الفصل الفصل 9 · Chapter IX

1_st Gent_. An ancient land in ancient oracles

Is called “law-thirsty”: all the struggle there

Was after order and a perfect rule.

Pray, where lie such lands now? . . .

2_d Gent_. Why, where they lay of old—in human souls.

Mr. Casaubon’s behavior about settlements was highly satisfactory to

Mr. Brooke, and the preliminaries of marriage rolled smoothly along,

shortening the weeks of courtship. The betrothed bride must see her

future home, and dictate any changes that she would like to have made

there. A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an

appetite for submission afterwards. And certainly, the mistakes that we

male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly

raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.

On a gray but dry November morning Dorothea drove to Lowick in company

with her uncle and Celia. Mr. Casaubon’s home was the manor-house.

Close by, visible from some parts of the garden, was the little church,

with the old parsonage opposite. In the beginning of his career, Mr.

Casaubon had only held the living, but the death of his brother had put

him in possession of the manor also. It had a small park, with a fine

old oak here and there, and an avenue of limes towards the southwest

front, with a sunk fence between park and pleasure-ground, so that from

the drawing-room windows the glance swept uninterruptedly along a slope

of greensward till the limes ended in a level of corn and pastures,

which often seemed to melt into a lake under the setting sun. This was

the happy side of the house, for the south and east looked rather

melancholy even under the brightest morning. The grounds here were more

confined, the flower-beds showed no very careful tendance, and large

clumps of trees, chiefly of sombre yews, had risen high, not ten yards

from the windows. The building, of greenish stone, was in the old

English style, not ugly, but small-windowed and melancholy-looking: the

sort of house that must have children, many flowers, open windows, and

little vistas of bright things, to make it seem a joyous home. In this

latter end of autumn, with a sparse remnant of yellow leaves falling

slowly athwart the dark evergreens in a stillness without sunshine, the

house too had an air of autumnal decline, and Mr. Casaubon, when he

presented himself, had no bloom that could be thrown into relief by

that background.

“Oh dear!” Celia said to herself, “I am sure Freshitt Hall would have

been pleasanter than this.” She thought of the white freestone, the

pillared portico, and the terrace full of flowers, Sir James smiling

above them like a prince issuing from his enchantment in a rose-bush,

with a handkerchief swiftly metamorphosed from the most delicately

odorous petals—Sir James, who talked so agreeably, always about things

which had common-sense in them, and not about learning! Celia had those

light young feminine tastes which grave and weatherworn gentlemen

sometimes prefer in a wife; but happily Mr. Casaubon’s bias had been

different, for he would have had no chance with Celia.

Dorothea, on the contrary, found the house and grounds all that she

could wish: the dark book-shelves in the long library, the carpets and

curtains with colors subdued by time, the curious old maps and

bird’s-eye views on the walls of the corridor, with here and there an

old vase below, had no oppression for her, and seemed more cheerful

than the casts and pictures at the Grange, which her uncle had long ago

brought home from his travels—they being probably among the ideas he

had taken in at one time. To poor Dorothea these severe classical

nudities and smirking Renaissance-Correggiosities were painfully

inexplicable, staring into the midst of her Puritanic conceptions: she

had never been taught how she could bring them into any sort of

relevance with her life. But the owners of Lowick apparently had not

been travellers, and Mr. Casaubon’s studies of the past were not

carried on by means of such aids.

Dorothea walked about the house with delightful emotion. Everything

seemed hallowed to her: this was to be the home of her wifehood, and

she looked up with eyes full of confidence to Mr. Casaubon when he drew

her attention specially to some actual arrangement and asked her if she

would like an alteration. All appeals to her taste she met gratefully,

but saw nothing to alter. His efforts at exact courtesy and formal

tenderness had no defect for her. She filled up all blanks with

unmanifested perfections, interpreting him as she interpreted the works

of Providence, and accounting for seeming discords by her own deafness

to the higher harmonies. And there are many blanks left in the weeks of

courtship which a loving faith fills with happy assurance.

