Middlemarch
for a moment or two, when Dorothea began again with an air of saying at
last what had been in her mind beforehand.
“I wanted to ask you again about something you said the other day.
Perhaps it was half of it your lively way of speaking: I notice that
you like to put things strongly; I myself often exaggerate when I speak
hastily.”
“What was it?” said Will, observing that she spoke with a timidity
quite new in her. “I have a hyperbolical tongue: it catches fire as it
goes. I dare say I shall have to retract.”
“I mean what you said about the necessity of knowing German—I mean, for
the subjects that Mr. Casaubon is engaged in. I have been thinking
about it; and it seems to me that with Mr. Casaubon’s learning he must
have before him the same materials as German scholars—has he not?”
Dorothea’s timidity was due to an indistinct consciousness that she was
in the strange situation of consulting a third person about the
adequacy of Mr. Casaubon’s learning.
“Not exactly the same materials,” said Will, thinking that he would be
duly reserved. “He is not an Orientalist, you know. He does not profess
to have more than second-hand knowledge there.”
“But there are very valuable books about antiquities which were written
a long while ago by scholars who knew nothing about these modern
things; and they are still used. Why should Mr. Casaubon’s not be
valuable, like theirs?” said Dorothea, with more remonstrant energy.
She was impelled to have the argument aloud, which she had been having
in her own mind.
“That depends on the line of study taken,” said Will, also getting a
tone of rejoinder. “The subject Mr. Casaubon has chosen is as changing
as chemistry: new discoveries are constantly making new points of view.
Who wants a system on the basis of the four elements, or a book to
refute Paracelsus? Do you not see that it is no use now to be crawling
a little way after men of the last century—men like Bryant—and
correcting their mistakes?—living in a lumber-room and furbishing up
broken-legged theories about Chus and Mizraim?”
“How can you bear to speak so lightly?” said Dorothea, with a look
between sorrow and anger. “If it were as you say, what could be sadder
than so much ardent labor all in vain? I wonder it does not affect you
more painfully, if you really think that a man like Mr. Casaubon, of so
much goodness, power, and learning, should in any way fail in what has
been the labor of his best years.” She was beginning to be shocked that
she had got to such a point of supposition, and indignant with Will for
having led her to it.
“You questioned me about the matter of fact, not of feeling,” said
Will. “But if you wish to punish me for the fact, I submit. I am not in
a position to express my feeling toward Mr. Casaubon: it would be at
best a pensioner’s eulogy.”
“Pray excuse me,” said Dorothea, coloring deeply. “I am aware, as you
say, that I am in fault in having introduced the subject. Indeed, I am
wrong altogether. Failure after long perseverance is much grander than
never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.”
“I quite agree with you,” said Will, determined to change the
situation—“so much so that I have made up my mind not to run that risk
of never attaining a failure. Mr. Casaubon’s generosity has perhaps
been dangerous to me, and I mean to renounce the liberty it has given
me. I mean to go back to England shortly and work my own way—depend on
nobody else than myself.”
“That is fine—I respect that feeling,” said Dorothea, with returning
kindness. “But Mr. Casaubon, I am sure, has never thought of anything
in the matter except what was most for your welfare.”
“She has obstinacy and pride enough to serve instead of love, now she
has married him,” said Will to himself. Aloud he said, rising—
“I shall not see you again.”
“Oh, stay till Mr. Casaubon comes,” said Dorothea, earnestly. “I am so
glad we met in Rome. I wanted to know you.”
“And I have made you angry,” said Will. “I have made you think ill of
me.”
“Oh no. My sister tells me I am always angry with people who do not say
just what I like. But I hope I am not given to think ill of them. In
the end I am usually obliged to think ill of myself for being so
impatient.”
“Still, you don’t like me; I have made myself an unpleasant thought to
you.”
“Not at all,” said Dorothea, with the most open kindness. “I like you
very much.”
Will was not quite contented, thinking that he would apparently have
been of more importance if he had been disliked. He said nothing, but
looked dull, not to say sulky.
“And I am quite interested to see what you will do,” Dorothea went on
cheerfully. “I believe devoutly in a natural difference of vocation. If
it were not for that belief, I suppose I should be very narrow—there
are so many things, besides painting, that I am quite ignorant of. You
would hardly believe how little I have taken in of music and
literature, which you know so much of. I wonder what your vocation will
turn out to be: perhaps you will be a poet?”
“That depends. To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that
no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment
is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of
emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling,
and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that
condition by fits only.”
“But you leave out the poems,” said Dorothea. “I think they are wanted
to complete the poet. I understand what you mean about knowledge
passing into feeling, for that seems to be just what I experience. But
I am sure I could never produce a poem.”
“You _are_ a poem—and that is to be the best part of a poet—what makes
up the poet’s consciousness in his best moods,” said Will, showing such
originality as we all share with the morning and the spring-time and
other endless renewals.
