MIDDLEMARCH
PART 14
CHAPTER XXVIII.
1st Gent.
All times are good to seek your wedded home
Bringing a mutual delight.
2d Gent. Why, true.
The calendar hath not an evil day
For souls made one by love, and
even death
Were sweetness, if it came like
rolling waves
While they two clasped each
other, and foresaw
No life apart.
Mr. and
Mrs. Casaubon, returning from their wedding journey, arrived at Lowick Manor in
the middle of January. A light snow was falling as they descended at the door,
and in the morning, when Dorothea passed from her dressing-room avenue the
blue-green boudoir that we know of, she saw the long avenue of limes lifting
their trunks from a white earth, and spreading white branches against the dun
and motionless sky. The distant flat shrank in uniform whiteness and
low-hanging uniformity of cloud. The very furniture in the room seemed to have
shrunk since she saw it before: the stag in the tapestry looked more like a
ghost in his ghostly blue-green world; the volumes of polite literature in the
bookcase looked more like immovable imitations of books. The bright fire of dry
oak-boughs burning on the logs seemed an incongruous renewal of life and
glow—like the figure of Dorothea herself as she entered carrying the
red-leather cases containing the cameos for Celia.
She was
glowing from her morning toilet as only healthful youth can glow: there was
gem-like brightness on her coiled hair and in her hazel eyes; there was warm
red life in her lips; her throat had a breathing whiteness above the differing
white of the fur which itself seemed to wind about her neck and cling down her
blue-gray pelisse with a tenderness gathered from her own, a sentient
commingled innocence which kept its loveliness against the crystalline purity
of the outdoor snow. As she laid the cameo-cases on the table in the
bow-window, she unconsciously kept her hands on them, immediately absorbed in
looking out on the still, white enclosure which made her visible world.
Mr.
Casaubon, who had risen early complaining of palpitation, was in the library
giving audience to his curate Mr. Tucker. By-and-by Celia would come in her
quality of bridesmaid as well as sister, and through the next weeks there would
be wedding visits received and given; all in continuance of that transitional
life understood to correspond with the excitement of bridal felicity, and
keeping up the sense of busy ineffectiveness, as of a dream which the dreamer
begins to suspect. The duties of her married life, contemplated as so great
beforehand, seemed to be shrinking with the furniture and the white
vapor-walled landscape. The clear heights where she expected to walk in full
communion had become difficult to see even in her imagination; the delicious
repose of the soul on a complete superior had been shaken into uneasy effort
and alarmed with dim presentiment. When would the days begin of that active
wifely devotion which was to strengthen her husband's life and exalt her own?
Never perhaps, as she had preconceived them; but somehow—still somehow. In this
solemnly pledged union of her life, duty would present itself in some new form
of inspiration and give a new meaning to wifely love.
Meanwhile
there was the snow and the low arch of dun vapor—there was the stifling
oppression of that gentlewoman's world, where everything was done for her and
none asked for her aid—where the sense of connection with a manifold pregnant
existence had to be kept up painfully as an inward vision, instead of coming
from without in claims that would have shaped her energies.— "What shall I
do?" "Whatever you please, my dear:" that had been her brief history
since she had left off learning morning lessons and practising silly rhythms on
the hated piano. Marriage, which was to bring guidance into worthy and
imperative occupation, had not yet freed her from the gentlewoman's oppressive
liberty: it had not even filled her leisure with the ruminant joy of unchecked
tenderness. Her blooming full-pulsed youth stood there in a moral imprisonment
which made itself one with the chill, colorless, narrowed landscape, with the
shrunken furniture, the never-read books, and the ghostly stag in a pale
fantastic world that seemed to be vanishing from the daylight.
In the
first minutes when Dorothea looked out she felt nothing but the dreary
oppression; then came a keen remembrance, and turning away from the window she
walked round the room. The ideas and hopes which were living in her mind when
she first saw this room nearly three months before were present now only as
memories: she judged them as we judge transient and departed things. All
existence seemed to beat with a lower pulse than her own, and her religious
faith was a solitary cry, the struggle out of a nightmare in which every object
was withering and shrinking away from her. Each remembered thing in the room
was disenchanted, was deadened as an unlit transparency, till her wandering
gaze came to the group of miniatures, and there at last she saw something which
had gathered new breath and meaning: it was the miniature of Mr. Casaubon's
aunt Julia, who had made the unfortunate marriage—of Will Ladislaw's grandmother.
