MIDDLEMARCH
PART 4
CHAPTER VII.
"Piacer e popone
Vuol la sua stagione."
—Italian Proverb.
Mr.
Casaubon, as might be expected, spent a great deal of his time at the Grange in
these weeks, and the hindrance which courtship occasioned to the progress of
his great work—the Key to all Mythologies—naturally made him look forward the
more eagerly to the happy termination of courtship. But he had deliberately
incurred the hindrance, having made up his mind that it was now time for him to
adorn his life with the graces of female companionship, to irradiate the gloom
which fatigue was apt to hang over the intervals of studious labour with the
play of female fancy, and to secure in this, his culminating age, the solace of
female tendance for his declining years. Hence he determined to abandon himself
to the stream of feeling, and perhaps was surprised to find what an exceedingly
shallow rill it was. As in droughty regions baptism by immersion could only be
performed symbolically, Mr. Casaubon found that sprinkling was the utmost
approach to a plunge which his stream would afford him; and he concluded that the
poets had much exaggerated the force of masculine passion. Nevertheless, he
observed with pleasure that Miss Brooke showed an ardent submissive affection
which promised to fulfil his most agreeable previsions of marriage. It had once
or twice crossed his mind that possibly there was some deficiency in Dorothea
to account for the moderation of his abandonment; but he was unable to discern
the deficiency, or to figure to himself a woman who would have pleased him
better; so that there was clearly no reason to fall back upon but the
exaggerations of human tradition.
"Could
I not be preparing myself now to be more useful?" said Dorothea to him,
one morning, early in the time of courtship; "could I not learn to read
Latin and Greek aloud to you, as Milton's daughters did to their father,
without understanding what they read?"
"I
fear that would be wearisome to you," said Mr. Casaubon, smiling;
"and, indeed, if I remember rightly, the young women you have mentioned
regarded that exercise in unknown tongues as a ground for rebellion against the
poet."
"Yes;
but in the first place they were very naughty girls, else they would have been
proud to minister to such a father; and in the second place they might have
studied privately and taught themselves to understand what they read, and then
it would have been interesting. I hope you don't expect me to be naughty and
stupid?"
"I
expect you to be all that an exquisite young lady can be in every possible
relation of life. Certainly it might be a great advantage if you were able to
copy the Greek character, and to that end it were well to begin with a little
reading."
Dorothea
seized this as a precious permission. She would not have asked Mr. Casaubon at
once to teach her the languages, dreading of all things to be tiresome instead
of helpful; but it was not entirely out of devotion to her future husband that
she wished to know Latin and Greek. Those provinces of masculine knowledge
seemed to her a standing-ground from which all truth could be seen more truly.
As it was, she constantly doubted her own conclusions, because she felt her own
ignorance: how could she be confident that one-roomed cottages were not for the
glory of God, when men who knew the classics appeared to conciliate
indifference to the cottages with zeal for the glory? Perhaps even Hebrew might
be necessary—at least the alphabet and a few roots—in order to arrive at the
core of things, and judge soundly on the social duties of the Christian. And
she had not reached that point of renunciation at which she would have been
satisfied with having a wise husband: she wished, poor child, to be wise
herself. Miss Brooke was certainly very naive with all her alleged cleverness.
Celia, whose mind had never been thought too powerful, saw the emptiness of
other people's pretensions much more readily. To have in general but little
feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any
particular occasion.
However,
Mr. Casaubon consented to listen and teach for an hour together, like a
schoolmaster of little boys, or rather like a lover, to whom a mistress's
elementary ignorance and difficulties have a touching fitness. Few scholars
would have disliked teaching the alphabet under such circumstances. But
Dorothea herself was a little shocked and discouraged at her own stupidity, and
the answers she got to some timid questions about the value of the Greek accents
gave her a painful suspicion that here indeed there might be secrets not
capable of explanation to a woman's reason.
Mr.
Brooke had no doubt on that point, and expressed himself with his usual
strength upon it one day that he came into the library while the reading was
going forward.
"Well,
but now, Casaubon, such deep studies, classics, mathematics, that kind of
thing, are too taxing for a woman—too taxing, you know."
"Dorothea
is learning to read the characters simply," said Mr. Casaubon, evading the
question. "She had the very considerate thought of saving my eyes."
"Ah,
well, without understanding, you know—that may not be so bad. But there is a
lightness about the feminine mind—a touch and go—music, the fine arts, that
kind of thing—they should study those up to a certain point, women should; but
in a light way, you know. A woman should be able to sit down and play you or
sing you a good old English tune. That is what I like; though I have heard most
things—been at the opera in Vienna: Gluck, Mozart, everything of that sort. But
I'm a conservative in music—it's not like ideas, you know. I stick to the good
old tunes."
