“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.”
“Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t like it. Don’t ask me why, or anything about
it,” said Maggie, in a distressed tone. “My father feels so strongly
about some things. He is not at all happy.”
“No more am I,” said Philip, impetuously; “I am not happy.”
“Why?” said Maggie, gently. “At least—I ought not to ask—but I’m very,
very sorry.”
Philip turned to walk on, as if he had not patience to stand still any
longer, and they went out of the hollow, winding amongst the trees and
bushes in silence. After that last word of Philip’s, Maggie could not
bear to insist immediately on their parting.
“I’ve been a great deal happier,” she said at last, timidly, “since I
have given up thinking about what is easy and pleasant, and being
discontented because I couldn’t have my own will. Our life is
determined for us; and it makes the mind very free when we give up
wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing what
is given us to do.”
“But I can’t give up wishing,” said Philip, impatiently. “It seems to
me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly
alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and
we _must_ hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them
until our feelings are deadened? I delight in fine pictures; I long to
be able to paint such. I strive and strive, and can’t produce what I
want. That is pain to me, and always _will_ be pain, until my faculties
lose their keenness, like aged eyes. Then there are many other things I
long for,”—here Philip hesitated a little, and then said,—“things that
other men have, and that will always be denied me. My life will have
nothing great or beautiful in it; I would rather not have lived.”
“Oh, Philip,” said Maggie, “I wish you didn’t feel so.” But her heart
began to beat with something of Philip’s discontent.
“Well, then,” said he, turning quickly round and fixing his gray eyes
entreatingly on her face, “I should be contented to live, if you would
let me see you sometimes.” Then, checked by a fear which her face
suggested, he looked away again and said more calmly, “I have no friend
to whom I can tell everything, no one who cares enough about me; and if
I could only see you now and then, and you would let me talk to you a
little, and show me that you cared for me, and that we may always be
friends in heart, and help each other, then I might come to be glad of
life.
“There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer /committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.”
If the passenger
was curious for further knowledge concerning the Transome affairs,
Sampson would shake his head and say there had been fine stories in his
time; but he never condescended to state what the stories were. Some
attributed this reticence to a wise incredulity, others to a want of
memory, others to simple ignorance. But at least Sampson was right in
saying that there had been fine stories--meaning, ironically, stories
not altogether creditable to the parties concerned.
And such stories often come to be fine in a sense that is not ironical.
For there is seldom any wrong-doing which does not carry along with it
some downfall of blindly-climbing hopes, some hard entail of suffering,
some quickly-satiated desire that survives, with the life in death of
old paralytic vice, to see itself cursed by its woeful progeny--some
tragic mark of kinship in the one brief life to the far-stretching life
that went before, and to the life that is to come after, such as has
raised the pity and terror of men ever since they began to discern
between will and destiny. But these things are often unknown to the
world; for there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations
that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying
existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of
murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and
joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer--committed to no sound except that
of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the
face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears.
Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into
no human ear.
The poets have told us of a dolorous enchanted forest in the under
world. The thorn-bushes there, and the thick-barked stems, have human
histories hidden in them; the power of unuttered cries dwells in the
passionless-seeming branches, and the red warm blood is darkly feeding
the quivering nerves of a sleepless memory that watches through all
dreams. These things are a parable.
CHAPTER I.
He left me when the down upon his lip
Lay like the shadow of a hovering kiss.
"Beautiful mother, do not grieve," he said;
"I will be great, and build our fortunes high.
And you shall wear the longest train at court,
And look so queenly, all the lords shall say,
'She is a royal changeling: there is some crown
Lacks the right head, since hers wears naught but braids.'"
O, he is coming now--but I am gray:
And he----
On the first of September, in the memorable year 1832, some one was
expected at Transome Court. As early as two o'clock in the afternoon the
aged lodge-keeper had opened the heavy gate, green as the tree trunks
were green with nature's powdery paint, deposited year after year.
“If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrels heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence”
Peter’s, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the
attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics
above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading
itself everywhere like a disease of the retina.
Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea’s was anything very
exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among
incongruities and left to “find their feet” among them, while their
elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs.
Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding,
the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some
faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary,
is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what
is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of
frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of
mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had
a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like
hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die
of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the
quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
However, Dorothea was crying, and if she had been required to state the
cause, she could only have done so in some such general words as I have
already used: to have been driven to be more particular would have been
like trying to give a history of the lights and shadows, for that new
real future which was replacing the imaginary drew its material from
the endless minutiae by which her view of Mr. Casaubon and her wifely
relation, now that she was married to him, was gradually changing with
the secret motion of a watch-hand from what it had been in her maiden
dream. It was too early yet for her fully to recognize or at least
admit the change, still more for her to have readjusted that
devotedness which was so necessary a part of her mental life that she
was almost sure sooner or later to recover it. Permanent rebellion, the
disorder of a life without some loving reverent resolve, was not
possible to her; but she was now in an interval when the very force of
her nature heightened its confusion.
“Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?”
”
“Yes, he would be a great hypocrite; and he is not that yet.”
“It is of no use saying anything to you, Mary. You always take Fred’s
part.”
“Why should I not take his part?” said Mary, lighting up. “He would
take mine. He is the only person who takes the least trouble to oblige
me.”
“You make me feel very uncomfortable, Mary,” said Rosamond, with her
gravest mildness; “I would not tell mamma for the world.”
“What would you not tell her?” said Mary, angrily.
“Pray do not go into a rage, Mary,” said Rosamond, mildly as ever.
“If your mamma is afraid that Fred will make me an offer, tell her that
I would not marry him if he asked me. But he is not going to do so,
that I am aware. He certainly never has asked me.”
“Mary, you are always so violent.”
“And you are always so exasperating.”
“I? What can you blame me for?”
“Oh, blameless people are always the most exasperating. There is the
bell—I think we must go down.”
“I did not mean to quarrel,” said Rosamond, putting on her hat.
“Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarrelled. If one is not to get into a
rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?”
“Am I to repeat what you have said?”
“Just as you please. I never say what I am afraid of having repeated.
But let us go down.”
Mr. Lydgate was rather late this morning, but the visitors stayed long
enough to see him; for Mr. Featherstone asked Rosamond to sing to him,
and she herself was so kind as to propose a second favorite song of
his—“Flow on, thou shining river”—after she had sung “Home, sweet home”
(which she detested). This hard-headed old Overreach approved of the
sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and also as
fundamentally fine, sentiment being the right thing for a song.
Mr. Featherstone was still applauding the last performance, and
assuring missy that her voice was as clear as a blackbird’s, when Mr.
Lydgate’s horse passed the window.
His dull expectation of the usual disagreeable routine with an aged
patient—who can hardly believe that medicine would not “set him up” if
the doctor were only clever enough—added to his general disbelief in
Middlemarch charms, made a doubly effective background to this vision
of Rosamond, whom old Featherstone made haste ostentatiously to
introduce as his niece, though he had never thought it worth while to
speak of Mary Garth in that light.
“She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.”
He knew that he was deluding her—wished, in the very moment
of farewell, to make her believe that he gave her the whole price of
her heart, and knew that he had spent it half before. Why had he not
stayed among the crowd of whom she asked nothing—but only prayed that
they might be less contemptible?
But she lost energy at last even for her loud-whispered cries and
moans: she subsided into helpless sobs, and on the cold floor she
sobbed herself to sleep.
In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim around
her, she awoke—not with any amazed wondering where she was or what had
happened, but with the clearest consciousness that she was looking into
the eyes of sorrow. She rose, and wrapped warm things around her, and
seated herself in a great chair where she had often watched before. She
was vigorous enough to have borne that hard night without feeling ill
in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but she had waked to a new
condition: she felt as if her soul had been liberated from its terrible
conflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sit
down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her
thoughts. For now the thoughts came thickly. It was not in Dorothea’s
nature, for longer than the duration of a paroxysm, to sit in the
narrow cell of her calamity, in the besotted misery of a consciousness
that only sees another’s lot as an accident of its own.
