Middlemarch
Altogether it seems to me peculiar rather than pretty. There is not
even a family likeness between her and your mother.”
“No. And they were not alike in their lot.”
“You did not mention her to me,” said Dorothea.
“My aunt made an unfortunate marriage. I never saw her.”
Dorothea wondered a little, but felt that it would be indelicate just
then to ask for any information which Mr. Casaubon did not proffer, and
she turned to the window to admire the view. The sun had lately pierced
the gray, and the avenue of limes cast shadows.
“Shall we not walk in the garden now?” said Dorothea.
“And you would like to see the church, you know,” said Mr. Brooke. “It
is a droll little church. And the village. It all lies in a nut-shell.
By the way, it will suit you, Dorothea; for the cottages are like a row
of alms-houses—little gardens, gilly-flowers, that sort of thing.”
“Yes, please,” said Dorothea, looking at Mr. Casaubon, “I should like
to see all that.” She had got nothing from him more graphic about the
Lowick cottages than that they were “not bad.”
They were soon on a gravel walk which led chiefly between grassy
borders and clumps of trees, this being the nearest way to the church,
Mr. Casaubon said. At the little gate leading into the churchyard there
was a pause while Mr. Casaubon went to the parsonage close by to fetch
a key. Celia, who had been hanging a little in the rear, came up
presently, when she saw that Mr. Casaubon was gone away, and said in
her easy staccato, which always seemed to contradict the suspicion of
any malicious intent—
“Do you know, Dorothea, I saw some one quite young coming up one of the
walks.”
“Is that astonishing, Celia?”
“There may be a young gardener, you know—why not?” said Mr. Brooke. “I
told Casaubon he should change his gardener.”
“No, not a gardener,” said Celia; “a gentleman with a sketch-book. He
had light-brown curls. I only saw his back. But he was quite young.”
“The curate’s son, perhaps,” said Mr. Brooke. “Ah, there is Casaubon
again, and Tucker with him. He is going to introduce Tucker. You don’t
know Tucker yet.”
Mr. Tucker was the middle-aged curate, one of the “inferior clergy,”
who are usually not wanting in sons. But after the introduction, the
conversation did not lead to any question about his family, and the
startling apparition of youthfulness was forgotten by every one but
Celia. She inwardly declined to believe that the light-brown curls and
slim figure could have any relationship to Mr. Tucker, who was just as
old and musty-looking as she would have expected Mr. Casaubon’s curate
to be; doubtless an excellent man who would go to heaven (for Celia
wished not to be unprincipled), but the corners of his mouth were so
unpleasant. Celia thought with some dismalness of the time she should
have to spend as bridesmaid at Lowick, while the curate had probably no
pretty little children whom she could like, irrespective of principle.
Mr. Tucker was invaluable in their walk; and perhaps Mr. Casaubon had
not been without foresight on this head, the curate being able to
answer all Dorothea’s questions about the villagers and the other
parishioners. Everybody, he assured her, was well off in Lowick: not a
cottager in those double cottages at a low rent but kept a pig, and the
strips of garden at the back were well tended. The small boys wore
excellent corduroy, the girls went out as tidy servants, or did a
little straw-plaiting at home: no looms here, no Dissent; and though
the public disposition was rather towards laying by money than towards
spirituality, there was not much vice. The speckled fowls were so
numerous that Mr. Brooke observed, “Your farmers leave some barley for
the women to glean, I see. The poor folks here might have a fowl in
their pot, as the good French king used to wish for all his people. The
French eat a good many fowls—skinny fowls, you know.”
“I think it was a very cheap wish of his,” said Dorothea, indignantly.
“Are kings such monsters that a wish like that must be reckoned a royal
virtue?”
“And if he wished them a skinny fowl,” said Celia, “that would not be
nice. But perhaps he wished them to have fat fowls.”
“Yes, but the word has dropped out of the text, or perhaps was
subauditum; that is, present in the king’s mind, but not uttered,” said
Mr. Casaubon, smiling and bending his head towards Celia, who
immediately dropped backward a little, because she could not bear Mr.
Casaubon to blink at her.
Dorothea sank into silence on the way back to the house. She felt some
disappointment, of which she was yet ashamed, that there was nothing
for her to do in Lowick; and in the next few minutes her mind had
glanced over the possibility, which she would have preferred, of
finding that her home would be in a parish which had a larger share of
the world’s misery, so that she might have had more active duties in
it. Then, recurring to the future actually before her, she made a
picture of more complete devotion to Mr. Casaubon’s aims in which she
would await new duties. Many such might reveal themselves to the higher
knowledge gained by her in that companionship.
Mr. Tucker soon left them, having some clerical work which would not
allow him to lunch at the Hall; and as they were re-entering the garden
through the little gate, Mr. Casaubon said—
“You seem a little sad, Dorothea. I trust you are pleased with what you
have seen.”
“I am feeling something which is perhaps foolish and wrong,” answered
Dorothea, with her usual openness—“almost wishing that the people
wanted more to be done for them here. I have known so few ways of
making my life good for anything. Of course, my notions of usefulness
must be narrow. I must learn new ways of helping people.”
“Doubtless,” said Mr. Casaubon. “Each position has its corresponding
duties. Yours, I trust, as the mistress of Lowick, will not leave any
yearning unfulfilled.”
