BOOK IV.
THREE LOVE PROBLEMS.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
1st Gent. Such men as this are feathers, chips, and straws.
Carry no weight, no force.
2d Gent. But levity
Is causal too, and makes the sum of weight.
For power finds its place in lack of power;
Advance is cession, and the driven ship
May run aground because the helmsman's thought
Lacked force to balance opposites."
It was on a morning of May that Peter Featherstone was buried.
In the prosaic neighborhood of Middlemarch, May was not always warm
and sunny, and on this particular morning a chill wind was blowing
the blossoms from the surrounding gardens on to the green mounds
of Lowick churchyard. Swiftly moving clouds only now and then
allowed a gleam to light up any object, whether ugly or beautiful,
that happened to stand within its golden shower. In the churchyard
the objects were remarkably various, for there was a little country
crowd waiting to see the funeral. The news had spread that it
was to be a "big burying;" the old gentleman had left written
directions about everything and meant to have a funeral "beyond
his betters." This was true; for old Featherstone had not been
a Harpagon whose passions had all been devoured by the ever-lean
and ever-hungry passion of saving, and who would drive a bargain
with his undertaker beforehand. He loved money, but he also
loved to spend it in gratifying his peculiar tastes, and perhaps
he loved it best of all as a means of making others feel his
power more or less uncomfortably. If any one will here contend
that there must have been traits of goodness in old Featherstone,
I will not presume to deny this; but I must observe that goodness
is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much privacy,
elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into
extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who
construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who
form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.
In any case, he had been bent on having a handsome funeral, and on
having persons "bid" to it who would rather have stayed at home.
He had even desired that female relatives should follow him to
the grave, and poor sister Martha had taken a difficult journey
for this purpose from the Chalky Flats. She and Jane would have
been altogether cheered (in a tearful manner) by this sign that
a brother who disliked seeing them while he was living had been
prospectively fond of their presence when he should have become
a testator, if the sign had not been made equivocal by being extended
to Mrs. Vincy, whose expense in handsome crape seemed to imply
the most presumptuous hopes, aggravated by a bloom of complexion
which told pretty plainly that she was not a blood-relation,
but of that generally objectionable class called wife's kin.
We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images
are the brood of desire; and poor old Featherstone, who laughed
much at the way in which others cajoled themselves, did not escape
the fellowship of illusion. In writing the programme for his burial
he certainly did not make clear to himself that his pleasure in the
little drama of which it formed a part was confined to anticipation.
In chuckling over the vexations he could inflict by the rigid clutch
of his dead hand, he inevitably mingled his consciousness with that
livid stagnant presence, and so far as he was preoccupied with a
future life, it was with one of gratification inside his coffin.
Thus old Featherstone was imaginative, after his fashion.
However, the three mourning-coaches were filled according to the
written orders of the deceased. There were pall-bearers on horseback,
with the richest scarfs and hatbands, and even the under-bearers
had trappings of woe which were of a good well-priced quality.
The black procession, when dismounted, looked the larger for
the smallness of the churchyard; the heavy human faces and the
black draperies shivering in the wind seemed to tell of a world
strangely incongruous with the lightly dropping blossoms and
the gleams of sunshine on the daisies. The clergyman who met
the procession was Mr. Cadwallader--also according to the request
of Peter Featherstone, prompted as usual by peculiar reasons.
Having a contempt for curates, whom he always called understrappers,
he was resolved to be buried by a beneficed clergyman. Mr. Casaubon
was out of the question, not merely because he declined duty
of this sort, but because Featherstone had an especial dislike
to him as the rector of his own parish, who had a lien on the land
in the shape of tithe, also as the deliverer of morning sermons,
which the old man, being in his pew and not at all sleepy,
had been obliged to sit through with an inward snarl. He had an
objection to a parson stuck up above his head preaching to him.
But his relations with Mr. Cadwallader had been of a different kind:
the trout-stream which ran through Mr. Casaubon's land took its course
through Featherstone's also, so that Mr. Cadwallader was a parson
who had had to ask a favor instead of preaching. Moreover, he was
one of the high gentry living four miles away from Lowick, and was
thus exalted to an equal sky with the sheriff of the county and other
dignities vaguely regarded as necessary to the system of things.
There would be a satisfaction in being buried by Mr. Cadwallader,
whose very name offered a fine opportunity for pronouncing wrongly
if you liked.
This distinction conferred on the Rector of Tipton and Freshitt was
the reason why Mrs. Cadwallader made one of the group that watched
old Featherstone's funeral from an upper window of the manor.
She was not fond of visiting that house, but she liked, as she said,
to see collections of strange animals such as there would be at
this funeral; and she had persuaded Sir James and the young Lady
Chettam to drive the Rector and herself to Lowick in order that the
visit might be altogether pleasant.
"I will go anywhere with you, Mrs. Cadwallader," Celia had said;
"but I don't like funerals."