She began now to live through that yesterday morning deliberately
again, forcing herself to dwell on every detail and its possible
meaning. Was she alone in that scene? Was it her event only? She forced
herself to think of it as bound up with another woman’s life—a woman
towards whom she had set out with a longing to carry some clearness and
comfort into her beclouded youth. In her first outleap of jealous
indignation and disgust, when quitting the hateful room, she had flung
away all the mercy with which she had undertaken that visit. She had
enveloped both Will and Rosamond in her burning scorn, and it seemed to
her as if Rosamond were burned out of her sight forever. But that base
prompting which makes a women more cruel to a rival than to a faithless
lover, could have no strength of recurrence in Dorothea when the
dominant spirit of justice within her had once overcome the tumult and
had once shown her the truer measure of things.
“Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relation of the least-instructed human beings...”
Now that she was grown up, Silas had often been
led, in those moments of quiet outpouring which come to people who live
together in perfect love, to talk with _her_ too of the past, and how
and why he had lived a lonely man until she had been sent to him. For
it would have been impossible for him to hide from Eppie that she was
not his own child: even if the most delicate reticence on the point
could have been expected from Raveloe gossips in her presence, her own
questions about her mother could not have been parried, as she grew up,
without that complete shrouding of the past which would have made a
painful barrier between their minds. So Eppie had long known how her
mother had died on the snowy ground, and how she herself had been found
on the hearth by father Silas, who had taken her golden curls for his
lost guineas brought back to him. The tender and peculiar love with
which Silas had reared her in almost inseparable companionship with
himself, aided by the seclusion of their dwelling, had preserved her
from the lowering influences of the village talk and habits, and had
kept her mind in that freshness which is sometimes falsely supposed to
be an invariable attribute of rusticity. Perfect love has a breath of
poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human
beings; and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie from the time
when she had followed the bright gleam that beckoned her to Silas’s
hearth; so that it is not surprising if, in other things besides her
delicate prettiness, she was not quite a common village maiden, but had
a touch of refinement and fervour which came from no other teaching
than that of tenderly-nurtured unvitiated feeling. She was too childish
and simple for her imagination to rove into questions about her unknown
father; for a long while it did not even occur to her that she must
have had a father; and the first time that the idea of her mother
having had a husband presented itself to her, was when Silas showed her
the wedding-ring which had been taken from the wasted finger, and had
been carefully preserved by him in a little lackered box shaped like a
shoe. He delivered this box into Eppie’s charge when she had grown up,
and she often opened it to look at the ring: but still she thought
hardly at all about the father of whom it was the symbol.
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
Blackwood thinks the
publication desirable, as a guarantee that it will not prove
injudicious in relation to the outer world--I mean, the world beyond
the circle of your husband's especial friends and admirers. I am
grieved to hear of your poor eyes having been condemned to an inaction
which, I fear, may have sadly increased the vividness of that inward
seeing, already painfully strong in you. There has been, I trust,
always some sympathetic young companionship to help you--some sweet
voice to read aloud to you, or to talk of those better things in human
lots which enable us to look at the good of life a little apart from
our own particular sorrow.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 11th May, 1875.]
The doctors have decided that there is nothing very grave the matter
with me: and I am now so much better that we even think it possible I
may go to see Salvini, in the Gladiator, to-morrow evening. This is to
let you know that there is no reason against your coming, with or
without Margaret, at the usual time on Friday.
Your words of affection in the note you sent me are very dear to my
remembrance. I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I
am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm
of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of
light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very
dear.
[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 14th May, 1875.]
You are right--there is no time, but only the sense of not having
time; especially when, instead of filling the days with useful
exertion, as you do, one wastes them in being ill, as I have been
doing of late. However, I am better now, and will not grumble. Thanks
for all the dear words in your letter. Be sure I treasure the memory
of your faithful friendship, which goes back--you know how far.
[Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 1st June, 1875.]
If you could, some day this week or the beginning of next, allow me
half an hour's quiet _tête-à-tête_, I should be very much obliged by
such a kindness.
The trivial questions I want to put could hardly be shapen in a letter
so as to govern an answer that would satisfy my need. And I trust that
the interview will hardly be more troublesome to you than writing.
I hope, when you learn the pettiness of my difficulties, you will not
be indignant, like a great doctor called in to the favorite cat.
What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
She was so accustomed to think of impressions as purely spiritual
monitions that she looked for no material visible accompaniment of the
voice.
But this second time she looked round. What a look of yearning love it
was that the mild grey eyes turned on the strong dark-eyed man! She did
not start again at the sight of him; she said nothing, but moved
towards him so that his arm could clasp her round.
