CHAPTER XLII.
"How much, methinks, I could despise this man
Were I not bound in charity against it!
--SHAKESPEARE: Henry VIII.
One of the professional calls made by Lydgate soon after his return
from his wedding-journey was to Lowick Manor, in consequence
of a letter which had requested him to fix a time for his visit.
Mr. Casaubon had never put any question concerning the nature
of his illness to Lydgate, nor had he even to Dorothea betrayed
any anxiety as to how far it might be likely to cut short his
labors or his life. On this point, as on all others, he shrank
from pity; and if the suspicion of being pitied for anything
in his lot surmised or known in spite of himself was embittering,
the idea of calling forth a show of compassion by frankly admitting
an alarm or a sorrow was necessarily intolerable to him.
Every proud mind knows something of this experience, and perhaps
it is only to be overcome by a sense of fellowship deep enough
to make all efforts at isolation seem mean and petty instead of exalting.
But Mr. Casaubon was now brooding over something through which the
question of his health and life haunted his silence with a more
harassing importunity even than through the autumnal unripeness
of his authorship. It is true that this last might be called his
central ambition; but there are some kinds of authorship in which
by far the largest result is the uneasy susceptibility accumulated
in the consciousness of the author one knows of the river by a
few streaks amid a long-gathered deposit of uncomfortable mud.
That was the way with Mr. Casaubon's hard intellectual labors.
Their most characteristic result was not the "Key to all Mythologies,"
but a morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place
which he had not demonstrably merited--a perpetual suspicious
conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to his advantage--
a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a
passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing.
Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have
absorbed and dried him, was really no security against wounds,
least of all against those which came from Dorothea. And he had
begun now to frame possibilities for the future which were somehow
more embittering to him than anything his mind had dwelt on before.
Against certain facts he was helpless: against Will Ladislaw's
existence his defiant stay in the neighborhood of Lowick, and his
flippant state of mind with regard to the possessors of authentic,
well-stamped erudition: against Dorothea's nature, always taking on
some new shape of ardent activity, and even in submission and silence
covering fervid reasons which it was an irritation to think of:
against certain notions and likings which had taken possession of
her mind in relation to subjects that he could not possibly discuss
with her. "There was no denying that Dorothea was as virtuous
and lovely a young lady as he could have obtained for a wife;
but a young lady turned out to be something more troublesome than he
had conceived. She nursed him, she read to him, she anticipated
his wants, and was solicitous about his feelings; but there had
entered into the husband's mind the certainty that she judged him,
and that her wifely devotedness was like a penitential expiation
of unbelieving thoughts--was accompanied with a power of comparison
by which himself and his doings were seen too luminously as a part
of things in general. His discontent passed vapor-like through all
her gentle loving manifestations, and clung to that inappreciative
world which she had only brought nearer to him.
Poor Mr. Casaubon! This suffering was the harder to bear because it
seemed like a betrayal: the young creature who had worshipped
him with perfect trust had quickly turned into the critical wife;
and early instances of criticism and resentment had made an impression
which no tenderness and submission afterwards could remove.
To his suspicious interpretation Dorothea's silence now was
a suppressed rebellion; a remark from her which he had not in
any way anticipated was an assertion of conscious superiority;
her gentle answers had an irritating cautiousness in them;
and when she acquiesced it was a self-approved effort of forbearance.
The tenacity with which he strove to hide this inward drama made it
the more vivid for him; as we hear with the more keenness what we
wish others not to hear.
Instead of wondering at this result of misery in Mr. Casaubon,
I think it quite ordinary. Will not a tiny speck very close to our
vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin
by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.
And who, if Mr. Casaubon had chosen to expound his discontents--
his suspicions that he was not any longer adored without criticism--
could have denied that they were founded on good reasons?
On the contrary, there was a strong reason to be added, which he
had not himself taken explicitly into account--namely, that he was
not unmixedly adorable. He suspected this, however, as he suspected
other things, without confessing it, and like the rest of us,
felt how soothing it would have been to have a co pan ion who would
never find it out.
