บทที่ บทที่ 42 · Chapter XLII

How much, methinks, I could despise this man

Were I not bound in charity against it!

—SHAKESPEARE: _Henry VIII_.

One of the professional calls made by Lydgate soon after his return

from his wedding-journey was to Lowick Manor, in consequence of a

letter which had requested him to fix a time for his visit.

Mr. Casaubon had never put any question concerning the nature of his

illness to Lydgate, nor had he even to Dorothea betrayed any anxiety as

to how far it might be likely to cut short his labors or his life. On

this point, as on all others, he shrank from pity; and if the suspicion

of being pitied for anything in his lot surmised or known in spite of

himself was embittering, the idea of calling forth a show of compassion

by frankly admitting an alarm or a sorrow was necessarily intolerable

to him. Every proud mind knows something of this experience, and

perhaps it is only to be overcome by a sense of fellowship deep enough

to make all efforts at isolation seem mean and petty instead of

exalting.

But Mr. Casaubon was now brooding over something through which the

question of his health and life haunted his silence with a more

harassing importunity even than through the autumnal unripeness of his

authorship. It is true that this last might be called his central

ambition; but there are some kinds of authorship in which by far the

largest result is the uneasy susceptibility accumulated in the

consciousness of the author—one knows of the river by a few streaks

amid a long-gathered deposit of uncomfortable mud. That was the way

with Mr. Casaubon’s hard intellectual labors. Their most characteristic

result was not the “Key to all Mythologies,” but a morbid consciousness

that others did not give him the place which he had not demonstrably

merited—a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the views entertained of

him were not to his advantage—a melancholy absence of passion in his

efforts at achievement, and a passionate resistance to the confession

that he had achieved nothing.

Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have absorbed

and dried him, was really no security against wounds, least of all

against those which came from Dorothea. And he had begun now to frame

possibilities for the future which were somehow more embittering to him

than anything his mind had dwelt on before.

Against certain facts he was helpless: against Will Ladislaw’s

existence, his defiant stay in the neighborhood of Lowick, and his

flippant state of mind with regard to the possessors of authentic,

well-stamped erudition: against Dorothea’s nature, always taking on

some new shape of ardent activity, and even in submission and silence

covering fervid reasons which it was an irritation to think of: against

certain notions and likings which had taken possession of her mind in

relation to subjects that he could not possibly discuss with her. There

was no denying that Dorothea was as virtuous and lovely a young lady as

he could have obtained for a wife; but a young lady turned out to be

something more troublesome than he had conceived. She nursed him, she

read to him, she anticipated his wants, and was solicitous about his

feelings; but there had entered into the husband’s mind the certainty

that she judged him, and that her wifely devotedness was like a

penitential expiation of unbelieving thoughts—was accompanied with a

power of comparison by which himself and his doings were seen too

luminously as a part of things in general. His discontent passed

vapor-like through all her gentle loving manifestations, and clung to

that inappreciative world which she had only brought nearer to him.

Poor Mr. Casaubon! This suffering was the harder to bear because it

seemed like a betrayal: the young creature who had worshipped him with

perfect trust had quickly turned into the critical wife; and early

instances of criticism and resentment had made an impression which no

tenderness and submission afterwards could remove. To his suspicious

interpretation Dorothea’s silence now was a suppressed rebellion; a

remark from her which he had not in any way anticipated was an

assertion of conscious superiority; her gentle answers had an

irritating cautiousness in them; and when she acquiesced it was a

self-approved effort of forbearance. The tenacity with which he strove

to hide this inward drama made it the more vivid for him; as we hear

with the more keenness what we wish others not to hear.

Instead of wondering at this result of misery in Mr. Casaubon, I think

it quite ordinary. Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot

out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the

blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self. And who, if Mr. Casaubon

had chosen to expound his discontents—his suspicions that he was not

any longer adored without criticism—could have denied that they were

founded on good reasons? On the contrary, there was a strong reason to

be added, which he had not himself taken explicitly into

account—namely, that he was not unmixedly adorable. He suspected this,

however, as he suspected other things, without confessing it, and like

the rest of us, felt how soothing it would have been to have a

companion who would never find it out.