“Indeed, I believe that,” said Dorothea, earnestly. “Do not suppose
that I am sad.”
“That is well. But, if you are not tired, we will take another way to
the house than that by which we came.”
Dorothea was not at all tired, and a little circuit was made towards a
fine yew-tree, the chief hereditary glory of the grounds on this side
of the house. As they approached it, a figure, conspicuous on a dark
background of evergreens, was seated on a bench, sketching the old
tree. Mr. Brooke, who was walking in front with Celia, turned his head,
and said—
“Who is that youngster, Casaubon?”
They had come very near when Mr. Casaubon answered—
“That is a young relative of mine, a second cousin: the grandson, in
fact,” he added, looking at Dorothea, “of the lady whose portrait you
have been noticing, my aunt Julia.”
The young man had laid down his sketch-book and risen. His bushy
light-brown curls, as well as his youthfulness, identified him at once
with Celia’s apparition.
“Dorothea, let me introduce to you my cousin, Mr. Ladislaw. Will, this
is Miss Brooke.”
The cousin was so close now, that, when he lifted his hat, Dorothea
could see a pair of gray eyes rather near together, a delicate
irregular nose with a little ripple in it, and hair falling backward;
but there was a mouth and chin of a more prominent, threatening aspect
than belonged to the type of the grandmother’s miniature. Young
Ladislaw did not feel it necessary to smile, as if he were charmed with
this introduction to his future second cousin and her relatives; but
wore rather a pouting air of discontent.
“You are an artist, I see,” said Mr. Brooke, taking up the sketch-book
and turning it over in his unceremonious fashion.
“No, I only sketch a little. There is nothing fit to be seen there,”
said young Ladislaw, coloring, perhaps with temper rather than modesty.
“Oh, come, this is a nice bit, now. I did a little in this way myself
at one time, you know. Look here, now; this is what I call a nice
thing, done with what we used to call _brio_.” Mr. Brooke held out
towards the two girls a large colored sketch of stony ground and trees,
with a pool.
“I am no judge of these things,” said Dorothea, not coldly, but with an
eager deprecation of the appeal to her. “You know, uncle, I never see
the beauty of those pictures which you say are so much praised. They
are a language I do not understand. I suppose there is some relation
between pictures and nature which I am too ignorant to feel—just as you
see what a Greek sentence stands for which means nothing to me.”
Dorothea looked up at Mr. Casaubon, who bowed his head towards her,
while Mr. Brooke said, smiling nonchalantly—
“Bless me, now, how different people are! But you had a bad style of
teaching, you know—else this is just the thing for girls—sketching,
fine art and so on. But you took to drawing plans; you don’t understand
_morbidezza_, and that kind of thing. You will come to my house, I
hope, and I will show you what I did in this way,” he continued,
turning to young Ladislaw, who had to be recalled from his
preoccupation in observing Dorothea. Ladislaw had made up his mind that
she must be an unpleasant girl, since she was going to marry Casaubon,
and what she said of her stupidity about pictures would have confirmed
that opinion even if he had believed her. As it was, he took her words
for a covert judgment, and was certain that she thought his sketch
detestable. There was too much cleverness in her apology: she was
laughing both at her uncle and himself. But what a voice! It was like
the voice of a soul that had once lived in an Aeolian harp. This must
be one of Nature’s inconsistencies. There could be no sort of passion
in a girl who would marry Casaubon. But he turned from her, and bowed
his thanks for Mr. Brooke’s invitation.
“We will turn over my Italian engravings together,” continued that
good-natured man. “I have no end of those things, that I have laid by
for years. One gets rusty in this part of the country, you know. Not
you, Casaubon; you stick to your studies; but my best ideas get
undermost—out of use, you know. You clever young men must guard against
indolence. I was too indolent, you know: else I might have been
anywhere at one time.”
“That is a seasonable admonition,” said Mr. Casaubon; “but now we will
pass on to the house, lest the young ladies should be tired of
standing.”
When their backs were turned, young Ladislaw sat down to go on with his
sketching, and as he did so his face broke into an expression of
amusement which increased as he went on drawing, till at last he threw
back his head and laughed aloud. Partly it was the reception of his own
artistic production that tickled him; partly the notion of his grave
cousin as the lover of that girl; and partly Mr. Brooke’s definition of
the place he might have held but for the impediment of indolence. Mr.
Will Ladislaw’s sense of the ludicrous lit up his features very
agreeably: it was the pure enjoyment of comicality, and had no mixture
of sneering and self-exaltation.
“What is your nephew going to do with himself, Casaubon?” said Mr.
Brooke, as they went on.
“My cousin, you mean—not my nephew.”
“Yes, yes, cousin. But in the way of a career, you know.”
“The answer to that question is painfully doubtful. On leaving Rugby he
declined to go to an English university, where I would gladly have
placed him, and chose what I must consider the anomalous course of
studying at Heidelberg. And now he wants to go abroad again, without
any special object, save the vague purpose of what he calls culture,
preparation for he knows not what. He declines to choose a profession.”
“He has no means but what you furnish, I suppose.”
“I have always given him and his friends reason to understand that I
would furnish in moderation what was necessary for providing him with a