Will only thought of giving a good pinch that would annihilate thatvaunted laboriousness, and was unable to imagine the mode in whichDorothea would be wounded. Young Mr. Ladislaw was not at all deephimself in German writers; but very little achievement is required inorder to pity another man's shortcomings.
Poor Dorothea felt a pang at the thought that the labor of herhusband's life might be void, which left her no energy to spare for thequestion whether this young relative who was so much obliged to himought not to have repressed his observation. She did not even speak, butsat looking at her hands, absorbed in the piteousness of that thought. Will, however, having given that annihilating pinch, was ratherashamed, imagining from Dorothea's silence that he had offended herstill more; and having also a conscience about plucking the tail-feathersfrom a benefactor.
"I regretted it especially," he resumed, taking the usual course fromdetraction to insincere eulogy, "because of my gratitude and respecttowards my cousin. It would not signify so much in a man whose talentsand character were less distinguished."
Dorothea raised her eyes, brighter than usual with excited feeling,and said in her saddest recitative, "How I wish I had learned Germanwhen I was at Lausanne! There were plenty of German teachers. But nowI can be of no use."
There was a new light, but still a mysterious light, for Will inDorothea's last words. The question how she had come to accept Mr.Casaubon—which he had dismissed when he first saw her by saying thatshe must be disagreeable in spite of appearances—was not now to beanswered on any such short and easy method. Whatever else she mightbe, she was not disagreeable. She was not coldly clever and indirectlysatirical, but adorably simple and full of feeling. She was an angelbeguiled. It would be a unique delight to wait and watch for themelodious fragments in which her heart and soul came forth so directlyand ingenuously. The AEolian harp again came into his mind.
She must have made some original romance for herself in thismarriage. And if Mr. Casaubon had been a dragon who had carried heroff to his lair with his talons simply and without legal forms, it wouldhave been an unavoidable feat of heroism to release her and fall at herfeet. But he was something more unmanageable than a dragon: he was abenefactor with collective society at his back, and he was at that momententering the room in all the unimpeachable correctness of his demeanor,while Dorothea was looking animated with a newly roused alarm andregret, and Will was looking animated with his admiring speculationabout her feelings.
Mr. Casaubon felt a surprise which was quite unmixed withpleasure, but he did not swerve from his usual politeness of greeting,when Will rose and explained his presence. Mr. Casaubon was less happythan usual, and this perhaps made him look all the dimmer and morefaded; else, the effect might easily have been produced by the contrast ofhis young cousin's appearance. The first impression on seeing Will wasone of sunny brightness, which added to the uncertainty of his changingexpression. Surely, his very features changed their form, his jaw lookedsometimes large and sometimes small; and the little ripple in his nosewas a preparation for metamorphosis. When he turned his head quicklyhis hair seemed to shake out light, and some persons thought they sawdecided genius in this coruscation. Mr. Casaubon, on the contrary, stoodrayless.
As Dorothea's eyes were turned anxiously on her husband she wasperhaps not insensible to the contrast, but it was only mingled withother causes in making her more conscious of that new alarm on hisbehalf which was the first stirring of a pitying tenderness fed by therealities of his lot and not by her own dreams. Yet it was a source ofgreater freedom to her that Will was there; his young equality wasagreeable, and also perhaps his openness to conviction. She felt animmense need of some one to speak to, and she had never before seenany one who seemed so quick and pliable, so likely to understandeverything.
Mr. Casaubon gravely hoped that Will was passing his timeprofitably as well as pleasantly in Rome—had thought his intention wasto remain in South Germany—but begged him to come and dine to-morrow, when he could converse more at large: at present he wassomewhat weary. Ladislaw understood, and accepting the invitationimmediately took his leave.
Dorothea's eyes followed her husband anxiously, while he sank downwearily at the end of a sofa, and resting his elbow supported his headand looked on the floor. A little flushed, and with bright eyes, she seatedherself beside him, and said—
"Forgive me for speaking so hastily to you this morning. I was wrong.I fear I hurt you and made the day more burdensome."
"I am glad that you feel that, my dear," said Mr. Casaubon. He spokequietly and bowed his head a little, but there was still an uneasy feelingin his eyes as he looked at her.