Dorothea could fancy that it was alive now—the delicate woman's face which yet
had a headstrong look, a peculiarity difficult to interpret. Was it only her
friends who thought her marriage unfortunate? or did she herself find it out to
be a mistake, and taste the salt bitterness of her tears in the merciful
silence of the night? What breadths of experience Dorothea seemed to have
passed over since she first looked at this miniature! She felt a new
companionship with it, as if it had an ear for her and could see how she was
looking at it. Here was a woman who had known some difficulty about marriage.
Nay, the colors deepened, the lips and chin seemed to get larger, the hair and
eyes seemed to be sending out light, the face was masculine and beamed on her with
that full gaze which tells her on whom it falls that she is too interesting for
the slightest movement of her eyelid to pass unnoticed and uninterpreted. The
vivid presentation came like a pleasant glow to Dorothea: she felt herself
smiling, and turning from the miniature sat down and looked up as if she were
again talking to a figure in front of her. But the smile disappeared as she
went on meditating, and at last she said aloud—
"Oh,
it was cruel to speak so! How sad—how dreadful!"
She rose
quickly and went out of the room, hurrying along the corridor, with the
irresistible impulse to go and see her husband and inquire if she could do
anything for him. Perhaps Mr. Tucker was gone and Mr. Casaubon was alone in the
library. She felt as if all her morning's gloom would vanish if she could see
her husband glad because of her presence.
But when
she reached the head of the dark oak there was Celia coming up, and below there
was Mr. Brooke, exchanging welcomes and congratulations with Mr. Casaubon.
"Dodo!"
said Celia, in her quiet staccato; then kissed her sister, whose arms encircled
her, and said no more. I think they both cried a little in a furtive manner,
while Dorothea ran down-stairs to greet her uncle.
"I
need not ask how you are, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, after kissing her
forehead. "Rome has agreed with you, I see—happiness, frescos, the
antique—that sort of thing. Well, it's very pleasant to have you back again,
and you understand all about art now, eh? But Casaubon is a little pale, I tell
him—a little pale, you know. Studying hard in his holidays is carrying it
rather too far. I overdid it at one time"—Mr. Brooke still held Dorothea's
hand, but had turned his face to Mr. Casaubon—"about topography, ruins,
temples—I thought I had a clew, but I saw it would carry me too far, and
nothing might come of it. You may go any length in that sort of thing, and
nothing may come of it, you know."
Dorothea's
eyes also were turned up to her husband's face with some anxiety at the idea
that those who saw him afresh after absence might be aware of signs which she
had not noticed.
"Nothing
to alarm you, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, observing her expression. "A
little English beef and mutton will soon make a difference. It was all very
well to look pale, sitting for the portrait of Aquinas, you know—we got your
letter just in time. But Aquinas, now—he was a little too subtle, wasn't he?
Does anybody read Aquinas?"
"He
is not indeed an author adapted to superficial minds," said Mr. Casaubon,
meeting these timely questions with dignified patience.
"You
would like coffee in your own room, uncle?" said Dorothea, coming to the
rescue.
"Yes;
and you must go to Celia: she has great news to tell you, you know. I leave it
all to her."
The
blue-green boudoir looked much more cheerful when Celia was seated there in a
pelisse exactly like her sister's, surveying the cameos with a placid
satisfaction, while the conversation passed on to other topics.
"Do
you think it nice to go to Rome on a wedding journey?" said Celia, with
her ready delicate blush which Dorothea was used to on the smallest occasions.
"It
would not suit all—not you, dear, for example," said Dorothea, quietly. No
one would ever know what she thought of a wedding journey to Rome.
"Mrs.
Cadwallader says it is nonsense, people going a long journey when they are
married. She says they get tired to death of each other, and can't quarrel
comfortably, as they would at home. And Lady Chettam says she went to
Bath." Celia's colour changed again and again—seemed
"To
come and go with tidings from the heart,
As it a running messenger had been."
As it a running messenger had been."
It must
mean more than Celia's blushing usually did.
"Celia!
has something happened?" said Dorothea, in a tone full of sisterly
feeling. "Have you really any great news to tell me?"
"It
was because you went away, Dodo. Then there was nobody but me for Sir James to
talk to," said Celia, with a certain roguishness in her eyes.
