Chapter: Surely the golden hours are turning gray
    And dance no more, and vainly strive to run:
    I see their white locks streaming in the wind--
    Each face is haggard as it looks at me,
    Slow turning in the constant clasping round
    Storm-driven.


Dorothea's distress when she was leaving the church came chiefly from
the perception that Mr. Casaubon was determined not to speak to his
cousin, and that Will's presence at church had served to mark more
strongly the alienation between them.  Will's coming seemed to her
quite excusable, nay, she thought it an amiable movement in him towards
a reconciliation which she herself had been constantly wishing for.  He
had probably imagined, as she had, that if Mr. Casaubon and he could
meet easily, they would shake hands and friendly intercourse might
return.  But now Dorothea felt quite robbed of that hope.  Will was
banished further than ever, for Mr. Casaubon must have been newly
embittered by this thrusting upon him of a presence which he refused to
recognize.

He had not been very well that morning, suffering from some difficulty
in breathing, and had not preached in consequence; she was not
surprised, therefore, that he was nearly silent at luncheon, still less
that he made no allusion to Will Ladislaw.  For her own part she felt
that she could never again introduce that subject.  They usually spent
apart the hours between luncheon and dinner on a Sunday; Mr. Casaubon
in the library dozing chiefly, and Dorothea in her boudoir, where she
was wont to occupy herself with some of her favorite books.  There was
a little heap of them on the table in the bow-window--of various sorts,
from Herodotus, which she was learning to read with Mr. Casaubon, to
her old companion Pascal, and Keble's "Christian Year." But to-day
opened one after another, and could read none of them.  Everything
seemed dreary: the portents before the birth of Cyrus--Jewish
antiquities--oh dear!--devout epigrams--the sacred chime of favorite
hymns--all alike were as flat as tunes beaten on wood: even the spring
flowers and the grass had a dull shiver in them under the afternoon
clouds that hid the sun fitfully; even the sustaining thoughts which
had become habits seemed to have in them the weariness of long future
days in which she would still live with them for her sole companions.
It was another or rather a fuller sort of companionship that poor
Dorothea was hungering for, and the hunger had grown from the perpetual
effort demanded by her married life.  She was always trying to be what
her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she
was.  The thing that she liked, that she spontaneously cared to have,
seemed to be always excluded from her life; for if it was only granted
and not shared by her husband it might as well have been denied.  About
Will Ladislaw there had been a difference between them from the first,
and it had ended, since Mr. Casaubon had so severely repulsed
Dorothea's strong feeling about his claims on the family property, by
her being convinced that she was in the right and her husband in the
wrong, but that she was helpless.  This afternoon the helplessness was
more wretchedly benumbing than ever: she longed for objects who could
be dear to her, and to whom she could be dear.  She longed for work
which would be directly beneficent like the sunshine and the rain, and
now it appeared that she was to live more and more in a virtual tomb,
where there was the apparatus of a ghastly labor producing what would
never see the light.  Today she had stood at the door of the tomb and
seen Will Ladislaw receding into the distant world of warm activity and
fellowship--turning his face towards her as he went.

Books were of no use.  Thinking was of no use.  It was Sunday, and she
could not have the carriage to go to Celia, who had lately had a baby.
There was no refuge now from spiritual emptiness and discontent, and
Dorothea had to bear her bad mood, as she would have borne a headache.

After dinner, at the hour when she usually began to read aloud, Mr.
Casaubon proposed that they should go into the library, where, he said,
he had ordered a fire and lights.  He seemed to have revived, and to be
thinking intently.

In the library Dorothea observed that he had newly arranged a row of
his note-books on a table, and now he took up and put into her hand a
well-known volume, which was a table of contents to all the others.

"You will oblige me, my dear," he said, seating himself, "if instead of
other reading this evening, you will go through this aloud, pencil in
hand, and at each point where I say 'mark,' will make a cross with your
pencil.  This is the first step in a sifting process which I have long
had in view, and as we go on I shall be able to indicate to you certain
principles of selection whereby you will, I trust, have an intelligent
participation in my purpose."

This proposal was only one more sign added to many since his memorable
interview with Lydgate, that Mr. Casaubon's original reluctance to let
Dorothea work with him had given place to the contrary disposition,
namely, to demand much interest and labor from her.

After she had read and marked for two hours, he said, "We will take the
volume up-stairs--and the pencil, if you please--and in case of
reading in the night, we can pursue this task.  It is not wearisome to
you, I trust, Dorothea?"

"I prefer always reading what you like best to hear," said Dorothea,
who told the simple truth; for what she dreaded was to exert herself in
reading or anything else which left him as joyless as ever.

It was a proof of the force with which certain characteristics in
Dorothea impressed those around her, that her husband, with all his
jealousy and suspicion, had gathered implicit trust in the integrity of
her promises, and her power of devoting herself to her idea of the
right and best.  Of late he had begun to feel that these qualities were
a peculiar possession for himself, and he wanted to engross them.

The reading in the night did come.  Dorothea in her young weariness had
slept soon and fast: she was awakened by a sense of light, which seemed
to her at first like a sudden vision of sunset after she had climbed a
steep hill: she opened her eyes and saw her husband wrapped in his warm
gown seating himself in the arm-chair near the fire-place where the
embers were still glowing.  He had lit two candles, expecting that
Dorothea would awake, but not liking to rouse her by more direct means.

"Are you ill, Edward?" she said, rising immediately.

"I felt some uneasiness in a reclining posture.  I will sit here for a
time."  She threw wood on the fire, wrapped herself up, and said, "You
would like me to read to you?"

"You would oblige me greatly by doing so, Dorothea," said Mr. Casaubon,
with a shade more meekness than usual in his polite manner.  "I am
wakeful: my mind is remarkably lucid."

"I fear that the excitement may be too great for you," said Dorothea,
remembering Lydgate's cautions.

"No, I am not conscious of undue excitement.  Thought is easy."
Dorothea dared not insist, and she read for an hour or more on the same
plan as she had done in the evening, but getting over the pages with
more quickness.  Mr. Casaubon's mind was more alert, and he seemed to
anticipate what was coming after a very slight verbal indication,
saying, "That will do--mark that"--or "Pass on to the next head--I omit
the second excursus on Crete." Dorothea was amazed to think of the
bird-like speed with which his mind was surveying the ground where it
had been creeping for years.  At last he said--

"Close the book now, my dear.  We will resume our work to-morrow.  I
have deferred it too long, and would gladly see it completed.  But you
observe that the principle on which my selection is made, is to give
adequate, and not disproportionate illustration to each of the theses
enumerated in my introduction, as at present sketched.  You have
perceived that distinctly, Dorothea?"

"Yes," said Dorothea, rather tremulously.  She felt sick at heart.

"And now I think that I can take some repose," said Mr. Casaubon.  He
laid down again and begged her to put out the lights.  When she had
lain down too, and there was a darkness only broken by a dull glow on
the hearth, he said--

"Before I sleep, I have a request to make, Dorothea."

"What is it?" said Dorothea, with dread in her mind.

"It is that you will let me know, deliberately, whether, in case of my
death, you will carry out my wishes: whether you will avoid doing what
I should deprecate, and apply yourself to do what I should desire."

Dorothea was not taken by surprise: many incidents had been leading her
to the conjecture of some intention on her husband's part which might
make a new yoke for her.  She did not answer immediately.

"You refuse?" said Mr. Casaubon, with more edge in his tone.

"No, I do not yet refuse," said Dorothea, in a clear voice, the need of
freedom asserting itself within her; "but it is too solemn--I think it
is not right--to make a promise when I am ignorant what it will bind me
to.  Whatever affection prompted I would do without promising."

"But you would use your own judgment: I ask you to obey mine; you
refuse."

"No, dear, no!" said Dorothea, beseechingly, crushed by opposing fears.
"But may I wait and reflect a little while?  I desire with my whole
soul to do what will comfort you; but I cannot give any pledge
suddenly--still less a pledge to do I know not what."

"You cannot then confide in the nature of my wishes?"

"Grant me till to-morrow," said Dorothea, beseechingly.

"Till to-morrow then," said Mr. Casaubon.

