Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (347 page)

And yet, could she deny him? Could she say, “I refuse to content this pining hunger?” It would be refusing to do for him dead, what she was almost sure to do for him living. If he lived as Lydgate had said he might, for fifteen years or more, her life would certainly be spent in helping him and obeying him.

Still, there was a deep difference between that devotion to the living and that indefinite promise of devotion to the dead. While he lived, he could claim nothing that she would not still be free to remonstrate against, and even to refuse. But — the thought passed through her mind more than once, though she could not believe in it — might he not mean to demand something more from her than she had been able to imagine, since he wanted her pledge to carry out his wishes without telling her exactly what they were? No; his heart was bound up in his work only: that was the end for which his failing life was to be eked out by hers.

And now, if she were to say, “No! if you die, I will put no finger to your work” — it seemed as if she would be crushing that bruised heart.

For four hours Dorothea lay in this conflict, till she felt ill and bewildered, unable to resolve, praying mutely. Helpless as a child which has sobbed and sought too long, she fell into a late morning sleep, and when she waked Mr. Casaubon was already up. Tantripp told her that he had read prayers, breakfasted, and was in the library.

“I never saw you look so pale, madam,” said Tantripp, a solid-figured woman who had been with the sisters at Lausanne.

“Was I ever high-colored, Tantripp?” said Dorothea, smiling faintly.

“Well, not to say high-colored, but with a bloom like a Chiny rose. But always smelling those leather books, what can be expected? Do rest a little this morning, madam. Let me say you are ill and not able to go into that close library.”

“Oh no, no! let me make haste,” said Dorothea. “Mr. Casaubon wants me particularly.”

When she went down she felt sure that she should promise to fulfil his wishes; but that would be later in the day — not yet.

As Dorothea entered the library, Mr. Casaubon turned round from the table where he had been placing some books, and said —

“I was waiting for your appearance, my dear. I had hoped to set to work at once this morning, but I find myself under some indisposition, probably from too much excitement yesterday. I am going now to take a turn in the shrubbery, since the air is milder.”

“I am glad to hear that,” said Dorothea. “Your mind, I feared, was too active last night.”

“I would fain have it set at rest on the point I last spoke of, Dorothea. You can now, I hope, give me an answer.”

“May I come out to you in the garden presently?” said Dorothea, winning a little breathing space in that way.

“I shall be in the Yew-tree Walk for the next half-hour,” said Mr. Casaubon, and then he left her.

Dorothea, feeling very weary, rang and asked Tantripp to bring her some wraps. She had been sitting still for a few minutes, but not in any renewal of the former conflict: she simply felt that she was going to say “Yes” to her own doom: she was too weak, too full of dread at the thought of inflicting a keen-edged blow on her husband, to do anything but submit completely. She sat still and let Tantripp put on her bonnet and shawl, a passivity which was unusual with her, for she liked to wait on herself.

“God bless you, madam!” said Tantripp, with an irrepressible movement of love towards the beautiful, gentle creature for whom she felt unable to do anything more, now that she had finished tying the bonnet.

This was too much for Dorothea’s highly-strung feeling, and she burst into tears, sobbing against Tantripp’s arm. But soon she checked herself, dried her eyes, and went out at the glass door into the shrubbery.

“I wish every book in that library was built into a caticom for your master,” said Tantripp to Pratt, the butler, finding him in the breakfast-room. She had been at Rome, and visited the antiquities, as we know; and she always declined to call Mr. Casaubon anything but “your master,” when speaking to the other servants.

Pratt laughed. He liked his master very well, but he liked Tantripp better.

