Middlemarch

She was getting away from Tipton and Freshitt, and her own sad liability to tread in the wrong places on her way to the New Jerusalem.

Mr Brooke sat down in his arm-chair, stretched his legs towards the wood-fire, which had fallen into a wondrous mass of glowing dice between the dogs, and rubbed his hands gently, looking very mildly towards Dorothea, but with a neutral leisurely air, as if he had nothing particular to say. Dorothea closed her pamphlet, as soon as she was aware of her uncle’s presence, and rose as if to go. Usually she would have been interested about her uncle’s merciful errand on behalf of the criminal, but her late agitation had made her absent-minded.

‘I came back by Lowick, you know,’ said Mr Brooke, not as if with any intention to arrest her departure, but apparently from his usual tendency to say what he had said before. This fundamental principle of human speech was markedly exhibited in Mr Brooke. ‘I lunched there and saw Casaubon’s library, and that kind of thing. There’s a sharp air, driving. Won’t you sit down, my dear? You look cold.’

Dorothea felt quite inclined to accept the invitation. Sometimes, when her uncle’s easy way of taking things did not happen to be exasperating, it was rather soothing. She threw off her mantle and bonnet, and sat down opposite to him, enjoying the glow, but lifting up her beautiful hands for a screen. They were not thin hands, or small hands; but powerful, feminine, maternal hands. She seemed to be holding then up in propitiation for her passionate desire to know and to think, which in the unfriendly mediums of Tipton and Freshitt had issued in crying and red eyelids.

She bethought herself now of the condemned criminal. ‘What news have you brought about the sheep-stealer, uncle?’

‘What, poor Bunch?—well, it seems we can’t get him off—he is to be hanged.’

Dorothea’s brow took an expression of reprobation and pity.

‘Hanged, you know,’ said Mr Brooke, with a quiet nod. ‘Poor Romilly! he would have helped us. I knew Romilly. Casaubon didn’t know Romilly. He is a little buried in books, you know, Casaubon is.’

‘When a man has great studies and is writing a great work, he must of course give up seeing much of the world. How can he go about making acquaintances?’

‘That’s true. But a man mopes, you know. I have always been a bachelor too, but I have that sort of disposition that I never moped; it was my way to go about everywhere and take in everything. I never moped: but I can see that Casaubon does, you know. He wants a companion—a companion, you know.’

‘It would be a great honour to any one to be his companion,’ said Dorothea, energetically.

‘You like him, eh?’ said Mr Brooke, without showing any surprise, or other emotion. ‘Well, now, I’ve known Casaubon ten years, ever since he came to Lowick. But I never got anything out of him—any ideas, you know. However, he is a tiptop man, and may be a bishop—that kind of thing, you know, if Peel stays in. And he has a very high opinion of you, my dear.’

Dorothea could not speak.

‘The fact is, he has a very high opinion indeed of you. And he speaks uncommonly well—does Casaubon. He has deferred to me, you not being of age. In short, I have promised to speak to you, though I told him I thought there was not much chance. I was bound to tell him that. I said, my niece is very young, and that kind of thing. But I didn’t think it necessary to go into everything. However, the long and the short of it is, that he has asked my permission to make you an offer of marriage—of marriage, you know,’ said Mr Brooke, with his explanatory nod. ‘I thought it better to tell you, my dear.’

No one could have detected any anxiety in Mr Brooke’s manner, but he did really wish to know something of his niece’s mind, that, if there were any need for advice, he might give it in time. What feeling he, as a magistrate who had taken in so many ideas, could make room for, was unmixedly kind. Since Dorothea did not speak immediately, he repeated, ‘I thought it better to tell you, my dear.’

‘Thank you, uncle,’ said Dorothea, in a clear unwavering tone. ‘I am very grateful to Mr Casaubon. If he makes me an offer, I shall accept him. I admire and honour him more than any man I ever saw.’

Mr Brooke paused a little, and then said in a lingering low tone, ‘Ah? … Well! He is a good match in some respects. But now, Chettam is a good match. And our land lies together. I shall never interfere against your wishes, my dear. People should have their own way in marriage, and that sort of thing—up to a certain point, you know. I have always said that, up to a certain point. I wish you to marry well; and I have good reason to believe that Chettam wishes to marry you. I mention it, you know.’

