MIDDLEMARCH
PART 21
CHAPTER XLII.
"How much, methinks, I could
despise this man
Were
I not bound in charity against it!
—SHAKESPEARE: Henry VIII.
One of
the professional calls made by Lydgate soon after his return from his
wedding-journey was to Lowick Manor, in consequence of a letter which had
requested him to fix a time for his visit.
Mr.
Casaubon had never put any question concerning the nature of his illness to
Lydgate, nor had he even to Dorothea betrayed any anxiety as to how far it
might be likely to cut short his labors or his life. On this point, as on all
others, he shrank from pity; and if the suspicion of being pitied for anything
in his lot surmised or known in spite of himself was embittering, the idea of
calling forth a show of compassion by frankly admitting an alarm or a sorrow
was necessarily intolerable to him. Every proud mind knows something of this
experience, and perhaps it is only to be overcome by a sense of fellowship deep
enough to make all efforts at isolation seem mean and petty instead of
exalting.
But Mr.
Casaubon was now brooding over something through which the question of his
health and life haunted his silence with a more harassing importunity even than
through the autumnal unripeness of his authorship. It is true that this last
might be called his central ambition; but there are some kinds of authorship in
which by far the largest result is the uneasy susceptibility accumulated in the
consciousness of the author—one knows of the river by a few streaks amid a
long-gathered deposit of uncomfortable mud. That was the way with Mr.
Casaubon's hard intellectual labors. Their most characteristic result was not
the "Key to all Mythologies," but a morbid consciousness that others
did not give him the place which he had not demonstrably merited—a perpetual
suspicious conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to his
advantage—a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a
passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing.
Thus his
intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have absorbed and dried him,
was really no security against wounds, least of all against those which came
from Dorothea. And he had begun now to frame possibilities for the future which
were somehow more embittering to him than anything his mind had dwelt on
before.
Against
certain facts he was helpless: against Will Ladislaw's existence, his defiant
stay in the neighborhood of Lowick, and his flippant state of mind with regard
to the possessors of authentic, well-stamped erudition: against Dorothea's
nature, always taking on some new shape of ardent activity, and even in
submission and silence covering fervid reasons which it was an irritation to
think of: against certain notions and likings which had taken possession of her
mind in relation to subjects that he could not possibly discuss with her. There
was no denying that Dorothea was as virtuous and lovely a young lady as he
could have obtained for a wife; but a young lady turned out to be something
more troublesome than he had conceived. She nursed him, she read to him, she
anticipated his wants, and was solicitous about his feelings; but there had
entered into the husband's mind the certainty that she judged him, and that her
wifely devotedness was like a penitential expiation of unbelieving thoughts—was
accompanied with a power of comparison by which himself and his doings were
seen too luminously as a part of things in general. His discontent passed
vapor-like through all her gentle loving manifestations, and clung to that
inappreciative world which she had only brought nearer to him.
Poor Mr.
Casaubon! This suffering was the harder to bear because it seemed like a
betrayal: the young creature who had worshipped him with perfect trust had
quickly turned into the critical wife; and early instances of criticism and resentment
had made an impression which no tenderness and submission afterwards could
remove. To his suspicious interpretation Dorothea's silence now was a
suppressed rebellion; a remark from her which he had not in any way anticipated
was an assertion of conscious superiority; her gentle answers had an irritating
cautiousness in them; and when she acquiesced it was a self-approved effort of
forbearance. The tenacity with which he strove to hide this inward drama made
it the more vivid for him; as we hear with the more keenness what we wish
others not to hear.
Instead
of wondering at this result of misery in Mr. Casaubon, I think it quite
ordinary. Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of
the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so
troublesome as self. And who, if Mr. Casaubon had chosen to expound his
discontents—his suspicions that he was not any longer adored without
criticism—could have denied that they were founded on good reasons? On the contrary,
there was a strong reason to be added, which he had not himself taken
explicitly into account—namely, that he was not unmixedly adorable. He
suspected this, however, as he suspected other things, without confessing it,
and like the rest of us, felt how soothing it would have been to have a
companion who would never find it out.