"Mr.
Casaubon is not fond of the piano, and I am very glad he is not," said
Dorothea, whose slight regard for domestic music and feminine fine art must be
forgiven her, considering the small tinkling and smearing in which they chiefly
consisted at that dark period. She smiled and looked up at her betrothed with
grateful eyes. If he had always been asking her to play the "Last Rose of
Summer," she would have required much resignation. "He says there is
only an old harpsichord at Lowick, and it is covered with books."
"Ah,
there you are behind Celia, my dear. Celia, now, plays very prettily, and is
always ready to play. However, since Casaubon does not like it, you are all
right. But it's a pity you should not have little recreations of that sort,
Casaubon: the bow always strung—that kind of thing, you know—will not do."
"I
never could look on it in the light of a recreation to have my ears teased with
measured noises," said Mr. Casaubon. "A tune much iterated has the
ridiculous effect of making the words in my mind perform a sort of minuet to
keep time—an effect hardly tolerable, I imagine, after boyhood. As to the
grander forms of music, worthy to accompany solemn celebrations, and even to
serve as an educating influence according to the ancient conception, I say
nothing, for with these we are not immediately concerned."
"No;
but music of that sort I should enjoy," said Dorothea. "When we were
coming home from Lausanne my uncle took us to hear the great organ at Freiberg,
and it made me sob."
"That
kind of thing is not healthy, my dear," said Mr. Brooke. "Casaubon,
she will be in your hands now: you must teach my niece to take things more
quietly, eh, Dorothea?"
He ended
with a smile, not wishing to hurt his niece, but really thinking that it was
perhaps better for her to be early married to so sober a fellow as Casaubon,
since she would not hear of Chettam.
"It
is wonderful, though," he said to himself as he shuffled out of the
room—"it is wonderful that she should have liked him. However, the match
is good. I should have been travelling out of my brief to have hindered it, let
Mrs. Cadwallader say what she will. He is pretty certain to be a bishop, is
Casaubon. That was a very seasonable pamphlet of his on the Catholic
Question:—a deanery at least. They owe him a deanery."
And here
I must vindicate a claim to philosophical reflectiveness, by remarking that Mr.
Brooke on this occasion little thought of the Radical speech which, at a later
period, he was led to make on the incomes of the bishops. What elegant
historian would neglect a striking opportunity for pointing out that his heroes
did not foresee the history of the world, or even their own actions?—For
example, that Henry of Navarre, when a Protestant baby, little thought of being
a Catholic monarch; or that Alfred the Great, when he measured his laborious
nights with burning candles, had no idea of future gentlemen measuring their
idle days with watches. Here is a mine of truth, which, however vigorously it
may be worked, is likely to outlast our coal.
But of
Mr. Brooke I make a further remark perhaps less warranted by precedent—namely,
that if he had foreknown his speech, it might not have made any great
difference. To think with pleasure of his niece's husband having a large
ecclesiastical income was one thing—to make a Liberal speech was another thing;
and it is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of
view.
CHAPTER VIII.
"Oh, rescue her! I am her brother now,
And you her father. Every gentle maid
Should have a guardian in each
gentleman."
It was
wonderful to Sir James Chettam how well he continued to like going to the
Grange after he had once encountered the difficulty of seeing Dorothea for the
first time in the light of a woman who was engaged to another man. Of course
the forked lightning seemed to pass through him when he first approached her,
and he remained conscious throughout the interview of hiding uneasiness; but,
good as he was, it must be owned that his uneasiness was less than it would
have been if he had thought his rival a brilliant and desirable match. He had
no sense of being eclipsed by Mr. Casaubon; he was only shocked that Dorothea
was under a melancholy illusion, and his mortification lost some of its
bitterness by being mingled with compassion.
Nevertheless,
while Sir James said to himself that he had completely resigned her, since with
the perversity of a Desdemona she had not affected a proposed match that was
clearly suitable and according to nature; he could not yet be quite passive
under the idea of her engagement to Mr. Casaubon. On the day when he first saw
them together in the light of his present knowledge, it seemed to him that he
had not taken the affair seriously enough. Brooke was really culpable; he ought
to have hindered it. Who could speak to him? Something might be done perhaps
even now, at least to defer the marriage. On his way home he turned into the
Rectory and asked for Mr. Cadwallader. Happily, the Rector was at home, and his
visitor was shown into the study, where all the fishing tackle hung. But he
himself was in a little room adjoining, at work with his turning apparatus, and
he called to the baronet to join him there. The two were better friends than
any other landholder and clergyman in the county—a significant fact which was
in agreement with the amiable expression of their faces.