“Now, my dear Dorothea, I wish you to favor me by pointing out which

room you would like to have as your boudoir,” said Mr. Casaubon,

showing that his views of the womanly nature were sufficiently large to

include that requirement.

“It is very kind of you to think of that,” said Dorothea, “but I assure

you I would rather have all those matters decided for me. I shall be

much happier to take everything as it is—just as you have been used to

have it, or as you will yourself choose it to be. I have no motive for

wishing anything else.”

“Oh, Dodo,” said Celia, “will you not have the bow-windowed room

up-stairs?”

Mr. Casaubon led the way thither. The bow-window looked down the avenue

of limes; the furniture was all of a faded blue, and there were

miniatures of ladies and gentlemen with powdered hair hanging in a

group. A piece of tapestry over a door also showed a blue-green world

with a pale stag in it. The chairs and tables were thin-legged and easy

to upset. It was a room where one might fancy the ghost of a

tight-laced lady revisiting the scene of her embroidery. A light

bookcase contained duodecimo volumes of polite literature in calf,

completing the furniture.

“Yes,” said Mr. Brooke, “this would be a pretty room with some new

hangings, sofas, and that sort of thing. A little bare now.”

“No, uncle,” said Dorothea, eagerly. “Pray do not speak of altering

anything. There are so many other things in the world that want

altering—I like to take these things as they are. And you like them as

they are, don’t you?” she added, looking at Mr. Casaubon. “Perhaps this

was your mother’s room when she was young.”

“It was,” he said, with his slow bend of the head.

“This is your mother,” said Dorothea, who had turned to examine the

group of miniatures. “It is like the tiny one you brought me; only, I

should think, a better portrait. And this one opposite, who is this?”

“Her elder sister. They were, like you and your sister, the only two

children of their parents, who hang above them, you see.”

“The sister is pretty,” said Celia, implying that she thought less

favorably of Mr. Casaubon’s mother. It was a new opening to Celia’s

imagination, that he came of a family who had all been young in their

time—the ladies wearing necklaces.

“It is a peculiar face,” said Dorothea, looking closely. “Those deep

gray eyes rather near together—and the delicate irregular nose with a

sort of ripple in it—and all the powdered curls hanging backward.

Altogether it seems to me peculiar rather than pretty. There is not

even a family likeness between her and your mother.”

“No. And they were not alike in their lot.”

“You did not mention her to me,” said Dorothea.

“My aunt made an unfortunate marriage. I never saw her.”

Dorothea wondered a little, but felt that it would be indelicate just

then to ask for any information which Mr. Casaubon did not proffer, and

she turned to the window to admire the view. The sun had lately pierced

the gray, and the avenue of limes cast shadows.

“Shall we not walk in the garden now?” said Dorothea.

“And you would like to see the church, you know,” said Mr. Brooke. “It

is a droll little church. And the village. It all lies in a nut-shell.

By the way, it will suit you, Dorothea; for the cottages are like a row

of alms-houses—little gardens, gilly-flowers, that sort of thing.”

“Yes, please,” said Dorothea, looking at Mr. Casaubon, “I should like

to see all that.” She had got nothing from him more graphic about the

Lowick cottages than that they were “not bad.”

They were soon on a gravel walk which led chiefly between grassy

borders and clumps of trees, this being the nearest way to the church,

Mr. Casaubon said. At the little gate leading into the churchyard there

was a pause while Mr. Casaubon went to the parsonage close by to fetch

a key. Celia, who had been hanging a little in the rear, came up

presently, when she saw that Mr. Casaubon was gone away, and said in

her easy staccato, which always seemed to contradict the suspicion of

any malicious intent—

“Do you know, Dorothea, I saw some one quite young coming up one of the

walks.”

“Is that astonishing, Celia?”

“There may be a young gardener, you know—why not?” said Mr. Brooke. “I

told Casaubon he should change his gardener.”