Soon she could hear that he was sleeping, but there was no more sleep
for her.  While she constrained herself to lie still lest she should
disturb him, her mind was carrying on a conflict in which imagination
ranged its forces first on one side and then on the other.  She had no
presentiment that the power which her husband wished to establish over
her future action had relation to anything else than his work.  But it
was clear enough to her that he would expect her to devote herself to
sifting those mixed heaps of material, which were to be the doubtful
illustration of principles still more doubtful.  The poor child had
become altogether unbelieving as to the trustworthiness of that Key
which had made the ambition and the labor of her husband's life.  It
was not wonderful that, in spite of her small instruction, her judgment
in this matter was truer than his: for she looked with unbiassed
comparison and healthy sense at probabilities on which he had risked
all his egoism.  And now she pictured to herself the days, and months,
and years which she must spend in sorting what might be called
shattered mummies, and fragments of a tradition which was itself a
mosaic wrought from crushed ruins--sorting them as food for a theory
which was already withered in the birth like an elfin child.  Doubtless
a vigorous error vigorously pursued has kept the embryos of truth
a-breathing: the quest of gold being at the same time a questioning of
substances, the body of chemistry is prepared for its soul, and
Lavoisier is born.  But Mr. Casaubon's theory of the elements which
made the seed of all tradition was not likely to bruise itself unawares
against discoveries: it floated among flexible conjectures no more
solid than those etymologies which seemed strong because of likeness in
sound until it was shown that likeness in sound made them impossible:
it was a method of interpretation which was not tested by the necessity
of forming anything which had sharper collisions than an elaborate
notion of Gog and Magog: it was as free from interruption as a plan for
threading the stars together.  And Dorothea had so often had to check
her weariness and impatience over this questionable riddle-guessing, as
it revealed itself to her instead of the fellowship in high knowledge
which was to make life worthier!  She could understand well enough now
why her husband had come to cling to her, as possibly the only hope
left that his labors would ever take a shape in which they could be
given to the world.  At first it had seemed that he wished to keep even
her aloof from any close knowledge of what he was doing; but gradually
the terrible stringency of human need--the prospect of a too speedy
death--

And here Dorothea's pity turned from her own future to her husband's
past--nay, to his present hard struggle with a lot which had grown out
of that past: the lonely labor, the ambition breathing hardly under the
pressure of self-distrust; the goal receding, and the heavier limbs;
and now at last the sword visibly trembling above him!  And had she not
wished to marry him that she might help him in his life's labor?--But
she had thought the work was to be something greater, which she could
serve in devoutly for its own sake.  Was it right, even to soothe his
grief--would it be possible, even if she promised--to work as in a
treadmill fruitlessly?

And yet, could she deny him?  Could she say, "I refuse to content this
pining hunger?"  It would be refusing to do for him dead, what she was
almost sure to do for him living.  If he lived as Lydgate had said he
might, for fifteen years or more, her life would certainly be spent in
helping him and obeying him.

Still, there was a deep difference between that devotion to the living
and that indefinite promise of devotion to the dead.  While he lived,
he could claim nothing that she would not still be free to remonstrate
against, and even to refuse.  But--the thought passed through her mind
more than once, though she could not believe in it--might he not mean
to demand something more from her than she had been able to imagine,
since he wanted her pledge to carry out his wishes without telling her
exactly what they were?  No; his heart was bound up in his work only:
that was the end for which his failing life was to be eked out by hers.

And now, if she were to say, "No! if you die, I will put no finger to
your work"--it seemed as if she would be crushing that bruised heart.

For four hours Dorothea lay in this conflict, till she felt ill and
bewildered, unable to resolve, praying mutely.  Helpless as a child
which has sobbed and sought too long, she fell into a late morning
sleep, and when she waked Mr. Casaubon was already up.  Tantripp told
her that he had read prayers, breakfasted, and was in the library.

"I never saw you look so pale, madam," said Tantripp, a solid-figured
woman who had been with the sisters at Lausanne.

"Was I ever high-colored, Tantripp?" said Dorothea, smiling faintly.

"Well, not to say high-colored, but with a bloom like a Chiny rose.
But always smelling those leather books, what can be expected?  Do rest
a little this morning, madam.  Let me say you are ill and not able to
go into that close library."

"Oh no, no! let me make haste," said Dorothea.  "Mr. Casaubon wants me
particularly."

When she went down she felt sure that she should promise to fulfil his
wishes; but that would be later in the day--not yet.

As Dorothea entered the library, Mr. Casaubon turned round from the
table where he had been placing some books, and said--

"I was waiting for your appearance, my dear.  I had hoped to set to
work at once this morning, but I find myself under some indisposition,
probably from too much excitement yesterday.  I am going now to take a
turn in the shrubbery, since the air is milder."

"I am glad to hear that," said Dorothea.  "Your mind, I feared, was too
active last night."

"I would fain have it set at rest on the point I last spoke of,
Dorothea.  You can now, I hope, give me an answer."

"May I come out to you in the garden presently?" said Dorothea, winning
a little breathing space in that way.

"I shall be in the Yew-tree Walk for the next half-hour," said Mr.
Casaubon, and then he left her.

Dorothea, feeling very weary, rang and asked Tantripp to bring her some
wraps.  She had been sitting still for a few minutes, but not in any
renewal of the former conflict: she simply felt that she was going to
say "Yes" to her own doom: she was too weak, too full of dread at the
thought of inflicting a keen-edged blow on her husband, to do anything
but submit completely.  She sat still and let Tantripp put on her
bonnet and shawl, a passivity which was unusual with her, for she liked
to wait on herself.

"God bless you, madam!" said Tantripp, with an irrepressible movement
of love towards the beautiful, gentle creature for whom she felt unable
to do anything more, now that she had finished tying the bonnet.

This was too much for Dorothea's highly-strung feeling, and she burst
into tears, sobbing against Tantripp's arm.  But soon she checked
herself, dried her eyes, and went out at the glass door into the
shrubbery.

"I wish every book in that library was built into a caticom for your
master," said Tantripp to Pratt, the butler, finding him in the
breakfast-room. She had been at Rome, and visited the antiquities, as
we know; and she always declined to call Mr. Casaubon anything but
"your master," when speaking to the other servants.

Pratt laughed.  He liked his master very well, but he liked Tantripp
better.

When Dorothea was out on the gravel walks, she lingered among the
nearer clumps of trees, hesitating, as she had done once before, though
from a different cause.  Then she had feared lest her effort at
fellowship should be unwelcome; now she dreaded going to the spot where
she foresaw that she must bind herself to a fellowship from which she
shrank.  Neither law nor the world's opinion compelled her to
this--only her husband's nature and her own compassion, only the ideal
and not the real yoke of marriage.  She saw clearly enough the whole
situation, yet she was fettered: she could not smite the stricken soul
that entreated hers.  If that were weakness, Dorothea was weak.  But
the half-hour was passing, and she must not delay longer.  When she
entered the Yew-tree Walk she could not see her husband; but the walk
had bends, and she went, expecting to catch sight of his figure wrapped
in a blue cloak, which, with a warm velvet cap, was his outer garment
on chill days for the garden.  It occurred to her that he might be
resting in the summer-house, towards which the path diverged a little.
Turning the angle, she could see him seated on the bench, close to a
stone table.  His arms were resting on the table, and his brow was
bowed down on them, the blue cloak being dragged forward and screening
his face on each side.

"He exhausted himself last night," Dorothea said to herself, thinking
at first that he was asleep, and that the summer-house was too damp a
place to rest in.  But then she remembered that of late she had seen
him take that attitude when she was reading to him, as if he found it
easier than any other; and that he would sometimes speak, as well as
listen, with his face down in that way.  She went into the summerhouse
and said, "I am come, Edward; I am ready."

He took no notice, and she thought that he must be fast asleep.  She
laid her hand on his shoulder, and repeated, "I am ready!" Still he was
motionless; and with a sudden confused fear, she leaned down to him,
took off his velvet cap, and leaned her cheek close to his head, crying
in a distressed tone--

"Wake, dear, wake!  Listen to me.  I am come to answer." But Dorothea
never gave her answer.

Later in the day, Lydgate was seated by her bedside, and she was
talking deliriously, thinking aloud, and recalling what had gone
through her mind the night before.  She knew him, and called him by his
name, but appeared to think it right that she should explain everything
to him; and again, and again, begged him to explain everything to her
husband.

"Tell him I shall go to him soon: I am ready to promise.  Only,
thinking about it was so dreadful--it has made me ill.  Not very ill.
I shall soon be better.  Go and tell him."

But the silence in her husband's ear was never more to be broken.



    A task too strong for wizard spells
    This squire had brought about;
    'T is easy dropping stones in wells,
    But who shall get them out?"


"I wish to God we could hinder Dorothea from knowing this," said Sir
James Chettam, with a little frown on his brow, and an expression of
intense disgust about his mouth.

He was standing on the hearth-rug in the library at Lowick Grange, and
speaking to Mr. Brooke.  It was the day after Mr. Casaubon had been
buried, and Dorothea was not yet able to leave her room.

