Chapter: "How much, methinks, I could despise this man
     Were I not bound in charity against it!
                          --SHAKESPEARE: Henry VIII.


One of the professional calls made by Lydgate soon after his return
from his wedding-journey was to Lowick Manor, in consequence of a
letter which had requested him to fix a time for his visit.

Mr. Casaubon had never put any question concerning the nature of his
illness to Lydgate, nor had he even to Dorothea betrayed any anxiety as
to how far it might be likely to cut short his labors or his life.  On
this point, as on all others, he shrank from pity; and if the suspicion
of being pitied for anything in his lot surmised or known in spite of
himself was embittering, the idea of calling forth a show of compassion
by frankly admitting an alarm or a sorrow was necessarily intolerable
to him.  Every proud mind knows something of this experience, and
perhaps it is only to be overcome by a sense of fellowship deep enough
to make all efforts at isolation seem mean and petty instead of
exalting.

But Mr. Casaubon was now brooding over something through which the
question of his health and life haunted his silence with a more
harassing importunity even than through the autumnal unripeness of his
authorship.  It is true that this last might be called his central
ambition; but there are some kinds of authorship in which by far the
largest result is the uneasy susceptibility accumulated in the
consciousness of the author--one knows of the river by a few streaks
amid a long-gathered deposit of uncomfortable mud.  That was the way
with Mr. Casaubon's hard intellectual labors.  Their most
characteristic result was not the "Key to all Mythologies," but a
morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place which he
had not demonstrably merited--a perpetual suspicious conjecture that
the views entertained of him were not to his advantage--a melancholy
absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a passionate
resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing.

Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have absorbed
and dried him, was really no security against wounds, least of all
against those which came from Dorothea.  And he had begun now to frame
possibilities for the future which were somehow more embittering to him
than anything his mind had dwelt on before.

Against certain facts he was helpless: against Will Ladislaw's
existence, his defiant stay in the neighborhood of Lowick, and his
flippant state of mind with regard to the possessors of authentic,
well-stamped erudition: against Dorothea's nature, always taking on
some new shape of ardent activity, and even in submission and silence
covering fervid reasons which it was an irritation to think of: against
certain notions and likings which had taken possession of her mind in
relation to subjects that he could not possibly discuss with her.
There was no denying that Dorothea was as virtuous and lovely a young
lady as he could have obtained for a wife; but a young lady turned out
to be something more troublesome than he had conceived.  She nursed
him, she read to him, she anticipated his wants, and was solicitous
about his feelings; but there had entered into the husband's mind the
certainty that she judged him, and that her wifely devotedness was like
a penitential expiation of unbelieving thoughts--was accompanied with a
power of comparison by which himself and his doings were seen too
luminously as a part of things in general.  His discontent passed
vapor-like through all her gentle loving manifestations, and clung to
that inappreciative world which she had only brought nearer to him.

Poor Mr. Casaubon!  This suffering was the harder to bear because it
seemed like a betrayal: the young creature who had worshipped him with
perfect trust had quickly turned into the critical wife; and early
instances of criticism and resentment had made an impression which no
tenderness and submission afterwards could remove.  To his suspicious
interpretation Dorothea's silence now was a suppressed rebellion; a
remark from her which he had not in any way anticipated was an
assertion of conscious superiority; her gentle answers had an
irritating cautiousness in them; and when she acquiesced it was a
self-approved effort of forbearance.  The tenacity with which he strove
to hide this inward drama made it the more vivid for him; as we hear
with the more keenness what we wish others not to hear.

Instead of wondering at this result of misery in Mr. Casaubon, I think
it quite ordinary.  Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot
out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the
blot?  I know no speck so troublesome as self.  And who, if Mr.
Casaubon had chosen to expound his discontents--his suspicions that he
was not any longer adored without criticism--could have denied that
they were founded on good reasons?  On the contrary, there was a strong
reason to be added, which he had not himself taken explicitly into
account--namely, that he was not unmixedly adorable.  He suspected
this, however, as he suspected other things, without confessing it, and
like the rest of us, felt how soothing it would have been to have a
companion who would never find it out.