And they walked on so in silence, while the warm tears fell. Adam was
content, and said nothing. It was Dinah who spoke first.
“Adam,” she said, “it is the Divine Will. My soul is so knit to yours
that it is but a divided life I live without you. And this moment, now
you are with me, and I feel that our hearts are filled with the same
love. I have a fulness of strength to bear and do our heavenly Father’s
Will that I had lost before.”
Adam paused and looked into her sincere eyes.
“Then we’ll never part any more, Dinah, till death parts us.”
And they kissed each other with a deep joy.
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they
are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on
each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be
one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the
last parting?
Chapter LV
Marriage Bells
In little more than a month after that meeting on the hill—on a rimy
morning in departing November—Adam and Dinah were married.
It was an event much thought of in the village. All Mr. Burge’s men had
a holiday, and all Mr. Poyser’s, and most of those who had a holiday
appeared in their best clothes at the wedding. I think there was hardly
an inhabitant of Hayslope specially mentioned in this history and still
resident in the parish on this November morning who was not either in
church to see Adam and Dinah married, or near the church door to greet
them as they came forth. Mrs. Irwine and her daughters were waiting at
the churchyard gates in their carriage (for they had a carriage now) to
shake hands with the bride and bridegroom and wish them well; and in
the absence of Miss Lydia Donnithorne at Bath, Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills,
and Mr. Craig had felt it incumbent on them to represent “the family”
at the Chase on the occasion. The churchyard walk was quite lined with
familiar faces, many of them faces that had first looked at Dinah when
she preached on the Green.
Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.
I would forewarn Felix, who would doubtless delight to see your face
again; seeing that he may go away, and be, as it were, buried from you,
even though it may be only in prison, and not----"
This was too much for Esther. She threw her arms round her father's neck
and sobbed like a child. It was an unspeakable relief to her after all
the pent-up, stifling experience, all the inward incommunicable debate
of the last few weeks. The old man was deeply moved, too, and held his
arm close round the dear child, praying silently.
No word was spoken for some minutes, till Esther raised herself, dried
her eyes, and, with an action that seemed playful, though there was no
smile on her face, pressed her handkerchief against her father's cheeks.
Then, when she had put her hand in his, he said, solemnly--
"'Tis a great and mysterious gift, this clinging of the heart, my
Esther, whereby it hath often seemed to me that even in the very moment
of suffering our souls have the keenest foretaste of heaven. I speak not
lightly, but as one who hath endured. And 'tis a strange truth that only
in the agony of parting we look into the depths of love."
So the interview ended, without any question from Mr. Lyon concerning
what Esther contemplated as the ultimate arrangement between herself and
the Transomes.
After this conversation, which showed him that what happened to Felix
touched Esther more closely than he had supposed, the minister felt no
impulse to raise the images of a future so unlike anything that Felix
would share. And Esther would have been unable to answer any such
questions. The successive weeks, instead of bringing her nearer to
clearness and decision, had only brought that state of disenchantment
belonging to the actual presence of things which have long dwelt in the
imagination with all the factitious charms of arbitrary arrangement. Her
imaginary mansion had not been inhabited just as Transome Court was; her
imaginary fortune had not been attended with circumstances which she was
unable to sweep away. She, herself, in her Utopia, had never been what
she was now--a woman whose heart was divided and oppressed.
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse
struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which
great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the
aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so
strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new
Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual
life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in
daring all for the sake of a brother’s burial: the medium in which
their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant
people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many
Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that
of the Dorothea whose story we know.
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were
not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus
broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on
the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was
incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly
dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you
and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived
faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
THE END
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easy.
Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.
Come, come, get on your dressing-gown and
unplait your hair.”
“Well, _you_ are not very forward,” retorted Maggie, hastily reaching
her own pink cotton gown, and looking at Lucy’s light-brown hair
brushed back in curly disorder.
“Oh, I have not much to do. I shall sit down and talk to you till I see
you are really on the way to bed.”
While Maggie stood and unplaited her long black hair over her pink
drapery, Lucy sat down near the toilette-table, watching her with
affectionate eyes, and head a little aside, like a pretty spaniel. If
it appears to you at all incredible that young ladies should be led on
to talk confidentially in a situation of this kind, I will beg you to
remember that human life furnishes many exceptional cases.