"Oh, my dear, when you have a clergyman in your family you must
accommodate your tastes: I did that very early. When I married
Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking
the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning,
because I couldn't have the end without them."
"No, to be sure not," said the Dowager Lady Chettam,
with stately emphasis.
The upper window from which the funeral could be well seen was in the
room occupied by Mr. Casaubon when he had been forbidden to work;
but he had resumed nearly his habitual style of life now in spite
of warnings and prescriptions, and after politely welcoming
Mrs. Cadwallader had slipped again into the library to chew a cud
of erudite mistake about Cush and Mizraim.
But for her visitors Dorothea too might have been shut up in the library,
and would not have witnessed this scene of old Featherstone's
funeral, which, aloof as it seemed to be from the tenor of her life,
always afterwards came back to her at the touch of certain sensitive
points in memory, just as the vision of St. Peter's at Rome
was inwoven with moods of despondency. Scenes which make vital
changes in our neighbors' lot are but the background of our own,
yet, like a particular aspect of the fields and trees, they become
associated for us with the epochs of our own history, and make a part
of that unity which lies in the selection of our keenest consciousness.
The dream-like association of something alien and ill-understood
with the deepest secrets of her experience seemed to mirror that sense
of loneliness which was due to the very ardor of Dorothea's nature.
The country gentry of old time lived in a rarefied social air:
dotted apart on their stations up the mountain they looked down
with imperfect discrimination on the belts of thicker life below.
And Dorothea was not at ease in the perspective and chilliness of
that height.
"I shall not look any more," said Celia, after the train had entered
the church, placing herself a little behind her husband's elbow
so that she could slyly touch his coat with her cheek. "I dare say
Dodo likes it: she is fond of melancholy things and ugly people."
"I am fond of knowing something about the people I live among,"
said Dorothea, who had been watching everything with the
interest of a monk on his holiday tour. "It seems to me
we know nothing of our neighbors, unless they are cottagers.
One is constantly wondering what sort of lives other people lead,
and how they take things. I am quite obliged to Mrs. Cadwallader
for coming and calling me out of the library."
"Quite right to feel obliged to me," said Mrs. Cadwallader.
"Your rich Lowick farmers are as curious as any buffaloes or bisons,
and I dare say you don't half see them at church. They are quite
different from your uncle's tenants or Sir James's--monsters--
farmers without landlords--one can't tell how to class them."
"Most of these followers are not Lowick people," said Sir James;
"I suppose they are legatees from a distance, or from Middlemarch.
Lovegood tells me the old fellow has left a good deal of money as well
as land."
"Think of that now! when so many younger sons can't dine at
their own expense," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Ah," turning round
at the sound of the opening door, "here is Mr. Brooke. I felt
that we were incomplete before, and here is the explanation.
You are come to see this odd funeral, of course?"
"No, I came to look after Casaubon--to see how he goes on,
you know. And to bring a little news--a little news, my dear,"
said Mr. Brooke, nodding at Dorothea as she came towards him.
"I looked into the library, and I saw Casaubon over his books.
I told him it wouldn't do: I said, `This will never do, you know:
think of your wife, Casaubon.' And he promised me to come up. I didn't
tell him my news: I said, he must come up."
"Ah, now they are coming out of church," Mrs. Cadwallader exclaimed.
"Dear me, what a wonderfully mixed set! Mr. Lydgate as doctor,
I suppose. But that is really a good looking woman, and the fair
young man must be her son. Who are they, Sir James, do you know?"
"I see Vincy, the Mayor of Middlemarch; they are probably his wife
and son," said Sir James, looking interrogatively at Mr. Brooke,
who nodded and said--
"Yes, a very decent family--a very good fellow is Vincy; a credit
to the manufacturing interest. You have seen him at my house,
you know."
"Ah, yes: one of your secret committee," said Mrs. Cadwallader,
provokingly.
"A coursing fellow, though," said Sir James, with a fox-hunter's disgust.
"And one of those who suck the life out of the wretched handloom
weavers in Tipton and Freshitt. That is how his family look so fair
and sleek," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Those dark, purple-faced people
are an excellent foil. Dear me, they are like a set of jugs!
Do look at Humphrey: one might fancy him an ugly archangel towering
above them in his white surplice."
"It's a solemn thing, though, a funeral," said Mr. Brooke, "if you
take it in that light, you know."
"But I am not taking it in that light. I can't wear my solemnity
too often, else it will go to rags. It was time the old man died,
and none of these people are sorry."
"How piteous!" said Dorothea. "This funeral seems to me the most
dismal thing I ever saw. It is a blot on the morning I cannot
bear to think that any one should die and leave no love behind."
She was going to say more, but she saw her husband enter and seat
himself a little in the background. The difference his presence
made to her was not always a happy one: she felt that he often
inwardly objected to her speech.