"I
understand. It is as I used to hope and believe," said Dorothea, taking
her sister's face between her hands, and looking at her half anxiously. Celia's
marriage seemed more serious than it used to do.
"It
was only three days ago," said Celia. "And Lady Chettam is very kind."
"And
you are very happy?"
"Yes.
We are not going to be married yet. Because every thing is to be got ready. And
I don't want to be married so very soon, because I think it is nice to be
engaged. And we shall be married all our lives after."
"I
do believe you could not marry better, Kitty. Sir James is a good, honourable
man," said Dorothea, warmly.
"He
has gone on with the cottages, Dodo. He will tell you about them when he comes.
Shall you be glad to see him?"
"Of
course I shall. How can you ask me?"
"Only
I was afraid you would be getting so learned," said Celia, regarding Mr.
Casaubon's learning as a kind of damp which might in due time saturate a
neighboring body.
CHAPTER
XXIX.
"I
found that no genius in another could please me. My unfortunate paradoxes had
entirely dried up that source of comfort."—GOLDSMITH.
One
morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea—but why always
Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this
marriage? I protest against all our interest, all our effort at understanding
being given to the young skins that look blooming in spite of trouble; for
these too will get faded, and will know the older and more eating griefs which
we are helping to neglect. In spite of the blinking eyes and white moles
objectionable to Celia, and the want of muscular curve which was morally
painful to Sir James, Mr. Casaubon had an intense consciousness within him, and
was spiritually a-hungered like the rest of us. He had done nothing exceptional
in marrying—nothing but what society sanctions, and considers an occasion for
wreaths and bouquets. It had occurred to him that he must not any longer defer
his intention of matrimony, and he had reflected that in taking a wife, a man
of good position should expect and carefully choose a blooming young lady—the
younger the better, because more educable and submissive—of a rank equal to his
own, of religious principles, virtuous disposition, and good understanding. On such
a young lady he would make handsome settlements, and he would neglect no
arrangement for her happiness: in return, he should receive family pleasures
and leave behind him that copy of himself which seemed so urgently required of
a man—to the sonneteers of the sixteenth century. Times had altered since then,
and no sonneteer had insisted on Mr. Casaubon's leaving a copy of himself;
moreover, he had not yet succeeded in issuing copies of his mythological key;
but he had always intended to acquit himself by marriage, and the sense that he
was fast leaving the years behind him, that the world was getting dimmer and
that he felt lonely, was a reason to him for losing no more time in overtaking
domestic delights before they too were left behind by the years.
And when
he had seen Dorothea he believed that he had found even more than he demanded:
she might really be such a helpmate to him as would enable him to dispense with
a hired secretary, an aid which Mr. Casaubon had never yet employed and had a
suspicious dread of. (Mr. Casaubon was nervously conscious that he was expected
to manifest a powerful mind.) Providence, in its kindness, had supplied him
with the wife he needed. A wife, a modest young lady, with the purely
appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is sure to think her husband's
mind powerful. Whether Providence had taken equal care of Miss Brooke in
presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could hardly occur to him.
Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much
about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of
hers for making himself happy. As if a man could choose not only his wife but
his wife's husband! Or as if he were bound to provide charms for his posterity
in his own person!— When Dorothea accepted him with effusion, that was only
natural; and Mr. Casaubon believed that his happiness was going to begin.
He had
not had much foretaste of happiness in his previous life. To know intense joy
without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul. Mr. Casaubon
had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being
enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into
passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was
hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that
pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should be
known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare
for transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread-like in small currents of
self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon had
many scruples: he was capable of a severe self-restraint; he was resolute in
being a man of honour according to the code; he would be unimpeachable by any
recognized opinion. In conduct these ends had been attained; but the difficulty
of making his Key to all Mythologies unimpeachable weighed like lead upon his
mind; and the pamphlets—or "Parerga" as he called them—by which he
tested his public and deposited small monumental records of his march, were far
from having been seen in all their significance. He suspected the Archdeacon of
not having read them; he was in painful doubt as to what was really thought of
them by the leading minds of Brasenose, and bitterly convinced that his old
acquaintance Carp had been the writer of that depreciatory recension which was
kept locked in a small drawer of Mr. Casaubon's desk, and also in a dark closet
of his verbal memory. These were heavy impressions to struggle against, and
brought that melancholy embitterment which is the consequence of all excessive
claim: even his religious faith wavered with his wavering trust in his own
authorship, and the consolations of the Christian hope in immortality seemed to
lean on the immortality of the still unwritten Key to all Mythologies. For my
part I am very sorry for him. It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call
highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of
life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self—never to be
fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness
rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardour of a
passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired,
ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted. Becoming a dean or even a
bishop would make little difference, I fear, to Mr. Casaubon's uneasiness.
Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the
speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual
and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control.
To this
mental estate mapped out a quarter of a century before, to sensibilities thus
fenced in, Mr. Casaubon had thought of annexing happiness with a lovely young
bride; but even before marriage, as we have seen, he found himself under a new
depression in the consciousness that the new bliss was not blissful to him.
Inclination yearned back to its old, easier custom. And the deeper he went in
domesticity the more did the sense of acquitting himself and acting with
propriety predominate over any other satisfaction. Marriage, like religion and
erudition, nay, like authorship itself, was fated to become an outward
requirement, and Edward Casaubon was bent on fulfilling unimpeachably all
requirements. Even drawing Dorothea into use in his study, according to his own
intention before marriage, was an effort which he was always tempted to defer, and
but for her pleading insistence it might never have begun. But she had
succeeded in making it a matter of course that she should take her place at an
early hour in the library and have work either of reading aloud or copying
assigned her. The work had been easier to define because Mr. Casaubon had
adopted an immediate intention: there was to be a new Parergon, a small
monograph on some lately traced indications concerning the Egyptian mysteries
whereby certain assertions of Warburton's could be corrected. References were
extensive even here, but not altogether shoreless; and sentences were actually
to be written in the shape wherein they would be scanned by Brasenose and a
less formidable posterity. These minor monumental productions were always
exciting to Mr. Casaubon; digestion was made difficult by the interference of
citations, or by the rivalry of dialectical phrases ringing against each other
in his brain. And from the first there was to be a Latin dedication about which
everything was uncertain except that it was not to be addressed to Carp: it was
a poisonous regret to Mr. Casaubon that he had once addressed a dedication to
Carp in which he had numbered that member of the animal kingdom among the viros
nullo aevo perituros, a mistake which would infallibly lay the dedicator open
to ridicule in the next age, and might even be chuckled over by Pike and Tench
in the present.
Thus Mr.
Casaubon was in one of his busiest epochs, and as I began to say a little while
ago, Dorothea joined him early in the library where he had breakfasted alone.
Celia at this time was on a second visit to Lowick, probably the last before
her marriage, and was in the drawing-room expecting Sir James.
Dorothea
had learned to read the signs of her husband's mood, and she saw that the
morning had become more foggy there during the last hour. She was going
silently to her desk when he said, in that distant tone which implied that he
was discharging a disagreeable duty—
"Dorothea,
here is a letter for you, which was enclosed in one addressed to me."
It was a
letter of two pages, and she immediately looked at the signature.
"Mr.
Ladislaw! What can he have to say to me?" she exclaimed, in a tone of
pleased surprise. "But," she added, looking at Mr. Casaubon, "I
can imagine what he has written to you about."
"You
can, if you please, read the letter," said Mr. Casaubon, severely pointing
to it with his pen, and not looking at her. "But I may as well say beforehand,
that I must decline the proposal it contains to pay a visit here. I trust I may
be excused for desiring an interval of complete freedom from such distractions
as have been hitherto inevitable, and especially from guests whose desultory
vivacity makes their presence a fatigue."
There had
been no clashing of temper between Dorothea and her husband since that little
explosion in Rome, which had left such strong traces in her mind that it had
been easier ever since to quell emotion than to incur the consequence of
venting it. But this ill-tempered anticipation that she could desire visits
which might be disagreeable to her husband, this gratuitous defence of himself
against selfish complaint on her part, was too sharp a sting to be meditated on
until after it had been resented. Dorothea had thought that she could have been
patient with John Milton, but she had never imagined him behaving in this way;
and for a moment Mr. Casaubon seemed to be stupidly undiscerning and odiously
unjust. Pity, that "new-born babe" which was by-and-by to rule many a
storm within her, did not "stride the blast" on this occasion. With
her first words, uttered in a tone that shook him, she startled Mr. Casaubon
into looking at her, and meeting the flash of her eyes.
"Why
do you attribute to me a wish for anything that would annoy you? You speak to
me as if I were something you had to contend against. Wait at least till I
appear to consult my own pleasure apart from yours."
