Middlemarch
The reading in the night did come. Dorothea in her young weariness had
slept soon and fast: she was awakened by a sense of light, which seemed
to her at first like a sudden vision of sunset after she had climbed a
steep hill: she opened her eyes and saw her husband wrapped in his warm
gown seating himself in the arm-chair near the fire-place where the
embers were still glowing. He had lit two candles, expecting that
Dorothea would awake, but not liking to rouse her by more direct means.
“Are you ill, Edward?” she said, rising immediately.
“I felt some uneasiness in a reclining posture. I will sit here for a
time.” She threw wood on the fire, wrapped herself up, and said, “You
would like me to read to you?”
“You would oblige me greatly by doing so, Dorothea,” said Mr. Casaubon,
with a shade more meekness than usual in his polite manner. “I am
wakeful: my mind is remarkably lucid.”
“I fear that the excitement may be too great for you,” said Dorothea,
remembering Lydgate’s cautions.
“No, I am not conscious of undue excitement. Thought is easy.” Dorothea
dared not insist, and she read for an hour or more on the same plan as
she had done in the evening, but getting over the pages with more
quickness. Mr. Casaubon’s mind was more alert, and he seemed to
anticipate what was coming after a very slight verbal indication,
saying, “That will do—mark that”—or “Pass on to the next head—I omit
the second excursus on Crete.” Dorothea was amazed to think of the
bird-like speed with which his mind was surveying the ground where it
had been creeping for years. At last he said—
“Close the book now, my dear. We will resume our work to-morrow. I have
deferred it too long, and would gladly see it completed. But you
observe that the principle on which my selection is made, is to give
adequate, and not disproportionate illustration to each of the theses
enumerated in my introduction, as at present sketched. You have
perceived that distinctly, Dorothea?”
“Yes,” said Dorothea, rather tremulously. She felt sick at heart.
“And now I think that I can take some repose,” said Mr. Casaubon. He
laid down again and begged her to put out the lights. When she had lain
down too, and there was a darkness only broken by a dull glow on the
hearth, he said—
“Before I sleep, I have a request to make, Dorothea.”
“What is it?” said Dorothea, with dread in her mind.
“It is that you will let me know, deliberately, whether, in case of my
death, you will carry out my wishes: whether you will avoid doing what
I should deprecate, and apply yourself to do what I should desire.”
Dorothea was not taken by surprise: many incidents had been leading her
to the conjecture of some intention on her husband’s part which might
make a new yoke for her. She did not answer immediately.
“You refuse?” said Mr. Casaubon, with more edge in his tone.
“No, I do not yet refuse,” said Dorothea, in a clear voice, the need of
freedom asserting itself within her; “but it is too solemn—I think it
is not right—to make a promise when I am ignorant what it will bind me
to. Whatever affection prompted I would do without promising.”
“But you would use your own judgment: I ask you to obey mine; you
refuse.”
“No, dear, no!” said Dorothea, beseechingly, crushed by opposing fears.
“But may I wait and reflect a little while? I desire with my whole soul
to do what will comfort you; but I cannot give any pledge
suddenly—still less a pledge to do I know not what.”
“You cannot then confide in the nature of my wishes?”
“Grant me till to-morrow,” said Dorothea, beseechingly.
“Till to-morrow then,” said Mr. Casaubon.
Soon she could hear that he was sleeping, but there was no more sleep
for her. While she constrained herself to lie still lest she should
disturb him, her mind was carrying on a conflict in which imagination
ranged its forces first on one side and then on the other. She had no
presentiment that the power which her husband wished to establish over
her future action had relation to anything else than his work. But it
was clear enough to her that he would expect her to devote herself to
sifting those mixed heaps of material, which were to be the doubtful
illustration of principles still more doubtful. The poor child had
become altogether unbelieving as to the trustworthiness of that Key
which had made the ambition and the labor of her husband’s life. It was
not wonderful that, in spite of her small instruction, her judgment in
this matter was truer than his: for she looked with unbiassed
comparison and healthy sense at probabilities on which he had risked
all his egoism. And now she pictured to herself the days, and months,
and years which she must spend in sorting what might be called
shattered mummies, and fragments of a tradition which was itself a
mosaic wrought from crushed ruins—sorting them as food for a theory
which was already withered in the birth like an elfin child. Doubtless
a vigorous error vigorously pursued has kept the embryos of truth
a-breathing: the quest of gold being at the same time a questioning of
substances, the body of chemistry is prepared for its soul, and
Lavoisier is born. But Mr. Casaubon’s theory of the elements which made
the seed of all tradition was not likely to bruise itself unawares
against discoveries: it floated among flexible conjectures no more
solid than those etymologies which seemed strong because of likeness in
sound until it was shown that likeness in sound made them impossible:
it was a method of interpretation which was not tested by the necessity
of forming anything which had sharper collisions than an elaborate
notion of Gog and Magog: it was as free from interruption as a plan for
threading the stars together. And Dorothea had so often had to check
her weariness and impatience over this questionable riddle-guessing, as
it revealed itself to her instead of the fellowship in high knowledge
which was to make life worthier! She could understand well enough now
why her husband had come to cling to her, as possibly the only hope
left that his labors would ever take a shape in which they could be
given to the world. At first it had seemed that he wished to keep even
her aloof from any close knowledge of what he was doing; but gradually
the terrible stringency of human need—the prospect of a too speedy
death—
And here Dorothea’s pity turned from her own future to her husband’s
past—nay, to his present hard struggle with a lot which had grown out
of that past: the lonely labor, the ambition breathing hardly under the
pressure of self-distrust; the goal receding, and the heavier limbs;
and now at last the sword visibly trembling above him! And had she not
wished to marry him that she might help him in his life’s labor?—But
she had thought the work was to be something greater, which she could
serve in devoutly for its own sake. Was it right, even to soothe his
grief—would it be possible, even if she promised—to work as in a
treadmill fruitlessly?
