To a creature of Will's susceptible temperament--without any neutral region of indifference in his nature, ready to turn everything that befell him into the collisions of a passionate drama--the revelation that Rosamond had made her happiness in any way dependent on him was a difficulty which his outburst of rage towards her had immeasurably increased for him. He hated his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded to show the fulness of his relenting: he must go to her again;the friendship could not be put to a sudden end; and her unhappiness was a power which he dreaded. And all the while there was no more foretaste of enjoyment in the life before him than if his limbs had been lopped off and he was ****** his fresh start on crutches.
In the night he had debated whether he should not get on the coach, not for Riverston, but for London, leaving a note to Lydgate which would give a makeshift reason for his retreat. But there were strong cords pulling him back from that abrupt departure:
the blight on his happiness in thinking of Dorothea, the crushing of that chief hope which had remained in spite of the acknowledged necessity for renunciation, was too fresh a misery for him to resign himself to it and go straightway into a distance which was also despair.
Thus he did nothing more decided than taking the Riverston coach.
He came back again by it while it was still daylight, having made up his mind that he must go to Lydgate's that evening.
The Rubicon, we know, was a very insignificant stream to look at;its significance lay entirely in certain invisible conditions.
Will felt as if he were forced to cross his small boundary ditch, and what he saw beyond it was not empire, but discontented subjection.
But it is given to us sometimes even in our every-day life to witness the saving influence of a noble nature, the divine efficacy of rescue that may lie in a self-subduing act of fellowship.
If Dorothea, after her night's anguish, had not taken that walk to Rosamond--why, she perhaps would have been a woman who gained a higher character for discretion, but it would certainly not have been as well for those three who were on one hearth in Lydgate's house at half-past seven that evening.
Rosamond had been prepared for Will's visit, and she received him with a languid coldness which Lydgate accounted for by her nervous exhaustion, of which he could not suppose that it had any relation to Will.
And when she sat in silence bending over a bit of work, he innocently apologized for her in an indirect way by begging her to lean backward and rest. Will was miserable in the necessity for playing the part of a friend who was ****** his first appearance and greeting to Rosamond, while his thoughts were busy about her feeling since that scene of yesterday, which seemed still inexorably to enclose them both, like the painful vision of a double madness. It happened that nothing called Lydgate out of the room; but when Rosamond poured out the tea, and Will came near to fetch it, she placed a tiny bit of folded paper in his saucer. He saw it and secured it quickly, but as he went back to his inn he had no eagerness to unfold the paper.
What Rosamond had written to him would probably deepen the painful impressions of the evening. Still, he opened and read it by his bed-candle. There were only these few words in her neatly flowing hand:--"I have told Mrs. Casaubon. She is not under any mistake about you.
I told her because she came to see me and was very kind. You will have nothing to reproach me with now. I shall not have made any difference to you."The effect of these words was not quite all gladness. As Will dwelt on them with excited imagination, he felt his cheeks and ears burning at the thought of what had occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond--at the uncertainty how far Dorothea might still feel her dignity wounded in having an explanation of his conduct offered to her.
There might still remain in her mind a changed association with him which made an irremediable difference--a lasting flaw. With active fancy he wrought himself into a state of doubt little more easy than that of the man who has escaped from wreck by night and stands on unknown ground in the darkness. Until that wretched yesterday--except the moment of vexation long ago in the very same room and in the very same presence--all their vision, all their thought of each other, had been as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered.
But now--would Dorothea meet him in that world again?