"Positively," exclaimed Mrs. Cadwallader, "there is a new face
come out from behind that broad man queerer than any of them:
a little round head with bulging eyes--a sort of frog-face--do look.
He must be of another blood, I think."
"Let me see!" said Celia, with awakened curiosity, standing behind Mrs.
Cadwallader and leaning forward over her head. "Oh, what an odd face!"
Then with a quick change to another sort of surprised expression, she
added, "Why, Dodo, you never told me that Mr. Ladislaw was come again!"
Dorothea felt a shock of alarm: every one noticed her sudden paleness
as she looked up immediately at her uncle, while Mr. Casaubon
looked at her.
"He came with me, you know; he is my guest--puts up with me at
the Grange," said Mr. Brooke, in his easiest tone, nodding at Dorothea,
as if the announcement were just what she might have expected.
"And we have brought the picture at the top of the carriage.
I knew you would be pleased with the surprise, Casaubon. There you
are to the very life--as Aquinas, you know. Quite the right sort
of thing. And you will hear young Ladislaw talk about it.
He talks uncommonly well--points out this, that, and the other--
knows art and everything of that kind--companionable, you know--is up
with you in any track--what I've been wanting a long while."
Mr. Casaubon bowed with cold politeness, mastering his irritation,
but only so far as to be silent. He remembered Will's letter
quite as well as Dorothea did; he had noticed that it was not
among the letters which had been reserved for him on his recovery,
and secretly concluding that Dorothea had sent word to Will not
to come to Lowick, he had shrunk with proud sensitiveness from ever
recurring to the subject. He now inferred that she had asked
her uncle to invite Will to the Grange; and she felt it impossible
at that moment to enter into any explanation.
Mrs. Cadwallader's eyes, diverted from the churchyard, saw a good
deal of dumb show which was not so intelligible to her as she could
have desired, and could not repress the question, "Who is Mr. Ladislaw?"
"A young relative of Mr. Casaubon's," said Sir James, promptly.
His good-nature often made him quick and clear-seeing
in personal matters, and he had divined from Dorothea's
glance at her husband that there was some alarm in her mind.
"A very nice young fellow--Casaubon has done everything for him,"
explained Mr. Brooke. "He repays your expense in him, Casaubon,"
he went on, nodding encouragingly. "I hope he will stay with me
a long while and we shall make something of my documents. I have
plenty of ideas and facts, you know, and I can see he is just the man
to put them into shape--remembers what the right quotations are,
omne tulit punctum, and that sort of thing--gives subjects a kind
of turn. I invited him some time ago when you were ill, Casaubon;
Dorothea said you couldn't have anybody in the house, you know,
and she asked me to write."
Poor Dorothea felt that every word of her uncle's was about as
pleasant as a grain of sand in the eye to Mr. Casaubon. It would
be altogether unfitting now to explain that she had not wished her
uncle to invite Will Ladislaw. She could not in the least make clear
to herself the reasons for her husband's dislike to his presence--
a dislike painfully impressed on her by the scene in the library;
but she felt the unbecomingness of saying anything that might convey
a notion of it to others. Mr. Casaubon, indeed, had not thoroughly
represented those mixed reasons to himself; irritated feeling
with him, as with all of us, seeking rather for justification
than for self-knowledge. But he wished to repress outward signs,
and only Dorothea could discern the changes in her husband's face
before he observed with more of dignified bending and sing-song
than usual--
"You are exceedingly hospitable, my dear sir; and I owe you
acknowledgments for exercising your hospitality towards a relative
of mine."
The funeral was ended now, and the churchyard was being cleared.
"Now you can see him, Mrs. Cadwallader," said Celia. "He is just like
a miniature of Mr. Casaubon's aunt that hangs in Dorothea's boudoir--
quite nice-looking."
"A very pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, dryly. "What
is your nephew to be, Mr. Casaubon?"
"Pardon me, he is not my nephew. He is my cousin."
"Well, you know," interposed Mr. Brooke, "he is trying his wings.
He is just the sort of young fellow to rise. I should be glad
to give him an opportunity. He would make a good secretary, now,
like Hobbes, Milton, Swift--that sort of man."
"I understand," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "One who can write speeches."
"I'll fetch him in now, eh, Casaubon?" said Mr. Brooke.
"He wouldn't come in till I had announced him, you know. And we'll
go down and look at the picture. There you are to the life:
a deep subtle sort of thinker with his fore-finger on the page,
while Saint Bonaventure or somebody else, rather fat and florid,
is looking up at the Trinity. Everything is symbolical, you know--
the higher style of art: I like that up to a certain point,
but not too far--it's rather straining to keep up with, you know.
But you are at home in that, Casaubon. And your painter's flesh
is good--solidity, transparency, everything of that sort.
I went into that a great deal at one time. However, I'll go and
fetch Ladislaw."