"But you do forgive me?" said Dorothea, with a quick sob. In herneed for some manifestation of feeling she was ready to exaggerate herown fault. Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on itsneck and kiss it?
"My dear Dorothea—'who with repentance is not satisfied, is not ofheaven nor earth:'—you do not think me worthy to be banished by thatsevere sentence," said Mr. Casaubon, exerting himself to make a strongstatement, and also to smile faintly.
Dorothea was silent, but a tear which had come up with the sobwould insist on falling.
"You are excited, my dear.. And I also am feeling some unpleasantconsequences of too much mental disturbance," said Mr. Casaubon. Infact, he had it in his thought to tell her that she ought not to havereceived young Ladislaw in his absence: but he abstained, partly fromthe sense that it would be ungracious to bring a new complaint in themoment of her penitent acknowledgment, partly because he wanted toavoid further agitation of himself by speech, and partly because he wastoo proud to betray that jealousy of disposition which was not soexhausted on his scholarly compeers that there was none to spare inother directions. There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: itis hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondencyof uneasy egoism.
"I think it is time for us to dress," he added, looking at his watch.They both rose, and there was never any further allusion between themto what had passed on this day.
But Dorothea remembered it to the last with the vividness withwhich we all remember epochs in our experience when some dearexpectation dies, or some new motive is born. Today she had begun tosee that she had been under a wild illusion in expecting a response to herfeeling from Mr. Casaubon, and she had felt the waking of apresentiment that there might be a sad consciousness in his life whichmade as great a need on his side as on her own.
We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as anudder to feed our supreme selves: Dorothea had early begun to emergefrom that stupidity, but yet it had been easier to her to imagine how shewould devote herself to Mr. Casaubon, and become wise and strong inhis strength and wisdom, than to conceive with that distinctness whichis no longer reflection but feeling—an idea wrought back to thedirectness of sense, like the solidity of objects—that he had anequivalent centre of self, whence the lights and shadows must always fallwith a certain difference.
CHAPTER XXII.
"Nous causames longtemps; elle etait simple et bonne.
Ne sachant pas le mal, elle faisait le bien;
Des richesses du coeur elle me fit l'aumone,
Et tout en ecoutant comme le coeur se donne,
Sans oser y penser je lui donnai le mien;
Elle emporta ma vie, et n'en sut jamais rien."
—ALFRED DE MUSSET.
Will Ladislaw was delightfully agreeable at dinner the next day, andgave no opportunity for Mr. Casaubon to show disapprobation. On thecontrary it seemed to Dorothea that Will had a happier way of drawingher husband into conversation and of deferentially listening to him thanshe had ever observed in any one before. To be sure, the listeners aboutTipton were not highly gifted! Will talked a good deal himself, but whathe said was thrown in with such rapidity, and with such an unimportantair of saying something by the way, that it seemed a gay little chime afterthe great bell. If Will was not always perfect, this was certainly one ofhis good days. He described touches of incident among the poor peoplein Rome, only to be seen by one who could move about freely; he foundhimself in agreement with Mr. Casaubon as to the unsound opinions ofMiddleton concerning the relations of Judaism and Catholicism; andpassed easily to a half-enthusiastic half-playful picture of the enjoymenthe got out of the very miscellaneousness of Rome, which made the mindflexible with constant comparison, and saved you from seeing the world'sages as a set of box-like partitions without vital connection. Mr.Casaubon's studies, Will observed, had always been of too broad a kindfor that, and he had perhaps never felt any such sudden effect, but forhimself he confessed that Rome had given him quite a new sense ofhistory as a whole: the fragments stimulated his imagination and madehim constructive. Then occasionally, but not too often, he appealed toDorothea, and discussed what she said, as if her sentiment were an itemto be considered in the final judgment even of the Madonna di Foligno orthe Laocoon. A sense of contributing to form the world's opinion makesconversation particularly cheerful; and Mr. Casaubon too was notwithout his pride in his young wife, who spoke better than most women,as indeed he had perceived in choosing her.
