BOOK VI.
THE WIDOW AND THE WIFE.
CHAPTER LIV.
"Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore;
Per che si fa gentil eio ch'ella mira:
Ov'ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira,
E cui saluta fa tremar lo core.
Sicche, bassando il viso, tutto smore,
E d'ogni suo difetto allor sospira:
Fuggon dinanzi a lei Superbia ed Ira:
Aiutatemi, donne, a farle onore.
Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile
Nasee nel core a chi parlar la sente;
Ond' e beato chi prima la vide.
Quel ch'ella par quand' un poco sorride,
Non si pub dicer, ne tener a mente,
Si e nuovo miracolo gentile."
--DANTE: la Vita Nuova.
By that delightful morning when the hay-ricks at Stone Court were
scenting the air quite impartially, as if Mr. Raffles had been
a guest worthy of finest incense, Dorothea had again taken up
her abode at Lowick Manor. After three months Freshitt had become
rather oppressive: to sit like a model for Saint Catherine looking
rapturously at Celia's baby would not do for many hours in the day,
and to remain in that momentous babe's presence with persistent
disregard was a course that could not have been tolerated in a
childless sister. Dorothea would have been capable of carrying
baby joyfully for a mile if there had been need, and of loving
it the more tenderly for that labor; but to an aunt who does not
recognize her infant nephew as Bouddha, and has nothing to do for him but
to admire, his behavior is apt to appear monotonous, and the interest
of watching him exhaustible. This possibility was quite hidden
from Celia, who felt that Dorothea's childless widowhood fell in quite
prettily with the birth of little Arthur (baby was named after Mr. Brooke).
"Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having anything of her own--
children or anything!" said Celia to her husband. "And if she
had had a baby, it never could have been such a dear as Arthur.
Could it, James?
"Not if it had been like Casaubon," said Sir James, conscious of
some indirectness in his answer, and of holding a strictly private
opinion as to the perfections of his first-born.
"No! just imagine! Really it was a mercy," said Celia; "and I think
it is very nice for Dodo to be a widow. She can be just as fond
of our baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions
of her own as she likes."
"It is a pity she was not a queen," said the devout Sir James.
"But what should we have been then? We must have been something else,"
said Celia, objecting to so laborious a flight of imagination.
"I like her better as she is."
Hence, when she found that Dorothea was making arrangements for her final
departure to Lowick, Celia raised her eyebrows with disappointment,
and in her quiet unemphatic way shot a needle-arrow of sarcasm.
"What will you do at Lowick, Dodo? You say yourself there is
nothing to be done there: everybody is so clean and well off,
it makes you quite melancholy. And here you have been so happy
going all about Tipton with Mr. Garth into the worst backyards.
And now uncle is abroad, you and Mr. Garth can have it all your own way;
and I am sure James does everything you tell him."
"I shall often come here, and I shall see how baby grows all
the better," said Dorothea.
"But you will never see him washed," said Celia; "and that is quite
the best part of the day." She was almost pouting: it did seem
to her very hard in Dodo to go away from the baby when she might stay.
"Dear Kitty, I will come and stay all night on purpose,"
said Dorothea; "but I want to be alone now, and in my own home.
I wish to know the Farebrothers better, and to talk to Mr. Farebrother
about what there is to be done in Middlemarch."
Dorothea's native strength of will was no longer all converted into
resolute submission. She had a great yearning to be at Lowick,
and was simply determined to go, not feeling bound to tell all
her reasons. But every one around her disapproved. Sir James was
much pained, and offered that they should all migrate to Cheltenham
for a few months with the sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle:
at that period a man could hardly know what to propose if Cheltenham
were rejected.
The Dowager Lady Chettam, just returned from a visit to her daughter
in town, wished, at least, that Mrs. Vigo should be written to,
and invited to accept the office of companion to Mrs. Casaubon:
it was not credible that Dorothea as a young widow would think
of living alone in the house at Lowick. Mrs. Vigo had been reader
and secretary to royal personages, and in point of knowledge and
sentiments even Dorothea could have nothing to object to her.
Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, "You will certainly go mad in
that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got
to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same
names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons
and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad:
they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that.
I dare say you are a little bored here with our good dowager;
but think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-creatures
if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely.
Sitting alone in that library at Lowick you may fancy yourself
ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn't
believe you if you told them. That is a good lowering medicine."
"I never called everything by the same name that all the people
about me did," said Dorothea, stoutly.
"But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear,"
said Mrs. Cadwallader, "and that is a proof of sanity."
Dorothea was aware of the sting, but it did not hurt her.
"No," she said, "I still think that the greater part of the world
is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet
think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come
round from its opinion."
Mrs. Cadwallader said no more on that point to Dorothea, but to her
husband she remarked, "It will be well for her to marry again as soon
as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people.
Of course the Chettams would not wish it. But I see clearly
a husband is the best thing to keep her in order. If we were not
so poor I would invite Lord Triton. He will be marquis some day,
and there is no denying that she would make a good marchioness:
she looks handsomer than ever in her mourning."
"My dear Elinor, do let the poor woman alone. Such contrivances
are of no use," said the easy Rector.
"No use? How are matches made, except by bringing men and
women together? And it is a shame that her uncle should have run
away and shut up the Grange just now. There ought to be plenty
of eligible matches invited to Freshitt and the Grange. Lord Triton
is precisely the man: full of plans for making the people happy
in a soft-headed sort of way. That would just suit Mrs. Casaubon."
"Let Mrs. Casaubon choose for herself, Elinor."
"That is the nonsense you wise men talk! How can she choose
if she has no variety to choose from? A woman's choice usually
means taking the only man she can get. Mark my words, Humphrey.
If her friends don't exert themselves, there will be a worse
business than the Casaubon business yet."
"For heaven's sake don't touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a
very sore point with Sir James He would be deeply offended if you
entered on it to him unnecessarily."
"I have never entered on it," said Mrs Cadwallader, opening her hands.
"Celia told me all about the will at the beginning, without any
asking of mine."
"Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand
that the young fellow is going out of the neighborhood."
Mrs. Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her husband three
significant nods, with a very sarcastic expression in her dark eyes.
Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion.
So by the end of June the shutters were all opened at Lowick Manor,
and the morning gazed calmly into the library, shining on the rows
of note-books as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge
stones, the mute memorial of a forgotten faith; and the evening
laden with roses entered silently into the blue-green boudoir
where Dorothea chose oftenest to sit. At first she walked into
every room, questioning the eighteen months of her married life,
and carrying on her thoughts as if they were a speech to be heard
by her husband. Then, she lingered in the library and could not
be at rest till she had carefully ranged all the note-books as she
imagined that he would wish to see them, in orderly sequence.
The pity which had been the restraining compelling motive in her life
with him still clung about his image, even while she remonstrated
with him in indignant thought and told him that he was unjust.
One little act of hers may perhaps be smiled at as superstitious.
The Synoptical Tabulation for the use of Mrs. Casaubon, she
carefully enclosed and sealed, writing within the envelope,
"I could not use it. Do you not see now that I could not submit
my soul to yours, by working hopelessly at what I have no belief
in--Dorothea?" Then she deposited the paper in her own desk.
That silent colloquy was perhaps only the more earnest because underneath
and through it all there was always the deep longing which had really
determined her to come to Lowick. The longing was to see Will Ladislaw.
She did not know any good that could come of their meeting:
she was helpless; her hands had been tied from making up to him
for any unfairness in his lot. But her soul thirsted to see him.
How could it be otherwise? If a princess in the days of enchantment
had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds
come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her
with choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying,
what would she look for when the herds passed her? Surely for
the gaze which had found her, and which she would know again.
Life would be no better than candle-light tinsel and daylight
rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been, to issues
of longing and constancy. It was true that Dorothea wanted to know
the Farebrothers better, and especially to talk to the new rector,
but also true that remembering what Lydgate had told her about
Will Ladislaw and little Miss Noble, she counted on Will's coming
to Lowick to see the Farebrother family. The very first Sunday,
BEFORE she entered the church, she saw him as she had seen
him the last time she was there, alone in the clergyman's pew;
but WHEN she entered his figure was gone.