“You really _have_ enjoyed the music to-night, haven’t you Maggie?”
“Oh yes, that is what prevented me from feeling sleepy. I think I
should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of
music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my
brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
At other times one is conscious of carrying a weight.”
“And Stephen has a splendid voice, hasn’t he?”
“Well, perhaps we are neither of us judges of that,” said Maggie,
laughing, as she seated herself and tossed her long hair back. “You are
not impartial, and _I_ think any barrel-organ splendid.”
“But tell me what you think of him, now. Tell me exactly; good and bad
too.”
“Oh, I think you should humiliate him a little. A lover should not be
so much at ease, and so self-confident. He ought to tremble more.”
“Nonsense, Maggie! As if any one could tremble at me! You think he is
conceited, I see that. But you don’t dislike him, do you?”
“Dislike him! No. Am I in the habit of seeing such charming people,
that I should be very difficult to please? Besides, how could I dislike
any one that promised to make you happy, my dear thing!” Maggie pinched
Lucy’s dimpled chin.
“We shall have more music to-morrow evening,” said Lucy, looking happy
already, “for Stephen will bring Philip Wakem with him.
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
And—one should know the truth about his conduct
beforehand, to feel very confident of a good result.”
“I feel convinced that his conduct has not been guilty: I believe that
people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are,”
said Dorothea. Some of her intensest experience in the last two years
had set her mind strongly in opposition to any unfavorable construction
of others; and for the first time she felt rather discontented with Mr.
Farebrother. She disliked this cautious weighing of consequences,
instead of an ardent faith in efforts of justice and mercy, which would
conquer by their emotional force. Two days afterwards, he was dining at
the Manor with her uncle and the Chettams, and when the dessert was
standing uneaten, the servants were out of the room, and Mr. Brooke was
nodding in a nap, she returned to the subject with renewed vivacity.
“Mr. Lydgate would understand that if his friends hear a calumny about
him their first wish must be to justify him. What do we live for, if it
is not to make life less difficult to each other? I cannot be
indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in _my_ trouble,
and attended me in my illness.”
Dorothea’s tone and manner were not more energetic than they had been
when she was at the head of her uncle’s table nearly three years
before, and her experience since had given her more right to express a
decided opinion. But Sir James Chettam was no longer the diffident and
acquiescent suitor: he was the anxious brother-in-law, with a devout
admiration for his sister, but with a constant alarm lest she should
fall under some new illusion almost as bad as marrying Casaubon. He
smiled much less; when he said “Exactly” it was more often an
introduction to a dissentient opinion than in those submissive bachelor
days; and Dorothea found to her surprise that she had to resolve not to
be afraid of him—all the more because he was really her best friend. He
disagreed with her now.
“But, Dorothea,” he said, remonstrantly, “you can’t undertake to manage
a man’s life for him in that way.
The progress of the world can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of the individual beings who compose the world.
flatters egoism
with the possibility that a complex and refined human society can
continue, wherein relations have no sacredness beyond the inclination
of changing moods?--or figures to itself an æsthetic human life that
one may compare to that of the fabled grasshoppers who were once men,
but having heard the song of the Muses could do nothing but sing, and
starved themselves so till they died and had a fit resurrection as
grasshoppers? "And this," says Socrates, "was the return the Muses
made them."
With regard to the pains and limitations of one's personal lot, I
suppose there is not a single man or woman who has not more or less
need of that stoical resignation which is often a hidden heroism, or
who, in considering his or her past history, is not aware that it has
been cruelly affected by the ignorant or selfish action of some
fellow-being in a more or less close relation of life. And to my mind
there can be no stronger motive than this perception, to an energetic
effort that the lives nearest to us shall not suffer in a like manner
from _us_.
The progress of the world--which you say can only come at the right
time--can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of
the individual beings who compose the world; and that we can say to
ourselves with effect, "There is an order of considerations which I
will keep myself continually in mind of, so that they may continually
be the prompters of certain feelings and actions," seems to me as
undeniable as that we can resolve to study the Semitic languages and
apply to an Oriental scholar to give us daily lessons. What would your
keen wit say to a young man who alleged the physical basis of nervous
action as a reason why he could not possibly take that course?