This sore susceptibility in relation to Dorothea was thoroughly
prepared before Will Ladislaw had returned to Lowick, and what had
occurred since then had brought Mr. Casaubon's power of suspicious
construction into exasperated activity. To all the facts which he knew,
he added imaginary facts both present and future which become more
real to him than those because they called up a stronger dislike,
a more predominating bitterness. Suspicion and jealousy of Will
Ladislaw's intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Dorothea's impressions,
were constantly at their weaving work. It would be quite unjust
to him to suppose that he could have entered into any coarse
misinterpretation of Dorothea: his own habits of mind and conduct,
quite as much as the open elevation of her nature, saved him
from any such mistake. What he was jealous of was her opinion,
the sway that might be given to her ardent mind in its judgments,
and the future possibilities to which these might lead her.
As to Will, though until his last defiant letter he had nothing definite
which he would choose formally to allege against him, he felt himself
warranted in believing that he was capable of any design which could
fascinate a rebellious temper and an undisciplined impulsiveness.
He was quite sure that Dorothea was the cause of Will's return
from Rome, and his determination to settle in the neighborhood;
and he was penetrating enough to imagine that Dorothea had innocently
encouraged this course. It was as clear as possible that she was
ready to be attached to Will and to be pliant to his suggestions:
they had never had a tete-a-tete without her bringing away from
it some new troublesome impression, and the last interview that
Mr. Casaubon was aware of (Dorothea, on returning from Freshitt Hall,
had for the first time been silent about having seen Will) had led
to a scene which roused an angrier feeling against them both than
he had ever known before. Dorothea's outpouring of her notions
about money, in the darkness of the night, had done nothing but bring
a mixture of more odious foreboding into her husband's mind.
And there was the shock lately given to his health always sadly
present with him. He was certainly much revived; he had recovered
all his usual power of work: the illness might have been mere fatigue,
and there might still be twenty years of achievement before him,
which would justify the thirty years of preparation. That prospect
was made the sweeter by a flavor of vengeance against the hasty
sneers of Carp & Company; for even when Mr. Casaubon was carrying
his taper among the tombs of the past, those modern figures came
athwart the dim light, and interrupted his diligent exploration.
To convince Carp of his mistake, so that he would have to eat his
own words with a good deal of indigestion, would be an agreeable
accident of triumphant authorship, which the prospect of living to
future ages on earth and to all eternity in heaven could not exclude
from contemplation. Since, thus, the prevision of his own unending
bliss could not nullify the bitter savors of irritated jealousy
and vindictiveness, it is the less surprising that the probability
of a transient earthly bliss for other persons, when he himself
should have entered into glory, had not a potently sweetening effect.
If the truth should be that some undermining disease was at work
within him, there might be large opportunity for some people to be
the happier when he was gone; and if one of those people should be
Will Ladislaw, Mr. Casaubon objected so strongly that it seemed
as if the annoyance would make part of his disembodied existence.
This is a very bare and therefore a very incomplete way of putting
the case. The human soul moves in many channels, and Mr. Casaubon,
we know, had a sense of rectitude and an honorable pride in satisfying
the requirements of honor, which compelled him to find other
reasons for his conduct than those of jealousy and vindictiveness.
The way in which Mr. Casaubon put the case was this:--"In marrying
Dorothea Brooke I had to care for her well-being in case of my death.
But well-being is not to be secured by ample, independent possession
of property; on the contrary, occasions might arise in which such
possession might expose her to the more danger. She is ready prey
to any man who knows how to play adroitly either on her affectionate
ardor or her Quixotic enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that
very intention in his mind--a man with no other principle than
transient caprice, and who has a personal animosity towards me--
I am sure of it--an animosity which is fed by the consciousness
of his ingratitude, and which he has constantly vented in ridicule
of which I am as well assured as if I had heard it. Even if I
live I shall not be without uneasiness as to what he may attempt
through indirect influence. This man has gained Dorothea's ear:
he has fascinated her attention; he has evidently tried to impress
her mind with the notion that he has claims beyond anything I have done
for him. If I die--and he is waiting here on the watch for that--
he will persuade her to marry him. That would be calamity for
her and success for him. SHE would not think it calamity:
he would make her believe anything; she has a tendency to
immoderate attachment which she inwardly reproaches me for not
responding to, and already her mind is occupied with his fortunes.
