Chapter LV
"Hath she her faults? I would you had them too.
They are the fruity must of soundest wine;
Or say, they are regenerating fire
Such as hath turned the dense black element
Into a crystal pathway for the sun."
If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in
the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age
is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and
resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems
final, simply because it is new. We are told that the
oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by
the earthquakes, but they proba
bly see beyond each
shock, and reflect that there are plenty more to come.
To Dorothea, still in that time of youth when the eyes
with their long full lashes look out after their rain of
tears unsoiled and unwearied as a freshly opened passion-flower, that morning's parting with Will Ladislaw seemed to
be the close of their personal relations. He was going away
into the distance of unknown years, and if ever he came back
he would be another man. The actual state of his mind — his
proud resolve to give the lie beforehand to any suspicion
that he would play the needy adventurer seeking a rich
woman — lay quite out of her imagination, and she had
interpreted all his behavior easily enough by her
supposition that Mr. Casaubon's codicil seemed to him, as it
did to her, a gross and. cruel interdict on any active
friendship between them. Their young delight in speaking to
each other, and saying what no one else would care to hear,
was forever ended, and become a treasure of the past. For
this very reason she dwelt on it without inward check. .
That unique happiness too was dead, and in its shadowed
silent chamber she might vent the passionate grief which she
herself wondered at. For the first time she took down the
miniature from the wall and kept it before her, liking to
blend the woman who had been too hardly judged with the
grandson whom her own heart and judgment defended. Can any
one who has rejoiced in woman's tenderness think it a
reproach to her that she took the little oval picture in her
palm and made a bed for it there, and leaned her cheek upon
it, as if that would soothe the creatures who had suffered
unjust condemnation? She did not know then that it was Love
who had come to her briefly, as in a dream before awaking,
with the hues of morning on his wings — that it was Love to
whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished
by the blameless rigor of irresistible day. She only felt
that there was something irrevocably amiss and lost in her
lot, and her thoughts about the future were the more readily
shapen into resolve. Ardent souls, ready to construct their
coming lives, are apt to commit themselves to the fulfilment
of their own visions.
One day that she went to Freshitt to fulfil her promise
of staying all night and seeing baby washed, Mrs.
Cadwallader came to dine, the Rector being gone on a fishing
excursion. It was a warm evening, and even in the
delightful drawing-room, where the fine old turf sloped from
the open window towards a lilied pool and well-planted
mounds, the heat was enough to make Celia in her white
muslin and light curls reflect with pity on what Dodo must
feel in her black dress and close cap. But this was not
until some episodes with baby were over, and had left her
mind at leisure. She had seated herself and taken up a fan
for some time before she said, in her quiet guttural —
"Dear Dodo, do throw off that cap. I am sure your dress
must make you feel ill."
"I am so used to the cap — it has become a sort of
shell," said Dorothea, smiling. " I feel rather bare and
exposed when it is off."
"I must see you without it; it makes us all warm," said
Celia, throwing down her fan, and going to Dorothea. It was
a pretty picture to see this little lady in white muslin
unfastening the widow's cap from her more majestic sister,
and tossing it on to a chair. Just as the coils and braids
of dark-brown hair had been set free, Sir James entered the
room. He looked at the released head, and said, " Ah!" in a
tone of satisfaction.
"It was I who did it, James," said Celia. " Dodo need
not make such a slavery of her mourning; she need not wear
that cap any more among her friends."
"My dear Celia," said Lady Chettam, " a widow must v.
ear her mourning at least a year."
"Not if she marries again before the end of it," said
Mrs. Cadwallader, who had some pleasure in startling her
good friend the Dowager. Sir James was annoyed, and leaned
forward to play with Celia's Maltese dog.
"That is very rare, I hope," said Lady Chettam, in a
tone intended to guard against such events. "No friend of
ours ever committed herself in that way except Mrs. Beevor,
and it was very painful to Lord Grinsell when she did so.
Her first
husband was objectionable, which made it the
greater wonder. And severely she was punished for it. They
said Captain Beevor dragged her about by the hair, and held
up loaded pistols at her."