"That would be difficult, you know, Chettam, as she is an executrix,
and she likes to go into these things--property, land, that kind of
thing.  She has her notions, you know," said Mr. Brooke, sticking his
eye-glasses on nervously, and exploring the edges of a folded paper
which he held in his hand; "and she would like to act--depend upon it,
as an executrix Dorothea would want to act.  And she was twenty-one
last December, you know.  I can hinder nothing."

Sir James looked at the carpet for a minute in silence, and then
lifting his eyes suddenly fixed them on Mr. Brooke, saying, "I will
tell you what we can do.  Until Dorothea is well, all business must be
kept from her, and as soon as she is able to be moved she must come to
us.  Being with Celia and the baby will be the best thing in the world
for her, and will pass away the time.  And meanwhile you must get rid
of Ladislaw: you must send him out of the country." Here Sir James's
look of disgust returned in all its intensity.

Mr. Brooke put his hands behind him, walked to the window and
straightened his back with a little shake before he replied.

"That is easily said, Chettam, easily said, you know."

"My dear sir," persisted Sir James, restraining his indignation within
respectful forms, "it was you who brought him here, and you who keep
him here--I mean by the occupation you give him."

"Yes, but I can't dismiss him in an instant without assigning reasons,
my dear Chettam.  Ladislaw has been invaluable, most satisfactory.  I
consider that I have done this part of the country a service by
bringing him--by bringing him, you know."  Mr. Brooke ended with a nod,
turning round to give it.

"It's a pity this part of the country didn't do without him, that's all
I have to say about it.  At any rate, as Dorothea's brother-in-law, I
feel warranted in objecting strongly to his being kept here by any
action on the part of her friends.  You admit, I hope, that I have a
right to speak about what concerns the dignity of my wife's sister?"

Sir James was getting warm.

"Of course, my dear Chettam, of course.  But you and I have different
ideas--different--"

"Not about this action of Casaubon's, I should hope," interrupted Sir
James.  "I say that he has most unfairly compromised Dorothea.  I say
that there never was a meaner, more ungentlemanly action than this--a
codicil of this sort to a will which he made at the time of his
marriage with the knowledge and reliance of her family--a positive
insult to Dorothea!"

"Well, you know, Casaubon was a little twisted about Ladislaw.
Ladislaw has told me the reason--dislike of the bent he took, you
know--Ladislaw didn't think much of Casaubon's notions, Thoth and
Dagon--that sort of thing: and I fancy that Casaubon didn't like the
independent position Ladislaw had taken up.  I saw the letters between
them, you know.  Poor Casaubon was a little buried in books--he didn't
know the world."

"It's all very well for Ladislaw to put that color on it," said Sir
James.  "But I believe Casaubon was only jealous of him on Dorothea's
account, and the world will suppose that she gave him some reason; and
that is what makes it so abominable--coupling her name with this young
fellow's."

"My dear Chettam, it won't lead to anything, you know," said Mr.
Brooke, seating himself and sticking on his eye-glass again.  "It's all
of a piece with Casaubon's oddity.  This paper, now, 'Synoptical
Tabulation' and so on, 'for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,' it was locked up
in the desk with the will.  I suppose he meant Dorothea to publish his
researches, eh? and she'll do it, you know; she has gone into his
studies uncommonly."

"My dear sir," said Sir James, impatiently, "that is neither here nor
there.  The question is, whether you don't see with me the propriety of
sending young Ladislaw away?"

"Well, no, not the urgency of the thing.  By-and-by, perhaps, it may
come round.  As to gossip, you know, sending him away won't hinder
gossip.  People say what they like to say, not what they have chapter
and verse for," said Mr Brooke, becoming acute about the truths that
lay on the side of his own wishes.  "I might get rid of Ladislaw up to
a certain point--take away the 'Pioneer' from him, and that sort of
thing; but I couldn't send him out of the country if he didn't choose
to go--didn't choose, you know."

Mr. Brooke, persisting as quietly as if he were only discussing the
nature of last year's weather, and nodding at the end with his usual
amenity, was an exasperating form of obstinacy.

"Good God!" said Sir James, with as much passion as he ever showed,
"let us get him a post; let us spend money on him.  If he could go in
the suite of some Colonial Governor!  Grampus might take him--and I
could write to Fulke about it."

"But Ladislaw won't be shipped off like a head of cattle, my dear
fellow; Ladislaw has his ideas.  It's my opinion that if he were to
part from me to-morrow, you'd only hear the more of him in the country.
With his talent for speaking and drawing up documents, there are few
men who could come up to him as an agitator--an agitator, you know."

"Agitator!" said Sir James, with bitter emphasis, feeling that the
syllables of this word properly repeated were a sufficient exposure of
its hatefulness.

"But be reasonable, Chettam.  Dorothea, now.  As you say, she had
better go to Celia as soon as possible.  She can stay under your roof,
and in the mean time things may come round quietly.  Don't let us be
firing off our guns in a hurry, you know.  Standish will keep our
counsel, and the news will be old before it's known.  Twenty things may
happen to carry off Ladislaw--without my doing anything, you know."

"Then I am to conclude that you decline to do anything?"

"Decline, Chettam?--no--I didn't say decline.  But I really don't see
what I could do.  Ladislaw is a gentleman."

"I am glad to hear it!" said Sir James, his irritation making him
forget himself a little.  "I am sure Casaubon was not."

"Well, it would have been worse if he had made the codicil to hinder
her from marrying again at all, you know."

"I don't know that," said Sir James.  "It would have been less
indelicate."

"One of poor Casaubon's freaks!  That attack upset his brain a little.
It all goes for nothing.  She doesn't _want_ to marry Ladislaw."

"But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she
did.  I don't believe anything of the sort about Dorothea," said Sir
James--then frowningly, "but I suspect Ladislaw.  I tell you frankly,
I suspect Ladislaw."

"I couldn't take any immediate action on that ground, Chettam.  In
fact, if it were possible to pack him off--send him to Norfolk
Island--that sort of thing--it would look all the worse for Dorothea
to those who knew about it.  It would seem as if we distrusted
her--distrusted her, you know."

That Mr. Brooke had hit on an undeniable argument, did not tend to
soothe Sir James.  He put out his hand to reach his hat, implying that
he did not mean to contend further, and said, still with some heat--

"Well, I can only say that I think Dorothea was sacrificed once,
because her friends were too careless.  I shall do what I can, as her
brother, to protect her now."

"You can't do better than get her to Freshitt as soon as possible,
Chettam.  I approve that plan altogether," said Mr. Brooke, well
pleased that he had won the argument.  It would have been highly
inconvenient to him to part with Ladislaw at that time, when a
dissolution might happen any day, and electors were to be convinced of
the course by which the interests of the country would be best served.
Mr. Brooke sincerely believed that this end could be secured by his own
return to Parliament: he offered the forces of his mind honestly to the
nation.



    "'This Loller here wol precilen us somewhat.'
     'Nay by my father's soule! that schal he nat,'
      Sayde the Schipman, 'here schal he not preche,
      We schal no gospel glosen here ne teche.
      We leven all in the gret God,' quod he.
      He wolden sowen some diffcultee."
                                 Canterbury Tales.


Dorothea had been safe at Freshitt Hall nearly a week before she had
asked any dangerous questions.  Every morning now she sat with Celia in
the prettiest of up-stairs sitting-rooms, opening into a small
conservatory--Celia all in white and lavender like a bunch of mixed
violets, watching the remarkable acts of the baby, which were so
dubious to her inexperienced mind that all conversation was interrupted
by appeals for their interpretation made to the oracular nurse.
Dorothea sat by in her widow's dress, with an expression which rather
provoked Celia, as being much too sad; for not only was baby quite
well, but really when a husband had been so dull and troublesome while
he lived, and besides that had--well, well!  Sir James, of course, had
told Celia everything, with a strong representation how important it
was that Dorothea should not know it sooner than was inevitable.

But Mr. Brooke had been right in predicting that Dorothea would not
long remain passive where action had been assigned to her; she knew the
purport of her husband's will made at the time of their marriage, and
her mind, as soon as she was clearly conscious of her position, was
silently occupied with what she ought to do as the owner of Lowick
Manor with the patronage of the living attached to it.

One morning when her uncle paid his usual visit, though with an unusual
alacrity in his manner which he accounted for by saying that it was now
pretty certain Parliament would be dissolved forthwith, Dorothea said--

"Uncle, it is right now that I should consider who is to have the
living at Lowick.  After Mr. Tucker had been provided for, I never
heard my husband say that he had any clergyman in his mind as a
successor to himself.  I think I ought to have the keys now and go to
Lowick to examine all my husband's papers.  There may be something that
would throw light on his wishes."

