Chapter VI
"My lady's tongue is like the meadow blades,
That cut you stroking them with idle hand.
Nice cutting is her function: she divides
With spiritual edge the millet-seed,
And makes intangible savings."
As Mr. Casaubon's carriage was passing out of the gate-way, it arrested the entrance of a pony phaeton driven by a
lady with a servant seated behind. It was doubtful whether
the recognition had been mutual, for Mr. Casaubon was
looking absently before him; but the lady was quick-eyed, and
threw a nod and a " How do you do?" in the nick of time. In
spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was
plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important
personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the
entrance of the small phaeton.
"Well, Mrs. Fitchett, how are your fowls laying now?"
said the high-colored, dark-eyed lady, with the clearest
chiselled utterance.
"Pretty well for laying, madam, but they've ta'en to
eating their eggs: I've no peace o' mind with 'em at all."
"Oh, the cannibals! Better sell them cheap at once.
What will you sell them a couple? One can't eat fowls of a
bad character at a high price."
"Well, madam, half-a-crown: I couldn't let 'em go, not
under."
"Half-a-crown, these times! Come now — for the Rector's
chicken-broth on a Sunday. He has consumed all ours that I
can spare. You are half paid with the sermon, Mrs.
Fitchett, remember that. Take a pair of tumbler-pigeons for
them — little beauties. You must come and see them. You
have no tumblers among your pigeons."
"Well, madam, Master Fitchett shall go and see 'em after
work. He's very hot on new sorts; to oblige you."
"Oblige me! It will be the best bargain he ever made.
A pair of church pigeons for a couple of wicked Spanish
fowls that eat their own eggs! Don't you and Fitchett boast
too much, that is all!"
The phaeton was driven onwards with the last words,
leaving Mrs. Fitchett laughing and shaking her head slowly,
with an interjectional " Surely, surely!" — from
which it might be inferred that she would have found the
country-side somewhat duller if the Rector's lady had been
less free-spoken and less of a skinflint. Indeed, both the
farmers and laborers in the parishes of Freshitt and Tipton
would have felt a sad lack of conversation but for the
stories about what Mrs. Cadwallader said and did: a lady of
immeasurably high birth, descended, as it were, from unknown
earls, dim as the crowd of heroic shades — who pleaded
poverty, pared down prices, and cut jokes in the most
companionable manner, though with a turn of tongue that let
you know who she was. Such a lady gave a neighborliness to
both rank and religion, and mitigated the bitterness of
uncommuted tithe. A much more exemplary character with an
infusion of sour dignity would not have
furthered their
comprehension of the Thirty-nine Articles, and would have
been less socially uniting.
Mr. Brooke, seeing Mrs. Cadwallader's merits from a
different point of view, winced a little when her name was
announced in the library, where he was sitting alone.
"I see you have had our Lowick Cicero here," she said,
seating herself comfortably, throwing back her wraps, and
showing a thin but well-built figure. "I suspect you and he
are brewing some bad polities, else you would not be seeing
so much of the lively man. I shall inform against you:
remember you are both suspicious characters since you took
Peel's side about the Catholic Bill. I shall tell everybody
that you are going to put up for Middlemarch on the Whig
side when old Pinkerton resigns, and that Casaubon is going
to help you in an underhand manner: going to bribe the
voters with pamphlets, and throw open the public-houses to
distribute them. Come, confess!"
"Nothing of the sort," said Mr. Brooke, smiling and
rubbing his eye-glasses, but really blushing a little at the
impeachment. " Casaubon and I don't talk politics much. He
doesn't care much about the philanthropic side of things;
punishments, and that kind of thing. He only cares about
Church questions. That is not my line of action, you know."
"Ra-a-ther too much, my friend. _I_ have heard of your
doings. Who was it that sold his bit of land to the Papists
at Middlemarch? I believe you bought it on purpose. You
are a perfect Guy Faux. See if you are not burnt in effigy
this 5th of November coming. Humphrey would not come to
quarrel with you about it, so I am come."
"Very good. I was prepared to be persecuted for not
persecuting — not persecuting, you know."