“No, not a gardener,” said Celia; “a gentleman with a sketch-book. He

had light-brown curls. I only saw his back. But he was quite young.”

“The curate’s son, perhaps,” said Mr. Brooke. “Ah, there is Casaubon

again, and Tucker with him. He is going to introduce Tucker. You don’t

know Tucker yet.”

Mr. Tucker was the middle-aged curate, one of the “inferior clergy,”

who are usually not wanting in sons. But after the introduction, the

conversation did not lead to any question about his family, and the

startling apparition of youthfulness was forgotten by every one but

Celia. She inwardly declined to believe that the light-brown curls and

slim figure could have any relationship to Mr. Tucker, who was just as

old and musty-looking as she would have expected Mr. Casaubon’s curate

to be; doubtless an excellent man who would go to heaven (for Celia

wished not to be unprincipled), but the corners of his mouth were so

unpleasant. Celia thought with some dismalness of the time she should

have to spend as bridesmaid at Lowick, while the curate had probably no

pretty little children whom she could like, irrespective of principle.

Mr. Tucker was invaluable in their walk; and perhaps Mr. Casaubon had

not been without foresight on this head, the curate being able to

answer all Dorothea’s questions about the villagers and the other

parishioners. Everybody, he assured her, was well off in Lowick: not a

cottager in those double cottages at a low rent but kept a pig, and the

strips of garden at the back were well tended. The small boys wore

excellent corduroy, the girls went out as tidy servants, or did a

little straw-plaiting at home: no looms here, no Dissent; and though

the public disposition was rather towards laying by money than towards

spirituality, there was not much vice. The speckled fowls were so

numerous that Mr. Brooke observed, “Your farmers leave some barley for

the women to glean, I see. The poor folks here might have a fowl in

their pot, as the good French king used to wish for all his people. The

French eat a good many fowls—skinny fowls, you know.”

“I think it was a very cheap wish of his,” said Dorothea, indignantly.

“Are kings such monsters that a wish like that must be reckoned a royal

virtue?”

“And if he wished them a skinny fowl,” said Celia, “that would not be

nice. But perhaps he wished them to have fat fowls.”

“Yes, but the word has dropped out of the text, or perhaps was

subauditum; that is, present in the king’s mind, but not uttered,” said

Mr. Casaubon, smiling and bending his head towards Celia, who

immediately dropped backward a little, because she could not bear Mr.

Casaubon to blink at her.

Dorothea sank into silence on the way back to the house. She felt some

disappointment, of which she was yet ashamed, that there was nothing

for her to do in Lowick; and in the next few minutes her mind had

glanced over the possibility, which she would have preferred, of

finding that her home would be in a parish which had a larger share of

the world’s misery, so that she might have had more active duties in

it. Then, recurring to the future actually before her, she made a

picture of more complete devotion to Mr. Casaubon’s aims in which she

would await new duties. Many such might reveal themselves to the higher

knowledge gained by her in that companionship.

Mr. Tucker soon left them, having some clerical work which would not

allow him to lunch at the Hall; and as they were re-entering the garden

through the little gate, Mr. Casaubon said—

“You seem a little sad, Dorothea. I trust you are pleased with what you

have seen.”

“I am feeling something which is perhaps foolish and wrong,” answered

Dorothea, with her usual openness—“almost wishing that the people

wanted more to be done for them here. I have known so few ways of

making my life good for anything. Of course, my notions of usefulness

must be narrow. I must learn new ways of helping people.”

“Doubtless,” said Mr. Casaubon. “Each position has its corresponding

duties. Yours, I trust, as the mistress of Lowick, will not leave any

yearning unfulfilled.”

“Indeed, I believe that,” said Dorothea, earnestly. “Do not suppose

that I am sad.”

“That is well. But, if you are not tired, we will take another way to

the house than that by which we came.”

