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JOHN CALDIGATE
‘You are so good to me that I can hardly understand your
goodness. Trusting to that, I will wait here till he shall come
again and tell me where and how I am to live.’
After that the old Squire made no further attempt in
the same direction, finding that no slightest hollow had been
made on that other stone.
CHAPTER XLV
THE BOLTONS ARE MUCH
TROUBLED
The condition of the inhabitants of Puritan Grange during
the six weeks immediately after the verdict was very sad indeed.
I have described badly the character of the lady living there, if
I have induced my readers to think that her heart was hardened
against her daughter. She was a woman of strong convictions
and bitter prejudices; but her heart was soft enough. When
she married, circumstances had separated her widely from her
own family, in which she had never known either a brother or
a sister; and the burden of her marriage with an old man had
been brightened to her by the possession of an only child — of
one daughter, who had been the lamp of her life, the solitary
delight of her heart, the single relief to the otherwise solitary
tedium of her monotonous existence. She had, indeed attended to the religious training of her girl with constant care; — but
the yearnings of her maternal heart had softened even her religion, so that the laws, and dogmas, and texts, and exercises by
which her husband was oppressed, and her servants afflicted,
had been made lighter for Hester — sometimes not without
pangs of conscience on the part of the self-convicted parent.
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JOHN CALDIGATE
She had known, as well as other mothers, how to gloat over
the sweet charms of the one thing which in all the world had
been quite her own. She had revelled in kisses and soft touches.
Her Hester’s garments had been a delight to her, till she had
taught herself to think that though sackcloth and ashes were
the proper wear for herself and her husband, nothing was
too soft, too silken, too delicate for her little girl. The roses in
the garden, and the goldfish in the bowl, and the pet spaniel,
had been there because such surroundings had been needed
for the joyousness of her girl. And the theological hardness of
the literature of the house had been somewhat mitigated as
Hester grew into reading, so that Watt was occasionally relieved by Wordsworth, and Thomson’s ‘Seasons’ was alternated with George Withers’s ‘Hallelujah.’
Then had come, first the idea of the marriage, and, immediately consequent upon the idea, the marriage itself. The story of that has been told, but the reader has perhaps hardly been
made to understand the utter bereavement which it brought
on the mother. It is natural that the adult bird should delight to leave the family nest, and that the mother bird should
have its heart-strings torn by the separation. It must be so,
alas! even when the divulsions are made in the happiest manner. But here the tearing away had nothing in it to reconcile
the mother. She was suddenly told that her daughter was to
be no longer her own. Her step-son had interfered and her
husband had become powerful over her with a sudden obstinacy. She had had no hand in the choice. She would fain have
postponed any choice, and would then fain have herself made
the choice. But a man was brought who was distasteful to
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
her at all points, and she was told that that man was to have
her daughter! He was thoroughly distasteful He had been
a spendthrift and a gambler; — then a seeker after gold in
wild, godless countries, and, to her thinking, not at all the better because he had been a successful seeker. She believed
the man to be an atheist. She was told that his father was
an infidel, and was ready to believe the worst of the son. And
yet in this terrible emergency she was powerless. The girl was
allowed to see the man, and declared almost at once that she
would transfer herself from her mother’s keeping to the keeping of this wicked one! She was transferred, and the mother
had been left alone.
Then came the blow — very quickly, the blow which, as
she now told herself morning, noon, and night, was no worse
than she had expected. Another woman claimed the man as
her husband, and so claimed him that the world all around
her had declared that the claim would be made good. And
the man himself had owned enough to make him unfit —
as she thought — to have the custody of any honest woman.
Then she acknowledged to herself the full weight of the misfortune that had fallen upon them — the misfortune which
never would have fallen upon them had they listened to her
counsel — and she had immediately put her shoulders to
the wheel with the object of rescuing her child from the perils,
from the sin, from the degradation of her position. And could
she have rescued her, could she have induced her daughter to
remain at Puritan Grange, there would even then have been
consolation. It was one of the tenets of her life — the strongest,
perhaps, of all those doctrines on which she built her faith —
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JOHN CALDIGATE
that this world is a world of woe; that wailing and suffering, if
not gnashing of teeth, is and should be the condition of mankind preparatory to eternal bliss. For eternal bliss there could,
she thought, be no other preparation She did not want to be
happy here, or to have those happy around her whom she loved.