"There you go! That is a piece of clap-trap you have
got ready for the hustings. Now, do not let them lure
you to the hustings, my dear Mr. Brooke. A man always makes
a fool of himself, speechifying: there's no excuse but being
on the right side, so that you can ask a blessing on your
humming and hawing. You will lose yourself, I forewarn you.
You
will make a Saturday pie of all parties' opinions,
and be pelted by everybody."
"That is what I expect. you know," said Mr. Brooke, not
wishing to betray how little he enjoyed this prophetic
sketch — " what I expect as an independent man. As to the
Whigs, a man who goes with the thinkers is not likely to be
hooked on by any party. He may go with them up to a certain
point — up to a certain point, you know. But that is what
you ladies never understand."
"Where your certain point is? No. I should like to be
told how a man can have any certain point when he belongs to
no party — leading a roving life, and never letting his
friends know his address. `Nobody knows where Brooke will
be — there's no counting on Brooke' — that is what people say
of you, to be quite frank. Now, do turn respectable. How
will you like going to Sessions with everybody looking shy
on you, and you with a bad conscience and an empty pocket?"
"I don't pretend to argue with a lady on politics," said
Mr. Brooke, with an air of smiling indifference, but feeling
rather unpleasantly conscious that this attack of Mrs.
Cadwallader's had opened the defensive campaign to which
certain rash steps had exposed him. " Your sex are not
thinkers, you know — varium et mutabile semper — that kind
of thing. You don't know Virgil. I knew " — Mr. Brooke
reflected in time that he had not had the personal
acquaintance of the Augustan poet — " I was going to say,
poor Stoddart, you know. That was what he said. You
ladies are always against an independent attitude — a man's
caring for nothing but truth, and that sort of thing. And
there is no part of the county where opinion is narrower
than it is here — I don't mean to throw stones, you know, but
somebody is wanted to take the independent line; and if I
don't take it, who will?"
"Who? Why, any upstart who has got neither blood nor
position. People of standing should consume their
independent nonsense at home, not hawk it about. And you!
who are going to marry your niece, as good as your daughter,
to one of our best men. Sir James would be cruelly annoyed:
it
will be too hard on him if you turn round now and
make yourself a Whig sign-board."
Mr. Brooke again winced inwardly, for Dorothea's
engagement had no sooner been decided, than he had thought
of Mrs. Cadwallader's prospective taunts. It might have
been easy for ignorant observers to say, " Quarrel with Mrs.
Cadwallader;" but where is a country gentleman to go who
quarrels with his oldest neighbors? Who could taste the
fine flavor in the name of Brooke if it were delivered
casually, like wine without a seal? Certainly a man can
only be cosmopolitan up to a certain point.
"I hope Chettam and I shall always be good friends; but
I am sorry to say there is no prospect of his marrying my
niece," said Mr. Brooke, much relieved to see through the
window that Celia was coming in.
"Why not?" said Mrs. Cadwallader, with a sharp note of
surprise. "It is hardly a fortnight since you and I were
talking about it."
"My niece has chosen another suitor — has chosen him, you
know. I have had nothing to do with it. I should have
preferred Chettam; and I should have said Chettam was the
man any girl would have chosen. But there is no accounting
for these things. Your sex is capricious, you know."
"Why, whom do you mean to say that you are going to let
her marry?" Mrs. Cadwallader's mind was rapidly surveying
the possibilities of choice for Dorothea.
But here Celia entered, blooming from a walk in the
garden, and the greeting with her delivered Mr. Brooke from
the necessity of answering immediately. He got up hastily,
and saying, "By the way, I must speak to Wright about the
horses," shuffled quickly out of the room.
"My dear child, what is this? — this about your sister's
engagement?" said Mrs. Cadwallader.
"She is engaged to marry Mr. Casaubon," said Celia,
resorting, as usual, to the simplest statement of fact, and
enjoying this opportunity of speaking to the Rector's wife
alone.
"This is frightful. How long has it been going on?"
"I only knew of it yesterday. They are to be married in
six weeks."
"Well, my dear, I wish you joy of your brother-in-law."
"I am so sorry for Dorothea."
"Sorry! It is her doing, I suppose."
"Yes; she says Mr. Casaubon has a great soul."