Mr.
Cadwallader was a large man, with full lips and a sweet smile; very plain and
rough in his exterior, but with that solid imperturbable ease and good-humour
which is infectious, and like great grassy hills in the sunshine, quiets even
an irritated egoism, and makes it rather ashamed of itself. "Well, how are
you?" he said, showing a hand not quite fit to be grasped. "Sorry I
missed you before. Is there anything particular? You look vexed."
Sir
James's brow had a little crease in it, a little depression of the eyebrow,
which he seemed purposely to exaggerate as he answered.
"It
is only this conduct of Brooke's. I really think somebody should speak to
him."
"What?
meaning to stand?" said Mr. Cadwallader, going on with the arrangement of
the reels which he had just been turning. "I hardly think he means it. But
where's the harm, if he likes it? Any one who objects to Whiggery should be
glad when the Whigs don't put up the strongest fellow. They won't overturn the
Constitution with our friend Brooke's head for a battering ram."
"Oh,
I don't mean that," said Sir James, who, after putting down his hat and
throwing himself into a chair, had begun to nurse his leg and examine the sole
of his boot with much bitterness. "I mean this marriage. I mean his
letting that blooming young girl marry Casaubon."
"What
is the matter with Casaubon? I see no harm in him—if the girl likes him."
"She
is too young to know what she likes. Her guardian ought to interfere. He ought
not to allow the thing to be done in this headlong manner. I wonder a man like
you, Cadwallader—a man with daughters, can look at the affair with
indifference: and with such a heart as yours! Do think seriously about
it."
"I
am not joking; I am as serious as possible," said the Rector, with a
provoking little inward laugh. "You are as bad as Elinor. She has been
wanting me to go and lecture Brooke; and I have reminded her that her friends
had a very poor opinion of the match she made when she married me."
"But
look at Casaubon," said Sir James, indignantly. "He must be fifty,
and I don't believe he could ever have been much more than the shadow of a man.
Look at his legs!"
"Confound
you handsome young fellows! you think of having it all your own way in the
world. You don't under stand women. They don't admire you half so much as you
admire yourselves. Elinor used to tell her sisters that she married me for my
ugliness—it was so various and amusing that it had quite conquered her
prudence."
"You!
it was easy enough for a woman to love you. But this is no question of beauty.
I don't like Casaubon." This was Sir James's strongest way of
implying that he thought ill of a man's character.
"Why?
what do you know against him?" said the Rector laying down his reels, and
putting his thumbs into his armholes with an air of attention.
Sir James
paused. He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons: it seemed to him
strange that people should not know them without being told, since he only felt
what was reasonable. At last he said—
"Now,
Cadwallader, has he got any heart?"
"Well,
yes. I don't mean of the melting sort, but a sound kernel, that you may
be sure of. He is very good to his poor relations: pensions several of the
women, and is educating a young fellow at a good deal of expense. Casaubon acts
up to his sense of justice. His mother's sister made a bad match—a Pole, I
think—lost herself—at any rate was disowned by her family. If it had not been
for that, Casaubon would not have had so much money by half. I believe he went
himself to find out his cousins, and see what he could do for them. Every man
would not ring so well as that, if you tried his metal. You would,
Chettam; but not every man."
"I
don't know," said Sir James, coloring. "I am not so sure of
myself." He paused a moment, and then added, "That was a right thing
for Casaubon to do. But a man may wish to do what is right, and yet be a sort
of parchment code. A woman may not be happy with him. And I think when a girl
is so young as Miss Brooke is, her friends ought to interfere a little to
hinder her from doing anything foolish. You laugh, because you fancy I have
some feeling on my own account. But upon my honour, it is not that. I should
feel just the same if I were Miss Brooke's brother or uncle."
"Well,
but what should you do?"
"I
should say that the marriage must not be decided on until she was of age. And
depend upon it, in that case, it would never come off. I wish you saw it as I
do—I wish you would talk to Brooke about it."
Sir James
rose as he was finishing his sentence, for he saw Mrs. Cadwallader entering
from the study. She held by the hand her youngest girl, about five years old,
who immediately ran to papa, and was made comfortable on his knee.
"I
hear what you are talking about," said the wife. "But you will make
no impression on Humphrey. As long as the fish rise to his bait, everybody is
what he ought to be. Bless you, Casaubon has got a trout-stream, and does not
care about fishing in it himself: could there be a better fellow?"
"Well,
there is something in that," said the Rector, with his quiet, inward
laugh. "It is a very good quality in a man to have a trout-stream."
