Middlemarch
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