فصل 04

CHAPTER FOUR

Lowick

Mr and Mrs Casaubon arrived home from their wedding-journey in January. A light snow was falling. Lowick looked different to Dorothea now. In the grey winter light, it seemed dark and oppressive. During the first evening, she realised that, as mistress of Lowick, she had no duties. The servants did everything.

The morning after their arrival, Mr Casaubon got up early. He said he had slept badly and was not feeling well. Nevertheless, he went into his study to work immediately after breakfast. ‘What shall I do?’ Dorothea asked, and he replied, ‘Whatever you like, my dear.’ She felt as if she were in prison.

Back in her room, Dorothea looked at the miniature portrait of Mr Casaubon’s Aunt Julia, who had made an unfortunate marriage. Was it only her family who thought that her marriage was a mistake, or did she herself regret it and cry about it in the silence of the night? Dorothea felt a new companionship with the portrait. It was the only object in the house that now seemed to have more interest and significance than it had possessed on her visit to Lowick nearly three months before. Julia was Will Ladislaw’s grandmother. As Dorothea looked at the portrait, she imagined it changing gradually from a feminine face to a masculine one, full of light, which looked at her with great interest. Dorothea smiled at the portrait.

Just then Mr Brooke and Celia arrived. Dorothea ran downstairs to greet them.

‘Hello, my dear!’ cried Mr Brooke. ‘You do look well! I’m sure you enjoyed Rome - happiness, frescoes, the antique! It’s very pleasant to have you back. But Casaubon looks a little pale.’

Dorothea looked anxiously at her husband.

‘You go off with Celia, my dear,’ continued Mr Brooke. ‘She has a great surprise for you, and she wants to tell you all about it.’

Dorothea and Celia went to the blue-green room together.

‘Is Rome a nice place for a wedding-journey?’ asked Celia, blushing.

‘I don’t think you would like it,’ Dorothea replied, thinking, ‘No one will ever know my opinion of a wedding-journey to Rome.’

‘Mrs Cadwallader says that wedding-journeys are a mistake. She says you get tired of each other,’ said Celia, blushing more deeply.

‘Celia! Has anything happened? What is your great surprise?’

‘Sir James has asked me to marry him!’

Dorothea took her sister’s face in her hands and looked at her anxiously. Celia’s face seemed more serious than it used to do. ‘And are you happy?’ she asked.

‘Yes!’

‘Oh, I’m so glad. Sir James is a good, honourable man.’

One morning, a few weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea - but why always Dorothea? Is hers the only point of view from which to look at this marriage? I protest against all this interest in the young and beautiful. The old and ugly have feelings too. Mr Casaubon had done nothing wrong in getting married. When he met Dorothea, he thought she was the ideal wife for him. He did not ask himself if he was the ideal husband for Dorothea, but that was not Mr Casaubon’s fault. Society never expects a man to ask if he is charming and handsome. He had hoped to make his wife happy and to find happiness himself.

The one great anxiety of Mr Casaubon’s life was his Key to All Mythologies. The longer he worked on it, the more perfect - it seemed to him - the finished product had to be. He had published a few articles, and the critics had not liked them. The poor man had hoped to find comfort in marriage, but now he felt that Dorothea too was looking at his work critically. For that reason he did not want her to help him in the library, but she insisted, so that finally she joined him every morning to read aloud or copy notes.

One morning he said, ‘Dorothea, here’s a letter for you from Mr Ladislaw. He wrote to me as well.’

‘Mr Ladislaw!’ she said in surprise. ‘I don’t know what he wants to say to me, but I can imagine what he wrote to you.’

During one of their conversations in Rome, Will had told Dorothea that he intended to stop taking money from Mr Casaubon. He wanted to be independent. Dorothea admired him for his decision. In fact, Will wanted to be independent so that he need not feel ashamed of hating his benefactor and adoring his benefactor’s wife.

‘In his letter to me, he asks if he can come and stay with us. I’m sorry, Dorothea, but I will tell him that a visit is not convenient at present. I’ve too much work to do.’

They had not argued since that unpleasant morning in Rome. Their last argument had been so distressing that Dorothea had decided never to argue with him again. Nevertheless, when she spoke, her voice was angry. ‘Why do you think I want him to visit, if you don’t want it?’

‘I don’t wish to argue,’ said Mr Casaubon. He started writing again, but his hand was trembling.

Dorothea too went back to work. Her hand did not tremble as she copied the notes. She was still angry with her husband. They had been working in silence for half an hour when Dorothea heard a book fall to the floor. Looking up, she saw Mr Casaubon with his hands on his heart, as if in pain. She leapt up and ran to his side.

‘Can I help you, dear?’ she said, her voice full of tenderness and anxiety. She led him to a large chair.

Just then, Sir James and Celia arrived. Sir James said, ‘We must send for a doctor immediately! I can recommend Lydgate.

Do you want me to get him?’

