But this opinion of his did not cause a lasting alienation; and theway in which the family was made whole again was characteristic of allconcerned. Mr. Brooke could not resist the pleasure of correspondingwith Will and Dorothea; and one morning when his pen had beenremarkably fluent on the prospects of Municipal Reform, it ran off intoan invitation to the Grange, which, once written, could not be done awaywith at less cost than the sacrifice (hardly to be conceived) of the wholevaluable letter. During the months of this correspondence Mr. Brookehad continually, in his talk with Sir James Chettam, been presupposingor hinting that the intention of cutting off the entail was still maintained;and the day on which his pen gave the daring invitation, he went toFreshitt expressly to intimate that he had a stronger sense than ever ofthe reasons for taking that energetic step as a precaution against anymixture of low blood in the heir of the Brookes.
But that morning something exciting had happened at the Hall. Aletter had come to Celia which made her cry silently as she read it; andwhen Sir James, unused to see her in tears, asked anxiously what wasthe matter, she burst out in a wail such as he had never heard from herbefore.
"Dorothea has a little boy. And you will not let me go and see her.And I am sure she wants to see me. And she will not know what to dowith the baby—she will do wrong things with it. And they thought shewould die. It is very dreadful! Suppose it had been me and little Arthur,and Dodo had been hindered from coming to see me! I wish you wouldbe less unkind, James!"
"Good heavens, Celia!" said Sir James, much wrought upon, "what doyou wish? I will do anything you like. I will take you to town to-morrowif you wish it." And Celia did wish it.
It was after this that Mr. Brooke came, and meeting the Baronet inthe grounds, began to chat with him in ignorance of the news, which SirJames for some reason did not care to tell him immediately. But whenthe entail was touched on in the usual way, he said, "My dear sir, it isnot for me to dictate to you, but for my part I would let that alone. Iwould let things remain as they are."
Mr. Brooke felt so much surprised that he did not at once find outhow much he was relieved by the sense that he was not expected to doanything in particular.
Such being the bent of Celia's heart, it was inevitable that Sir Jamesshould consent to a reconciliation with Dorothea and her husband.Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutualdislike. Sir James never liked Ladislaw, and Will always preferred to haveSir James's company mixed with another kind: they were on a footing ofreciprocal tolerance which was made quite easy only when Dorothea andCelia were present.
It became an understood thing that Mr. and Mrs. Ladislaw shouldpay at least two visits during the year to the Grange, and there camegradually a small row of cousins at Freshitt who enjoyed playing with thetwo cousins visiting Tipton as much as if the blood of these cousins hadbeen less dubiously mixed.
Mr. Brooke lived to a good old age, and his estate was inherited byDorothea's son, who might have represented Middlemarch, but declined,thinking that his opinions had less chance of being stifled if he remainedout of doors.
Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as amistake; and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it inMiddlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a finegirl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and inlittle more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry hiscousin—young enough to have been his son, with no property, and notwell-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usuallyobserved that she could not have been "a nice woman," else she wouldnot have married either the one or the other.
Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideallybeautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulsestruggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in whichgreat feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith theaspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is sostrong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A newTheresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life,any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring allfor the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardentdeeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with ourdaily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some ofwhich may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorotheawhose story we know.
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they werenot widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus brokethe strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on theearth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculablydiffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent onunhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as theymight have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully ahidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
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