"That is very kind of you," said Dorothea, looking up at Mr.Casaubon with delight. "It is noble. After all, people may really have inthem some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may theynot? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We shouldbe very patient with each other, I think."
"I suppose it is being engaged to be married that has made you thinkpatience good," said Celia, as soon as she and Dorothea were alonetogether, taking off their wrappings.
"You mean that I am very impatient, Celia."
"Yes; when people don't do and say just what you like." Celia hadbecome less afraid of "saying things" to Dorothea since this engagement:cleverness seemed to her more pitiable than ever.
CHAPTER X.
"He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes to wear than
the skin of a bear not yet killed."—FULLER.
Young Ladislaw did not pay that visit to which Mr. Brooke hadinvited him, and only six days afterwards Mr. Casaubon mentioned thathis young relative had started for the Continent, seeming by this coldvagueness to waive inquiry. Indeed, Will had declined to fix on any moreprecise destination than the entire area of Europe. Genius, he held, isnecessarily intolerant of fetters: on the one hand it must have the utmostplay for its spontaneity; on the other, it may confidently await thosemessages from the universe which summon it to its peculiar work, onlyplacing itself in an attitude of receptivity towards all sublime chances.The attitudes of receptivity are various, and Will had sincerely triedmany of them. He was not excessively fond of wine, but he had severaltimes taken too much, simply as an experiment in that form of ecstasy;he had fasted till he was faint, and then supped on lobster; he had madehimself ill with doses of opium. Nothing greatly original had resultedfrom these measures; and the effects of the opium had convinced himthat there was an entire dissimilarity between his constitution and DeQuincey's. The superadded circumstance which would evolve the geniushad not yet come; the universe had not yet beckoned. Even Caesar'sfortune at one time was, but a grand presentiment. We know what amasquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may bedisguised in helpless embryos.—In fact, the world is full of hopefulanalogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities. Will sawclearly enough the pitiable instances of long incubation producing nochick, and but for gratitude would have laughed at Casaubon, whoseplodding application, rows of note-books, and small taper of learnedtheory exploring the tossed ruins of the world, seemed to enforce a moralentirely encouraging to Will's generous reliance on the intentions of theuniverse with regard to himself. He held that reliance to be a mark ofgenius; and certainly it is no mark to the contrary; genius consistingneither in self-conceit nor in humility, but in a power to make or do, notanything in general, but something in particular. Let him start for theContinent, then, without our pronouncing on his future. Among all formsof mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
But at present this caution against a too hasty judgment interests memore in relation to Mr. Casaubon than to his young cousin. If toDorothea Mr. Casaubon had been the mere occasion which had set alightthe fine inflammable material of her youthful illusions, does it followthat he was fairly represented in the minds of those less impassionedpersonages who have hitherto delivered their judgments concerning him?I protest against any absolute conclusion, any prejudice derived fromMrs. Cadwallader's contempt for a neighboring clergyman's allegedgreatness of soul, or Sir James Chettam's poor opinion of his rival'slegs,—from Mr. Brooke's failure to elicit a companion's ideas, or fromCelia's criticism of a middle-aged scholar's personal appearance. I am notsure that the greatest man of his age, if ever that solitary superlativeexisted, could escape these unfavorable reflections of himself in varioussmall mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his portrait in a spoon, mustsubmit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin. Moreover, if Mr.Casaubon, speaking for himself, has rather a chilling rhetoric, it is nottherefore certain that there is no good work or fine feeling in him. Didnot an immortal physicist and interpreter of hieroglyphs write detestableverses? Has the theory of the solar system been advanced by gracefulmanners and conversational tact? Suppose we turn from outsideestimates of a man, to wonder, with keener interest, what is the reportof his own consciousness about his doings or capacity: with whathindrances he is carrying on his daily labors; what fading of hopes, orwhat deeper fixity of self-delusion the years are marking off within him;and with what spirit he wrestles against universal pressure, which willone day be too heavy for him, and bring his heart to its final pause.Doubtless his lot is important in his own eyes; and the chief reason thatwe think he asks too large a place in our consideration must be our wantof room for him, since we refer him to the Divine regard with perfectconfidence; nay, it is even held sublime for our neighbor to expect theutmost there, however little he may have got from us. Mr. Casaubon,too, was the centre of his own world; if he was liable to think that otherswere providentially made for him, and especially to consider them in thelight of their fitness for the author of a "Key to all Mythologies," this traitis not quite alien to us, and, like the other mendicant hopes of mortals,claims some of our pity.
