Middlemarch
more emphatically of that fitness which I had preconceived, and thus
evoking more decisively those affections to which I have but now
referred. Our conversations have, I think, made sufficiently clear to
you the tenor of my life and purposes: a tenor unsuited, I am aware, to
the commoner order of minds. But I have discerned in you an elevation
of thought and a capability of devotedness, which I had hitherto not
conceived to be compatible either with the early bloom of youth or with
those graces of sex that may be said at once to win and to confer
distinction when combined, as they notably are in you, with the mental
qualities above indicated. It was, I confess, beyond my hope to meet
with this rare combination of elements both solid and attractive,
adapted to supply aid in graver labors and to cast a charm over vacant
hours; and but for the event of my introduction to you (which, let me
again say, I trust not to be superficially coincident with
foreshadowing needs, but providentially related thereto as stages
towards the completion of a life’s plan), I should presumably have gone
on to the last without any attempt to lighten my solitariness by a
matrimonial union.
Such, my dear Miss Brooke, is the accurate statement of my
feelings; and I rely on your kind indulgence in venturing now to
ask you how far your own are of a nature to confirm my happy
presentiment. To be accepted by you as your husband and the earthly
guardian of your welfare, I should regard as the highest of
providential gifts. In return I can at least offer you an affection
hitherto unwasted, and the faithful consecration of a life which,
however short in the sequel, has no backward pages whereon, if you
choose to turn them, you will find records such as might justly
cause you either bitterness or shame. I await the expression of
your sentiments with an anxiety which it would be the part of
wisdom (were it possible) to divert by a more arduous labor than
usual. But in this order of experience I am still young, and in
looking forward to an unfavorable possibility I cannot but feel
that resignation to solitude will be more difficult after the
temporary illumination of hope.
In any case, I shall remain,
Yours with sincere devotion,
EDWARD CASAUBON.
Dorothea trembled while she read this letter; then she fell on her
knees, buried her face, and sobbed. She could not pray: under the rush
of solemn emotion in which thoughts became vague and images floated
uncertainly, she could but cast herself, with a childlike sense of
reclining, in the lap of a divine consciousness which sustained her
own. She remained in that attitude till it was time to dress for
dinner.
How could it occur to her to examine the letter, to look at it
critically as a profession of love? Her whole soul was possessed by the
fact that a fuller life was opening before her: she was a neophyte
about to enter on a higher grade of initiation. She was going to have
room for the energies which stirred uneasily under the dimness and
pressure of her own ignorance and the petty peremptoriness of the
world’s habits.
Now she would be able to devote herself to large yet definite duties;
now she would be allowed to live continually in the light of a mind
that she could reverence. This hope was not unmixed with the glow of
proud delight—the joyous maiden surprise that she was chosen by the man
whom her admiration had chosen. All Dorothea’s passion was transfused
through a mind struggling towards an ideal life; the radiance of her
transfigured girlhood fell on the first object that came within its
level. The impetus with which inclination became resolution was
heightened by those little events of the day which had roused her
discontent with the actual conditions of her life.
After dinner, when Celia was playing an “air, with variations,” a small
kind of tinkling which symbolized the aesthetic part of the young
ladies’ education, Dorothea went up to her room to answer Mr.
Casaubon’s letter. Why should she defer the answer? She wrote it over
three times, not because she wished to change the wording, but because
her hand was unusually uncertain, and she could not bear that Mr.
Casaubon should think her handwriting bad and illegible. She piqued
herself on writing a hand in which each letter was distinguishable
without any large range of conjecture, and she meant to make much use
of this accomplishment, to save Mr. Casaubon’s eyes. Three times she
wrote.
MY DEAR MR. CASAUBON,—I am very grateful to you for loving me, and
thinking me worthy to be your wife. I can look forward to no better
happiness than that which would be one with yours. If I said more, it
would only be the same thing written out at greater length, for I
cannot now dwell on any other thought than that I may be through life
Yours devotedly,
DOROTHEA BROOKE.
Later in the evening she followed her uncle into the library to give
him the letter, that he might send it in the morning. He was surprised,
but his surprise only issued in a few moments’ silence, during which he
pushed about various objects on his writing-table, and finally stood
with his back to the fire, his glasses on his nose, looking at the
address of Dorothea’s letter.
“Have you thought enough about this, my dear?” he said at last.
“There was no need to think long, uncle. I know of nothing to make me
vacillate. If I changed my mind, it must be because of something
important and entirely new to me.”
“Ah!—then you have accepted him? Then Chettam has no chance? Has
Chettam offended you—offended you, you know? What is it you don’t like
in Chettam?”
“There is nothing that I like in him,” said Dorothea, rather
impetuously.
Mr. Brooke threw his head and shoulders backward as if some one had
thrown a light missile at him. Dorothea immediately felt some
self-rebuke, and said—
“I mean in the light of a husband. He is very kind, I think—really very
good about the cottages. A well-meaning man.”