This sore susceptibility in relation to Dorothea was thoroughly
prepared before Will Ladislaw had returned to Lowick, and what had
occurred since then had brought Mr. Casaubon's power of suspicious
construction into exasperated activity.  To all the facts which he
knew, he added imaginary facts both present and future which became
more real to him than those because they called up a stronger dislike,
a more predominating bitterness.  Suspicion and jealousy of Will
Ladislaw's intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Dorothea's
impressions, were constantly at their weaving work.  It would be quite
unjust to him to suppose that he could have entered into any coarse
misinterpretation of Dorothea: his own habits of mind and conduct,
quite as much as the open elevation of her nature, saved him from any
such mistake.  What he was jealous of was her opinion, the sway that
might be given to her ardent mind in its judgments, and the future
possibilities to which these might lead her.  As to Will, though until
his last defiant letter he had nothing definite which he would choose
formally to allege against him, he felt himself warranted in believing
that he was capable of any design which could fascinate a rebellious
temper and an undisciplined impulsiveness.  He was quite sure that
Dorothea was the cause of Will's return from Rome, and his
determination to settle in the neighborhood; and he was penetrating
enough to imagine that Dorothea had innocently encouraged this course.
It was as clear as possible that she was ready to be attached to Will
and to be pliant to his suggestions: they had never had a tete-a-tete
without her bringing away from it some new troublesome impression, and
the last interview that Mr. Casaubon was aware of (Dorothea, on
returning from Freshitt Hall, had for the first time been silent about
having seen Will) had led to a scene which roused an angrier feeling
against them both than he had ever known before.  Dorothea's outpouring
of her notions about money, in the darkness of the night, had done
nothing but bring a mixture of more odious foreboding into her
husband's mind.

And there was the shock lately given to his health always sadly present
with him.  He was certainly much revived; he had recovered all his
usual power of work: the illness might have been mere fatigue, and
there might still be twenty years of achievement before him, which
would justify the thirty years of preparation.  That prospect was made
the sweeter by a flavor of vengeance against the hasty sneers of Carp &
Company; for even when Mr. Casaubon was carrying his taper among the
tombs of the past, those modern figures came athwart the dim light, and
interrupted his diligent exploration.  To convince Carp of his mistake,
so that he would have to eat his own words with a good deal of
indigestion, would be an agreeable accident of triumphant authorship,
which the prospect of living to future ages on earth and to all
eternity in heaven could not exclude from contemplation.  Since, thus,
the prevision of his own unending bliss could not nullify the bitter
savors of irritated jealousy and vindictiveness, it is the less
surprising that the probability of a transient earthly bliss for other
persons, when he himself should have entered into glory, had not a
potently sweetening effect.  If the truth should be that some
undermining disease was at work within him, there might be large
opportunity for some people to be the happier when he was gone; and if
one of those people should be Will Ladislaw, Mr. Casaubon objected so
strongly that it seemed as if the annoyance would make part of his
disembodied existence.

This is a very bare and therefore a very incomplete way of putting the
case.  The human soul moves in many channels, and Mr. Casaubon, we
know, had a sense of rectitude and an honorable pride in satisfying the
requirements of honor, which compelled him to find other reasons for
his conduct than those of jealousy and vindictiveness.  The way in
which Mr. Casaubon put the case was this:--"In marrying Dorothea Brooke
I had to care for her well-being in case of my death.  But well-being
is not to be secured by ample, independent possession of property; on
the contrary, occasions might arise in which such possession might
expose her to the more danger.  She is ready prey to any man who knows
how to play adroitly either on her affectionate ardor or her Quixotic
enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that very intention in his mind--a
man with no other principle than transient caprice, and who has a
personal animosity towards me--I am sure of it--an animosity which is
fed by the consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has
constantly vented in ridicule of which I am as well assured as if I had
heard it.  Even if I live I shall not be without uneasiness as to what
he may attempt through indirect influence.  This man has gained
Dorothea's ear: he has fascinated her attention; he has evidently tried
to impress her mind with the notion that he has claims beyond anything
I have done for him.  If I die--and he is waiting here on the watch for
that--he will persuade her to marry him.  That would be calamity for
her and success for him.  _She_ would not think it calamity: he would
make her believe anything; she has a tendency to immoderate attachment
which she inwardly reproaches me for not responding to, and already her
mind is occupied with his fortunes.  He thinks of an easy conquest and
of entering into my nest.  That I will hinder! Such a marriage would be
fatal to Dorothea.  Has he ever persisted in anything except from
contradiction?  In knowledge he has always tried to be showy at small
cost.  In religion he could be, as long as it suited him, the facile
echo of Dorothea's vagaries.  When was sciolism ever dissociated from
laxity?  I utterly distrust his morals, and it is my duty to hinder to
the utmost the fulfilment of his designs."