In the week-days when she went to see the ladies at the Rectory,
she listened in vain for some word that they might let fall about Will;
but it seemed to her that Mrs. Farebrother talked of every one else
in the neighborhood and out of it.
"Probably some of Mr. Farebrother's Middlemarch hearers may follow
him to Lowick sometimes. Do you not think so?" said Dorothea,
rather despising herself for having a secret motive in asking
the question.
"If they are wise they will, Mrs. Casaubon," said the old lady.
"I see that you set a right value on my son's preaching. His grandfather
on my side was an excellent clergyman, but his father was in the law:--
most exemplary and honest nevertheless, which is a reason for our
never being rich. They say Fortune is a woman and capricious.
But sometimes she is a good woman and gives to those who merit,
which has been the case with you, Mrs. Casaubon, who have given a
living to my son."
Mrs. Farebrother recurred to her knitting with a dignified satisfaction
in her neat little effort at oratory, but this was not what Dorothea
wanted to hear. Poor thing! she did not even know whether Will Ladislaw
was still at Middlemarch, and there was no one whom she dared to ask,
unless it were Lydgate. But just now she could not see Lydgate
without sending for him or going to seek him. Perhaps Will Ladislaw,
having heard of that strange ban against him left by Mr. Casaubon,
had felt it better that he and she should not meet again, and perhaps
she was wrong to wish for a meeting that others might find many good
reasons against. Still "I do wish it" came at the end of those
wise reflections as naturally as a sob after holding the breath.
And the meeting did happen, but in a formal way quite unexpected by her.
One morning, about eleven, Dorothea was seated in her boudoir with a
map of the land attached to the manor and other papers before her,
which were to help her in making an exact statement for herself
of her income and affairs. She had not yet applied herself
to her work, but was seated with her hands folded on her lap,
looking out along the avenue of limes to the distant fields.
Every leaf was at rest in the sunshine, the familiar scene
was changeless, and seemed to represent the prospect of her life,
full of motiveless ease--motiveless, if her own energy could not
seek out reasons for ardent action. The widow's cap of those times
made an oval frame for the face, and had a crown standing up;
the dress was an experiment in the utmost laying on of crape;
but this heavy solemnity of clothing made her face look all the younger,
with its recovered bloom, and the sweet, inquiring candor of her eyes.
Her reverie was broken by Tantripp, who came to say that Mr. Ladislaw
was below, and begged permission to see Madam if it were not too early.
"I will see him," said Dorothea, rising immediately. "Let him
be shown into the drawing-room."
The drawing-room was the most neutral room in the house to her--
the one least associated with the trials of her married life:
the damask matched the wood-work, which was all white and gold;
there were two tall mirrors and tables with nothing on them--
in brief, it was a room where you had no reason for sitting in one
place rather than in another. It was below the boudoir, and had
also a bow-window looking out on the avenue. But when Pratt showed
Will Ladislaw into it the window was open; and a winged visitor,
buzzing in and out now and then without minding the furniture,
made the room look less formal and uninhabited.
"Glad to see you here again, sir," said Pratt, lingering to adjust
a blind.
"I am only come to say good-by, Pratt," said Will, who wished even
the butler to know that he was too proud to hang about Mrs. Casaubon
now she was a rich widow.
"Very sorry to hear it, sir," said Pratt, retiring. Of course,
as a servant who was to be told nothing, he knew the fact of
which Ladislaw was still ignorant, and had drawn his inferences;
indeed, had not differed from his betrothed Tantripp when she said,
"Your master was as jealous as a fiend--and no reason.
Madam would look higher than Mr. Ladislaw, else I don't know her.
Mrs. Cadwallader's maid says there's a lord coming who is to marry
her when the mourning's over."
There were not many moments for Will to walk about with his hat
in his hand before Dorothea entered. The meeting was very different
from that first meeting in Rome when Will had been embarrassed
and Dorothea calm. This time he felt miserable but determined,
while she was in a state of agitation which could not be hidden.
