Kabanata Kabanata 8 · Chapter VIII

“Oh, rescue her! I am her brother now,

And you her father. Every gentle maid

Should have a guardian in each gentleman.”

It was wonderful to Sir James Chettam how well he continued to like

going to the Grange after he had once encountered the difficulty of

seeing Dorothea for the first time in the light of a woman who was

engaged to another man. Of course the forked lightning seemed to pass

through him when he first approached her, and he remained conscious

throughout the interview of hiding uneasiness; but, good as he was, it

must be owned that his uneasiness was less than it would have been if

he had thought his rival a brilliant and desirable match. He had no

sense of being eclipsed by Mr. Casaubon; he was only shocked that

Dorothea was under a melancholy illusion, and his mortification lost

some of its bitterness by being mingled with compassion.

Nevertheless, while Sir James said to himself that he had completely

resigned her, since with the perversity of a Desdemona she had not

affected a proposed match that was clearly suitable and according to

nature; he could not yet be quite passive under the idea of her

engagement to Mr. Casaubon. On the day when he first saw them together

in the light of his present knowledge, it seemed to him that he had not

taken the affair seriously enough. Brooke was really culpable; he ought

to have hindered it. Who could speak to him? Something might be done

perhaps even now, at least to defer the marriage. On his way home he

turned into the Rectory and asked for Mr. Cadwallader. Happily, the

Rector was at home, and his visitor was shown into the study, where all

the fishing tackle hung. But he himself was in a little room adjoining,

at work with his turning apparatus, and he called to the baronet to

join him there. The two were better friends than any other landholder

and clergyman in the county—a significant fact which was in agreement

with the amiable expression of their faces.

Mr. Cadwallader was a large man, with full lips and a sweet smile; very

plain and rough in his exterior, but with that solid imperturbable ease

and good-humor which is infectious, and like great grassy hills in the

sunshine, quiets even an irritated egoism, and makes it rather ashamed

of itself. “Well, how are you?” he said, showing a hand not quite fit

to be grasped. “Sorry I missed you before. Is there anything

particular? You look vexed.”

Sir James’s brow had a little crease in it, a little depression of the

eyebrow, which he seemed purposely to exaggerate as he answered.

“It is only this conduct of Brooke’s. I really think somebody should

speak to him.”

“What? meaning to stand?” said Mr. Cadwallader, going on with the

arrangement of the reels which he had just been turning. “I hardly

think he means it. But where’s the harm, if he likes it? Any one who

objects to Whiggery should be glad when the Whigs don’t put up the

strongest fellow. They won’t overturn the Constitution with our friend

Brooke’s head for a battering ram.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that,” said Sir James, who, after putting down his

hat and throwing himself into a chair, had begun to nurse his leg and

examine the sole of his boot with much bitterness. “I mean this

marriage. I mean his letting that blooming young girl marry Casaubon.”

“What is the matter with Casaubon? I see no harm in him—if the girl

likes him.”

“She is too young to know what she likes. Her guardian ought to

interfere. He ought not to allow the thing to be done in this headlong

manner. I wonder a man like you, Cadwallader—a man with daughters, can

look at the affair with indifference: and with such a heart as yours!

Do think seriously about it.”

“I am not joking; I am as serious as possible,” said the Rector, with a

provoking little inward laugh. “You are as bad as Elinor. She has been

wanting me to go and lecture Brooke; and I have reminded her that her

friends had a very poor opinion of the match she made when she married

me.”

“But look at Casaubon,” said Sir James, indignantly. “He must be fifty,

and I don’t believe he could ever have been much more than the shadow

of a man. Look at his legs!”

“Confound you handsome young fellows! you think of having it all your

own way in the world. You don’t understand women. They don’t admire you

half so much as you admire yourselves. Elinor used to tell her sisters

that she married me for my ugliness—it was so various and amusing that

it had quite conquered her prudence.”

“You! it was easy enough for a woman to love you. But this is no

question of beauty. I don’t _like_ Casaubon.” This was Sir James’s

strongest way of implying that he thought ill of a man’s character.

“Why? what do you know against him?” said the Rector laying down his

reels, and putting his thumbs into his armholes with an air of

attention.

Sir James paused. He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons:

it seemed to him strange that people should not know them without being

told, since he only felt what was reasonable. At last he said—

“Now, Cadwallader, has he got any heart?”

“Well, yes. I don’t mean of the melting sort, but a sound kernel,

_that_ you may be sure of. He is very good to his poor relations:

pensions several of the women, and is educating a young fellow at a

good deal of expense. Casaubon acts up to his sense of justice. His

mother’s sister made a bad match—a Pole, I think—lost herself—at any

rate was disowned by her family. If it had not been for that, Casaubon

would not have had so much money by half. I believe he went himself to

find out his cousins, and see what he could do for them. Every man

would not ring so well as that, if you tried his metal. _You_ would,

Chettam; but not every man.”

“I don’t know,” said Sir James, coloring. “I am not so sure of myself.”

