It was a newer crisis in Rosamond's experience than even Dorothea could imagine: she was under the first great shock that had shattered her dream-world in which she had been easily confident of herself and critical of others; and this strange unexpected manifestation of feeling in a woman whom she had approached with a shrinking aversion and dread, as one who must necessarily have a jealous hatred towards her, made her soul totter all the more with a sense that she had been walking in an unknown world which had just broken in upon her.
When Rosamond's convulsed throat was subsiding into calm, and she withdrew the handkerchief with which she had been hiding her face, her eyes met Dorothea's as helplessly as if they had been blue flowers.
What was the use of thinking about behavior after this crying?
And Dorothea looked almost as childish, with the neglected trace of a silent tear. Pride was broken down between these two.
"We were talking about your husband," Dorothea said, with some timidity.
"I thought his looks were sadly changed with suffering the other day.
I had not seen him for many weeks before. He said he had been feeling very lonely in his trial; but I think he would have borne it all better if he had been able to be quite open with you.""Tertius is so angry and impatient if I say anything," said Rosamond, imagining that he had been complaining of her to Dorothea. "He ought not to wonder that I object to speak to him on painful subjects.""It was himself he blamed for not speaking," said Dorothea.
"What he said of you was, that he could not be happy in doing anything which made you unhappy--that his marriage was of course a bond which must affect his choice about everything; and for that reason he refused my proposal that he should keep his position at the Hospital, because that would bind him to stay in Middlemarch, and he would not undertake to do anything which would be painful to you. He could say that to me, because he knows that I had much trial in my marriage, from my husband's illness, which hindered his plans and saddened him;and he knows that I have felt how hard it is to walk always in fear of hurting another who is tied to us."Dorothea waited a little; she had discerned a faint pleasure stealing over Rosamond's face. But there was no answer, and she went on, with a gathering tremor, "Marriage is so unlike everything else.
There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved some one else better than--than those we were married to, it would be no use"--poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her language brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear--but it murders our marriage--and then the marriage stays with us like a murder--and everything else is gone. And then our husband--if he loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse in his life--"Her voice had sunk very low: there was a dread upon her of presuming too far, and of speaking as if she herself were perfection addressing error. She was too much preoccupied with her own anxiety, to be aware that Rosamond was trembling too; and filled with the need to express pitying fellowship rather than rebuke, she put her hands on Rosamond's, and said with more agitated rapidity,--"I know, I know that the feeling may be very dear--it has taken hold of us unawares--it is so hard, it may seem like death to part with it--and we are weak--I am weak--"The waves of her own sorrow, from out of which she was struggling to save another, rushed over Dorothea with conquering force.
She stopped in speechless agitation. not crying, but feeling as if she were being inwardly grappled. Her face had become of a deathlier paleness, her lips trembled, and she pressed her hands helplessly on the hands that lay under them.
Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own--hurried along in a new movement which gave all things some new, awful, undefined aspect--could find no words, but involuntarily she put her lips to Dorothea's forehead which was very near her, and then for a minute the two women clasped each other as if they had been in a shipwreck.
"You are thinking what is not true," said Rosamond, in an eager half-whisper, while she was still feeling Dorothea's arms round her--urged by a mysterious necessity to free herself from something that oppressed her as if it were blood guiltiness.
They moved apart, looking at each other.
"When you came in yesterday--it was not as you thought,"said Rosamond in the same tone.
There was a movement of surprised attention in Dorothea She expected a vindication of Rosamond herself.