Chapter XXVIII
"1st Gent. All times are good to seek your wedded home
Bringing a mutual delight.
2d Gent. Why, true.
The calendar hath not an evil day
For souls made one by love, and even death
Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves
While they two clasped each other, and foresaw
No life apart."
Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon, returning from their wedding
journey, arrived at Lowick Manor in the middle of January.
A light snow was falling as they descended at the door, and
in the morning, when Dorothea passed from her dressing-room
avenue the blue-green boudoir that we know of, she saw the
long avenue of limes lifting their trunks from a white
earth, and spreading white branches against the dun and
motionless sky. The distant flat shrank in uniform
whiteness and low-hanging uniformity of cloud. The very
furniture in the room seemed to have shrunk since she saw it
before: the slag in the tapestry looked more like a ghost in
his ghostly blue-green world;
the volumes of polite literature in the bookcase looked morn
like immovable imitations of books. The bright fire of dry
oak-boughs burning on the dogs seemed an incongruous renewal
of life and glow — like the figure of Dorothea herself as she
entered carrying the red-leather eases containing the cameos
for Celia.
She was glowing from her morning toilet as only
healthful youth can glow: there was gem-like brightness on
her coiled hair and in her hazel eyes; there was warm red
life in her lips; her throat had a breathing whiteness above
the differing white of the fur which itself seemed to wind
about her neck and cling down her blue-gray pelisse with a
tenderness gathered from her own, a sentient commingled
innocence which kept its loveliness against the crystalline
purity of the outdoor
snow. As she laid the
cameo-cases on the table in the bow-window, she
unconsciously kept her hands on them, immediately absorbed
in looking out on the still, white enclosure which made her
visible world.
Mr. Casaubon, who had risen early complaining of
palpitation, was in the library giving audience to his
curate Mr. Tucker. By-and-by Celia would come in her
quality of bridesmaid as well as sister, and through the
next weeks there would be wedding visits received and given;
all in continuance of that transitional life understood to
correspond with the excitement of bridal felicity, and
keeping up the sense of busy ineffectiveness, as of a dream
which the dreamer begins to suspect. The duties of her
married life, contemplated as so great beforehand, seemed to
be shrinking with the furniture and the white vapor-walled
landscape. The clear heights where she expected to walk in
full communion had become difficult to see even in her
imagination; the delicious repose of the soul on a complete
superior had been shaken into uneasy effort and alarmed with
dim presentiment. When would the days begin of that active
wifely devotion which was to strengthen her husband's life
and exalt her own? Never perhaps, as she had preconceived
them; but somehow — still somehow. In this solemnly pledged
union of her life, duty would present itself in some new
form of inspiration and give a new meaning to wifely love.
Meanwhile there was the snow and the low arch of dun
vapor — there was the stifling oppression of that
gentlewoman's world, where everything was done for her and
none asked for her aid — where the sense of connection with a
manifold pregnant existence had to be kept up painfully as
an inward vision, instead of coming from without in claims
that would have shaped her energies. — " What shall I do?" "
Whatever you please, my dear: "that had been her brief
history since she had left off learning morning lessons and
practising silly rhythms on the hated piano. Marriage,
which was to bring guidance into worthy and imperative
occupation, had not yet freed her from the gentlewoman's
oppressive liberty: it had not even filled her leisure with
the ruminant joy
of unchecked tenderness. Her blooming
full-pulsed youth stood there in a moral imprisonment which
made itself one with the chill, colorless, narrowed
landscape, with the shrunken furniture, the never-read
books, and the ghostly stag in a pale fantastic world that
seemed to be vanishing from the daylight.
In the first minutes when Dorothea looked out she felt
nothing but the dreary oppression; then came a keen
remembrance, and turning away from the window she walked
round the room. The ideas and hopes which were living in
her mind when she first saw this room nearly three months
before were present now only as memories: she judged them as
we judge transient and departed things. All existence
seemed to beat with a lower pulse than her own, and her
religious faith was a solitary cry, the struggle out of a
nightmare in which every object was withering and shrinking
away from her. Each remembered thing in the room was
disenchanted, was deadened as an unlit transparency, till
her wandering gaze came to the group of miniatures, and
there at last she saw something which had gathered new
breath and meaning: it was the miniature of Mr. Casaubon's
aunt Julia, who had made the unfortunate marriage — of Will
Ladislaw's grandmother. Dorothea could fancy that it was
alive now — the delicate woman's face which yet had a
headstrong look, a peculiarity difficult to interpret. Was
it only her friends who thought her marriage unfortunate? or
did she herself find it out to be a mistake, and taste the
salt bitterness of her tears in the merciful silence of the
night? What breadths of experience Dorothea seemed to have
passed over since she first looked at this miniature! She
felt a new companionship with it, as if it had an ear for
her and could see how she was looking at it. Here was a
woman who had known some difficulty about marriage. Nay,
the colors deepened, the lips and chin seemed to get larger,
the hair and eyes seemed to be sending out light, the face
was masculine and beamed on her with that full gaze which
tells her on whom it falls that she is too interesting for
the slightest movement of her eyelid to pass unnoticed and
uninterpreted. The vivid presentation came like a pleasant
glow to Dorothea: she
felt herself smiling, and turning
from the miniature sat down and looked up as if she were
again talking to a figure in front of her. But the smile
disappeared as she went on meditating, and at last she said
aloud —
"Oh, it was cruel to speak so! How sad — how dreadful!"
