Middlemarch
but still humanly interested. Especially the mysterious “Aunt Julia”
about whom Dorothea had never found it easy to question her husband.
And now, since her conversation with Will, many fresh images had
gathered round that Aunt Julia who was Will’s grandmother; the presence
of that delicate miniature, so like a living face that she knew,
helping to concentrate her feelings. What a wrong, to cut off the girl
from the family protection and inheritance only because she had chosen
a man who was poor! Dorothea, early troubling her elders with questions
about the facts around her, had wrought herself into some independent
clearness as to the historical, political reasons why eldest sons had
superior rights, and why land should be entailed: those reasons,
impressing her with a certain awe, might be weightier than she knew,
but here was a question of ties which left them uninfringed. Here was a
daughter whose child—even according to the ordinary aping of
aristocratic institutions by people who are no more aristocratic than
retired grocers, and who have no more land to “keep together” than a
lawn and a paddock—would have a prior claim. Was inheritance a question
of liking or of responsibility? All the energy of Dorothea’s nature
went on the side of responsibility—the fulfilment of claims founded on
our own deeds, such as marriage and parentage.
It was true, she said to herself, that Mr. Casaubon had a debt to the
Ladislaws—that he had to pay back what the Ladislaws had been wronged
of. And now she began to think of her husband’s will, which had been
made at the time of their marriage, leaving the bulk of his property to
her, with proviso in case of her having children. That ought to be
altered; and no time ought to be lost. This very question which had
just arisen about Will Ladislaw’s occupation, was the occasion for
placing things on a new, right footing. Her husband, she felt sure,
according to all his previous conduct, would be ready to take the just
view, if she proposed it—she, in whose interest an unfair concentration
of the property had been urged. His sense of right had surmounted and
would continue to surmount anything that might be called antipathy. She
suspected that her uncle’s scheme was disapproved by Mr. Casaubon, and
this made it seem all the more opportune that a fresh understanding
should be begun, so that instead of Will’s starting penniless and
accepting the first function that offered itself, he should find
himself in possession of a rightful income which should be paid by her
husband during his life, and, by an immediate alteration of the will,
should be secured at his death. The vision of all this as what ought to
be done seemed to Dorothea like a sudden letting in of daylight, waking
her from her previous stupidity and incurious self-absorbed ignorance
about her husband’s relation to others. Will Ladislaw had refused Mr.
Casaubon’s future aid on a ground that no longer appeared right to her;
and Mr. Casaubon had never himself seen fully what was the claim upon
him. “But he will!” said Dorothea. “The great strength of his character
lies here. And what are we doing with our money? We make no use of half
of our income. My own money buys me nothing but an uneasy conscience.”
There was a peculiar fascination for Dorothea in this division of
property intended for herself, and always regarded by her as excessive.
She was blind, you see, to many things obvious to others—likely to
tread in the wrong places, as Celia had warned her; yet her blindness
to whatever did not lie in her own pure purpose carried her safely by
the side of precipices where vision would have been perilous with fear.
The thoughts which had gathered vividness in the solitude of her
boudoir occupied her incessantly through the day on which Mr. Casaubon
had sent his letter to Will. Everything seemed hindrance to her till
she could find an opportunity of opening her heart to her husband. To
his preoccupied mind all subjects were to be approached gently, and she
had never since his illness lost from her consciousness the dread of
agitating him. But when young ardor is set brooding over the conception
of a prompt deed, the deed itself seems to start forth with independent
life, mastering ideal obstacles. The day passed in a sombre fashion,
not unusual, though Mr. Casaubon was perhaps unusually silent; but
there were hours of the night which might be counted on as
opportunities of conversation; for Dorothea, when aware of her
husband’s sleeplessness, had established a habit of rising, lighting a
candle, and reading him to sleep again. And this night she was from the
beginning sleepless, excited by resolves. He slept as usual for a few
hours, but she had risen softly and had sat in the darkness for nearly
an hour before he said—
“Dorothea, since you are up, will you light a candle?”
“Do you feel ill, dear?” was her first question, as she obeyed him.
“No, not at all; but I shall be obliged, since you are up, if you will
read me a few pages of Lowth.”
“May I talk to you a little instead?” said Dorothea.
“Certainly.”
“I have been thinking about money all day—that I have always had too
much, and especially the prospect of too much.”
“These, my dear Dorothea, are providential arrangements.”
“But if one has too much in consequence of others being wronged, it
seems to me that the divine voice which tells us to set that wrong
right must be obeyed.”
“What, my love, is the bearing of your remark?”
“That you have been too liberal in arrangements for me—I mean, with
regard to property; and that makes me unhappy.”
“How so? I have none but comparatively distant connections.”
“I have been led to think about your aunt Julia, and how she was left
in poverty only because she married a poor man, an act which was not
disgraceful, since he was not unworthy. It was on that ground, I know,
that you educated Mr. Ladislaw and provided for his mother.”