"But
seriously," said Sir James, whose vexation had not yet spent itself,
"don't you think the Rector might do some good by speaking?"
"Oh,
I told you beforehand what he would say," answered Mrs. Cadwallader,
lifting up her eyebrows. "I have done what I could: I wash my hands of the
marriage."
"In
the first place," said the Rector, looking rather grave, "it would be
nonsensical to expect that I could convince Brooke, and make him act
accordingly. Brooke is a very good fellow, but pulpy; he will run into any
mould, but he won't keep shape."
"He
might keep shape long enough to defer the marriage," said Sir James.
"But,
my dear Chettam, why should I use my influence to Casaubon's disadvantage,
unless I were much surer than I am that I should be acting for the advantage of
Miss Brooke? I know no harm of Casaubon. I don't care about his Xisuthrus and
Fee-fo-fum and the rest; but then he doesn't care about my fishing-tackle. As
to the line he took on the Catholic Question, that was unexpected; but he has
always been civil to me, and I don't see why I should spoil his sport. For
anything I can tell, Miss Brooke may be happier with him than she would be with
any other man."
"Humphrey!
I have no patience with you. You know you would rather dine under the hedge
than with Casaubon alone. You have nothing to say to each other."
"What
has that to do with Miss Brooke's marrying him? She does not do it for my
amusement."
"He
has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James.
"No.
Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and
parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader.
"Why
does he not bring out his book, instead of marrying," said Sir James, with
a disgust which he held warranted by the sound feeling of an English layman.
"Oh,
he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains. They say, when he
was a little boy, he made an abstract of 'Hop o' my Thumb,' and he has been
making abstracts ever since. Ugh! And that is the man Humphrey goes on saying
that a woman may be happy with."
"Well,
he is what Miss Brooke likes," said the Rector. "I don't profess to
understand every young lady's taste."
"But
if she were your own daughter?" said Sir James.
"That
would be a different affair. She is not my daughter, and I don't feel
called upon to interfere. Casaubon is as good as most of us. He is a scholarly
clergyman, and creditable to the cloth. Some Radical fellow speechifying at
Middlemarch said Casaubon was the learned straw-chopping incumbent, and Freke
was the brick-and-mortar incumbent, and I was the angling incumbent. And upon
my word, I don't see that one is worse or better than the other." The
Rector ended with his silent laugh. He always saw the joke of any satire
against himself. His conscience was large and easy, like the rest of him: it
did only what it could do without any trouble.
Clearly,
there would be no interference with Miss Brooke's marriage through Mr.
Cadwallader; and Sir James felt with some sadness that she was to have perfect
liberty of misjudgment. It was a sign of his good disposition that he did not
slacken at all in his intention of carrying out Dorothea's design of the
cottages. Doubtless this persistence was the best course for his own dignity:
but pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than
vanity makes us witty. She was now enough aware of Sir James's position with
regard to her, to appreciate the rectitude of his perseverance in a landlord's
duty, to which he had at first been urged by a lover's complaisance, and her
pleasure in it was great enough to count for something even in her present happiness.
Perhaps she gave to Sir James Chettam's cottages all the interest she could
spare from Mr. Casaubon, or rather from the symphony of hopeful dreams,
admiring trust, and passionate self devotion which that learned gentleman had
set playing in her soul. Hence it happened that in the good baronet's
succeeding visits, while he was beginning to pay small attentions to Celia, he
found himself talking with more and more pleasure to Dorothea. She was
perfectly unconstrained and without irritation towards him now, and he was
gradually discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and companionship
between a man and a woman who have no passion to hide or confess.
CHAPTER IX.
1st Gent. An ancient land in
ancient oracles
Is called
"law-thirsty": all the struggle there
Was after order and
a perfect rule.
Pray, where lie such
lands now? . . .
2d Gent. Why, where they lay of old—in human souls.
Mr.
Casaubon's behaviour about settlements was highly satisfactory to Mr. Brooke,
and the preliminaries of marriage rolled smoothly along, shortening the weeks
of courtship. The betrothed bride must see her future home, and dictate any changes
that she would like to have made there. A woman dictates before marriage in
order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards. And certainly,
the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way
might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.