This sore
susceptibility in relation to Dorothea was thoroughly prepared before Will
Ladislaw had returned to Lowick, and what had occurred since then had brought
Mr. Casaubon's power of suspicious construction into exasperated activity. To
all the facts which he knew, he added imaginary facts both present and future
which became more real to him than those because they called up a stronger
dislike, a more predominating bitterness. Suspicion and jealousy of Will
Ladislaw's intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Dorothea's impressions, were
constantly at their weaving work. It would be quite unjust to him to suppose
that he could have entered into any coarse misinterpretation of Dorothea: his
own habits of mind and conduct, quite as much as the open elevation of her
nature, saved him from any such mistake. What he was jealous of was her
opinion, the sway that might be given to her ardent mind in its judgments, and
the future possibilities to which these might lead her. As to Will, though
until his last defiant letter he had nothing definite which he would choose
formally to allege against him, he felt himself warranted in believing that he
was capable of any design which could fascinate a rebellious temper and an
undisciplined impulsiveness. He was quite sure that Dorothea was the cause of
Will's return from Rome, and his determination to settle in the neighborhood;
and he was penetrating enough to imagine that Dorothea had innocently
encouraged this course. It was as clear as possible that she was ready to be
attached to Will and to be pliant to his suggestions: they had never had a
tete-a-tete without her bringing away from it some new troublesome impression,
and the last interview that Mr. Casaubon was aware of (Dorothea, on returning
from Freshitt Hall, had for the first time been silent about having seen Will)
had led to a scene which roused an angrier feeling against them both than he
had ever known before. Dorothea's outpouring of her notions about money, in the
darkness of the night, had done nothing but bring a mixture of more odious
foreboding into her husband's mind.
And there
was the shock lately given to his health always sadly present with him. He was
certainly much revived; he had recovered all his usual power of work: the
illness might have been mere fatigue, and there might still be twenty years of
achievement before him, which would justify the thirty years of preparation.
That prospect was made the sweeter by a flavour of vengeance against the hasty
sneers of Carp & Company; for even when Mr. Casaubon was carrying his taper
among the tombs of the past, those modern figures came athwart the dim light,
and interrupted his diligent exploration. To convince Carp of his mistake, so
that he would have to eat his own words with a good deal of indigestion, would
be an agreeable accident of triumphant authorship, which the prospect of living
to future ages on earth and to all eternity in heaven could not exclude from
contemplation. Since, thus, the prevision of his own unending bliss could not
nullify the bitter savors of irritated jealousy and vindictiveness, it is the
less surprising that the probability of a transient earthly bliss for other
persons, when he himself should have entered into glory, had not a potently
sweetening effect. If the truth should be that some undermining disease was at
work within him, there might be large opportunity for some people to be the
happier when he was gone; and if one of those people should be Will Ladislaw,
Mr. Casaubon objected so strongly that it seemed as if the annoyance would make
part of his disembodied existence.
This is a
very bare and therefore a very incomplete way of putting the case. The human
soul moves in many channels, and Mr. Casaubon, we know, had a sense of
rectitude and an honourable pride in satisfying the requirements of honour,
which compelled him to find other reasons for his conduct than those of
jealousy and vindictiveness. The way in which Mr. Casaubon put the case was
this:—"In marrying Dorothea Brooke I had to care for her well-being in
case of my death. But well-being is not to be secured by ample, independent
possession of property; on the contrary, occasions might arise in which such
possession might expose her to the more danger. She is ready prey to any man
who knows how to play adroitly either on her affectionate ardour or her
Quixotic enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that very intention in his mind—a
man with no other principle than transient caprice, and who has a personal
animosity towards me—I am sure of it—an animosity which is fed by the
consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has constantly vented in
ridicule of which I am as well assured as if I had heard it. Even if I live I
shall not be without uneasiness as to what he may attempt through indirect
influence. This man has gained Dorothea's ear: he has fascinated her attention;
he has evidently tried to impress her mind with the notion that he has claims
beyond anything I have done for him. If I die—and he is waiting here on the
watch for that—he will persuade her to marry him. That would be calamity for
her and success for him. She would not think it calamity: he would make
her believe anything; she has a tendency to immoderate attachment which she
inwardly reproaches me for not responding to, and already her mind is occupied
with his fortunes. He thinks of an easy conquest and of entering into my nest.