‘It is impossible that I should ever marry Sir James Chettam,’ said Dorothea. ‘If he thinks of marrying me, he has made a great mistake.’

‘That is it, you see. One never knows. I should have thought Chettam was just the sort of man a woman would like, now.’

‘Pray do not mention him in that light again, uncle,’ said Dorothea, feeling some of her late irritation revive.

Mr Brooke wondered, and felt that women were an inexhaustible subject of study, since he at his age was not in a perfect state of scientific prediction about them. Here was a fellow like Chettam with no chance at all.

‘Well, but Casaubon, now. There is no hurry—I mean for you. It’s true, every year will tell upon him. He is over five-and-forty, you know. I should say a good seven-and-twenty years older than you. To be sure,—if you like learning and standing, and that sort of thing, we can’t have everything. And his income is good—he has a handsome property independent of the Church—his income is good. Still he is not young, and I must not conceal from you, my dear, that I think his health is not over-strong. I know nothing else against him.’

‘I should not wish to have a husband very near my own age,’ said Dorothea, with grave decision. ‘I should wish to have a husband who was above me in judgment and in all knowledge.’

Mr Brooke repeated his subdued, ‘Ah?—I thought you had more of your own opinion than most girls. I thought you liked your own opinion—liked it, you know.’

‘I cannot imagine myself living without some opinions, but I should wish to have good reasons for them, and a wise man could help me to see which opinions had the best foundation, and would help me to live according to them.’

‘Very true. You couldn’t put the thing better—couldn’t put it better, beforehand, you know. But there are oddities in things,’ continued Mr Brooke, whose conscience was really roused to do the best he could for his niece on this occasion. ‘Life isn’t cast in a mould—not cut out by rule and line, and that sort of thing. I never married myself, and it will be the better for you and yours. The fact is, I never loved any one well enough to put myself into a noose for them. It is a noose, you know. Temper, now. There is temper. And a husband likes to be master.’

‘I know that I must expect trials, uncle. Marriage is a state of higher duties. I never thought of it as mere personal ease,’ said poor Dorothea.

‘Well, you are not fond of show, a great establishment, balls, dinners, that kind of thing. I can see that Casaubon’s ways might suit you better than Chettam’s. And you shall do as you like, my dear. I would not hinder Casaubon; I said so at once; for there is no knowing how anything may turn out. You have not the same tastes as every young lady; and a clergyman and scholar—who may be a bishop—that kind of thing—may suit you better than Chettam. Chettam is a good fellow, a good sound-hearted fellow, you know; but he doesn’t go much into ideas. I did, when I was his age. But Casaubon’s eyes, now. I think he has hurt them a little with too much reading.’

‘I should be all the happier, uncle, the more room there was for me to help him,’ said Dorothea, ardently.

‘You have quite made up your mind, I see. Well, my dear, the fact is, I have a letter for you in my pocket.’ Mr Brooke handed the letter to Dorothea, but as she rose to go away, he added, ‘There is not too much hurry, my dear. Think about it, you know.’

When Dorothea had left him, he reflected that he had certainly spoken strongly: he had put the risks of marriage before her in a striking manner. It was his duty to do so. But as to pretending to be wise for young people,—no uncle, however much he had travelled in his youth, absorbed the new ideas, and dined with celebrities now deceased, could pretend to judge what sort of marriage would turn out well for a young girl who preferred Casaubon to Chettam. In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr Brooke’s mind felt blank before it, could be hardly less complicated than the revolutions of an irregular solid.

CHAPTER 5

‘Hard students are commonly troubled with gowts, catarrhs, rheums, cachexia, bradypepsia, bad eyes, stone, and collick, crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by over-much sitting: they are most part lean, dry, ill-coloured … and all through immoderate pains and extraordinary studies. If you will not believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus and Thomas Aquainas’ works; and tell me whether those men took pains.’

—Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, P. I. s. 2.

