Middlemarch
purport of her husband’s will made at the time of their marriage, and
her mind, as soon as she was clearly conscious of her position, was
silently occupied with what she ought to do as the owner of Lowick
Manor with the patronage of the living attached to it.
One morning when her uncle paid his usual visit, though with an unusual
alacrity in his manner which he accounted for by saying that it was now
pretty certain Parliament would be dissolved forthwith, Dorothea said—
“Uncle, it is right now that I should consider who is to have the
living at Lowick. After Mr. Tucker had been provided for, I never heard
my husband say that he had any clergyman in his mind as a successor to
himself. I think I ought to have the keys now and go to Lowick to
examine all my husband’s papers. There may be something that would
throw light on his wishes.”
“No hurry, my dear,” said Mr. Brooke, quietly. “By-and-by, you know,
you can go, if you like. But I cast my eyes over things in the desks
and drawers—there was nothing—nothing but deep subjects, you
know—besides the will. Everything can be done by-and-by. As to the
living, I have had an application for interest already—I should say
rather good. Mr. Tyke has been strongly recommended to me—I had
something to do with getting him an appointment before. An apostolic
man, I believe—the sort of thing that would suit you, my dear.”
“I should like to have fuller knowledge about him, uncle, and judge for
myself, if Mr. Casaubon has not left any expression of his wishes. He
has perhaps made some addition to his will—there may be some
instructions for me,” said Dorothea, who had all the while had this
conjecture in her mind with relation to her husband’s work.
“Nothing about the rectory, my dear—nothing,” said Mr. Brooke, rising
to go away, and putting out his hand to his nieces: “nor about his
researches, you know. Nothing in the will.”
Dorothea’s lip quivered.
“Come, you must not think of these things yet, my dear. By-and-by, you
know.”
“I am quite well now, uncle; I wish to exert myself.”
“Well, well, we shall see. But I must run away now—I have no end of
work now—it’s a crisis—a political crisis, you know. And here is Celia
and her little man—you are an aunt, you know, now, and I am a sort of
grandfather,” said Mr. Brooke, with placid hurry, anxious to get away
and tell Chettam that it would not be his (Mr. Brooke’s) fault if
Dorothea insisted on looking into everything.
Dorothea sank back in her chair when her uncle had left the room, and
cast her eyes down meditatively on her crossed hands.
“Look, Dodo! look at him! Did you ever see anything like that?” said
Celia, in her comfortable staccato.
“What, Kitty?” said Dorothea, lifting her eyes rather absently.
“What? why, his upper lip; see how he is drawing it down, as if he
meant to make a face. Isn’t it wonderful! He may have his little
thoughts. I wish nurse were here. Do look at him.”
A large tear which had been for some time gathering, rolled down
Dorothea’s cheek as she looked up and tried to smile.
“Don’t be sad, Dodo; kiss baby. What are you brooding over so? I am
sure you did everything, and a great deal too much. You should be happy
now.”
“I wonder if Sir James would drive me to Lowick. I want to look over
everything—to see if there were any words written for me.”
“You are not to go till Mr. Lydgate says you may go. And he has not
said so yet (here you are, nurse; take baby and walk up and down the
gallery). Besides, you have got a wrong notion in your head as usual,
Dodo—I can see that: it vexes me.”
“Where am I wrong, Kitty?” said Dorothea, quite meekly. She was almost
ready now to think Celia wiser than herself, and was really wondering
with some fear what her wrong notion was. Celia felt her advantage, and
was determined to use it. None of them knew Dodo as well as she did, or
knew how to manage her. Since Celia’s baby was born, she had had a new
sense of her mental solidity and calm wisdom. It seemed clear that
where there was a baby, things were right enough, and that error, in
general, was a mere lack of that central poising force.
“I can see what you are thinking of as well as can be, Dodo,” said
Celia. “You are wanting to find out if there is anything uncomfortable
for you to do now, only because Mr. Casaubon wished it. As if you had
not been uncomfortable enough before. And he doesn’t deserve it, and
you will find that out. He has behaved very badly. James is as angry
with him as can be. And I had better tell you, to prepare you.”
“Celia,” said Dorothea, entreatingly, “you distress me. Tell me at once
what you mean.” It glanced through her mind that Mr. Casaubon had left
the property away from her—which would not be so very distressing.
“Why, he has made a codicil to his will, to say the property was all to
go away from you if you married—I mean—”
“That is of no consequence,” said Dorothea, breaking in impetuously.
“But if you married Mr. Ladislaw, not anybody else,” Celia went on with
persevering quietude. “Of course that is of no consequence in one
way—you never _would_ marry Mr. Ladislaw; but that only makes it worse
of Mr. Casaubon.”
The blood rushed to Dorothea’s face and neck painfully. But Celia was
administering what she thought a sobering dose of fact. It was taking
up notions that had done Dodo’s health so much harm. So she went on in
her neutral tone, as if she had been remarking on baby’s robes.
“James says so. He says it is abominable, and not like a gentleman. And
there never was a better judge than James. It is as if Mr. Casaubon
wanted to make people believe that you would wish to marry Mr.
Ladislaw—which is ridiculous. Only James says it was to hinder Mr.