This sore susceptibility in relation to Dorothea was thoroughly

prepared before Will Ladislaw had returned to Lowick, and what had

occurred since then had brought Mr. Casaubon’s power of suspicious

construction into exasperated activity. To all the facts which he knew,

he added imaginary facts both present and future which became more real

to him than those because they called up a stronger dislike, a more

predominating bitterness. Suspicion and jealousy of Will Ladislaw’s

intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Dorothea’s impressions, were

constantly at their weaving work. It would be quite unjust to him to

suppose that he could have entered into any coarse misinterpretation of

Dorothea: his own habits of mind and conduct, quite as much as the open

elevation of her nature, saved him from any such mistake. What he was

jealous of was her opinion, the sway that might be given to her ardent

mind in its judgments, and the future possibilities to which these

might lead her. As to Will, though until his last defiant letter he had

nothing definite which he would choose formally to allege against him,

he felt himself warranted in believing that he was capable of any

design which could fascinate a rebellious temper and an undisciplined

impulsiveness. He was quite sure that Dorothea was the cause of Will’s

return from Rome, and his determination to settle in the neighborhood;

and he was penetrating enough to imagine that Dorothea had innocently

encouraged this course. It was as clear as possible that she was ready

to be attached to Will and to be pliant to his suggestions: they had

never had a _tête-à-tête_ without her bringing away from it some new

troublesome impression, and the last interview that Mr. Casaubon was

aware of (Dorothea, on returning from Freshitt Hall, had for the first

time been silent about having seen Will) had led to a scene which

roused an angrier feeling against them both than he had ever known

before. Dorothea’s outpouring of her notions about money, in the

darkness of the night, had done nothing but bring a mixture of more

odious foreboding into her husband’s mind.

And there was the shock lately given to his health always sadly present

with him. He was certainly much revived; he had recovered all his usual

power of work: the illness might have been mere fatigue, and there

might still be twenty years of achievement before him, which would

justify the thirty years of preparation. That prospect was made the

sweeter by a flavor of vengeance against the hasty sneers of Carp &

Company; for even when Mr. Casaubon was carrying his taper among the

tombs of the past, those modern figures came athwart the dim light, and

interrupted his diligent exploration. To convince Carp of his mistake,

so that he would have to eat his own words with a good deal of

indigestion, would be an agreeable accident of triumphant authorship,

which the prospect of living to future ages on earth and to all

eternity in heaven could not exclude from contemplation. Since, thus,

the prevision of his own unending bliss could not nullify the bitter

savors of irritated jealousy and vindictiveness, it is the less

surprising that the probability of a transient earthly bliss for other

persons, when he himself should have entered into glory, had not a

potently sweetening effect. If the truth should be that some

undermining disease was at work within him, there might be large

opportunity for some people to be the happier when he was gone; and if

one of those people should be Will Ladislaw, Mr. Casaubon objected so

strongly that it seemed as if the annoyance would make part of his

disembodied existence.

This is a very bare and therefore a very incomplete way of putting the

case. The human soul moves in many channels, and Mr. Casaubon, we know,

had a sense of rectitude and an honorable pride in satisfying the

requirements of honor, which compelled him to find other reasons for

his conduct than those of jealousy and vindictiveness. The way in which

Mr. Casaubon put the case was this:—“In marrying Dorothea Brooke I had

to care for her well-being in case of my death. But well-being is not

to be secured by ample, independent possession of property; on the

contrary, occasions might arise in which such possession might expose

her to the more danger. She is ready prey to any man who knows how to

play adroitly either on her affectionate ardor or her Quixotic

enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that very intention in his mind—a

man with no other principle than transient caprice, and who has a

personal animosity towards me—I am sure of it—an animosity which is fed

by the consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has constantly

vented in ridicule of which I am as well assured as if I had heard it.

