Middlemarch, Page 21

  CHAPTER XX.

  "A child forsaken, waking suddenly, Whose gaze afeard on all things round doth rove, And seeth only that it cannot see The meeting eyes of love."

  Two hours later, Dorothea was seated in an inner room or boudoir of ahandsome apartment in the Via Sistina.

  I am sorry to add that she was sobbing bitterly, with such abandonmentto this relief of an oppressed heart as a woman habitually controlledby pride on her own account and thoughtfulness for others willsometimes allow herself when she feels securely alone. And Mr.Casaubon was certain to remain away for some time at the Vatican.

  Yet Dorothea had no distinctly shapen grievance that she could stateeven to herself; and in the midst of her confused thought and passion,the mental act that was struggling forth into clearness was aself-accusing cry that her feeling of desolation was the fault of herown spiritual poverty. She had married the man of her choice, and withthe advantage over most girls that she had contemplated her marriagechiefly as the beginning of new duties: from the very first she hadthought of Mr. Casaubon as having a mind so much above her own, that hemust often be claimed by studies which she could not entirely share;moreover, after the brief narrow experience of her girlhood she wasbeholding Rome, the city of visible history, where the past of a wholehemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestralimages and trophies gathered from afar.

  But this stupendous fragmentariness heightened the dreamlikestrangeness of her bridal life. Dorothea had now been five weeks inRome, and in the kindly mornings when autumn and winter seemed to gohand in hand like a happy aged couple one of whom would presentlysurvive in chiller loneliness, she had driven about at first with Mr.Casaubon, but of late chiefly with Tantripp and their experiencedcourier. She had been led through the best galleries, had been takento the chief points of view, had been shown the grandest ruins and themost glorious churches, and she had ended by oftenest choosing to driveout to the Campagna where she could feel alone with the earth and sky,away-from the oppressive masquerade of ages, in which her own life tooseemed to become a masque with enigmatical costumes.

  To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of aknowledge which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, andtraces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Romemay still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world. Butlet them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic brokenrevelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on thenotions of a girl who had been brought up in English and SwissPuritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly ofthe hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her smallallowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into theirmould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things thequality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife,and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herselfplunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot. The weightof unintelligible Rome might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom itformed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society;but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins andbasilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present,where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deepdegeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer butyet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; thelong vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold themonotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitiousideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs ofbreathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with anelectric shock, and then urged themselves on her with that achebelonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion.Forms both pale and glowing took possession of her young sense, andfixed themselves in her memory even when she was not thinking of them,preparing strange associations which remained through her after-years.Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each otherlike the magic-lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states ofdull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness ofSt. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in theattitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaicsabove, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreadingitself everywhere like a disease of the retina.

  Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything veryexceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out amongincongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while theirelders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs.Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding,the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, somefaintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary,is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by whatis not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact offrequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion ofmankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If wehad a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would belike hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and weshould die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As itis, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

  However, Dorothea was crying, and if she had been required to state thecause, she could only have done so in some such general words as I havealready used: to have been driven to be more particular would have beenlike trying to give a history of the lights and shadows, for that newreal future which was replacing the imaginary drew its material fromthe endless minutiae by which her view of Mr. Casaubon and her wifelyrelation, now that she was married to him, was gradually changing withthe secret motion of a watch-hand from what it had been in her maidendream. It was too early yet for her fully to recognize or at leastadmit the change, still more for her to have readjusted thatdevotedness which was so necessary a part of her mental life that shewas almost sure sooner or later to recover it. Permanent rebellion,the disorder of a life without some loving reverent resolve, was notpossible to her; but she was now in an interval when the very force ofher nature heightened its confusion. In this way, the early months ofmarriage often are times of critical tumult--whether that of ashrimp-pool or of deeper waters--which afterwards subsides intocheerful peace.

  But was not Mr. Casaubon just as learned as before? Had his forms ofexpression changed, or his sentiments become less laudable? Ohwaywardness of womanhood! did his chronology fail him, or his abilityto state not only a theory but the names of those who held it; or hisprovision for giving the heads of any subject on demand? And was notRome the place in all the world to give free play to suchaccomplishments? Besides, had not Dorothea's enthusiasm especiallydwelt on the prospect of relieving the weight and perhaps the sadnesswith which great tasks lie on him who has to achieve them?-- And thatsuch weight pressed on Mr. Casaubon was only plainer than before.

  All these are crushing questions; but whatever else remained the same,the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday.The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you areacquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a fewimaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity ofmarried companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse thanwhat you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogetherthe same. And it would be astonishing to find how soon the change isfelt if we had no kindred changes to compare with it. To sharelodgings with a brilliant dinner-companion, or to see your favoritepolitician in the Ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: inthese cases too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and wesometimes end by inverting the quantities.