“But you must have a scholar, and that sort of thing? Well, it lies a
little in our family. I had it myself—that love of knowledge, and going
into everything—a little too much—it took me too far; though that sort
of thing doesn’t often run in the female-line; or it runs underground
like the rivers in Greece, you know—it comes out in the sons. Clever
sons, clever mothers. I went a good deal into that, at one time.
However, my dear, I have always said that people should do as they like
in these things, up to a certain point. I couldn’t, as your guardian,
have consented to a bad match. But Casaubon stands well: his position
is good. I am afraid Chettam will be hurt, though, and Mrs. Cadwallader
will blame me.”
That evening, of course, Celia knew nothing of what had happened. She
attributed Dorothea’s abstracted manner, and the evidence of further
crying since they had got home, to the temper she had been in about Sir
James Chettam and the buildings, and was careful not to give further
offence: having once said what she wanted to say, Celia had no
disposition to recur to disagreeable subjects. It had been her nature
when a child never to quarrel with any one—only to observe with wonder
that they quarrelled with her, and looked like turkey-cocks; whereupon
she was ready to play at cat’s cradle with them whenever they recovered
themselves. And as to Dorothea, it had always been her way to find
something wrong in her sister’s words, though Celia inwardly protested
that she always said just how things were, and nothing else: she never
did and never could put words together out of her own head. But the
best of Dodo was, that she did not keep angry for long together. Now,
though they had hardly spoken to each other all the evening, yet when
Celia put by her work, intending to go to bed, a proceeding in which
she was always much the earlier, Dorothea, who was seated on a low
stool, unable to occupy herself except in meditation, said, with the
musical intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her
speech like a fine bit of recitative—
“Celia, dear, come and kiss me,” holding her arms open as she spoke.
Celia knelt down to get the right level and gave her little butterfly
kiss, while Dorothea encircled her with gentle arms and pressed her
lips gravely on each cheek in turn.
“Don’t sit up, Dodo, you are so pale to-night: go to bed soon,” said
Celia, in a comfortable way, without any touch of pathos.
“No, dear, I am very, very happy,” said Dorothea, fervently.
“So much the better,” thought Celia. “But how strangely Dodo goes from
one extreme to the other.”
The next day, at luncheon, the butler, handing something to Mr. Brooke,
said, “Jonas is come back, sir, and has brought this letter.”
Mr. Brooke read the letter, and then, nodding toward Dorothea, said,
“Casaubon, my dear: he will be here to dinner; he didn’t wait to write
more—didn’t wait, you know.”
It could not seem remarkable to Celia that a dinner guest should be
announced to her sister beforehand, but, her eyes following the same
direction as her uncle’s, she was struck with the peculiar effect of
the announcement on Dorothea. It seemed as if something like the
reflection of a white sunlit wing had passed across her features,
ending in one of her rare blushes. For the first time it entered into
Celia’s mind that there might be something more between Mr. Casaubon
and her sister than his delight in bookish talk and her delight in
listening. Hitherto she had classed the admiration for this “ugly” and
learned acquaintance with the admiration for Monsieur Liret at
Lausanne, also ugly and learned. Dorothea had never been tired of
listening to old Monsieur Liret when Celia’s feet were as cold as
possible, and when it had really become dreadful to see the skin of his
bald head moving about. Why then should her enthusiasm not extend to
Mr. Casaubon simply in the same way as to Monsieur Liret? And it seemed
probable that all learned men had a sort of schoolmaster’s view of
young people.
But now Celia was really startled at the suspicion which had darted
into her mind. She was seldom taken by surprise in this way, her
marvellous quickness in observing a certain order of signs generally
preparing her to expect such outward events as she had an interest in.
Not that she now imagined Mr. Casaubon to be already an accepted lover:
she had only begun to feel disgust at the possibility that anything in
Dorothea’s mind could tend towards such an issue. Here was something
really to vex her about Dodo: it was all very well not to accept Sir
James Chettam, but the idea of marrying Mr. Casaubon! Celia felt a sort
of shame mingled with a sense of the ludicrous. But perhaps Dodo, if
she were really bordering on such an extravagance, might be turned away
from it: experience had often shown that her impressibility might be
calculated on. The day was damp, and they were not going to walk out,
so they both went up to their sitting-room; and there Celia observed
that Dorothea, instead of settling down with her usual diligent
interest to some occupation, simply leaned her elbow on an open book
and looked out of the window at the great cedar silvered with the damp.
She herself had taken up the making of a toy for the curate’s children,
and was not going to enter on any subject too precipitately.
Dorothea was in fact thinking that it was desirable for Celia to know
of the momentous change in Mr. Casaubon’s position since he had last
been in the house: it did not seem fair to leave her in ignorance of
what would necessarily affect her attitude towards him; but it was
impossible not to shrink from telling her. Dorothea accused herself of
some meanness in this timidity: it was always odious to her to have any