Chương Chương 43 · Chapter XLIII

“This figure hath high price: ’t was wrought with love

Ages ago in finest ivory;

Nought modish in it, pure and noble lines

Of generous womanhood that fits all time

That too is costly ware; majolica

Of deft design, to please a lordly eye:

The smile, you see, is perfect—wonderful

As mere Faience! a table ornament

To suit the richest mounting.”

Dorothea seldom left home without her husband, but she did occasionally

drive into Middlemarch alone, on little errands of shopping or charity

such as occur to every lady of any wealth when she lives within three

miles of a town. Two days after that scene in the Yew-tree Walk, she

determined to use such an opportunity in order if possible to see

Lydgate, and learn from him whether her husband had really felt any

depressing change of symptoms which he was concealing from her, and

whether he had insisted on knowing the utmost about himself. She felt

almost guilty in asking for knowledge about him from another, but the

dread of being without it—the dread of that ignorance which would make

her unjust or hard—overcame every scruple. That there had been some

crisis in her husband’s mind she was certain: he had the very next day

begun a new method of arranging his notes, and had associated her quite

newly in carrying out his plan. Poor Dorothea needed to lay up stores

of patience.

It was about four o’clock when she drove to Lydgate’s house in Lowick

Gate, wishing, in her immediate doubt of finding him at home, that she

had written beforehand. And he was not at home.

“Is Mrs. Lydgate at home?” said Dorothea, who had never, that she knew

of, seen Rosamond, but now remembered the fact of the marriage. Yes,

Mrs. Lydgate was at home.

“I will go in and speak to her, if she will allow me. Will you ask her

if she can see me—see Mrs. Casaubon, for a few minutes?”

When the servant had gone to deliver that message, Dorothea could hear

sounds of music through an open window—a few notes from a man’s voice

and then a piano bursting into roulades. But the roulades broke off

suddenly, and then the servant came back saying that Mrs. Lydgate would

be happy to see Mrs. Casaubon.

When the drawing-room door opened and Dorothea entered, there was a

sort of contrast not infrequent in country life when the habits of the

different ranks were less blent than now. Let those who know, tell us

exactly what stuff it was that Dorothea wore in those days of mild

autumn—that thin white woollen stuff soft to the touch and soft to the

eye. It always seemed to have been lately washed, and to smell of the

sweet hedges—was always in the shape of a pelisse with sleeves hanging

all out of the fashion. Yet if she had entered before a still audience

as Imogene or Cato’s daughter, the dress might have seemed right

enough: the grace and dignity were in her limbs and neck; and about her

simply parted hair and candid eyes the large round poke which was then

in the fate of women, seemed no more odd as a head-dress than the gold

trencher we call a halo. By the present audience of two persons, no

dramatic heroine could have been expected with more interest than Mrs.

Casaubon. To Rosamond she was one of those county divinities not mixing

with Middlemarch mortality, whose slightest marks of manner or

appearance were worthy of her study; moreover, Rosamond was not without

satisfaction that Mrs. Casaubon should have an opportunity of studying

_her_. What is the use of being exquisite if you are not seen by the

best judges? and since Rosamond had received the highest compliments at

Sir Godwin Lydgate’s, she felt quite confident of the impression she

must make on people of good birth. Dorothea put out her hand with her

usual simple kindness, and looked admiringly at Lydgate’s lovely

bride—aware that there was a gentleman standing at a distance, but

seeing him merely as a coated figure at a wide angle. The gentleman was

too much occupied with the presence of the one woman to reflect on the

contrast between the two—a contrast that would certainly have been

striking to a calm observer. They were both tall, and their eyes were

on a level; but imagine Rosamond’s infantine blondness and wondrous

crown of hair-plaits, with her pale-blue dress of a fit and fashion so

perfect that no dressmaker could look at it without emotion, a large

embroidered collar which it was to be hoped all beholders would know

the price of, her small hands duly set off with rings, and that

controlled self-consciousness of manner which is the expensive

substitute for simplicity.

“Thank you very much for allowing me to interrupt you,” said Dorothea,

immediately. “I am anxious to see Mr. Lydgate, if possible, before I go

home, and I hoped that you might possibly tell me where I could find

him, or even allow me to wait for him, if you expect him soon.”

“He is at the New Hospital,” said Rosamond; “I am not sure how soon he

will come home. But I can send for him.”

