Middlemarch
by
George Eliot
Part 1 out of 18
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Middlemarch
By George Eliot
New York and Boston H. M. Caldwell Company Publishers
To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes,
in this nineteenth year of our blessed union.
PRELUDE
Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious
mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt,
at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled
with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking
forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother,
to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled
from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns,
but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic
reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from
their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning.
Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were
many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a
brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel;
and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction,
some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile
self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self.
She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.
That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly
not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who
found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant
unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes,
the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with
the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found
no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights
and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed
in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles
seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born
Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could
perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul.
Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning
of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance,
and the other condemned as a lapse.
Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the
inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has
fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine
incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more,
the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude.
Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation
are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness
of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse.
Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings
in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship
with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa,
foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an
unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances,
instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.
BOOK I.
MISS BROOKE.
----
CHAPTER I.
"Since I can do no good because a woman,
Reach constantly at something that is near it.
--The Maid's Tragedy: BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into
relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that
she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which
the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile
as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity
from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion
gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,--or
from one of our elder poets,--in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper.
She was usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the
addition that her sister Celia had more common-sense. Nevertheless,
Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and it was only to close
observers that her dress differed from her sister's, and had a shade
of coquetry in its arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing
was due to mixed conditions, in most of which her sister shared.
The pride of being ladies had something to do with it: the Brooke
connections, though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably
"good:" if you inquired backward for a generation or two, you would
not find any yard-measuring or parcel-tying forefathers--anything
lower than an admiral or a clergyman; and there was even an ancestor
discernible as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell,
but afterwards conformed, and managed to come out of all political
troubles as the proprietor of a respectable family estate.
Young women of such birth, living in a quiet country-house,
and attending a village church hardly larger than a parlor,
naturally regarded frippery as the ambition of a huckster's daughter.
Then there was well-bred economy, which in those days made show in
dress the first item to be deducted from, when any margin was required
for expenses more distinctive of rank. Such reasons would have been
enough to account for plain dress, quite apart from religious feeling;
but in Miss Brooke's case, religion alone would have determined it;
and Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments,
only infusing them with that common-sense which is able to accept
momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation. Dorothea knew
many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart;
and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity,
made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation
for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual
life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp
and artificial protrusions of drapery. Her mind was theoretic,
and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world
which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule
of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness,
and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects;
likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and then to incur
martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it.
Certainly such elements in the character of a marriageable girl tended
to interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being decided according
to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely canine affection.
With all this, she, the elder of the sisters, was not yet twenty,
and they had both been educated, since they were about twelve years old
and had lost their parents, on plans at once narrow and promiscuous,
first in an English family and afterwards in a Swiss family at Lausanne,
their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this way to remedy the
disadvantages of their orphaned condition.
It was hardly a year since they had come to live at Tipton Grange
with their uncle, a man nearly sixty, of acquiescent temper,
miscellaneous opinions, and uncertain vote. He had travelled
in his younger years, and was held in this part of the county
to have contracted a too rambling habit of mind. Mr. Brooke's
conclusions were as difficult to predict as the weather: it was
only safe to say that he would act with benevolent intentions,
and that he would spend as little money as possible in carrying
them out. For the most glutinously indefinite minds enclose some
hard grains of habit; and a man has been seen lax about all his
own interests except the retention of his snuff-box, concerning
which he was watchful, suspicious, and greedy of clutch.
In Mr. Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly
in abeyance; but in his niece Dorothea it glowed alike through faults
and virtues, turning sometimes into impatience of her uncle's talk
or his way of "letting things be" on his estate, and making her long
all the more for the time when she would be of age and have some
command of money for generous schemes. She was regarded as an heiress;
for not only had the sisters seven hundred a-year each from
their parents, but if Dorothea married and had a son, that son would
inherit Mr. Brooke's estate, presumably worth about three thousand
a-year--a rental which seemed wealth to provincial families,
still discussing Mr. Peel's late conduct on the Catholic question,
innocent of future gold-fields, and of that gorgeous plutocracy
which has so nobly exalted the necessities of genteel life.
And how should Dorothea not marry?--a girl so handsome and with
such prospects? Nothing could hinder it but her love of extremes,
and her insistence on regulating life according to notions which
might cause a wary man to hesitate before he made her an offer,
or even might lead her at last to refuse all offers. A young lady
of some birth and fortune, who knelt suddenly down on a brick floor
by the side of a sick laborer and prayed fervidly as if she thought
herself living in the time of the Apostles--who had strange whims
of fasting like a Papist, and of sitting up at night to read old
theological books! Such a wife might awaken you some fine morning with
a new scheme for the application of her income which would interfere
with political economy and the keeping of saddle-horses: a man would
naturally think twice before he risked himself in such fellowship.
Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard
of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on.
Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics
were at large, one might know and avoid them.
The rural opinion about the new young ladies, even among the cottagers,
was generally in favor of Celia, as being so amiable and innocent-looking,
while Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, like her religion, too unusual
and striking. Poor Dorothea! compared with her, the innocent-looking
Celia was knowing and worldly-wise; so much subtler is a human mind
than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face
for it.
Yet those who approached Dorothea, though prejudiced against her
by this alarming hearsay, found that she had a charm unaccountably
reconcilable with it. Most men thought her bewitching when she
was on horseback. She loved the fresh air and the various aspects
of the country, and when her eyes and cheeks glowed with mingled
pleasure she looked very little like a devotee. Riding was an
indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms;
she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and always
looked forward to renouncing it.
She was open, ardent, and not in the least self-admiring; indeed,
it was pretty to see how her imagination adorned her sister Celia
with attractions altogether superior to her own, and if any gentleman
appeared to come to the Grange from some other motive than that of
seeing Mr. Brooke, she concluded that he must be in love with Celia:
Sir James Chettam, for example, whom she constantly considered from
Celia's point of view, inwardly debating whether it would be good
for Celia to accept him. That he should be regarded as a suitor
to herself would have seemed to her a ridiculous irrelevance.
Dorothea, with all her eagerness to know the truths of life,
retained very childlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that
she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if she had been born
in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony;
or John Milton when his blindness had come on; or any of the other
great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure;
but an amiable handsome baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks
even when she expressed uncertainty,--how could he affect her as a
lover? The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband
was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.
These peculiarities of Dorothea's character caused Mr. Brooke
to be all the more blamed in neighboring families for not securing
some middle-aged lady as guide and companion to his nieces.
But he himself dreaded so much the sort of superior woman likely
to be available for such a position, that he allowed himself to be
dissuaded by Dorothea's objections, and was in this case brave enough
to defy the world--that is to say, Mrs. Cadwallader the Rector's wife,
and the small group of gentry with whom he visited in the northeast corner
of Loamshire. So Miss Brooke presided in her uncle's household, and
did not at all dislike her new authority, with the homage that belonged
to it.
Sir James Chettam was going to dine at the Grange to-day with
another gentleman whom the girls had never seen, and about whom
Dorothea felt some venerating expectation. This was the Reverend
Edward Casaubon, noted in the county as a man of profound learning,
understood for many years to be engaged on a great work concerning
religious history; also as a man of wealth enough to give lustre
to his piety, and having views of his own which were to be more
clearly ascertained on the publication of his book. His very name
carried an impressiveness hardly to be measured without a precise
chronology of scholarship.
Early in the day Dorothea had returned from the infant school
which she had set going in the village, and was taking her usual
place in the pretty sitting-room which divided the bedrooms
of the sisters, bent on finishing a plan for some buildings (a
kind of work which she delighted in), when Celia, who had been
watching her with a hesitating desire to propose something, said--
"Dorothea, dear, if you don't mind--if you are not very busy--suppose
we looked at mamma's jewels to-day, and divided them? It is exactly
six months to-day since uncle gave them to you, and you have not
looked at them yet."
Celia's face had the shadow of a pouting expression in it, the full
presence of the pout being kept back by an habitual awe of Dorothea
and principle; two associated facts which might show a mysterious
electricity if you touched them incautiously. To her relief,
Dorothea's eyes were full of laughter as she looked up.
"What a wonderful little almanac you are, Celia! Is it six calendar
or six lunar months?"
"It is the last day of September now, and it was the first of
April when uncle gave them to you. You know, he said that he
had forgotten them till then. I believe you have never thought
of them since you locked them up in the cabinet here."
"Well, dear, we should never wear them, you know." Dorothea spoke
in a full cordial tone, half caressing, half explanatory.
She had her pencil in her hand, and was making tiny side-plans
on a margin.
Celia colored, and looked very grave. "I think, dear, we are
wanting in respect to mamma's memory, to put them by and take
no notice of them. And," she added, after hesitating a little,
with a rising sob of mortification, "necklaces are quite usual now;
and Madame Poincon, who was stricter in some things even than you are,
used to wear ornaments. And Christians generally--surely there are
women in heaven now who wore jewels." Celia was conscious of some
mental strength when she really applied herself to argument.
"You would like to wear them?" exclaimed Dorothea, an air of astonished
discovery animating her whole person with a dramatic action which she
had caught from that very Madame Poincon who wore the ornaments.
"Of course, then, let us have them out. Why did you not tell me
before? But the keys, the keys!" She pressed her hands against
the sides of her head and seemed to despair of her memory.
"They are here," said Celia, with whom this explanation had been
long meditated and prearranged.
"Pray open the large drawer of the cabinet and get out the jewel-box."
The casket was soon open before them, and the various jewels spread out,
making a bright parterre on the table. It was no great collection,
but a few of the ornaments were really of remarkable beauty, the finest
that was obvious at first being a necklace of purple amethysts set
in exquisite gold work, and a pearl cross with five brilliants in it.
Dorothea immediately took up the necklace and fastened it round
her sister's neck, where it fitted almost as closely as a bracelet;
but the circle suited the Henrietta-Maria style of Celia's head
and neck, and she could see that it did, in the pier-glass opposite.
"There, Celia! you can wear that with your Indian muslin.
But this cross you must wear with your dark dresses."
Celia was trying not to smile with pleasure. "O Dodo, you must
keep the cross yourself."
