Middlemarch, Page 29

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  1st Gent. All times are good to seek your wedded home Bringing a mutual delight.

  2d Gent. Why, true. The calendar hath not an evil day For souls made one by love, and even death Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves While they two clasped each other, and foresaw No life apart.

  Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon, returning from their wedding journey, arrived atLowick Manor in the middle of January. A light snow was falling asthey descended at the door, and in the morning, when Dorothea passedfrom her dressing-room avenue the blue-green boudoir that we know of,she saw the long avenue of limes lifting their trunks from a whiteearth, and spreading white branches against the dun and motionless sky.The distant flat shrank in uniform whiteness and low-hanging uniformityof cloud. The very furniture in the room seemed to have shrunk sinceshe saw it before: the stag in the tapestry looked more like a ghost inhis ghostly blue-green world; the volumes of polite literature in thebookcase looked more like immovable imitations of books. The brightfire of dry oak-boughs burning on the logs seemed an incongruousrenewal of life and glow--like the figure of Dorothea herself as sheentered carrying the red-leather cases containing the cameos for Celia.

  She was glowing from her morning toilet as only healthful youth canglow: there was gem-like brightness on her coiled hair and in her hazeleyes; there was warm red life in her lips; her throat had a breathingwhiteness above the differing white of the fur which itself seemed towind about her neck and cling down her blue-gray pelisse with atenderness gathered from her own, a sentient commingled innocence whichkept its loveliness against the crystalline purity of the outdoor snow.As she laid the cameo-cases on the table in the bow-window, sheunconsciously kept her hands on them, immediately absorbed in lookingout on the still, white enclosure which made her visible world.

  Mr. Casaubon, who had risen early complaining of palpitation, was inthe library giving audience to his curate Mr. Tucker. By-and-by Celiawould come in her quality of bridesmaid as well as sister, and throughthe next weeks there would be wedding visits received and given; all incontinuance of that transitional life understood to correspond with theexcitement of bridal felicity, and keeping up the sense of busyineffectiveness, as of a dream which the dreamer begins to suspect.The duties of her married life, contemplated as so great beforehand,seemed to be shrinking with the furniture and the white vapor-walledlandscape. The clear heights where she expected to walk in fullcommunion had become difficult to see even in her imagination; thedelicious repose of the soul on a complete superior had been shakeninto uneasy effort and alarmed with dim presentiment. When would thedays begin of that active wifely devotion which was to strengthen herhusband's life and exalt her own? Never perhaps, as she hadpreconceived them; but somehow--still somehow. In this solemnlypledged union of her life, duty would present itself in some new formof inspiration and give a new meaning to wifely love.

  Meanwhile there was the snow and the low arch of dun vapor--there wasthe stifling oppression of that gentlewoman's world, where everythingwas done for her and none asked for her aid--where the sense ofconnection with a manifold pregnant existence had to be kept uppainfully as an inward vision, instead of coming from without in claimsthat would have shaped her energies.-- "What shall I do?" "Whatever youplease, my dear:" that had been her brief history since she had leftoff learning morning lessons and practising silly rhythms on the hatedpiano. Marriage, which was to bring guidance into worthy andimperative occupation, had not yet freed her from the gentlewoman'soppressive liberty: it had not even filled her leisure with theruminant joy of unchecked tenderness. Her blooming full-pulsed youthstood there in a moral imprisonment which made itself one with thechill, colorless, narrowed landscape, with the shrunken furniture, thenever-read books, and the ghostly stag in a pale fantastic world thatseemed to be vanishing from the daylight.

  In the first minutes when Dorothea looked out she felt nothing but thedreary oppression; then came a keen remembrance, and turning away fromthe window she walked round the room. The ideas and hopes which wereliving in her mind when she first saw this room nearly three monthsbefore were present now only as memories: she judged them as we judgetransient and departed things. All existence seemed to beat with alower pulse than her own, and her religious faith was a solitary cry,the struggle out of a nightmare in which every object was withering andshrinking away from her. Each remembered thing in the room wasdisenchanted, was deadened as an unlit transparency, till her wanderinggaze came to the group of miniatures, and there at last she sawsomething which had gathered new breath and meaning: it was theminiature of Mr. Casaubon's aunt Julia, who had made the unfortunatemarriage--of Will Ladislaw's grandmother. Dorothea could fancy thatit was alive now--the delicate woman's face which yet had a headstronglook, a peculiarity difficult to interpret. Was it only her friendswho thought her marriage unfortunate? or did she herself find it out tobe a mistake, and taste the salt bitterness of her tears in themerciful silence of the night? What breadths of experience Dorotheaseemed to have passed over since she first looked at this miniature!She felt a new companionship with it, as if it had an ear for her andcould see how she was looking at it. Here was a woman who had knownsome difficulty about marriage. Nay, the colors deepened, the lips andchin seemed to get larger, the hair and eyes seemed to be sending outlight, the face was masculine and beamed on her with that full gazewhich tells her on whom it falls that she is too interesting for theslightest movement of her eyelid to pass unnoticed and uninterpreted.The vivid presentation came like a pleasant glow to Dorothea: she feltherself smiling, and turning from the miniature sat down and looked upas if she were again talking to a figure in front of her. But thesmile disappeared as she went on meditating, and at last she saidaloud--

  "Oh, it was cruel to speak so! How sad--how dreadful!"

