Chapter VIII
"Oh, rescue her! I am her brother now,
And you her father. Every gentle maid
Should have a guardian in each gentleman."
It was wonderful to Sir James Chettam how well he
continued to like going to the Grange after he had once
encountered the difficulty of seeing Dorothea for the first
time in the light of a woman who was engaged to another man.
Of course the forked lightning seemed to pass through him
when he first approached her, and he remained conscious
throughout the interview of hiding uneasiness; but, good as
he was, it must be owned that his uneasiness was less than
it would have been if he had thought his rival a brilliant
and desirable match. He had no sense of being eclipsed by
Mr. Casaubon; he was only shocked that Dorothea was under a
melancholy illusion, and his mortification lost some of its
bitterness by being mingled with compassion.
Nevertheless, while Sir James said to himself that he
had completely resigned her, since with the perversity of a
Desdemonz she had not affected a proposed match that was
clearly suitable and according to nature; he could not yet
be quite passive under the idea of her engagement to Mr.
Casaubon. On the day when he first saw them together in the
light of his present knowledge, it seemed to him that he had
not taken the affair seriously enough. Brooke was really
culpable; he ought to have hindered it. Who could speak to
him? Something might be done perhaps even now, at least to
defer the marriage. On his way home he turned into the
Rectory and asked for Mr. Cadwallader. Happily, the Rector
was at home, and his visitor was shown into the study, where
all the fishing-tackle hung. But he himself was in a little
room adjoining, at work with his turning apparatus, and he
called to the baronet to join him there. The two were
better friends than any
other landholder and clergyman
in the county — a significant fact which was in agreement
with the amiable expression of their faces.
Mr. Cadwallader was a large man, with full lips and a
sweet smile; very plain and rough in his exterior, but with
that solid imperturbable ease and good-humor which is
infectious, and like great grassy hills in the sunshine,
quiets even an irritated egoism, and makes it rather ashamed
of itself. " Well, how are you?" he said, showing a hand
not quite fit to be grasped. "Sorry I missed you before.
Is there anything particular? You look vexed."
Sir James's brow had a little crease in it, a little
depression of the eyebrow, which he seemed purposely to
exaggerate as he answered.
"It is only this conduct of Brooke's. I really think
somebody should speak to him."
"What? meaning to stand?" said Mr. Cadwallader, going on
with the arrangement of the reels which he had just been
turning. " I hardly think he means it. But where's the
harm, if he likes it? Any one who objects to Whiggery
should be glad when the Whigs don't put up the strongest
fellow. They won't overturn the Constitution with our
friend Brooke's head for a battering ram."
"Oh, I don't mean that," said Sir James, who, after
putting down his hat and throwing himself into a chair, had
begun to nurse his leg and examine the sole of his boot with
much bitterness. "I mean this marriage. I mean his letting
that blooming young girl marry Casaubon."
"What is the matter with Casaubon? I see no harm in
him — if the girl likes him."
"She is too young to know what she likes. Her guardian
ought to interfere. He ought not to allow the thing to be
done in this headlong manner. I wonder a man like you,
Cadwallader — a man with daughters, can look at the affair
with indifference: and with such a heart as yours I Do think
seriously about it."
"I am not joking; I am as serious as possible," said the
Rector, with a provoking little inward laugh. "You are as
bad as Elinor. She has been wanting me to go and
lecture Brooke j and I have reminded her that her friends
had a very poor opinion of the match she made when she
married me."
"But look at Casaubon," said Sir James, indignantly. "
He must be fifty, and I don't believe he could ever have
been much more than the shadow of a man. Look at his legs!"
"Confound you handsome young fellows! you think of
having it all your own way in the world. You don't
understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you
admire yourselves. Elinor used to tell her sisters that she
married me for my ugliness — it was so various and amusing
that it had quite conquered her prudence."
"You! it was easy enough for a woman to love you. But
this is no question of beauty. I don't like Casaubon."
This was Sir James's strongest way of implying that he
thought ill of a man's character.
"Why? what do you know against him?" said the Rector,
laying down his reels, and putting his thumbs into his arm-holes with an air of attention.
Sir James paused. He did not usually find it easy to
give his reasons: it seemed to him strange that people
should not know them without being told, since he only felt
what was reasonable. At last he said —
"Now, Cadwallader, has he got any heart?"
"Well, yes. I don't mean of the melting sort, but a
sound kernel, that you may be sure of. He is very good
to his poor relations: pensions several of the women, and is
educating a young fellow at a good deal of expense.
Casaubon acts up to his sense of justice. His mother's
sister made a bad match — a Pole, I think — lost herself — at
any rate was disowned by her family. If it had not been for
that, Casaubon would not have had so much money by half. I
believe he went himself to find out his cousins, and see
what he could do for them. Every man would not ring so well
as that, if you tried his metal. You would, Chettam;
but not every man."