When Dorothea was out on the gravel walks, she lingered among the nearer clumps of trees, hesitating, as she had done once before, though from a different cause. Then she had feared lest her effort at fellowship should be unwelcome; now she dreaded going to the spot where she foresaw that she must bind herself to a fellowship from which she shrank. Neither law nor the world’s opinion compelled her to this — only her husband’s nature and her own compassion, only the ideal and not the real yoke of marriage. She saw clearly enough the whole situation, yet she was fettered: she could not smite the stricken soul that entreated hers. If that were weakness, Dorothea was weak. But the half-hour was passing, and she must not delay longer. When she entered the Yew-tree Walk she could not see her husband; but the walk had bends, and she went, expecting to catch sight of his figure wrapped in a blue cloak, which, with a warm velvet cap, was his outer garment on chill days for the garden. It occurred to her that he might be resting in the summer-house, towards which the path diverged a little. Turning the angle, she could see him seated on the bench, close to a stone table. His arms were resting on the table, and his brow was bowed down on them, the blue cloak being dragged forward and screening his face on each side.

“He exhausted himself last night,” Dorothea said to herself, thinking at first that he was asleep, and that the summer-house was too damp a place to rest in. But then she remembered that of late she had seen him take that attitude when she was reading to him, as if he found it easier than any other; and that he would sometimes speak, as well as listen, with his face down in that way. She went into the summerhouse and said, “I am come, Edward; I am ready.”

He took no notice, and she thought that he must be fast asleep. She laid her hand on his shoulder, and repeated, “I am ready!” Still he was motionless; and with a sudden confused fear, she leaned down to him, took off his velvet cap, and leaned her cheek close to his head, crying in a distressed tone —

“Wake, dear, wake! Listen to me. I am come to answer.” But Dorothea never gave her answer.

Later in the day, Lydgate was seated by her bedside, and she was talking deliriously, thinking aloud, and recalling what had gone through her mind the night before. She knew him, and called him by his name, but appeared to think it right that she should explain everything to him; and again, and again, begged him to explain everything to her husband.

“Tell him I shall go to him soon: I am ready to promise. Only, thinking about it was so dreadful — it has made me ill. Not very ill. I shall soon be better. Go and tell him.”

But the silence in her husband’s ear was never more to be broken.

CHAPTER XLIX
.

 
A task too strong for wizard spells

 
This squire had brought about;

 
‘T is easy dropping stones in wells,

 
But who shall get them out?”

“I wish to God we could hinder Dorothea from knowing this,” said Sir James Chettam, with a little frown on his brow, and an expression of intense disgust about his mouth.

He was standing on the hearth-rug in the library at Lowick Grange, and speaking to Mr. Brooke. It was the day after Mr. Casaubon had been buried, and Dorothea was not yet able to leave her room.

“That would be difficult, you know, Chettam, as she is an executrix, and she likes to go into these things — property, land, that kind of thing. She has her notions, you know,” said Mr. Brooke, sticking his eye-glasses on nervously, and exploring the edges of a folded paper which he held in his hand; “and she would like to act — depend upon it, as an executrix Dorothea would want to act. And she was twenty-one last December, you know. I can hinder nothing.”

Sir James looked at the carpet for a minute in silence, and then lifting his eyes suddenly fixed them on Mr. Brooke, saying, “I will tell you what we can do. Until Dorothea is well, all business must be kept from her, and as soon as she is able to be moved she must come to us. Being with Celia and the baby will be the best thing in the world for her, and will pass away the time. And meanwhile you must get rid of Ladislaw: you must send him out of the country.” Here Sir James’s look of disgust returned in all its intensity.

Mr. Brooke put his hands behind him, walked to the window and straightened his back with a little shake before he replied.

“That is easily said, Chettam, easily said, you know.”

“My dear sir,” persisted Sir James, restraining his indignation within respectful forms, “it was you who brought him here, and you who keep him here — I mean by the occupation you give him.”

“Yes, but I can’t dismiss him in an instant without assigning reasons, my dear Chettam. Ladislaw has been invaluable, most satisfactory. I consider that I have done this part of the country a service by bringing him — by bringing him, you know.” Mr. Brooke ended with a nod, turning round to give it.

“It’s a pity this part of the country didn’t do without him, that’s all I have to say about it. At any rate, as Dorothea’s brother-in-law, I feel warranted in objecting strongly to his being kept here by any action on the part of her friends. You admit, I hope, that I have a right to speak about what concerns the dignity of my wife’s sister?”