Ladislaw from wanting to marry you for your money—just as if he ever
would think of making you an offer. Mrs. Cadwallader said you might as
well marry an Italian with white mice! But I must just go and look at
baby,” Celia added, without the least change of tone, throwing a light
shawl over her, and tripping away.
Dorothea by this time had turned cold again, and now threw herself back
helplessly in her chair. She might have compared her experience at that
moment to the vague, alarmed consciousness that her life was taking on
a new form, that she was undergoing a metamorphosis in which memory
would not adjust itself to the stirring of new organs. Everything was
changing its aspect: her husband’s conduct, her own duteous feeling
towards him, every struggle between them—and yet more, her whole
relation to Will Ladislaw. Her world was in a state of convulsive
change; the only thing she could say distinctly to herself was, that
she must wait and think anew. One change terrified her as if it had
been a sin; it was a violent shock of repulsion from her departed
husband, who had had hidden thoughts, perhaps perverting everything she
said and did. Then again she was conscious of another change which also
made her tremulous; it was a sudden strange yearning of heart towards
Will Ladislaw. It had never before entered her mind that he could,
under any circumstances, be her lover: conceive the effect of the
sudden revelation that another had thought of him in that light—that
perhaps he himself had been conscious of such a possibility,—and this
with the hurrying, crowding vision of unfitting conditions, and
questions not soon to be solved.
It seemed a long while—she did not know how long—before she heard Celia
saying, “That will do, nurse; he will be quiet on my lap now. You can
go to lunch, and let Garratt stay in the next room. What I think,
Dodo,” Celia went on, observing nothing more than that Dorothea was
leaning back in her chair, and likely to be passive, “is that Mr.
Casaubon was spiteful. I never did like him, and James never did. I
think the corners of his mouth were dreadfully spiteful. And now he has
behaved in this way, I am sure religion does not require you to make
yourself uncomfortable about him. If he has been taken away, that is a
mercy, and you ought to be grateful. We should not grieve, should we,
baby?” said Celia confidentially to that unconscious centre and poise
of the world, who had the most remarkable fists all complete even to
the nails, and hair enough, really, when you took his cap off, to
make—you didn’t know what:—in short, he was Bouddha in a Western form.
At this crisis Lydgate was announced, and one of the first things he
said was, “I fear you are not so well as you were, Mrs. Casaubon; have
you been agitated? allow me to feel your pulse.” Dorothea’s hand was of
a marble coldness.
“She wants to go to Lowick, to look over papers,” said Celia. “She
ought not, ought she?”
Lydgate did not speak for a few moments. Then he said, looking at
Dorothea. “I hardly know. In my opinion Mrs. Casaubon should do what
would give her the most repose of mind. That repose will not always
come from being forbidden to act.”
“Thank you,” said Dorothea, exerting herself, “I am sure that is wise.
There are so many things which I ought to attend to. Why should I sit
here idle?” Then, with an effort to recall subjects not connected with
her agitation, she added, abruptly, “You know every one in Middlemarch,
I think, Mr. Lydgate. I shall ask you to tell me a great deal. I have
serious things to do now. I have a living to give away. You know Mr.
Tyke and all the—” But Dorothea’s effort was too much for her; she
broke off and burst into sobs.
Lydgate made her drink a dose of sal volatile.
“Let Mrs. Casaubon do as she likes,” he said to Sir James, whom he
asked to see before quitting the house. “She wants perfect freedom, I
think, more than any other prescription.”
His attendance on Dorothea while her brain was excited, had enabled him
to form some true conclusions concerning the trials of her life. He
felt sure that she had been suffering from the strain and conflict of
self-repression; and that she was likely now to feel herself only in
another sort of pinfold than that from which she had been released.
Lydgate’s advice was all the easier for Sir James to follow when he
found that Celia had already told Dorothea the unpleasant fact about
the will. There was no help for it now—no reason for any further delay
in the execution of necessary business. And the next day Sir James
complied at once with her request that he would drive her to Lowick.
“I have no wish to stay there at present,” said Dorothea; “I could
hardly bear it. I am much happier at Freshitt with Celia. I shall be
able to think better about what should be done at Lowick by looking at
it from a distance. And I should like to be at the Grange a little
while with my uncle, and go about in all the old walks and among the
people in the village.”
“Not yet, I think. Your uncle is having political company, and you are
better out of the way of such doings,” said Sir James, who at that
moment thought of the Grange chiefly as a haunt of young Ladislaw’s.
But no word passed between him and Dorothea about the objectionable
part of the will; indeed, both of them felt that the mention of it
between them would be impossible. Sir James was shy, even with men,
about disagreeable subjects; and the one thing that Dorothea would have
chosen to say, if she had spoken on the matter at all, was forbidden to
her at present because it seemed to be a further exposure of her
husband’s injustice. Yet she did wish that Sir James could know what
had passed between her and her husband about Will Ladislaw’s moral
claim on the property: it would then, she thought, be apparent to him
as it was to her, that her husband’s strange indelicate proviso had
been chiefly urged by his bitter resistance to that idea of claim, and
not merely by personal feelings more difficult to talk about. Also, it