"I don't know," said Sir James, coloring. "I am not so
sure of myself." He paused a moment, and then added, "That
was a right thing for Casaubon to do. But a man may
wish to do what is right, and yet be a sort of parchment
code. A woman may not be happy with him. And I think when
a girl is so young as Miss Brooke is, her friends ought to
interfere a little to hinder her from doing anything
foolish. You laugh, because you fancy I have some feeling
on my own account. But upon my honor, it is not that. I
should feel just the same if I were Miss Brooke's brother or
uncle."
"Well, but what should you do?"
"I should say that the marriage must not be decided on
until she was of age. And depend upon it, in that case, it
would never come off. I wish you saw it as I do — I wish you
would talk to Brooke about it."
Sir James rose as he was finishing his sentence, for he
saw Mrs. Cadwallader entering from the study. She held by
the hand her youngest girl, about five years old, who
immediately ran to papa, and was made comfortable on his
knee.
"I hear what you are talking about," said the wife.
"But you will make no impression on Humphrey. As long as
the fish rise to his bait, everybody is what he ought to be.
Bless you, Casaubon has got a trout-stream, and does not
care about fishing in it himself: could there be a better
fellow?"
"Well, there is something in that," said the Rector,
with his quiet, inward laugh. "It is a very good quality in
a man to have a trout-stream."
"But seriously," said Sir James, whose vexation had not
yet spent itself, "don't you think the Rector might do some
good by speaking?"
"Oh, I told you beforehand what he would say," answered
Mrs. Cadwallader, lifting up her eyebrows. " I have done
what I could: I wash my hands of the marriage."
"In the first place," said the Rector, looking rather
grave, "it would be nonsensical to expect that I could
convince Brooke, and make him act accordingly. Brooke is a
very good fellow, but pulpy; he will run into any mould, but
he won't keep shape."
"He might keep shape long enough to defer the marriage,"
said Sir James.
"But, my dear Chettam, why should I use my influence to
Casaubon's disadvantage, unless I were much surer than I
am that I should be acting for the advantage of Miss Brooke?
I know no harm of Casaubon. I don't care about his
Xisuthrus and Fee-fo-fum and the rest; but then he doesn't
care about my fishing-tackle. As to the line he took on the
Catholic Question, that was unexpected; but he has always
been evil to me, and I don't see why I should spoil his
sport. For anything I can tell, Miss Brooke may be happier
with him than she would be with any other man."
"Humphrey! I have no patience with you. You know you
would rather dine under the hedge than with Casaubon alone.
You have nothing to say to each other."
"What has that to do with Miss Brooke's marrying him?
She does not do it for my amusement."
"He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir
James.
"No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass, and
it was all semicolons and parentheses," said Mrs.
Cadwallader.
"Why does he not bring out his book, instead of
marrying," said Sir James, with a disgust which he held
warranted by the sound feeling of an English layman.
"Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his
brains. They say, when he was a little boy, he made an
abstract of ' Hop o' my Thumb,' and he has been making
abstracts ever since. Ugh! And that is the man Humphrey
goes on saying that a woman may be happy with."
"Well, he is what Miss Brooke likes," said the Rector.
"I don't profess to understand every young lady's taste."
"But if she were your own daughter?" said Sir James.
"That would be a different affair. She is not my
daughter, and I don't feel called upon to interfere.
Casaubon is as good as most of us. He is a scholarly
clergyman, and creditable to the cloth. Some Radical fellow
speechifying at Middlemarch said Casaubon was the learned
straw-chopping incumbent, and Freke was the brick-and-mortar
incumbent, and I was the angling incumbent. And upon my
word, I don't see that one is worse or better than the
other." The Rector ended with his silent laugh. He always
saw the joke of any satire against
himself. His
conscience was large and easy, like the rest of him: it did
only what it could do without any trouble.
Clearly, there would be no interference with Miss
Brooke's marriage through Mr. Cadwallader; and Sir James
felt with some sadness that she was to have perfect liberty
of misjudgment. It was a sign of his good disposition that
he did not slacken at all in his intention of carrying out
Dorothea's de. sign of the cottages. Doubtless this
persistence was the best course for his own dignity: but
pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so,
any more than vanity makes us witty. She was now enough
aware of Sir James's position with regard to her, to
appreciate the rectitude of his perseverance in a landlord's
duty, to which he had at first been urged by a lover's
complaisance, and her pleasure in it was great enough to
count for something even in her present happiness. Perhaps
she gave to Sir James Chettam's cottages all the interest
she could spare from Mr. Casaubon, or rather from the
symphony of hopeful dreams, admiring trust, and passionate self
devotion which that learned gentleman had set playing in her
soul. Hence it happened that in the good baronet's
succeeding visits, while he was beginning to pay small
attentions to Celia, he found himself talking with more and
more pleasure to Dorothea. She was perfectly unconstrained
and without irritation towards him now, and he was gradually
discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and
companionship between a man and a woman who have no passion
to hide or confess.