Middlemarch
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