Certainly this affair of his marriage with Miss Brooke touched himmore nearly than it did any one of the persons who have hitherto showntheir disapproval of it, and in the present stage of things I feel moretenderly towards his experience of success than towards thedisappointment of the amiable Sir James. For in truth, as the day fixedfor his marriage came nearer, Mr. Casaubon did not find his spiritsrising; nor did the contemplation of that matrimonial garden scene,where, as all experience showed, the path was to be bordered withflowers, prove persistently more enchanting to him than the accustomedvaults where he walked taper in hand. He did not confess to himself, stillless could he have breathed to another, his surprise that though he hadwon a lovely and noble-hearted girl he had not won delight,—which hehad also regarded as an object to be found by search. It is true that heknew all the classical passages implying the contrary; but knowingclassical passages, we find, is a mode of motion, which explains whythey leave so little extra force for their personal application.
Poor Mr. Casaubon had imagined that his long studiousbachelorhood had stored up for him a compound interest of enjoyment,and that large drafts on his affections would not fail to be honored; forwe all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, andact fatally on the strength of them. And now he was in danger of beingsaddened by the very conviction that his circumstances were unusuallyhappy: there was nothing external by which he could account for acertain blankness of sensibility which came over him just when hisexpectant gladness should have been most lively, just when he exchangedthe accustomed dulness of his Lowick library for his visits to the Grange.Here was a weary experience in which he was as utterly condemned toloneliness as in the despair which sometimes threatened him whiletoiling in the morass of authorship without seeming nearer to the goal.And his was that worst loneliness which would shrink from sympathy.He could not but wish that Dorothea should think him not less happythan the world would expect her successful suitor to be; and in relationto his authorship he leaned on her young trust and veneration, he likedto draw forth her fresh interest in listening, as a means ofencouragement to himself: in talking to her he presented all hisperformance and intention with the reflected confidence of thepedagogue, and rid himself for the time of that chilling ideal audiencewhich crowded his laborious uncreative hours with the vaporouspressure of Tartarean shades.
For to Dorothea, after that toy-box history of the world adapted toyoung ladies which had made the chief part of her education, Mr.Casaubon's talk about his great book was full of new vistas; and thissense of revelation, this surprise of a nearer introduction to Stoics andAlexandrians, as people who had ideas not totally unlike her own, keptin abeyance for the time her usual eagerness for a binding theory whichcould bring her own life and doctrine into strict connection with thatamazing past, and give the remotest sources of knowledge some bearingon her actions. That more complete teaching would come—Mr. Casaubonwould tell her all that: she was looking forward to higher initiation inideas, as she was looking forward to marriage, and blending her dimconceptions of both. It would be a great mistake to suppose thatDorothea would have cared about any share in Mr. Casaubon's learningas mere accomplishment; for though opinion in the neighborhood ofFreshitt and Tipton had pronounced her clever, that epithet would nothave described her to circles in whose more precise vocabularycleverness implies mere aptitude for knowing and doing, apart fromcharacter. All her eagerness for acquirement lay within that full currentof sympathetic motive in which her ideas and impulses were habituallyswept along. She did not want to deck herself with knowledge—to wearit loose from the nerves and blood that fed her action; and if she hadwritten a book she must have done it as Saint Theresa did, under thecommand of an authority that constrained her conscience. But somethingshe yearned for by which her life might be filled with action at oncerational and ardent; and since the time was gone by for guiding visionsand spiritual directors, since prayer heightened yearning but notinstruction, what lamp was there but knowledge? Surely learned menkept the only oil; and who more learned than Mr. Casaubon?