"No, no, dear, no," said Dorothea, putting up her hand with
careless deprecation.
"Yes, indeed you must; it would suit you--in your black dress, now,"
said Celia, insistingly. "You _might_ wear that."
"Not for the world, not for the world. A cross is the last thing
I would wear as a trinket." Dorothea shuddered slightly.
"Then you will think it wicked in me to wear it," said Celia, uneasily.
"No, dear, no," said Dorothea, stroking her sister's cheek.
"Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another."
"But you might like to keep it for mamma's sake."
"No, I have other things of mamma's--her sandal-wood box which I am
so fond of--plenty of things. In fact, they are all yours, dear.
We need discuss them no longer. There--take away your property."
Celia felt a little hurt. There was a strong assumption of superiority
in this Puritanic toleration, hardly less trying to the blond
flesh of an unenthusiastic sister than a Puritanic persecution.
"But how can I wear ornaments if you, who are the elder sister,
will never wear them?"
"Nay, Celia, that is too much to ask, that I should wear trinkets
to keep you in countenance. If I were to put on such a necklace
as that, I should feel as if I had been pirouetting. The world
would go round with me, and I should not know how to walk."
Celia had unclasped the necklace and drawn it off. "It would be
a little tight for your neck; something to lie down and hang would
suit you better," she said, with some satisfaction. The complete
unfitness of the necklace from all points of view for Dorothea,
made Celia happier in taking it. She was opening some ring-boxes,
which disclosed a fine emerald with diamonds, and just then the sun
passing beyond a cloud sent a bright gleam over the table.
"How very beautiful these gems are!" said Dorothea, under a new current
of feeling, as sudden as the gleam. "It is strange how deeply colors
seem to penetrate one, like scent. I suppose that is the reason why
gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St. John.
They look like fragments of heaven. I think that emerald is more
beautiful than any of them."
"And there is a bracelet to match it," said Celia. "We did not
notice this at first."
"They are lovely," said Dorothea, slipping the ring and bracelet
on her finely turned finger and wrist, and holding them towards
the window on a level with her eyes. All the while her thought
was trying to justify her delight in the colors by merging them
in her mystic religious joy.
"You _would_ like those, Dorothea," said Celia, rather falteringly,
beginning to think with wonder that her sister showed some weakness,
and also that emeralds would suit her own complexion even better
than purple amethysts. "You must keep that ring and bracelet--if
nothing else. But see, these agates are very pretty and quiet."
"Yes! I will keep these--this ring and bracelet," said Dorothea.
Then, letting her hand fall on the table, she said in another
tone--"Yet what miserable men find such things, and work at them,
and sell them!" She paused again, and Celia thought that her sister
was going to renounce the ornaments, as in consistency she ought
to do.
"Yes, dear, I will keep these," said Dorothea, decidedly. "But take
all the rest away, and the casket."
She took up her pencil without removing the jewels, and still
looking at them. She thought of often having them by her, to feed
her eye at these little fountains of pure color.
"Shall you wear them in company?" said Celia, who was watching
her with real curiosity as to what she would do.
Dorothea glanced quickly at her sister. Across all her imaginative
adornment of those whom she loved, there darted now and then
a keen discernment, which was not without a scorching quality.
If Miss Brooke ever attained perfect meekness, it would not be
for lack of inward fire.
"Perhaps," she said, rather haughtily. "I cannot tell to what level
I may sink."
Celia blushed, and was unhappy: she saw that she had offended
her sister, and dared not say even anything pretty about the gift
of the ornaments which she put back into the box and carried away.
Dorothea too was unhappy, as she went on with her plan-drawing,
questioning the purity of her own feeling and speech in the scene
which had ended with that little explosion.
Celia's consciousness told her that she had not been at all in the
wrong: it was quite natural and justifiable that she should have
asked that question, and she repeated to herself that Dorothea was
inconsistent: either she should have taken her full share of the jewels,
or, after what she had said, she should have renounced them altogether.
"I am sure--at least, I trust," thought Celia, "that the wearing
of a necklace will not interfere with my prayers. And I do not see
that I should be bound by Dorothea's opinions now we are going
into society, though of course she herself ought to be bound by them.
But Dorothea is not always consistent."
Thus Celia, mutely bending over her tapestry, until she heard
her sister calling her.
"Here, Kitty, come and look at my plan; I shall think I am
a great architect, if I have not got incompatible stairs and fireplaces."
As Celia bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek against
her sister's arm caressingly. Celia understood the action.
Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong, and Celia pardoned her.
Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism
and awe in the attitude of Celia's mind towards her elder sister.
The younger had always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked creature
without its private opinions?
CHAPTER II.
"`Dime; no ves aquel caballero que hacia nosotros viene
sobre un caballo rucio rodado que trae puesto en la cabeza
un yelmo de oro?' `Lo que veo y columbro,' respondio Sancho,
`no es sino un hombre sobre un as no pardo como el mio, que
trae sobre la cabeza una cosa que relumbra.' `Pues ese es el
yelmo de Mambrino,' dijo Don Quijote."--CERVANTES.
"`Seest thou not yon cavalier who cometh toward us on a
dapple-gray steed, and weareth a golden helmet?' `What I
see,' answered Sancho, `is nothing but a man on a gray ass
like my own, who carries something shiny on his head.' `Just
so,' answered Don Quixote: `and that resplendent object is
the helmet of Mambrino.'"
"Sir Humphry Davy?" said Mr. Brooke, over the soup, in his easy
smiling way, taking up Sir James Chettam's remark that he was studying
Davy's Agricultural Chemistry. "Well, now, Sir Humphry Davy;
I dined with him years ago at Cartwright's, and Wordsworth was there
too--the poet Wordsworth, you know. Now there was something singular.
I was at Cambridge when Wordsworth was there, and I never met him--and
I dined with him twenty years afterwards at Cartwright's. There's
an oddity in things, now. But Davy was there: he was a poet too.
Or, as I may say, Wordsworth was poet one, and Davy was poet two.
That was true in every sense, you know."
Dorothea felt a little more uneasy than usual. In the beginning
of dinner, the party being small and the room still, these motes from
the mass of a magistrate's mind fell too noticeably. She wondered
how a man like Mr. Casaubon would support such triviality. His manners,
she thought, were very dignified; the set of his iron-gray hair
and his deep eye-sockets made him resemble the portrait of Locke.
He had the spare form and the pale complexion which became a student;
as different as possible from the blooming Englishman of the
red-whiskered type represented by Sir James Chettam.
"I am reading the Agricultural Chemistry," said this excellent baronet,
"because I am going to take one of the farms into my own hands,
and see if something cannot be done in setting a good pattern
of farming among my tenants. Do you approve of that, Miss Brooke?"
"A great mistake, Chettam," interposed Mr. Brooke, "going into
electrifying your land and that kind of thing, and making a parlor
of your cow-house. It won't do. I went into science a great deal
myself at one time; but I saw it would not do. It leads to everything;
you can let nothing alone. No, no--see that your tenants don't sell
their straw, and that kind of thing; and give them draining-tiles,
you know. But your fancy farming will not do--the most expensive
sort of whistle you can buy: you may as well keep a pack of hounds."
"Surely," said Dorothea, "it is better to spend money in finding
out how men can make the most of the land which supports them all,
than in keeping dogs and horses only to gallop over it. It is not
a sin to make yourself poor in performing experiments for the good
of all."
She spoke with more energy than is expected of so young a lady,
but Sir James had appealed to her. He was accustomed to do so,
and she had often thought that she could urge him to many good actions
when he was her brother-in-law.
Mr. Casaubon turned his eyes very markedly on Dorothea while she
was speaking, and seemed to observe her newly.
"Young ladies don't understand political economy, you know,"
said Mr. Brooke, smiling towards Mr. Casaubon. "I remember when we
were all reading Adam Smith. _There_ is a book, now. I took in all
the new ideas at one time--human perfectibility, now. But some say,
history moves in circles; and that may be very well argued; I have
argued it myself. The fact is, human reason may carry you a little
too far--over the hedge, in fact. It carried me a good way at one time;
but I saw it would not do. I pulled up; I pulled up in time.
But not too hard. I have always been in favor of a little theory: we
must have Thought; else we shall be landed back in the dark ages.
But talking of books, there is Southey's `Peninsular War.' I am
reading that of a morning. You know Southey?"
"No" said Mr. Casaubon, not keeping pace with Mr. Brooke's impetuous
reason, and thinking of the book only. "I have little leisure for
such literature just now. I have been using up my eyesight on old
characters lately; the fact is, I want a reader for my evenings;
but I am fastidious in voices, and I cannot endure listening to
an imperfect reader. It is a misfortune, in some senses: I feed
too much on the inward sources; I live too much with the dead.
My mind is something like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about
the world and trying mentally to construct it as it used to be,
in spite of ruin and confusing changes. But I find it necessary
to use the utmost caution about my eyesight."
This was the first time that Mr. Casaubon had spoken at any length.
He delivered himself with precision, as if he had been called upon
to make a public statement; and the balanced sing-song neatness of
his speech, occasionally corresponded to by a movement of his head,
was the more conspicuous from its contrast with good Mr. Brooke's
scrappy slovenliness. Dorothea said to herself that Mr. Casaubon
was the most interesting man she had ever seen, not excepting even
Monsieur Liret, the Vaudois clergyman who had given conferences
on the history of the Waldenses. To reconstruct a past world,
doubtless with a view to the highest purposes of truth--what
a work to be in any way present at, to assist in, though only
as a lamp-holder! This elevating thought lifted her above her
annoyance at being twitted with her ignorance of political economy,
that never-explained science which was thrust as an extinguisher
over all her lights.
"But you are fond of riding, Miss Brooke," Sir James presently took
an opportunity of saying. "I should have thought you would enter
a little into the pleasures of hunting. I wish you would let me
send over a chestnut horse for you to try. It has been trained
for a lady. I saw you on Saturday cantering over the hill on a nag
not worthy of you. My groom shall bring Corydon for you every day,
if you will only mention the time."
"Thank you, you are very good. I mean to give up riding.
