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 co pan ion 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 become 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 wellbeing 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 I 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 po
lite 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
ease, 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 east 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.