As to duration and the way in which it affects your view of the human
history, what is really the difference to your imagination between
infinitude and billions when you have to consider the value of human
experience? Will you say that, since your life has a term of
threescore years and ten, it was really a matter of indifference
whether you were a cripple with a wretched skin disease, or an active
creature with a mind at large for the enjoyment of knowledge, and with
a nature which has attracted others to you?
It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings – much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.
And I would
not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create
a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to
do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder
eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields—on the real
breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or
injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your
fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.
So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things
seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity,
which, in spite of one’s best efforts, there is reason to dread.
Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a
delightful facility in drawing a griffin—the longer the claws, and the
larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we
mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real
unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that
even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to
say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings—much harder
than to say something fine about them which is _not_ the exact truth.
It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in
many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a
source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous
homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my
fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic
suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn, without shrinking, from
cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an
old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner,
while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls
on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and her
stone jug, and all those cheap common things which are the precious
necessaries of life to her—or I turn to that village wedding, kept
between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the dance
with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and
middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and
probably with quart-pots in their hands, but with an expression of
unmistakable contentment and goodwill.
People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.
Full souls are double mirrors, making still
An endless vista of fair things before,
Repeating things behind.
Dorothea’s impetuous generosity, which would have leaped at once to the
vindication of Lydgate from the suspicion of having accepted money as a
bribe, underwent a melancholy check when she came to consider all the
circumstances of the case by the light of Mr. Farebrother’s experience.
“It is a delicate matter to touch,” he said. “How can we begin to
inquire into it? It must be either publicly by setting the magistrate
and coroner to work, or privately by questioning Lydgate. As to the
first proceeding there is no solid ground to go upon, else Hawley would
have adopted it; and as to opening the subject with Lydgate, I confess
I should shrink from it. He would probably take it as a deadly insult.
I have more than once experienced the difficulty of speaking to him on
personal matters. And—one should know the truth about his conduct
beforehand, to feel very confident of a good result.”
“I feel convinced that his conduct has not been guilty: I believe that
people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are,”
said Dorothea. Some of her intensest experience in the last two years
had set her mind strongly in opposition to any unfavorable construction
of others; and for the first time she felt rather discontented with Mr.
Farebrother. She disliked this cautious weighing of consequences,
instead of an ardent faith in efforts of justice and mercy, which would
conquer by their emotional force. Two days afterwards, he was dining at
the Manor with her uncle and the Chettams, and when the dessert was
standing uneaten, the servants were out of the room, and Mr. Brooke was
nodding in a nap, she returned to the subject with renewed vivacity.
“Mr. Lydgate would understand that if his friends hear a calumny about
him their first wish must be to justify him. What do we live for, if it
is not to make life less difficult to each other? I cannot be
indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in _my_ trouble,
and attended me in my illness.”
Dorothea’s tone and manner were not more energetic than they had been
when she was at the head of her uncle’s table nearly three years
before, and her experience since had given her more right to express a
decided opinion.
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
“The Tories bribe, you know:
Hawley and his set bribe with treating, hot codlings, and that sort of
thing; and they bring the voters drunk to the poll. But they are not
going to have it their own way in future—not in future, you know.
Middlemarch is a little backward, I admit—the freemen are a little
backward. But we shall educate them—we shall bring them on, you know.
The best people there are on our side.”
“Hawley says you have men on your side who will do you harm,” remarked
Sir James. “He says Bulstrode the banker will do you harm.”
“And that if you got pelted,” interposed Mrs. Cadwallader, “half the
rotten eggs would mean hatred of your committee-man. Good heavens!
Think what it must be to be pelted for wrong opinions. And I seem to
remember a story of a man they pretended to chair and let him fall into
a dust-heap on purpose!”
“Pelting is nothing to their finding holes in one’s coat,” said the
Rector. “I confess that’s what I should be afraid of, if we parsons had
to stand at the hustings for preferment. I should be afraid of their
reckoning up all my fishing days. Upon my word, I think the truth is
the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”
“The fact is,” said Sir James, “if a man goes into public life he must
be prepared for the consequences. He must make himself proof against
calumny.”
“My dear Chettam, that is all very fine, you know,” said Mr. Brooke.