Dorothea waited a few moments for some answer that would help her
onward. None came, and her next words seemed the more forcible to her,
falling clear upon the dark silence.
“But surely we should regard his claim as a much greater one, even to
the half of that property which I know that you have destined for me.
And I think he ought at once to be provided for on that understanding.
It is not right that he should be in the dependence of poverty while we
are rich. And if there is any objection to the proposal he mentioned,
the giving him his true place and his true share would set aside any
motive for his accepting it.”
“Mr. Ladislaw has probably been speaking to you on this subject?” said
Mr. Casaubon, with a certain biting quickness not habitual to him.
“Indeed, no!” said Dorothea, earnestly. “How can you imagine it, since
he has so lately declined everything from you? I fear you think too
hardly of him, dear. He only told me a little about his parents and
grandparents, and almost all in answer to my questions. You are so
good, so just—you have done everything you thought to be right. But it
seems to me clear that more than that is right; and I must speak about
it, since I am the person who would get what is called benefit by that
‘more’ not being done.”
There was a perceptible pause before Mr. Casaubon replied, not quickly
as before, but with a still more biting emphasis.
“Dorothea, my love, this is not the first occasion, but it were well
that it should be the last, on which you have assumed a judgment on
subjects beyond your scope. Into the question how far conduct,
especially in the matter of alliances, constitutes a forfeiture of
family claims, I do not now enter. Suffice it, that you are not here
qualified to discriminate. What I now wish you to understand is, that I
accept no revision, still less dictation within that range of affairs
which I have deliberated upon as distinctly and properly mine. It is
not for you to interfere between me and Mr. Ladislaw, and still less to
encourage communications from him to you which constitute a criticism
on my procedure.”
Poor Dorothea, shrouded in the darkness, was in a tumult of conflicting
emotions. Alarm at the possible effect on himself of her husband’s
strongly manifested anger, would have checked any expression of her own
resentment, even if she had been quite free from doubt and compunction
under the consciousness that there might be some justice in his last
insinuation. Hearing him breathe quickly after he had spoken, she sat
listening, frightened, wretched—with a dumb inward cry for help to bear
this nightmare of a life in which every energy was arrested by dread.
But nothing else happened, except that they both remained a long while
sleepless, without speaking again.
The next day, Mr. Casaubon received the following answer from Will
Ladislaw:—
“DEAR MR. CASAUBON,—I have given all due consideration to your letter
of yesterday, but I am unable to take precisely your view of our mutual
position. With the fullest acknowledgment of your generous conduct to
me in the past, I must still maintain that an obligation of this kind
cannot fairly fetter me as you appear to expect that it should. Granted
that a benefactor’s wishes may constitute a claim; there must always be
a reservation as to the quality of those wishes. They may possibly
clash with more imperative considerations. Or a benefactor’s veto might
impose such a negation on a man’s life that the consequent blank might
be more cruel than the benefaction was generous. I am merely using
strong illustrations. In the present case I am unable to take your view
of the bearing which my acceptance of occupation—not enriching
certainly, but not dishonorable—will have on your own position which
seems to me too substantial to be affected in that shadowy manner. And
though I do not believe that any change in our relations will occur
(certainly none has yet occurred) which can nullify the obligations
imposed on me by the past, pardon me for not seeing that those
obligations should restrain me from using the ordinary freedom of
living where I choose, and maintaining myself by any lawful occupation
I may choose. Regretting that there exists this difference between us
as to a relation in which the conferring of benefits has been entirely
on your side—
I remain, yours with persistent obligation,
WILL LADISLAW.”
Poor Mr. Casaubon felt (and must not we, being impartial, feel with him
a little?) that no man had juster cause for disgust and suspicion than
he. Young Ladislaw, he was sure, meant to defy and annoy him, meant to
win Dorothea’s confidence and sow her mind with disrespect, and perhaps
aversion, towards her husband. Some motive beneath the surface had been
needed to account for Will’s sudden change of course in rejecting Mr.
Casaubon’s aid and quitting his travels; and this defiant determination
to fix himself in the neighborhood by taking up something so much at
variance with his former choice as Mr. Brooke’s Middlemarch projects,
revealed clearly enough that the undeclared motive had relation to
Dorothea. Not for one moment did Mr. Casaubon suspect Dorothea of any
doubleness: he had no suspicions of her, but he had (what was little
less uncomfortable) the positive knowledge that her tendency to form
opinions about her husband’s conduct was accompanied with a disposition
to regard Will Ladislaw favorably and be influenced by what he said.
His own proud reticence had prevented him from ever being undeceived in
the supposition that Dorothea had originally asked her uncle to invite
Will to his house.
And now, on receiving Will’s letter, Mr. Casaubon had to consider his
duty. He would never have been easy to call his action anything else
than duty; but in this case, contending motives thrust him back into
negations.