On a gray
but dry November morning Dorothea drove to Lowick in company with her uncle and
Celia. Mr. Casaubon's home was the manor-house. Close by, visible from some
parts of the garden, was the little church, with the old parsonage opposite. In
the beginning of his career, Mr. Casaubon had only held the living, but the
death of his brother had put him in possession of the manor also. It had a
small park, with a fine old oak here and there, and an avenue of limes towards
the southwest front, with a sunk fence between park and pleasure-ground, so
that from the drawing-room windows the glance swept uninterruptedly along a
slope of greensward till the limes ended in a level of corn and pastures, which
often seemed to melt into a lake under the setting sun. This was the happy side
of the house, for the south and east looked rather melancholy even under the
brightest morning. The grounds here were more confined, the flower-beds showed
no very careful tendance, and large clumps of trees, chiefly of sombre yews,
had risen high, not ten yards from the windows. The building, of greenish
stone, was in the old English style, not ugly, but small-windowed and
melancholy-looking: the sort of house that must have children, many flowers,
open windows, and little vistas of bright things, to make it seem a joyous
home. In this latter end of autumn, with a sparse remnant of yellow leaves
falling slowly athwart the dark evergreens in a stillness without sunshine, the
house too had an air of autumnal decline, and Mr. Casaubon, when he presented
himself, had no bloom that could be thrown into relief by that background.
"Oh
dear!" Celia said to herself, "I am sure Freshitt Hall would have
been pleasanter than this." She thought of the white freestone, the
pillared portico, and the terrace full of flowers, Sir James smiling above them
like a prince issuing from his enchantment in a rose-bush, with a handkerchief
swiftly metamorphosed from the most delicately odorous petals—Sir James, who
talked so agreeably, always about things which had common-sense in them, and
not about learning! Celia had those light young feminine tastes which grave and
weatherworn gentlemen sometimes prefer in a wife; but happily Mr. Casaubon's
bias had been different, for he would have had no chance with Celia.
Dorothea,
on the contrary, found the house and grounds all that she could wish: the dark
book-shelves in the long library, the carpets and curtains with colors subdued
by time, the curious old maps and bird's-eye views on the walls of the
corridor, with here and there an old vase below, had no oppression for her, and
seemed more cheerful than the easts and pictures at the Grange, which her uncle
had long ago brought home from his travels—they being probably among the ideas
he had taken in at one time. To poor Dorothea these severe classical nudities
and smirking Renaissance-Correggiosities were painfully inexplicable, staring
into the midst of her Puritanic conceptions: she had never been taught how she
could bring them into any sort of relevance with her life. But the owners of
Lowick apparently had not been travellers, and Mr. Casaubon's studies of the
past were not carried on by means of such aids.
Dorothea
walked about the house with delightful emotion. Everything seemed hallowed to
her: this was to be the home of her wifehood, and she looked up with eyes full
of confidence to Mr. Casaubon when he drew her attention specially to some
actual arrangement and asked her if she would like an alteration. All appeals to
her taste she met gratefully, but saw nothing to alter. His efforts at exact
courtesy and formal tenderness had no defect for her. She filled up all blanks
with unmanifested perfections, interpreting him as she interpreted the works of
Providence, and accounting for seeming discords by her own deafness to the
higher harmonies. And there are many blanks left in the weeks of courtship
which a loving faith fills with happy assurance.
"Now,
my dear Dorothea, I wish you to favour me by pointing out which room you would
like to have as your boudoir," said Mr. Casaubon, showing that his views
of the womanly nature were sufficiently large to include that requirement.
"It
is very kind of you to think of that," said Dorothea, "but I assure
you I would rather have all those matters decided for me. I shall be much
happier to take everything as it is—just as you have been used to have it, or
as you will yourself choose it to be. I have no motive for wishing anything else."
"Oh,
Dodo," said Celia, "will you not have the bow-windowed room
up-stairs?"
Mr.
Casaubon led the way thither. The bow-window looked down the avenue of limes;
the furniture was all of a faded blue, and there were miniatures of ladies and
gentlemen with powdered hair hanging in a group. A piece of tapestry over a
door also showed a blue-green world with a pale stag in it. The chairs and
tables were thin-legged and easy to upset. It was a room where one might fancy
the ghost of a tight-laced lady revisiting the scene of her embroidery. A light
bookcase contained duodecimo volumes of polite literature in calf, completing
the furniture.
"Yes,"
said Mr. Brooke, "this would be a pretty room with some new hangings,
sofas, and that sort of thing. A little bare now."
"No,
uncle," said Dorothea, eagerly. "Pray do not speak of altering
anything. There are so many other things in the world that want altering—I like
to take these things as they are. And you like them as they are, don't
you?" she added, looking at Mr. Casaubon. "Perhaps this was your
mother's room when she was young."
"It
was," he said, with his slow bend of the head.
"This
is your mother," said Dorothea, who had turned to examine the group of
miniatures. "It is like the tiny one you brought me; only, I should think,
a better portrait. And this one opposite, who is this?"