I shall not ride any more," said Dorothea, urged to this brusque
resolution by a little annoyance that Sir James would be soliciting
her attention when she wanted to give it all to Mr. Casaubon.
"No, that is too hard," said Sir James, in a tone of reproach that
showed strong interest. "Your sister is given to self-mortification,
is she not?" he continued, turning to Celia, who sat at his right hand.
"I think she is," said Celia, feeling afraid lest she should say
something that would not please her sister, and blushing as prettily
as possible above her necklace. "She likes giving up."
"If that were true, Celia, my giving-up would be self-indulgence,
not self-mortification. But there may be good reasons for choosing
not to do what is very agreeable," said Dorothea.
Mr. Brooke was speaking at the same time, but it was evident
that Mr. Casaubon was observing Dorothea, and she was aware of it.
"Exactly," said Sir James. "You give up from some high, generous motive."
"No, indeed, not exactly. I did not say that of myself,"
answered Dorothea, reddening. Unlike Celia, she rarely blushed,
and only from high delight or anger. At this moment she felt angry
with the perverse Sir James. Why did he not pay attention to Celia,
and leave her to listen to Mr. Casaubon?--if that learned man would
only talk, instead of allowing himself to be talked to by Mr. Brooke,
who was just then informing him that the Reformation either meant
something or it did not, that he himself was a Protestant to the core,
but that Catholicism was a fact; and as to refusing an acre
of your ground for a Romanist chapel, all men needed the bridle
of religion, which, properly speaking, was the dread of a Hereafter.
"I made a great study of theology at one time," said Mr. Brooke,
as if to explain the insight just manifested. "I know something
of all schools. I knew Wilberforce in his best days. Do you
know Wilberforce?"
Mr. Casaubon said, "No."
"Well, Wilberforce was perhaps not enough of a thinker; but if I
went into Parliament, as I have been asked to do, I should sit on
the independent bench, as Wilberforce did, and work at philanthropy."
Mr. Casaubon bowed, and observed that it was a wide field.
"Yes," said Mr. Brooke, with an easy smile, "but I have documents.
I began a long while ago to collect documents. They want arranging,
but when a question has struck me, I have written to somebody and got
an answer. I have documents at my back. But now, how do you arrange
your documents?"
"In pigeon-holes partly," said Mr. Casaubon, with rather a startled
air of effort.
"Ah, pigeon-holes will not do. I have tried pigeon-holes, but everything
gets mixed in pigeon-holes: I never know whether a paper is in A or Z."
"I wish you would let me sort your papers for you, uncle," said Dorothea.
"I would letter them all, and then make a list of subjects under each
letter."
Mr. Casaubon gravely smiled approval, and said to Mr. Brooke,
"You have an excellent secretary at hand, you perceive."
"No, no," said Mr. Brooke, shaking his head; "I cannot let young
ladies meddle with my documents. Young ladies are too flighty."
Dorothea felt hurt. Mr. Casaubon would think that her uncle had
some special reason for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark
lay in his mind as lightly as the broken wing of an insect among
all the other fragments there, and a chance current had sent it
alighting on _her_.
When the two girls were in the drawing-room alone, Celia said--
"How very ugly Mr. Casaubon is!"
"Celia! He is one of the most distinguished-looking men I ever saw.
He is remarkably like the portrait of Locke. He has the same
deep eye-sockets."
"Had Locke those two white moles with hairs on them?"
"Oh, I dare say! when people of a certain sort looked at him,"
said Dorothea, walking away a little.
"Mr. Casaubon is so sallow."
"All the better. I suppose you admire a man with the complexion
of a cochon de lait."
"Dodo!" exclaimed Celia, looking after her in surprise. "I never
heard you make such a comparison before."
"Why should I make it before the occasion came? It is a good
comparison: the match is perfect."
Miss Brooke was clearly forgetting herself, and Celia thought so.
"I wonder you show temper, Dorothea."
"It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human
beings as if they were merely animals with a toilet, and never
see the great soul in a man's face."
"Has Mr. Casaubon a great soul?" Celia was not without a touch
of naive malice.
"Yes, I believe he has," said Dorothea, with the full voice
of decision. "Everything I see in him corresponds to his pamphlet
on Biblical Cosmology."
"He talks very little," said Celia
"There is no one for him to talk to."
Celia thought privately, "Dorothea quite despises Sir James Chettam;
I believe she would not accept him." Celia felt that this was a pity.
She had never been deceived as to the object of the baronet's interest.
Sometimes, indeed, she had reflected that Dodo would perhaps not
make a husband happy who had not her way of looking at things;
and stifled in the depths of her heart was the feeling that her sister
was too religious for family comfort. Notions and scruples were
like spilt needles, making one afraid of treading, or sitting down,
or even eating.
When Miss Brooke was at the tea-table, Sir James came to sit down
by her, not having felt her mode of answering him at all offensive.
Why should he? He thought it probable that Miss Brooke liked him,
and manners must be very marked indeed before they cease to be
interpreted by preconceptions either confident or distrustful.
She was thoroughly charming to him, but of course he theorized a
little about his attachment. He was made of excellent human dough,
and had the rare merit of knowing that his talents, even if let loose,
would not set the smallest stream in the county on fire: hence he
liked the prospect of a wife to whom he could say, "What shall we do?"
about this or that; who could help her husband out with reasons,
and would also have the property qualification for doing so.
As to the excessive religiousness alleged against Miss Brooke,
he had a very indefinite notion of what it consisted in, and thought
that it would die out with marriage. In short, he felt himself
to be in love in the right place, and was ready to endure a great
deal of predominance, which, after all, a man could always put
down when he liked. Sir James had no idea that he should ever
like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl, in whose
cleverness he delighted. Why not? A man's mind--what there is of
it--has always the advantage of being masculine,--as the smallest
birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,--and
even his ignorance is of a sounder quality. Sir James might not
have originated this estimate; but a kind Providence furnishes
the limpest personality with a little gunk or starch in the form
of tradition.
"Let me hope that you will rescind that resolution about the horse,
Miss Brooke," said the persevering admirer. "I assure you,
riding is the most healthy of exercises."
"I am aware of it," said Dorothea, coldly. "I think it would
do Celia good--if she would take to it."
"But you are such a perfect horsewoman."
"Excuse me; I have had very little practice, and I should be
easily thrown."
"Then that is a reason for more practice. Every lady ought to be
a perfect horsewoman, that she may accompany her husband."
"You see how widely we differ, Sir James. I have made up my mind that I
ought not to be a perfect horsewoman, and so I should never correspond
to your pattern of a lady." Dorothea looked straight before her,
and spoke with cold brusquerie, very much with the air of a handsome boy,
in amusing contrast with the solicitous amiability of her admirer.
"I should like to know your reasons for this cruel resolution.
It is not possible that you should think horsemanship wrong."
"It is quite possible that I should think it wrong for me."
"Oh, why?" said Sir James, in a tender tone of remonstrance.
Mr. Casaubon had come up to the table, teacup in hand, and was listening.
"We must not inquire too curiously into motives," he interposed,
in his measured way. "Miss Brooke knows that they are apt to become
feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air.
We must keep the germinating grain away from the light."
Dorothea colored with pleasure, and looked up gratefully to the speaker.
Here was a man who could understand the higher inward life,
and with whom there could be some spiritual communion; nay, who could
illuminate principle with the widest knowledge a man whose learning
almost amounted to a proof of whatever he believed!
Dorothea's inferences may seem large; but really life could never have
gone on at any period but for this liberal allowance of conclusions,
which has facilitated marriage under the difficulties of civilization.
Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb
of pre-matrimonial acquaintanceship?
"Certainly," said good Sir James. "Miss Brooke shall not be urged
to tell reasons she would rather be silent upon. I am sure her
reasons would do her honor."
He was not in the least jealous of the interest with which Dorothea
had looked up at Mr. Casaubon: it never occurred to him that a girl
to whom he was meditating an offer of marriage could care for a dried
bookworm towards fifty, except, indeed, in a religious sort of way,
as for a clergyman of some distinction.
However, since Miss Brooke had become engaged in a conversation
with Mr. Casaubon about the Vaudois clergy, Sir James betook
himself to Celia, and talked to her about her sister; spoke of a
house in town, and asked whether Miss Brooke disliked London.
Away from her sister, Celia talked quite easily, and Sir James
said to himself that the second Miss Brooke was certainly very
agreeable as well as pretty, though not, as some people pretended,
more clever and sensible than the elder sister. He felt that he
had chosen the one who was in all respects the superior; and a man
naturally likes to look forward to having the best. He would
be the very Mawworm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it.
CHAPTER III.
"Say, goddess, what ensued, when Raphael,
The affable archangel . . .
Eve
The story heard attentive, and was filled
With admiration, and deep muse, to hear
Of things so high and strange."
--Paradise Lost, B. vii.
If it had really occurred to Mr. Casaubon to think of Miss
Brooke as a suitable wife for him, the reasons that might induce
her to accept him were already planted in her mind, and by the
evening of the next day the reasons had budded and bloomed.
For they had had a long conversation in the morning, while Celia,
who did not like the company of Mr. Casaubon's moles and sallowness,
had escaped to the vicarage to play with the curate's ill-shod
but merry children.
Dorothea by this time had looked deep into the ungauged reservoir
of Mr. Casaubon's mind, seeing reflected there in vague labyrinthine
extension every quality she herself brought; had opened much of
her own experience to him, and had understood from him the scope
of his great work, also of attractively labyrinthine extent.
For he had been as instructive as Milton's "affable archangel;"
and with something of the archangelic manner he told her how he had
undertaken to show (what indeed had been attempted before, but not
with that thoroughness, justice of comparison, and effectiveness
of arrangement at which Mr. Casaubon aimed) that all the mythical
systems or erratic mythical fragments in the world were corruptions
of a tradition originally revealed. Having once mastered the true
position and taken a firm footing there, the vast field of mythical
constructions became intelligible, nay, luminous with the reflected
light of correspondences. But to gather in this great harvest
of truth was no light or speedy work. His notes already made
a formidable range of volumes, but the crowning task would be to
condense these voluminous still-accumulating results and bring them,
like the earlier vintage of Hippocratic books, to fit a little shelf.