He thinks of an easy conquest and of entering into my nest.
That I will hinder! Such a marriage would be fatal to Dorothea.
Has he ever persisted in anything except from contradiction?
In knowledge he has always tried to be showy at small cost.
In religion he could be, as long as it suited him, the facile echo of
Dorothea's vagaries. When was sciolism ever dissociated from laxity?
I utterly distrust his morals, and it is my duty to hinder to the
utmost the fulfilment of his designs."
The arrangements made by Mr. Casaubon on his marriage left strong
measures open to him, but in ruminating on them his mind inevitably
dwelt so much on the probabilities of his own life that the longing
to get the nearest possible calculation had at last overcome his
proud reticence, and had determined him to ask Lydgate's opinion
as to the nature of his illness.
He had mentioned to Dorothea that Lydgate was coming by appointment
at half-past three, and in answer to her anxious question, whether he
had felt ill, replied,--"No, I merely wish to have his opinion
concerning some habitual symptoms. You need not see him, my dear.
I shall give orders that he may be sent to me in the Yew-tree Walk,
where I shall be taking my usual exercise."
When Lydgate entered the Yew-tree Walk he saw Mr. Casaubon slowly
receding with his hands behind him according to his habit,
and his head bent forward. It was a lovely afternoon; the leaves
from the lofty limes were falling silently across the sombre
evergreens, while the lights and shadows slept side by side:
there was no sound but the cawing of the rooks, which to the
accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that last solemn lullaby, a dirge.
Lydgate, conscious of an energetic frame in its prime, felt some
compassion when the figure which he was likely soon to overtake
turned round, and in advancing towards him showed more markedly
than ever the signs of premature age--the student's bent shoulders,
the emaciated limbs, and the melancholy lines of the mouth.
"Poor fellow," he thought, "some men with his years are like lions;
one can tell nothing of their age except that they are full grown."
"Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, with his invariably po lite air,
"I am exceedingly obliged to you for your punctuality. We will,
if you please, carry on our conversation in walking to and fro."
"I hope your wish to see me is not due to the return
of unpleasant symptoms," said Lydgate, filling up a pause.
"Not immediately--no. In order to account for that wish I must mention--
what it were otherwise needless to refer to--that my life,
on all collateral accounts insignificant, derives a possible
importance from the incompleteness of labors which have extended
through all its best years. In short, I have long had on hand
a work which I would fain leave behind me in such a state, at least,
that it might be committed to the press by--others. Were I assured
that this is the utmost I can reasonably expect, that assurance
would be a useful circumscription of my attempts, and a guide
in both the positive and negative determination of my course."
Here Mr. Casaubon paused, removed one hand from his back and thrust
it between the buttons of his single-breasted coat. To a mind
largely instructed in the human destiny hardly anything could be
more interesting than the inward conflict implied in his formal
measured address, delivered with the usual sing-song and motion
of the head. Nay, are there many situations more sublimely tragic
than the struggle of the soul with the demand to renounce a work
which has been all the significance of its life--a significance
which is to vanish as the waters which come and go where no man has
need of them? But there was nothing to strike others as sublime
about Mr. Casaubon, and Lydgate, who had some contempt at hand for
futile scholarship, felt a little amusement mingling with his pity.
He was at present too ill acquainted with disaster to enter into
the pathos of a lot where everything is below the level of tragedy
except the passionate egoism of the sufferer.
"You refer to the possible hindrances from want of health?" he said,
wishing to help forward Mr. Casaubon's purpose, which seemed to be
clogged by some hesitation.
"I do. You have not implied to me that the symptoms which--
I am bound to testify--you watched with scrupulous care,
were those of a fatal disease. But were it so, Mr. Lydgate,
I should desire to know the truth without reservation, and I
appeal to you for an exact statement of your conclusions:
I request it as a friendly service. If you can tell me that my
life is not threatened by anything else than ordinary casualties,
I shall rejoice, on grounds which I have already indicated.