Just outside the door she had felt that this longed-for meeting was
after all too difficult, and when she saw Will advancing towards her,
the deep blush which was rare in her came with painful suddenness.
Neither of them knew how it was, but neither of them spoke.
She gave her hand for a moment, and then they went to sit down
near the window, she on one settee and he on another opposite.
Will was peculiarly uneasy: it seemed to him not like Dorothea
that the mere fact of her being a widow should cause such a change
in her manner of receiving him; and he knew of no other condition
which could have affected their previous relation to each other--
except that, as his imagination at once told him, her friends
might have been poisoning her mind with their suspicions
of him.
"I hope I have not presumed too much in calling," said Will;
"I could not bear to leave the neighborhood and begin a new life
without seeing you to say good-by."
"Presumed? Surely not. I should have thought it unkind if you
had not wished to see me," said Dorothea, her habit of speaking
with perfect genuineness asserting itself through all her uncertainty
and agitation. "Are you going away immediately?"
"Very soon, I think. I intend to go to town and eat my dinners
as a barrister, since, they say, that is the preparation for all
public business. There will be a great deal of political work
to be done by-and-by, and I mean to try and do some of it.
Other men have managed to win an honorable position for themselves
without family or money."
"And that will make it all the more honorable," said Dorothea,
ardently. "Besides, you have so many talents. I have heard from
my uncle how well you speak in public, so that every one is sorry
when you leave off, and how clearly you can explain things.
And you care that justice should be done to every one. I am so glad.
When we were in Rome, I thought you only cared for poetry and art,
and the things that adorn life for us who are well off.
But now I know you think about the rest of the world."
While she was speaking Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment,
and had become like her former self. She looked at Will with a
direct glance, full of delighted confidence.
"You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming
here again till I have made myself of some mark in the world?"
said Will, trying hard to reconcile the utmost pride with the utmost
effort to get an expression of strong feeling from Dorothea.
She was not aware how long it was before she answered. She had
turned her head and was looking out of the window on the rose-bushes,
which seemed to have in them the summers of all the years when Will
would be away. This was not judicious behavior. But Dorothea never
thought of studying her manners: she thought only of bowing to a sad
necessity which divided her from Will. Those first words of his
about his intentions had seemed to make everything clear to her:
he knew, she supposed, all about Mr. Casaubon's final conduct in
relation to him, and it had come to him with the same sort of shock
as to herself. He had never felt more than friendship for her--
had never had anything in his mind to justify what she felt to be
her husband's outrage on the feelings of both: and that friendship
he still felt. Something which may be called an inward silent
sob had gone on in Dorothea before she said with a pure voice,
just trembling in the last words as if only from its liquid flexibility--
"Yes, it must be right for you to do as you say. I shall be
very happy when I hear that you have made your value felt.
But you must have patience. It will perhaps be a long while."
Will never quite knew how it was that he saved himself from falling
down at her feet, when the "long while" came forth with its
gentle tremor. He used to say that the horrible hue and surface
of her crape dress was most likely the sufficient controlling force.
He sat still, however, and only said--
"I shall never hear from you. And you will forget all about me."
"No," said Dorothea, "I shall never forget you. I have never
forgotten any one whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded,
and seems not likely to be so. And I have a great deal of space
for memory at Lowick, haven't I?" She smiled.
"Good God!" Will burst out passionately, rising, with his hat still
in his hand, and walking away to a marble table, where he suddenly
turned and leaned his back against it. The blood had mounted to his
face and neck, and he looked almost angry. It had seemed to him
as if they were like two creatures slowly turning to marble in each
other's presence, while their hearts were conscious and their eyes
were yearning. But there was no help for it. It should never be true
of him that in this meeting to which he had come with bitter resolution
he had ended by a confession which might be interpreted into asking
for her fortune. Moreover, it was actually true that he was fearful
of the effect which such confessions might have on Dorothea herself.
She looked at him from that distance in some trouble, imagining that
there might hate been an offence in her words. But all the while
there was a current of thought in her about his probable want
of money, and the impossibility of her helping him. If her uncle
had been at home, something might have been done through him!