  Still, such comparisons might mislead, for no man was more incapable offlashy make-believe than Mr. Casaubon: he was as genuine a character asany ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in creating anyillusions about himself. How was it that in the weeks since hermarriage, Dorothea had not
distinctly observed but felt with a stiflingdepression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she haddreamed of finding in her husband's mind were replaced by anterooms andwinding passages which seemed to lead nowhither? I suppose it was thatin courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, andthe smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guaranteedelightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. Butthe door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated onthe present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it isimpossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is notwithin sight--that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.

  In their conversation before marriage, Mr. Casaubon had often dwelt onsome explanation or questionable detail of which Dorothea did not seethe bearing; but such imperfect coherence seemed due to the brokennessof their intercourse, and, supported by her faith in their future, shehad listened with fervid patience to a recitation of possible argumentsto be brought against Mr. Casaubon's entirely new view of thePhilistine god Dagon and other fish-deities, thinking that hereaftershe should see this subject which touched him so nearly from the samehigh ground whence doubtless it had become so important to him. Again,the matter-of-course statement and tone of dismissal with which hetreated what to her were the most stirring thoughts, was easilyaccounted for as belonging to the sense of haste and preoccupation inwhich she herself shared during their engagement. But now, since theyhad been in Rome, with all the depths of her emotion roused totumultuous activity, and with life made a new problem by new elements,she had been becoming more and more aware, with a certain terror, thather mind was continually sliding into inward fits of anger andrepulsion, or else into forlorn weariness. How far the judiciousHooker or any other hero of erudition would have been the same at Mr.Casaubon's time of life, she had no means of knowing, so that he couldnot have the advantage of comparison; but her husband's way ofcommenting on the strangely impressive objects around them had begun toaffect her with a sort of mental shiver: he had perhaps the bestintention of acquitting himself worthily, but only of acquittinghimself. What was fresh to her mind was worn out to his; and suchcapacity of thought and feeling as had ever been stimulated in him bythe general life of mankind had long shrunk to a sort of driedpreparation, a lifeless embalmment of knowledge.

  When he said, "Does this interest you, Dorothea? Shall we stay alittle longer? I am ready to stay if you wish it,"--it seemed to heras if going or staying were alike dreary. Or, "Should you like to goto the Farnesina, Dorothea? It contains celebrated frescos designed orpainted by Raphael, which most persons think it worth while to visit."

  "But do you care about them?" was always Dorothea's question.

  "They are, I believe, highly esteemed. Some of them represent thefable of Cupid and Psyche, which is probably the romantic invention ofa literary period, and cannot, I think, be reckoned as a genuinemythical product. But if you like these wall-paintings we can easilydrive thither; and you will then, I think, have seen the chief works ofRaphael, any of which it were a pity to omit in a visit to Rome. He isthe painter who has been held to combine the most complete grace ofform with sublimity of expression. Such at least I have gathered to bethe opinion of cognoscenti."

  This kind of answer given in a measured official tone, as of aclergyman reading according to the rubric, did not help to justify theglories of the Eternal City, or to give her the hope that if she knewmore about them the world would be joyously illuminated for her. Thereis hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature thanthat of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued ina blank absence of interest or sympathy.

  On other subjects indeed Mr. Casaubon showed a tenacity of occupationand an eagerness which are usually regarded as the effect ofenthusiasm, and Dorothea was anxious to follow this spontaneousdirection of his thoughts, instead of being made to feel that shedragged him away from it. But she was gradually ceasing to expect withher former delightful confidence that she should see any wide openingwhere she followed him. Poor Mr. Casaubon himself was lost among smallclosets and winding stairs, and in an agitated dimness about theCabeiri, or in an exposure of other mythologists' ill-consideredparallels, easily lost sight of any purpose which had prompted him tothese labors. With his taper stuck before him he forgot the absence ofwindows, and in bitter manuscript remarks on other men's notions aboutthe solar deities, he had become indifferent to the sunlight.

  These characteristics, fixed and unchangeable as bone in Mr. Casaubon,might have remained longer unfelt by Dorothea if she had beenencouraged to pour forth her girlish and womanly feeling--if he wouldhave held her hands between his and listened with the delight oftenderness and understanding to all the little histories which made upher experience, and would have given her the same sort of intimacy inreturn, so that the past life of each could be included in their mutualknowledge and affection--or if she could have fed her affection withthose childlike caresses which are the bent of every sweet woman, whohas begun by showering kisses on the hard pate of her bald doll,creating a happy soul within that woodenness from the wealth of her ownlove. That was Dorothea's bent. With all her yearning to know whatwas afar from her and to be widely benignant, she had ardor enough forwhat was near, to have kissed Mr. Casaubon's coat-sleeve, or to havecaressed his shoe-latchet, if he would have made any other sign ofacceptance than pronouncing her, with his unfailing propriety, to be ofa most affectionate and truly feminine nature, indicating at the sametime by politely reaching a chair for her that he regarded thesemanifestations as rather crude and startling. Having made his clericaltoilet with due care in the morning, he was prepared only for thoseamenities of life which were suited to the well-adjusted stiff cravatof the period, and to a mind weighted with unpublished matter.