This was Mr Casaubon’s letter:—

My dear Miss Brooke,—I have your guardian’s permission to address you on a subject than which I have none more at heart. I am not, I trust, mistaken in the recognition of some deeper correspondence than that of date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my own life had arisen contemporaneously with the possibility of my becoming acquainted with you. For in the first hour of meeting you, I had an impression of your eminent and perhaps exclusive fitness to supply that need (connected, I may say, with such activity of the affections as even the preoccupations of a work too special to be abdicated could not uninterruptedly dissimulate); and each succeeding opportunity for observation has given the impression an added depth by convincing me more emphatically of that fitness which I had preconceived, and thus evoking more decisively those affections to which I have but now referred. Our conversations have, I think, made sufficiently clear to you the tenor of my life and purposes: a tenor unsuited, I am aware, to the commoner order of minds. But I have discerned in you an elevation of thought and a capability of devotedness, which I had hitherto not conceived to be compatible either with the early bloom of youth or with those graces of sex that may be said at once to win and to confer distinction when combined, as they notably are in you, with the mental qualities above indicated. It was, I confess, beyond my hope to meet with this rare combination of elements both solid and attractive, adapted to supply aid in graver labours and to cast a charm over vacant hours; and but for the event of my introduction to you (which, let me again say, I trust not to be superficially coincident with foreshadowing needs, but providentially related thereto as stages towards the completion of a life’s plan), I should presumably have gone on to the last without any attempt to lighten my solitariness by a matrimonial union.

Such, my dear Miss Brooke, is the accurate statement of my feelings; and I rely on your kind indulgence in venturing now to ask you how far your own are of a nature to confirm my happy presentiment. To be accepted by you as your husband and the earthly guardian of your welfare, I should regard as the highest of providential gifts. In return I can at least offer you an affection hitherto unwasted, and the faithful consecration of a life which, however short in the sequel, has no backward pages whereon, if you choose to turn them, you will find records such as might justly cause you either bitterness or shame. I await the expression of your sentiments with an anxiety which it would be the part of wisdom (were it possible) to divert by a more arduous labour than usual. But in this order of experience I am still young, and in looking forward to an unfavourable possibility I cannot but feel that resignation to solitude will be more difficult after the temporary illumination of hope. In any case, I shall remain, yours with sincere devotion,

Edward Casaubon.

Dorothea trembled while she read this letter; then she fell on her knees, buried her face, and sobbed. She could not pray; under the rush of solemn emotion in which thoughts became vague and images floated uncertainly, she could but cast herself, with a childlike sense of reclining, in the lap of a divine consciousness which sustained her own. She remained in that attitude till it was time to dress for dinner.

How could it occur to her to examine the letter, to look at it critically as a profession of love? Her whole soul was possessed by the fact that a fuller life was opening before her: she was a neophyte about to enter on a higher grade of initiation. She was going to have room for the energies which stirred uneasily under the dimness and pressure of her own ignorance and the petty peremptoriness of the world’s habits.

Now she would be able to devote herself to large yet definite duties; now she would be allowed to live continually in the light of a mind that she could reverence. This hope was not unmixed with the glow of proud delight—the joyous maiden surprise that she was chosen by the man whom her admiration had chosen. All Dorothea’s passion was transfused through a mind struggling towards an ideal life; the radiance of her transfigured girlhood fell on the first object that came within its level. The impetus with which inclination became resolution was heightened by those little events of the day which had roused her discontent with the actual conditions of her life.

After dinner, when Celia was playing an ‘air, with variations’, a small kind of tinkling which symbolised the aesthetic part of the young ladies’ education, Dorothea went up to her room to answer Mr Casaubon’s letter. Why should she defer the answer? She wrote it over three times, not because she wished to change the wording, but because her hand was unusually uncertain, and she could not bear that Mr Casaubon should think her handwriting bad and illegible. She piqued herself on writing a hand in which each letter was distinguishable without any large range of conjecture, and she meant to make much use of this accomplishment, to save Mr Casaubon’s eyes. Three times she wrote.