"Dorothea,
you are hasty," answered Mr. Casaubon, nervously.
Decidedly,
this woman was too young to be on the formidable level of wifehood—unless she
had been pale and featureless and taken everything for granted.
"I
think it was you who were first hasty in your false suppositions about my
feeling," said Dorothea, in the same tone. The fire was not dissipated
yet, and she thought it was ignoble in her husband not to apologize to her.
"We
will, if you please, say no more on this subject, Dorothea. I have neither
leisure nor energy for this kind of debate."
Here Mr.
Casaubon dipped his pen and made as if he would return to his writing, though
his hand trembled so much that the words seemed to be written in an unknown
character. There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the
other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel
that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than
in philosophy.
Dorothea
left Ladislaw's two letters unread on her husband's writing-table and went to
her own place, the scorn and indignation within her rejecting the reading of
these letters, just as we hurl away any trash towards which we seem to have
been suspected of mean cupidity. She did not in the least divine the subtle
sources of her husband's bad temper about these letters: she only knew that
they had caused him to offend her. She began to work at once, and her hand did
not tremble; on the contrary, in writing out the quotations which had been
given to her the day before, she felt that she was forming her letters
beautifully, and it seemed to her that she saw the construction of the Latin
she was copying, and which she was beginning to understand, more clearly than
usual. In her indignation there was a sense of superiority, but it went out for
the present in firmness of stroke, and did not compress itself into an inward
articulate voice pronouncing the once "affable archangel" a poor creature.
There had
been this apparent quiet for half an hour, and Dorothea had not looked away
from her own table, when she heard the loud bang of a book on the floor, and
turning quickly saw Mr. Casaubon on the library steps clinging forward as if he
were in some bodily distress. She started up and bounded towards him in an
instant: he was evidently in great straits for breath. Jumping on a stool she
got close to his elbow and said with her whole soul melted into tender alarm—
"Can
you lean on me, dear?"
He was
still for two or three minutes, which seemed endless to her, unable to speak or
move, gasping for breath. When at last he descended the three steps and fell
backward in the large chair which Dorothea had drawn close to the foot of the
ladder, he no longer gasped but seemed helpless and about to faint. Dorothea
rang the bell violently, and presently Mr. Casaubon was helped to the couch: he
did not faint, and was gradually reviving, when Sir James Chettam came in,
having been met in the hall with the news that Mr. Casaubon had "had a fit
in the library."
"Good
God! this is just what might have been expected," was his immediate
thought. If his prophetic soul had been urged to particularize, it seemed to
him that "fits" would have been the definite expression alighted
upon. He asked his informant, the butler, whether the doctor had been sent for.
The butler never knew his master to want the doctor before; but would it not be
right to send for a physician?
When Sir
James entered the library, however, Mr. Casaubon could make some signs of his
usual politeness, and Dorothea, who in the reaction from her first terror had
been kneeling and sobbing by his side now rose and herself proposed that some
one should ride off for a medical man.
"I
recommend you to send for Lydgate," said Sir James. "My mother has
called him in, and she has found him uncommonly clever. She has had a poor
opinion of the physicians since my father's death."
Dorothea
appealed to her husband, and he made a silent sign of approval. So Mr. Lydgate
was sent for and he came wonderfully soon, for the messenger, who was Sir James
Chettam's man and knew Mr. Lydgate, met him leading his horse along the Lowick
road and giving his arm to Miss Vincy.
Celia, in
the drawing-room, had known nothing of the trouble till Sir James told her of
it. After Dorothea's account, he no longer considered the illness a fit, but
still something "of that nature."
"Poor
dear Dodo—how dreadful!" said Celia, feeling as much grieved as her own
perfect happiness would allow. Her little hands were clasped, and enclosed by
Sir James's as a bud is enfolded by a liberal calyx. "It is very shocking
that Mr. Casaubon should be ill; but I never did like him. And I think he is
not half fond enough of Dorothea; and he ought to be, for I am sure no one else
would have had him—do you think they would?"
"I
always thought it a horrible sacrifice of your sister," said Sir James.
"Yes.
But poor Dodo never did do what other people do, and I think she never
will."
"She
is a noble creature," said the loyal-hearted Sir James. He had just had a
fresh impression of this kind, as he had seen Dorothea stretching her tender
arm under her husband's neck and looking at him with unspeakable sorrow. He did
not know how much penitence there was in the sorrow.
