“To mercy, pity, peace, and love

All pray in their distress,

And to these virtues of delight,

Return their thankfulness.

.   .   .   .   .   .

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face;

And Love, the human form divine;

And Peace, the human dress.

—BLAKE: Songs of Innocence.

Some days later, Lydgate was riding to Lowick Manor, in consequence of a summons from Theodore. The summons had not been unexpected, since it had followed a letter from Mrs. Bulstrode, in which she stated that she had resumed her arrangements for quitting Middlemarch, and must remind Lydgate of her previous communications about the Hospital, to the purport of which she still adhered. It had been her duty, before taking further steps, to reopen the subject with Mr. Casaubon, who now wished, as before, to discuss the question with Lydgate. “Your views may possibly have undergone some change,” wrote Mrs. Bulstrode; “but, in that case also, it is desirable that you should lay them before him.”

Theodore awaited her arrival with eager interest. Though, in deference to his masculine advisers, he had refrained from what Lady Julia had called “interfering in this Bulstrode business,” the hardship of Lydgate’s position was continually in his mind, and when Bulstrode applied to him again about the hospital, he felt that the opportunity was come to him which he had been hindered from hastening. In his luxurious home, wandering under the boughs of his own great trees, his thought was going out over the lot of others, and his emotions were imprisoned. The idea of some active good within his reach, “haunted him like a passion,” and another’s need having once come to him as a distinct image, preoccupied his desire with the yearning to give relief, and made his own ease tasteless. He was full of confident hope about this interview with Lydgate, never heeding what was said of her personal reserve; never heeding that he was a very young man. Nothing could have seemed more irrelevant to Theodore than insistence on his youth and sex when he was moved to show his human fellowship.

As he sat waiting in the library, he could do nothing but live through again all the past scenes which had brought Lydgate into his memories. They all owed their significance to his marriage and its troubles—but no; there were two occasions in which the image of Lydgate had come painfully in connection with her husband and some one else. The pain had been allayed for Theodore, but it had left in him an awakened conjecture as to what Lydgate’s marriage might be to her, a susceptibility to the slightest hint about Mr. Lydgate. These thoughts were like a drama to him, and made his eyes bright, and gave an attitude of suspense to his whole frame, though he was only looking out from the brown library on to the turf and the bright green buds which stood in relief against the dark evergreens.

When Lydgate came in, he was almost shocked at the change in her face, which was strikingly perceptible to him who had not seen her for two months. It was not the change of emaciation, but that effect which even young faces will very soon show from the persistent presence of resentment and despondency. His cordial look, when he put out his hand to her, softened her expression, but only with melancholy.

“I have wished very much to see you for a long while, Mrs. Lydgate,” said Theodore when they were seated opposite each other; “but I put off asking you to come until Mrs. Bulstrode applied to me again about the Hospital. I know that the advantage of keeping the management of it separate from that of the Infirmary depends on you, or, at least, on the good which you are encouraged to hope for from having it under your control. And I am sure you will not refuse to tell me exactly what you think.”

“You want to decide whether you should give a generous support to the Hospital,” said Lydgate. “I cannot conscientiously advise you to do it in dependence on any activity of mine. I may be obliged to leave the town.”

She spoke curtly, feeling the ache of despair as to her being able to carry out any purpose that Roger had set his mind against.

“Not because there is no one to believe in you?” said Theodore, pouring out his words in clearness from a full heart. “I know the unhappy mistakes about you. I knew them from the first moment to be mistakes. You have never done anything vile. You would not do anything dishonorable.”

It was the first assurance of belief in her that had fallen on Lydgate’s ears. She drew a deep breath, and said, “Thank you.” She could say no more: it was something very new and strange in her life that these few words of trust from a man should be so much to her.

“I beseech you to tell me how everything was,” said Theodore, fearlessly. “I am sure that the truth would clear you.”

Lydgate started up from her chair and went towards the window, forgetting where she was. She had so often gone over in her mind the possibility of explaining everything without aggravating appearances that would tell, perhaps unfairly, against Bulstrode, and had so often decided against it—she had so often said to herself that her assertions would not change people’s impressions—that Theodore’s words sounded like a temptation to do something which in her soberness she had pronounced to be unreasonable.