She had stumbled and gone astray — she told herself hourly
now that she had stumbled and gone astray — in preparing
those roses and ribbons, and other lightnesses for her young
girl. It should have been all sackcloth and ashes. Had it been
all sackcloth and ashes there would not have been this terrible
fall. But if the loved one would now come back to sackcloth
and ashes — if she would assent to the blackness of religious
asceticism, to penitence and theological gloom, and would
lead the life of the godly but comfortless here in order that she
might insure the glories and joys of the future life, then there
might be consolation; — then it might be felt that this tribulation had been a precious balm by which an erring soul had
been brought back to its due humility.
But Wordsworth and Thomson, though upon the whole
moral poets, had done their work. Or, if not done altogether
by them, the work had been done by the latitude which had
admitted them. So that the young wife, when she found herself
breathing the free air with which her husband surrounded
her, was able to burst asunder the remnants of those cords of
fanaticism with which her mother had endeavoured to constrain her. She looked abroad, and soon taught herself to feel
that the world was bright and merry, that this mortal life was
by no means necessarily a place of gloom, and the companionship of the man to whom Providence had allotted her was to
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
her so happy, so enjoyable, so sufficient, that she found herself to have escaped from a dark prison and to be roaming
among shrubs and flowers, and running waters, which were
ever green, which never faded, and the music of which was
always in her ears. When the first tidings of Euphemia Smith
came to Folking she was in all her thoughts and theories of
life poles asunder from her mother. There might be suffering and tribulation — suffering even to death. But her idea of
the manner in which the suffering should be endured and
death awaited was altogether opposed to that which was hot
within her mother’s bosom.
But not the less did the mother still pray, still struggle, and
still hope. They, neither of them, quite understood each other,
but the mother did not at all understand the daughter. She,
the mother, knew what the verdict had been, and was taught to
believe that by that verdict the very ceremony of her daughter’s marriage had been rendered null and void. It was in vain
that the truth of the matter came to her from Robert Bolton,
diluted through the vague explanations of her husband. ‘It
does not alter the marriage, Robert says.’ So it was that the old
man told his tale, not perfectly understanding, not even quite
believing, what his son had told him.
‘How can he dare to say so?’ demanded the indignant
mother of the injured woman. ‘Not alter the marriage when
the jury have declared that the other woman is his wife! In
the eyes of God she is not his wife. That cannot be imputed as
sin to her — not that — because she did it not knowing. She,
poor innocent, was betrayed. But now that she knows it, every
mouthful that she eats of his bread is a sin.’
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JOHN CALDIGATE
‘It is the old man’s bread,’ said this older man, weakly.
‘What matter? It is the bread of adultery.’ It may certainly be
said that at this time Mrs. Bolton herself would have been relieved from none of her sufferings by any new evidence which
would have shown that Crinkett and the others had sworn
falsely. Though she loved her daughter dearly, though her
daughter’s misery made her miserable, yet she did not wish to
restore the husband to the wife. Any allusion to a possibility
that the verdict had been a mistaken verdict was distasteful to
her. Her own original opinion respecting Caldigate had been
made good by the verdict. The verdict had proved her to be
right, and her husband with all his sons to have been wrong.
