That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after. It contained that concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion reveals the bias of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which will end an intermediate struggle. Without that memory of Raffles she might still have thought only of monetary ruin, but now along with her brother's look and words there darted into her mind the idea of some guilt in her husband--then, under the working of terror came the image of her husband exposed to disgrace--and then, after an instant of scorching shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world, with one leap of her heart she was at his side in mournful but unreproaching fellowship with shame and isolation. All this went on within her in a mere flash of time--while she sank into the chair, and raised her eyes to her brother, who stood over her. "I know nothing, Walter. What is it?"she said, faintly.
He told her everything, very inartificially, in slow fragments, ****** her aware that the scandal went much beyond proof, especially as to the end of Raffles.
"People will talk," he said. "Even if a man has been acquitted by a jury, they'll talk, and nod and wink--and as far as the world goes, a man might often as well be guilty as not. It's a breakdown blow, and it damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode. I don't pretend to say what is the truth. I only wish we had never heard the name of either Bulstrode or Lydgate. You'd better have been a Vincy all your life, and so had Rosamond." Mrs. Bulstrode made no reply.
"But you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet. People don't blame YOU. And I'll stand by you whatever you make up your mind to do,"said the brother, with rough but well-meaning affectionateness.
"Give me your arm to the carriage, Walter," said Mrs. Bulstrode.
"I feel very weak."
And when she got home she was obliged to say to her daughter, "I am not well, my dear; I must go and lie down. Attend to your papa.
Leave me in quiet. I shall take no dinner."She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk steadily to the place allotted her. A new searching light had fallen on her husband's character, and she could not judge him leniently:
the twenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated him by virtue of his concealments came back with particulars that made them seem an odious deceit. He had married her with that bad past life hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his innocence of the worst that was imputed to him.
Her honest ostentatious nature made the sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any mortal.
But this imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and habits were an odd patchwork, had a loyal spirit within her. The man whose prosperity she had shared through nearly half a life, and who had unvaryingly cherished her--now that punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake him.
There is a forsaking which still sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity. She knew, when she locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to go down to her unhappy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will mourn and not reproach.
But she needed time to gather up her strength; she needed to sob out her farewell to all the gladness and pride of her life.
When she had resolved to go down, she prepared herself by some little acts which might seem mere folly to a hard onlooker;they were her way of expressing to all spectators visible or invisible that she had begun a new life in which she embraced humiliation.
She took off all her ornaments and put on a plain black gown, and instead of wearing her much-adorned cap and large bows of hair, she brushed her hair down and put on a plain bonnet-cap, which made her look suddenly like an early Methodist.
Bulstrode, who knew that his wife had been out and had come in saying that she was not well, had spent the time in an agitation equal to hers. He had looked forward to her learning the truth from others, and had acquiesced in that probability, as something easier to him than any confession. But now that he imagined the moment of her knowledge come, he awaited the result in anguish.
His daughters had been obliged to consent to leave him, and though he had allowed some food to be brought to him, he had not touched it.
He felt himself perishing slowly in unpitied misery. Perhaps he should never see his wife's face with affection in it again.
And if he turned to God there seemed to be no answer but the pressure of retribution.
It was eight o'clock in the evening before the door opened and his wife entered. He dared not look up at her. He sat with his eyes bent down, and as she went towards him she thought he looked smaller--he seemed so withered and shrunken. A movement of new compassion and old tenderness went through her like a great wave, and putting one hand on his which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on his shoulder, she said, solemnly but kindly--"Look up, Nicholas."
He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her half amazed for a moment: her pale face, her changed, mourning dress, the trembling about her mouth, all said, "I know;" and her hands and eyes rested gently on him. He burst out crying and they cried together, she sitting at his side. They could not yet speak to each other of the shame which she was bearing with him, or of the acts which had brought it down on them. His confession was silent, and her promise of faithfulness was silent. Open-minded as she was, she nevertheless shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual consciousness, as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire.
She could not say, "How much is only slander and false suspicion?"and he did not say, "I am innocent."