Sir James was getting warm.

“Of course, my dear Chettam, of course. But you and I have different ideas — different — “

“Not about this action of Casaubon’s, I should hope,” interrupted Sir James. “I say that he has most unfairly compromised Dorothea. I say that there never was a meaner, more ungentlemanly action than this — a codicil of this sort to a will which he made at the time of his marriage with the knowledge and reliance of her family — a positive insult to Dorothea!”

“Well, you know, Casaubon was a little twisted about Ladislaw. Ladislaw has told me the reason — dislike of the bent he took, you know — Ladislaw didn’t think much of Casaubon’s notions, Thoth and Dagon — that sort of thing: and I fancy that Casaubon didn’t like the independent position Ladislaw had taken up. I saw the letters between them, you know. Poor Casaubon was a little buried in books — he didn’t know the world.”

“It’s all very well for Ladislaw to put that color on it,” said Sir James. “But I believe Casaubon was only jealous of him on Dorothea’s account, and the world will suppose that she gave him some reason; and that is what makes it so abominable — coupling her name with this young fellow’s.”

“My dear Chettam, it won’t lead to anything, you know,” said Mr. Brooke, seating himself and sticking on his eye-glass again. “It’s all of a piece with Casaubon’s oddity. This paper, now, ‘Synoptical Tabulation’ and so on, ‘for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,’ it was locked up in the desk with the will. I suppose he meant Dorothea to publish his researches, eh? and she’ll do it, you know; she has gone into his studies uncommonly.”

“My dear sir,” said Sir James, impatiently, “that is neither here nor there. The question is, whether you don’t see with me the propriety of sending young Ladislaw away?”

“Well, no, not the urgency of the thing. By-and-by, perhaps, it may come round. As to gossip, you know, sending him away won’t hinder gossip. People say what they like to say, not what they have chapter and verse for,” said Mr Brooke, becoming acute about the truths that lay on the side of his own wishes. “I might get rid of Ladislaw up to a certain point — take away the ‘Pioneer’ from him, and that sort of thing; but I couldn’t send him out of the country if he didn’t choose to go — didn’t choose, you know.”

Mr. Brooke, persisting as quietly as if he were only discussing the nature of last year’s weather, and nodding at the end with his usual amenity, was an exasperating form of obstinacy.

“Good God!” said Sir James, with as much passion as he ever showed, “let us get him a post; let us spend money on him. If he could go in the suite of some Colonial Governor! Grampus might take him — and I could write to Fulke about it.”

“But Ladislaw won’t be shipped off like a head of cattle, my dear fellow; Ladislaw has his ideas. It’s my opinion that if he were to part from me to-morrow, you’d only hear the more of him in the country. With his talent for speaking and drawing up documents, there are few men who could come up to him as an agitator — an agitator, you know.”

“Agitator!” said Sir James, with bitter emphasis, feeling that the syllables of this word properly repeated were a sufficient exposure of its hatefulness.

“But be reasonable, Chettam. Dorothea, now. As you say, she had better go to Celia as soon as possible. She can stay under your roof, and in the mean time things may come round quietly. Don’t let us be firing off our guns in a hurry, you know. Standish will keep our counsel, and the news will be old before it’s known. Twenty things may happen to carry off Ladislaw — without my doing anything, you know.”

“Then I am to conclude that you decline to do anything?”

“Decline, Chettam? — no — I didn’t say decline. But I really don’t see what I could do. Ladislaw is a gentleman.”

“I am glad to hear It!” said Sir James, his irritation making him forget himself a little. “I am sure Casaubon was not.”

“Well, it would have been worse if he had made the codicil to hinder her from marrying again at all, you know.”

“I don’t know that,” said Sir James. “It would have been less indelicate.”

“One of poor Casaubon’s freaks! That attack upset his brain a little. It all goes for nothing. She doesn’t
want
to marry Ladislaw.”