Even if I live I shall not be without uneasiness as to what he may

attempt through indirect influence. This man has gained Dorothea’s ear:

he has fascinated her attention; he has evidently tried to impress her

mind with the notion that he has claims beyond anything I have done for

him. If I die—and he is waiting here on the watch for that—he will

persuade her to marry him. That would be calamity for her and success

for him. _She_ would not think it calamity: he would make her believe

anything; she has a tendency to immoderate attachment which she

inwardly reproaches me for not responding to, and already her mind is

occupied with his fortunes. He thinks of an easy conquest and of

entering into my nest. That I will hinder! Such a marriage would be

fatal to Dorothea. Has he ever persisted in anything except from

contradiction? In knowledge he has always tried to be showy at small

cost. In religion he could be, as long as it suited him, the facile

echo of Dorothea’s vagaries. When was sciolism ever dissociated from

laxity? I utterly distrust his morals, and it is my duty to hinder to

the utmost the fulfilment of his designs.”

The arrangements made by Mr. Casaubon on his marriage left strong

measures open to him, but in ruminating on them his mind inevitably

dwelt so much on the probabilities of his own life that the longing to

get the nearest possible calculation had at last overcome his proud

reticence, and had determined him to ask Lydgate’s opinion as to the

nature of his illness.

He had mentioned to Dorothea that Lydgate was coming by appointment at

half-past three, and in answer to her anxious question, whether he had

felt ill, replied,—“No, I merely wish to have his opinion concerning

some habitual symptoms. You need not see him, my dear. I shall give

orders that he may be sent to me in the Yew-tree Walk, where I shall be

taking my usual exercise.”

When Lydgate entered the Yew-tree Walk he saw Mr. Casaubon slowly

receding with his hands behind him according to his habit, and his head

bent forward. It was a lovely afternoon; the leaves from the lofty

limes were falling silently across the sombre evergreens, while the

lights and shadows slept side by side: there was no sound but the

cawing of the rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that

last solemn lullaby, a dirge. Lydgate, conscious of an energetic frame

in its prime, felt some compassion when the figure which he was likely

soon to overtake turned round, and in advancing towards him showed more

markedly than ever the signs of premature age—the student’s bent

shoulders, the emaciated limbs, and the melancholy lines of the mouth.

“Poor fellow,” he thought, “some men with his years are like lions; one

can tell nothing of their age except that they are full grown.”

“Mr. Lydgate,” said Mr. Casaubon, with his invariably polite air, “I am

exceedingly obliged to you for your punctuality. We will, if you

please, carry on our conversation in walking to and fro.”

“I hope your wish to see me is not due to the return of unpleasant

symptoms,” said Lydgate, filling up a pause.

“Not immediately—no. In order to account for that wish I must

mention—what it were otherwise needless to refer to—that my life, on

all collateral accounts insignificant, derives a possible importance

from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all its

best years. In short, I have long had on hand a work which I would fain

leave behind me in such a state, at least, that it might be committed

to the press by—others. Were I assured that this is the utmost I can

reasonably expect, that assurance would be a useful circumscription of

my attempts, and a guide in both the positive and negative

determination of my course.”

Here Mr. Casaubon paused, removed one hand from his back and thrust it

between the buttons of his single-breasted coat. To a mind largely

instructed in the human destiny hardly anything could be more

interesting than the inward conflict implied in his formal measured

address, delivered with the usual sing-song and motion of the head.

Nay, are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle

of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the

significance of its life—a significance which is to vanish as the

waters which come and go where no man has need of them? But there was

nothing to strike others as sublime about Mr. Casaubon, and Lydgate,

who had some contempt at hand for futile scholarship, felt a little

amusement mingling with his pity. He was at present too ill acquainted

with disaster to enter into the pathos of a lot where everything is

below the level of tragedy except the passionate egoism of the

sufferer.

“You refer to the possible hindrances from want of health?” he said,

wishing to help forward Mr. Casaubon’s purpose, which seemed to be

clogged by some hesitation.

“I do. You have not implied to me that the symptoms which—I am bound to

testify—you watched with scrupulous care, were those of a fatal

disease. But were it so, Mr. Lydgate, I should desire to know the truth

without reservation, and I appeal to you for an exact statement of your

conclusions: I request it as a friendly service. If you can tell me

that my life is not threatened by anything else than ordinary

casualties, I shall rejoice, on grounds which I have already indicated.