Since things were going on so pleasantly, Mr. Casaubon's statementthat his labors in the Library would be suspended for a couple of days,and that after a brief renewal he should have no further reason forstaying in Rome, encouraged Will to urge that Mrs. Casaubon should notgo away without seeing a studio or two. Would not Mr. Casaubon takeher? That sort of thing ought not to be missed: it was quite special: itwas a form of life that grew like a small fresh vegetation with itspopulation of insects on huge fossils. Will would be happy to conductthem—not to anything wearisome, only to a few examples.
Mr. Casaubon, seeing Dorothea look earnestly towards him, couldnot but ask her if she would be interested in such visits: he was now ather service during the whole day; and it was agreed that Will shouldcome on the morrow and drive with them.
Will could not omit Thorwaldsen, a living celebrity about whom evenMr. Casaubon inquired, but before the day was far advanced he led theway to the studio of his friend Adolf Naumann, whom he mentioned asone of the chief renovators of Christian art, one of those who had notonly revived but expanded that grand conception of supreme events asmysteries at which the successive ages were spectators, and in relation towhich the great souls of all periods became as it were contemporaries.Will added that he had made himself Naumann's pupil for the nonce.
"I have been making some oil-sketches under him," said Will. "I hatecopying. I must put something of my own in. Naumann has beenpainting the Saints drawing the Car of the Church, and I have beenmaking a sketch of Marlowe's Tamburlaine Driving the Conquered Kingsin his Chariot. I am not so ecclesiastical as Naumann, and I sometimestwit him with his excess of meaning. But this time I mean to outdo himin breadth of intention. I take Tamburlaine in his chariot for thetremendous course of the world's physical history lashing on theharnessed dynasties. In my opinion, that is a good mythicalinterpretation." Will here looked at Mr. Casaubon, who received thisoffhand treatment of symbolism very uneasily, and bowed with a neutralair.
"The sketch must be very grand, if it conveys so much," saidDorothea. "I should need some explanation even of the meaning you give.Do you intend Tamburlaine to represent earthquakes and volcanoes?" "Oh yes," said Will, laughing, "and migrations of races and clearingsof forests—and America and the steam-engine. Everything you canimagine!"
"What a difficult kind of shorthand!" said Dorothea, smiling towardsher husband. "It would require all your knowledge to be able to read it."
Mr. Casaubon blinked furtively at Will. He had a suspicion that hewas being laughed at. But it was not possible to include Dorothea in thesuspicion.
They found Naumann painting industriously, but no model waspresent; his pictures were advantageously arranged, and his own plainvivacious person set off by a dove-colored blouse and a maroon velvetcap, so that everything was as fortunate as if he had expected thebeautiful young English lady exactly at that time.
The painter in his confident English gave little dissertations on hisfinished and unfinished subjects, seeming to observe Mr. Casaubon asmuch as he did Dorothea. Will burst in here and there with ardent wordsof praise, marking out particular merits in his friend's work; andDorothea felt that she was getting quite new notions as to thesignificance of Madonnas seated under inexplicable canopied throneswith the simple country as a background, and of saints with architecturalmodels in their hands, or knives accidentally wedged in their skulls.Some things which had seemed monstrous to her were gatheringintelligibility and even a natural meaning: but all this was apparently abranch of knowledge in which Mr. Casaubon had not interested himself.
"I think I would rather feel that painting is beautiful than have toread it as an enigma; but I should learn to understand these picturessooner than yours with the very wide meaning," said Dorothea, speakingto Will.
"Don't speak of my painting before Naumann," said Will. "He will tellyou, it is all pfuscherei, which is his most opprobrious word!"
"Is that true?" said Dorothea, turning her sincere eyes on Naumann,who made a slight grimace and said—
"Oh, he does not mean it seriously with painting. His walk must bebelles-lettres. That is wi-ide."
Naumann's pronunciation of the vowel seemed to stretch the wordsatirically. Will did not half like it, but managed to laugh: and Mr.Casaubon, while he felt some disgust at the artist's German accent,began to entertain a little respect for his judicious severity.
The respect was not diminished when Naumann, after drawing Willaside for a moment and looking, first at a large canvas, then at Mr.Casaubon, came forward again and said—