"No hurry, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, quietly.  "By-and-by, you know,
you can go, if you like.  But I cast my eyes over things in the desks
and drawers--there was nothing--nothing but deep subjects, you
know--besides the will.  Everything can be done by-and-by. As to the
living, I have had an application for interest already--I should say
rather good.  Mr. Tyke has been strongly recommended to me--I had
something to do with getting him an appointment before.  An apostolic
man, I believe--the sort of thing that would suit you, my dear."

"I should like to have fuller knowledge about him, uncle, and judge for
myself, if Mr. Casaubon has not left any expression of his wishes.  He
has perhaps made some addition to his will--there may be some
instructions for me," said Dorothea, who had all the while had this
conjecture in her mind with relation to her husband's work.

"Nothing about the rectory, my dear--nothing," said Mr. Brooke, rising
to go away, and putting out his hand to his nieces: "nor about his
researches, you know.  Nothing in the will."

Dorothea's lip quivered.

"Come, you must not think of these things yet, my dear.  By-and-by, you
know."

"I am quite well now, uncle; I wish to exert myself."

"Well, well, we shall see.  But I must run away now--I have no end of
work now--it's a crisis--a political crisis, you know.  And here is
Celia and her little man--you are an aunt, you know, now, and I am a
sort of grandfather," said Mr. Brooke, with placid hurry, anxious to
get away and tell Chettam that it would not be his (Mr. Brooke's) fault
if Dorothea insisted on looking into everything.

Dorothea sank back in her chair when her uncle had left the room, and
cast her eyes down meditatively on her crossed hands.

"Look, Dodo! look at him!  Did you ever see anything like that?" said
Celia, in her comfortable staccato.

"What, Kitty?" said Dorothea, lifting her eyes rather absently.

"What? why, his upper lip; see how he is drawing it down, as if he
meant to make a face.  Isn't it wonderful!  He may have his little
thoughts.  I wish nurse were here.  Do look at him."

A large tear which had been for some time gathering, rolled down
Dorothea's cheek as she looked up and tried to smile.

"Don't be sad, Dodo; kiss baby.  What are you brooding over so?  I am
sure you did everything, and a great deal too much.  You should be
happy now."

"I wonder if Sir James would drive me to Lowick.  I want to look over
everything--to see if there were any words written for me."

"You are not to go till Mr. Lydgate says you may go.  And he has not
said so yet (here you are, nurse; take baby and walk up and down the
gallery). Besides, you have got a wrong notion in your head as usual,
Dodo--I can see that: it vexes me."

"Where am I wrong, Kitty?" said Dorothea, quite meekly.  She was almost
ready now to think Celia wiser than herself, and was really wondering
with some fear what her wrong notion was.  Celia felt her advantage,
and was determined to use it.  None of them knew Dodo as well as she
did, or knew how to manage her.  Since Celia's baby was born, she had
had a new sense of her mental solidity and calm wisdom.  It seemed
clear that where there was a baby, things were right enough, and that
error, in general, was a mere lack of that central poising force.

"I can see what you are thinking of as well as can be, Dodo," said
Celia.  "You are wanting to find out if there is anything uncomfortable
for you to do now, only because Mr. Casaubon wished it.  As if you had
not been uncomfortable enough before.  And he doesn't deserve it, and
you will find that out.  He has behaved very badly.  James is as angry
with him as can be.  And I had better tell you, to prepare you."

"Celia," said Dorothea, entreatingly, "you distress me.  Tell me at
once what you mean."  It glanced through her mind that Mr. Casaubon
had left the property away from her--which would not be so very
distressing.

"Why, he has made a codicil to his will, to say the property was all to
go away from you if you married--I mean--"

"That is of no consequence," said Dorothea, breaking in impetuously.

"But if you married Mr. Ladislaw, not anybody else," Celia went on with
persevering quietude.  "Of course that is of no consequence in one
way--you never _would_ marry Mr. Ladislaw; but that only makes it worse
of Mr. Casaubon."

The blood rushed to Dorothea's face and neck painfully.  But Celia was
administering what she thought a sobering dose of fact.  It was taking
up notions that had done Dodo's health so much harm.  So she went on in
her neutral tone, as if she had been remarking on baby's robes.

"James says so.  He says it is abominable, and not like a gentleman.
And there never was a better judge than James.  It is as if Mr.
Casaubon wanted to make people believe that you would wish to marry Mr.
Ladislaw--which is ridiculous.  Only James says it was to hinder Mr.
Ladislaw from wanting to marry you for your money--just as if he ever
would think of making you an offer.  Mrs. Cadwallader said you might as
well marry an Italian with white mice!  But I must just go and look at
baby," Celia added, without the least change of tone, throwing a light
shawl over her, and tripping away.

Dorothea by this time had turned cold again, and now threw herself back
helplessly in her chair.  She might have compared her experience at
that moment to the vague, alarmed consciousness that her life was
taking on a new form, that she was undergoing a metamorphosis in which
memory would not adjust itself to the stirring of new organs.
Everything was changing its aspect: her husband's conduct, her own
duteous feeling towards him, every struggle between them--and yet
more, her whole relation to Will Ladislaw.  Her world was in a state of
convulsive change; the only thing she could say distinctly to herself
was, that she must wait and think anew.  One change terrified her as if
it had been a sin; it was a violent shock of repulsion from her
departed husband, who had had hidden thoughts, perhaps perverting
everything she said and did.  Then again she was conscious of another
change which also made her tremulous; it was a sudden strange yearning
of heart towards Will Ladislaw.  It had never before entered her mind
that he could, under any circumstances, be her lover: conceive the
effect of the sudden revelation that another had thought of him in that
light--that perhaps he himself had been conscious of such a
possibility,--and this with the hurrying, crowding vision of unfitting
conditions, and questions not soon to be solved.

It seemed a long while--she did not know how long--before she heard
Celia saying, "That will do, nurse; he will be quiet on my lap now.
You can go to lunch, and let Garratt stay in the next room." "What I
think, Dodo," Celia went on, observing nothing more than that Dorothea
was leaning back in her chair, and likely to be passive, "is that Mr.
Casaubon was spiteful.  I never did like him, and James never did.  I
think the corners of his mouth were dreadfully spiteful.  And now he
has behaved in this way, I am sure religion does not require you to
make yourself uncomfortable about him.  If he has been taken away, that
is a mercy, and you ought to be grateful.  We should not grieve, should
we, baby?" said Celia confidentially to that unconscious centre and
poise of the world, who had the most remarkable fists all complete even
to the nails, and hair enough, really, when you took his cap off, to
make--you didn't know what:--in short, he was Bouddha in a Western
form.

At this crisis Lydgate was announced, and one of the first things he
said was, "I fear you are not so well as you were, Mrs. Casaubon; have
you been agitated? allow me to feel your pulse."  Dorothea's hand was
of a marble coldness.

"She wants to go to Lowick, to look over papers," said Celia.  "She
ought not, ought she?"

Lydgate did not speak for a few moments.  Then he said, looking at
Dorothea.  "I hardly know.  In my opinion Mrs. Casaubon should do what
would give her the most repose of mind.  That repose will not always
come from being forbidden to act."

"Thank you," said Dorothea, exerting herself, "I am sure that is wise.
There are so many things which I ought to attend to.  Why should I sit
here idle?"  Then, with an effort to recall subjects not connected with
her agitation, she added, abruptly, "You know every one in Middlemarch,
I think, Mr. Lydgate.  I shall ask you to tell me a great deal.  I have
serious things to do now.  I have a living to give away.  You know Mr.
Tyke and all the--" But Dorothea's effort was too much for her; she
broke off and burst into sobs.  Lydgate made her drink a dose of sal
volatile.

"Let Mrs. Casaubon do as she likes," he said to Sir James, whom he
asked to see before quitting the house.  "She wants perfect freedom, I
think, more than any other prescription."

His attendance on Dorothea while her brain was excited, had enabled him
to form some true conclusions concerning the trials of her life.  He
felt sure that she had been suffering from the strain and conflict of
self-repression; and that she was likely now to feel herself only in
another sort of pinfold than that from which she had been released.

Lydgate's advice was all the easier for Sir James to follow when he
found that Celia had already told Dorothea the unpleasant fact about
the will.  There was no help for it now--no reason for any further
delay in the execution of necessary business.  And the next day Sir
James complied at once with her request that he would drive her to
Lowick.