“But how will you make yourself proof against calumny? You should read
history—look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of
thing. They always happen to the best men, you know. But what is that
in Horace?—_fiat justitia, ruat_ … something or other.”
“Exactly,” said Sir James, with a little more heat than usual. “What I
mean by being proof against calumny is being able to point to the fact
as a contradiction.”
“And it is not martyrdom to pay bills that one has run into one’s
self,” said Mrs. Cadwallader.
But it was Sir James’s evident annoyance that most stirred Mr. Brooke.
“Well, you know, Chettam,” he said, rising, taking up his hat and
leaning on his stick, “you and I have a different system. You are all
for outlay with your farms.
She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.
”
Dorothea was trying to extract out of this an excuse for her husband’s
evident repulsion, as she said, with a playful smile, “You were not a
steady worker enough.”
“No,” said Will, shaking his head backward somewhat after the manner of
a spirited horse. And then, the old irritable demon prompting him to
give another good pinch at the moth-wings of poor Mr. Casaubon’s glory,
he went on, “And I have seen since that Mr. Casaubon does not like any
one to overlook his work and know thoroughly what he is doing. He is
too doubtful—too uncertain of himself. I may not be good for much, but
he dislikes me because I disagree with him.”
Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our
tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before
general intentions can be brought to bear. And it was too intolerable
that Casaubon’s dislike of him should not be fairly accounted for to
Dorothea. Yet when he had spoken he was rather uneasy as to the effect
on her.
But Dorothea was strangely quiet—not immediately indignant, as she had
been on a like occasion in Rome. And the cause lay deep. She was no
longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting
herself to their clearest perception; and now when she looked steadily
at her husband’s failure, still more at his possible consciousness of
failure, she seemed to be looking along the one track where duty became
tenderness. Will’s want of reticence might have been met with more
severity, if he had not already been recommended to her mercy by her
husband’s dislike, which must seem hard to her till she saw better
reason for it.
She did not answer at once, but after looking down ruminatingly she
said, with some earnestness, “Mr. Casaubon must have overcome his
dislike of you so far as his actions were concerned: and that is
admirable.”
“Yes; he has shown a sense of justice in family matters. It was an
abominable thing that my grandmother should have been disinherited
because she made what they called a _mesalliance_, though there was
nothing to be said against her husband except that he was a Polish
refugee who gave lessons for his bread.”
“I wish I knew all about her!” said Dorothea. “I wonder how she bore
the change from wealth to poverty: I wonder whether she was happy with
her husband!
Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly -- something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.
“So far as self is concerned,
I think it would be easier to give up power and money than to keep
them. It seems very unfitting that I should have this patronage, yet I
felt that I ought not to let it be used by some one else instead of
me.”
“It is I who am bound to act so that you will not regret your power,”
said Mr. Farebrother.
His was one of the natures in which conscience gets the more active
when the yoke of life ceases to gall them. He made no display of
humility on the subject, but in his heart he felt rather ashamed that
his conduct had shown laches which others who did not get benefices
were free from.
“I used often to wish I had been something else than a clergyman,” he
said to Lydgate, “but perhaps it will be better to try and make as good
a clergyman out of myself as I can. That is the well-beneficed point of
view, you perceive, from which difficulties are much simplified,” he
ended, smiling.
The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy. But
Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly—something like a heavy friend
whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within
our gates.
Hardly a week later, Duty presented itself in his study under the
disguise of Fred Vincy, now returned from Omnibus College with his
bachelor’s degree.
“I am ashamed to trouble you, Mr. Farebrother,” said Fred, whose fair
open face was propitiating, “but you are the only friend I can consult.
I told you everything once before, and you were so good that I can’t
help coming to you again.”
“Sit down, Fred, I’m ready to hear and do anything I can,” said the
Vicar, who was busy packing some small objects for removal, and went on
with his work.
“I wanted to tell you—” Fred hesitated an instant and then went on
plungingly, “I might go into the Church now; and really, look where I
may, I can’t see anything else to do. I don’t like it, but I know it’s
uncommonly hard on my father to say so, after he has spent a good deal
of money in educating me for it.” Fred paused again an instant, and
then repeated, “and I can’t see anything else to do.”
“I did talk to your father about it, Fred, but I made little way with
him.
“What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined ... to strengthen each other ... to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.”
“Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.”
