That was the bare fact which Bulstrode was now forced to see in the
rigid outline with which acts present themselves onlookers. But for
himself at that distant time, and even now in burning memory, the fact
was broken into little sequences, each justified as it came by
reasonings which seemed to prove it righteous. Bulstrode's course up
to that time had, he thought, been sanctioned by remarkable
providences, appearing to point the way for him to be the agent in
making the best use of a large property and withdrawing it from
perversion. Death and other striking dispositions, such as feminine
trustfulness, had come; and Bulstrode would have adopted Cromwell's
words--"Do you call these bare events? The Lord pity you!" The
events were comparatively small, but the essential condition was
there--namely, that they were in favor of his own ends. It was easy
for him to settle what was due from him to others by inquiring what
were God's intentions with regard to himself. Could it be for God's
service that this fortune should in any considerable proportion go to a
young woman and her husband who were given up to the lightest pursuits,
and might scatter it abroad in triviality--people who seemed to lie
outside the path of remarkable providences? Bulstrode had never said
to himself beforehand, "The daughter shall not be found"--nevertheless
when the moment came he kept her existence hidden; and when other
moments followed, he soothed the mother with consolation in the
probability that the unhappy young woman might be no more.
There were hours in which Bulstrode felt that his action was
unrighteous; but how could he go back? He had mental exercises, called
himself nought, laid hold on redemption, and went on in his course of
instrumentality. And after five years Death again came to widen his
path, by taking away his wife. He did gradually withdraw his capital,
but he did not make the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the
business, which was carried on for thirteen years afterwards before it
finally collapsed. Meanwhile Nicholas Bulstrode had used his hundred
thousand discreetly, and was become provincially, solidly important--a
banker, a Churchman, a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in
trading concerns, in which his ability was directed to economy in the
raw material, as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy's silk.
And now, when this respectability had lasted undisturbed for nearly
thirty years--when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the
consciousness--that past had risen and immersed his thought as if with
the terrible irruption of a new sense overburthening the feeble being.