Middlemarch
Sunday, and to approve of his going to Lowick Church. Will easily felt
happy when nothing crossed his humor, and by this time the thought of
vexing Mr. Casaubon had become rather amusing to him, making his face
break into its merry smile, pleasant to see as the breaking of sunshine
on the water—though the occasion was not exemplary. But most of us are
apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is
odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his
personality excites in ourselves. Will went along with a small book
under his arm and a hand in each side-pocket, never reading, but
chanting a little, as he made scenes of what would happen in church and
coming out. He was experimenting in tunes to suit some words of his
own, sometimes trying a ready-made melody, sometimes improvising. The
words were not exactly a hymn, but they certainly fitted his Sunday
experience:—
“O me, O me, what frugal cheer
My love doth feed upon!
A touch, a ray, that is not here,
A shadow that is gone:
“A dream of breath that might be near,
An inly-echoed tone,
The thought that one may think me dear,
The place where one was known,
“The tremor of a banished fear,
An ill that was not done—
O me, O me, what frugal cheer
My love doth feed upon!”
Sometimes, when he took off his hat, shaking his head backward, and
showing his delicate throat as he sang, he looked like an incarnation
of the spring whose spirit filled the air—a bright creature, abundant
in uncertain promises.
The bells were still ringing when he got to Lowick, and he went into
the curate’s pew before any one else arrived there. But he was still
left alone in it when the congregation had assembled. The curate’s pew
was opposite the rector’s at the entrance of the small chancel, and
Will had time to fear that Dorothea might not come while he looked
round at the group of rural faces which made the congregation from year
to year within the white-washed walls and dark old pews, hardly with
more change than we see in the boughs of a tree which breaks here and
there with age, but yet has young shoots. Mr. Rigg’s frog-face was
something alien and unaccountable, but notwithstanding this shock to
the order of things, there were still the Waules and the rural stock of
the Powderells in their pews side by side; brother Samuel’s cheek had
the same purple round as ever, and the three generations of decent
cottagers came as of old with a sense of duty to their betters
generally—the smaller children regarding Mr. Casaubon, who wore the
black gown and mounted to the highest box, as probably the chief of all
betters, and the one most awful if offended. Even in 1831 Lowick was at
peace, not more agitated by Reform than by the solemn tenor of the
Sunday sermon. The congregation had been used to seeing Will at church
in former days, and no one took much note of him except the choir, who
expected him to make a figure in the singing.
Dorothea did at last appear on this quaint background, walking up the
short aisle in her white beaver bonnet and gray cloak—the same she had
worn in the Vatican. Her face being, from her entrance, towards the
chancel, even her shortsighted eyes soon discerned Will, but there was
no outward show of her feeling except a slight paleness and a grave bow
as she passed him. To his own surprise Will felt suddenly
uncomfortable, and dared not look at her after they had bowed to each
other. Two minutes later, when Mr. Casaubon came out of the vestry,
and, entering the pew, seated himself in face of Dorothea, Will felt
his paralysis more complete. He could look nowhere except at the choir
in the little gallery over the vestry-door: Dorothea was perhaps
pained, and he had made a wretched blunder. It was no longer amusing to
vex Mr. Casaubon, who had the advantage probably of watching him and
seeing that he dared not turn his head. Why had he not imagined this
beforehand?—but he could not expect that he should sit in that square
pew alone, unrelieved by any Tuckers, who had apparently departed from
Lowick altogether, for a new clergyman was in the desk. Still he called
himself stupid now for not foreseeing that it would be impossible for
him to look towards Dorothea—nay, that she might feel his coming an
impertinence. There was no delivering himself from his cage, however;
and Will found his places and looked at his book as if he had been a
school-mistress, feeling that the morning service had never been so
immeasurably long before, that he was utterly ridiculous, out of
temper, and miserable. This was what a man got by worshipping the sight
of a woman! The clerk observed with surprise that Mr. Ladislaw did not
join in the tune of Hanover, and reflected that he might have a cold.
Mr. Casaubon did not preach that morning, and there was no change in
Will’s situation until the blessing had been pronounced and every one
rose. It was the fashion at Lowick for “the betters” to go out first.
With a sudden determination to break the spell that was upon him, Will
looked straight at Mr. Casaubon. But that gentleman’s eyes were on the
button of the pew-door, which he opened, allowing Dorothea to pass, and
following her immediately without raising his eyelids. Will’s glance
had caught Dorothea’s as she turned out of the pew, and again she
bowed, but this time with a look of agitation, as if she were
repressing tears. Will walked out after them, but they went on towards
the little gate leading out of the churchyard into the shrubbery, never
looking round.
It was impossible for him to follow them, and he could only walk back
sadly at mid-day along the same road which he had trodden hopefully in
the morning. The lights were all changed for him both without and
within.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Surely the golden hours are turning gray
And dance no more, and vainly strive to run:
I see their white locks streaming in the wind—
Each face is haggard as it looks at me,
Slow turning in the constant clasping round
Storm-driven.
