Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (297 page)

“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 moments. When she spoke there was a tear gathering.

“Oh, 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 under tone. “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.

“Never mind, Kitty, do not grieve. We should never admire the same people. I often offend in something of the same way; I am apt to speak too strongly of those who don’t please me.”

In spite of this magnanimity Dorothea was still smarting: perhaps as much from Celia’s subdued astonishment as from her small criticisms. Of course all the world round Tipton would be out of sympathy with this marriage. Dorothea knew of no one who thought as she did about life and its best objects.

Nevertheless before the evening was at an end she was very happy. In an hour’s tete-a-tete with Mr. Casaubon she talked to him with more freedom than she had ever felt before, even pouring out her joy at the thought of devoting herself to him, and of learning how she might best share and further all his great ends. Mr. Casaubon was touched with an unknown delight (what man would not have been?) at this childlike unrestrained ardor: he was not surprised (what lover would have been?) that he should be the object of it.

“My dear young lady — Miss Brooke — Dorothea!” he said, pressing her hand between his hands, “this is a happiness greater than I had ever imagined to be in reserve for me. That I should ever meet with a mind and person so rich in the mingled graces which could render marriage desirable, was far indeed from my conception. You have all — nay, more than all — those qualities which I have ever regarded as the characteristic excellences of womanhood. The great charm of your sex is its capability of an ardent self-sacrificing affection, and herein we see its fitness to round and complete the existence of our own. Hitherto I have known few pleasures save of the severer kind: my satisfactions have been those of the solitary student. I have been little disposed to gather flowers that would wither in my hand, but now I shall pluck them with eagerness, to place them in your bosom.”

No speech could have been more thoroughly honest in its intention: the frigid rhetoric at the end was as sincere as the bark of a dog, or the cawing of an amorous rook. Would it not be rash to conclude that there was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike us as the thin music of a mandolin?

Dorothea’s faith supplied all that Mr. Casaubon’s words seemed to leave unsaid: what believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.

“I am very ignorant — you will quite wonder at my ignorance,” said Dorothea. “I have so many thoughts that may be quite mistaken; and now I shall be able to tell them all to you, and ask you about them. But,” she added, with rapid imagination of Mr. Casaubon’s probable feeling, “I will not trouble you too much; only when you are inclined to listen to me. You must often be weary with the pursuit of subjects in your own track. I shall gain enough if you will take me with you there.”

“How should I be able now to persevere in any path without your companionship?” said Mr. Casaubon, kissing her candid brow, and feeling that heaven had vouchsafed him a blessing in every way suited to his peculiar wants. He was being unconsciously wrought upon by the charms of a nature which was entirely without hidden calculations either for immediate effects or for remoter ends. It was this which made Dorothea so childlike, and, according to some judges, so stupid, with all her reputed cleverness; as, for example, in the present case of throwing herself, metaphorically speaking, at Mr. Casaubon’s feet, and kissing his unfashionable shoe-ties as if he were a Protestant Pope. She was not in the least teaching Mr. Casaubon to ask if he were good enough for her, but merely asking herself anxiously how she could be good enough for Mr. Casaubon. Before he left the next day it had been decided that the marriage should take place within six weeks. Why not? Mr. Casaubon’s house was ready. It was not a parsonage, but a considerable mansion, with much land attached to it. The parsonage was inhabited by the curate, who did all the duty except preaching the morning sermon.

CHAPTER VI
.

 
My lady’s tongue is like the meadow blades,

 
That cut you stroking them with idle hand.

 
Nice cutting is her function: she divides

 
With spiritual edge the millet-seed,

 
And makes intangible savings.

As Mr. Casaubon’s carriage was passing out of the gateway, it arrested the entrance of a pony phaeton driven by a lady with a servant seated behind. It was doubtful whether the recognition had been mutual, for Mr. Casaubon was looking absently before him; but the lady was quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a “How do you do?” in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the entrance of the small phaeton.

“Well, Mrs. Fitchett, how are your fowls laying now?” said the high-colored, dark-eyed lady, with the clearest chiselled utterance.

“Pretty well for laying, madam, but they’ve ta’en to eating their eggs: I’ve no peace o’ mind with ‘em at all.”

“Oh, the cannibals! Better sell them cheap at once. What will you sell them a couple? One can’t eat fowls of a bad character at a high price.”

“Well, madam, half-a-crown: I couldn’t let ‘em go, not under.”

“Half-a-crown, these times! Come now — for the Rector’s chicken-broth on a Sunday. He has consumed all ours that I can spare. You are half paid with the sermon, Mrs. Fitchett, remember that. Take a pair of tumbler-pigeons for them — little beauties. You must come and see them. You have no tumblers among your pigeons.”