“I am very glad to hear it,” said Dorothea, laughing out her words in a
bird-like modulation, and looking at Will with playful gratitude in her
eyes. “What very kind things you say to me!”
“I wish I could ever do anything that would be what you call kind—that
I could ever be of the slightest service to you. I fear I shall never
have the opportunity.” Will spoke with fervor.
“Oh yes,” said Dorothea, cordially. “It will come; and I shall remember
how well you wish me. I quite hoped that we should be friends when I
first saw you—because of your relationship to Mr. Casaubon.” There was
a certain liquid brightness in her eyes, and Will was conscious that
his own were obeying a law of nature and filling too. The allusion to
Mr. Casaubon would have spoiled all if anything at that moment could
have spoiled the subduing power, the sweet dignity, of her noble
unsuspicious inexperience.
“And there is one thing even now that you can do,” said Dorothea,
rising and walking a little way under the strength of a recurring
impulse. “Promise me that you will not again, to any one, speak of that
subject—I mean about Mr. Casaubon’s writings—I mean in that kind of
way. It was I who led to it. It was my fault. But promise me.”
She had returned from her brief pacing and stood opposite Will, looking
gravely at him.
“Certainly, I will promise you,” said Will, reddening however. If he
never said a cutting word about Mr. Casaubon again and left off
receiving favors from him, it would clearly be permissible to hate him
the more. The poet must know how to hate, says Goethe; and Will was at
least ready with that accomplishment. He said that he must go now
without waiting for Mr. Casaubon, whom he would come to take leave of
at the last moment. Dorothea gave him her hand, and they exchanged a
simple “Good-by.”
But going out of the _porte cochere_ he met Mr. Casaubon, and that
gentleman, expressing the best wishes for his cousin, politely waived
the pleasure of any further leave-taking on the morrow, which would be
sufficiently crowded with the preparations for departure.
“I have something to tell you about our cousin Mr. Ladislaw, which I
think will heighten your opinion of him,” said Dorothea to her husband
in the course of the evening. She had mentioned immediately on his
entering that Will had just gone away, and would come again, but Mr.
Casaubon had said, “I met him outside, and we made our final adieux, I
believe,” saying this with the air and tone by which we imply that any
subject, whether private or public, does not interest us enough to wish
for a further remark upon it. So Dorothea had waited.
“What is that, my love?” said Mr Casaubon (he always said “my love”
when his manner was the coldest).
“He has made up his mind to leave off wandering at once, and to give up
his dependence on your generosity. He means soon to go back to England,
and work his own way. I thought you would consider that a good sign,”
said Dorothea, with an appealing look into her husband’s neutral face.
“Did he mention the precise order of occupation to which he would
addict himself?”
“No. But he said that he felt the danger which lay for him in your
generosity. Of course he will write to you about it. Do you not think
better of him for his resolve?”
“I shall await his communication on the subject,” said Mr. Casaubon.
“I told him I was sure that the thing you considered in all you did for
him was his own welfare. I remembered your goodness in what you said
about him when I first saw him at Lowick,” said Dorothea, putting her
hand on her husband’s.
“I had a duty towards him,” said Mr. Casaubon, laying his other hand on
Dorothea’s in conscientious acceptance of her caress, but with a glance
which he could not hinder from being uneasy. “The young man, I confess,
is not otherwise an object of interest to me, nor need we, I think,
discuss his future course, which it is not ours to determine beyond the
limits which I have sufficiently indicated.” Dorothea did not mention
Will again.
BOOK III.
WAITING FOR DEATH.
CHAPTER XXIII.
“Your horses of the Sun,” he said,
“And first-rate whip Apollo!
Whate’er they be, I’ll eat my head,
But I will beat them hollow.”
Fred Vincy, we have seen, had a debt on his mind, and though no such
immaterial burthen could depress that buoyant-hearted young gentleman
for many hours together, there were circumstances connected with this
debt which made the thought of it unusually importunate. The creditor
was Mr. Bambridge, a horse-dealer of the neighborhood, whose company
was much sought in Middlemarch by young men understood to be “addicted
to pleasure.” During the vacations Fred had naturally required more
amusements than he had ready money for, and Mr. Bambridge had been
accommodating enough not only to trust him for the hire of horses and
the accidental expense of ruining a fine hunter, but also to make a
small advance by which he might be able to meet some losses at
billiards. The total debt was a hundred and sixty pounds. Bambridge was
in no alarm about his money, being sure that young Vincy had backers;
but he had required something to show for it, and Fred had at first
given a bill with his own signature. Three months later he had renewed
this bill with the signature of Caleb Garth. On both occasions Fred had
felt confident that he should meet the bill himself, having ample funds
at disposal in his own hopefulness. You will hardly demand that his
confidence should have a basis in external facts; such confidence, we
know, is something less coarse and materialistic: it is a comfortable
disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of providence or the
folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the still greater
mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring about
agreeable issues, such as are consistent with our good taste in