"Yes,"
said Celia, thinking it was very well for Sir James to say so, but he
would not have been comfortable with Dodo. "Shall I go to her? Could I
help her, do you think?"
"I
think it would be well for you just to go and see her before Lydgate
comes," said Sir James, magnanimously. "Only don't stay long."
While
Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had originally felt
about Dorothea's engagement, and feeling a revival of his disgust at Mr.
Brooke's indifference. If Cadwallader—if every one else had regarded the affair
as he, Sir James, had done, the marriage might have been hindered. It was
wicked to let a young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any
effort to save her. Sir James had long ceased to have any regrets on his own
account: his heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he had a
chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the ideal
glories of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness;
its death had made sweet odors—floating memories that clung with a consecrating
effect to Dorothea. He could remain her brotherly friend, interpreting her
actions with generous trustfulness.
CHAPTER
XXX.
"Qui
veut delasser hors de propos, lasse."—PASCAL.
Mr.
Casaubon had no second attack of equal severity with the first, and in a few
days began to recover his usual condition. But Lydgate seemed to think the case
worth a great deal of attention. He not only used his stethoscope (which had
not become a matter of course in practice at that time), but sat quietly by his
patient and watched him. To Mr. Casaubon's questions about himself, he replied
that the source of the illness was the common error of intellectual men—a too
eager and monotonous application: the remedy was, to be satisfied with moderate
work, and to seek variety of relaxation. Mr. Brooke, who sat by on one
occasion, suggested that Mr. Casaubon should go fishing, as Cadwallader did,
and have a turning-room, make toys, table-legs, and that kind of thing.
"In
short, you recommend me to anticipate the arrival of my second childhood,"
said poor Mr. Casaubon, with some bitterness. "These things," he
added, looking at Lydgate, "would be to me such relaxation as tow-picking
is to prisoners in a house of correction."
"I
confess," said Lydgate, smiling, "amusement is rather an
unsatisfactory prescription. It is something like telling people to keep up
their spirits. Perhaps I had better say, that you must submit to be mildly
bored rather than to go on working."
"Yes,
yes," said Mr. Brooke. "Get Dorothea to play backgammon with you in
the evenings. And shuttlecock, now—I don't know a finer game than shuttlecock
for the daytime. I remember it all the fashion. To be sure, your eyes might not
stand that, Casaubon. But you must unbend, you know. Why, you might take to
some light study: conchology, now: I always think that must be a light study.
Or get Dorothea to read you light things, Smollett—'Roderick Random,' 'Humphrey
Clinker:' they are a little broad, but she may read anything now she's married,
you know. I remember they made me laugh uncommonly—there's a droll bit about a
postilion's breeches. We have no such humour now. I have gone through all these
things, but they might be rather new to you."
"As
new as eating thistles," would have been an answer to represent Mr.
Casaubon's feelings. But he only bowed resignedly, with due respect to his
wife's uncle, and observed that doubtless the works he mentioned had "served
as a resource to a certain order of minds."
"You
see," said the able magistrate to Lydgate, when they were outside the
door, "Casaubon has been a little narrow: it leaves him rather at a loss
when you forbid him his particular work, which I believe is something very deep
indeed—in the line of research, you know. I would never give way to that; I was
always versatile. But a clergyman is tied a little tight. If they would make
him a bishop, now!—he did a very good pamphlet for Peel. He would have more
movement then, more show; he might get a little flesh. But I recommend you to
talk to Mrs. Casaubon. She is clever enough for anything, is my niece. Tell
her, her husband wants liveliness, diversion: put her on amusing tactics."
Without
Mr. Brooke's advice, Lydgate had determined on speaking to Dorothea. She had
not been present while her uncle was throwing out his pleasant suggestions as
to the mode in which life at Lowick might be enlivened, but she was usually by
her husband's side, and the unaffected signs of intense anxiety in her face and
voice about whatever touched his mind or health, made a drama which Lydgate was
inclined to watch. He said to himself that he was only doing right in telling
her the truth about her husband's probable future, but he certainly thought
also that it would be interesting to talk confidentially with her. A medical
man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of
such studies is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death
easily set at nought. Lydgate had often been satirical on this gratuitous
prediction, and he meant now to be guarded.