In explaining this to Dorothea, Mr. Casaubon expressed himself nearly
as he would have done to a fellow-student, for he had not two styles
of talking at command: it is true that when he used a Greek or Latin
phrase he always gave the English with scrupulous care, but he would
probably have done this in any case. A learned provincial clergyman
is accustomed to think of his acquaintances as of "lords, knyghtes,
and other noble and worthi men, that conne Latyn but lytille."
Dorothea was altogether captivated by the wide embrace
of this conception. Here was something beyond the shallows
of ladies' school literature: here was a living Bossuet,
whose work would reconcile complete knowledge with devoted piety;
here was a modern Augustine who united the glories of doctor and saint.
The sanctity seemed no less clearly marked than the learning,
for when Dorothea was impelled to open her mind on certain themes
which she could speak of to no one whom she had before seen at Tipton,
especially on the secondary importance of ecclesiastical forms
and articles of belief compared with that spiritual religion,
that submergence of self in communion with Divine perfection
which seemed to her to be expressed in the best Christian books
of widely distant ages, she found in Mr. Casaubon a listener
who understood her at once, who could assure her of his own
agreement with that view when duly tempered with wise conformity,
and could mention historical examples before unknown to her.
"He thinks with me," said Dorothea to herself, "or rather, he thinks
a whole world of which my thought is but a poor twopenny mirror.
And his feelings too, his whole experience--what a lake compared
with my little pool!"
Miss Brooke argued from words and dispositions not less unhesitatingly
than other young ladies of her age. Signs are small measurable things,
but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet,
ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief,
vast as a sky, and colored by a diffused thimbleful of matter in
the shape of knowledge. They are not always too grossly deceived;
for Sinbad himself may have fallen by good-luck on a true description,
and wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions:
starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops
and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be.
Because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore
clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it.
He stayed a little longer than he had intended, on a slight pressure
of invitation from Mr. Brooke, who offered no bait except his own
documents on machine-breaking and rick-burning. Mr. Casaubon was
called into the library to look at these in a heap, while his host
picked up first one and then the other to read aloud from in a
skipping and uncertain way, passing from one unfinished passage
to another with a "Yes, now, but here!" and finally pushing them
all aside to open the journal of his youthful Continental travels.
"Look here--here is all about Greece. Rhamnus, the ruins of
Rhamnus--you are a great Grecian, now. I don't know whether you
have given much study to the topography. I spent no end of time
in making out these things--Helicon, now. Here, now!--`We started
the next morning for Parnassus, the double-peaked Parnassus.'
All this volume is about Greece, you know," Mr. Brooke wound up,
rubbing his thumb transversely along the edges of the leaves as he
held the book forward.
Mr. Casaubon made a dignified though somewhat sad audience;
bowed in the right place, and avoided looking at anything documentary
as far as possible, without showing disregard or impatience;
mindful that this desultoriness was associated with the institutions
of the country, and that the man who took him on this severe mental
scamper was not only an amiable host, but a landholder and
custos rotulorum. Was his endurance aided also by the reflection
that Mr. Brooke was the uncle of Dorothea?
Certainly he seemed more and more bent on making her talk to him,
on drawing her out, as Celia remarked to herself; and in looking at
her his face was often lit up by a smile like pale wintry sunshine.
Before he left the next morning, while taking a pleasant walk with Miss
Brooke along the gravelled terrace, he had mentioned to her that he
felt the disadvantage of loneliness, the need of that cheerful
companionship with which the presence of youth can lighten or vary
the serious toils of maturity. And he delivered this statement
with as much careful precision as if he had been a diplomatic envoy
whose words would be attended with results. Indeed, Mr. Casaubon
was not used to expect that he should have to repeat or revise his
communications of a practical or personal kind. The inclinations
which he had deliberately stated on the 2d of October he would think
it enough to refer to by the mention of that date; judging by the
standard of his own memory, which was a volume where a vide supra
could serve instead of repetitions, and not the ordinary long-used
blotting-book which only tells of forgotten writing. But in this
case Mr. Casaubon's confidence was not likely to be falsified,
for Dorothea heard and retained what he said with the eager interest
of a fresh young nature to which every variety in experience is an epoch.
It was three o'clock in the beautiful breezy autumn day when Mr. Casaubon
drove off to his Rectory at Lowick, only five miles from Tipton;
and Dorothea, who had on her bonnet and shawl, hurried along the shrubbery
and across the park that she might wander through the bordering wood
with no other visible companionship than that of Monk, the Great
St. Bernard dog, who always took care of the young ladies in their walks.
There had risen before her the girl's vision of a possible future
for herself to which she looked forward with trembling hope, and she
wanted to wander on in that visionary future without interruption.
She walked briskly in the brisk air, the color rose in her cheeks,
and her straw bonnet (which our contemporaries might look at
with conjectural curiosity as at an obsolete form of basket)
fell a little backward. She would perhaps be hardly characterized
enough if it were omitted that she wore her brown hair flatly braided
and coiled behind so as to expose the outline of her head in a
daring manner at a time when public feeling required the meagreness
of nature to be dissimulated by tall barricades of frizzed curls
and bows, never surpassed by any great race except the Feejeean.
This was a trait of Miss Brooke's asceticism. But there was nothing
of an ascetic's expression in her bright full eyes, as she looked
before her, not consciously seeing, but absorbing into the intensity
of her mood, the solemn glory of the afternoon with its long swathes
of light between the far-off rows of limes, whose shadows touched
each other.
All people, young or old (that is, all people in those ante-reform
times), would have thought her an interesting object if they had
referred the glow in her eyes and cheeks to the newly awakened ordinary
images of young love: the illusions of Chloe about Strephon have been
sufficiently consecrated in poetry, as the pathetic loveliness of all
spontaneous trust ought to be. Miss Pippin adoring young Pumpkin,
and dreaming along endless vistas of unwearying companionship,
was a little drama which never tired our fathers and mothers,
and had been put into all costumes. Let but Pumpkin have a
figure which would sustain the disadvantages of the shortwaisted
swallow-tail, and everybody felt it not only natural but necessary
to the perfection of womanhood, that a sweet girl should be at once
convinced of his virtue, his exceptional ability, and above all,
his perfect sincerity. But perhaps no persons then living--certainly
none in the neighborhood of Tipton--would have had a sympathetic
understanding for the dreams of a girl whose notions about marriage
took their color entirely from an exalted enthusiasm about the ends
of life, an enthusiasm which was lit chiefly by its own fire,
and included neither the niceties of the trousseau, the pattern
of plate, nor even the honors and sweet joys of the blooming matron.
It had now entered Dorothea's mind that Mr. Casaubon might wish
to make her his wife, and the idea that he would do so touched
her with a sort of reverential gratitude. How good of him--nay, it
would be almost as if a winged messenger had suddenly stood beside
her path and held out his hand towards her! For a long while she
had been oppressed by the indefiniteness which hung in her mind,
like a thick summer haze, over all her desire to make her life
greatly effective. What could she do, what ought she to do?--she,
hardly more than a budding woman, but yet with an active conscience
and a great mental need, not to be satisfied by a girlish instruction
comparable to the nibblings and judgments of a discursive mouse.
With some endowment of stupidity and conceit, she might have thought
that a Christian young lady of fortune should find her ideal of life
in village charities, patronage of the humbler clergy, the perusal
of "Female Scripture Characters," unfolding the private experience
of Sara under the Old Dispensation, and Dorcas under the New,
and the care of her soul over her embroidery in her own boudoir--with
a background of prospective marriage to a man who, if less strict
than herself, as being involved in affairs religiously inexplicable,
might be prayed for and seasonably exhorted. From such contentment poor
Dorothea was shut out. The intensity of her religious disposition,
the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a
nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequent:
and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching,
hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth
of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led
no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once
exaggeration and inconsistency. The thing which seemed to her best,
she wanted to justify by the completest knowledge; and not to live
in a pretended admission of rules which were never acted on.
Into this soul-hunger as yet all her youthful passion was poured;
the union which attracted her was one that would deliver her from her
girlish subjection to her own ignorance, and give her the freedom of
voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the grandest path.
"I should learn everything then," she said to herself, still walking
quickly along the bridle road through the wood. "It would be my
duty to study that I might help him the better in his great works.
There would be nothing trivial about our lives. Every-day things with us
would mean the greatest things. It would be like marrying Pascal.
I should learn to see the truth by the same light as great men have seen
it by. And then I should know what to do, when I got older: I should
see how it was possible to lead a grand life here--now--in England.
I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now: everything
seems like going on a mission to a people whose language I don't
know;--unless it were building good cottages--there can be no
doubt about that. Oh, I hope I should be able to get the people
well housed in Lowick! I will draw plenty of plans while I have time."
Dorothea checked herself suddenly with self-rebuke for the
presumptuous way in which she was reckoning on uncertain events,
but she was spared any inward effort to change the direction of her
thoughts by the appearance of a cantering horseman round a turning
of the road. The well-groomed chestnut horse and two beautiful
setters could leave no doubt that the rider was Sir James Chettam.
He discerned Dorothea, jumped off his horse at once, and, having
delivered it to his groom, advanced towards her with something white
on his arm, at which the two setters were barking in an excited manner.
"How delightful to meet you, Miss Brooke," he said, raising his
hat and showing his sleekly waving blond hair. "It has hastened
the pleasure I was looking forward to."
Miss Brooke was annoyed at the interruption. This amiable baronet,
really a suitable husband for Celia, exaggerated the necessity
of making himself agreeable to the elder sister. Even a prospective
brother-in-law may be an oppression if he will always be presupposing
too good an understanding with you, and agreeing with you even
when you contradict him. The thought that he had made the mistake
of paying his addresses to herself could not take shape: all her
mental activity was used up in persuasions of another kind.
But he was positively obtrusive at this moment, and his dimpled hands
were quite disagreeable. Her roused temper made her color deeply,
as she returned his greeting with some haughtiness.