"I have no wish to stay there at present," said Dorothea; "I could
hardly bear it.  I am much happier at Freshitt with Celia.  I shall be
able to think better about what should be done at Lowick by looking at
it from a distance.  And I should like to be at the Grange a little
while with my uncle, and go about in all the old walks and among the
people in the village."

"Not yet, I think.  Your uncle is having political company, and you are
better out of the way of such doings," said Sir James, who at that
moment thought of the Grange chiefly as a haunt of young Ladislaw's.
But no word passed between him and Dorothea about the objectionable
part of the will; indeed, both of them felt that the mention of it
between them would be impossible.  Sir James was shy, even with men,
about disagreeable subjects; and the one thing that Dorothea would have
chosen to say, if she had spoken on the matter at all, was forbidden to
her at present because it seemed to be a further exposure of her
husband's injustice.  Yet she did wish that Sir James could know what
had passed between her and her husband about Will Ladislaw's moral
claim on the property: it would then, she thought, be apparent to him
as it was to her, that her husband's strange indelicate proviso had
been chiefly urged by his bitter resistance to that idea of claim, and
not merely by personal feelings more difficult to talk about.  Also, it
must be admitted, Dorothea wished that this could be known for Will's
sake, since her friends seemed to think of him as simply an object of
Mr. Casaubon's charity.  Why should he be compared with an Italian
carrying white mice?  That word quoted from Mrs. Cadwallader seemed
like a mocking travesty wrought in the dark by an impish finger.

At Lowick Dorothea searched desk and drawer--searched all her husband's
places of deposit for private writing, but found no paper addressed
especially to her, except that "Synoptical Tabulation," which was
probably only the beginning of many intended directions for her
guidance.  In carrying out this bequest of labor to Dorothea, as in all
else, Mr. Casaubon had been slow and hesitating, oppressed in the plan
of transmitting his work, as he had been in executing it, by the sense
of moving heavily in a dim and clogging medium: distrust of Dorothea's
competence to arrange what he had prepared was subdued only by distrust
of any other redactor.  But he had come at last to create a trust for
himself out of Dorothea's nature: she could do what she resolved to do:
and he willingly imagined her toiling under the fetters of a promise to
erect a tomb with his name upon it.  (Not that Mr. Casaubon called the
future volumes a tomb; he called them the Key to all Mythologies.) But
the months gained on him and left his plans belated: he had only had
time to ask for that promise by which he sought to keep his cold grasp
on Dorothea's life.

The grasp had slipped away.  Bound by a pledge given from the depths of
her pity, she would have been capable of undertaking a toil which her
judgment whispered was vain for all uses except that consecration of
faithfulness which is a supreme use.  But now her judgment, instead of
being controlled by duteous devotion, was made active by the
imbittering discovery that in her past union there had lurked the
hidden alienation of secrecy and suspicion.  The living, suffering man
was no longer before her to awaken her pity: there remained only the
retrospect of painful subjection to a husband whose thoughts had been
lower than she had believed, whose exorbitant claims for himself had
even blinded his scrupulous care for his own character, and made him
defeat his own pride by shocking men of ordinary honor.  As for the
property which was the sign of that broken tie, she would have been
glad to be free from it and have nothing more than her original fortune
which had been settled on her, if there had not been duties attached to
ownership, which she ought not to flinch from.  About this property
many troublous questions insisted on rising: had she not been right in
thinking that the half of it ought to go to Will Ladislaw?--but was it
not impossible now for her to do that act of justice?  Mr. Casaubon had
taken a cruelly effective means of hindering her: even with indignation
against him in her heart, any act that seemed a triumphant eluding of
his purpose revolted her.

After collecting papers of business which she wished to examine, she
locked up again the desks and drawers--all empty of personal words for
her--empty of any sign that in her husband's lonely brooding his heart
had gone out to her in excuse or explanation; and she went back to
Freshitt with the sense that around his last hard demand and his last
injurious assertion of his power, the silence was unbroken.

Dorothea tried now to turn her thoughts towards immediate duties, and
one of these was of a kind which others were determined to remind her
of.  Lydgate's ear had caught eagerly her mention of the living, and as
soon as he could, he reopened the subject, seeing here a possibility of
making amends for the casting-vote he had once given with an
ill-satisfied conscience.  "Instead of telling you anything about Mr.
Tyke," he said, "I should like to speak of another man--Mr.
Farebrother, the Vicar of St. Botolph's.  His living is a poor one, and
gives him a stinted provision for himself and his family.  His mother,
aunt, and sister all live with him, and depend upon him.  I believe he
has never married because of them.  I never heard such good preaching
as his--such plain, easy eloquence.  He would have done to preach at
St. Paul's Cross after old Latimer.  His talk is just as good about all
subjects: original, simple, clear.  I think him a remarkable fellow: he
ought to have done more than he has done."

"Why has he not done more?" said Dorothea, interested now in all who
had slipped below their own intention.

"That's a hard question," said Lydgate.  "I find myself that it's
uncommonly difficult to make the right thing work: there are so many
strings pulling at once.  Farebrother often hints that he has got into
the wrong profession; he wants a wider range than that of a poor
clergyman, and I suppose he has no interest to help him on.  He is very
fond of Natural History and various scientific matters, and he is
hampered in reconciling these tastes with his position.  He has no
money to spare--hardly enough to use; and that has led him into
card-playing--Middlemarch is a great place for whist.  He does play for
money, and he wins a good deal.  Of course that takes him into company
a little beneath him, and makes him slack about some things; and yet,
with all that, looking at him as a whole, I think he is one of the most
blameless men I ever knew.  He has neither venom nor doubleness in him,
and those often go with a more correct outside."

"I wonder whether he suffers in his conscience because of that habit,"
said Dorothea; "I wonder whether he wishes he could leave it off."

"I have no doubt he would leave it off, if he were transplanted into
plenty: he would be glad of the time for other things."

"My uncle says that Mr. Tyke is spoken of as an apostolic man," said
Dorothea, meditatively.  She was wishing it were possible to restore
the times of primitive zeal, and yet thinking of Mr. Farebrother with a
strong desire to rescue him from his chance-gotten money.

"I don't pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic," said Lydgate.
"His position is not quite like that of the Apostles: he is only a
parson among parishioners whose lives he has to try and make better.
Practically I find that what is called being apostolic now, is an
impatience of everything in which the parson doesn't cut the principal
figure.  I see something of that in Mr. Tyke at the Hospital: a good
deal of his doctrine is a sort of pinching hard to make people
uncomfortably aware of him.  Besides, an apostolic man at Lowick!--he
ought to think, as St. Francis did, that it is needful to preach to the
birds."

"True," said Dorothea.  "It is hard to imagine what sort of notions our
farmers and laborers get from their teaching.  I have been looking into
a volume of sermons by Mr. Tyke: such sermons would be of no use at
Lowick--I mean, about imputed righteousness and the prophecies in the
Apocalypse.  I have always been thinking of the different ways in which
Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a
wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean
that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most
people as sharers in it.  It is surely better to pardon too much, than
to condemn too much.  But I should like to see Mr. Farebrother and hear
him preach."

"Do," said Lydgate; "I trust to the effect of that.  He is very much
beloved, but he has his enemies too: there are always people who can't
forgive an able man for differing from them.  And that money-winning
business is really a blot.  You don't, of course, see many Middlemarch
people: but Mr. Ladislaw, who is constantly seeing Mr. Brooke, is a
great friend of Mr. Farebrother's old ladies, and would be glad to sing
the Vicar's praises.  One of the old ladies--Miss Noble, the aunt--is a
wonderfully quaint picture of self-forgetful goodness, and Ladislaw
gallants her about sometimes.  I met them one day in a back street: you
know Ladislaw's look--a sort of Daphnis in coat and waistcoat; and this
little old maid reaching up to his arm--they looked like a couple
dropped out of a romantic comedy.  But the best evidence about
Farebrother is to see him and hear him."

Happily Dorothea was in her private sitting-room when this conversation
occurred, and there was no one present to make Lydgate's innocent
introduction of Ladislaw painful to her.  As was usual with him in
matters of personal gossip, Lydgate had quite forgotten Rosamond's
remark that she thought Will adored Mrs. Casaubon.  At that moment he
was only caring for what would recommend the Farebrother family; and he
had purposely given emphasis to the worst that could be said about the
Vicar, in order to forestall objections.  In the weeks since Mr.
Casaubon's death he had hardly seen Ladislaw, and he had heard no rumor
to warn him that Mr. Brooke's confidential secretary was a dangerous
subject with Mrs. Casaubon.  When he was gone, his picture of Ladislaw
lingered in her mind and disputed the ground with that question of the
Lowick living.  What was Will Ladislaw thinking about her?  Would he
hear of that fact which made her cheeks burn as they never used to do?
And how would he feel when he heard it?--But she could see as well as
possible how he smiled down at the little old maid.  An Italian with
white mice!--on the contrary, he was a creature who entered into every
one's feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of
urging his own with iron resistance.



