Middlemarch
persons, when he himself should have entered into glory, had not a
potently sweetening effect. If the truth should be that some
undermining disease was at work within him, there might be large
opportunity for some people to be the happier when he was gone; and if
one of those people should be Will Ladislaw, Mr. Casaubon objected so
strongly that it seemed as if the annoyance would make part of his
disembodied existence.
This is a very bare and therefore a very incomplete way of putting the
case. The human soul moves in many channels, and Mr. Casaubon, we know,
had a sense of rectitude and an honorable pride in satisfying the
requirements of honor, which compelled him to find other reasons for
his conduct than those of jealousy and vindictiveness. The way in which
Mr. Casaubon put the case was this:—“In marrying Dorothea Brooke I had
to care for her well-being in case of my death. But well-being is not
to be secured by ample, independent possession of property; on the
contrary, occasions might arise in which such possession might expose
her to the more danger. She is ready prey to any man who knows how to
play adroitly either on her affectionate ardor or her Quixotic
enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that very intention in his mind—a
man with no other principle than transient caprice, and who has a
personal animosity towards me—I am sure of it—an animosity which is fed
by the consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has constantly
vented in ridicule of which I am as well assured as if I had heard it.
Even if I live I shall not be without uneasiness as to what he may
attempt through indirect influence. This man has gained Dorothea’s ear:
he has fascinated her attention; he has evidently tried to impress her
mind with the notion that he has claims beyond anything I have done for
him. If I die—and he is waiting here on the watch for that—he will
persuade her to marry him. That would be calamity for her and success
for him. _She_ would not think it calamity: he would make her believe
anything; she has a tendency to immoderate attachment which she
inwardly reproaches me for not responding to, and already her mind is
occupied with his fortunes. He thinks of an easy conquest and of
entering into my nest. That I will hinder! Such a marriage would be
fatal to Dorothea. Has he ever persisted in anything except from
contradiction? In knowledge he has always tried to be showy at small
cost. In religion he could be, as long as it suited him, the facile
echo of Dorothea’s vagaries. When was sciolism ever dissociated from
laxity? I utterly distrust his morals, and it is my duty to hinder to
the utmost the fulfilment of his designs.”
The arrangements made by Mr. Casaubon on his marriage left strong
measures open to him, but in ruminating on them his mind inevitably
dwelt so much on the probabilities of his own life that the longing to
get the nearest possible calculation had at last overcome his proud
reticence, and had determined him to ask Lydgate’s opinion as to the
nature of his illness.
He had mentioned to Dorothea that Lydgate was coming by appointment at
half-past three, and in answer to her anxious question, whether he had
felt ill, replied,—“No, I merely wish to have his opinion concerning
some habitual symptoms. You need not see him, my dear. I shall give
orders that he may be sent to me in the Yew-tree Walk, where I shall be
taking my usual exercise.”
When Lydgate entered the Yew-tree Walk he saw Mr. Casaubon slowly
receding with his hands behind him according to his habit, and his head
bent forward. It was a lovely afternoon; the leaves from the lofty
limes were falling silently across the sombre evergreens, while the
lights and shadows slept side by side: there was no sound but the
cawing of the rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that
last solemn lullaby, a dirge. Lydgate, conscious of an energetic frame
in its prime, felt some compassion when the figure which he was likely
soon to overtake turned round, and in advancing towards him showed more
markedly than ever the signs of premature age—the student’s bent
shoulders, the emaciated limbs, and the melancholy lines of the mouth.
“Poor fellow,” he thought, “some men with his years are like lions; one
can tell nothing of their age except that they are full grown.”
“Mr. Lydgate,” said Mr. Casaubon, with his invariably polite air, “I am
exceedingly obliged to you for your punctuality. We will, if you
please, carry on our conversation in walking to and fro.”
“I hope your wish to see me is not due to the return of unpleasant
symptoms,” said Lydgate, filling up a pause.
“Not immediately—no. In order to account for that wish I must
mention—what it were otherwise needless to refer to—that my life, on
all collateral accounts insignificant, derives a possible importance
from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all its
best years. In short, I have long had on hand a work which I would fain
leave behind me in such a state, at least, that it might be committed
to the press by—others. Were I assured that this is the utmost I can
reasonably expect, that assurance would be a useful circumscription of
my attempts, and a guide in both the positive and negative
determination of my course.”
Here Mr. Casaubon paused, removed one hand from his back and thrust it
between the buttons of his single-breasted coat. To a mind largely
instructed in the human destiny hardly anything could be more
interesting than the inward conflict implied in his formal measured
address, delivered with the usual sing-song and motion of the head.