Sir James interpreted the heightened color in the way most gratifying
to himself, and thought he never saw Miss Brooke looking so handsome.
"I have brought a little petitioner," he said, "or rather,
I have brought him to see if he will be approved before his
petition is offered." He showed the white object under his arm,
which was a tiny Maltese puppy, one of nature's most naive toys.
"It is painful to me to see these creatures that are bred merely
as pets," said Dorothea, whose opinion was forming itself that
very moment (as opinions will) under the heat of irritation.
"Oh, why?" said Sir James, as they walked forward.
"I believe all the petting that is given them does not make
them happy. They are too helpless: their lives are too frail.
A weasel or a mouse that gets its own living is more interesting.
I like to think that the animals about us have souls something
like our own, and either carry on their own little affairs or can be
companions to us, like Monk here. Those creatures are parasitic."
"I am so glad I know that you do not like them," said good Sir James.
"I should never keep them for myself, but ladies usually are fond
of these Maltese dogs. Here, John, take this dog, will you?"
The objectionable puppy, whose nose and eyes were equally black
and expressive, was thus got rid of, since Miss Brooke decided
that it had better not have been born. But she felt it necessary
to explain.
"You must not judge of Celia's feeling from mine. I think she likes
these small pets. She had a tiny terrier once, which she was very
fond of. It made me unhappy, because I was afraid of treading on it.
I am rather short-sighted."
"You have your own opinion about everything, Miss Brooke, and it
is always a good opinion."
What answer was possible to such stupid complimenting?
"Do you know, I envy you that," Sir James said, as they continued
walking at the rather brisk pace set by Dorothea.
"I don't quite understand what you mean."
"Your power of forming an opinion. I can form an opinion of persons.
I know when I like people. But about other matters, do you know,
I have often a difficulty in deciding. One hears very sensible things
said on opposite sides."
"Or that seem sensible. Perhaps we don't always discriminate
between sense and nonsense."
Dorothea felt that she was rather rude.
"Exactly," said Sir James. "But you seem to have the power
of discrimination."
"On the contrary, I am often unable to decide. But that is
from ignorance. The right conclusion is there all the same,
though I am unable to see it."
"I think there are few who would see it more readily. Do you know,
Lovegood was telling me yesterday that you had the best notion in
the world of a plan for cottages--quite wonderful for a young lady,
he thought. You had a real _genus_, to use his expression.
He said you wanted Mr. Brooke to build a new set of cottages, but he
seemed to think it hardly probable that your uncle would consent.
Do you know, that is one of the things I wish to do--I mean, on my
own estate. I should be so glad to carry out that plan of yours,
if you would let me see it. Of course, it is sinking money;
that is why people object to it. Laborers can never pay rent to make
it answer. But, after all, it is worth doing."
"Worth doing! yes, indeed," said Dorothea, energetically, forgetting
her previous small vexations. "I think we deserve to be beaten
out of our beautiful houses with a scourge of small cords--all
of us who let tenants live in such sties as we see round us.
Life in cottages might be happier than ours, if they were real
houses fit for human beings from whom we expect duties and affections."
"Will you show me your plan?"
"Yes, certainly. I dare say it is very faulty. But I have been
examining all the plans for cottages in Loudon's book, and picked
out what seem the best things. Oh what a happiness it would be to
set the pattern about here! I think instead of Lazarus at the gate,
we should put the pigsty cottages outside the park-gate."
Dorothea was in the best temper now. Sir James, as brother in-law,
building model cottages on his estate, and then, perhaps, others being
built at Lowick, and more and more elsewhere in imitation--it
would be as if the spirit of Oberlin had passed over the parishes
to make the life of poverty beautiful!
Sir James saw all the plans, and took one away to consult upon
with Lovegood. He also took away a complacent sense that he was
making great progress in Miss Brooke's good opinion. The Maltese
puppy was not offered to Celia; an omission which Dorothea
afterwards thought of with surprise; but she blamed herself for it.
She had been engrossing Sir James. After all, it was a relief
that there was no puppy to tread upon.
Celia was present while the plans were being examined, and observed
Sir James's illusion. "He thinks that Dodo cares about him,
and she only cares about her plans. Yet I am not certain that she
would refuse him if she thought he would let her manage everything
and carry out all her notions. And how very uncomfortable Sir
James would be! I cannot bear notions."
It was Celia's private luxury to indulge in this dislike.
She dared not confess it to her sister in any direct statement,
for that would be laying herself open to a demonstration that
she was somehow or other at war with all goodness. But on
safe opportunities, she had an indirect mode of making her negative
wisdom tell upon Dorothea, and calling her down from her rhapsodic
mood by reminding her that people were staring, not listening.
Celia was not impulsive: what she had to say could wait,
and came from her always with the same quiet staccato evenness.
When people talked with energy and emphasis she watched their faces
and features merely. She never could understand how well-bred
persons consented to sing and open their mouths in the ridiculous
manner requisite for that vocal exercise.
It was not many days before Mr. Casaubon paid a morning visit,
on which he was invited again for the following week to dine and stay
the night. Thus Dorothea had three more conversations with him,
and was convinced that her first impressions had been just.
He was all she had at first imagined him to be: almost everything
he had said seemed like a specimen from a mine, or the inscription
on the door of a museum which might open on the treasures of
past ages; and this trust in his mental wealth was all the deeper
and more effective on her inclination because it was now obvious
that his visits were made for her sake. This accomplished
man condescended to think of a young girl, and take the pains
to talk to her, not with absurd compliment, but with an appeal
to her understanding, and sometimes with instructive correction.
What delightful companionship! Mr. Casaubon seemed even unconscious
that trivialities existed, and never handed round that small-talk
of heavy men which is as acceptable as stale bride-cake brought forth
with an odor of cupboard. He talked of what he was interested in,
or else he was silent and bowed with sad civility. To Dorothea
this was adorable genuineness, and religious abstinence from that
artificiality which uses up the soul in the efforts of pretence.
For she looked as reverently at Mr. Casaubon's religious elevation
above herself as she did at his intellect and learning.
He assented to her expressions of devout feeling, and usually with
an appropriate quotation; he allowed himself to say that he had gone
through some spiritual conflicts in his youth; in short, Dorothea saw
that here she might reckon on understanding, sympathy, and guidance.
On one--only one--of her favorite themes she was disappointed.
Mr. Casaubon apparently did not care about building cottages,
and diverted the talk to the extremely narrow accommodation
which was to be had in the dwellings of the ancient Egyptians,
as if to check a too high standard. After he was gone,
Dorothea dwelt with some agitation on this indifference of his;
and her mind was much exercised with arguments drawn from the varying
conditions of climate which modify human needs, and from the admitted
wickedness of pagan despots. Should she not urge these arguments
on Mr. Casaubon when he came again? But further reflection told
her that she was presumptuous in demanding his attention to such
a subject; he would not disapprove of her occupying herself with it
in leisure moments, as other women expected to occupy themselves
with their dress and embroidery--would not forbid it when--Dorothea
felt rather ashamed as she detected herself in these speculations.
But her uncle had been invited to go to Lowick to stay a couple
of days: was it reasonable to suppose that Mr. Casaubon delighted
in Mr. Brooke's society for its own sake, either with or without
documents?
Meanwhile that little disappointment made her delight the more in Sir
James Chettam's readiness to set on foot the desired improvements.
He came much oftener than Mr. Casaubon, and Dorothea ceased to find him
disagreeable since he showed himself so entirely in earnest; for he had
already entered with much practical ability into Lovegood's estimates,
and was charmingly docile. She proposed to build a couple of cottages,
and transfer two families from their old cabins, which could then
be pulled down, so that new ones could be built on the old sites.
Sir James said "Exactly," and she bore the word remarkably well.
Certainly these men who had so few spontaneous ideas might be very
useful members of society under good feminine direction, if they were
fortunate in choosing their sisters-in-law! It is difficult to say
whether there was or was not a little wilfulness in her continuing
blind to the possibility that another sort of choice was in question
in relation to her. But her life was just now full of hope and action:
she was not only thinking of her plans, but getting down learned
books from the library and reading many things hastily (that she
might be a little less ignorant in talking to Mr. Casaubon), all the
while being visited with conscientious questionings whether she were
not exalting these poor doings above measure and contemplating them
with that self-satisfaction which was the last doom of ignorance and folly.
CHAPTER IV.
1st Gent. Our deeds are fetters that we forge ourselves.
2d Gent. Ay, truly: but I think it is the world
That brings the iron.
"Sir James seems determined to do everything you wish," said Celia,
as they were driving home from an inspection of the new building-site.
"He is a good creature, and more sensible than any one would imagine,"
said Dorothea, inconsiderately.
"You mean that he appears silly."
"No, no," said Dorothea, recollecting herself, and laying her hand
on her sister's a moment, "but he does not talk equally well on
all subjects."
"I should think none but disagreeable people do," said Celia,
in her usual purring way. "They must be very dreadful to live with.
Only think! at breakfast, and always."
Dorothea laughed. "O Kitty, you are a wonderful creature!"
She pinched Celia's chin, being in the mood now to think her
very winning and lovely--fit hereafter to be an eternal cherub,
and if it were not doctrinally wrong to say so, hardly more in need
of salvation than a squirrel. "Of course people need not be always
talking well. Only one tells the quality of their minds when they
try to talk well."
"You mean that Sir James tries and fails."
"I was speaking generally. Why do you catechise me about Sir
James? It is not the object of his life to please me."
"Now, Dodo, can you really believe that?"
"Certainly. He thinks of me as a future sister--that is all."
Dorothea had never hinted this before, waiting, from a certain
shyness on such subjects which was mutual between the sisters,
until it should be introduced by some decisive event. Celia blushed,
but said at once--
"Pray do not make that mistake any longer, Dodo. When Tantripp
was brushing my hair the other day, she said that Sir James's man
knew from Mrs. Cadwallader's maid that Sir James was to marry
the eldest Miss Brooke."
"How can you let Tantripp talk such gossip to you, Celia?"
said Dorothea, indignantly, not the less angry because details asleep
in her memory were now awakened to confirm the unwelcome revelation.
"You must have asked her questions. It is degrading."
