Middlemarch
at least till I appear to consult my own pleasure apart from yours.”
“Dorothea, you are hasty,” answered Mr. Casaubon, nervously.
Decidedly, this woman was too young to be on the formidable level of
wifehood—unless she had been pale and featureless and taken everything
for granted.
“I think it was you who were first hasty in your false suppositions
about my feeling,” said Dorothea, in the same tone. The fire was not
dissipated yet, and she thought it was ignoble in her husband not to
apologize to her.
“We will, if you please, say no more on this subject, Dorothea. I have
neither leisure nor energy for this kind of debate.”
Here Mr. Casaubon dipped his pen and made as if he would return to his
writing, though his hand trembled so much that the words seemed to be
written in an unknown character. There are answers which, in turning
away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a
discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own
side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.
Dorothea left Ladislaw’s two letters unread on her husband’s
writing-table and went to her own place, the scorn and indignation
within her rejecting the reading of these letters, just as we hurl away
any trash towards which we seem to have been suspected of mean
cupidity. She did not in the least divine the subtle sources of her
husband’s bad temper about these letters: she only knew that they had
caused him to offend her. She began to work at once, and her hand did
not tremble; on the contrary, in writing out the quotations which had
been given to her the day before, she felt that she was forming her
letters beautifully, and it seemed to her that she saw the construction
of the Latin she was copying, and which she was beginning to
understand, more clearly than usual. In her indignation there was a
sense of superiority, but it went out for the present in firmness of
stroke, and did not compress itself into an inward articulate voice
pronouncing the once “affable archangel” a poor creature.
There had been this apparent quiet for half an hour, and Dorothea had
not looked away from her own table, when she heard the loud bang of a
book on the floor, and turning quickly saw Mr. Casaubon on the library
steps clinging forward as if he were in some bodily distress. She
started up and bounded towards him in an instant: he was evidently in
great straits for breath. Jumping on a stool she got close to his elbow
and said with her whole soul melted into tender alarm—
“Can you lean on me, dear?”
He was still for two or three minutes, which seemed endless to her,
unable to speak or move, gasping for breath. When at last he descended
the three steps and fell backward in the large chair which Dorothea had
drawn close to the foot of the ladder, he no longer gasped but seemed
helpless and about to faint. Dorothea rang the bell violently, and
presently Mr. Casaubon was helped to the couch: he did not faint, and
was gradually reviving, when Sir James Chettam came in, having been met
in the hall with the news that Mr. Casaubon had “had a fit in the
library.”
“Good God! this is just what might have been expected,” was his
immediate thought. If his prophetic soul had been urged to
particularize, it seemed to him that “fits” would have been the
definite expression alighted upon. He asked his informant, the butler,
whether the doctor had been sent for. The butler never knew his master
to want the doctor before; but would it not be right to send for a
physician?
When Sir James entered the library, however, Mr. Casaubon could make
some signs of his usual politeness, and Dorothea, who in the reaction
from her first terror had been kneeling and sobbing by his side now
rose and herself proposed that some one should ride off for a medical
man.
“I recommend you to send for Lydgate,” said Sir James. “My mother has
called him in, and she has found him uncommonly clever. She has had a
poor opinion of the physicians since my father’s death.”
Dorothea appealed to her husband, and he made a silent sign of
approval. So Mr. Lydgate was sent for and he came wonderfully soon, for
the messenger, who was Sir James Chettam’s man and knew Mr. Lydgate,
met him leading his horse along the Lowick road and giving his arm to
Miss Vincy.
Celia, in the drawing-room, had known nothing of the trouble till Sir
James told her of it. After Dorothea’s account, he no longer considered
the illness a fit, but still something “of that nature.”
“Poor dear Dodo—how dreadful!” said Celia, feeling as much grieved as
her own perfect happiness would allow. Her little hands were clasped,
and enclosed by Sir James’s as a bud is enfolded by a liberal calyx.
“It is very shocking that Mr. Casaubon should be ill; but I never did
like him. And I think he is not half fond enough of Dorothea; and he
ought to be, for I am sure no one else would have had him—do you think
they would?”
“I always thought it a horrible sacrifice of your sister,” said Sir
James.
“Yes. But poor Dodo never did do what other people do, and I think she
never will.”
“She is a noble creature,” said the loyal-hearted Sir James. He had
just had a fresh impression of this kind, as he had seen Dorothea
stretching her tender arm under her husband’s neck and looking at him
with unspeakable sorrow. He did not know how much penitence there was
in the sorrow.
“Yes,” said Celia, thinking it was very well for Sir James to say so,
but _he_ would not have been comfortable with Dodo. “Shall I go to her?
Could I help her, do you think?”
“I think it would be well for you just to go and see her before Lydgate
comes,” said Sir James, magnanimously. “Only don’t stay long.”