And yet, could she deny him? Could she say, “I refuse to content this
pining hunger?” It would be refusing to do for him dead, what she was
almost sure to do for him living. If he lived as Lydgate had said he
might, for fifteen years or more, her life would certainly be spent in
helping him and obeying him.
Still, there was a deep difference between that devotion to the living
and that indefinite promise of devotion to the dead. While he lived, he
could claim nothing that she would not still be free to remonstrate
against, and even to refuse. But—the thought passed through her mind
more than once, though she could not believe in it—might he not mean to
demand something more from her than she had been able to imagine, since
he wanted her pledge to carry out his wishes without telling her
exactly what they were? No; his heart was bound up in his work only:
that was the end for which his failing life was to be eked out by hers.
And now, if she were to say, “No! if you die, I will put no finger to
your work”—it seemed as if she would be crushing that bruised heart.
For four hours Dorothea lay in this conflict, till she felt ill and
bewildered, unable to resolve, praying mutely. Helpless as a child
which has sobbed and sought too long, she fell into a late morning
sleep, and when she waked Mr. Casaubon was already up. Tantripp told
her that he had read prayers, breakfasted, and was in the library.
“I never saw you look so pale, madam,” said Tantripp, a solid-figured
woman who had been with the sisters at Lausanne.
“Was I ever high-colored, Tantripp?” said Dorothea, smiling faintly.
“Well, not to say high-colored, but with a bloom like a Chiny rose. But
always smelling those leather books, what can be expected? Do rest a
little this morning, madam. Let me say you are ill and not able to go
into that close library.”
“Oh no, no! let me make haste,” said Dorothea. “Mr. Casaubon wants me
particularly.”
When she went down she felt sure that she should promise to fulfil his
wishes; but that would be later in the day—not yet.
As Dorothea entered the library, Mr. Casaubon turned round from the
table where he had been placing some books, and said—
“I was waiting for your appearance, my dear. I had hoped to set to work
at once this morning, but I find myself under some indisposition,
probably from too much excitement yesterday. I am going now to take a
turn in the shrubbery, since the air is milder.”
“I am glad to hear that,” said Dorothea. “Your mind, I feared, was too
active last night.”
“I would fain have it set at rest on the point I last spoke of,
Dorothea. You can now, I hope, give me an answer.”
“May I come out to you in the garden presently?” said Dorothea, winning
a little breathing space in that way.
“I shall be in the Yew-tree Walk for the next half-hour,” said Mr.
Casaubon, and then he left her.
Dorothea, feeling very weary, rang and asked Tantripp to bring her some
wraps. She had been sitting still for a few minutes, but not in any
renewal of the former conflict: she simply felt that she was going to
say “Yes” to her own doom: she was too weak, too full of dread at the
thought of inflicting a keen-edged blow on her husband, to do anything
but submit completely. She sat still and let Tantripp put on her bonnet
and shawl, a passivity which was unusual with her, for she liked to
wait on herself.
“God bless you, madam!” said Tantripp, with an irrepressible movement
of love towards the beautiful, gentle creature for whom she felt unable
to do anything more, now that she had finished tying the bonnet.
This was too much for Dorothea’s highly-strung feeling, and she burst
into tears, sobbing against Tantripp’s arm. But soon she checked
herself, dried her eyes, and went out at the glass door into the
shrubbery.
“I wish every book in that library was built into a caticom for your
master,” said Tantripp to Pratt, the butler, finding him in the
breakfast-room. She had been at Rome, and visited the antiquities, as
we know; and she always declined to call Mr. Casaubon anything but
“your master,” when speaking to the other servants.
Pratt laughed. He liked his master very well, but he liked Tantripp
better.
When Dorothea was out on the gravel walks, she lingered among the
nearer clumps of trees, hesitating, as she had done once before, though
from a different cause. Then she had feared lest her effort at
fellowship should be unwelcome; now she dreaded going to the spot where
she foresaw that she must bind herself to a fellowship from which she
shrank. Neither law nor the world’s opinion compelled her to this—only
her husband’s nature and her own compassion, only the ideal and not the
real yoke of marriage. She saw clearly enough the whole situation, yet