Dorothea was not at all tired, and a little circuit was made towards a

fine yew-tree, the chief hereditary glory of the grounds on this side

of the house. As they approached it, a figure, conspicuous on a dark

background of evergreens, was seated on a bench, sketching the old

tree. Mr. Brooke, who was walking in front with Celia, turned his head,

and said—

“Who is that youngster, Casaubon?”

They had come very near when Mr. Casaubon answered—

“That is a young relative of mine, a second cousin: the grandson, in

fact,” he added, looking at Dorothea, “of the lady whose portrait you

have been noticing, my aunt Julia.”

The young man had laid down his sketch-book and risen. His bushy

light-brown curls, as well as his youthfulness, identified him at once

with Celia’s apparition.

“Dorothea, let me introduce to you my cousin, Mr. Ladislaw. Will, this

is Miss Brooke.”

The cousin was so close now, that, when he lifted his hat, Dorothea

could see a pair of gray eyes rather near together, a delicate

irregular nose with a little ripple in it, and hair falling backward;

but there was a mouth and chin of a more prominent, threatening aspect

than belonged to the type of the grandmother’s miniature. Young

Ladislaw did not feel it necessary to smile, as if he were charmed with

this introduction to his future second cousin and her relatives; but

wore rather a pouting air of discontent.

“You are an artist, I see,” said Mr. Brooke, taking up the sketch-book

and turning it over in his unceremonious fashion.

“No, I only sketch a little. There is nothing fit to be seen there,”

said young Ladislaw, coloring, perhaps with temper rather than modesty.

“Oh, come, this is a nice bit, now. I did a little in this way myself

at one time, you know. Look here, now; this is what I call a nice

thing, done with what we used to call _brio_.” Mr. Brooke held out

towards the two girls a large colored sketch of stony ground and trees,

with a pool.

“I am no judge of these things,” said Dorothea, not coldly, but with an

eager deprecation of the appeal to her. “You know, uncle, I never see

the beauty of those pictures which you say are so much praised. They

are a language I do not understand. I suppose there is some relation

between pictures and nature which I am too ignorant to feel—just as you

see what a Greek sentence stands for which means nothing to me.”

Dorothea looked up at Mr. Casaubon, who bowed his head towards her,

while Mr. Brooke said, smiling nonchalantly—

“Bless me, now, how different people are! But you had a bad style of

teaching, you know—else this is just the thing for girls—sketching,

fine art and so on. But you took to drawing plans; you don’t understand

_morbidezza_, and that kind of thing. You will come to my house, I

hope, and I will show you what I did in this way,” he continued,

turning to young Ladislaw, who had to be recalled from his

preoccupation in observing Dorothea. Ladislaw had made up his mind that

she must be an unpleasant girl, since she was going to marry Casaubon,

and what she said of her stupidity about pictures would have confirmed

that opinion even if he had believed her. As it was, he took her words

for a covert judgment, and was certain that she thought his sketch

detestable. There was too much cleverness in her apology: she was

laughing both at her uncle and himself. But what a voice! It was like

the voice of a soul that had once lived in an Aeolian harp. This must

be one of Nature’s inconsistencies. There could be no sort of passion

in a girl who would marry Casaubon. But he turned from her, and bowed

his thanks for Mr. Brooke’s invitation.

“We will turn over my Italian engravings together,” continued that

good-natured man. “I have no end of those things, that I have laid by

for years. One gets rusty in this part of the country, you know. Not

you, Casaubon; you stick to your studies; but my best ideas get

undermost—out of use, you know. You clever young men must guard against

indolence. I was too indolent, you know: else I might have been

anywhere at one time.”

“That is a seasonable admonition,” said Mr. Casaubon; “but now we will

pass on to the house, lest the young ladies should be tired of

standing.”

When their backs were turned, young Ladislaw sat down to go on with his

sketching, and as he did so his face broke into an expression of

amusement which increased as he went on drawing, till at last he threw

back his head and laughed aloud. Partly it was the reception of his own

artistic production that tickled him; partly the notion of his grave

cousin as the lover of that girl; and partly Mr. Brooke’s definition of

the place he might have held but for the impediment of indolence. Mr.