    Party is Nature too, and you shall see
    By force of Logic how they both agree:
    The Many in the One, the One in Many;
    All is not Some, nor Some the same as Any:
    Genus holds species, both are great or small;
    One genus highest, one not high at all;
    Each species has its differentia too,
    This is not That, and He was never You,
    Though this and that are AYES, and you and he
    Are like as one to one, or three to three.


No gossip about Mr. Casaubon's will had yet reached Ladislaw: the air
seemed to be filled with the dissolution of Parliament and the coming
election, as the old wakes and fairs were filled with the rival clatter
of itinerant shows; and more private noises were taken little notice
of.  The famous "dry election" was at hand, in which the depths of
public feeling might be measured by the low flood-mark of drink.  Will
Ladislaw was one of the busiest at this time; and though Dorothea's
widowhood was continually in his thought, he was so far from wishing to
be spoken to on the subject, that when Lydgate sought him out to tell
him what had passed about the Lowick living, he answered rather
waspishly--

"Why should you bring me into the matter?  I never see Mrs. Casaubon,
and am not likely to see her, since she is at Freshitt.  I never go
there.  It is Tory ground, where I and the 'Pioneer' are no more
welcome than a poacher and his gun."

The fact was that Will had been made the more susceptible by observing
that Mr. Brooke, instead of wishing him, as before, to come to the
Grange oftener than was quite agreeable to himself, seemed now to
contrive that he should go there as little as possible.  This was a
shuffling concession of Mr. Brooke's to Sir James Chettam's indignant
remonstrance; and Will, awake to the slightest hint in this direction,
concluded that he was to be kept away from the Grange on Dorothea's
account.  Her friends, then, regarded him with some suspicion?  Their
fears were quite superfluous: they were very much mistaken if they
imagined that he would put himself forward as a needy adventurer trying
to win the favor of a rich woman.

Until now Will had never fully seen the chasm between himself and
Dorothea--until now that he was come to the brink of it, and saw her on
the other side.  He began, not without some inward rage, to think of
going away from the neighborhood: it would be impossible for him to
show any further interest in Dorothea without subjecting himself to
disagreeable imputations--perhaps even in her mind, which others might
try to poison.

"We are forever divided," said Will.  "I might as well be at Rome; she
would be no farther from me."  But what we call our despair is often
only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.  There were plenty of reasons
why he should not go--public reasons why he should not quit his post at
this crisis, leaving Mr. Brooke in the lurch when he needed "coaching"
for the election, and when there was so much canvassing, direct and
indirect, to be carried on.  Will could not like to leave his own
chessmen in the heat of a game; and any candidate on the right side,
even if his brain and marrow had been as soft as was consistent with a
gentlemanly bearing, might help to turn a majority.  To coach Mr.
Brooke and keep him steadily to the idea that he must pledge himself to
vote for the actual Reform Bill, instead of insisting on his
independence and power of pulling up in time, was not an easy task.
Mr. Farebrother's prophecy of a fourth candidate "in the bag" had not
yet been fulfilled, neither the Parliamentary Candidate Society nor any
other power on the watch to secure a reforming majority seeing a worthy
nodus for interference while there was a second reforming candidate
like Mr. Brooke, who might be returned at his own expense; and the
fight lay entirely between Pinkerton the old Tory member, Bagster the
new Whig member returned at the last election, and Brooke the future
independent member, who was to fetter himself for this occasion only.
Mr. Hawley and his party would bend all their forces to the return of
Pinkerton, and Mr. Brooke's success must depend either on plumpers
which would leave Bagster in the rear, or on the new minting of Tory
votes into reforming votes.  The latter means, of course, would be
preferable.

This prospect of converting votes was a dangerous distraction to Mr.
Brooke: his impression that waverers were likely to be allured by
wavering statements, and also the liability of his mind to stick afresh
at opposing arguments as they turned up in his memory, gave Will
Ladislaw much trouble.

"You know there are tactics in these things," said Mr. Brooke; "meeting
people half-way--tempering your ideas--saying, 'Well now, there's
something in that,' and so on.  I agree with you that this is a
peculiar occasion--the country with a will of its own--political
unions--that sort of thing--but we sometimes cut with rather too sharp
a knife, Ladislaw.  These ten-pound householders, now: why ten?  Draw
the line somewhere--yes: but why just at ten?  That's a difficult
question, now, if you go into it."

"Of course it is," said Will, impatiently.  "But if you are to wait
till we get a logical Bill, you must put yourself forward as a
revolutionist, and then Middlemarch would not elect you, I fancy.  As
for trimming, this is not a time for trimming."

Mr. Brooke always ended by agreeing with Ladislaw, who still appeared
to him a sort of Burke with a leaven of Shelley; but after an interval
the wisdom of his own methods reasserted itself, and he was again drawn
into using them with much hopefulness.  At this stage of affairs he was
in excellent spirits, which even supported him under large advances of
money; for his powers of convincing and persuading had not yet been
tested by anything more difficult than a chairman's speech introducing
other orators, or a dialogue with a Middlemarch voter, from which he
came away with a sense that he was a tactician by nature, and that it
was a pity he had not gone earlier into this kind of thing.  He was a
little conscious of defeat, however, with Mr. Mawmsey, a chief
representative in Middlemarch of that great social power, the retail
trader, and naturally one of the most doubtful voters in the
borough--willing for his own part to supply an equal quality of teas
and sugars to reformer and anti-reformer, as well as to agree
impartially with both, and feeling like the burgesses of old that this
necessity of electing members was a great burthen to a town; for even
if there were no danger in holding out hopes to all parties beforehand,
there would be the painful necessity at last of disappointing
respectable people whose names were on his books.  He was accustomed to
receive large orders from Mr. Brooke of Tipton; but then, there were
many of Pinkerton's committee whose opinions had a great weight of
grocery on their side.  Mr. Mawmsey thinking that Mr. Brooke, as not
too "clever in his intellects," was the more likely to forgive a grocer
who gave a hostile vote under pressure, had become confidential in his
back parlor.

"As to Reform, sir, put it in a family light," he said, rattling the
small silver in his pocket, and smiling affably.  "Will it support Mrs.
Mawmsey, and enable her to bring up six children when I am no more?  I
put the question _fictiously_, knowing what must be the answer.  Very
well, sir.  I ask you what, as a husband and a father, I am to do when
gentlemen come to me and say, 'Do as you like, Mawmsey; but if you vote
against us, I shall get my groceries elsewhere: when I sugar my liquor
I like to feel that I am benefiting the country by maintaining
tradesmen of the right color.'  Those very words have been spoken to
me, sir, in the very chair where you are now sitting.  I don't mean by
your honorable self, Mr. Brooke."

"No, no, no--that's narrow, you know.  Until my butler complains to me
of your goods, Mr. Mawmsey," said Mr. Brooke, soothingly, "until I hear
that you send bad sugars, spices--that sort of thing--I shall never
order him to go elsewhere."

"Sir, I am your humble servant, and greatly obliged," said Mr. Mawmsey,
feeling that politics were clearing up a little.  "There would be some
pleasure in voting for a gentleman who speaks in that honorable manner."

"Well, you know, Mr. Mawmsey, you would find it the right thing to put
yourself on our side.  This Reform will touch everybody by-and-by--a
thoroughly popular measure--a sort of A, B, C, you know, that must come
first before the rest can follow.  I quite agree with you that you've
got to look at the thing in a family light: but public spirit, now.
We're all one family, you know--it's all one cupboard.  Such a thing
as a vote, now: why, it may help to make men's fortunes at the
Cape--there's no knowing what may be the effect of a vote," Mr. Brooke
ended, with a sense of being a little out at sea, though finding it
still enjoyable.  But Mr. Mawmsey answered in a tone of decisive check.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I can't afford that.  When I give a vote I
must know what I am doing; I must look to what will be the effects on
my till and ledger, speaking respectfully.  Prices, I'll admit, are
what nobody can know the merits of; and the sudden falls after you've
bought in currants, which are a goods that will not keep--I've never;
myself seen into the ins and outs there; which is a rebuke to human
pride.  But as to one family, there's debtor and creditor, I hope;
they're not going to reform that away; else I should vote for things
staying as they are.  Few men have less need to cry for change than I
have, personally speaking--that is, for self and family.  I am not one
of those who have nothing to lose: I mean as to respectability both in
parish and private business, and noways in respect of your honorable
self and custom, which you was good enough to say you would not
withdraw from me, vote or no vote, while the article sent in was
satisfactory."