That I will hinder! Such a marriage would be fatal to Dorothea. Has he ever
persisted in anything except from contradiction? In knowledge he has always
tried to be showy at small cost. In religion he could be, as long as it suited
him, the facile echo of Dorothea's vagaries. When was sciolism ever dissociated
from laxity? I utterly distrust his morals, and it is my duty to hinder to the
utmost the fulfilment of his designs."
The
arrangements made by Mr. Casaubon on his marriage left strong measures open to
him, but in ruminating on them his mind inevitably dwelt so much on the
probabilities of his own life that the longing to get the nearest possible
calculation had at last overcome his proud reticence, and had determined him to
ask Lydgate's opinion as to the nature of his illness.
He had
mentioned to Dorothea that Lydgate was coming by appointment at half-past
three, and in answer to her anxious question, whether he had felt ill,
replied,—"No, I merely wish to have his opinion concerning some habitual
symptoms. You need not see him, my dear. I shall give orders that he may be sent
to me in the Yew-tree Walk, where I shall be taking my usual exercise."
When
Lydgate entered the Yew-tree Walk he saw Mr. Casaubon slowly receding with his
hands behind him according to his habit, and his head bent forward. It was a
lovely afternoon; the leaves from the lofty limes were falling silently across
the sombre evergreens, while the lights and shadows slept side by side: there
was no sound but the cawing of the rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a
lullaby, or that last solemn lullaby, a dirge. Lydgate, conscious of an
energetic frame in its prime, felt some compassion when the figure which he was
likely soon to overtake turned round, and in advancing towards him showed more
markedly than ever the signs of premature age—the student's bent shoulders, the
emaciated limbs, and the melancholy lines of the mouth. "Poor
fellow," he thought, "some men with his years are like lions; one can
tell nothing of their age except that they are full grown."
"Mr.
Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, with his invariably polite air, "I am
exceedingly obliged to you for your punctuality. We will, if you please, carry
on our conversation in walking to and fro."
"I
hope your wish to see me is not due to the return of unpleasant symptoms,"
said Lydgate, filling up a pause.
"Not
immediately—no. In order to account for that wish I must mention—what it were
otherwise needless to refer to—that my life, on all collateral accounts
insignificant, derives a possible importance from the incompleteness of labors
which have extended through all its best years. In short, I have long had on
hand a work which I would fain leave behind me in such a state, at least, that
it might be committed to the press by—others. Were I assured that this is the
utmost I can reasonably expect, that assurance would be a useful
circumscription of my attempts, and a guide in both the positive and negative
determination of my course."
Here Mr.
Casaubon paused, removed one hand from his back and thrust it between the
buttons of his single-breasted coat. To a mind largely instructed in the human
destiny hardly anything could be more interesting than the inward conflict
implied in his formal measured address, delivered with the usual sing-song and
motion of the head. Nay, are there many situations more sublimely tragic than
the struggle of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all
the significance of its life—a significance which is to vanish as the waters
which come and go where no man has need of them? But there was nothing to
strike others as sublime about Mr. Casaubon, and Lydgate, who had some contempt
at hand for futile scholarship, felt a little amusement mingling with his pity.
He was at present too ill acquainted with disaster to enter into the pathos of
a lot where everything is below the level of tragedy except the passionate
egoism of the sufferer.
"You
refer to the possible hindrances from want of health?" he said, wishing to
help forward Mr. Casaubon's purpose, which seemed to be clogged by some
hesitation.
"I
do. You have not implied to me that the symptoms which—I am bound to
testify—you watched with scrupulous care, were those of a fatal disease. But
were it so, Mr. Lydgate, I should desire to know the truth without reservation,
and I appeal to you for an exact statement of your conclusions: I request it as
a friendly service. If you can tell me that my life is not threatened by
anything else than ordinary casualties, I shall rejoice, on grounds which I
have already indicated. If not, knowledge of the truth is even more important
to me."
