Middlemarch, Page 31

  CHAPTER XXX.

  "Qui veut delasser hors de propos, lasse."--PASCAL.

  Mr. Casaubon had no second attack of equal severity with the first, andin a few days began to recover his usual condition. But Lydgate seemedto think the case worth a great deal of attention. He not only usedhis stethoscope (which had not become a matter of course in practice atthat time), but sat quietly by his patient and watched him. To Mr.Casaubon's questions about himself, he replied that the source of theillness was the common error of intellectual men--a too eager andmonotonous application: the remedy was, to be satisfied with moderatework, and to seek variety of relaxation. Mr. Brooke, who sat by on oneoccasion, suggested that Mr. Casaubon should go fishing, as Cadwalladerdid, and have a turning-room, make toys, table-legs, and that kind ofthing.

  "In short, you recommend me to anticipate the arrival of my secondchildhood," said poor Mr. Casaubon, with some bitterness. "Thesethings," he added, looking at Lydgate, "would be to me such relaxationas tow-picking is to prisoners in a house of correction."

  "I confess," said Lydgate, smiling, "amusement is rather anunsatisfactory prescription. It is something like telling people tokeep up their spirits. Perhaps I had better say, that you must submitto be mildly bored rather than to go on working."

  "Yes, yes," said Mr. Brooke. "Get Dorothea to play backgammon with youin the evenings. And shuttlecock, now--I don't know a finer game thanshuttlecock for the daytime. I remember it all the fashion. To besure, your eyes might not stand that, Casaubon. But you must unbend,you know. Why, you might take to some light study: conchology, now: Ialways think that must be a light study. Or get Dorothea to read youlight things, Smollett--'Roderick Random,' 'Humphrey Clinker:' theyare a little broad, but she may read anything now she's married, youknow. I remember they made me laugh uncommonly--there's a droll bitabout a postilion's breeches. We have no such humor now. I have gonethrough all these things, but they might be rather new to you."

  "As new as eating thistles," would have been an answer to represent Mr.Casaubon's feelings. But he only bowed resignedly, with due respect tohis wife's uncle, and observed that doubtless the works he mentionedhad "served as a resource to a certain order of minds."

  "You see," said the able magistrate to Lydgate, when they were outsidethe door, "Casaubon has been a little narrow: it leaves him rather at aloss when you forbid him his particular work, which I believe issomething very deep indeed--in the line of research, you know. I wouldnever give way to that; I was always versatile. But a clergyman istied a little tight. If they would make him a bishop, now!--he did avery good pamphlet for Peel. He would have more movement then, moreshow; he might get a little flesh. But I recommend you to talk to Mrs.Casaubon. She is clever enough for anything, is my niece. Tell her,her husband wants liveliness, diversion: put her on amusing tactics."

  Without Mr. Brooke's advice, Lydgate had determined on speaking toDorothea. She had not been present while her uncle was throwing outhis pleasant suggestions as to the mode in which life at Lowick mightbe enlivened, but she was usually by her husband's side, and theunaffected signs of intense anxiety in her face and voice aboutwhatever touched his mind or health, made a drama which Lydgate wasinclined to watch. He said to himself that he was only doing right intelling her the truth about her husband's probable future, but hecertainly thought also that it would be interesting to talkconfidentially with her. A medical man likes to make psychologicalobservations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is tooeasily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily setat nought. Lydgate had often been satirical on this gratuitousprediction, and he meant now to be guarded.

  He asked for Mrs. Casaubon, but being told that she was out walking, hewas going away, when Dorothea and Celia appeared, both glowing fromtheir struggle with the March wind. When Lydgate begged to speak withher alone, Dorothea opened the library door which happened to be thenearest, thinking of nothing at the moment but what he might have tosay about Mr. Casaubon. It was the first time she had entered thisroom since her husband had been taken ill, and the servant had chosennot to open the shutters. But there was light enough to read by fromthe narrow upper panes of the windows.

  "You will not mind this sombre light," said Dorothea, standing in themiddle of the room. "Since you forbade books, the library has been outof the question. But Mr. Casaubon will soon be here again, I hope. Ishe not making progress?"