The arrangements made by Mr. Casaubon on his marriage left strong
measures open to him, but in ruminating on them his mind inevitably
dwelt so much on the probabilities of his own life that the longing to
get the nearest possible calculation had at last overcome his proud
reticence, and had determined him to ask Lydgate's opinion as to the
nature of his illness.

He had mentioned to Dorothea that Lydgate was coming by appointment at
half-past three, and in answer to her anxious question, whether he had
felt ill, replied,--"No, I merely wish to have his opinion concerning
some habitual symptoms.  You need not see him, my dear.  I shall give
orders that he may be sent to me in the Yew-tree Walk, where I shall be
taking my usual exercise."

When Lydgate entered the Yew-tree Walk he saw Mr. Casaubon slowly
receding with his hands behind him according to his habit, and his head
bent forward.  It was a lovely afternoon; the leaves from the lofty
limes were falling silently across the sombre evergreens, while the
lights and shadows slept side by side: there was no sound but the
cawing of the rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that
last solemn lullaby, a dirge.  Lydgate, conscious of an energetic frame
in its prime, felt some compassion when the figure which he was likely
soon to overtake turned round, and in advancing towards him showed more
markedly than ever the signs of premature age--the student's bent
shoulders, the emaciated limbs, and the melancholy lines of the mouth.
"Poor fellow," he thought, "some men with his years are like lions; one
can tell nothing of their age except that they are full grown."

"Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, with his invariably polite air, "I am
exceedingly obliged to you for your punctuality.  We will, if you
please, carry on our conversation in walking to and fro."

"I hope your wish to see me is not due to the return of unpleasant
symptoms," said Lydgate, filling up a pause.

"Not immediately--no.  In order to account for that wish I must
mention--what it were otherwise needless to refer to--that my life, on
all collateral accounts insignificant, derives a possible importance
from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all its
best years.  In short, I have long had on hand a work which I would
fain leave behind me in such a state, at least, that it might be
committed to the press by--others.  Were I assured that this is the
utmost I can reasonably expect, that assurance would be a useful
circumscription of my attempts, and a guide in both the positive and
negative determination of my course."

Here Mr. Casaubon paused, removed one hand from his back and thrust it
between the buttons of his single-breasted coat.  To a mind largely
instructed in the human destiny hardly anything could be more
interesting than the inward conflict implied in his formal measured
address, delivered with the usual sing-song and motion of the head.
Nay, are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle
of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the
significance of its life--a significance which is to vanish as the
waters which come and go where no man has need of them?  But there was
nothing to strike others as sublime about Mr. Casaubon, and Lydgate,
who had some contempt at hand for futile scholarship, felt a little
amusement mingling with his pity.  He was at present too ill acquainted
with disaster to enter into the pathos of a lot where everything is
below the level of tragedy except the passionate egoism of the sufferer.

"You refer to the possible hindrances from want of health?" he said,
wishing to help forward Mr. Casaubon's purpose, which seemed to be
clogged by some hesitation.

"I do.  You have not implied to me that the symptoms which--I am bound
to testify--you watched with scrupulous care, were those of a fatal
disease.  But were it so, Mr. Lydgate, I should desire to know the
truth without reservation, and I appeal to you for an exact statement
of your conclusions: I request it as a friendly service.  If you can
tell me that my life is not threatened by anything else than ordinary
casualties, I shall rejoice, on grounds which I have already indicated.
If not, knowledge of the truth is even more important to me."

"Then I can no longer hesitate as to my course," said Lydgate; "but the
first thing I must impress on you is that my conclusions are doubly
uncertain--uncertain not only because of my fallibility, but because
diseases of the heart are eminently difficult to found predictions on.
In any case, one can hardly increase appreciably the tremendous
uncertainty of life."

Mr. Casaubon winced perceptibly, but bowed.