“Well, madam, Master Fitchett shall go and see ‘em after work. He’s very hot on new sorts; to oblige you.”

“Oblige me! It will be the best bargain he ever made. A pair of church pigeons for a couple of wicked Spanish fowls that eat their own eggs! Don’t you and Fitchett boast too much, that is all!”

The phaeton was driven onwards with the last words, leaving Mrs. Fitchett laughing and shaking her head slowly, with an interjectional “Sure
ly
, sure
ly
!” — from which it might be inferred that she would have found the country-side somewhat duller if the Rector’s lady had been less free-spoken and less of a skinflint. Indeed, both the farmers and laborers in the parishes of Freshitt and Tipton would have felt a sad lack of conversation but for the stories about what Mrs. Cadwallader said and did: a lady of immeasurably high birth, descended, as it were, from unknown earls, dim as the crowd of heroic shades — who pleaded poverty, pared down prices, and cut jokes in the most companionable manner, though with a turn of tongue that let you know who she was. Such a lady gave a neighborliness to both rank and religion, and mitigated the bitterness of uncommuted tithe. A much more exemplary character with an infusion of sour dignity would not have furthered their comprehension of the Thirty-nine Articles, and would have been less socially uniting.

Mr. Brooke, seeing Mrs. Cadwallader’s merits from a different point of view, winced a little when her name was announced in the library, where he was sitting alone.

“I see you have had our Lowick Cicero here,” she said, seating herself comfortably, throwing back her wraps, and showing a thin but well-built figure. “I suspect you and he are brewing some bad polities, else you would not be seeing so much of the lively man. I shall inform against you: remember you are both suspicious characters since you took Peel’s side about the Catholic Bill. I shall tell everybody that you are going to put up for Middlemarch on the Whig side when old Pinkerton resigns, and that Casaubon is going to help you in an underhand manner: going to bribe the voters with pamphlets, and throw open the public-houses to distribute them. Come, confess!”

“Nothing of the sort,” said Mr. Brooke, smiling and rubbing his eye-glasses, but really blushing a little at the impeachment. “Casaubon and I don’t talk politics much. He doesn’t care much about the philanthropic side of things; punishments, and that kind of thing. He only cares about Church questions. That is not my line of action, you know.”

“Ra-a-ther too much, my friend. I have heard of your doings. Who was it that sold his bit of land to the Papists at Middlemarch? I believe you bought it on purpose. You are a perfect Guy Faux. See if you are not burnt in effigy this 5th of November coming. Humphrey would not come to quarrel with you about it, so I am come.”

“Very good. I was prepared to be persecuted for not persecuting — not persecuting, you know.”

“There you go! That is a piece of clap-trap you have got ready for the hustings. Now,
do not
let them lure you to the hustings, my dear Mr. Brooke. A man always makes a fool of himself, speechifying: there’s no excuse but being on the right side, so that you can ask a blessing on your humming and hawing. You will lose yourself, I forewarn you. You will make a Saturday pie of all parties’ opinions, and be pelted by everybody.”

“That is what I expect, you know,” said Mr. Brooke, not wishing to betray how little he enjoyed this prophetic sketch — “what I expect as an independent man. As to the Whigs, a man who goes with the thinkers is not likely to be hooked on by any party. He may go with them up to a certain point — up to a certain point, you know. But that is what you ladies never understand.”

“Where your certain point is? No. I should like to be told how a man can have any certain point when he belongs to no party — leading a roving life, and never letting his friends know his address. ‘Nobody knows where Brooke will be — there’s no counting on Brooke’ — that is what people say of you, to be quite frank. Now, do turn respectable. How will you like going to Sessions with everybody looking shy on you, and you with a bad conscience and an empty pocket?”

“I don’t pretend to argue with a lady on politics,” said Mr. Brooke, with an air of smiling indifference, but feeling rather unpleasantly conscious that this attack of Mrs. Cadwallader’s had opened the defensive campaign to which certain rash steps had exposed him. “Your sex are not thinkers, you know — varium et mutabile semper — that kind of thing. You don’t know Virgil. I knew” — Mr. Brooke reflected in time that he had not had the personal acquaintance of the Augustan poet — “I was going to say, poor Stoddart, you know. That was what
he
said. You ladies are always against an independent attitude — a man’s caring for nothing but truth, and that sort of thing. And there is no part of the county where opinion is narrower than it is here — I don’t mean to throw stones, you know, but somebody is wanted to take the independent line; and if I don’t take it, who will?”