“Will you let me go and fetch him?” said Will Ladislaw, coming forward.

He had already taken up his hat before Dorothea entered. She colored

with surprise, but put out her hand with a smile of unmistakable

pleasure, saying—

“I did not know it was you: I had no thought of seeing you here.”

“May I go to the Hospital and tell Mr. Lydgate that you wish to see

him?” said Will.

“It would be quicker to send the carriage for him,” said Dorothea, “if

you will be kind enough to give the message to the coachman.”

Will was moving to the door when Dorothea, whose mind had flashed in an

instant over many connected memories, turned quickly and said, “I will

go myself, thank you. I wish to lose no time before getting home again.

I will drive to the Hospital and see Mr. Lydgate there. Pray excuse me,

Mrs. Lydgate. I am very much obliged to you.”

Her mind was evidently arrested by some sudden thought, and she left

the room hardly conscious of what was immediately around her—hardly

conscious that Will opened the door for her and offered her his arm to

lead her to the carriage. She took the arm but said nothing. Will was

feeling rather vexed and miserable, and found nothing to say on his

side. He handed her into the carriage in silence, they said good-by,

and Dorothea drove away.

In the five minutes’ drive to the Hospital she had time for some

reflections that were quite new to her. Her decision to go, and her

preoccupation in leaving the room, had come from the sudden sense that

there would be a sort of deception in her voluntarily allowing any

further intercourse between herself and Will which she was unable to

mention to her husband, and already her errand in seeking Lydgate was a

matter of concealment. That was all that had been explicitly in her

mind; but she had been urged also by a vague discomfort. Now that she

was alone in her drive, she heard the notes of the man’s voice and the

accompanying piano, which she had not noted much at the time, returning

on her inward sense; and she found herself thinking with some wonder

that Will Ladislaw was passing his time with Mrs. Lydgate in her

husband’s absence. And then she could not help remembering that he had

passed some time with her under like circumstances, so why should there

be any unfitness in the fact? But Will was Mr. Casaubon’s relative, and

one towards whom she was bound to show kindness. Still there had been

signs which perhaps she ought to have understood as implying that Mr.

Casaubon did not like his cousin’s visits during his own absence.

“Perhaps I have been mistaken in many things,” said poor Dorothea to

herself, while the tears came rolling and she had to dry them quickly.

She felt confusedly unhappy, and the image of Will which had been so

clear to her before was mysteriously spoiled. But the carriage stopped

at the gate of the Hospital. She was soon walking round the grass plots

with Lydgate, and her feelings recovered the strong bent which had made

her seek for this interview.

Will Ladislaw, meanwhile, was mortified, and knew the reason of it

clearly enough. His chances of meeting Dorothea were rare; and here for

the first time there had come a chance which had set him at a

disadvantage. It was not only, as it had been hitherto, that she was

not supremely occupied with him, but that she had seen him under

circumstances in which he might appear not to be supremely occupied

with her. He felt thrust to a new distance from her, amongst the

circles of Middlemarchers who made no part of her life. But that was

not his fault: of course, since he had taken his lodgings in the town,

he had been making as many acquaintances as he could, his position

requiring that he should know everybody and everything. Lydgate was

really better worth knowing than any one else in the neighborhood, and

he happened to have a wife who was musical and altogether worth calling

upon. Here was the whole history of the situation in which Diana had

descended too unexpectedly on her worshipper. It was mortifying. Will

was conscious that he should not have been at Middlemarch but for

Dorothea; and yet his position there was threatening to divide him from

her with those barriers of habitual sentiment which are more fatal to

the persistence of mutual interest than all the distance between Rome

and Britain. Prejudices about rank and status were easy enough to defy

in the form of a tyrannical letter from Mr. Casaubon; but prejudices,

like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid and

subtle—solid as the pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo,

or as the memory of hyacinths which once scented the darkness. And Will

was of a temperament to feel keenly the presence of subtleties: a man

of clumsier perceptions would not have felt, as he did, that for the

first time some sense of unfitness in perfect freedom with him had

sprung up in Dorothea’s mind, and that their silence, as he conducted

her to the carriage, had had a chill in it. Perhaps Casaubon, in his

hatred and jealousy, had been insisting to Dorothea that Will had slid

below her socially. Confound Casaubon!

