Mrs. Casaubon is coming in, sir.”

Will turned round quickly, and the next moment Dorothea was entering. As Mrs. Kell closed the door behind her they met: each was looking at the other, and consciousness was overflowed by something that suppressed utterance. It was not confusion that kept them silent, for they both felt that parting was near, and there is no shamefacedness in a sad parting.

She moved automatically towards her uncle’s chair against the writing-table, and Will, after drawing it out a little for her, went a few paces off and stood opposite to her.

“Pray sit down,” said Dorothea, crossing her hands on her lap; “I am very glad you were here.” Will thought that her face looked just as it did when she first shook hands with him in Rome; for her widow’s cap, fixed in her bonnet, had gone off with it, and he could see that she had lately been shedding tears. But the mixture of anger in her agitation had vanished at the sight of him; she had been used, when they were face to face, always to feel confidence and the happy freedom which comes with mutual understanding, and how could other people’s words hinder that effect on a sudden? Let the music which can take possession of our frame and fill the air with joy for us, sound once more⁠—what does it signify that we heard it found fault with in its absence?

“I have sent a letter to Lowick Manor today, asking leave to see you,” said Will, seating himself opposite to her. “I am going away immediately, and I could not go without speaking to you again.”

“I thought we had parted when you came to Lowick many weeks ago⁠—you thought you were going then,” said Dorothea, her voice trembling a little.

“Yes; but I was in ignorance then of things which I know now⁠—things which have altered my feelings about the future. When I saw you before, I was dreaming that I might come back some day. I don’t think I ever shall⁠—now.” Will paused here.

“You wished me to know the reasons?” said Dorothea, timidly.

“Yes,” said Will, impetuously, shaking his head backward, and looking away from her with irritation in his face. “Of course I must wish it. I have been grossly insulted in your eyes and in the eyes of others. There has been a mean implication against my character. I wish you to know that under no circumstances would I have lowered myself by⁠—under no circumstances would I have given men the chance of saying that I sought money under the pretext of seeking⁠—something else. There was no need of other safeguard against me⁠—the safeguard of wealth was enough.”

Will rose from his chair with the last word and went⁠—he hardly knew where; but it was to the projecting window nearest him, which had been open as now about the same season a year ago, when he and Dorothea had stood within it and talked together. Her whole heart was going out at this moment in sympathy with Will’s indignation: she only wanted to convince him that she had never done him injustice, and he seemed to have turned away from her as if she too had been part of the unfriendly world.

“It would be very unkind of you to suppose that I ever attributed any meanness to you,” she began. Then in her ardent way, wanting to plead with him, she moved from her chair