“But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she did. I don’t believe anything of the sort about Dorothea,” said Sir James — then frowningly, “but I suspect Ladislaw. I tell you frankly, I suspect Ladislaw.”

“I couldn’t take any immediate action on that ground, Chettam. In fact, if it were possible to pack him off — send him to Norfolk Island — that sort of thing — it would look all the worse for Dorothea to those who knew about it. It would seem as if we distrusted her — distrusted her, you know.”

That Mr. Brooke had hit on an undeniable argument, did not tend to soothe Sir James. He put out his hand to reach his hat, implying that he did not mean to contend further, and said, still with some heat —

“Well, I can only say that I think Dorothea was sacrificed once, because her friends were too careless. I shall do what I can, as her brother, to protect her now.”

“You can’t do better than get her to Freshitt as soon as possible, Chettam. I approve that plan altogether,” said Mr. Brooke, well pleased that he had won the argument. It would have been highly inconvenient to him to part with Ladislaw at that time, when a dissolution might happen any day, and electors were to be convinced of the course by which the interests of the country would be best served. Mr. Brooke sincerely believed that this end could be secured by his own return to Parliament: he offered the forces of his mind honestly to the nation.

CHAPTER L
.

 
“‘This Loller here wol precilen us somewhat.’

 
‘Nay by my father’s soule! that schal he nat,’

 
Sayde the Schipman, ‘here schal he not preche,

 
We schal no gospel glosen here ne teche.

 
We leven all in the gret God,’ quod he.

 
He wolden sowen some diffcultee.” — Canterbury Tales.

Dorothea had been safe at Freshitt Hall nearly a week before she had asked any dangerous questions. Every morning now she sat with Celia in the prettiest of up-stairs sitting-rooms, opening into a small conservatory — Celia all in white and lavender like a bunch of mixed violets, watching the remarkable acts of the baby, which were so dubious to her inexperienced mind that all conversation was interrupted by appeals for their interpretation made to the oracular nurse. Dorothea sat by in her widow’s dress, with an expression which rather provoked Celia, as being much too sad; for not only was baby quite well, but really when a husband had been so dull and troublesome while he lived, and besides that had — well, well! Sir James, of course, had told Celia everything, with a strong representation how important it was that Dorothea should not know it sooner than was inevitable.

But Mr. Brooke had been right in predicting that Dorothea would not long remain passive where action had been assigned to her; she knew the purport of her husband’s will made at the time of their marriage, and her mind, as soon as she was clearly conscious of her position, was silently occupied with what she ought to do as the owner of Lowick Manor with the patronage of the living attached to it.

One morning when her uncle paid his usual visit, though with an unusual alacrity in his manner which he accounted for by saying that it was now pretty certain Parliament would be dissolved forthwith, Dorothea said —

“Uncle, it is right now that I should consider who is to have the living at Lowick. After Mr. Tucker had been provided for, I never heard my husband say that he had any clergyman in his mind as a successor to himself. I think I ought to have the keys now and go to Lowick to examine all my husband’s papers. There may be something that would throw light on his wishes.”

“No hurry, my dear,” said Mr. Brooke, quietly. “By-and-by, you know, you can go, if you like. But I cast my eyes over things in the desks and drawers — there was nothing — nothing but deep subjects, you know — besides the will. Everything can be done by-and-by. As to the living, I have had an application for interest already — I should say rather good. Mr. Tyke has been strongly recommended to me — I had something to do with getting him an appointment before. An apostolic man, I believe — the sort of thing that would suit you, my dear.”

“I should like to have fuller knowledge about him, uncle, and judge for myself, if Mr. Casaubon has not left any expression of his wishes. He has perhaps made some addition to his will — there may be some instructions for me,” said Dorothea, who had all the while had this conjecture in her mind with relation to her husband’s work.

“Nothing about the rectory, my dear — nothing,” said Mr. Brooke, rising to go away, and putting out his hand to his nieces: “nor about his researches, you know. Nothing in the will.”