"With all my heart."
"Oh, Mrs. Cadwallader, I don't think it can be nice to
marry a man with a great soul."
"Well, my dear, take warning. You know the look of one
now; when the next comes and wants to marry you, don't you
accept him."
"I'm sure I never should."
"No; one such in a family is enough. So your sister
never cared about Sir James Chettam? What would you have
said to him for a brother-in-law?"
"I should have liked that very much. I am sure he would
have been a good husband. Only," Celia added, with a slight
blush (she sometimes seemed to blush as she breathed), "I
don't think he would have suited Dorothea."
"Not high-flown enough?"
"Dodo is very strict. She thinks so much about
everything, and is so particular about what one says. Sir
James never seemed to please her."
"She must have encouraged him, I am sure. That is not
very creditable."
"Please don't be angry with Dodo; she does not see
things. She thought so much about the cottages, and she was
rude to Sir James sometimes; but he is so kind, he never
noticed it."
"Well," said Mrs. Cadwallader, putting on her shawl, and
rising, as if in haste, "I must go straight to Sir James and
break this to him. He will have brought his mother back by
this time, and I must call. Your uncle will never tell him.
We are all disappointed, my dear. Young people should think
of their families in marrying. I set a bad example — married
a poor clergyman, and made myself a pitiable object among
the De Bracys — obliged to get my coals by stratagem, and
pray to heaven for my salad oil. However, Casaubon has
money enough; I must do him that justice. As to his
blood, I suppose the family quarterings are three cuttle-fish sable, and a commentator rampant. By the bye, before I
go, my dear, I must speak to your Mrs. Carter about pastry.
I want to send my young cook to learn of her. Poor people
with four children, like us, you know, can't afford to keep
a good cook. I have no doubt Mrs. Carter will oblige me.
Sir James's cook is a perfect dragon."
In less than an hour, Mrs. Cadwallader had circumvented
Mrs. Carter and driven to Freshitt Hall, which was not far
from her own parsonage, her husband being resident in
Freshitt and keeping a curate in Tipton.
Sir James Chettam had returned from the short journey
which had kept him absent for a couple of days, and had
changed his dress, intending to ride over to Tipton Grange.
His horse was standing at the door when Mrs. Cadwallader
drove up, and he immediately appeared there himself, whip in
hand. Lady Chettam had not yet returned, but Mrs.
Cadwallader's errand could not be despatched in the presence
of grooms, so she asked to be taken into the conservatory
close by, to look at the new plants; and on coming to a
contemplative stand, she said —
"I have a great shock for you; I hope you are not so far
gone in love as you pretended to be."
It was of no use protesting, against Mrs. Cadwallader's
way of putting things. But Sir James's countenance changed
a little. He felt a vague alarm.
"I do believe Brooke is going to expose himself after
all. I accused him of meaning to stand for Middlemarch on
the Liberal side, and he looked silly and never denied it —
talked about the independent line, and the usual nonsense."
"Is that all?" said Sir James, much relieved.
"Why," rejoined Mrs. Cadwallader, with a sharper note, "
you don't mean to say that you would like him to turn public
man in that way — making a sort of political Cheap Jack of
himself?"
"He might be dissuaded, I should think. He would not
like the expense."
"That is what I told him. He is vulnerable to reason
there — always a few grains of common-sense in an ounce of
miserliness. Miserliness is a capital quality to run in
families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on. And
there must be a little crack in the Brooke family, else we
should not see what we are to see."
"What? Brooke standing for Middlemarch?"
"Worse than that. I really feel a little responsible.
I always told you Miss Brooke would be such a fine match. I
knew there was a great deal of nonsense in her — a flighty
sort of Methodistical stuff. But these things wear out of
girls. However, I am taken by surprise for once."
"What do you mean, Mrs. Cadwallader?" said Sir James.
His fear lest Miss Brooke should have run away to join the
Moravian Brethren, or some preposterous sect unknown to good
society, was a little allayed by the knowledge that Mrs.
Cadwallader always made the worst of things. "What has
happened to Miss Brooke? Pray speak out."
"Very well. She is engaged to be married." Mrs.