He paused a moment, and then added, “That was a right thing for

Casaubon to do. But a man may wish to do what is right, and yet be a

sort of parchment code. A woman may not be happy with him. And I think

when a girl is so young as Miss Brooke is, her friends ought to

interfere a little to hinder her from doing anything foolish. You

laugh, because you fancy I have some feeling on my own account. But

upon my honor, it is not that. I should feel just the same if I were

Miss Brooke’s brother or uncle.”

“Well, but what should you do?”

“I should say that the marriage must not be decided on until she was of

age. And depend upon it, in that case, it would never come off. I wish

you saw it as I do—I wish you would talk to Brooke about it.”

Sir James rose as he was finishing his sentence, for he saw Mrs.

Cadwallader entering from the study. She held by the hand her youngest

girl, about five years old, who immediately ran to papa, and was made

comfortable on his knee.

“I hear what you are talking about,” said the wife. “But you will make

no impression on Humphrey. As long as the fish rise to his bait,

everybody is what he ought to be. Bless you, Casaubon has got a

trout-stream, and does not care about fishing in it himself: could

there be a better fellow?”

“Well, there is something in that,” said the Rector, with his quiet,

inward laugh. “It is a very good quality in a man to have a

trout-stream.”

“But seriously,” said Sir James, whose vexation had not yet spent

itself, “don’t you think the Rector might do some good by speaking?”

“Oh, I told you beforehand what he would say,” answered Mrs.

Cadwallader, lifting up her eyebrows. “I have done what I could: I wash

my hands of the marriage.”

“In the first place,” said the Rector, looking rather grave, “it would

be nonsensical to expect that I could convince Brooke, and make him act

accordingly. Brooke is a very good fellow, but pulpy; he will run into

any mould, but he won’t keep shape.”

“He might keep shape long enough to defer the marriage,” said Sir

James.

“But, my dear Chettam, why should I use my influence to Casaubon’s

disadvantage, unless I were much surer than I am that I should be

acting for the advantage of Miss Brooke? I know no harm of Casaubon. I

don’t care about his Xisuthrus and Fee-fo-fum and the rest; but then he

doesn’t care about my fishing-tackle. As to the line he took on the

Catholic Question, that was unexpected; but he has always been civil to

me, and I don’t see why I should spoil his sport. For anything I can

tell, Miss Brooke may be happier with him than she would be with any

other man.”

“Humphrey! I have no patience with you. You know you would rather dine

under the hedge than with Casaubon alone. You have nothing to say to

each other.”

“What has that to do with Miss Brooke’s marrying him? She does not do

it for my amusement.”

“He has got no good red blood in his body,” said Sir James.

“No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all

semicolons and parentheses,” said Mrs. Cadwallader.

“Why does he not bring out his book, instead of marrying,” said Sir

James, with a disgust which he held warranted by the sound feeling of

an English layman.

“Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains. They

say, when he was a little boy, he made an abstract of ‘Hop o’ my

Thumb,’ and he has been making abstracts ever since. Ugh! And that is

the man Humphrey goes on saying that a woman may be happy with.”

“Well, he is what Miss Brooke likes,” said the Rector. “I don’t profess

to understand every young lady’s taste.”

“But if she were your own daughter?” said Sir James.

“That would be a different affair. She is _not_ my daughter, and I

don’t feel called upon to interfere. Casaubon is as good as most of us.

He is a scholarly clergyman, and creditable to the cloth. Some Radical

fellow speechifying at Middlemarch said Casaubon was the learned

straw-chopping incumbent, and Freke was the brick-and-mortar incumbent,

and I was the angling incumbent. And upon my word, I don’t see that one

is worse or better than the other.” The Rector ended with his silent

laugh. He always saw the joke of any satire against himself. His

conscience was large and easy, like the rest of him: it did only what

it could do without any trouble.

Clearly, there would be no interference with Miss Brooke’s marriage

through Mr. Cadwallader; and Sir James felt with some sadness that she

was to have perfect liberty of misjudgment. It was a sign of his good

disposition that he did not slacken at all in his intention of carrying

out Dorothea’s design of the cottages. Doubtless this persistence was

the best course for his own dignity: but pride only helps us to be

generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.

She was now enough aware of Sir James’s position with regard to her, to

appreciate the rectitude of his perseverance in a landlord’s duty, to

which he had at first been urged by a lover’s complaisance, and her

pleasure in it was great enough to count for something even in her

present happiness. Perhaps she gave to Sir James Chettam’s cottages all

the interest she could spare from Mr. Casaubon, or rather from the

symphony of hopeful dreams, admiring trust, and passionate self

devotion which that learned gentleman had set playing in her soul.

Hence it happened that in the good baronet’s succeeding visits, while

he was beginning to pay small attentions to Celia, he found himself

talking with more and more pleasure to Dorothea. She was perfectly

unconstrained and without irritation towards him now, and he was

gradually discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and

companionship between a man and a woman who have no passion to hide or

confess.