"I see no harm at all in Tantripp's talking to me. It is better
to hear what people say. You see what mistakes you make by taking
up notions. I am quite sure that Sir James means to make you an offer;
and he believes that you will accept him, especially since you
have been so pleased with him about the plans. And uncle too--I
know he expects it. Every one can see that Sir James is very much
in love with you."
The revulsion was so strong and painful in Dorothea's mind that the tears
welled up and flowed abundantly. All her dear plans were embittered,
and she thought with disgust of Sir James's conceiving that she
recognized him as her lover. There was vexation too on account of Celia.
"How could he expect it?" she burst forth in her most impetuous manner.
"I have never agreed with him about anything but the cottages: I
was barely polite to him before."
"But you have been so pleased with him since then; he has begun
to feel quite sure that you are fond of him."
"Fond of him, Celia! How can you choose such odious expressions?"
said Dorothea, passionately.
"Dear me, Dorothea, I suppose it would be right for you to be fond
of a man whom you accepted for a husband."
"It is offensive to me to say that Sir James could think I was fond
of him. Besides, it is not the right word for the feeling I must
have towards the man I would accept as a husband."
"Well, I am sorry for Sir James. I thought it right to tell you,
because you went on as you always do, never looking just where you are,
and treading in the wrong place. You always see what nobody else sees;
it is impossible to satisfy you; yet you never see what is quite plain.
That's your way, Dodo." Something certainly gave Celia unusual courage;
and she was not sparing the sister of whom she was occasionally in awe.
Who can tell what just criticisms Murr the Cat may be passing on us
beings of wider speculation?
"It is very painful," said Dorothea, feeling scourged. "I can have
no more to do with the cottages. I must be uncivil to him. I must
tell him I will have nothing to do with them. It is very painful."
Her eyes filled again with tears.
"Wait a little. Think about it. You know he is going away for a day
or two to see his sister. There will be nobody besides Lovegood."
Celia could not help relenting. "Poor Dodo," she went on,
in an amiable staccato. "It is very hard: it is your favorite
_fad_ to draw plans."
"_Fad_ to draw plans! Do you think I only care about my fellow-creatures'
houses in that childish way? I may well make mistakes. How can one
ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty
thoughts?"
No more was said; Dorothea was too much jarred to recover her temper
and behave so as to show that she admitted any error in herself.
She was disposed rather to accuse the intolerable narrowness
and the purblind conscience of the society around her: and Celia
was no longer the eternal cherub, but a thorn in her spirit,
a pink-and-white nullifidian, worse than any discouraging presence
in the "Pilgrim's Progress." The _fad_ of drawing plans! What was
life worth--what great faith was possible when the whole
effect of one's actions could be withered up into such parched
rubbish as that? When she got out of the carriage, her cheeks
were pale and her eyelids red. She was an image of sorrow,
and her uncle who met her in the hall would have been alarmed,
if Celia had not been close to her looking so pretty and composed,
that he at once concluded Dorothea's tears to have their origin in
her excessive religiousness. He had returned, during their absence,
from a journey to the county town, about a petition for the pardon
of some criminal.
"Well, my dears," he said, kindly, as they went up to kiss him,
"I hope nothing disagreeable has happened while I have been away."
"No, uncle," said Celia, "we have been to Freshitt to look at
the cottages. We thought you would have been at home to lunch."
"I came by Lowick to lunch--you didn't know I came by Lowick. And I
have brought a couple of pamphlets for you, Dorothea--in the library,
you know; they lie on the table in the library."
It seemed as if an electric stream went through Dorothea,
thrilling her from despair into expectation. They were pamphlets
about the early Church. The oppression of Celia, Tantripp, and Sir
James was shaken off, and she walked straight to the library.
Celia went up-stairs. Mr. Brooke was detained by a message, but when
he re-entered the library, he found Dorothea seated and already
deep in one of the pamphlets which had some marginal manuscript
of Mr. Casaubon's,--taking it in as eagerly as she might have taken
in the scent of a fresh bouquet after a dry, hot, dreary walk.
She was getting away from Tipton and Freshitt, and her own sad
liability to tread in the wrong places on her way to the New Jerusalem.
Mr. Brooke sat down in his arm-chair, stretched his legs towards
the wood-fire, which had fallen into a wondrous mass of glowing dice
between the dogs, and rubbed his hands gently, looking very mildly
towards Dorothea, but with a neutral leisurely air, as if he had
nothing particular to say. Dorothea closed her pamphlet, as soon
as she was aware of her uncle's presence, and rose as if to go.
Usually she would have been interested about her uncle's merciful
errand on behalf of the criminal, but her late agitation had made
her absent-minded.
"I came back by Lowick, you know," said Mr. Brooke, not as if with
any intention to arrest her departure, but apparently from his
usual tendency to say what he had said before. This fundamental
principle of human speech was markedly exhibited in Mr. Brooke.
"I lunched there and saw Casaubon's library, and that kind of thing.
There's a sharp air, driving. Won't you sit down, my dear?
You look cold."
Dorothea felt quite inclined to accept the invitation. Some times,
when her uncle's easy way of taking things did not happen to
be exasperating, it was rather soothing. She threw off her mantle
and bonnet, and sat down opposite to him, enjoying the glow,
but lifting up her beautiful hands for a screen. They were not
thin hands, or small hands; but powerful, feminine, maternal hands.
She seemed to be holding them up in propitiation for her passionate
desire to know and to think, which in the unfriendly mediums
of Tipton and Freshitt had issued in crying and red eyelids.
She bethought herself now of the condemned criminal. "What news
have you brought about the sheep-stealer, uncle?"
"What, poor Bunch?--well, it seems we can't get him off--he
is to be hanged."
Dorothea's brow took an expression of reprobation and pity.
"Hanged, you know," said Mr. Brooke, with a quiet nod. "Poor Romilly! he
would have helped us. I knew Romilly. Casaubon didn't know Romilly.
He is a little buried in books, you know, Casaubon is."
"When a man has great studies and is writing a great work,
he must of course give up seeing much of the world. How can
he go about making acquaintances?"
"That's true. But a man mopes, you know. I have always been a
bachelor too, but I have that sort of disposition that I never moped;
it was my way to go about everywhere and take in everything.
I never moped: but I can see that Casaubon does, you know. He wants
a companion--a companion, you know."
"It would be a great honor to any one to be his companion,"
said Dorothea, energetically.
"You like him, eh?" said Mr. Brooke, without showing any surprise,
or other emotion. "Well, now, I've known Casaubon ten years,
ever since he came to Lowick. But I never got anything out of
him--any ideas, you know. However, he is a tiptop man and may
be a bishop--that kind of thing, you know, if Peel stays in.
And he has a very high opinion of you, my dear."
Dorothea could not speak.
"The fact is, he has a very high opinion indeed of you. And he
speaks uncommonly well--does Casaubon. He has deferred to me,
you not being of age. In short, I have promised to speak to you,
though I told him I thought there was not much chance. I was bound
to tell him that. I said, my niece is very young, and that kind
of thing. But I didn't think it necessary to go into everything.
However, the long and the short of it is, that he has asked my
permission to make you an offer of marriage--of marriage, you know,"
said Mr. Brooke, with his explanatory nod. "I thought it better
to tell you, my dear."
No one could have detected any anxiety in Mr. Brooke's manner,
but he did really wish to know something of his niece's mind, that,
if there were any need for advice, he might give it in time.
What feeling he, as a magistrate who had taken in so many ideas,
could make room for, was unmixedly kind. Since Dorothea did not
speak immediately, he repeated, "I thought it better to tell you,
my dear."
"Thank you, uncle," said Dorothea, in a clear unwavering tone.
"I am very grateful to Mr. Casaubon. If he makes me an offer,
I shall accept him. I admire and honor him more than any man I
ever saw."
Mr. Brooke paused a little, and then said in a lingering low tone,
"Ah? . . . Well! He is a good match in some respects. But now,
Chettam is a good match. And our land lies together. I shall never
interfere against your wishes, my dear. People should have their
own way in marriage, and that sort of thing--up to a certain point,
you know. I have always said that, up to a certain point. I wish
you to marry well; and I have good reason to believe that Chettam
wishes to marry you. I mention it, you know."
"It is impossible that I should ever marry Sir James Chettam,"
said Dorothea. "If he thinks of marrying me, he has made
a great mistake."
"That is it, you see. One never knows. I should have thought
Chettam was just the sort of man a woman would like, now."
"Pray do not mention him in that light again, uncle," said Dorothea,
feeling some of her late irritation revive.
Mr. Brooke wondered, and felt that women were an inexhaustible
subject of study, since even he at his age was not in a perfect
state of scientific prediction about them. Here was a fellow
like Chettam with no chance at all.
"Well, but Casaubon, now. There is no hurry--I mean for you.
It's true, every year will tell upon him. He is over five-and-forty,
you know. I should say a good seven-and-twenty years older than you.
To be sure,--if you like learning and standing, and that sort
of thing, we can't have everything. And his income is good--he has
a handsome property independent of the Church--his income is good.
Still he is not young, and I must not conceal from you, my dear,
that I think his health is not over-strong. I know nothing else
against him."
"I should not wish to have a husband very near my own age,"
said Dorothea, with grave decision. "I should wish to have a husband
who was above me in judgment and in all knowledge."
Mr. Brooke repeated his subdued, "Ah?--I thought you had more
of your own opinion than most girls. I thought you liked your
own opinion--liked it, you know."
"I cannot imagine myself living without some opinions, but I
should wish to have good reasons for them, and a wise man could
help me to see which opinions had the best foundation, and would
help me to live according to them."
"Very true. You couldn't put the thing better--couldn't put
it better, beforehand, you know. But there are oddities in things,"
continued Mr. Brooke, whose conscience was really roused to do
the best he could for his niece on this occasion. "Life isn't cast
in a mould--not cut out by rule and line, and that sort of thing.
I never married myself, and it will be the better for you and yours.
The fact is, I never loved any one well enough to put myself into
a noose for them. It _is_ a noose, you know. Temper, now.
There is temper. And a husband likes to be master."