It was this preoccupation with the hardship of Will's wanting money,
while she had what ought to have been his share, which led her to say,
seeing that he remained silent and looked away from her--
"I wonder whether you would like to have that miniature
which hangs up-stairs--I mean that beautiful miniature OF
your grandmother. I think it is not right for me to keep it,
if you would wish to have it. It is wonderfully like you."
"You are very good," said Will, irritably. "No; I don't mind
about it. It is not very consoling to have one's own likeness.
It would be more consoling if others wanted to have it."
"I thought you would like to cherish her memory--I thought--
"Dorothea broke off an instant, her imagination suddenly warning
her away from Aunt Julia's history--"you would surely like to have
the miniature as a family memorial."
"Why should I have that, when I have nothing else! A man with only
a portmanteau for his stowage must keep his memorials in his head."
Will spoke at random: he was merely venting his petulance;
it was a little too exasperating to have his grandmother's portrait
offered him at that moment. But to Dorothea's feeling his words
had a peculiar sting. She rose and said with a touch of indignation
as well as hauteur--
"You are much the happier of us two, Mr. Ladislaw, to have nothing."
Will was startled. Whatever the words might be, the tone seemed
like a dismissal; and quitting his leaning posture, he walked
a little way towards her. Their eyes met, but with a strange
questioning gravity. Something was keeping their minds aloof,
and each was left to conjecture what was in the other. Will had
really never thought of himself as having a claim of inheritance
on the property which was held by Dorothea, and would have required
a narrative to make him understand her present feeling.
"I never felt it a misfortune to have nothing till now," he said.
"But poverty may be as bad as leprosy, if it divides us from what we
most care for."
The words cut Dorothea to the heart, and made her relent.
She answered in a tone of sad fellowship.
"Sorrow comes in so many ways. Two years ago I had no notion of that--
I mean of the unexpected way in which trouble comes, and ties our hands,
and makes us silent when we long to speak. I used to despise women
a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better things.
I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given it up,"
she ended, smiling playfully.
"I have not given up doing as I like, but I can very seldom do it,"
said Will. He was standing two yards from her with his mind full
of contradictory desires and resolves--desiring some unmistakable
proof that she loved him, and yet dreading the position into which
such a proof might bring him. "The thing one most longs for may
be surrounded with conditions that would be intolerable."
At this moment Pratt entered and said, "Sir James Chettam
is in the library, madam."
"Ask Sir James to come in here," said Dorothea, immediately. It was
as if the same electric shock had passed through her and Will.
Each of them felt proudly resistant, and neither looked at the other,
while they awaited Sir James's entrance.
After shaking hands with Dorothea, he bowed as slightly as possible
to Ladislaw, who repaid the slightness exactly, and then going
towards Dorothea, said--
"I must say good-by, Mrs. Casaubon; and probably for a long while."
Dorothea put out her hand and said her good-by cordially. The sense
that Sir James was depreciating Will, and behaving rudely to him,
roused her resolution and dignity-there was no touch of confusion
in her manner. And when Will had left the room, she looked with
such calm self-possession at Sir James, saying, "How is Celia?"
that he was obliged to behave as if nothing had annoyed him.
And what would be the use of behaving otherwise? Indeed, Sir James
shrank with so much dislike from the association even in thought
of Dorothea with Ladislaw as her possible lover, that he would himself
have wished to avoid an outward show of displeasure which would
have recognized the disagreeable possibility. If any one had asked
him why he shrank in that way, I am not sure that he would at first
have said anything fuller or more precise than "THAT Ladislaw!"--
though on reflection he might have urged that Mr. Casaubon's codicil,
barring Dorothea's marriage with Will, except under a penalty,
was enough to cast unfitness over any relation at all between them.
His aversion was all the stronger because he felt himself unable
to interfere.
But Sir James was a power in a way unguessed by himself. Entering
at that moment, he was an incorporation of the strongest reasons
through which Will's pride became a repellent force, keeping him
asunder from Dorothea
