The joy was not the less--perhaps it was the more complete just then--because of the irrevocable parting; for there was no reproach, no contemptuous wonder to imagine in any eye or from any lips.
He had acted so as to defy reproach, and make wonder respectful.
Any one watching her might have seen that there was a fortifying thought within her. Just as when inventive power is working with glad ease some small claim on the attention is fully met as if it were only a cranny opened to the sunlight, it was easy now for Dorothea to write her memoranda. She spoke her last words to the housekeeper in cheerful tones, and when she seated herself in the carriage her eyes were bright and her cheeks blooming under the dismal bonnet. She threw back the heavy "weepers,"and looked before her, wondering which road Will had taken.
It was in her nature to be proud that he was blameless, and through all her feelings there ran this vein--"I was right to defend him."The coachman was used to drive his grays at a good pane, Mr. Casaubon being unenjoying and impatient in everything away from his desk, and wanting to get to the end of all journeys; and Dorothea was now bowled along quickly. Driving was pleasant, for rain in the night had laid the dust, and the blue sky looked far off, away from the region of the great clouds that sailed in masses.
The earth looked like a happy place under the vast heavens, and Dorothea was wishing that she might overtake Will and see him once more.
After a turn of the road, there he was with the portfolio under his arm;but the next moment she was passing him while he raised his hat, and she felt a pang at being seated there in a sort of exaltation, leaving him behind. She could not look back at him. It was as if a crowd of indifferent objects had thrust them asunder, and forced them along different paths, taking them farther and farther away from each other, and making it useless to look back.
She could no more make any sign that would seem to say, "Need we part?"than she could stop the carriage to wait for him. Nay, what a world of reasons crowded upon her against any movement of her thought towards a future that might reverse the decision of this day!
"I only wish I had known before--I wish he knew--then we could be quite happy in thinking of each other, though we are forever parted.
And if I could but have given him the money, and made things easier for him!"--were the longings that came back the most persistently.
And yet, so heavily did the world weigh on her in spite of her independent energy, that with this idea of Will as in need of such help and at a disadvantage with the world, there came always the vision of that unfittingness of any closer relation between them which lay in the opinion of every one connected with her. She felt to the full all the imperativeness of the motives which urged Will's conduct.
How could he dream of her defying the barrier that her husband had placed between them?--how could she ever say to herself that she would defy it?
Will's certainty as the carriage grew smaller in the distance, had much more bitterness in it. Very slight matters were enough to gall him in his sensitive mood, and the sight of Dorothea driving past him while he felt himself plodding along as a poor devil seeking a position in a world which in his present temper offered him little that he coveted, made his conduct seem a mere matter of necessity, and took away the sustainment of resolve.
After all, he had no assurance that she loved him: could any man pretend that he was simply glad in such a case to have the suffering all on his own side?
That evening Will spent with the Lydgates; the next evening he was gone.