"I know that I must expect trials, uncle. Marriage is a state
of higher duties. I never thought of it as mere personal ease,"
said poor Dorothea.
"Well, you are not fond of show, a great establishment, balls, dinners,
that kind of thing. I can see that Casaubon's ways might suit you
better than Chettam's. And you shall do as you like, my dear.
I would not hinder Casaubon; I said so at once; for there is no
knowing how anything may turn out. You have not the same tastes
as every young lady; and a clergyman and scholar--who may be
a bishop--that kind of thing--may suit you better than Chettam.
Chettam is a good fellow, a good sound-hearted fellow, you know;
but he doesn't go much into ideas. I did, when I was his age.
But Casaubon's eyes, now. I think he has hurt them a little with too
much reading."
"I should be all the happier, uncle, the more room there was for me
to help him," said Dorothea, ardently.
"You have quite made up your mind, I see. Well, my dear, the fact is,
I have a letter for you in my pocket." Mr. Brooke handed the letter
to Dorothea, but as she rose to go away, he added, "There is not
too much hurry, my dear. Think about it, you know."
When Dorothea had left him, he reflected that he had certainly
spoken strongly: he had put the risks of marriage before her in a
striking manner. It was his duty to do so. But as to pretending
to be wise for young people,--no uncle, however much he had travelled
in his youth, absorbed the new ideas, and dined with celebrities
now deceased, could pretend to judge what sort of marriage would
turn out well for a young girl who preferred Casaubon to Chettam.
In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr. Brooke's mind felt
blank before it, could be hardly less complicated than the revolutions
of an irregular solid.
CHAPTER V.
"Hard students are commonly troubled with gowts, catarrhs,
rheums, cachexia, bradypepsia, bad eyes, stone, and collick,
crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and
all such diseases as come by over-much sitting: they are
most part lean, dry, ill-colored . . . and all through
immoderate pains and extraordinary studies. If you will not
believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus and
Thomas Aquainas' works; and tell me whether those men took
pains."--BURTON'S Anatomy of Melancholy, P. I, s. 2.
This was Mr. Casaubon's letter.
MY DEAR MISS BROOKE,--I have your guardian's permission to address
you on a subject than which I have none more at heart. I am not,
I trust, mistaken in the recognition of some deeper correspondence
than that of date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my
own life had arisen contemporaneously with the possibility of my
becoming acquainted with you. For in the first hour of meeting you,
I had an impression of your eminent and perhaps exclusive fitness
to supply that need (connected, I may say, with such activity of the
affections as even the preoccupations of a work too special to be
abdicated could not uninterruptedly dissimulate); and each succeeding
opportunity for observation has given the impression an added
depth by convincing me more emphatically of that fitness which I
had preconceived, and thus evoking more decisively those affections
to which I have but now referred. Our conversations have, I think,
made sufficiently clear to you the tenor of my life and purposes:
a tenor unsuited, I am aware, to the commoner order of minds.
But I have discerned in you an elevation of thought and a capability
of devotedness, which I had hitherto not conceived to be compatible
either with the early bloom of youth or with those graces of sex that
may be said at once to win and to confer distinction when combined,
as they notably are in you, with the mental qualities above indicated.
It was, I confess, beyond my hope to meet with this rare combination
of elements both solid and attractive, adapted to supply aid
in graver labors and to cast a charm over vacant hours; and but
for the event of my introduction to you (which, let me again say,
I trust not to be superficially coincident with foreshadowing needs,
but providentially related thereto as stages towards the completion
of a life's plan), I should presumably have gone on to the last
without any attempt to lighten my solitariness by a matrimonial union.
Such, my dear Miss Brooke, is the accurate statement of my feelings;
and I rely on your kind indulgence in venturing now to ask you
how far your own are of a nature to confirm my happy presentiment.
To be accepted by you as your husband and the earthly guardian of
your welfare, I should regard as the highest of providential gifts.
In return I can at least offer you an affection hitherto unwasted,
and the faithful consecration of a life which, however short
in the sequel, has no backward pages whereon, if you choose
to turn them, you will find records such as might justly cause
you either bitterness or shame. I await the expression of your
sentiments with an anxiety which it would be the part of wisdom
(were it possible) to divert by a more arduous labor than usual.
But in this order of experience I am still young, and in looking forward
to an unfavorable possibility I cannot but feel that resignation
to solitude will be more difficult after the temporary illumination
of hope.
In any case, I shall remain,
Yours with sincere devotion,
EDWARD CASAUBON.
Dorothea trembled while she read this letter; then she fell on her knees,
buried her face, and sobbed. She could not pray: under the rush of solemn
emotion in which thoughts became vague and images floated uncertainly,
she could but cast herself, with a childlike sense of reclining,
in the lap of a divine consciousness which sustained her own.
She remained in that attitude till it was time to dress for dinner.
How could it occur to her to examine the letter, to look at it
critically as a profession of love? Her whole soul was possessed
by the fact that a fuller life was opening before her: she
was a neophyte about to enter on a higher grade of initiation.
She was going to have room for the energies which stirred uneasily
under the dimness and pressure of her own ignorance and the petty
peremptoriness of the world's habits.
Now she would be able to devote herself to large yet definite duties;
now she would be allowed to live continually in the light of a mind
that she could reverence. This hope was not unmixed with the glow
of proud delight--the joyous maiden surprise that she was chosen
by the man whom her admiration had chosen. All Dorothea's passion
was transfused through a mind struggling towards an ideal life;
the radiance of her transfigured girlhood fell on the first object
that came within its level. The impetus with which inclination
became resolution was heightened by those little events of the day
which had roused her discontent with the actual conditions of
her life.
After dinner, when Celia was playing an "air, with variations,"
a small kind of tinkling which symbolized the aesthetic part of the
young ladies' education, Dorothea went up to her room to answer
Mr. Casaubon's letter. Why should she defer the answer? She wrote
it over three times, not because she wished to change the wording,
but because her hand was unusually uncertain, and she could not bear
that Mr. Casaubon should think her handwriting bad and illegible.
She piqued herself on writing a hand in which each letter was
distinguishable without any large range of conjecture, and she meant
to make much use of this accomplishment, to save Mr. Casaubon's eyes.
Three times she wrote.
MY DEAR MR. CASAUBON,--I am very grateful to you for loving me,
and thinking me worthy to be your wife. I can look forward to no better
happiness than that which would be one with yours. If I said more,
it would only be the same thing written out at greater length,
for I cannot now dwell on any other thought than that I may be
through life
Yours devotedly,
DOROTHEA BROOKE.
Later in the evening she followed her uncle into the library
to give him the letter, that he might send it in the morning.
He was surprised, but his surprise only issued in a few moments'
silence, during which he pushed about various objects on his
writing-table, and finally stood with his back to the fire,
his glasses on his nose, looking at the address of Dorothea's letter.
"Have you thought enough about this, my dear?" he said at last.
"There was no need to think long, uncle. I know of nothing to make
me vacillate. If I changed my mind, it must be because of something
important and entirely new to me."
"Ah!--then you have accepted him? Then Chettam has no chance?
Has Chettam offended you--offended you, you know? What is it you
don't like in Chettam?"
"There is nothing that I like in him," said Dorothea, rather impetuously.
Mr. Brooke threw his head and shoulders backward as if some one
had thrown a light missile at him. Dorothea immediately felt
some self-rebuke, and said--
"I mean in the light of a husband. He is very kind, I think--really
very good about the cottages. A well-meaning man."
"But you must have a scholar, and that sort of thing? Well, it lies
a little in our family. I had it myself--that love of knowledge,
and going into everything--a little too much--it took me too far;
though that sort of thing doesn't often run in the female-line;
or it runs underground like the rivers in Greece, you know--it
comes out in the sons. Clever sons, clever mothers. I went
a good deal into that, at one time. However, my dear, I have
always said that people should do as they like in these things,
up to a certain point. I couldn't, as your guardian, have consented
to a bad match. But Casaubon stands well: his position is good.
I am afraid Chettam will be hurt, though, and Mrs. Cadwallader will
blame me."
That evening, of course, Celia knew nothing of what had happened.
She attributed Dorothea's abstracted manner, and the evidence of
further crying since they had got home, to the temper she had been
in about Sir James Chettam and the buildings, and was careful not
to give further offence: having once said what she wanted to say,
Celia had no disposition to recur to disagreeable subjects.
It had been her nature when a child never to quarrel with any one--
only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her, and looked
like turkey-cocks; whereupon she was ready to play at cat's cradle
with them whenever they recovered themselves. And as to Dorothea,
it had always been her way to find something wrong in her sister's
words, though Celia inwardly protested that she always said just
how things were, and nothing else: she never did and never could
put words together out of her own head. But the best of Dodo was,
that she did not keep angry for long together. Now, though they
had hardly spoken to each other all the evening, yet when Celia put
by her work, intending to go to bed, a proceeding in which she was
always much the earlier, Dorothea, who was seated on a low stool,
unable to occupy herself except in meditation, said, with the musical
intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her speech
like a fine bit of recitative--
"Celia, dear, come and kiss me," holding her arms open as she spoke.
Celia knelt down to get the right level and gave her little
butterfly kiss, while Dorothea encircled her with gentle arms
and pressed her lips gravely on each cheek in turn.
"Don't sit up, Dodo, you are so pale to-night: go to bed soon,"
said Celia, in a comfortable way, without any touch of pathos.
"No, dear, I am very, very happy," said Dorothea, fervently.
"So much the better," thought Celia. "But how strangely Dodo goes
from one extreme to the other."
The next day, at luncheon, the butler, handing something to
Mr. Brooke, said, "Jonas is come back, sir, and has brought this letter."
Mr. Brooke read the letter, and then, nodding toward Dorothea,
said, "Casaubon, my dear: he will be here to dinner; he didn't
wait to write more--didn't wait, you know."
