Middlemarch

‘My dear young lady—Miss Brooke—Dorothea!’ he said, pressing her hand between his hands, ‘this is a happiness greater than I had ever imagined to be in reserve for me. That I should ever meet with a mind and person so rich in the mingled graces which could render marriage desirable, was far indeed from my conception. You have all—nay, more than all—those qualities which I have ever regarded as the characteristic excellences of womanhood. The great charm of your sex is its capability of an ardent self-sacrificing affection, and herein we see its fitness to round and complete the existence of our own. Hitherto I have known few pleasures save of the severer kind; my satisfactions have been those of the solitary student. I have been little disposed to gather flowers that would wither in my hand, but now I shall pluck them with eagerness, to place them in your bosom.’

No speech could have been more thoroughly honest in its intention: the frigid rhetoric at the end was as sincere as the bark of a dog, or the cawing of an amorous rook. Would it not be rash to conclude that there was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike us as the thin music of a mandolin?

Dorothea’s faith supplied all that Mr Casaubon’s words seemed to leave unsaid; what believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.

‘I am very ignorant—you will quite wonder at my ignorance,’ said Dorothea. ‘I have so many thoughts that may be quite mistaken; and now I shall be able to tell them all to you, and ask you about them. But,’ she added, with rapid imagination of Mr Casaubon’s probable feeling, ‘I will not trouble you too much; only when you are inclined to listen to me. You must often be weary with the pursuit of subjects in your own track. I shall gain enough if you will take me with you there.’

‘How should I be able now to persevere in any path without your companionship?’ said Mr Casaubon, kissing her candid brow, and feeling that heaven had vouchsafed him a blessing in every way suited to his peculiar wants. He was being unconsciously wrought upon by the charms of a nature which was entirely without hidden calculations either for immediate effects or for remoter ends. It was this which made Dorothea so childlike, and, according to some judges, so stupid, with all her reputed cleverness; as, for example, in the present case of throwing herself, metaphorically speaking, at Mr Casaubon’s feet, and kissing his unfashionable shoeties as if he were a Protestant Pope. She was not in the least teaching Mr Casaubon to ask if he were good enough for her, but merely asking herself anxiously how she could be good enough for Mr Casaubon. Before he left the next day it had been decided that the marriage should take place within six weeks. Why not? Mr Casaubon’s house was ready. It was not a parsonage, but a considerable mansion, with much land attached to it. The parsonage was inhabited by the curate, who did all the duty except preaching the morning sermon.

CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_ad019f7c-9b1e-5775-9b50-e40bc9c8e121)

‘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 gateway, 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 curtsey which was dropped on the entrance of the small phaeton.

‘Well, Mrs Fitchett, how are your fowls laying now?’ said the high-coloured, 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.’

‘O 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 countryside somewhat duller if the Rector’s lady had been less free-spoken and less of a skinflint. Indeed, both the farmers and labourers 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 neighbourliness 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 politics, 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 Fawkes. 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 neighbours? Who could taste the fine flavour 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.’

‘O 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?’