Thus in these brief weeks Dorothea's joyous grateful expectation wasunbroken, and however her lover might occasionally be conscious offlatness, he could never refer it to any slackening of her affectionateinterest.
The season was mild enough to encourage the project of extendingthe wedding journey as far as Rome, and Mr. Casaubon was anxious forthis because he wished to inspect some manuscripts in the Vatican.
"I still regret that your sister is not to accompany us," he said onemorning, some time after it had been ascertained that Celia objected togo, and that Dorothea did not wish for her companionship. "You willhave many lonely hours, Dorotheas, for I shall be constrained to makethe utmost use of my time during our stay in Rome, and I should feelmore at liberty if you had a companion."
The words "I should feel more at liberty" grated on Dorothea. For thefirst time in speaking to Mr. Casaubon she colored from annoyance. "You must have misunderstood me very much," she said, "if youthink I should not enter into the value of your time—if you think that Ishould not willingly give up whatever interfered with your using it to thebest purpose."
"That is very amiable in you, my dear Dorothea," said Mr. Casaubon,not in the least noticing that she was hurt; "but if you had a lady as yourcompanion, I could put you both under the care of a cicerone, and wecould thus achieve two purposes in the same space of time."
"I beg you will not refer to this again," said Dorothea, ratherhaughtily. But immediately she feared that she was wrong, and turningtowards him she laid her hand on his, adding in a different tone, "Praydo not be anxious about me. I shall have so much to think of when I amalone. And Tantripp will be a sufficient companion, just to take care ofme. I could not bear to have Celia: she would be miserable."
It was time to dress. There was to be a dinner-party that day, thelast of the parties which were held at the Grange as proper preliminariesto the wedding, and Dorothea was glad of a reason for moving away atonce on the sound of the bell, as if she needed more than her usualamount of preparation. She was ashamed of being irritated from somecause she could not define even to herself; for though she had nointention to be untruthful, her reply had not touched the real hurt withinher. Mr. Casaubon's words had been quite reasonable, yet they hadbrought a vague instantaneous sense of aloofness on his part.
"Surely I am in a strangely selfish weak state of mind," she said toherself. "How can I have a husband who is so much above me withoutknowing that he needs me less than I need him?"
Having convinced herself that Mr. Casaubon was altogether right,she recovered her equanimity, and was an agreeable image of serenedignity when she came into the drawing-room in her silver-gray dress—the simple lines of her dark-brown hair parted over her brow and coiledmassively behind, in keeping with the entire absence from her mannerand expression of all search after mere effect. Sometimes when Dorotheawas in company, there seemed to be as complete an air of repose abouther as if she had been a picture of Santa Barbara looking out from hertower into the clear air; but these intervals of quietude made the energyof her speech and emotion the more remarked when some outwardappeal had touched her.
She was naturally the subject of many observations this evening, forthe dinner-party was large and rather more miscellaneous as to the maleportion than any which had been held at the Grange since Mr. Brooke'snieces had resided with him, so that the talking was done in duos andtrios more or less inharmonious. There was the newly elected mayor ofMiddlemarch, who happened to be a manufacturer; the philanthropicbanker his brother-in-law, who predominated so much in the town thatsome called him a Methodist, others a hypocrite, according to theresources of their vocabulary; and there were various professional men.In fact, Mrs. Cadwallader said that Brooke was beginning to treat theMiddlemarchers, and that she preferred the farmers at the tithe-dinner,who drank her health unpretentiously, and were not ashamed of theirgrandfathers' furniture. For in that part of the country, before reform haddone its notable part in developing the political consciousness, there wasa clearer distinction of ranks and a dimmer distinction of parties; so thatMr. Brooke's miscellaneous invitations seemed to belong to that generallaxity which came from his inordinate travel and habit of taking toomuch in the form of ideas.
Already, as Miss Brooke passed out of the dining-room, opportunitywas found for some interjectional "asides."
