it asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will not let us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance. She said to her own irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful, instead of driving her back from effort.
And what sort of crisis might not this be in three lives whose contact with hers laid an obligation on her as if they had been suppliants bearing the sacred branch? The objects of her rescue were not to be sought out by her fancy: they were chosen for her.
She yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant will. "What should I do--how should I act now, this very day, if I could clutch my own pain, and compel it to silence, and think of those three?"It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was light piercing into the room. She opened her curtains, and looked out towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond outside the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle on his back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could see figures moving--perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance.
She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining.
What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness. She took off the clothes which seemed to have some of the weariness of a hard watching in them, and began to make her toilet. Presently she rang for Tantripp, who came in her dressing-gown.
"Why, madam, you've never been in bed this blessed night,"burst out Tantripp, looking first at the bed and then at Dorothea's face, which in spite of bathing had the pale cheeks and pink eyelids of a mater dolorosa. "You'll kill yourself, you WILL. Anybody might think now you had a right to give yourself a little comfort.""Don't be alarmed, Tantripp," said Dorothea, smiling. "I have slept;I am not ill. I shall be glad of a cup of coffee as soon as possible.
And I want you to bring me my new dress; and most likely I shall want my new bonnet to-day.""They've lain there a month and more ready for you, madam, and most thankful I shall be to see you with a couple o' pounds'
worth less of crape," said Tantripp, stooping to light the fire.
"There's a reason in mourning, as I've always said; and three folds at the bottom of your skirt and a plain quilling in your bonnet--and if ever anybody looked like an angel, it's you in a net quilling--is what's consistent for a second year. At least, that's MYthinking," ended Tantripp, looking anxiously at the fire;"and if anybody was to marry me flattering himself I should wear those hijeous weepers two years for him, he'd be deceived by his own vanity, that's all.""The fire will do, my good Tan," said Dorothea, speaking as she used to do in the old Lausanne days, only with a very low voice;"get me the coffee."
She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against it in fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp went away wondering at this strange contrariness in her young mistress--that just the morning when she had more of a widow's face than ever, she should have asked for her lighter mourning which she had waived before.
Tantripp would never have found the clew to this mystery.
Dorothea wished to acknowledge that she had not the less an active life before her because she had buried a private joy;and the tradition that fresh garments belonged to all initiation, haunting her mind, made her grasp after even that slight outward help towards calm resolve. For the resolve was not easy.
Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking towards Middlemarch, having made up her mind that she would make as quietly and unnoticeably as possible her second attempt to see and save Rosamond.