It could not seem remarkable to Celia that a dinner guest should
be announced to her sister beforehand, but, her eyes following
the same direction as her uncle's, she was struck with the peculiar
effect of the announcement on Dorothea. It seemed as if something
like the reflection of a white sunlit wing had passed across
her features, ending in one of her rare blushes. For the first time
it entered into Celia's mind that there might be something more
between Mr. Casaubon and her sister than his delight in bookish
talk and her delight in listening. Hitherto she had classed
the admiration for this "ugly" and learned acquaintance with the
admiration for Monsieur Liret at Lausanne, also ugly and learned.
Dorothea had never been tired of listening to old Monsieur Liret
when Celia's feet were as cold as possible, and when it had really
become dreadful to see the skin of his bald head moving about.
Why then should her enthusiasm not extend to Mr. Casaubon simply
in the same way as to Monsieur Liret? And it seemed probable
that all learned men had a sort of schoolmaster's view of young people.
But now Celia was really startled at the suspicion which had darted
into her mind. She was seldom taken by surprise in this way,
her marvellous quickness in observing a certain order of signs generally
preparing her to expect such outward events as she had an interest in.
Not that she now imagined Mr. Casaubon to be already an accepted
lover: she had only begun to feel disgust at the possibility that
anything in Dorothea's mind could tend towards such an issue.
Here was something really to vex her about Dodo: it was all very
well not to accept Sir James Chettam, but the idea of marrying
Mr. Casaubon! Celia felt a sort of shame mingled with a sense
of the ludicrous. But perhaps Dodo, if she were really bordering
on such an extravagance, might be turned away from it: experience
had often shown that her impressibility might be calculated on.
The day was damp, and they were not going to walk out, so they both
went up to their sitting-room; and there Celia observed that Dorothea,
instead of settling down with her usual diligent interest to
some occupation, simply leaned her elbow on an open book and looked
out of the window at the great cedar silvered with the damp.
She herself had taken up the making of a toy for the curate's children,
and was not going to enter on any subject too precipitately.
Dorothea was in fact thinking that it was desirable for Celia to know
of the momentous change in Mr. Casaubon's position since he had last
been in the house: it did not seem fair to leave her in ignorance
of what would necessarily affect her attitude towards him; but it was
impossible not to shrink from telling her. Dorothea accused herself
of some meanness in this timidity: it was always odious to her to
have any small fears or contrivances about her actions, but at this
moment she was seeking the highest aid possible that she might not
dread the corrosiveness of Celia's pretty carnally minded prose.
Her reverie was broken, and the difficulty of decision banished,
by Celia's small and rather guttural voice speaking in its usual tone,
of a remark aside or a "by the bye."
"Is any one else coming to dine besides Mr. Casaubon?"
"Not that I know of."
"I hope there is some one else. Then I shall not hear him eat
his soup so."
"What is there remarkable about his soup-eating?"
"Really, Dodo, can't you hear how he scrapes his spoon? And he
always blinks before he speaks. I don't know whether Locke blinked,
but I'm sure I am sorry for those who sat opposite to him if he did."
"Celia," said Dorothea, with emphatic gravity, "pray don't make
any more observations of that kind."
"Why not? They are quite true," returned Celia, who had her reasons
for persevering, though she was beginning to be a little afraid.
"Many things are true which only the commonest minds observe."
"Then I think the commonest minds must be rather useful.
I think it is a pity Mr. Casaubon's mother had not a commoner mind:
she might have taught him better." Celia was inwardly frightened,
and ready to run away, now she had hurled this light javelin.
Dorothea's feelings had gathered to an avalanche, and there could
be no further preparation.
"It is right to tell you, Celia, that I am engaged to marry
Mr. Casaubon."
Perhaps Celia had never turned so pale before. The paper man she
was making would have had his leg injured, but for her habitual
care of whatever she held in her hands. She laid the fragile
figure down at once, and sat perfectly still for a few moments.
When she spoke there was a tear gathering.
"Oh, Dodo, I hope you will be happy." Her sisterly tenderness could
not but surmount other feelings at this moment, and her fears
were the fears of affection.
Dorothea was still hurt and agitated.
"It is quite decided, then?" said Celia, in an awed under tone.
"And uncle knows?"
"I have accepted Mr. Casaubon's offer. My uncle brought me
the letter that contained it; he knew about it beforehand."
"I beg your pardon, if I have said anything to hurt you, Dodo,"
said Celia, with a slight sob. She never could have thought
that she should feel as she did. There was something funereal
in the whole affair, and Mr. Casaubon seemed to be the officiating
clergyman, about whom it would be indecent to make remarks.
"Never mind, Kitty, do not grieve. We should never admire
the same people. I often offend in something of the same way;
I am apt to speak too strongly of those who don't please me."
In spite of this magnanimity Dorothea was still smarting: perhaps as
much from Celia's subdued astonishment as from her small criticisms.
Of course all the world round Tipton would be out of sympathy
with this marriage. Dorothea knew of no one who thought as she
did about life and its best objects.
Nevertheless before the evening was at an end she was very happy.
In an hour's tete-a-tete with Mr. Casaubon she talked to him
with more freedom than she had ever felt before, even pouring
out her joy at the thought of devoting herself to him, and of
learning how she might best share and further all his great ends.
Mr. Casaubon was touched with an unknown delight (what man would
not have been?) at this childlike unrestrained ardor: he was not
surprised (what lover would have been?) that he should be the object
of it.
"My dear young lady--Miss Brooke--Dorothea!" he said, pressing her
hand between his hands, "this is a happiness greater than I had ever
imagined to be in reserve for me. That I should ever meet with a
mind and person so rich in the mingled graces which could render
marriage desirable, was far indeed from my conception. You have
all--nay, more than all--those qualities which I have ever regarded
as the characteristic excellences of womanhood. The great charm
of your sex is its capability of an ardent self-sacrificing affection,
and herein we see its fitness to round and complete the existence
of our own. Hitherto I have known few pleasures save of the severer
kind: my satisfactions have been those of the solitary student.
I have been little disposed to gather flowers that would wither
in my hand, but now I shall pluck them with eagerness, to place
them in your bosom."
No speech could have been more thoroughly honest in its intention:
the frigid rhetoric at the end was as sincere as the bark of a dog,
or the cawing of an amorous rook. Would it not be rash to conclude
that there was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike
us as the thin music of a mandolin?
Dorothea's faith supplied all that Mr. Casaubon's words seemed
to leave unsaid: what believer sees a disturbing omission or
infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for
whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.
"I am very ignorant--you will quite wonder at my ignorance,"
said Dorothea. "I have so many thoughts that may be quite mistaken;
and now I shall be able to tell them all to you, and ask you about them.
But," she added, with rapid imagination of Mr. Casaubon's probable feeling,
"I will not trouble you too much; only when you are inclined to
listen to me. You must often be weary with the pursuit of subjects
in your own track. I shall gain enough if you will take me with you there."
"How should I be able now to persevere in any path without
your companionship?" said Mr. Casaubon, kissing her candid brow,
and feeling that heaven had vouchsafed him a blessing in every way
suited to his peculiar wants. He was being unconsciously wrought
upon by the charms of a nature which was entirely without hidden
calculations either for immediate effects or for remoter ends.
It was this which made Dorothea so childlike, and, according to some
judges, so stupid, with all her reputed cleverness; as, for example,
in the present case of throwing herself, metaphorically speaking,
at Mr. Casaubon's feet, and kissing his unfashionable shoe-ties
as if he were a Protestant Pope. She was not in the least teaching
Mr. Casaubon to ask if he were good enough for her, but merely asking
herself anxiously how she could be good enough for Mr. Casaubon.
Before he left the next day it had been decided that the marriage
should take place within six weeks. Why not? Mr. Casaubon's house
was ready. It was not a parsonage, but a considerable mansion,
with much land attached to it. The parsonage was inhabited by
the curate, who did all the duty except preaching the morning sermon.
CHAPTER VI.
My lady's tongue is like the meadow blades,
That cut you stroking them with idle hand.
Nice cutting is her function: she divides
With spiritual edge the millet-seed,
And makes intangible savings.
As Mr. Casaubon's carriage was passing out of the gateway,
it arrested the entrance of a pony phaeton driven by a lady with
a servant seated behind. It was doubtful whether the recognition
had been mutual, for Mr. Casaubon was looking absently before him;
but the lady was quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?"
in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old
Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her
as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped
on the entrance of the small phaeton.
"Well, Mrs. Fitchett, how are your fowls laying now?" said the
high-colored, dark-eyed lady, with the clearest chiselled utterance.
"Pretty well for laying, madam, but they've ta'en to eating their
eggs: I've no peace o' mind with 'em at all."
"Oh, the cannibals! Better sell them cheap at once. What will
you sell them a couple? One can't eat fowls of a bad character
at a high price."
"Well, madam, half-a-crown: I couldn't let 'em go, not under."
"Half-a-crown, these times! Come now--for the Rector's chicken-broth
on a Sunday. He has consumed all ours that I can spare.
You are half paid with the sermon, Mrs. Fitchett, remember that.
Take a pair of tumbler-pigeons for them--little beauties. You must
come and see them. You have no tumblers among your pigeons."
"Well, madam, Master Fitchett shall go and see 'em after work.
He's very hot on new sorts; to oblige you."
"Oblige me! It will be the best bargain he ever made. A pair
of church pigeons for a couple of wicked Spanish fowls that eat
their own eggs! Don't you and Fitchett boast too much, that is all!"
The phaeton was driven onwards with the last words, leaving Mrs.
Fitchett laughing and shaking her head slowly, with an interjectional
"Sure_ly_, sure_ly_!"--from which it might be inferred that she would
have found the country-side somewhat duller if the Rector's lady
had been less free-spoken and less of a skinflint. Indeed, both the
farmers and laborers in the parishes of Freshitt and Tipton
would have felt a sad lack of conversation but for the stories
about what Mrs. Cadwallader said and did: a lady of immeasurably
high birth, descended, as it were, from unknown earls, dim as the
crowd of heroic shades--who pleaded poverty, pared down prices,
and cut jokes in the most companionable manner, though with a turn
of tongue that let you know who she was. Such a lady gave a
neighborliness to both rank and religion, and mitigated the bitterness
of uncommuted tithe. A much more exemplary character with an infusion
of sour dignity would not have furthered their comprehension
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