"Her
elder sister. They were, like you and your sister, the only two children of
their parents, who hang above them, you see."
"The
sister is pretty," said Celia, implying that she thought less favorably of
Mr. Casaubon's mother. It was a new opening to Celia's imagination, that he
came of a family who had all been young in their time—the ladies wearing
necklaces.
"It
is a peculiar face," said Dorothea, looking closely. "Those deep gray
eyes rather near together—and the delicate irregular nose with a sort of ripple
in it—and all the powdered curls hanging backward. Altogether it seems to me
peculiar rather than pretty. There is not even a family likeness between her
and your mother."
"No.
And they were not alike in their lot."
"You
did not mention her to me," said Dorothea.
"My
aunt made an unfortunate marriage. I never saw her."
Dorothea
wondered a little, but felt that it would be indelicate just then to ask for
any information which Mr. Casaubon did not proffer, and she turned to the
window to admire the view. The sun had lately pierced the gray, and the avenue
of limes cast shadows.
"Shall
we not walk in the garden now?" said Dorothea.
"And
you would like to see the church, you know," said Mr. Brooke. "It is
a droll little church. And the village. It all lies in a nut-shell. By the way,
it will suit you, Dorothea; for the cottages are like a row of
alms-houses—little gardens, gilly-flowers, that sort of thing."
"Yes,
please," said Dorothea, looking at Mr. Casaubon, "I should like to
see all that." She had got nothing from him more graphic about the Lowick
cottages than that they were "not bad."
They were
soon on a gravel walk which led chiefly between grassy borders and clumps of
trees, this being the nearest way to the church, Mr. Casaubon said. At the
little gate leading into the churchyard there was a pause while Mr. Casaubon
went to the parsonage close by to fetch a key. Celia, who had been hanging a
little in the rear, came up presently, when she saw that Mr. Casaubon was gone
away, and said in her easy staccato, which always seemed to contradict the
suspicion of any malicious intent—
"Do
you know, Dorothea, I saw some one quite young coming up one of the
walks."
"Is
that astonishing, Celia?"
"There
may be a young gardener, you know—why not?" said Mr. Brooke. "I told
Casaubon he should change his gardener."
"No,
not a gardener," said Celia; "a gentleman with a sketch-book. He had
light-brown curls. I only saw his back. But he was quite young."
"The
curate's son, perhaps," said Mr. Brooke. "Ah, there is Casaubon
again, and Tucker with him. He is going to introduce Tucker. You don't know
Tucker yet."
Mr.
Tucker was the middle-aged curate, one of the "inferior clergy," who
are usually not wanting in sons. But after the introduction, the conversation
did not lead to any question about his family, and the startling apparition of
youthfulness was forgotten by every one but Celia. She inwardly declined to
believe that the light-brown curls and slim figure could have any relationship
to Mr. Tucker, who was just as old and musty-looking as she would have expected
Mr. Casaubon's curate to be; doubtless an excellent man who would go to heaven
(for Celia wished not to be unprincipled), but the corners of his mouth were so
unpleasant. Celia thought with some dismalness of the time she should have to
spend as bridesmaid at Lowick, while the curate had probably no pretty little
children whom she could like, irrespective of principle.
Mr.
Tucker was invaluable in their walk; and perhaps Mr. Casaubon had not been
without foresight on this head, the curate being able to answer all Dorothea's
questions about the villagers and the other parishioners. Everybody, he assured
her, was well off in Lowick: not a cottager in those double cottages at a low
rent but kept a pig, and the strips of garden at the back were well tended. The
small boys wore excellent corduroy, the girls went out as tidy servants, or did
a little straw-plaiting at home: no looms here, no Dissent; and though the
public disposition was rather towards laying by money than towards
spirituality, there was not much vice. The speckled fowls were so numerous that
Mr. Brooke observed, "Your farmers leave some barley for the women to
glean, I see. The poor folks here might have a fowl in their pot, as the good
French king used to wish for all his people. The French eat a good many
fowls—skinny fowls, you know."
"I
think it was a very cheap wish of his," said Dorothea, indignantly.
"Are kings such monsters that a wish like that must be reckoned a royal
virtue?"
"And
if he wished them a skinny fowl," said Celia, "that would not be
nice. But perhaps he wished them to have fat fowls."
"Yes,
but the word has dropped out of the text, or perhaps was subauditum; that is,
present in the king's mind, but not uttered," said Mr. Casaubon, smiling
and bending his head towards Celia, who immediately dropped backward a little,
because she could not bear Mr. Casaubon to blink at her.
