الفصل الفصل 30 · Chapter XXX

Qui veut délasser hors de propos, lasse.—PASCAL.

Mr. Casaubon had no second attack of equal severity with the first, and

in a few days began to recover his usual condition. But Lydgate seemed

to think the case worth a great deal of attention. He not only used his

stethoscope (which had not become a matter of course in practice at

that time), but sat quietly by his patient and watched him. To Mr.

Casaubon’s questions about himself, he replied that the source of the

illness was the common error of intellectual men—a too eager and

monotonous application: the remedy was, to be satisfied with moderate

work, and to seek variety of relaxation. Mr. Brooke, who sat by on one

occasion, suggested that Mr. Casaubon should go fishing, as Cadwallader

did, and have a turning-room, make toys, table-legs, and that kind of

thing.

“In short, you recommend me to anticipate the arrival of my second

childhood,” said poor Mr. Casaubon, with some bitterness. “These

things,” he added, looking at Lydgate, “would be to me such relaxation

as tow-picking is to prisoners in a house of correction.”

“I confess,” said Lydgate, smiling, “amusement is rather an

unsatisfactory prescription. It is something like telling people to

keep up their spirits. Perhaps I had better say, that you must submit

to be mildly bored rather than to go on working.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Brooke. “Get Dorothea to play backgammon with you

in the evenings. And shuttlecock, now—I don’t know a finer game than

shuttlecock for the daytime. I remember it all the fashion. To be sure,

your eyes might not stand that, Casaubon. But you must unbend, you

know. Why, you might take to some light study: conchology, now: I

always think that must be a light study. Or get Dorothea to read you

light things, Smollett—‘Roderick Random,’ ‘Humphry Clinker:’ they are

a little broad, but she may read anything now she’s married, you know.

I remember they made me laugh uncommonly—there’s a droll bit about a

postilion’s breeches. We have no such humor now. I have gone through

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 to

his wife’s uncle, and observed that doubtless the works he mentioned

had “served as a resource to a certain order of minds.”

“You see,” said the able magistrate to Lydgate, when they were outside

the door, “Casaubon has been a little narrow: it leaves him rather at a

loss when you forbid him his particular work, which I believe is

something very deep indeed—in the line of research, you know. I would

never give way to that; I was always versatile. But a clergyman is tied

a little tight. If they would make him a bishop, now!—he did a very

good pamphlet for Peel. He would have more movement then, more show; 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 to

Dorothea. She had not been present while her uncle was throwing out his

pleasant suggestions as to the mode in which life at Lowick might be

enlivened, but she was usually by her husband’s side, and the

unaffected signs of intense anxiety in her face and voice about

whatever touched his mind or health, made a drama which Lydgate was

inclined to watch. He said to himself that he was only doing right in

telling her the truth about her husband’s probable future, but he

certainly thought also that it would be interesting to talk

confidentially with her. A medical man likes to make psychological

observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too

easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set

at nought. Lydgate had often been satirical on this gratuitous

prediction, and he meant now to be guarded.

He asked for Mrs. Casaubon, but being told that she was out walking, he

was going away, when Dorothea and Celia appeared, both glowing from

their struggle with the March wind. When Lydgate begged to speak with

her alone, Dorothea opened the library door which happened to be the

nearest, thinking of nothing at the moment but what he might have to

say about Mr. Casaubon. It was the first time she had entered this room

since her husband had been taken ill, and the servant had chosen not to

open the shutters. But there was light enough to read by from the

narrow upper panes of the windows.

“You will not mind this sombre light,” said Dorothea, standing in the

middle of the room. “Since you forbade books, the library has been out

of the question. But Mr. Casaubon will soon be here again, I hope. Is

he not making progress?”

“Yes, much more rapid progress than I at first expected. Indeed, he is

already nearly in his usual state of health.”

“You do not fear that the illness will return?” said Dorothea, whose

quick 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 be

desirable to be very watchful on Mr. Casaubon’s account, lest he should

in any way strain his nervous power.”

“I beseech you to speak quite plainly,” said Dorothea, in an imploring

tone. “I cannot bear to think that there might be something which I did

not know, and which, if I had known it, would have made me act

differently.” The words came out like a cry: it was evident that they

were the voice of some mental experience which lay not very far off.

“Sit down,” she added, placing herself on the nearest chair, and

throwing off her bonnet and gloves, with an instinctive discarding of

formality where a great question of destiny was concerned.

“What you say now justifies my own view,” said Lydgate. “I think it is

one’s function as a medical man to hinder regrets of that sort as far

as possible. But I beg you to observe that Mr. Casaubon’s case is

precisely of the kind in which the issue is most difficult to pronounce

upon. He may possibly live for fifteen years or more, without much

worse health than he has had hitherto.”

Dorothea had turned very pale, and when Lydgate paused she said in a

low voice, “You mean if we are very careful.”

“Yes—careful against mental agitation of all kinds, and against

excessive 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, direct and

indirect, to moderate and vary his occupations. With a happy

concurrence of circumstances, there is, as I said, no immediate danger

from that affection of the heart, which I believe to have been the

cause of his late attack. On the other hand, it is possible that the

disease may develop itself more rapidly: it is one of those cases in

which death is sometimes sudden. Nothing should be neglected which

might be affected by such an issue.”