After this conversation Mr. Mawmsey went up and boasted to his wife
that he had been rather too many for Brooke of Tipton, and that he
didn't mind so much now about going to the poll.

Mr. Brooke on this occasion abstained from boasting of his tactics to
Ladislaw, who for his part was glad enough to persuade himself that he
had no concern with any canvassing except the purely argumentative
sort, and that he worked no meaner engine than knowledge.  Mr. Brooke,
necessarily, had his agents, who understood the nature of the
Middlemarch voter and the means of enlisting his ignorance on the side
of the Bill--which were remarkably similar to the means of enlisting it
on the side against the Bill.  Will stopped his ears.  Occasionally
Parliament, like the rest of our lives, even to our eating and apparel,
could hardly go on if our imaginations were too active about processes.
There were plenty of dirty-handed men in the world to do dirty
business; and Will protested to himself that his share in bringing Mr.
Brooke through would be quite innocent.

But whether he should succeed in that mode of contributing to the
majority on the right side was very doubtful to him.  He had written
out various speeches and memoranda for speeches, but he had begun to
perceive that Mr. Brooke's mind, if it had the burthen of remembering
any train of thought, would let it drop, run away in search of it, and
not easily come back again.  To collect documents is one mode of
serving your country, and to remember the contents of a document is
another.  No! the only way in which Mr. Brooke could be coerced into
thinking of the right arguments at the right time was to be well plied
with them till they took up all the room in his brain.  But here there
was the difficulty of finding room, so many things having been taken in
beforehand.  Mr. Brooke himself observed that his ideas stood rather in
his way when he was speaking.

However, Ladislaw's coaching was forthwith to be put to the test, for
before the day of nomination Mr. Brooke was to explain himself to the
worthy electors of Middlemarch from the balcony of the White Hart,
which looked out advantageously at an angle of the market-place,
commanding a large area in front and two converging streets.  It was a
fine May morning, and everything seemed hopeful: there was some
prospect of an understanding between Bagster's committee and Brooke's,
to which Mr. Bulstrode, Mr. Standish as a Liberal lawyer, and such
manufacturers as Mr. Plymdale and Mr. Vincy, gave a solidity which
almost counterbalanced Mr. Hawley and his associates who sat for
Pinkerton at the Green Dragon.  Mr. Brooke, conscious of having
weakened the blasts of the "Trumpet" against him, by his reforms as a
landlord in the last half year, and hearing himself cheered a little as
he drove into the town, felt his heart tolerably light under his
buff-colored waistcoat.  But with regard to critical occasions, it
often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.

"This looks well, eh?" said Mr. Brooke as the crowd gathered.  "I shall
have a good audience, at any rate.  I like this, now--this kind of
public made up of one's own neighbors, you know."

The weavers and tanners of Middlemarch, unlike Mr. Mawmsey, had never
thought of Mr. Brooke as a neighbor, and were not more attached to him
than if he had been sent in a box from London.  But they listened
without much disturbance to the speakers who introduced the candidate,
one of them--a political personage from Brassing, who came to tell
Middlemarch its duty--spoke so fully, that it was alarming to think
what the candidate could find to say after him.  Meanwhile the crowd
became denser, and as the political personage neared the end of his
speech, Mr. Brooke felt a remarkable change in his sensations while he
still handled his eye-glass, trifled with documents before him, and
exchanged remarks with his committee, as a man to whom the moment of
summons was indifferent.

"I'll take another glass of sherry, Ladislaw," he said, with an easy
air, to Will, who was close behind him, and presently handed him the
supposed fortifier.  It was ill-chosen; for Mr. Brooke was an
abstemious man, and to drink a second glass of sherry quickly at no
great interval from the first was a surprise to his system which tended
to scatter his energies instead of collecting them.  Pray pity him: so
many English gentlemen make themselves miserable by speechifying on
entirely private grounds!  whereas Mr. Brooke wished to serve his
country by standing for Parliament--which, indeed, may also be done on
private grounds, but being once undertaken does absolutely demand some
speechifying.

It was not about the beginning of his speech that Mr. Brooke was at all
anxious; this, he felt sure, would be all right; he should have it
quite pat, cut out as neatly as a set of couplets from Pope.  Embarking
would be easy, but the vision of open sea that might come after was
alarming.  "And questions, now," hinted the demon just waking up in his
stomach, "somebody may put questions about the schedules.--Ladislaw,"
he continued, aloud, "just hand me the memorandum of the schedules."

When Mr. Brooke presented himself on the balcony, the cheers were quite
loud enough to counterbalance the yells, groans, brayings, and other
expressions of adverse theory, which were so moderate that Mr. Standish
(decidedly an old bird) observed in the ear next to him, "This looks
dangerous, by God!  Hawley has got some deeper plan than this."  Still,
the cheers were exhilarating, and no candidate could look more amiable
than Mr. Brooke, with the memorandum in his breast-pocket, his left
hand on the rail of the balcony, and his right trifling with his
eye-glass. The striking points in his appearance were his buff
waistcoat, short-clipped blond hair, and neutral physiognomy.  He began
with some confidence.

"Gentlemen--Electors of Middlemarch!"

This was so much the right thing that a little pause after it seemed
natural.

"I'm uncommonly glad to be here--I was never so proud and happy in my
life--never so happy, you know."

This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing; for,
unhappily, the pat opening had slipped away--even couplets from Pope
may be but "fallings from us, vanishings," when fear clutches us, and a
glass of sherry is hurrying like smoke among our ideas.  Ladislaw, who
stood at the window behind the speaker, thought, "it's all up now.  The
only chance is that, since the best thing won't always do, floundering
may answer for once."  Mr. Brooke, meanwhile, having lost other clews,
fell back on himself and his qualifications--always an appropriate
graceful subject for a candidate.

"I am a close neighbor of yours, my good friends--you've known me on
the bench a good while--I've always gone a good deal into public
questions--machinery, now, and machine-breaking--you're many of you
concerned with machinery, and I've been going into that lately.  It
won't do, you know, breaking machines: everything must go on--trade,
manufactures, commerce, interchange of staples--that kind of
thing--since Adam Smith, that must go on.  We must look all over the
globe:--'Observation with extensive view,' must look everywhere, 'from
China to Peru,' as somebody says--Johnson, I think, 'The Rambler,' you
know.  That is what I have done up to a certain point--not as far as
Peru; but I've not always stayed at home--I saw it wouldn't do.  I've
been in the Levant, where some of your Middlemarch goods go--and then,
again, in the Baltic.  The Baltic, now."

Plying among his recollections in this way, Mr. Brooke might have got
along, easily to himself, and would have come back from the remotest
seas without trouble; but a diabolical procedure had been set up by the
enemy.  At one and the same moment there had risen above the shoulders
of the crowd, nearly opposite Mr. Brooke, and within ten yards of him,
the effigy of himself: buff-colored waistcoat, eye-glass, and neutral
physiognomy, painted on rag; and there had arisen, apparently in the
air, like the note of the cuckoo, a parrot-like, Punch-voiced echo of
his words.  Everybody looked up at the open windows in the houses at
the opposite angles of the converging streets; but they were either
blank, or filled by laughing listeners.  The most innocent echo has an
impish mockery in it when it follows a gravely persistent speaker, and
this echo was not at all innocent; if it did not follow with the
precision of a natural echo, it had a wicked choice of the words it
overtook.  By the time it said, "The Baltic, now," the laugh which had
been running through the audience became a general shout, and but for
the sobering effects of party and that great public cause which the
entanglement of things had identified with "Brooke of Tipton," the
laugh might have caught his committee.  Mr. Bulstrode asked,
reprehensively, what the new police was doing; but a voice could not
well be collared, and an attack on the effigy of the candidate would
have been too equivocal, since Hawley probably meant it to be pelted.

Mr. Brooke himself was not in a position to be quickly conscious of
anything except a general slipping away of ideas within himself: he had
even a little singing in the ears, and he was the only person who had
not yet taken distinct account of the echo or discerned the image of
himself.  Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly captive than
anxiety about what we have got to say.  Mr. Brooke heard the laughter;
but he had expected some Tory efforts at disturbance, and he was at
this moment additionally excited by the tickling, stinging sense that
his lost exordium was coming back to fetch him from the Baltic.