Dorothea
sank into silence on the way back to the house. She felt some disappointment,
of which she was yet ashamed, that there was nothing for her to do in Lowick;
and in the next few minutes her mind had glanced over the possibility, which
she would have preferred, of finding that her home would be in a parish which
had a larger share of the world's misery, so that she might have had more
active duties in it. Then, recurring to the future actually before her, she
made a picture of more complete devotion to Mr. Casaubon's aims in which she
would await new duties. Many such might reveal themselves to the higher
knowledge gained by her in that companionship.
Mr.
Tucker soon left them, having some clerical work which would not allow him to
lunch at the Hall; and as they were re-entering the garden through the little
gate, Mr. Casaubon said—
"You
seem a little sad, Dorothea. I trust you are pleased with what you have
seen."
"I
am feeling something which is perhaps foolish and wrong," answered
Dorothea, with her usual openness—"almost wishing that the people wanted
more to be done for them here. I have known so few ways of making my life good
for anything. Of course, my notions of usefulness must be narrow. I must learn
new ways of helping people."
"Doubtless,"
said Mr. Casaubon. "Each position has its corresponding duties. Yours, I
trust, as the mistress of Lowick, will not leave any yearning
unfulfilled."
"Indeed,
I believe that," said Dorothea, earnestly. "Do not suppose that I am
sad."
"That
is well. But, if you are not tired, we will take another way to the house than
that by which we came."
Dorothea
was not at all tired, and a little circuit was made towards a fine yew-tree,
the chief hereditary glory of the grounds on this side of the house. As they
approached it, a figure, conspicuous on a dark background of evergreens, was
seated on a bench, sketching the old tree. Mr. Brooke, who was walking in front
with Celia, turned his head, and said—
"Who
is that youngster, Casaubon?"
They had
come very near when Mr. Casaubon answered—
"That
is a young relative of mine, a second cousin: the grandson, in fact," he
added, looking at Dorothea, "of the lady whose portrait you have been
noticing, my aunt Julia."
The young
man had laid down his sketch-book and risen. His bushy light-brown curls, as
well as his youthfulness, identified him at once with Celia's apparition.
"Dorothea,
let me introduce to you my cousin, Mr. Ladislaw. Will, this is Miss
Brooke."
The
cousin was so close now, that, when he lifted his hat, Dorothea could see a
pair of gray eyes rather near together, a delicate irregular nose with a little
ripple in it, and hair falling backward; but there was a mouth and chin of a
more prominent, threatening aspect than belonged to the type of the
grandmother's miniature. Young Ladislaw did not feel it necessary to smile, as
if he were charmed with this introduction to his future second cousin and her
relatives; but wore rather a pouting air of discontent.
"You
are an artist, I see," said Mr. Brooke, taking up the sketch-book and
turning it over in his unceremonious fashion.
"No,
I only sketch a little. There is nothing fit to be seen there," said young
Ladislaw, coloring, perhaps with temper rather than modesty.
"Oh,
come, this is a nice bit, now. I did a little in this way myself at one time,
you know. Look here, now; this is what I call a nice thing, done with what we
used to call brio." Mr. Brooke held out towards the two girls a
large colored sketch of stony ground and trees, with a pool.
"I
am no judge of these things," said Dorothea, not coldly, but with an eager
deprecation of the appeal to her. "You know, uncle, I never see the beauty
of those pictures which you say are so much praised. They are a language I do
not understand. I suppose there is some relation between pictures and nature
which I am too ignorant to feel—just as you see what a Greek sentence stands
for which means nothing to me." Dorothea looked up at Mr. Casaubon, who
bowed his head towards her, while Mr. Brooke said, smiling nonchalantly—
"Bless
me, now, how different people are! But you had a bad style of teaching, you
know—else this is just the thing for girls—sketching, fine art and so on. But
you took to drawing plans; you don't understand morbidezza, and that kind of
thing. You will come to my house, I hope, and I will show you what I did in
this way," he continued, turning to young Ladislaw, who had to be recalled
from his preoccupation in observing Dorothea. Ladislaw had made up his mind
that she must be an unpleasant girl, since she was going to marry Casaubon, and
what she said of her stupidity about pictures would have confirmed that opinion
even if he had believed her. As it was, he took her words for a covert judgment,
and was certain that she thought his sketch detestable. There was too much
cleverness in her apology: she was laughing both at her uncle and himself. But
what a voice! It was like the voice of a soul that had once lived in an Aeolian
harp. This must be one of Nature's inconsistencies. There could be no sort of
passion in a girl who would marry Casaubon. But he turned from her, and bowed
his thanks for Mr. Brooke's invitation.