If not, knowledge of the truth is even more important to me."
"Then I can no longer hesitate as to my course," said Lydgate;
"but the first thing I must impress on you is that my conclusions
are doubly uncertain--uncertain not only because of my fallibility,
but because diseases of the heart are eminently difficult to found
predictions on. In any ease, one can hardly increase appreciably
the tremendous uncertainty of life."
Mr. Casaubon winced perceptibly, but bowed.
"I believe that you are suffering from what is called fatty
degeneration of the heart, a disease which was first divined
and explored by Laennec, the man who gave us the stethoscope,
not so very many years ago. A good deal of experience--a more
lengthened observation--is wanting on the subject. But after
what you have said, it is my duty to tell you that death from this
disease is often sudden. At the same time, no such result can
be predicted. Your condition may be consistent with a tolerably
comfortable life for another fifteen years, or even more. I could
add no information to this beyond anatomical or medical details,
which would leave expectation at precisely the same point."
Lydgate's instinct was fine enough to tell him that plain speech,
quite free from ostentatious caution, would be felt by Mr. Casaubon
as a tribute of respect.
"I thank you, Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, after a moment's pause.
"One thing more I have still to ask: did you communicate what you
have now told me to Mrs. Casaubon?"
"Partly--I mean, as to the possible issues." Lydgate was going
to explain why he had told Dorothea, but Mr. Casaubon, with an
unmistakable desire to end the conversation, waved his hand slightly,
and said again, "I thank you," proceeding to remark on the rare
beauty of the day.
Lydgate, certain that his patient wished to be alone, soon left him;
and the black figure with hands behind and head bent forward
continued to pace the walk where the dark yew-trees gave him
a mute companionship in melancholy, and the little shadows of bird
or leaf that fleeted across the isles of sunlight, stole along
in silence as in the presence of a sorrow. Here was a man who now
for the first time found himself looking into the eyes of death--
who was passing through one of those rare moments of experience
when we feel the truth of a commonplace, which is as different from
what we call knowing it, as the vision of waters upon the earth is
different from the delirious vision of the water which cannot be had
to cool the burning tongue. When the commonplace "We must all die"
transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness "I must die--
and soon," then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel;
afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did,
and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first.
To Mr. Casaubon now, it was as if he suddenly found himself on
the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the oncoming oar,
not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons. In such an
hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias, but carries it
onward in imagination to the other side of death, gazing backward--
perhaps with the divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the petty
anxieties of self-assertion. What was Mr. Casaubon's bias his acts
will give us a clew to. He held himself to be, with some private
scholarly reservations, a believing Christian, as to estimates of
the present and hopes of the future. But what we strive to gratify,
though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire:
the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already
in their imagination and love. And Mr. Casaubon's immediate desire
was not for divine communion and light divested of earthly conditions;
his passionate longings, poor man, clung low and mist-like in very
shady places.
Dorothea had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had
stepped into the garden, with the impulse to go at once to her husband.
But she hesitated, fearing to offend him by obtruding herself;
for her ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory,
to heighten her dread, as thwarted energy subsides into a shudder;
and she wandered slowly round the nearer clumps of trees until
she saw him advancing. Then she went towards him, and might have
represented a heaven-sent angel coming with a promise that the
short hours remaining should yet be filled with that faithful
love which clings the closer to a comprehended grief. His glance
in reply to hers was so chill that she felt her timidity increased;
yet she turned and passed her hand through his arm.
Mr. Casaubon kept his hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm
to cling with difficulty against his rigid arm.
There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this
unresponsive hardness inflicted on her. That is a strong word,
but not too strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that
the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round
with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made,
and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness--calling their
denial knowledge. You may ask why, in the name of manliness,
Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in that way. Consider that his
was a mind which shrank from pity: have you ever watched in such
a mind the effect of a suspicion that what is pressing it as a grief
may be really a source of contentment, either actual or future,
to the being who already offends by pitying? Besides, he knew
little of Dorothea's sensations, and had not reflected that on
such an occasion as the present they were comparable in strength
to his own sensibilities about Carp's criticisms.