"Then
I can no longer hesitate as to my course," said Lydgate; "but the
first thing I must impress on you is that my conclusions are doubly
uncertain—uncertain not only because of my fallibility, but because diseases of
the heart are eminently difficult to found predictions on. In any case, one can
hardly increase appreciably the tremendous uncertainty of life."
Mr.
Casaubon winced perceptibly, but bowed.
"I
believe that you are suffering from what is called fatty degeneration of the
heart, a disease which was first divined and explored by Laennec, the man who
gave us the stethoscope, not so very many years ago. A good deal of
experience—a more lengthened observation—is wanting on the subject. But after
what you have said, it is my duty to tell you that death from this disease is
often sudden. At the same time, no such result can be predicted. Your condition
may be consistent with a tolerably comfortable life for another fifteen years,
or even more. I could add no information to this beyond anatomical or medical
details, which would leave expectation at precisely the same point."
Lydgate's instinct was fine enough to tell him that plain speech, quite free
from ostentatious caution, would be felt by Mr. Casaubon as a tribute of
respect.
"I
thank you, Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, after a moment's pause.
"One thing more I have still to ask: did you communicate what you have now
told me to Mrs. Casaubon?"
"Partly—I
mean, as to the possible issues." Lydgate was going to explain why he had
told Dorothea, but Mr. Casaubon, with an unmistakable desire to end the
conversation, waved his hand slightly, and said again, "I thank you,"
proceeding to remark on the rare beauty of the day.
Lydgate,
certain that his patient wished to be alone, soon left him; and the black
figure with hands behind and head bent forward continued to pace the walk where
the dark yew-trees gave him a mute companionship in melancholy, and the little
shadows of bird or leaf that fleeted across the isles of sunlight, stole along
in silence as in the presence of a sorrow. Here was a man who now for the first
time found himself looking into the eyes of death—who was passing through one
of those rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace,
which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of waters
upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the water which cannot
be had to cool the burning tongue. When the commonplace "We must all
die" transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness "I must
die—and soon," then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel;
afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last
moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first. To Mr. Casaubon now, it
was as if he suddenly found himself on the dark river-brink and heard the plash
of the oncoming oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons. In
such an hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias, but carries it onward
in imagination to the other side of death, gazing backward—perhaps with the
divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the petty anxieties of self-assertion.
What was Mr. Casaubon's bias his acts will give us a clew to. He held himself
to be, with some private scholarly reservations, a believing Christian, as to
estimates of the present and hopes of the future. But what we strive to
gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the
future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their
imagination and love. And Mr. Casaubon's immediate desire was not for divine
communion and light divested of earthly conditions; his passionate longings,
poor man, clung low and mist-like in very shady places.
Dorothea
had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had stepped into the
garden, with the impulse to go at once to her husband. But she hesitated,
fearing to offend him by obtruding herself; for her ardour, continually
repulsed, served, with her intense memory, to heighten her dread, as thwarted
energy subsides into a shudder; and she wandered slowly round the nearer clumps
of trees until she saw him advancing. Then she went towards him, and might have
represented a heaven-sent angel coming with a promise that the short hours remaining
should yet be filled with that faithful love which clings the closer to a
comprehended grief. His glance in reply to hers was so chill that she felt her
timidity increased; yet she turned and passed her hand through his arm.
Mr.
Casaubon kept his hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm to cling with
difficulty against his rigid arm.
There was
something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this unresponsive
hardness inflicted on her. That is a strong word, but not too strong: it is in
these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until
men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste
has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness—calling their denial
knowledge. You may ask why, in the name of manliness, Mr. Casaubon should have
behaved in that way. Consider that his was a mind which shrank from pity: have
you ever watched in such a mind the effect of a suspicion that what is pressing
it as a grief may be really a source of contentment, either actual or future,
to the being who already offends by pitying? Besides, he knew little of
Dorothea's sensations, and had not reflected that on such an occasion as the
present they were comparable in strength to his own sensibilities about Carp's
criticisms.