The triumph had been very dark to her; but still it had been
a triumph. It was to her an established fact that John Caldigate
was not her daughter’s husband and therefore she was anxious, not to rehabilitate her daughter’s position, but to receive
her own miserable child once more beneath the shelter of
her own wing. That they two might pray together, struggle together, together wear their sackcloth and ashes, and together console themselves with their hopes of eternal joys, while
they shuddered, not altogether uncomfortably, at the torments prepared for others — this was now the only outlook in
which she could find a gleam of satisfaction; and she was so
assured of the reasonableness of her wishes, so convinced that
the house of her parents was now the only house in which
Hester could live without running counter to the precepts of
her own religion, and counter also to the rules of the wicked outside world, that she could not bring herself to believe
but that she would succeed at last. Merely to ask her child to
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
come, to repeat the invitation, and then to take a refusal, was
by no means sufficient for her energy. She had failed grievously
when she had endeavoured to make her daughter a prisoner
at the Grange. After such an attempt as that, it could hardly
be thought that ordinary invitations would be efficacious. But
when that attempt had been made, it was possible that Hester
should justify herself by the law. According to law she had then
been Caldigate’s wife. There had been some ground for her to
stand upon as a wife, and as a wife she had stood upon it very
firmly. But now there was not an inch of ground. The man had
been convicted as a bigamist, and the other woman, the first
woman, had been proved to be his wife. Mrs. Bolton had got
it into her head that the two had been dissevered as though
by some supernal power; and no explanation to the contrary,
brought to her by her husband from Robert, had any power of
shaking her conviction. It was manifest to all men and to all
women, that she who had been seduced, betrayed, and sacrificed should now return with her innocent babe to the protection of her father’s roof; and no stone must be left unturned till
the unfortunate one had been made to understand her duty.
The old banker in these days had not a good time, nor, indeed, had the Boltons generally. Mrs. Bolton, though prone to
grasp at power on every side, was apt, like some other women
who are equally grasping, to expect almost omnipotence from
the men around her when she was desirous that something
should be done by them in accordance with her own bidding.
Knowing her husband to be weak from age and sorrow, she
could still jeer at him because he was not abnormally strong;
and though her intercourse with his sons and their families
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JOHN CALDIGATE
was now scanty and infrequent, still by a word here and a line
there she could make her reproaches felt by them all. Robert,
who saw his father every day, heard very much of them. Daniel was often stung, and even Nicholas. And the reproaches
reached as far as William, the barrister up in London.
‘I am sure I don’t know what we can do,’ said the miserable father, sitting huddled up in his arm-chair one evening
towards the end of August. It was very hot, but the windows
were closed because he could not bear a draught, and he was
somewhat impatiently waiting for the hour of prayers which
were antecedent to bed, where he could be silent even if he
could not sleep.
‘There are five of you. One should be at the house every
day to tell her of her duty.’
‘I couldn’t go.’
‘They could go — if they cared. If they cared they would go.
They are her brothers.’
‘Mr. Caldigate would not let them enter the house,’ said
the old man.
‘Do you mean that he would separate her from her brother
and her parents?’
‘Not if she wished to see them. She is her own mistress,
and he will abet her in whatever she may choose to do. That is
what Robert says.’
‘And what Robert says is to be law?’
‘He knows what he is talking about.’ Mr. Bolton as he said
this shook his head angrily, because he was fatigued.
‘And he is to be your guide even when your daughter’s soul
is in jeopardy?’ This was the line of argument in reference to
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
which Mr. Bolton always felt himself to be as weak as water
before his wife. He did not dare to rebel against her religious
supremacy, not simply because he was a weak old man in presence of a strong woman, but from fear of denunciation. He,
too, believed her creed, though he was made miserable by her
constant adherence to it. He believed, and would fain have let
that suffice. She believed, and endeavoured to live up to her
belief. And so it came to pass that when she spoke to him of
his own soul, of the souls of those who were dear to him, or
even of souls in general, he was frightened and paralysed.
He had more than once attempted to reply with worldly arguments, but had suffered so much in the encounter that he had
learned to abstain. ‘I cannot believe that she would refuse to
see us. I shall go myself; but if we all went we should surely
persuade her.’ In answer to this the poor man only groaned,
till the coming in of the old servant to arrange the chairs and
put the big Bible on the table relieved him from something of
his misery.
‘I certainly will not interfere,’ Robert Bolton said to his father on the next morning. ‘I will not go to Folking, because
I am sure that I should do no good. Hester, no doubt, would be
better at your house — much better. There is nothing I would
not do to get her back from the Caldigates altogether — if
there was a chance of success. But we have no power; — none
whatever.’
‘No power at all,’ said the banker, shaking his head, and
feeling some satisfaction at the possession of an intelligible
word which he could quote to his wife.
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