Dorothea did not withdraw her arm, but she could not venture to speak.
Mr. Casaubon did not say, "I wish to be alone," but he directed his
steps in silence towards the house, and as they entered by the glass
door on this eastern side, Dorothea withdrew her arm and lingered
on the matting, that she might leave her husband quite free.
He entered the library and shut himself in, alone with his sorrow.
She went up to her boudoir. The open bow-window let in the serene
glory of the afternoon lying in the avenue, where the lime-trees
east long shadows. But Dorothea knew nothing of the scene.
She threw herself on a chair, not heeding that she was in the
dazzling sun-rays: if there were discomfort in that, how could
she tell that it was not part of her inward misery?
She was in the reaction of a rebellious anger stronger than any she
had felt since her marriage. Instead of tears there came words:--
"What have I done--what am I--that he should treat me so?
He never knows what is in my mind--he never cares. What is the use
of anything I do? He wishes he had never married me."
She began to hear herself, and was checked into stillness. Like one
who has lost his way and is weary, she sat and saw as in one glance
all the paths of her young hope which she should never find again.
And just as clearly in the miserable light she saw her own and her
husband's solitude--how they walked apart so that she was obliged
to survey him. If he had drawn her towards him, she would never have
surveyed him--never have said, "Is he worth living for?" but would
have felt him simply a part of her own life. Now she said bitterly,
"It is his fault, not mine." In the jar of her whole being,
Pity was overthrown. Was it her fault that she had believed in him--
had believed in his worthiness?--And what, exactly, was he?--
She was able enough to estimate him--she who waited on his glances
with trembling, and shut her best soul in prison, paying it only
hidden visits, that she might be petty enough to please him.
In such a crisis as this, some women begin to hate.
The sun was low when Dorothea was thinking that she would not go
down again, but would send a message to her husband saying that she
was not well and preferred remaining up-stairs. She had never
deliberately allowed her resentment to govern her in this way before,
but she believed now that she could not see him again without
telling him the truth about her feeling, and she must wait till
she could do it without interruption. He might wonder and be hurt
at her message. It was good that he should wonder and be hurt.
Her anger said, as anger is apt to say, that God was with her--
that all heaven, though it were crowded with spirits watching them,
must be on her side. She had determined to ring her bell, when there
came a rap at the door.
Mr. Casaubon had sent to say that he would have his dinner
in the library. He wished to be quite alone this evening,
being much occupied.
"I shall not dine, then, Tantripp."
"Oh, madam, let me bring you a little something?"
"No; I am not well. Get everything ready in my dressing room,
but pray do not disturb me again."
Dorothea sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle,
while the evening slowly deepened into night. But the struggle
changed continually, as that of a man who begins with a movement
towards striking and ends with conquering his desire to strike.
The energy that would animate a crime is not more than is wanted
to inspire a resolved, submission, when the noble habit of the soul
reasserts itself. That thought with which Dorothea had gone
out to meet her husband--her conviction that he had been asking
about the possible arrest of all his work, and that the answer
must have wrung his heart, could not be long without rising beside
the image of him, like a shadowy monitor looking at her anger
with sad remonstrance. It cost her a litany of pictured sorrows
and of silent cries that she might be the mercy for those sorrows--
but the resolved submission did come; and when the house was still,
and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon habitually
went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside in the
darkness waiting for his coming up-stairs with a light in his hand.
If he did not come soon she thought that she would go down and even risk
incurring another pang. She would never again expect anything else.
But she did hear the library door open, and slowly the light advanced
up the staircase without noise from the footsteps on the carpet.
When her husband stood opposite to her, she saw that his face was
more haggard. He started slightly on seeing her, and she looked up
at him beseechingly, without speaking.
"Dorothea!" he said, with a gentle surprise in his tone. "Were you
waiting for me?"
"Yes, I did not like to disturb you."
"Come, my dear, come. You are young, and need not to extend your
life by watching."
When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea's ears,
she felt something like the thankfulness that might well up
in us if we had narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature.
She put her hand into her husband's, and they went along the broad
corridor together.