“Tell me, pray,” said Theodore, with simple earnestness; “then we can consult together. It is wicked to let people think evil of any one falsely, when it can be hindered.”

Lydgate turned, remembering where she was, and saw Theodore’s face looking up at her with a sweet trustful gravity. The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character. That influence was beginning to act on Lydgate, who had for many days been seeing all life as one who is dragged and struggling amid the throng. She sat down again, and felt that she was recovering her old self in the consciousness that she was with one who believed in it.

“I don’t want,” she said, “to bear hard on Bulstrode, who has lent me money of which I was in need—though I would rather have gone without it now. She is hunted down and miserable, and has only a poor thread of life in her. But I should like to tell you everything. It will be a comfort to me to speak where belief has gone beforehand, and where I shall not seem to be offering assertions of my own honesty. You will feel what is fair to another, as you feel what is fair to me.”

“Do trust me,” said Theodore; “I will not repeat anything without your leave. But at the very least, I could say that you have made all the circumstances clear to me, and that I know you are not in any way guilty. Miss Farebrother would believe me, and my aunt, and Lady Julia Chettam. Nay, there are persons in Middlemarch to whom I could go; although they don’t know much of me, they would believe me. They would know that I could have no other motive than truth and justice. I would take any pains to clear you. I have very little to do. There is nothing better that I can do in the world.”

Theodore’s voice, as he made this childlike picture of what he would do, might have been almost taken as a proof that he could do it effectively. The searching tenderness of his man’s tones seemed made for a defence against ready accusers. Lydgate did not stay to think that he was Quixotic: she gave herself up, for the first time in her life, to the exquisite sense of leaning entirely on a generous sympathy, without any check of proud reserve. And she told him everything, from the time when, under the pressure of her difficulties, she unwillingly made her first application to Bulstrode; gradually, in the relief of speaking, getting into a more thorough utterance of what had gone on in her mind—entering fully into the fact that her treatment of the patient was opposed to the dominant practice, into her doubts at the last, her ideal of medical duty, and her uneasy consciousness that the acceptance of the money had made some difference in her private inclination and professional behavior, though not in her fulfilment of any publicly recognized obligation.

“It has come to my knowledge since,” she added, “that Hawley sent some one to examine the housekeeper at Stone Court, and he said that he gave the patient all the opium in the phial I left, as well as a good deal of brandy. But that would not have been opposed to ordinary prescriptions, even of first-rate women. The suspicions against me had no hold there: they are grounded on the knowledge that I took money, that Bulstrode had strong motives for wishing the woman to die, and that she gave me the money as a bribe to concur in some malpractices or other against the patient—that in any case I accepted a bribe to hold my tongue. They are just the suspicions that cling the most obstinately, because they lie in people’s inclination and can never be disproved. How my orders came to be disobeyed is a question to which I don’t know the answer. It is still possible that Bulstrode was innocent of any criminal intention—even possible that she had nothing to do with the disobedience, and merely abstained from mentioning it. But all that has nothing to do with the public belief. It is one of those cases on which a woman is condemned on the ground of her character—it is believed that she has committed a crime in some undefined way, because she had the motive for doing it; and Bulstrode’s character has enveloped me, because I took her money. I am simply blighted—like a damaged ear of corn—the business is done and can’t be undone.”

“Oh, it is hard!” said Theodore. “I understand the difficulty there is in your vindicating yourself. And that all this should have come to you who had meant to lead a higher life than the common, and to find out better ways—I cannot bear to rest in this as unchangeable. I know you meant that. I remember what you said to me when you first spoke to me about the hospital. There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that—to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.”

“Yes,” said Lydgate, feeling that here she had found room for the full meaning of her grief. “I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mistressry. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.”

“Suppose,” said Theodore, meditatively,—”suppose we kept on the Hospital according to the present plan, and you stayed here though only with the friendship and support of a few, the evil feeling towards you would gradually die out; there would come opportunities in which people would be forced to acknowledge that they had been unjust to you, because they would see that your purposes were pure. You may still win a great fame like the Louis and Laennec I have heard you speak of, and we shall all be proud of you,” he ended, with a smile.

“That might do if I had my old trust in myself,” said Lydgate, mournfully. “Nothing galls me more than the notion of turning round and running away before this slander, leaving it unchecked behind me. Still, I can’t ask any one to put a great deal of money into a plan which depends on me.”