Cadwallader paused a few moments, observing the deeply hurt
expression in her friend's face, which he was trying to
conceal by a nervous smile, while he whipped his boot; but
she soon added, " Engaged to Casaubon."
Sir James let his whip fall and stooped to pick it up.
Perhaps his face had never before gathered so much
concentrated disgust as when he turned to Mrs. Cadwallader
and repeated, " Casaubon?"
"Even so. You know my errand now."
"Good God! It is horrible! He is no better than a
mummy!" (The point of view has to be allowed for, as that of
a blooming and disappointed rival.)
"She says, he is a great soul. — A great bladder for
dried peas to rattle in!" said Mrs. Cadwallader.
"What business has an old bachelor like that to marry?"
said Sir James. " He has one foot in the grave."
"He means to draw it out again, I suppose."
"Brooke ought not to allow it: he should insist on its
being
put off till she is of age. She would think
better of it then. What is a guardian for?"
"As if you could ever squeeze a resolution out of
Brooke!"
"Cadwallader might talk to him."
"Not he! Humphrey finds everybody charming I never can
get him to abuse Casaubon. He will even speak well of the
bishop, though I tell him it is unnatural in a beneficed
clergyman; what can one do with a husband who attends so
little to the decencies? I hide it as well as I can by
abusing everybody myself. Come, come, cheer up! you are
well rid of Miss Brooke, a girl who would have been
requiring you to see the stars by daylight. Between
ourselves, little Celia is worth two of her, and likely
after all to be the better match. For this marriage to
Casaubon is as good as going to a nunnery ."
"Oh, on my own account — it is for Miss Brooke's sake I
think her friends should try to use their influence."
"Well, Humphrey doesn't know yet. But when I tell him,
you may depend on it he will say, ' Why not? Casaubon is a
good fellow — and young — young enough.' These charitable
people never know vinegar from wine till they have swallowed
it and got the colic. However, if I were a man I should
prefer Celia, especially when Dorothea was gone. The truth
is, you have been courting one and have won the other. I
can see that she admires you almost as much as a man expects
to be admired. If it were any one but me who said so, you
might think it exaggeration. Good-by!"
Sir James handed Mrs. Cadwallader to the phaeton, and
then jumped on his horse. He was not going to ,renounce his
ride because of his friend's unpleasant news — only to ride
the faster in some other direction than that of Tipton
Grange.
Now, why on earth should Mrs. Cadwallader have been at
all busy about Miss Brooke's marriage; and why, when one
match that she liked to think she had a hand in was
frustrated, should she have straightway contrived the
preliminaries of another? Was there any ingenious plot, any
hide-and-seek course of action, which might be detected by a
careful tele
scopic watch? Not at all: a telescope might
have swept the parishes of Tipton and Freshitt, the whole
area visited by Mrs. Cadwallader in her phaeton, without
witnessing any interview that could excite suspicion, or any
scene from which she did not return with the same
unperturbed keenness of eye and the same high natural color.
In fact, if that convenient vehicle had existed in the days
of the Seven Sages, one of them would doubtless have
remarked, that you can know little of women by following
them about in their pony-phaetons. Even with a microscope
directed on a water-drop we find ourselves making
interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for
whereas -under a weak lens you may seem to see a creature
exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller
creatures actively play as if they were so many animated
tax-pennies, a stronger lens reveals to you certain tiniest
hairlets which make vortices for these victims while the
swallower waits passively at his receipt of custom. In this
way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to Mrs.
Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of minute causes
producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to
bring her the sort of food she needed.
Her life was rurally simple, quite free from secrets
either foul, dangerous, or otherwise important, and not
consciously affected by the great affairs of the world. All
the more did the affairs of the great world interest her,
when communicated in the letters of high-born relations: the
way in which fascinating younger sons had gone to the dogs
by marrying their mistresses; the fine old-blooded idiocy of
young Lord Tapir, and the furious gouty humors of old Lord
Megatherium; the exact crossing of genealogies which had
brought a coronet into a new branch and widened the
relations of scandal, — these were topics of which she
retained details with the utmost accuracy, and reproduced
them in an excellent pickle of epigrams, which she herself
enjoyed the more because she believed as unquestionably in
birth and no-birth as she did in game and vermin. She would
never have disowned any one on the ground of poverty: a De
Bracy reduced to take his dinner in a basin would have
seemed to her an example of
pathos worth exaggerating,
and I fear his aristocratic vices would not have horrified
her. But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort OF
religious hatred: they had probably made all their money out
of high retail prices, and Mrs. Cadwallader detested high
prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the
Rectory: such people were no part of God's design in making
the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears.