Will re-entered the drawing-room, took up his hat, and looking

irritated as he advanced towards Mrs. Lydgate, who had seated herself

at her work-table, said—

“It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted. May I come

another day and just finish about the rendering of ‘Lungi dal caro

bene’?”

“I shall be happy to be taught,” said Rosamond. “But I am sure you

admit that the interruption was a very beautiful one. I quite envy your

acquaintance with Mrs. Casaubon. Is she very clever? She looks as if

she were.”

“Really, I never thought about it,” said Will, sulkily.

“That is just the answer Tertius gave me, when I first asked him if she

were handsome. What is it that you gentlemen are thinking of when you

are with Mrs. Casaubon?”

“Herself,” said Will, not indisposed to provoke the charming Mrs.

Lydgate. “When one sees a perfect woman, one never thinks of her

attributes—one is conscious of her presence.”

“I shall be jealous when Tertius goes to Lowick,” said Rosamond,

dimpling, and speaking with aery lightness. “He will come back and

think nothing of me.”

“That does not seem to have been the effect on Lydgate hitherto. Mrs.

Casaubon is too unlike other women for them to be compared with her.”

“You are a devout worshipper, I perceive. You often see her, I

suppose.”

“No,” said Will, almost pettishly. “Worship is usually a matter of

theory rather than of practice. But I am practising it to excess just

at this moment—I must really tear myself away.”

“Pray come again some evening: Mr. Lydgate will like to hear the music,

and I cannot enjoy it so well without him.”

When her husband was at home again, Rosamond said, standing in front of

him and holding his coat-collar with both her hands, “Mr. Ladislaw was

here singing with me when Mrs. Casaubon came in. He seemed vexed. Do

you think he disliked her seeing him at our house? Surely your position

is more than equal to his—whatever may be his relation to the

Casaubons.”

“No, no; it must be something else if he were really vexed. Ladislaw is

a sort of gypsy; he thinks nothing of leather and prunella.”

“Music apart, he is not always very agreeable. Do you like him?”

“Yes: I think he is a good fellow: rather miscellaneous and

bric-a-brac, but likable.”

“Do you know, I think he adores Mrs. Casaubon.”

“Poor devil!” said Lydgate, smiling and pinching his wife’s ears.

Rosamond felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world,

especially in discovering what when she was in her unmarried girlhood

had been inconceivable to her except as a dim tragedy in by-gone

costumes—that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and

enslave men. At that time young ladies in the country, even when

educated at Mrs. Lemon’s, read little French literature later than

Racine, and public prints had not cast their present magnificent

illumination over the scandals of life. Still, vanity, with a woman’s

whole mind and day to work in, can construct abundantly on slight

hints, especially on such a hint as the possibility of indefinite

conquests. How delightful to make captives from the throne of marriage

with a husband as crown-prince by your side—himself in fact a

subject—while the captives look up forever hopeless, losing their rest

probably, and if their appetite too, so much the better! But Rosamond’s

romance turned at present chiefly on her crown-prince, and it was

enough to enjoy his assured subjection. When he said, “Poor devil!” she

asked, with playful curiosity—

“Why so?”

“Why, what can a man do when he takes to adoring one of you mermaids?

He only neglects his work and runs up bills.”

“I am sure you do not neglect your work. You are always at the

Hospital, or seeing poor patients, or thinking about some doctor’s

quarrel; and then at home you always want to pore over your microscope

and phials. Confess you like those things better than me.”

“Haven’t you ambition enough to wish that your husband should be

something better than a Middlemarch doctor?” said Lydgate, letting his

hands fall on to his wife’s shoulders, and looking at her with

affectionate gravity. “I shall make you learn my favorite bit from an

old poet—

‘Why should our pride make such a stir to be

And be forgot? What good is like to this,

To do worthy the writing, and to write

Worthy the reading and the worlds delight?’

What I want, Rosy, is to do worthy the writing,—and to write out myself

what I have done. A man must work, to do that, my pet.”

“Of course, I wish you to make discoveries: no one could more wish you

to attain a high position in some better place than Middlemarch. You

cannot say that I have ever tried to hinder you from working. But we

cannot live like hermits. You are not discontented with me, Tertius?”

“No, dear, no. I am too entirely contented.”

“But what did Mrs. Casaubon want to say to you?”

“Merely to ask about her husband’s health. But I think she is going to

be splendid to our New Hospital: I think she will give us two hundred

a-year.”