My dear Mr Casaubon,—I am very grateful to you for loving me, and thinking me worthy to be your wife. I can look forward to no better happiness than that which would be one with yours. If I said more, it would only be the same thing written out at greater length, for I cannot now dwell on any other thought than that I may be through life, yours devotedly,

Dorothea Brooke.

Later in the evening she followed her uncle into the library to give him the letter, that he might send it in the morning. He was surprised—but his surprise only issued in a few minutes’ silence, during which he pushed about various objects on his writing-table, and finally stood with his back to the fire, his glasses on his nose, looking at the address of Dorothea’s letter.

‘Have you thought enough about this, my dear?’ he said at last.

‘There was no need to think long, uncle. I know of nothing to make me vacillate. If I changed my mind, it must be because of something important and entirely new to me.’

‘Ah!—then you have accepted him? Then Chettam has no chance? Has Chettam offended you—offended you, you know? What is it you don’t like in Chettam?’

‘There is nothing that I like in him,’ said Dorothea, rather impetuously.

Mr Brooke threw his head and shoulders backward as if some one had thrown a light missile at him. Dorothea immediately felt some self-rebuke, and said—

‘I mean in the light of a husband. He is very kind, I think—really very good about the cottages. A well-meaning man.’

‘But you must have a scholar and that sort of thing? Well, it lies a little in our family. I had it myself—that love of knowledge, and going into everything—a little too much—it took me too far; though that sort of thing doesn’t often run in the female line; or it runs underground like the rivers in Greece, you know—it comes out in the sons. Clever sons, clever mothers. I went a good deal into that, at one time. However, my dear, I have always said that people should do as they like in these things, up to a certain point. I couldn’t, as your guardian, have consented to a bad match. But Casaubon stands well: his position is good. I am afraid Chettam will be hurt, though, and Mrs Cadwallader will blame me.’

That evening, of course, Celia knew nothing of what had happened. She attributed Dorothea’s abstracted manner, and the evidence of further crying since they had got home, to the temper she had been in about Sir James Chettam and the buildings, and was careful not to give further offence: having once said what she wanted to say, Celia had no disposition to recur to disagreeable subjects. It had been her nature when a child never to quarrel with any one—only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her, and looked like turkey-cocks; whereupon she was ready to play at cat’s cradle with them whenever they recovered themselves. And as to Dorothea, it had always been her way to find something wrong in her sister’s words, though Celia inwardly protested that she always said just how things were, and nothing else; she never did and never could put words together out of her own head. But the best of Dodo was, that she did not keep angry for long together. Now, though they had hardly spoken to each other all the evening, yet when Celia put by her work, intending to go to bed, a proceeding in which she was always much the earlier, Dorothea, who was seated on a low stool, unable to occupy herself except in meditation, said, with the musical intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her speech like a fine bit of recitative:—

‘Celia, dear, come and kiss me,’ holding her arms open as she spoke.

Celia knelt down to get the right level and gave her little butterfly kiss, while Dorothea encircled her with gentle arms and pressed her lips gravely on each cheek in turn.

‘Don’t sit up, Dodo, you are so pale to-night; go to bed soon,’ said Celia, in a comfortable way, without any touch of pathos.

‘No, dear, I am very, very happy,’ said Dorothea, fervently.

‘So much the better,’ thought Celia. ‘But how strangely Dodo goes from one extreme to the other.’

The next day, at luncheon, the butler, handing something to Mr Brooke, said, ‘Jonas is come back, sir, and has brought this letter.’

Mr Brooke read the letter, and then, nodding toward Dorothea, said, ‘Casaubon, my dear, he will be here to dinner; he didn’t wait to write more—didn’t wait, you know.’

It could not seem remarkable to Celia that a dinner guest should be announced to her sister beforehand, but, her eyes following the same direction as her uncle’s, she was struck with the peculiar effect of the announcement on Dorothea. It seemed as if something like the reflection of a white sunlit wing had passed across her features, ending in one of her rare blushes. For the first time it entered into Celia’s mind that there might be something more between Mr Casaubon and her sister than his delight in bookish talk and her delight in listening. Hitherto she had classed the admiration for this ‘ugly’ and learned acquaintance with the admiration for Monsieur Liret at Lausanne, also ugly and learned. Dorothea had never been tired of listening to old Monsieur Liret when Celia’s feet were as cold as possible, and when it had really become dreadful to see the skin of his bald head moving about. Why then should her enthusiasm not extend to Mr Casaubon simply in the same way as to Monsieur Liret? And it seemed probable that all learned men had a sort of schoolmaster’s view of young people.

