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 I " 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 world s 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."