Dorothea
did not withdraw her arm, but she could not venture to speak. Mr. Casaubon did
not say, "I wish to be alone," but he directed his steps in silence
towards the house, and as they entered by the glass door on this eastern side,
Dorothea withdrew her arm and lingered on the matting, that she might leave her
husband quite free. He entered the library and shut himself in, alone with his
sorrow.
She went
up to her boudoir. The open bow-window let in the serene glory of the afternoon
lying in the avenue, where the lime-trees cast long shadows. But Dorothea knew
nothing of the scene. She threw herself on a chair, not heeding that she was in
the dazzling sun-rays: if there were discomfort in that, how could she tell
that it was not part of her inward misery?
She was
in the reaction of a rebellious anger stronger than any she had felt since her
marriage. Instead of tears there came words:—
"What
have I done—what am I—that he should treat me so? He never knows what is in my
mind—he never cares. What is the use of anything I do? He wishes he had never
married me."
She began
to hear herself, and was checked into stillness. Like one who has lost his way
and is weary, she sat and saw as in one glance all the paths of her young hope
which she should never find again. And just as clearly in the miserable light
she saw her own and her husband's solitude—how they walked apart so that she
was obliged to survey him. If he had drawn her towards him, she would never
have surveyed him—never have said, "Is he worth living for?" but
would have felt him simply a part of her own life. Now she said bitterly,
"It is his fault, not mine." In the jar of her whole being, Pity was
overthrown. Was it her fault that she had believed in him—had believed in his
worthiness?—And what, exactly, was he?— She was able enough to estimate him—she
who waited on his glances with trembling, and shut her best soul in prison,
paying it only hidden visits, that she might be petty enough to please him. In
such a crisis as this, some women begin to hate.
The sun
was low when Dorothea was thinking that she would not go down again, but would
send a message to her husband saying that she was not well and preferred
remaining up-stairs. She had never deliberately allowed her resentment to
govern her in this way before, but she believed now that she could not see him
again without telling him the truth about her feeling, and she must wait till
she could do it without interruption. He might wonder and be hurt at her
message. It was good that he should wonder and be hurt. Her anger said, as
anger is apt to say, that God was with her—that all heaven, though it were
crowded with spirits watching them, must be on her side. She had determined to
ring her bell, when there came a rap at the door.
Mr.
Casaubon had sent to say that he would have his dinner in the library. He
wished to be quite alone this evening, being much occupied.
"I
shall not dine, then, Tantripp."
"Oh,
madam, let me bring you a little something?"
"No;
I am not well. Get everything ready in my dressing room, but pray do not
disturb me again."
Dorothea
sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle, while the evening slowly
deepened into night. But the struggle changed continually, as that of a man who
begins with a movement towards striking and ends with conquering his desire to
strike. The energy that would animate a crime is not more than is wanted to
inspire a resolved submission, when the noble habit of the soul reasserts
itself. That thought with which Dorothea had gone out to meet her husband—her
conviction that he had been asking about the possible arrest of all his work,
and that the answer must have wrung his heart, could not be long without rising
beside the image of him, like a shadowy monitor looking at her anger with sad
remonstrance. It cost her a litany of pictured sorrows and of silent cries that
she might be the mercy for those sorrows—but the resolved submission did come;
and when the house was still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr.
Casaubon habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside
in the darkness waiting for his coming up-stairs with a light in his hand. If
he did not come soon she thought that she would go down and even risk incurring
another pang. She would never again expect anything else. But she did hear the
library door open, and slowly the light advanced up the staircase without noise
from the footsteps on the carpet. When her husband stood opposite to her, she
saw that his face was more haggard. He started slightly on seeing her, and she
looked up at him beseechingly, without speaking.
"Dorothea!"
he said, with a gentle surprise in his tone. "Were you waiting for
me?"
"Yes,
I did not like to disturb you."
"Come,
my dear, come. You are young, and need not to extend your life by
watching."
When the
kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea's ears, she felt
something like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we had narrowly
escaped hurting a lamed creature. She put her hand into her husband's, and they
went along the broad corridor together.
To be
continued