Nay, are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle
of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the
significance of its life—a significance which is to vanish as the
waters which come and go where no man has need of them? But there was
nothing to strike others as sublime about Mr. Casaubon, and Lydgate,
who had some contempt at hand for futile scholarship, felt a little
amusement mingling with his pity. He was at present too ill acquainted
with disaster to enter into the pathos of a lot where everything is
below the level of tragedy except the passionate egoism of the
sufferer.
“You refer to the possible hindrances from want of health?” he said,
wishing to help forward Mr. Casaubon’s purpose, which seemed to be
clogged by some hesitation.
“I do. You have not implied to me that the symptoms which—I am bound to
testify—you watched with scrupulous care, were those of a fatal
disease. But were it so, Mr. Lydgate, I should desire to know the truth
without reservation, and I appeal to you for an exact statement of your
conclusions: I request it as a friendly service. If you can tell me
that my life is not threatened by anything else than ordinary
casualties, I shall rejoice, on grounds which I have already indicated.
If not, knowledge of the truth is even more important to me.”
“Then I can no longer hesitate as to my course,” said Lydgate; “but the
first thing I must impress on you is that my conclusions are doubly
uncertain—uncertain not only because of my fallibility, but because
diseases of the heart are eminently difficult to found predictions on.
In any case, one can hardly increase appreciably the tremendous
uncertainty of life.”
Mr. Casaubon winced perceptibly, but bowed.
“I believe that you are suffering from what is called fatty
degeneration of the heart, a disease which was first divined and
explored by Laennec, the man who gave us the stethoscope, not so very
many years ago. A good deal of experience—a more lengthened
observation—is wanting on the subject. But after what you have said, it
is my duty to tell you that death from this disease is often sudden. At
the same time, no such result can be predicted. Your condition may be
consistent with a tolerably comfortable life for another fifteen years,
or even more. I could add no information to this beyond anatomical or
medical details, which would leave expectation at precisely the same
point.” Lydgate’s instinct was fine enough to tell him that plain
speech, quite free from ostentatious caution, would be felt by Mr.
Casaubon as a tribute of respect.
“I thank you, Mr. Lydgate,” said Mr. Casaubon, after a moment’s pause.
“One thing more I have still to ask: did you communicate what you have
now told me to Mrs. Casaubon?”
“Partly—I mean, as to the possible issues.” Lydgate was going to
explain why he had told Dorothea, but Mr. Casaubon, with an
unmistakable desire to end the conversation, waved his hand slightly,
and said again, “I thank you,” proceeding to remark on the rare beauty
of the day.
Lydgate, certain that his patient wished to be alone, soon left him;
and the black figure with hands behind and head bent forward continued
to pace the walk where the dark yew-trees gave him a mute companionship
in melancholy, and the little shadows of bird or leaf that fleeted
across the isles of sunlight, stole along in silence as in the presence
of a sorrow. Here was a man who now for the first time found himself
looking into the eyes of death—who was passing through one of those
rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace,
which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of
waters upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the
water which cannot be had to cool the burning tongue. When the
commonplace “We must all die” transforms itself suddenly into the acute
consciousness “I must die—and soon,” then death grapples us, and his
fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as
our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be
like the first. To Mr. Casaubon now, it was as if he suddenly found
himself on the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the oncoming
oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons. In such an
hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias, but carries it onward
in imagination to the other side of death, gazing backward—perhaps with
the divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the petty anxieties of
self-assertion. What was Mr. Casaubon’s bias his acts will give us a
clew to. He held himself to be, with some private scholarly
reservations, a believing Christian, as to estimates of the present and
hopes of the future. But what we strive to gratify, though we may call
it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which
men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love.
And Mr. Casaubon’s immediate desire was not for divine communion and
light divested of earthly conditions; his passionate longings, poor
man, clung low and mist-like in very shady places.
Dorothea had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had
stepped into the garden, with the impulse to go at once to her husband.
But she hesitated, fearing to offend him by obtruding herself; for her
ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory, to
heighten her dread, as thwarted energy subsides into a shudder; and she
wandered slowly round the nearer clumps of trees until she saw him
advancing. Then she went towards him, and might have represented a
heaven-sent angel coming with a promise that the short hours remaining
should yet be filled with that faithful love which clings the closer to
a comprehended grief. His glance in reply to hers was so chill that she
felt her timidity increased; yet she turned and passed her hand through
his arm.
Mr. Casaubon kept his hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm to
cling with difficulty against his rigid arm.
There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this
unresponsive hardness inflicted on her. That is a strong word, but not