  "Yes, much more rapid progress than I at first expected. Indeed, he isalready nearly in his usual state of health."

  "You do not fear that the illness will return?" said Dorothea, whosequick ear had detected some significance in Lydgate's tone.

  "Such cases are peculiarly difficult to pronounce upon," said Lydgate."The only point on which I can be confident is that it will bedesirable to be very watchful on Mr. Casaubon's account, lest he shouldin any way strain his nervous power."

  "I beseech you to speak quite plainly," said Dorothea, in an imploringtone. "I cannot bear to think that there might be something which Idid not know, and which, if I had known it, would have made me actdifferently." The words came out like a cry: it was evident that theywere the voice of some mental experience which lay not very far off.

  "Sit down," she added, placing herself on the nearest chair, andthrowing off her bonnet and gloves, with an instinctive discarding offormality where a great question of destiny was concerned.

  "What you say now justifies my own view," said Lydgate. "I think it isone's function as a medical man to hinder regrets of that sort as faras possible. But I beg you to observe that Mr. Casaubon's case isprecisely of the kind in which the issue is most difficult to pronounceupon. He may possibly live for fifteen years or more, without muchworse health than he has had hitherto."

  Dorothea had turned very pale, and when Lydgate paused she said in alow voice, "You mean if we are very careful."

  "Yes--careful against mental agitation of all kinds, and againstexcessive application."

  "He would be miserable, if he had to give up his work," said Dorothea,with a quick prevision of that wretchedness.

  "I am aware of that. The only course is to try by all means, directand indirect, to moderate and vary his occupations. With a happyconcurrence of circumstances, there is, as I said, no immediate dangerfrom that affection of the heart, which I believe to have been thecause of his late attack. On the other hand, it is possible that thedisease may develop itself more rapidly: it is one of those cases inwhich death is sometimes sudden. Nothing should be neglected whichmight be affected by such an issue."

  There was silence for a few moments, while Dorothea sat as if she hadbeen turned to marble, though the life within her was so intense thather mind had never before swept in brief time over an equal range ofscenes and motives.

  "Help me, pray," she said, at last, in the same low voice as before."Tell me what I can do."

  "What do you think of foreign travel? You have been lately in Rome, Ithink."

  The memories which made this resource utterly hopeless were a newcurrent that shook Dorothea out of her pallid immobility.

  "Oh, that would not do--that would be worse than anything," she saidwith a more childlike despondency, while the tears rolled down."Nothing will be of any use that he does not enjoy."

  "I wish that I could have spared you this pain," said Lydgate, deeplytouched, yet wondering about her marriage. Women just like Dorotheahad not entered into his traditions.

  "It was right of you to tell me. I thank you for telling me the truth."

  "I wish you to understand that I shall not say anything to enlightenMr. Casaubon himself. I think it desirable for him to know nothingmore than that he must not overwork himself, and must observe certainrules. Anxiety of any kind would be precisely the most unfavorablecondition for him."

  Lydgate rose, and Dorothea mechanically rose at the same time,unclasping her cloak and throwing it off as if it stifled her. He wasbowing and quitting her, when an impulse whic
h if she had been alonewould have turned into a prayer, made her say with a sob in her voice--

  "Oh, you are a wise man, are you not? You know all about life anddeath. Advise me. Think what I can do. He has been laboring all hislife and looking forward. He minds about nothing else.-- And I mindabout nothing else--"

  For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him bythis involuntary appeal--this cry from soul to soul, without otherconsciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the sameembroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully illuminated life. Butwhat could he say now except that he should see Mr. Casaubon againto-morrow?