There was silence for a few moments, while Dorothea sat as if she had

been turned to marble, though the life within her was so intense that

her mind had never before swept in brief time over an equal range of

scenes 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, I

think.”

The memories which made this resource utterly hopeless were a new

current that shook Dorothea out of her pallid immobility.

“Oh, that would not do—that would be worse than anything,” she said

with 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, deeply

touched, yet wondering about her marriage. Women just like Dorothea had

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 enlighten

Mr. Casaubon himself. I think it desirable for him to know nothing more

than that he must not overwork himself, and must observe certain rules.

Anxiety of any kind would be precisely the most unfavorable condition

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 was

bowing and quitting her, when an impulse which if she had been alone

would 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 and

death. Advise me. Think what I can do. He has been laboring all his

life and looking forward. He minds about nothing else.— And I mind

about nothing else—”

For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by

this involuntary appeal—this cry from soul to soul, without other

consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same

embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully illuminated life. But

what could he say now except that he should see Mr. Casaubon again

to-morrow?

When he was gone, Dorothea’s tears gushed forth, and relieved her

stifling oppression. Then she dried her eyes, reminded that her

distress must not be betrayed to her husband; and looked round the room

thinking that she must order the servant to attend to it as usual,

since Mr. Casaubon might now at any moment wish to enter. On his

writing-table there were letters which had lain untouched since the

morning when he was taken ill, and among them, as Dorothea well

remembered, there were young Ladislaw’s letters, the one addressed to

her still unopened. The associations of these letters had been made the

more painful by that sudden attack of illness which she felt that the

agitation caused by her anger might have helped to bring on: it would

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 now it

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, he

must, if possible, not be annoyed again; and she ran her eyes first

over the letter addressed to him to assure herself whether or not it

would 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 was

plain that if he were not grateful, he must be the poorest-spirited

rascal who had ever found a generous friend. To expand in wordy thanks

would be like saying, “I am honest.” But Will had come to perceive that

his defects—defects which Mr. Casaubon had himself often pointed

to—needed for their correction that more strenuous position which his

relative’s generosity had hitherto prevented from being inevitable. He

trusted that he should make the best return, if return were possible,

by showing the effectiveness of the education for which he was

indebted, and by ceasing in future to need any diversion towards

himself of funds on which others might have a better claim. He was

coming to England, to try his fortune, as many other young men were

obliged to do whose only capital was in their brains. His friend

Naumann had desired him to take charge of the “Dispute”—the picture

painted for Mr. Casaubon, with whose permission, and Mrs. Casaubon’s,

Will would convey it to Lowick in person. A letter addressed to the

Poste Restante in Paris within the fortnight would hinder him, if

necessary, from arriving at an inconvenient moment. He enclosed a

letter 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 continuation

of his remonstrance with her fanatical sympathy and her want of sturdy

neutral delight in things as they were—an outpouring of his young

vivacity which it was impossible to read just now. She had immediately

to consider what was to be done about the other letter: there was still

time perhaps to prevent Will from coming to Lowick. Dorothea ended by

giving the letter to her uncle, who was still in the house, and begging

him to let Will know that Mr. Casaubon had been ill, and that his

health would not allow the reception of any visitors.

No one more ready than Mr. Brooke to write a letter: his only

difficulty was to write a short one, and his ideas in this case

expanded over the three large pages and the inward foldings. He had

simply said to Dorothea—

“To be sure, I will write, my dear. He’s a very clever young

fellow—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, I will tell

him about Casaubon.”

But the end of Mr. Brooke’s pen was a thinking organ, evolving

sentences, especially of a benevolent kind, before the rest of his mind

could well overtake them. It expressed regrets and proposed remedies,

which, when Mr. Brooke read them, seemed felicitously

worded—surprisingly the right thing, and determined a sequel which he

had never before thought of. In this case, his pen found it such a pity

young Ladislaw should not have come into the neighborhood just at that

time, in order that Mr. Brooke might make his acquaintance more fully,

and that they might go over the long-neglected Italian drawings

together—it also felt such an interest in a young man who was starting

in life with a stock of ideas—that by the end of the second page it had

persuaded Mr. Brooke to invite young Ladislaw, since he could not be

received at Lowick, to come to Tipton Grange. Why not? They could find

a great many things to do together, and this was a period of peculiar

growth—the political horizon was expanding, and—in short, Mr. Brooke’s

pen went off into a little speech which it had lately reported for that

imperfectly edited organ the “Middlemarch Pioneer.” While Mr. Brooke

was sealing this letter, he felt elated with an influx of dim

projects:—a young man capable of putting ideas into form, the “Pioneer”

purchased to clear the pathway for a new candidate, documents

utilized—who knew what might come of it all? Since Celia was going to

marry immediately, it would be very pleasant to have a young fellow at

table with him, at least for a time.

But he went away without telling Dorothea what he had put into the

letter, for she was engaged with her husband, and—in fact, these things

were of no importance to her.