"That reminds me," he went on, thrusting a hand into his side-pocket,
with an easy air, "if I wanted a precedent, you know--but we never want
a precedent for the right thing--but there is Chatham, now; I can't say
I should have supported Chatham, or Pitt, the younger Pitt--he was not
a man of ideas, and we want ideas, you know."

"Blast your ideas! we want the Bill," said a loud rough voice from the
crowd below.

Immediately the invisible Punch, who had hitherto followed Mr. Brooke,
repeated, "Blast your ideas! we want the Bill." The laugh was louder
than ever, and for the first time Mr. Brooke being himself silent,
heard distinctly the mocking echo.  But it seemed to ridicule his
interrupter, and in that light was encouraging; so he replied with
amenity--

"There is something in what you say, my good friend, and what do we
meet for but to speak our minds--freedom of opinion, freedom of the
press, liberty--that kind of thing?  The Bill, now--you shall have the
Bill"--here Mr. Brooke paused a moment to fix on his eye-glass and take
the paper from his breast-pocket, with a sense of being practical and
coming to particulars.  The invisible Punch followed:--

"You shall have the Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering contest, and a
seat outside Parliament as delivered, five thousand pounds, seven
shillings, and fourpence."

Mr. Brooke, amid the roars of laughter, turned red, let his eye-glass
fall, and looking about him confusedly, saw the image of himself, which
had come nearer.  The next moment he saw it dolorously bespattered with
eggs.  His spirit rose a little, and his voice too.

"Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth--all that is very
well"--here an unpleasant egg broke on Mr. Brooke's shoulder, as the
echo said, "All that is very well;" then came a hail of eggs, chiefly
aimed at the image, but occasionally hitting the original, as if by
chance.  There was a stream of new men pushing among the crowd;
whistles, yells, bellowings, and fifes made all the greater hubbub
because there was shouting and struggling to put them down.  No voice
would have had wing enough to rise above the uproar, and Mr. Brooke,
disagreeably anointed, stood his ground no longer.  The frustration
would have been less exasperating if it had been less gamesome and
boyish: a serious assault of which the newspaper reporter "can aver
that it endangered the learned gentleman's ribs," or can respectfully
bear witness to "the soles of that gentleman's boots having been
visible above the railing," has perhaps more consolations attached to
it.

Mr. Brooke re-entered the committee-room, saying, as carelessly as he
could, "This is a little too bad, you know.  I should have got the ear
of the people by-and-by--but they didn't give me time.  I should have
gone into the Bill by-and-by, you know," he added, glancing at
Ladislaw.  "However, things will come all right at the nomination."

But it was not resolved unanimously that things would come right; on
the contrary, the committee looked rather grim, and the political
personage from Brassing was writing busily, as if he were brewing new
devices.

"It was Bowyer who did it," said Mr. Standish, evasively.  "I know it
as well as if he had been advertised.  He's uncommonly good at
ventriloquism, and he did it uncommonly well, by God!  Hawley has been
having him to dinner lately: there's a fund of talent in Bowyer."

"Well, you know, you never mentioned him to me, Standish, else I would
have invited him to dine," said poor Mr. Brooke, who had gone through a
great deal of inviting for the good of his country.

"There's not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer," said
Ladislaw, indignantly, "but it seems as if the paltry fellows were
always to turn the scale."

Will was thoroughly out of temper with himself as well as with his
"principal," and he went to shut himself in his rooms with a
half-formed resolve to throw up the "Pioneer" and Mr. Brooke together.
Why should he stay?  If the impassable gulf between himself and
Dorothea were ever to be filled up, it must rather be by his going away
and getting into a thoroughly different position than by staying here
and slipping into deserved contempt as an understrapper of Brooke's.
Then came the young dream of wonders that he might do--in five years,
for example: political writing, political speaking, would get a higher
value now public life was going to be wider and more national, and they
might give him such distinction that he would not seem to be asking
Dorothea to step down to him.  Five years:--if he could only be sure
that she cared for him more than for others; if he could only make her
aware that he stood aloof until he could tell his love without lowering
himself--then he could go away easily, and begin a career which at
five-and-twenty seemed probable enough in the inward order of things,
where talent brings fame, and fame everything else which is delightful.
He could speak and he could write; he could master any subject if he
chose, and he meant always to take the side of reason and justice, on
which he would carry all his ardor.  Why should he not one day be
lifted above the shoulders of the crowd, and feel that he had won that
eminence well?  Without doubt he would leave Middlemarch, go to town,
and make himself fit for celebrity by "eating his dinners."

But not immediately: not until some kind of sign had passed between him
and Dorothea.  He could not be satisfied until she knew why, even if he
were the man she would choose to marry, he would not marry her.  Hence
he must keep his post and bear with Mr. Brooke a little longer.

But he soon had reason to suspect that Mr. Brooke had anticipated him
in the wish to break up their connection.  Deputations without and
voices within had concurred in inducing that philanthropist to take a
stronger measure than usual for the good of mankind; namely, to
withdraw in favor of another candidate, to whom he left the advantages
of his canvassing machinery.  He himself called this a strong measure,
but observed that his health was less capable of sustaining excitement
than he had imagined.

"I have felt uneasy about the chest--it won't do to carry that too
far," he said to Ladislaw in explaining the affair.  "I must pull up.
Poor Casaubon was a warning, you know.  I've made some heavy advances,
but I've dug a channel.  It's rather coarse work--this electioneering,
eh, Ladislaw? dare say you are tired of it.  However, we have dug a
channel with the 'Pioneer'--put things in a track, and so on.  A more
ordinary man than you might carry it on now--more ordinary, you know."

"Do you wish me to give it up?" said Will, the quick color coming in
his face, as he rose from the writing-table, and took a turn of three
steps with his hands in his pockets.  "I am ready to do so whenever you
wish it."

"As to wishing, my dear Ladislaw, I have the highest opinion of your
powers, you know.  But about the 'Pioneer,' I have been consulting a
little with some of the men on our side, and they are inclined to take
it into their hands--indemnify me to a certain extent--carry it on, in
fact.  And under the circumstances, you might like to give up--might
find a better field.  These people might not take that high view of you
which I have always taken, as an alter ego, a right hand--though I
always looked forward to your doing something else.  I think of having
a run into France.  But I'll write you any letters, you know--to
Althorpe and people of that kind.  I've met Althorpe."

"I am exceedingly obliged to you," said Ladislaw, proudly.  "Since you
are going to part with the 'Pioneer,' I need not trouble you about the
steps I shall take.  I may choose to continue here for the present."

After Mr. Brooke had left him Will said to himself, "The rest of the
family have been urging him to get rid of me, and he doesn't care now
about my going.  I shall stay as long as I like.  I shall go of my own
movements and not because they are afraid of me."

 Dorothea is upset at the alienation between Will and Casaubon. Casaubon had been ill and unable to preach that Sunday. Dorothea longs for a fuller companionship. Because of her husband's bad health, Dorothea is working harder, sifting through his notes. Casaubon believes her devotion belongs strictly to himself and tries to make her promise to obey his wishes even after his death. She dreads what he may ask of her and begs to think on it till the next day. She goes through mental anguish but finally decides to surrender to him, yet when she goes to him in the garden, she finds him already dead. Dorothea becomes ill, and her family is afraid for her to see Casaubon's will. They argue about sending Ladislaw away so it won't cause scandal when people hear of the codicil prohibiting Dorothea to marry Ladislaw on pain of disinheritance. Sir James is angry at the negative implications about their relationship that Casaubon has thus unjustly attributed to his wife. Dorothea recuperates with Celia and Sir James, who have lately had a baby. Celia tells her sister about the codicil, and it changes Dorothea's pity for Casaubon and makes her yearn towards Will. Dorothea assigns Farebrother to her husband's church, at Lydgate's suggestion. Meanwhile, the air is full of the dissolution of Parliament and reform issues. Will stays away from Dorothea, so he won't be thought a needy adventurer. He is ignorant of the codicil. He stays to coach Brooke who wants to stand for the election as an independent committed to the Reform Bill. As Brooke canvasses for votes, he tells a merchant, "This Reform Bill will touch everyone; it is a sort of ABC." The day before the election, Brooke speaks to a crowd in the square. Will has been writing his speeches and coaching him but despairs of anything sticking in Brooke's wandering mind. Brooke makes a fool of himself, rambling without sense, and the crowd pushes him off by throwing eggs. Will resolves to go away to make his own mark in the new political world, but not before he has a sign from Dorothea that there is hope for them. Brooke yields to family pressure to try to get Will away before there is a scandal and tells him he is not needed on the newspaper any more. Will knows they are trying to get rid of him, but decides he will only leave when he is ready.