  When he was gone, Dorothea's tears gushed forth, and relieved herstifling oppression. Then she dried her eyes, reminded that herdistress must not be betrayed to her husband; and looked round the roomthinking that she must order the servant to attend to it as usual,since Mr. Casaubon might now at any moment wish to enter. On hiswriting-table there were letters which had lain untouched since themorning when he was taken ill, and among them, as Dorothea wellremembered, there were young Ladislaw's letters, the one addressed toher still unopened. The associations of these letters had been madethe more painful by that sudden attack of illness which she felt thatthe agitation caused by her anger might have helped to bring on: itwould be time enough to read them when they were again thrust upon her,and she had had no inclination to fetch them from the library. But nowit occurred to her that they should be put out of her husband's sight:whatever might have been the sources of his annoyance about them, hemust, if possible, not be annoyed again; and she ran her eyes firstover the letter addressed to him to assure herself whether or not itwould be necessary to write in order to hinder the offensive visit.

  Will wrote from Rome, and began by saying that his obligations to Mr.Casaubon were too deep for all thanks not to seem impertinent. It wasplain that if he were not grateful, he must be the poorest-spiritedrascal who had ever found a generous friend. To expand in wordy thankswould be like saying, "I am honest." But Will had come to perceive thathis defects--defects which Mr. Casaubon had himself often pointedto--needed for their correction that more strenuous position which hisrelative's generosity had hitherto prevented from being inevitable. Hetrusted that he should make the best return, if return were possible,by showing the effectiveness of the education for which he wasindebted, and by ceasing in future to need any diversion towardshimself of funds on which others might have a better claim. He wascoming to England, to try his fortune, as many other young men wereobliged to do whose only capital was in their brains. His friendNaumann had desired him to take charge of the "Dispute"--the picturepainted for Mr. Casaubon, with whose permission, and Mrs. Casaubon's,Will would convey it to Lowick in person. A letter addressed to thePoste Restante in Paris within the fortnight would hinder him, ifnecessary, from arriving at an inconvenient moment. He enclosed aletter to Mrs. Casaubon in which he continued a discussion about art,begun with her in Rome.

  Opening her own letter Dorothea saw that it was a lively continuationof his remonstrance with her fanatical sympathy and her want of sturdyneutral delight in things as they were--an outpouring of his youngvivacity which it was impossible to read just now. She had immediatelyto consider what was to be done about the other letter: there was stilltime perhaps to prevent Will from coming to Lowick. Dorothea ended bygiving the letter to her uncle, who was still in the house, and begginghim to let Will know that Mr. Casaubon had been ill, and that hishealth would not allow the reception of any visitors.

  No one more ready than Mr. Brooke to write a letter: his onlydifficulty was to write a short one, and his ideas in this caseexpanded over the three large pages and the inward foldings. He hadsimply said to Dorothea--

  "To be sure, I will write, my dear. He's a very clever youngfellow--this young Ladislaw--I dare say will be a rising young man.It's a good letter--marks his sense of things, you know. However, Iwill tell him about Casaubon."

  But the end of Mr. Brooke's pen was a thinking organ, evolvingsentences, especially of a benevolent kind, before the rest of his mindcould well overtake them. It expressed regrets and proposed remedies,which, when Mr. Brooke read them, seemed felicitouslyworded--surprisingly the right thing, and determined a sequel which hehad never before thought of. In this case, his pen found it such a pityyoung Ladislaw should not have come into the neighborhood just atthat time, in order that Mr. Brooke might make his acquaintance morefully, and that they might go over the long-neglected Italian drawingstogether--it also felt such an interest in a young man who was startingin life with a stock of ideas--that by the end of the second page ithad persuaded Mr. Brooke to invite young Ladislaw, since he could notbe received at Lowick, to come to Tipton Grange. Why not? They couldfind a great many things to do together, and this was a period ofpeculiar growth--the political horizon was expanding, and--in short,Mr. Brooke's pen went off into a little speech which it had latelyreported for that imperfectly edited organ the "Middlemarch Pioneer."While Mr. Brooke was sealing this letter, he felt elated with an influxof dim projects:--a young man capable of putting ideas into form, the"Pioneer" purchased to clear the pathway for a new candidate, documentsutilized--who knew what might come of it all? Since Celia was going tomarry immediately, it would be very pleasant to have a young fellow attable with him, at least for a time.

  But he went away without telling Dorothea what he had put into theletter, for she was engaged with her husband, and--in fact, thesethings were of no importance to her.