He asked
for Mrs. Casaubon, but being told that she was out walking, he was going away,
when Dorothea and Celia appeared, both glowing from their struggle with the
March wind. When Lydgate begged to speak with her alone, Dorothea opened the
library door which happened to be the nearest, thinking of nothing at the
moment but what he might have to say about Mr. Casaubon. It was the first time
she had entered this room since her husband had been taken ill, and the servant
had chosen not to open the shutters. But there was light enough to read by from
the narrow upper panes of the windows.
"You
will not mind this sombre light," said Dorothea, standing in the middle of
the room. "Since you forbade books, the library has been out of the
question. But Mr. Casaubon will soon be here again, I hope. Is he not making
progress?"
"Yes,
much more rapid progress than I at first expected. Indeed, he is already nearly
in his usual state of health."
"You
do not fear that the illness will return?" said Dorothea, whose quick ear
had detected some significance in Lydgate's tone.
"Such
cases are peculiarly difficult to pronounce upon," said Lydgate. "The
only point on which I can be confident is that it will be desirable to be very
watchful on Mr. Casaubon's account, lest he should in any way strain his
nervous power."
"I
beseech you to speak quite plainly," said Dorothea, in an imploring tone.
"I cannot bear to think that there might be something which I did not
know, and which, if I had known it, would have made me act differently."
The words came out like a cry: it was evident that they were the voice of some
mental experience which lay not very far off.
"Sit
down," she added, placing herself on the nearest chair, and throwing off
her bonnet and gloves, with an instinctive discarding of formality where a
great question of destiny was concerned.
"What
you say now justifies my own view," said Lydgate. "I think it is
one's function as a medical man to hinder regrets of that sort as far as
possible. But I beg you to observe that Mr. Casaubon's case is precisely of the
kind in which the issue is most difficult to pronounce upon. He may possibly
live for fifteen years or more, without much worse health than he has had
hitherto."
Dorothea
had turned very pale, and when Lydgate paused she said in a low voice,
"You mean if we are very careful."
"Yes—careful
against mental agitation of all kinds, and against excessive application."
"He
would be miserable, if he had to give up his work," said Dorothea, with a
quick prevision of that wretchedness.
"I
am aware of that. The only course is to try by all means, direct and indirect,
to moderate and vary his occupations. With a happy concurrence of
circumstances, there is, as I said, no immediate danger from that affection of
the heart, which I believe to have been the cause of his late attack. On the
other hand, it is possible that the disease may develop itself more rapidly: it
is one of those cases in which death is sometimes sudden. Nothing should be
neglected which might be affected by such an issue."
There was
silence for a few moments, while Dorothea sat as if she had been turned to
marble, though the life within her was so intense that her mind had never
before swept in brief time over an equal range of scenes and motives.
"Help
me, pray," she said, at last, in the same low voice as before. "Tell
me what I can do."
"What
do you think of foreign travel? You have been lately in Rome, I think."
The
memories which made this resource utterly hopeless were a new current that
shook Dorothea out of her pallid immobility.
"Oh,
that would not do—that would be worse than anything," she said with a more
childlike despondency, while the tears rolled down. "Nothing will be of
any use that he does not enjoy."
"I
wish that I could have spared you this pain," said Lydgate, deeply
touched, yet wondering about her marriage. Women just like Dorothea had not
entered into his traditions.
"It
was right of you to tell me. I thank you for telling me the truth."
"I
wish you to understand that I shall not say anything to enlighten Mr. Casaubon
himself. I think it desirable for him to know nothing more than that he must
not overwork himself, and must observe certain rules. Anxiety of any kind would
be precisely the most unfavorable condition for him."
Lydgate
rose, and Dorothea mechanically rose at the same time, unclasping her cloak and
throwing it off as if it stifled her. He was bowing and quitting her, when an
impulse which if she had been alone would have turned into a prayer, made her
say with a sob in her voice—
"Oh,
you are a wise man, are you not? You know all about life and death. Advise me.
Think what I can do. He has been laboring all his life and looking forward. He
minds about nothing else.— And I mind about nothing else—"
For years
after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary
appeal—this cry from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their
moving with kindred natures in the same embroiled medium, the same troublous
fitfully illuminated life. But what could he say now except that he should see
Mr. Casaubon again to-morrow?
When he
was gone, Dorothea's tears gushed forth, and relieved her stifling oppression.