If not, knowledge of the truth is even more important to me.”

“Then I can no longer hesitate as to my course,” said Lydgate; “but the

first thing I must impress on you is that my conclusions are doubly

uncertain—uncertain not only because of my fallibility, but because

diseases of the heart are eminently difficult to found predictions on.

In any case, one can hardly increase appreciably the tremendous

uncertainty of life.”

Mr. Casaubon winced perceptibly, but bowed.

“I believe that you are suffering from what is called fatty

degeneration of the heart, a disease which was first divined and

explored by Laennec, the man who gave us the stethoscope, not so very

many years ago. A good deal of experience—a more lengthened

observation—is wanting on the subject. But after what you have said, it

is my duty to tell you that death from this disease is often sudden. At

the same time, no such result can be predicted. Your condition may be

consistent with a tolerably comfortable life for another fifteen years,

or even more. I could add no information to this beyond anatomical or

medical details, which would leave expectation at precisely the same

point.” Lydgate’s instinct was fine enough to tell him that plain

speech, quite free from ostentatious caution, would be felt by Mr.

Casaubon as a tribute of respect.

“I thank you, Mr. Lydgate,” said Mr. Casaubon, after a moment’s pause.

“One thing more I have still to ask: did you communicate what you have

now told me to Mrs. Casaubon?”

“Partly—I mean, as to the possible issues.” Lydgate was going to

explain why he had told Dorothea, but Mr. Casaubon, with an

unmistakable desire to end the conversation, waved his hand slightly,

and said again, “I thank you,” proceeding to remark on the rare beauty

of the day.

Lydgate, certain that his patient wished to be alone, soon left him;

and the black figure with hands behind and head bent forward continued

to pace the walk where the dark yew-trees gave him a mute companionship

in melancholy, and the little shadows of bird or leaf that fleeted

across the isles of sunlight, stole along in silence as in the presence

of a sorrow. Here was a man who now for the first time found himself

looking into the eyes of death—who was passing through one of those

rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace,

which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of

waters upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the

water which cannot be had to cool the burning tongue. When the

commonplace “We must all die” transforms itself suddenly into the acute

consciousness “I must die—and soon,” then death grapples us, and his

fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as

our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be

like the first. To Mr. Casaubon now, it was as if he suddenly found

himself on the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the oncoming

oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons. In such an

hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias, but carries it onward

in imagination to the other side of death, gazing backward—perhaps with

the divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the petty anxieties of

self-assertion. What was Mr. Casaubon’s bias his acts will give us a

clew to. He held himself to be, with some private scholarly

reservations, a believing Christian, as to estimates of the present and

hopes of the future. But what we strive to gratify, though we may call

it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which

men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love.

And Mr. Casaubon’s immediate desire was not for divine communion and

light divested of earthly conditions; his passionate longings, poor

man, clung low and mist-like in very shady places.

Dorothea had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had

stepped into the garden, with the impulse to go at once to her husband.

But she hesitated, fearing to offend him by obtruding herself; for her

ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory, to

heighten her dread, as thwarted energy subsides into a shudder; and she

wandered slowly round the nearer clumps of trees until she saw him

advancing. Then she went towards him, and might have represented a

heaven-sent angel coming with a promise that the short hours remaining

should yet be filled with that faithful love which clings the closer to

a comprehended grief. His glance in reply to hers was so chill that she

felt her timidity increased; yet she turned and passed her hand through

his arm.

Mr. Casaubon kept his hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm to

cling with difficulty against his rigid arm.

There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this

unresponsive hardness inflicted on her. That is a strong word, but not

too strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of

joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard

faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth

bears no harvest of sweetness—calling their denial knowledge. You may

ask why, in the name of manliness, Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in

that way. Consider that his was a mind which shrank from pity: have you

ever watched in such a mind the effect of a suspicion that what is

pressing it as a grief may be really a source of contentment, either

actual or future, to the being who already offends by pitying? Besides,

he knew little of Dorothea’s sensations, and had not reflected that on

such an occasion as the present they were comparable in strength to his

own sensibilities about Carp’s criticisms.

