Raffles’s fatal illness

Raffles’s fatal illness turns John Raffles’s return to Stone Court into a crisis of secrecy, medical judgment, and moral uncertainty. Nicholas Bulstrode hopes the illness will prevent Raffles from exposing his past, while Tertius Lydgate treats him according to principles that oppose the customary use of alcohol and heavy opium. Raffles dies, but neither his symptoms nor the available testimony establish that anyone caused his death; suspicion grows instead from the motives and circumstances surrounding it.

Illness and Return to Stone Court

When Raffles arrives at Stone Court, he is markedly changed. His pallor and weakness accompany a new, intense terror, replacing the loud, tormenting manner Bulstrode remembers. Raffles says his money has been taken, that he is ill and being pursued, and that he has told nobody anything. He denies having disclosed Bulstrode’s secrets, but cannot remember the fearful account he had given Caleb Garth: his consciousness has been interrupted, and what he said to Garth seems to have receded into darkness. His assurances therefore offer Bulstrode no dependable answer to the question that matters most to him—whether Raffles has told others what he knows.

Bulstrode reads Raffles’s illness through the prospect of his own exposure. He takes some comfort from evidence that Raffles had been away from Middlemarch and that, after Garth left Stone Court, Raffles asked the housekeeper for beer and then spoke no further. Yet the possibility of a sudden disclosure continues to govern Bulstrode’s attention. His hope for rescue is entangled with a wish that Raffles might die: he repeatedly invokes submission to divine will while privately longing for that will to end the danger posed by the sick man.

Lydgate’s Diagnosis and Treatment

Lydgate examines Raffles and orders bed rest, quiet, close watching, and attendance. He considers the illness serious but initially does not expect the attack to be fatal, since Raffles has a robust constitution, though complications could change the outlook. He warns Bulstrode not to give Raffles alcohol and stresses that treatment itself can be more dangerous than the disease. Raffles repeatedly asks for brandy and refuses the food prescribed for him, while his fear and delirium make him difficult to interpret.

The case also engages Lydgate’s established medical convictions. After leaving Stone Court, he considers the treatment of alcoholic poisoning, a subject that had interested him abroad and that had been sharpened by published accounts of experience in America. He rejects the prevalent practice of allowing alcohol and persistently administering large doses of opium, and recalls having acted on that conviction with favorable results. On a later visit, he brings opium but permits only extremely moderate doses if sleeplessness continues, gives exact instructions about when to stop, and again forbids alcohol. He judges that Raffles has strength enough to survive with little food, while warning that narcotism is the danger he particularly fears.

The Night Watch and Death

Bulstrode stays at Stone Court and personally carries out Lydgate’s orders. Through the night, Raffles remains restless and sleepless, repeatedly demanding brandy and saying that he is sinking away. He implores Bulstrode not to punish him by withholding food and insists that he has told no one anything. His delirium shifts: at one point he seems to imagine a doctor present and accuses Bulstrode of trying to starve him for a disclosure he says he never made. These episodes leave Bulstrode watching both the patient’s condition and the possibility that Raffles might speak.

Mrs. Abel reports that Raffles fell into a deep sleep sometime between three and four in the morning. Bulstrode recognizes that it is not restorative sleep but the approach of death. In the room, he sees a bottle containing brandy and an almost empty opium phial; he hides the phial and locks the brandy away. Lydgate arrives at half-past ten in time to witness the final pause in Raffles’s breathing. His expression shows that he recognizes he had not judged the case correctly. Asked when the change began, Bulstrode says he did not keep watch throughout the night and that Mrs. Abel had reported Raffles’s gradual sleep.

Uncertainty and Public Suspicion

The evidence does not settle whether Raffles’s death was hastened. The physicians gathered by John Hawley examine the reported circumstances, including Mrs. Abel’s account and Lydgate’s certificate attributing the death to delirium tremens, but find no particulars that provide positive grounds for suspicion. That medical conclusion does not dispel the town’s doubts. Bulstrode had a clear personal reason to want Raffles out of the way, and Lydgate’s attendance at Stone Court becomes more suspicious to observers after Bulstrode lends him money at a moment of financial distress.

The loan, the death, and Bulstrode’s history are joined in public speculation, even though the assembled medical men identify no direct evidence that Lydgate caused or abetted Raffles’s death. Some suspect that Bulstrode’s generosity was meant to secure Lydgate’s silence; others add the established prejudice that Lydgate had sought professional advantage through his association with the banker. The episode thus changes Raffles’s illness from a private medical emergency into the center of a public scandal: uncertainty about the death supplies room for conjecture, while the motives surrounding it make that conjecture seem persuasive to Middlemarch.