Casaubon made a silent sign of approval. As he left the room, Sir James thought of how Dorothea looked, with her arms around her husband and that expression of deep sorrow on her face. ‘Ah, what a noble creature she is!’ he thought. He did not know that she felt shame and penitence as well as sorrow.

Mr Casaubon stayed in bed for the next few days. Lydgate came often. On the third day, he asked if he could speak to Dorothea alone. They went into the library together.

‘Mrs Casaubon, your husband has a disease of the heart,’ began Lydgate. He did not want to distress her, but he felt he should be honest. ‘He might live another fifteen years, but only if we are very careful. He should avoid all unnecessary stress and anxiety. He should try to work less and get more exercise.’

‘He would be miserable if he had to give up his work,’ said Dorothea.

‘I know,’ Lydgate replied. ‘But we must try to vary and moderate his occupations. There is no immediate danger of another attack, but, on the other hand, death is often sudden in these cases.’

There was silence for a few moments. Dorothea looked as if she had been turned to marble. Finally she spoke: ‘Please help me,’ she said; ‘Tell me what I can do.’

‘Well,’ said Lydgate. ‘Perhaps you can travel to Europe together. That might be good for his health.’

‘Oh no!’ said Dorothea, tears filling her eyes. ‘He does not like travel.’

‘I’m sorry to have caused you such pain,’ said Lydgate. He suspected that there was some deep sadness in this marriage, and he wondered what it was.

‘I’m glad that you have told me the truth,’ replied Dorothea.

‘I won’t say anything to Mr Casaubon. I’ll just tell him not to work too hard. Anxiety of any kind might make him worse.’

‘Oh, you are a wise man, aren’t you?’ cried Dorothea, with a sob in her voice. ‘You know all about life and death. Help me. Tell me what I can do. He has been working all his life. He cares about nothing else. And I care about nothing else -‘

For years after, Lydgate remembered this appeal - this cry from one soul to another. But how could he help her? All he could do was say, ‘Goodbye, Mrs Casaubon. I will come again tomorrow.’

That evening, Lydgate told Rosamond about his conversation with Mrs Casaubon. ‘She seems to have a very strong feeling for her husband, even though he is a formal studious man almost thirty years older than she.’

‘Of course she is devoted to her husband,’ said Rosamond. Lydgate was delighted that she seemed to think that a woman necessarily loved her husband.

At that moment, Rosamond was thinking, ‘If Mrs Casaubon’s husband dies, she will be a very rich woman’, but she said, ‘Is she very handsome?’

‘She certainly is handsome,’ Lydgate replied, ‘but I haven’t thought about it.’

Left alone in the library, Dorothea noticed Will’s letters lying on Mr Casaubon’s desk. She thought, ‘I must put them away, so that he doesn’t see them when he comes back to the library.’ Mr Brooke was at Lowick that day. Dorothea gave him Will’s letter to Mr Casaubon and said, ‘Please write to Mr Ladislaw, uncle, and tell him about Mr Casaubon’s illness. Tell him that we are sorry he can’t come to visit.’

‘All right, my dear.’ Mr Brooke read the letter and decided that Will was an excellent writer and a very clever young man.

Mr Brooke, who was a magistrate, was thinking of running for Parliament. Recently, he had bought one of the local newspapers as a vehicle for his ideas on Reform. I’ll need a clever young man to help me,’ he thought. ‘Someone who can write good speeches and editorials. This young Ladislaw is just the type of fellow I need.’ Although Mr Brooke began his letter with the intention of telling Will not to come to Middlemarch, he ended it by inviting him to stay at Tipton Grange. He did not tell Dorothea what he had written in his letter, because he did not think that it was important.

So, several weeks later, Will came to Middlemarch and stayed at Tipton Grange. At first Dorothea was anxious about what Mr Casaubon might think of Will being her uncle’s guest, but Mr Casaubon said nothing. He had never liked Will, and now he disliked him even more.

Sometimes Mr Brooke brought Will to Lowick. For Dorothea, Will’s company was like a window opened in the wall of her prison, letting in fresh air and sunshine. He listened to what she said, and his own conversation was lively and interesting.

But Will was dissatisfied. He wanted to see Dorothea alone. ‘I will watch over her,’ he said to himself. ‘She will know that she has one slave in the world!’ Dante and Beatrice did not see each other often; nor did Petrarch and Laura. But times had changed since then. Now it was better to have fewer sonnets and more conversation.

One morning, Will went to Lowick when Mr Casaubon was not there. The servant showed him into the library, where Dorothea was sitting alone. ‘Mr Casaubon is out. He may not be back until dinner,’ she said, as she shook his hand.

‘I really came in the hope of seeing you alone,’ said Will. ‘I wanted to talk to you, as we did in Rome. It always makes a difference when other people are present.’

‘Yes,’ said Dorothea. ‘I enjoyed our conversations in Rome. It seems strange to me how many things I said to you.’