"We
will turn over my Italian engravings together," continued that
good-natured man. "I have no end of those things, that I have laid by for
years. One gets rusty in this part of the country, you know. Not you, Casaubon;
you stick to your studies; but my best ideas get undermost—out of use, you
know. You clever young men must guard against indolence. I was too indolent,
you know: else I might have been anywhere at one time."
"That
is a seasonable admonition," said Mr. Casaubon; "but now we will pass
on to the house, lest the young ladies should be tired of standing."
When
their backs were turned, young Ladislaw sat down to go on with his sketching,
and as he did so his face broke into an expression of amusement which increased
as he went on drawing, till at last he threw back his head and laughed aloud.
Partly it was the reception of his own artistic production that tickled him;
partly the notion of his grave cousin as the lover of that girl; and partly Mr.
Brooke's definition of the place he might have held but for the impediment of
indolence. Mr. Will Ladislaw's sense of the ludicrous lit up his features very
agreeably: it was the pure enjoyment of comicality, and had no mixture of
sneering and self-exaltation.
"What
is your nephew going to do with himself, Casaubon?" said Mr. Brooke, as
they went on.
"My
cousin, you mean—not my nephew."
"Yes,
yes, cousin. But in the way of a career, you know."
"The
answer to that question is painfully doubtful. On leaving Rugby he declined to
go to an English university, where I would gladly have placed him, and chose
what I must consider the anomalous course of studying at Heidelberg. And now he
wants to go abroad again, without any special object, save the vague purpose of
what he calls culture, preparation for he knows not what. He declines to choose
a profession."
"He
has no means but what you furnish, I suppose."
"I
have always given him and his friends reason to understand that I would furnish
in moderation what was necessary for providing him with a scholarly education,
and launching him respectably. I am-therefore bound to fulfil the expectation
so raised," said Mr. Casaubon, putting his conduct in the light of mere
rectitude: a trait of delicacy which Dorothea noticed with admiration.
"He
has a thirst for travelling; perhaps he may turn out a Bruce or a Mungo
Park," said Mr. Brooke. "I had a notion of that myself at one
time."
"No,
he has no bent towards exploration, or the enlargement of our geognosis: that
would be a special purpose which I could recognize with some approbation,
though without felicitating him on a career which so often ends in premature
and violent death. But so far is he from having any desire for a more accurate
knowledge of the earth's surface, that he said he should prefer not to know the
sources of the Nile, and that there should be some unknown regions preserved as
hunting grounds for the poetic imagination."
"Well,
there is something in that, you know," said Mr. Brooke, who had certainly
an impartial mind.
"It
is, I fear, nothing more than a part of his general inaccuracy and
indisposition to thoroughness of all kinds, which would be a bad augury for him
in any profession, civil or sacred, even were he so far submissive to ordinary
rule as to choose one."
"Perhaps
he has conscientious scruples founded on his own unfitness," said
Dorothea, who was interesting herself in finding a favorable explanation.
"Because the law and medicine should be very serious professions to
undertake, should they not? People's lives and fortunes depend on them."
"Doubtless;
but I fear that my young relative Will Ladislaw is chiefly determined in his
aversion to these callings by a dislike to steady application, and to that kind
of acquirement which is needful instrumentally, but is not charming or
immediately inviting to self-indulgent taste. I have insisted to him on what
Aristotle has stated with admirable brevity, that for the achievement of any
work regarded as an end there must be a prior exercise of many energies or acquired
facilities of a secondary order, demanding patience. I have pointed to my own
manuscript volumes, which represent the toil of years preparatory to a work not
yet accomplished. But in vain. To careful reasoning of this kind he replies by
calling himself Pegasus, and every form of prescribed work 'harness.'"
Celia
laughed. She was surprised to find that Mr. Casaubon could say something quite
amusing.
"Well,
you know, he may turn out a Byron, a Chatterton, a Churchill—that sort of
thing—there's no telling," said Mr. Brooke. "Shall you let him go to
Italy, or wherever else he wants to go?"
"Yes;
I have agreed to furnish him with moderate supplies for a year or so; he asks
no more. I shall let him be tried by the test of freedom."
"That
is very kind of you," said Dorothea, looking up at Mr. Casaubon with
delight. "It is noble. After all, people may really have in them some
vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem
idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each
other, I think."
"I
suppose it is being engaged to be married that has made you think patience
good," said Celia, as soon as she and Dorothea were alone together, taking
off their wrappings.
"You
mean that I am very impatient, Celia."
"Yes;
when people don't do and say just what you like." Celia had become less
afraid of "saying things" to Dorothea since this engagement:
cleverness seemed to her more pitiable than ever.
To be
continued