Will Ladislaw’s sense of the ludicrous lit up his features very

agreeably: it was the pure enjoyment of comicality, and had no mixture

of sneering and self-exaltation.

“What is your nephew going to do with himself, Casaubon?” said Mr.

Brooke, as they went on.

“My cousin, you mean—not my nephew.”

“Yes, yes, cousin. But in the way of a career, you know.”

“The answer to that question is painfully doubtful. On leaving Rugby he

declined to go to an English university, where I would gladly have

placed him, and chose what I must consider the anomalous course of

studying at Heidelberg. And now he wants to go abroad again, without

any special object, save the vague purpose of what he calls culture,

preparation for he knows not what. He declines to choose a profession.”

“He has no means but what you furnish, I suppose.”

“I have always given him and his friends reason to understand that I

would furnish in moderation what was necessary for providing him with a

scholarly education, and launching him respectably. I am therefore

bound to fulfil the expectation so raised,” said Mr. Casaubon, putting

his conduct in the light of mere rectitude: a trait of delicacy which

Dorothea noticed with admiration.

“He has a thirst for travelling; perhaps he may turn out a Bruce or a

Mungo Park,” said Mr. Brooke. “I had a notion of that myself at one

time.”

“No, he has no bent towards exploration, or the enlargement of our

geognosis: that would be a special purpose which I could recognize with

some approbation, though without felicitating him on a career which so

often ends in premature and violent death. But so far is he from having

any desire for a more accurate knowledge of the earth’s surface, that

he said he should prefer not to know the sources of the Nile, and that

there should be some unknown regions preserved as hunting grounds for

the poetic imagination.”

“Well, there is something in that, you know,” said Mr. Brooke, who had

certainly an impartial mind.

“It is, I fear, nothing more than a part of his general inaccuracy and

indisposition to thoroughness of all kinds, which would be a bad augury

for him in any profession, civil or sacred, even were he so far

submissive to ordinary rule as to choose one.”

“Perhaps he has conscientious scruples founded on his own unfitness,”

said Dorothea, who was interesting herself in finding a favorable

explanation. “Because the law and medicine should be very serious

professions to undertake, should they not? People’s lives and fortunes

depend on them.”

“Doubtless; but I fear that my young relative Will Ladislaw is chiefly

determined in his aversion to these callings by a dislike to steady

application, and to that kind of acquirement which is needful

instrumentally, but is not charming or immediately inviting to

self-indulgent taste. I have insisted to him on what Aristotle has

stated with admirable brevity, that for the achievement of any work

regarded as an end there must be a prior exercise of many energies or

acquired facilities of a secondary order, demanding patience. I have

pointed to my own manuscript volumes, which represent the toil of years

preparatory to a work not yet accomplished. But in vain. To careful

reasoning of this kind he replies by calling himself Pegasus, and every

form of prescribed work ‘harness.’”

Celia laughed. She was surprised to find that Mr. Casaubon could say

something quite amusing.

“Well, you know, he may turn out a Byron, a Chatterton, a

Churchill—that sort of thing—there’s no telling,” said Mr. Brooke.

“Shall you let him go to Italy, or wherever else he wants to go?”

“Yes; I have agreed to furnish him with moderate supplies for a year or

so; he asks no more. I shall let him be tried by the test of freedom.”

“That is very kind of you,” said Dorothea, looking up at Mr. Casaubon

with delight. “It is noble. After all, people may really have in them

some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not?

They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very

patient with each other, I think.”

“I suppose it is being engaged to be married that has made you think

patience good,” said Celia, as soon as she and Dorothea were alone

together, taking off their wrappings.

“You mean that I am very impatient, Celia.”

“Yes; when people don’t do and say just what you like.” Celia had

become less afraid of “saying things” to Dorothea since this

engagement: cleverness seemed to her more pitiable than ever.