But now Celia was really startled at the suspicion which had darted into her mind. She was seldom taken by surprise in this way, her marvellous quickness in observing a certain order of signs generally preparing her to expect such outward events as she had an interest in. Not that she now imagined Mr Casaubon to be already an accepted lover: she had only begun to feel disgust at the possibility that anything in Dorothea’s mind could tend towards such an issue. Here was something really to vex her about Dodo; it was all very well not to accept Sir James Chettam, but the idea of marrying Mr Casaubon! Celia felt a sort of shame mingled with a sense of the ludicrous. But perhaps Dodo, if she were really bordering on such an extravagance, might be turned away from it; experience had often shown that her impressibility might be calculated on. The day was damp, and they were not going to walk out, so they both went up to their sitting-room; and there Celia observed that Dorothea, instead of settling down with her usual diligent interest to some occupation, simply leaned her elbow on an open book and looked out of the window at the great cedar silvered with the damp. She herself had taken up the making of a toy for the curate’s children, and was not going to enter on any subject too precipitately.

Dorothea was, in fact, thinking that it was desirable for Celia to know of the momentous change in Mr Casaubon’s position since he had last been in the house. It did not seem fair to leave her in ignorance of what would necessarily affect her attitude towards him; but it was impossible not to shrink from telling her. Dorothea accused herself of some meanness in this timidity: it was always odious to her to have any small fears or contrivances about her actions, but at this moment she was seeking the highest aid possible that she might not dread the corrosiveness of Celia’s pretty carnally-minded prose. Her reverie was broken, and the difficulty of decision banished, by Celia’s small and rather guttural voice speaking in its usual tone, of a remark aside or a ‘by the bye.’

‘Is any one else coming to dine besides Mr Casaubon?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘I hope there is some one else. Then I shall not hear him eat his soup so.’

‘What is there remarkable about his soup-eating?’

‘Really, Dodo, can’t you hear how he scrapes his spoon? And he always blinks before he speaks. I don’t know whether Locke blinked, but I’m sure I am sorry for those who sat opposite to him if he did.’

‘Celia,’ said Dorothea, with emphatic gravity, ‘pray don’t make any more observations of that kind.’

‘Why not? They are quite true,’ returned Celia, who had her reasons for persevering, though she was beginning to be a little afraid.

‘Many things are true which only the commonest minds observe.’

‘Then I think the commonest minds must be rather useful. I think it is a pity Mr Casaubon’s mother had not a commoner mind; she might have taught him better.’ Celia was inwardly frightened, and ready to run away, now she had hurled this light javelin.

Dorothea’s feelings had gathered to an avalanche, and there could be no further preparation.

‘It is right to tell you, Celia, that I am engaged to marry Mr Casaubon.’

Perhaps Celia had never turned so pale before. The paper man she was making would have had his leg injured, but for her habitual care of whatever she held in her hands. She laid the fragile figure down at once, and sat perfectly still for a few minutes. When she spoke there was a tear gathering.

‘O Dodo, I hope you will be happy.’ Her sisterly tenderness could not but surmount other feelings at this moment, and her fears were the fears of affection.

Dorothea was still hurt and agitated.

‘It is quite decided, then?’ said Celia, in an awed undertone. ‘And uncle knows?’

‘I have accepted Mr Casaubon’s offer. My uncle brought me the letter that contained it; he knew about it beforehand.’

‘I beg your pardon, if I have said anything to hurt you, Dodo,’ said Celia, with a slight sob. She never could have thought that she should feel as she did. There was something funereal in the whole affair, and Mr Casaubon seemed to be the officiating clergyman, about whom it would be indecent to make remarks.