  And by a sad contradiction Dorothea's ideas and resolves seemed likemelting ice floating and lost in the warm flood of which they had beenbut another form. She was humiliated to find herself a mere victim offeeling, as if she could know nothing except through that medium: allher strength was scattered in fits of agitation, of struggle, ofdespondency, and then again in visions of more complete renunciation,transforming all hard conditions into duty. Poor Dorothea! she wascertainly troublesome--to herself chiefly; but this morning for thefirst time she had been troublesome to Mr. Casaubon.

  She had begun, while they were taking coffee, with a determination toshake off what she inwardly called her selfishness, and turned a faceall cheerful attention to her husband when he said, "My dear Dorothea,we must now think of all that is yet left undone, as a preliminary toour departure. I would fain have returned home earlier that we mighthave been at Lowick for the Christmas; but my inquiries here have beenprotracted beyond their anticipated period. I trust, however, that thetime here has not been passed unpleasantly to you. Among the sights ofEurope, that of Rome has ever been held one of the most striking and insome respects edifying. I well remember that I considered it an epochin my life when I visited it for the first time; after the fall ofNapoleon, an event which opened the Continent to travellers. Indeed Ithink it is one among several cities to which an extreme hyperbole hasbeen applied--'See Rome and die:' but in your case I would propose anemendation and say, See Rome as a bride, and live henceforth as a happywife."

  Mr. Casaubon pronounced this little speech with the most conscientiousintention, blinking a little and swaying his head up and down, andconcluding with a smile. He had not found marriage a rapturous state,but he had no idea of being anything else than an irreproachablehusband, who would make a charming young woman as happy as she deservedto be.

  "I hope you are thoroughly satisfied with our stay--I mean, with theresult so far as your studies are concerned," said Dorothea, trying tokeep her mind fixed on what most affected her husband.

  "Yes," said Mr. Casaubon, with that peculiar pitch of voice which makesthe word half a negative. "I have been led farther than I hadforeseen, and various subjects for annotation have prese
nted themselveswhich, though I have no direct need of them, I could not pretermit.The task, notwithstanding the assistance of my amanuensis, has been asomewhat laborious one, but your society has happily prevented me fromthat too continuous prosecution of thought beyond the hours of studywhich has been the snare of my solitary life."

  "I am very glad that my presence has made any difference to you," saidDorothea, who had a vivid memory of evenings in which she had supposedthat Mr. Casaubon's mind had gone too deep during the day to be able toget to the surface again. I fear there was a little temper in herreply. "I hope when we get to Lowick, I shall be more useful to you,and be able to enter a little more into what interests you."

  "Doubtless, my dear," said Mr. Casaubon, with a slight bow. "The notesI have here made will want sifting, and you can, if you please, extractthem under my direction."

  "And all your notes," said Dorothea, whose heart had already burnedwithin her on this subject, so that now she could not help speakingwith her tongue. "All those rows of volumes--will you not now do whatyou used to speak of?--will you not make up your mind what part of themyou will use, and begin to write the book which will make your vastknowledge useful to the world? I will write to your dictation, or Iwill copy and extract what you tell me: I can be of no other use."Dorothea, in a most unaccountable, darkly feminine manner, ended with aslight sob and eyes full of tears.

  The excessive feeling manifested would alone have been highlydisturbing to Mr. Casaubon, but there were other reasons why Dorothea'swords were among the most cutting and irritating to him that she couldhave been impelled to use. She was as blind to his inward troubles ashe to hers: she had not yet learned those hidden conflicts in herhusband which claim our pity. She had not yet listened patiently tohis heartbeats, but only felt that her own was beating violently. InMr. Casaubon's ear, Dorothea's voice gave loud emphatic iteration tothose muffled suggestions of consciousness which it was possible toexplain as mere fancy, the illusion of exaggerated sensitiveness:always when such suggestions are unmistakably repeated from without,they are resisted as cruel and unjust. We are angered even by the fullacceptance of our humiliating confessions--how much more by hearing inhard distinct syllables from the lips of a near observer, thoseconfused murmurs which we try to call morbid, and strive against as ifthey were the oncoming of numbness! And this cruel outward accuser wasthere in the shape of a wife--nay, of a young bride, who, instead ofobserving his abundant pen-scratches and amplitude of paper with theuncritical awe of an elegant-minded canary-bird, seemed to presentherself as a spy watching everything with a malign power of inference.Here, towards this particular point of the compass, Mr. Casaubon had asensitiveness to match Dorothea's, and an equal quickness to imaginemore than the fact. He had formerly observed with approbation hercapacity for worshipping the right object; he now foresaw with suddenterror that this capacity might be replaced by presumption, thisworship by the most exasperating of all criticism,--that which seesvaguely a great many fine ends, and has not the least notion what itcosts to reach them.