‘I remember them all,’ said Will. He felt that she deserved to be perfectly loved. And I think his own feelings at that moment were perfect. He was completely happy just to be in her presence.

‘I’ve been learning Latin and Greek,’ said Dorothea. ‘I can be of more use to Mr Casaubon now. But the scholar’s life is a difficult one. His work makes him so tired.’

‘If a man is capable of great thoughts, he’ll have them before he is old and tired,’ said Will. He saw in her face that he had said too much. ‘But it’s quite true that brilliant men sometimes make themselves ill by working too hard.’

‘I used to think that, even when I was a little girl. I thought that I would like to help someone who was doing great work. That was what I wanted to do with my life.’

‘But you must be careful of your own health,’ said Will. ‘You look pale. Do you spend too much time in the house? Mr Casaubon should get a secretary to help him.’

‘I want to help him,’ said Dorothea earnestly. ‘If I didn’t help him, I would have nothing to do. Please don’t mention that again.’

‘Certainly not, now that I know your feelings. But I’ve heard Mr Brooke and Sir James Chettam make the same suggestion.’

‘Yes, they want me to ride horses and do the things that other women do,’ she said, impatiently, ‘but my mind has other wants. I thought you knew that.’

‘Forgive me. At one time Mr Casaubon himself wanted a secretary. In fact, he asked me to be his secretary. But I was not good enough.’

‘You didn’t work hard enough?’ asked Dorothea, smiling.

‘No. But I have noticed that Mr Casaubon doesn’t like anyone to know exactly what he is working on. He is too uncertain of himself. I know I didn’t work hard enough, but the real reason he dislikes me is because I disagree with him.’

‘Mr Casaubon paid for your education, even though he disliked you,’ said Dorothea. ‘That’s admirable.’

‘Yes. He has been honourable about that. My grandmother was disinherited because she married someone her family disliked. Her husband was a Polish refugee, a teacher. He had no money, but he was intelligent. He could speak many languages. My grandparents both died young. My father was very musical. He taught music for a living, but he never made much money from it. My mother was a rebel too, like my grandmother Julia: she ran away from home and became an actress. I don’t remember much about my father, except what my mother told me. I remember when he was dying, and I was very hungry and had only a little bit of bread.’

‘Ah! What a different life from mine!’ said Dorothea. ‘I have always had too much of everything. Tell me about it.’

‘My father had written a letter to Mr Casaubon, and that was my last hungry day. My father died, but Mr Casaubon took care of my mother and I. Well, he has probably told you all this himself.’

‘No,’ said Dorothea. ‘He never talks about his own honourable actions. You see, he’s been very good to you, and now he’s ill. Try not to dislike him.’

‘I’ll never complain about him again,’ said Will. ‘I’ll never again do or say anything of which you disapprove.’

‘That’s very good of you,’ said Dorothea, smiling. ‘You make me feel like a queen. But soon you’ll leave Middlemarch, and I won’t be able to rule you any more.’

‘I want to ask you about that. It’s one of the reasons I wished to speak to you alone,’ said Will. ‘Mr Brooke has offered me a position as editor of his newspaper. If you don’t think I should accept his offer, I’ll say no. But, if you approve, I’ll accept. I prefer to stay here than go away.’

‘I think you should stay,’ said Dorothea at once. At that moment, she saw no reason why she should say no.

‘Then I will stay,’ said Ladislaw.

But then Dorothea thought she had made a mistake. She remembered that her husband felt differently. She blushed deeply, angry with herself for having said something that opposed her husband’s wishes. ‘But my opinion isn’t important,’ she said. ‘You should ask Mr Casaubon.’

He got up to leave. He wanted to ask her not to mention the subject to Mr Casaubon, but he was afraid to do so. She was so honest and sincere: he did not want her to change. And he was afraid that she might think less of him for asking it. So he just said goodbye and left the house.

At four o’clock, Mr Casaubon returned, looking happier than usual. ‘I met Dr Spanning today, my dear, and he said some complimentary things about my article on the Egyptian Mysteries.’

‘I’m very glad,’ said Dorothea, delighted to see her husband smiling. ‘It’s a pity you weren’t here earlier. Mr Ladislaw called. He mentioned that my uncle has offered him work as editor of his newspaper. Do you think he should accept the position?’

‘Did Mr Ladislaw come to ask my opinion?’ said Mr Casaubon. All the pleasure that had been in his face when he spoke of Dr Spanning was gone.

‘No, but, when he mentioned my uncle’s offer, he of course expected me to tell you about it.’

Mr Casaubon was silent.

The next morning, he wrote the following letter to Will:

Dear Mr Ladislaw

I hear that you have been offered a position on a Middlemarch newspaper. If you accept that offer, I will be offended. I have a high social position to maintain. Editing a newspaper is not, in my opinion, honourable and respectable work. If you accept the position, you will no longer ne welcome to call at Lowick.

Yours sincerely,

Edward Casaubon.

Mr Casaubon did not tell Dorothea about this letter.