"Oh, if she took the wrong man!" said Mrs. Cadwallader,
who was in a decidedly wicked mood. " Marriage is always
bad then, first or second. Priority is a poor
recommendation in a husband if he has got no other. I would
rather have a good second husband than an indifferent
first."
"My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you," said
Lady Chettam. "I am sure you would be the last woman to
marry again prematurely, if our dear Rector were taken
away."
"Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy.
It is lawful to marry again, I suppose; else we might as
well be Hindoos instead of Christians. Of course if a woman
accepts the wrong man, she must take the consequences, and
one who does it twice over deserves her fate. But if she
can marry blood, beauty, and bravery — the sooner the
better."
"I think the subject of our conversation is very ill-chosen," said Sir James, with a look of disgust. " Suppose
we change it."
"Not on my account, Sir James," said Dorothea,
determined not to lose the opportunity of freeing herself
from certain oblique references to excellent matches. " If
you are speaking on my behalf, I can assure you that no
question can be more indifferent and impersonal to me than
second marriage. It is no more to me than if you talked of
women going fox-hunting: whether it is admirable in them or
not, I shall not follow them. Pray let Mrs. Cadwallader
amuse herself on that subject as much as on any other."
"My dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Lady Chettam, in her
stateliest way, "you do not, I hope, think there was any
allusion to you in my mentioning Mrs. Beevor. It was only
an instance that occurred to me. She was step-daughter to
Lord Grinsell: he married Mrs. Teveroy for his second wife.
There could be no possible allusion to you."
"Oh no," said Celia. "Nobody chose the subject; it all
came out of Dodo's cap. Mrs. Cadwallader only said
what was quite true. A woman could not be married in a
widow's cap, James."
"Hush, my dear!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "I will not
offend again. I will not even refer to Dido or Zenobia.
Only what are we to talk about? I, for my part, object to
the discussion of Human Nature, because that is the nature
of rectors' wives."
Later in the evening, after Mrs. Cadwallader was gone,
Celia said privately to Dorothea, " Really, Dodo, taking
your cap off made you like yourself again in more ways than
one. You spoke up just as you used to do, when anything was
said to displease you. But I could hardly make out whether
it was James that you thought wrong, or Mrs. Cadwallader."
"Neither," said Dorothea. "James spoke out of delicacy
to me, but he was mistaken in supposing that I minded what
Mrs. Cadwallader said. I should only mind if there were a
law obliging me to take any piece of blood and beauty that
she or anybody else recommended."
"But you know, Dodo, if you ever did marry, it would be
all the better to have blood and beauty," said Celia,
reflecting that Mr. Casaubon had not been richly endowed
with those gifts, and that it would be well to caution
Dorothea in time.
"Don't be anxious, Kitty; I have quite other thoughts
about my life. I shall never marry again," said Dorothea,
touching her sister's chin, and looking at her with
indulgent affection. Celia was nursing her baby, and
Dorothea had come to say good-night to her.
"Really — quite?" said Celia. " Not anybody at all — if
he were very wonderful indeed?"
Dorothea shook her head slowly. "Not anybody at all. I
have delightful plans. I should like to take a great deal
of land, and drain it, and make a little colony, where
everybody should work, and all the work should be done well.
I should know every one of the people and be their friend.
I am going to have great consultations with Mr. Garth: he
can tell me almost everything I want to know."
"Then you will be happy, if you have a plan, Dodo?"
said
Celia. "Perhaps little Arthur will like plans
when he grows up, and then he can help you."
Sir James was informed that same night that Dorothea was
really quite set against marrying anybody at all, and was
going to take to "all sorts of plans," just like what she
used to have. Sir James made no remark. To his secret
feeling there was something repulsive in a woman's second
marriage, and no match would prevent him from feeling it a
sort of desecration for Dorothea. He was aware that the
world would regard such a sentiment as preposterous,
especially in relation to a woman of one-and-twenty; the
practice of "the world" being to treat of a young widow's
second marriage as certain and probably near, and to smile
with meaning if the widow acts accordingly. But if Dorothea
did choose to espouse her solitude, he felt that the
resolution would well become her.