  She rose quickly and went out of the room, hurrying along the corridor,with the irresistible impulse to go and see her husband and inquire ifshe could do anything for him. Perhaps Mr. Tucker was gone and Mr.Casaubon was alone in the library. She felt as if all her morning'sgloom would vanish if she could see her husband glad because of herpresence.

  But when she reached the head of the dark oak there was Celia comingup, and below there was Mr. Brooke, exchanging welcomes andcongratulations with Mr. Casaubon.

  "Dodo!" said Celia, in her quiet staccato; then kissed her sister,whose arms encircled her, and said no more. I think they both cried alittle in a furtive manner, while Dorothea ran down-stairs to greet heruncle.

  "I need not ask how you are, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, after kissingher forehead. "Rome has agreed with you, I see--happiness, frescos,the antique--that sort of thing. Well, it's very pleasant to have youback again, and you understand all about art now, eh? But Casaubon isa little pale, I tell him--a little pale, you know. Studying hard inhis holidays is carrying it rather too far. I overdid it at onetime"--Mr. Brooke still held Dorothea's hand, but had turned his faceto Mr. Casaubon--"about topography, ruins, temples--I thought I had aclew, but I saw it would carry me too far, and nothing might come ofit. You may go any length in that sort of thing, and nothing may comeof it, you know."

  Dorothea's eyes also were turned up to her husband's face with someanxiety at the idea that those who saw him afresh after absence mightbe aware of signs which she had not noticed.

  "Nothing to alarm you, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, observing herexpression. "A little English beef and mutton will soon make adifference. It was all very well to look pale, sitting for theportrait of Aquinas, you know--we got your letter just in time. ButAquinas, now--he was a little too subtle, wasn't he? Does anybody readAquinas?"

  "He is not indeed an author adapted to superficial minds," said Mr.Casaubon, meeting these timely questions with dignified patience.

  "You would like coffee in your own room, uncle?" said Dorothea, comingto the rescue
.

  "Yes; and you must go to Celia: she has great news to tell you, youknow. I leave it all to her."

  The blue-green boudoir looked much more cheerful when Celia was seatedthere in a pelisse exactly like her sister's, surveying the cameos witha placid satisfaction, while the conversation passed on to other topics.

  "Do you think it nice to go to Rome on a wedding journey?" said Celia,with her ready delicate blush which Dorothea was used to on thesmallest occasions.

  "It would not suit all--not you, dear, for example," said Dorothea,quietly. No one would ever know what she thought of a wedding journeyto Rome.

  "Mrs. Cadwallader says it is nonsense, people going a long journey whenthey are married. She says they get tired to death of each other, andcan't quarrel comfortably, as they would at home. And Lady Chettamsays she went to Bath." Celia's color changed again and again--seemed

  "To come and go with tidings from the heart, As it a running messenger had been."

  It must mean more than Celia's blushing usually did.

  "Celia! has something happened?" said Dorothea, in a tone full ofsisterly feeling. "Have you really any great news to tell me?"

  "It was because you went away, Dodo. Then there was nobody but me forSir James to talk to," said Celia, with a certain roguishness in hereyes.

  "I understand. It is as I used to hope and believe," said Dorothea,taking her sister's face between her hands, and looking at her halfanxiously. Celia's marriage seemed more serious than it used to do.

  "It was only three days ago," said Celia. "And Lady Chettam is verykind."

  "And you are very happy?"

  "Yes. We are not going to be married yet. Because every thing is tobe got ready. And I don't want to be married so very soon, because Ithink it is nice to be engaged. And we shall be married all our livesafter."

  "I do believe you could not marry better, Kitty. Sir James is a good,honorable man," said Dorothea, warmly.

  "He has gone on with the cottages, Dodo. He will tell you about themwhen he comes. Shall you be glad to see him?"

  "Of course I shall. How can you ask me?"

  "Only I was afraid you would be getting so learned," said Celia,regarding Mr. Casaubon's learning as a kind of damp which might in duetime saturate a neighboring body.