While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had
originally felt about Dorothea’s engagement, and feeling a revival of
his disgust at Mr. Brooke’s indifference. If Cadwallader—if every one
else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had done, the marriage
might have been hindered. It was wicked to let a young girl blindly
decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her. Sir James
had long ceased to have any regrets on his own account: his heart was
satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he had a chivalrous nature
(was not the disinterested service of woman among the ideal glories of
old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness; its
death had made sweet odors—floating memories that clung with a
consecrating effect to Dorothea. He could remain her brotherly friend,
interpreting her actions with generous trustfulness.
CHAPTER XXX.
Qui veut délasser hors de propos, lasse.—PASCAL.
Mr. Casaubon had no second attack of equal severity with the first, and
in a few days began to recover his usual condition. But Lydgate seemed
to think the case worth a great deal of attention. He not only used his
stethoscope (which had not become a matter of course in practice at
that time), but sat quietly by his patient and watched him. To Mr.
Casaubon’s questions about himself, he replied that the source of the
illness was the common error of intellectual men—a too eager and
monotonous application: the remedy was, to be satisfied with moderate
work, and to seek variety of relaxation. Mr. Brooke, who sat by on one
occasion, suggested that Mr. Casaubon should go fishing, as Cadwallader
did, and have a turning-room, make toys, table-legs, and that kind of
thing.
“In short, you recommend me to anticipate the arrival of my second
childhood,” said poor Mr. Casaubon, with some bitterness. “These
things,” he added, looking at Lydgate, “would be to me such relaxation
as tow-picking is to prisoners in a house of correction.”
“I confess,” said Lydgate, smiling, “amusement is rather an
unsatisfactory prescription. It is something like telling people to
keep up their spirits. Perhaps I had better say, that you must submit
to be mildly bored rather than to go on working.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Brooke. “Get Dorothea to play backgammon with you
in the evenings. And shuttlecock, now—I don’t know a finer game than
shuttlecock for the daytime. I remember it all the fashion. To be sure,
your eyes might not stand that, Casaubon. But you must unbend, you
know. Why, you might take to some light study: conchology, now: I
always think that must be a light study. Or get Dorothea to read you
light things, Smollett—‘Roderick Random,’ ‘Humphry Clinker:’ they are
a little broad, but she may read anything now she’s married, you know.
I remember they made me laugh uncommonly—there’s a droll bit about a
postilion’s breeches. We have no such humor now. I have gone through
all these things, but they might be rather new to you.”
“As new as eating thistles,” would have been an answer to represent Mr.
Casaubon’s feelings. But he only bowed resignedly, with due respect to
his wife’s uncle, and observed that doubtless the works he mentioned
had “served as a resource to a certain order of minds.”
“You see,” said the able magistrate to Lydgate, when they were outside
the door, “Casaubon has been a little narrow: it leaves him rather at a
loss when you forbid him his particular work, which I believe is
something very deep indeed—in the line of research, you know. I would
never give way to that; I was always versatile. But a clergyman is tied
a little tight. If they would make him a bishop, now!—he did a very
good pamphlet for Peel. He would have more movement then, more show; he
might get a little flesh. But I recommend you to talk to Mrs. Casaubon.
She is clever enough for anything, is my niece. Tell her, her husband
wants liveliness, diversion: put her on amusing tactics.”
Without Mr. Brooke’s advice, Lydgate had determined on speaking to
Dorothea. She had not been present while her uncle was throwing out his
pleasant suggestions as to the mode in which life at Lowick might be
enlivened, but she was usually by her husband’s side, and the
unaffected signs of intense anxiety in her face and voice about
whatever touched his mind or health, made a drama which Lydgate was
inclined to watch. He said to himself that he was only doing right in
telling her the truth about her husband’s probable future, but he
certainly thought also that it would be interesting to talk
confidentially with her. A medical man likes to make psychological
observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too
easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set
at nought. Lydgate had often been satirical on this gratuitous
prediction, and he meant now to be guarded.
He asked for Mrs. Casaubon, but being told that she was out walking, he
was going away, when Dorothea and Celia appeared, both glowing from
their struggle with the March wind. When Lydgate begged to speak with
her alone, Dorothea opened the library door which happened to be the
nearest, thinking of nothing at the moment but what he might have to
say about Mr. Casaubon. It was the first time she had entered this room
since her husband had been taken ill, and the servant had chosen not to
open the shutters. But there was light enough to read by from the
narrow upper panes of the windows.
“You will not mind this sombre light,” said Dorothea, standing in the
middle of the room. “Since you forbade books, the library has been out
of the question. But Mr. Casaubon will soon be here again, I hope. Is
he not making progress?”
“Yes, much more rapid progress than I at first expected. Indeed, he is
already nearly in his usual state of health.”
“You do not fear that the illness will return?” said Dorothea, whose
quick ear had detected some significance in Lydgate’s tone.
“Such cases are peculiarly difficult to pronounce upon,” said Lydgate.
“The only point on which I can be confident is that it will be