Chapter IX
1st 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? . . .
2d 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 m 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 ML 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, Budo," 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 east 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, "
1 should like to see all that." She had got nothing from
him r 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, where 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 eves 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.