A town where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a
sort of low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a
well-bred scheme of the universe. Let any lady who is
inclined to be hard on Mrs. Cadwallader inquire into the
comprehensiveness of her own beautiful views, and be quite
sure that they afford accommodation for all the lives which
have the honor to coexist with hers.
With such a mind, active as phosphorus, biting
everything that came near into the form that suited it, how
could Mrs. Cadwallader feel that the Miss Brookes and their
matrimonial prospects were alien to her? especially as it
had been the habit of years for her to scold Mr. Brooke with
the friendliest frankness, and let him know in confidence
that she thought him a poor creature. From the first
arrival of the young ladies in Tipton she had prearranged
Dorothea's marriage with Sir James, and if it had taken
place would have been quite sure that it was her doing: that
it should not take place after she had preconceived it,
caused her an irritation which every thinker will sympathize
with. She was the diplomatist of Tipton and Freshitt, and
for anything to happen in spite of her was an offensive
irregularity. As to freaks like this of Miss Brooke's, Mrs.
Cadwallader had no patience with them, and now saw that her
opinion of this girl had been infected with some of her
husband's weak charitableness: those Methodistical whims,
that air of being more religious than the rector and curate
together, came from a deeper and more constitutional disease
than she had been willing to believe.
"However," said Mrs. Cadwallader, first to herself and
afterwards to her husband, "I throw her over: there was a
chance, if she had married Sir James, of her becoming a
sane, sensible woman. He would never have contradicted
her, and when a woman is not contradicted, she has no
motive for obstinacy in her absurdities. But now I wish her
joy of her hair shirt."
It followed that Mrs. Cadwallader must decide on another
match for Sir James, and having made up her mind that it was
to be the younger Miss Brooke, there could not have been a
more skilful move towards the success of her plan than her
hint to the baronet that he had made an impression on
Celia's heart. For he was not one of those gentlemen who
languish after the unattainable Sappho's apple that laughs
from the topmost bough — the charms which
"Smile like the knot of cowslips on the cliff, Not to be
come at by the willing hand."
He had no sonnets to write, and it could not strike him
agreeably that he was not an object of preference to the
woman whom he had preferred. Already the knowledge that
Dorothea had chosen Mr. Casaubon had bruised his attachment
and relaxed its hold. Although Sir James was a sportsman,
he had some other feelings towards women than towards grouse
and foxes, and did not regard his future wife in the light
of prey, valuable chiefly for the excitements of the chase.
Neither was he so well acquainted with the habits of
primitive races as to feel that an ideal combat for her,
tomahawk in hand, so to speak, was necessary to the
historical continuity of the marriage-tie. On the contrary,
having the amiable vanity which knits us to those who are
fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent,
and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman
had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness
from out his heart towards hers.
Thus it happened, that after Sir James had ridden rather
fast for half an hour in a direction away from Tipton
Grange, he slackened his pace, and at last turned into a
road which would lead him back by a shorter cut. Various
feelings wrought m him the determination after all to go to
the Grange to-day as if nothing new had happened. He could
not help rejoicing that he had never made the offer and been
rejected; mere friendly politeness required that he should
call to see Doro
thea about the cottages, and now happily
Mrs. Cadwallader had prepared him to offer his
congratulations, if necessary, without showing too much
awkwardness. He really did not like it: giving up Dorothea
was very painful to him; but there was something in the
resolve to make this visit forthwith and conquer all show of
feeling, which was a sort of file-biting and counter-irritant. And without his distinctly recognizing the
impulse, there certainly was present in him the sense that
Celia would be there, and that he should pay her more
attention than he had done before.
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment
between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and
look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to
inquiries say, " Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is
not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own
hurts — not to hurt others.