Then she dried her eyes, reminded that her distress must not be betrayed to her
husband; and looked round the room thinking that she must order the servant to
attend to it as usual, since Mr. Casaubon might now at any moment wish to
enter. On his writing-table there were letters which had lain untouched since
the morning when he was taken ill, and among them, as Dorothea well remembered,
there were young Ladislaw's letters, the one addressed to her still unopened.
The associations of these letters had been made the more painful by that sudden
attack of illness which she felt that the agitation caused by her anger might
have helped to bring on: it would be time enough to read them when they were
again thrust upon her, and she had had no inclination to fetch them from the
library. But now it occurred to her that they should be put out of her
husband's sight: whatever might have been the sources of his annoyance about
them, he must, if possible, not be annoyed again; and she ran her eyes first
over the letter addressed to him to assure herself whether or not it would be
necessary to write in order to hinder the offensive visit.
Will
wrote from Rome, and began by saying that his obligations to Mr. Casaubon were
too deep for all thanks not to seem impertinent. It was plain that if he were
not grateful, he must be the poorest-spirited rascal who had ever found a
generous friend. To expand in wordy thanks would be like saying, "I am
honest." But Will had come to perceive that his defects—defects which Mr.
Casaubon had himself often pointed to—needed for their correction that more
strenuous position which his relative's generosity had hitherto prevented from
being inevitable. He trusted that he should make the best return, if return
were possible, by showing the effectiveness of the education for which he was
indebted, and by ceasing in future to need any diversion towards himself of
funds on which others might have a better claim. He was coming to England, to
try his fortune, as many other young men were obliged to do whose only capital
was in their brains. His friend Naumann had desired him to take charge of the
"Dispute"—the picture painted for Mr. Casaubon, with whose
permission, and Mrs. Casaubon's, Will would convey it to Lowick in person. A
letter addressed to the Poste Restante in Paris within the fortnight would
hinder him, if necessary, from arriving at an inconvenient moment. He enclosed
a letter to Mrs. Casaubon in which he continued a discussion about art, begun
with her in Rome.
Opening
her own letter Dorothea saw that it was a lively continuation of his
remonstrance with her fanatical sympathy and her want of sturdy neutral delight
in things as they were—an outpouring of his young vivacity which it was
impossible to read just now. She had immediately to consider what was to be
done about the other letter: there was still time perhaps to prevent Will from
coming to Lowick. Dorothea ended by giving the letter to her uncle, who was
still in the house, and begging him to let Will know that Mr. Casaubon had been
ill, and that his health would not allow the reception of any visitors.
No one
more ready than Mr. Brooke to write a letter: his only difficulty was to write
a short one, and his ideas in this case expanded over the three large pages and
the inward foldings. He had simply said to Dorothea—
"To
be sure, I will write, my dear. He's a very clever young fellow—this young
Ladislaw—I dare say will be a rising young man. It's a good letter—marks his
sense of things, you know. However, I will tell him about Casaubon."
But the
end of Mr. Brooke's pen was a thinking organ, evolving sentences, especially of
a benevolent kind, before the rest of his mind could well overtake them. It
expressed regrets and proposed remedies, which, when Mr. Brooke read them,
seemed felicitously worded—surprisingly the right thing, and determined a
sequel which he had never before thought of. In this case, his pen found it
such a pity young Ladislaw should not have come into the neighborhood just at
that time, in order that Mr. Brooke might make his acquaintance more fully, and
that they might go over the long-neglected Italian drawings together—it also
felt such an interest in a young man who was starting in life with a stock of
ideas—that by the end of the second page it had persuaded Mr. Brooke to invite
young Ladislaw, since he could not be received at Lowick, to come to Tipton
Grange. Why not? They could find a great many things to do together, and this
was a period of peculiar growth—the political horizon was expanding, and—in
short, Mr. Brooke's pen went off into a little speech which it had lately
reported for that imperfectly edited organ the "Middlemarch Pioneer."
While Mr. Brooke was sealing this letter, he felt elated with an influx of dim
projects:—a young man capable of putting ideas into form, the
"Pioneer" purchased to clear the pathway for a new candidate,
documents utilized—who knew what might come of it all? Since Celia was going to
marry immediately, it would be very pleasant to have a young fellow at table
with him, at least for a time.
But he
went away without telling Dorothea what he had put into the letter, for she was
engaged with her husband, and—in fact, these things were of no importance to
her.
To be
continued