Dorothea did not withdraw her arm, but she could not venture to speak.

Mr. Casaubon did not say, “I wish to be alone,” but he directed his

steps in silence towards the house, and as they entered by the glass

door on this eastern side, Dorothea withdrew her arm and lingered on

the matting, that she might leave her husband quite free. He entered

the library and shut himself in, alone with his sorrow.

She went up to her boudoir. The open bow-window let in the serene glory

of the afternoon lying in the avenue, where the lime-trees cast long

shadows. But Dorothea knew nothing of the scene. She threw herself on a

chair, not heeding that she was in the dazzling sun-rays: if there were

discomfort in that, how could she tell that it was not part of her

inward misery?

She was in the reaction of a rebellious anger stronger than any she had

felt since her marriage. Instead of tears there came words:—

“What have I done—what am I—that he should treat me so? He never knows

what is in my mind—he never cares. What is the use of anything I do? He

wishes he had never married me.”

She began to hear herself, and was checked into stillness. Like one who

has lost his way and is weary, she sat and saw as in one glance all the

paths of her young hope which she should never find again. And just as

clearly in the miserable light she saw her own and her husband’s

solitude—how they walked apart so that she was obliged to survey him.

If he had drawn her towards him, she would never have surveyed

him—never have said, “Is he worth living for?” but would have felt him

simply a part of her own life. Now she said bitterly, “It is his fault,

not mine.” In the jar of her whole being, Pity was overthrown. Was it

her fault that she had believed in him—had believed in his

worthiness?—And what, exactly, was he?— She was able enough to estimate

him—she who waited on his glances with trembling, and shut her best

soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that she might be petty

enough to please him. In such a crisis as this, some women begin to

hate.

The sun was low when Dorothea was thinking that she would not go down

again, but would send a message to her husband saying that she was not

well and preferred remaining up-stairs. She had never deliberately

allowed her resentment to govern her in this way before, but she

believed now that she could not see him again without telling him the

truth about her feeling, and she must wait till she could do it without

interruption. He might wonder and be hurt at her message. It was good

that he should wonder and be hurt. Her anger said, as anger is apt to

say, that God was with her—that all heaven, though it were crowded with

spirits watching them, must be on her side. She had determined to ring

her bell, when there came a rap at the door.

Mr. Casaubon had sent to say that he would have his dinner in the

library. He wished to be quite alone this evening, being much occupied.

“I shall not dine, then, Tantripp.”

“Oh, madam, let me bring you a little something?”

“No; I am not well. Get everything ready in my dressing room, but pray

do not disturb me again.”

Dorothea sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle, while the

evening slowly deepened into night. But the struggle changed

continually, as that of a man who begins with a movement towards

striking and ends with conquering his desire to strike. The energy that

would animate a crime is not more than is wanted to inspire a resolved

submission, when the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself. That

thought with which Dorothea had gone out to meet her husband—her

conviction that he had been asking about the possible arrest of all his

work, and that the answer must have wrung his heart, could not be long

without rising beside the image of him, like a shadowy monitor looking

at her anger with sad remonstrance. It cost her a litany of pictured

sorrows and of silent cries that she might be the mercy for those

sorrows—but the resolved submission did come; and when the house was

still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon

habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside

in the darkness waiting for his coming up-stairs with a light in his

hand. If he did not come soon she thought that she would go down and

even risk incurring another pang. She would never again expect anything

else. But she did hear the library door open, and slowly the light

advanced up the staircase without noise from the footsteps on the

carpet. When her husband stood opposite to her, she saw that his face

was more haggard. He started slightly on seeing her, and she looked up

at him beseechingly, without speaking.

“Dorothea!” he said, with a gentle surprise in his tone. “Were you

waiting for me?”

“Yes, I did not like to disturb you.”

“Come, my dear, come. You are young, and need not to extend your life

by watching.”

When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea’s ears,

she felt something like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we

had narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature. She put her hand into

her husband’s, and they went along the broad corridor together.

BOOK V.

THE DEAD HAND.