Dorothea’s distress when she was leaving the church came chiefly from
the perception that Mr. Casaubon was determined not to speak to his
cousin, and that Will’s presence at church had served to mark more
strongly the alienation between them. Will’s coming seemed to her quite
excusable, nay, she thought it an amiable movement in him towards a
reconciliation which she herself had been constantly wishing for. He
had probably imagined, as she had, that if Mr. Casaubon and he could
meet easily, they would shake hands and friendly intercourse might
return. But now Dorothea felt quite robbed of that hope. Will was
banished further than ever, for Mr. Casaubon must have been newly
embittered by this thrusting upon him of a presence which he refused to
recognize.
He had not been very well that morning, suffering from some difficulty
in breathing, and had not preached in consequence; she was not
surprised, therefore, that he was nearly silent at luncheon, still less
that he made no allusion to Will Ladislaw. For her own part she felt
that she could never again introduce that subject. They usually spent
apart the hours between luncheon and dinner on a Sunday; Mr. Casaubon
in the library dozing chiefly, and Dorothea in her boudoir, where she
was wont to occupy herself with some of her favorite books. There was a
little heap of them on the table in the bow-window—of various sorts,
from Herodotus, which she was learning to read with Mr. Casaubon, to
her old companion Pascal, and Keble’s “Christian Year.” But to-day she
opened one after another, and could read none of them. Everything
seemed dreary: the portents before the birth of Cyrus—Jewish
antiquities—oh dear!—devout epigrams—the sacred chime of favorite
hymns—all alike were as flat as tunes beaten on wood: even the spring
flowers and the grass had a dull shiver in them under the afternoon
clouds that hid the sun fitfully; even the sustaining thoughts which
had become habits seemed to have in them the weariness of long future
days in which she would still live with them for her sole companions.
It was another or rather a fuller sort of companionship that poor
Dorothea was hungering for, and the hunger had grown from the perpetual
effort demanded by her married life. She was always trying to be what
her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she
was. The thing that she liked, that she spontaneously cared to have,
seemed to be always excluded from her life; for if it was only granted
and not shared by her husband it might as well have been denied. About
Will Ladislaw there had been a difference between them from the first,
and it had ended, since Mr. Casaubon had so severely repulsed
Dorothea’s strong feeling about his claims on the family property, by
her being convinced that she was in the right and her husband in the
wrong, but that she was helpless. This afternoon the helplessness was
more wretchedly benumbing than ever: she longed for objects who could
be dear to her, and to whom she could be dear. She longed for work
which would be directly beneficent like the sunshine and the rain, and
now it appeared that she was to live more and more in a virtual tomb,
where there was the apparatus of a ghastly labor producing what would
never see the light. Today she had stood at the door of the tomb and
seen Will Ladislaw receding into the distant world of warm activity and
fellowship—turning his face towards her as he went.
Books were of no use. Thinking was of no use. It was Sunday, and she
could not have the carriage to go to Celia, who had lately had a baby.
There was no refuge now from spiritual emptiness and discontent, and
Dorothea had to bear her bad mood, as she would have borne a headache.
After dinner, at the hour when she usually began to read aloud, Mr.
Casaubon proposed that they should go into the library, where, he said,
he had ordered a fire and lights. He seemed to have revived, and to be
thinking intently.
In the library Dorothea observed that he had newly arranged a row of
his note-books on a table, and now he took up and put into her hand a
well-known volume, which was a table of contents to all the others.
“You will oblige me, my dear,” he said, seating himself, “if instead of
other reading this evening, you will go through this aloud, pencil in
hand, and at each point where I say ‘mark,’ will make a cross with your
pencil. This is the first step in a sifting process which I have long
had in view, and as we go on I shall be able to indicate to you certain
principles of selection whereby you will, I trust, have an intelligent
participation in my purpose.”
This proposal was only one more sign added to many since his memorable
interview with Lydgate, that Mr. Casaubon’s original reluctance to let
Dorothea work with him had given place to the contrary disposition,
namely, to demand much interest and labor from her.
After she had read and marked for two hours, he said, “We will take the
volume up-stairs—and the pencil, if you please—and in case of reading
in the night, we can pursue this task. It is not wearisome to you, I
trust, Dorothea?”
“I prefer always reading what you like best to hear,” said Dorothea,
who told the simple truth; for what she dreaded was to exert herself in
reading or anything else which left him as joyless as ever.
It was a proof of the force with which certain characteristics in
Dorothea impressed those around her, that her husband, with all his
jealousy and suspicion, had gathered implicit trust in the integrity of
her promises, and her power of devoting herself to her idea of the
right and best. Of late he had begun to feel that these qualities were
a peculiar possession for himself, and he wanted to engross them.