  For the first time since Dorothea had known him, Mr. Casaubon's facehad a quick angry flush upon it.

  "My love," he said, with irritation reined in by propriety, "you mayrely upon me for knowing the times and the seasons, adapted to thedifferent stages of a work which is not to be measured by the facileconjectures of ignorant onlookers. It had been easy for me to gain atemporary effect by a mirage of baseless opinion; but it is ever thetrial of the scrupulous explorer to be saluted with the impatient scornof chatterers who attempt only the smallest achievements, being indeedequipped for no other. And it were well if all such could beadmonished to discriminate judgments of which the true subject-matterlies entirely beyond their reach, from those of which the elements maybe compassed by a narrow and superficial survey."

  This speech was delivered with an energy and readiness quite unusualwith Mr. Casaubon. It was not indeed entirely an improvisation, buthad taken shape in inward colloquy, and rushed out like the roundgrains from a fruit when sudden heat cracks it. Dorothea was not onlyhis wife: she was a personification of that shallow world whichsurrounds the appreciated or desponding author.

  Dorothea was indignant in her turn. Had she not been repressingeverything in herself except the desire to enter into some fellowshipwith her husband's chief interests?

  "My judgment _was_ a very superficial one--such as I am capable offorming," she answered, with a prompt resentment, that needed norehearsal. "You showed me the rows of notebooks--you have often spokenof them--you have often said that they wanted digesting. But I neverheard you speak of the writing that is to be published. Those werevery simple facts, and my judgment went no farther. I only begged youto let me be of some good to you."

  Dorothea rose to leave the table and Mr. Casaubon made no reply, takingup a letter which lay beside him as if to reperuse it. Both wereshocked at their mutual situation--that each should have betrayed angertowards the other. If they had been at home, settled at Lowick inordinary life among their neighbors, the clash would have been lessembarrassing: but on a wedding journey, the express object of which isto isolate two people on the ground that they are all the world to eachother, the sense of disagreement is, to say the least, confounding andstultifying. To have changed your longitude extensively and placedyourselves in a moral solitude in order to have small explosions, tofind conversation difficult and to hand a glass of water withoutlooking, can hardly be regarded as satisfactory fulfilment even to thetoughest minds. To Dorothea's inexperienced sensitiveness, it seemedlike a catastrophe, changing all prospects; and to Mr. Casaubon it wasa new pain, he never having been on a wedding journey before, or foundhimself in that close union which was more of a subjection than he hadbeen able to imagine, since this charming young bride not only obligedhim to much consideration on her behalf (which he had sedulouslygiven), but turned out to be capable of agitating him cruelly justwhere he most needed soothing. Instead of getting a soft fence againstthe cold, shadowy, unapplausive audience of his life, had he only givenit a more substantial presence?

  Neither of them felt it possible to speak again at present. To havereversed a previous arrangement and declined to go out would have beena show of persistent anger which Dorothea's conscience shrank from,seeing that she already began to feel herself guilty. However just herindignation might be, her ideal was not to claim justice, but to givetenderness. So when the carriage came to the door, she drove with Mr.Casaubon to the Vatican, walked with him through the stony avenue ofinscriptions, and when she parted with him at the entrance to theLibrary, went on through the Museum out of mere listlessness as to whatwas around her. She had not spirit to turn round and say that shewould drive anywhere. It was when Mr. Casaubon was quitting her thatNaumann had first seen her, and he had entered the long gallery ofsculpture at the same time with her; but here Naumann had to awaitLadislaw with whom he was to settle a bet of champagne about anenigmatical mediaeval-looking figure there. After they had examinedthe figure, and had walked on finishing their dispute, they had parted,Ladislaw lingering behind while Naumann had gone into the Hall ofStatues where he again saw Dorothea, and saw her in that broodingabstraction which made her pose remarkable. She did not really see thestreak of sunlight on the floor more than she saw the statues: she wasinwardly seeing the light of years to come in her own home and over theEnglish fields and elms and hedge-bordered highroads; and feeling thatthe way in which they might be filled with joyful devotedness was notso clear to her as it had been. But in Dorothea's mind there was acurrent into which all thought and feeling were apt sooner or later toflow--the reaching forward of the whole consciousness towards thefullest truth, the least partial good. There was clearly somethingbetter than anger and despondency.