“Who? Why, any upstart who has got neither blood nor position. People of standing should consume their independent nonsense at home, not hawk it about. And you! who are going to marry your niece, as good as your daughter, to one of our best men. Sir James would be cruelly annoyed: it will be too hard on him if you turn round now and make yourself a Whig sign-board.”

Mr. Brooke again winced inwardly, for Dorothea’s engagement had no sooner been decided, than he had thought of Mrs. Cadwallader’s prospective taunts. It might have been easy for ignorant observers to say, “Quarrel with Mrs. Cadwallader;” but where is a country gentleman to go who quarrels with his oldest neighbors? Who could taste the fine flavor in the name of Brooke if it were delivered casually, like wine without a seal? Certainly a man can only be cosmopolitan up to a certain point.

“I hope Chettam and I shall always be good friends; but I am sorry to say there is no prospect of his marrying my niece,” said Mr. Brooke, much relieved to see through the window that Celia was coming in.

“Why not?” said Mrs. Cadwallader, with a sharp note of surprise. “It is hardly a fortnight since you and I were talking about it.”

“My niece has chosen another suitor — has chosen him, you know. I have had nothing to do with it. I should have preferred Chettam; and I should have said Chettam was the man any girl would have chosen. But there is no accounting for these things. Your sex is capricious, you know.”

“Why, whom do you mean to say that you are going to let her marry?” Mrs. Cadwallader’s mind was rapidly surveying the possibilities of choice for Dorothea.

But here Celia entered, blooming from a walk in the garden, and the greeting with her delivered Mr. Brooke from the necessity of answering immediately. He got up hastily, and saying, “By the way, I must speak to Wright about the horses,” shuffled quickly out of the room.

“My dear child, what is this? — this about your sister’s engagement?” said Mrs. Cadwallader.

“She is engaged to marry Mr. Casaubon,” said Celia, resorting, as usual, to the simplest statement of fact, and enjoying this opportunity of speaking to the Rector’s wife alone.

“This is frightful. How long has it been going on?”

“I only knew of it yesterday. They are to be married in six weeks.”

“Well, my dear, I wish you joy of your brother-in-law.”

“I am so sorry for Dorothea.”

“Sorry! It is her doing, I suppose.”

“Yes; she says Mr. Casaubon has a great soul.”

“With all my heart.”

“Oh, Mrs. Cadwallader, I don’t think it can be nice to marry a man with a great soul.”

“Well, my dear, take warning. You know the look of one now; when the next comes and wants to marry you, don’t you accept him.”

“I’m sure I never should.”

“No; one such in a family is enough. So your sister never cared about Sir James Chettam? What would you have said to
him
for a brother-in-law?”

“I should have liked that very much. I am sure he would have been a good husband. Only,” Celia added, with a slight blush (she sometimes seemed to blush as she breathed), “I don’t think he would have suited Dorothea.”

“Not high-flown enough?”

“Dodo is very strict. She thinks so much about everything, and is so particular about what one says. Sir James never seemed to please her.”

“She must have encouraged him, I am sure. That is not very creditable.”

“Please don’t be angry with Dodo; she does not see things. She thought so much about the cottages, and she was rude to Sir James sometimes; but he is so kind, he never noticed it.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Cadwallader, putting on her shawl, and rising, as if in haste, “I must go straight to Sir James and break this to him. He will have brought his mother back by this time, and I must call. Your uncle will never tell him. We are all disappointed, my dear. Young people should think of their families in marrying. I set a bad example — married a poor clergyman, and made myself a pitiable object among the De Bracys — obliged to get my coals by stratagem, and pray to heaven for my salad oil. However, Casaubon has money enough; I must do him that justice. As to his blood, I suppose the family quarterings are three cuttle-fish sable, and a commentator rampant. By the bye, before I go, my dear, I must speak to your Mrs. Carter about pastry. I want to send my young cook to learn of her. Poor people with four children, like us, you know, can’t afford to keep a good cook. I have no doubt Mrs. Carter will oblige me. Sir James’s cook is a perfect dragon.”

In less than an hour, Mrs. Cadwallader had circumvented Mrs. Carter and driven to Freshitt Hall, which was not far from her own parsonage, her husband being resident in Freshitt and keeping a curate in Tipton.

Sir James Chettam had returned from the short journey which had kept him absent for a couple of days, and had changed his dress, intending to ride over to Tipton Grange. His horse was standing at the door when Mrs. Cadwallader drove up, and he immediately appeared there himself, whip in hand. Lady Chettam had not yet returned, but Mrs. Cadwallader’s errand could not be despatched in the presence of grooms, so she asked to be taken into the conservatory close by, to look at the new plants; and on coming to a contemplative stand, she said —

“I have a great shock for you; I hope you are not so far gone in love as you pretended to be.”