Middlemarch
though I have no direct need of them, I could not pretermit. The task,
notwithstanding the assistance of my amanuensis, has been a somewhat
laborious one, but your society has happily prevented me from that too
continuous prosecution of thought beyond the hours of study which has
been the snare of my solitary life.”
“I am very glad that my presence has made any difference to you,” said
Dorothea, who had a vivid memory of evenings in which she had supposed
that Mr. Casaubon’s mind had gone too deep during the day to be able to
get to the surface again. I fear there was a little temper in her
reply. “I hope when we get to Lowick, I shall be more useful to you,
and be able to enter a little more into what interests you.”
“Doubtless, my dear,” said Mr. Casaubon, with a slight bow. “The notes
I have here made will want sifting, and you can, if you please, extract
them under my direction.”
“And all your notes,” said Dorothea, whose heart had already burned
within her on this subject, so that now she could not help speaking
with her tongue. “All those rows of volumes—will you not now do what
you used to speak of?—will you not make up your mind what part of them
you will use, and begin to write the book which will make your vast
knowledge useful to the world? I will write to your dictation, or I
will copy and extract what you tell me: I can be of no other use.”
Dorothea, in a most unaccountable, darkly feminine manner, ended with a
slight sob and eyes full of tears.
The excessive feeling manifested would alone have been highly
disturbing to Mr. Casaubon, but there were other reasons why Dorothea’s
words were among the most cutting and irritating to him that she could
have been impelled to use. She was as blind to his inward troubles as
he to hers: she had not yet learned those hidden conflicts in her
husband which claim our pity. She had not yet listened patiently to his
heartbeats, but only felt that her own was beating violently. In Mr.
Casaubon’s ear, Dorothea’s voice gave loud emphatic iteration to those
muffled suggestions of consciousness which it was possible to explain
as mere fancy, the illusion of exaggerated sensitiveness: always when
such suggestions are unmistakably repeated from without, they are
resisted as cruel and unjust. We are angered even by the full
acceptance of our humiliating confessions—how much more by hearing in
hard distinct syllables from the lips of a near observer, those
confused murmurs which we try to call morbid, and strive against as if
they were the oncoming of numbness! And this cruel outward accuser was
there in the shape of a wife—nay, of a young bride, who, instead of
observing his abundant pen-scratches and amplitude of paper with the
uncritical awe of an elegant-minded canary-bird, seemed to present
herself as a spy watching everything with a malign power of inference.
Here, towards this particular point of the compass, Mr. Casaubon had a
sensitiveness to match Dorothea’s, and an equal quickness to imagine
more than the fact. He had formerly observed with approbation her
capacity for worshipping the right object; he now foresaw with sudden
terror that this capacity might be replaced by presumption, this
worship by the most exasperating of all criticism,—that which sees
vaguely a great many fine ends, and has not the least notion what it
costs to reach them.
For the first time since Dorothea had known him, Mr. Casaubon’s face
had a quick angry flush upon it.
“My love,” he said, with irritation reined in by propriety, “you may
rely upon me for knowing the times and the seasons, adapted to the
different stages of a work which is not to be measured by the facile
conjectures of ignorant onlookers. It had been easy for me to gain a
temporary effect by a mirage of baseless opinion; but it is ever the
trial of the scrupulous explorer to be saluted with the impatient scorn
of chatterers who attempt only the smallest achievements, being indeed
equipped for no other. And it were well if all such could be admonished
to discriminate judgments of which the true subject-matter lies
entirely beyond their reach, from those of which the elements may be
compassed by a narrow and superficial survey.”
This speech was delivered with an energy and readiness quite unusual
with Mr. Casaubon. It was not indeed entirely an improvisation, but had
taken shape in inward colloquy, and rushed out like the round grains
from a fruit when sudden heat cracks it. Dorothea was not only his
wife: she was a personification of that shallow world which surrounds
the appreciated or desponding author.
Dorothea was indignant in her turn. Had she not been repressing
everything in herself except the desire to enter into some fellowship
with her husband’s chief interests?
“My judgment _was_ a very superficial one—such as I am capable of
forming,” she answered, with a prompt resentment, that needed no
rehearsal. “You showed me the rows of notebooks—you have often spoken
of them—you have often said that they wanted digesting. But I never
heard you speak of the writing that is to be published. Those were very
simple facts, and my judgment went no farther. I only begged you to let
me be of some good to you.”