"I believe that you are suffering from what is called fatty
degeneration of the heart, a disease which was first divined and
explored by Laennec, the man who gave us the stethoscope, not so very
many years ago.  A good deal of experience--a more lengthened
observation--is wanting on the subject.  But after what you have said,
it is my duty to tell you that death from this disease is often sudden.
At the same time, no such result can be predicted.  Your condition may
be consistent with a tolerably comfortable life for another fifteen
years, or even more.  I could add no information to this beyond
anatomical or medical details, which would leave expectation at
precisely the same point." Lydgate's instinct was fine enough to tell
him that plain speech, quite free from ostentatious caution, would be
felt by Mr. Casaubon as a tribute of respect.

"I thank you, Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, after a moment's pause.
"One thing more I have still to ask: did you communicate what you have
now told me to Mrs. Casaubon?"

"Partly--I mean, as to the possible issues."  Lydgate was going to
explain why he had told Dorothea, but Mr. Casaubon, with an
unmistakable desire to end the conversation, waved his hand slightly,
and said again, "I thank you," proceeding to remark on the rare beauty
of the day.

Lydgate, certain that his patient wished to be alone, soon left him;
and the black figure with hands behind and head bent forward continued
to pace the walk where the dark yew-trees gave him a mute companionship
in melancholy, and the little shadows of bird or leaf that fleeted
across the isles of sunlight, stole along in silence as in the presence
of a sorrow.  Here was a man who now for the first time found himself
looking into the eyes of death--who was passing through one of those
rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace,
which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of
waters upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the
water which cannot be had to cool the burning tongue.  When the
commonplace "We must all die" transforms itself suddenly into the acute
consciousness "I must die--and soon," then death grapples us, and his
fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as
our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be
like the first.  To Mr. Casaubon now, it was as if he suddenly found
himself on the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the oncoming
oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons.  In such an
hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias, but carries it onward
in imagination to the other side of death, gazing backward--perhaps
with the divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the petty anxieties
of self-assertion. What was Mr. Casaubon's bias his acts will give us a
clew to.  He held himself to be, with some private scholarly
reservations, a believing Christian, as to estimates of the present and
hopes of the future.  But what we strive to gratify, though we may call
it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which
men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love.
And Mr. Casaubon's immediate desire was not for divine communion and
light divested of earthly conditions; his passionate longings, poor
man, clung low and mist-like in very shady places.

Dorothea had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had
stepped into the garden, with the impulse to go at once to her husband.
But she hesitated, fearing to offend him by obtruding herself; for her
ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory, to
heighten her dread, as thwarted energy subsides into a shudder; and she
wandered slowly round the nearer clumps of trees until she saw him
advancing.  Then she went towards him, and might have represented a
heaven-sent angel coming with a promise that the short hours remaining
should yet be filled with that faithful love which clings the closer to
a comprehended grief.  His glance in reply to hers was so chill that
she felt her timidity increased; yet she turned and passed her hand
through his arm.

Mr. Casaubon kept his hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm to
cling with difficulty against his rigid arm.

There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this
unresponsive hardness inflicted on her.  That is a strong word, but not
too strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of
joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard
faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth
bears no harvest of sweetness--calling their denial knowledge.  You may
ask why, in the name of manliness, Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in
that way.  Consider that his was a mind which shrank from pity: have
you ever watched in such a mind the effect of a suspicion that what is
pressing it as a grief may be really a source of contentment, either
actual or future, to the being who already offends by pitying?
Besides, he knew little of Dorothea's sensations, and had not reflected
that on such an occasion as the present they were comparable in
strength to his own sensibilities about Carp's criticisms.

Dorothea did not withdraw her arm, but she could not venture to speak.
Mr. Casaubon did not say, "I wish to be alone," but he directed his
steps in silence towards the house, and as they entered by the glass
door on this eastern side, Dorothea withdrew her arm and lingered on
the matting, that she might leave her husband quite free.  He entered
the library and shut himself in, alone with his sorrow.

She went up to her boudoir.  The open bow-window let in the serene
glory of the afternoon lying in the avenue, where the lime-trees cast
long shadows.  But Dorothea knew nothing of the scene.  She threw
herself on a chair, not heeding that she was in the dazzling sun-rays:
if there were discomfort in that, how could she tell that it was not
part of her inward misery?

She was in the reaction of a rebellious anger stronger than any she had
felt since her marriage.  Instead of tears there came words:--

"What have I done--what am I--that he should treat me so?  He never
knows what is in my mind--he never cares.  What is the use of anything
I do?  He wishes he had never married me."