She rose quickly and went out of the room, hurrying
along the corridor, with the irresistible impulse to go and
see her husband and inquire if she could do anything for
him. Perhaps Mr. Tucker was gone and Mr. Casaubon was alone
in the library. She felt as if all her morning's gloom
would vanish if she could see her husband glad because of
her presence.
But when she reached the head of the dark oak there was
Celia coming up, and below there was Mr. Brooke, exchanging
welcomes and congratulations with Mr. Casaubon.
"Dodo!" said Celia, in her quiet staccato; then kissed
her sister, whose arms encircled her, and said no more. I
think they both cried a little in a furtive manner, while
Dorothea ran down-stairs to greet her uncle.
"I need not ask how you are, my dear," said Mr. Brooke,
after kissing her forehead. " Rome has agreed with you, I
see — happiness, frescos, the antique — that sort of thing.
Well, it's very pleasant to have you back again, and you
understand all about art now, eh? But Casaubon is a little
pale, I tell him — a little pale, you know. Studying hard in
his holidays is carrying it rather too far. I overdid it at
one time" — Mr. Brooke still held Dorothea's hand, but had
turned his face to Mr. Casaubon — "about topography, ruins,
temples — I thought I had a clew, but I saw it would carry me
too far, and nothing might come of it. You may go any
length in that sort of thing, and nothing may come of it,
you know."
Dorothea's eyes also were turned up to her husband's
face with some anxiety at the idea that those who saw him
afresh after absence might be aware of signs which she had
not noticed.
"Nothing to alarm you, my dear," said Mr. Brooke,
observing her expression. "A little English beef and mutton
will soon make a difference. It was all very well to look
pale, sitting for the portrait of Aquinas, you know — we got
your letter
just in time. But Aquinas, now — he was a
little too subtle, wasn't he? Does anybody read Aquinas?"
"He is not indeed an author adapted to superficial
minds," said Mr. Casaubon, meeting these timely questions
with dignified patience.
"You would like coffee in your own room, uncle?" said
Dorothea, coming to the rescue.
"Yes; and you must go to Celia: she has great news to
tell you, you know. I leave it all to her."
The blue-green boudoir looked much more cheerful when
Celia was seated there in a pelisse exactly like her
sister's, surveying the cameos with a placid satisfaction,
while the conversation passed on to other topics.
"Do you think it nice to go to Rome on a wedding
journey?" said Celia, with her ready delicate blush which
Dorothea was used to on the smallest occasions.
"It would not suit all — not you, dear, for example,"
said Dorothea, quietly. No one would ever know what she
thought of a wedding journey to Rome.
"Mrs. Cadwallader says it is nonsense, people going a
long journey when they are married. She says they get tired
to death of each other, and can't quarrel comfortably, as
they would at home. And Lady Chettam says she went to
Bath." Celia's color changed again and again — seemed
To come and go with tidings from the heart,
As it a running messenger had been.
It must mean more than Celia's blushing usually did.
"Celia! has something happened?" said Dorothea, in a
tone full of sisterly feeling. " Have you really any great
news to tell me?"
"It was because you went away, Dodo. Then there was
nobody but me for Sir James to talk to," said Celia, with a
certain roguishness in her eyes.
"I understand. It is as I used to hope and believe,"
said Dorothea, taking her sister's face between her hands,
and looking at her half anxiously. Celia's marriage seemed
more serious than it used to do.
"It was only three days ago," said Celia. " And Lady
Chettam is very kind."
"And you are very happy?"
"Yes. We are not going to be married yet. Because
every thing is to be got ready. And I don't want to be
married so very soon, because I think it is nice to be
engaged. And we shall be married all our lives after."
"I do believe you could not marry better, Kitty. Sir
James is a good, honorable man," said Dorothea, warmly.
"He has gone on with the cottages, Dodo. He will tell
you about them when he comes. Shall you be glad to see
him?"
"Of course I shall. How can you ask me?"
"Only I was afraid you would be getting so learned,"
said Celia, regarding Mr. Casaubon's learning as a kind of
damp which might in due time saturate a neighboring body.