Dorothea rose to leave the table and Mr. Casaubon made no reply, taking
up a letter which lay beside him as if to reperuse it. Both were
shocked at their mutual situation—that each should have betrayed anger
towards the other. If they had been at home, settled at Lowick in
ordinary life among their neighbors, the clash would have been less
embarrassing: but on a wedding journey, the express object of which is
to isolate two people on the ground that they are all the world to each
other, the sense of disagreement is, to say the least, confounding and
stultifying. To have changed your longitude extensively and placed
yourselves in a moral solitude in order to have small explosions, to
find conversation difficult and to hand a glass of water without
looking, can hardly be regarded as satisfactory fulfilment even to the
toughest minds. To Dorothea’s inexperienced sensitiveness, it seemed
like a catastrophe, changing all prospects; and to Mr. Casaubon it was
a new pain, he never having been on a wedding journey before, or found
himself in that close union which was more of a subjection than he had
been able to imagine, since this charming young bride not only obliged
him to much consideration on her behalf (which he had sedulously
given), but turned out to be capable of agitating him cruelly just
where he most needed soothing. Instead of getting a soft fence against
the cold, shadowy, unapplausive audience of his life, had he only given
it a more substantial presence?
Neither of them felt it possible to speak again at present. To have
reversed a previous arrangement and declined to go out would have been
a show of persistent anger which Dorothea’s conscience shrank from,
seeing that she already began to feel herself guilty. However just her
indignation might be, her ideal was not to claim justice, but to give
tenderness. So when the carriage came to the door, she drove with Mr.
Casaubon to the Vatican, walked with him through the stony avenue of
inscriptions, and when she parted with him at the entrance to the
Library, went on through the Museum out of mere listlessness as to what
was around her. She had not spirit to turn round and say that she would
drive anywhere. It was when Mr. Casaubon was quitting her that Naumann
had first seen her, and he had entered the long gallery of sculpture at
the same time with her; but here Naumann had to await Ladislaw with
whom he was to settle a bet of champagne about an enigmatical
mediaeval-looking figure there. After they had examined the figure, and
had walked on finishing their dispute, they had parted, Ladislaw
lingering behind while Naumann had gone into the Hall of Statues where
he again saw Dorothea, and saw her in that brooding abstraction which
made her pose remarkable. She did not really see the streak of sunlight
on the floor more than she saw the statues: she was inwardly seeing the
light of years to come in her own home and over the English fields and
elms and hedge-bordered highroads; and feeling that the way in which
they might be filled with joyful devotedness was not so clear to her as
it had been. But in Dorothea’s mind there was a current into which all
thought and feeling were apt sooner or later to flow—the reaching
forward of the whole consciousness towards the fullest truth, the least
partial good. There was clearly something better than anger and
despondency.
CHAPTER XXI.
“Hire facounde eke full womanly and plain,
No contrefeted termes had she
To semen wise.”
—CHAUCER.
It was in that way Dorothea came to be sobbing as soon as she was
securely alone. But she was presently roused by a knock at the door,
which made her hastily dry her eyes before saying, “Come in.” Tantripp
had brought a card, and said that there was a gentleman waiting in the
lobby. The courier had told him that only Mrs. Casaubon was at home,
but he said he was a relation of Mr. Casaubon’s: would she see him?
“Yes,” said Dorothea, without pause; “show him into the salon.” Her
chief impressions about young Ladislaw were that when she had seen him
at Lowick she had been made aware of Mr. Casaubon’s generosity towards
him, and also that she had been interested in his own hesitation about
his career. She was alive to anything that gave her an opportunity for
active sympathy, and at this moment it seemed as if the visit had come
to shake her out of her self-absorbed discontent—to remind her of her
husband’s goodness, and make her feel that she had now the right to be
his helpmate in all kind deeds. She waited a minute or two, but when
she passed into the next room there were just signs enough that she had
been crying to make her open face look more youthful and appealing than
usual. She met Ladislaw with that exquisite smile of good-will which is
unmixed with vanity, and held out her hand to him. He was the elder by
several years, but at that moment he looked much the younger, for his
transparent complexion flushed suddenly, and he spoke with a shyness
extremely unlike the ready indifference of his manner with his male
companion, while Dorothea became all the calmer with a wondering desire
to put him at ease.
“I was not aware that you and Mr. Casaubon were in Rome, until this
morning, when I saw you in the Vatican Museum,” he said. “I knew you at
once—but—I mean, that I concluded Mr. Casaubon’s address would be found
at the Poste Restante, and I was anxious to pay my respects to him and
you as early as possible.”
“Pray sit down. He is not here now, but he will be glad to hear of you,
I am sure,” said Dorothea, seating herself unthinkingly between the
fire and the light of the tall window, and pointing to a chair
opposite, with the quietude of a benignant matron. The signs of girlish
sorrow in her face were only the more striking. “Mr. Casaubon is much
engaged; but you will leave your address—will you not?—and he will
write to you.”
“You are very good,” said Ladislaw, beginning to lose his diffidence in
the interest with which he was observing the signs of weeping which had
altered her face. “My address is on my card. But if you will allow me I
will call again to-morrow at an hour when Mr. Casaubon is likely to be
at home.”
“He goes to read in the Library of the Vatican every day, and you can
hardly see him except by an appointment. Especially now. We are about
to leave Rome, and he is very busy. He is usually away almost from
breakfast till dinner. But I am sure he will wish you to dine with us.”
Will Ladislaw was struck mute for a few moments. He had never been fond
of Mr. Casaubon, and if it had not been for the sense of obligation,