She began to hear herself, and was checked into stillness.  Like one
who has lost his way and is weary, she sat and saw as in one glance all
the paths of her young hope which she should never find again.  And
just as clearly in the miserable light she saw her own and her
husband's solitude--how they walked apart so that she was obliged to
survey him.  If he had drawn her towards him, she would never have
surveyed him--never have said, "Is he worth living for?" but would have
felt him simply a part of her own life.  Now she said bitterly, "It is
his fault, not mine."  In the jar of her whole being, Pity was
overthrown.  Was it her fault that she had believed in him--had
believed in his worthiness?--And what, exactly, was he?--  She was able
enough to estimate him--she who waited on his glances with trembling,
and shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that
she might be petty enough to please him.  In such a crisis as this,
some women begin to hate.

The sun was low when Dorothea was thinking that she would not go down
again, but would send a message to her husband saying that she was not
well and preferred remaining up-stairs. She had never deliberately
allowed her resentment to govern her in this way before, but she
believed now that she could not see him again without telling him the
truth about her feeling, and she must wait till she could do it without
interruption.  He might wonder and be hurt at her message.  It was good
that he should wonder and be hurt.  Her anger said, as anger is apt to
say, that God was with her--that all heaven, though it were crowded
with spirits watching them, must be on her side.  She had determined to
ring her bell, when there came a rap at the door.

Mr. Casaubon had sent to say that he would have his dinner in the
library.  He wished to be quite alone this evening, being much occupied.

"I shall not dine, then, Tantripp."

"Oh, madam, let me bring you a little something?"

"No; I am not well.  Get everything ready in my dressing room, but pray
do not disturb me again."

Dorothea sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle, while the
evening slowly deepened into night.  But the struggle changed
continually, as that of a man who begins with a movement towards
striking and ends with conquering his desire to strike.  The energy
that would animate a crime is not more than is wanted to inspire a
resolved submission, when the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself.
That thought with which Dorothea had gone out to meet her husband--her
conviction that he had been asking about the possible arrest of all his
work, and that the answer must have wrung his heart, could not be long
without rising beside the image of him, like a shadowy monitor looking
at her anger with sad remonstrance.  It cost her a litany of pictured
sorrows and of silent cries that she might be the mercy for those
sorrows--but the resolved submission did come; and when the house was
still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon
habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside
in the darkness waiting for his coming up-stairs with a light in his
hand.  If he did not come soon she thought that she would go down and
even risk incurring another pang.  She would never again expect
anything else.  But she did hear the library door open, and slowly the
light advanced up the staircase without noise from the footsteps on the
carpet.  When her husband stood opposite to her, she saw that his face
was more haggard.  He started slightly on seeing her, and she looked up
at him beseechingly, without speaking.

"Dorothea!" he said, with a gentle surprise in his tone.  "Were you
waiting for me?"

"Yes, I did not like to disturb you."

"Come, my dear, come.  You are young, and need not to extend your life
by watching."

When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea's ears,
she felt something like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we
had narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature.  She put her hand into
her husband's, and they went along the broad corridor together.





BOOK V.





THE DEAD HAND.

 Mr. Casaubon has never asked Lydgate anything about his illness, and Dorothea has never hinted to her husband what Lydgate had told her - that Casaubon's illness could come back at any time, and that the next time it might kill him. But Casaubon decides that he needs to know what his prognosis is, partly because he wants to know whether he'll ever be able to finish his book, the "Key to all Mythologies," and partly because he's worried about the idea of Dorothea remarrying. Casaubon is unhappy - even though Dorothea is good to him, he suspects her of secretly disrespecting him. His unhappiness about Dorothea and Will only makes his anxiety about his health worse. Casaubon is toying with the idea of rewriting his will to make it difficult or impossible for Will to marry Dorothea if he should die suddenly. So he calls Lydgate in for a consultation. Lydgate is upfront with him, and tells him that heart disease is difficult to predict. He might have another heart attack tomorrow, or he might live many years. Lydgate also tells Casaubon that he's already warned Dorothea about the uncertainty of heart disease. Dorothea goes out to meet Casaubon after Lydgate's left, and is affectionate towards him, but he doesn't respond. They go in, and he shuts himself in his library to deal with his sadness alone. Dorothea goes to her own room, miserable because he's so distant with her. She sits up without supper thinking things over, and finally decides that he's still worthy of her pity. So she waits for him to come up from the library, and he takes her by the hand gently. They're cool again.

