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“I should learn everything then,” she said to herself, still walking quickly along the bridle road through the wood. “It would be my duty to study that I might help him the better in his great works. There would be nothing trivial about our lives. Every-day things with us would mean the greatest things. It would be like marrying Pascal. I should learn to see the truth by the same light as great men have seen it by. And then I should know what to do, when I got older: I should see how it was possible to lead a grand life here—now—in England. I don’t feel sure about doing good in any way now:
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Sir James Chettam.
sleekly waving blond hair.
Even a prospective brother-in-law may be an oppression if he will always be presupposing too good
an understanding with you, and agreeing with you even when you contradict him.
Sir James interpreted the heightened color in the way most gratifying to himself, and thought he never saw Miss Brooke looking so handsome.
“You have your own opinion about everything, Miss Brooke, and it is always a good opinion.” What answer was possible to such stupid complimenting?
“Your power of forming an opinion. I can form an opinion of persons. I know when I like people. But about other matters, do you know, I have often a difficulty in deciding. One hears very sensible things said on opposite sides.”
Perhaps we don’t always discriminate between sense and nonsense.”
I am often unable to decide. But that is from ignorance. The right conclusion is there all the same, though I am unable to see it.”
“He thinks that Dodo cares about him, and she only cares about her plans. Yet I am not certain that she would refuse him if she thought he would let her manage everything and carry out all her
notions. And how very uncomfortable Sir James would be! I cannot bear notions.”
She dared not confess it to her sister in any direct statement, for that would be laying herself open to a demonstration that she was somehow or other at war with all goodness.
was convinced that her first impressions had been just. He was all she had at first imagined him to be: almost everything he had said seemed like a specimen from a mine, or the inscription on the door of a museum which might open on the treasures of past ages; and this trust in his mental wealth was all the deeper and more effective on her inclination because it was now obvious that his visits were made for her sake.
This accomplished man condescended to think of a young girl, and take the pains to talk to her, not with absurd compliment, but with an appeal to her understanding, and sometimes with instructive correction.
To Dorothea this was adorable genuineness, and religious abstinence from that artificiality which uses up the soul in the efforts of pretence.
Dorothea saw that here she might reckon on understanding, sympathy, and guidance.
Certainly these men who had so few spontaneous ideas might be very useful members of society under good feminine direction, if they were fortunate in choosing their sisters-in-law!
But her life was just now full of hope and action: she was not only thinking of her plans, but getting down learned books from the library and reading many things hastily
fit hereafter to be an eternal cherub, and if it were not doctrinally wrong to say so, hardly more in need of salvation than a squirrel.
It is better to hear what people say. You see what mistakes you make by taking up notions.
Every one can see that Sir James is very much in love with you.” The revulsion was so strong and painful in Dorothea’s mind that the tears welled up and flowed abundantly. All her dear plans were embittered, and she thought with disgust of Sir James’s conceiving that she recognized him as her lover. There was vexation too on account of Celia.
“Fond of him, Celia! How can you choose such odious expressions?” said Dorothea, passionately. “Dear me, Dorothea, I suppose it would be right for you to be fond of a man whom you accepted for a husband.”
You always see what nobody else sees; it is impossible to satisfy you; yet you never see what is quite plain.
she was not sparing the sister of whom she was occasionally in awe.
Celia was no longer the eternal cherub, but a thorn in her spirit,
It seemed as if an electric stream went through Dorothea, thrilling her from despair into expectation.
some marginal manuscript of Mr. Casaubon’s,—taking it in as eagerly as she might have taken in the scent of a fresh bouquet after a dry, hot, dreary walk.
He is a little buried in books, you know, Casaubon is.” “When a man has great studies and is writing a great work, he must of course give up seeing much of the world. How can he go about making acquaintances?”
“That’s true. But a man mopes, you know. I have always been a bachelor too, but I have that sort of disposition that I never moped; it was my way to go about everywhere and take in everything. I never moped: but I can see that Casaubon does, you know. He wants a companion—a companion, you know.”
People should have their own way in marriage, and that sort of thing—up to a certain point, you know. I have always said that, up to a certain point. I wish you to marry well;
He is over five-and-forty, you know.
Still he is not young, and I must not conceal from you, my dear, that I think his health is not over-strong.
“I should not wish to have a husband very near my own age,” said Dorothea, with grave decision. “I should wish to have a husband who was above me in judgment and in all knowledge.”
is, I never loved any one well enough to put myself into a noose for them. It is a noose, you know. Temper, now. There is temper. And a husband likes to be master.”
“I know that I must expect trials, uncle. Marriage is a state of higher duties. I never thought of it as mere personal ease,” said poor Dorothea.
“Hard students are commonly troubled with gowts, catarrhs, rheums, cachexia, bradypepsia, bad eyes, stone, and collick, crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by over-much sitting: they are most part lean, dry, ill-colored … and all through immoderate pains and extraordinary studies.
Her whole soul was possessed by the fact that a fuller life was opening before her:
Now she would be able to devote herself to large yet definite duties; now she would be allowed to live continually in the light of a mind that she could reverence.
“Have you thought enough about this, my dear?” he said at last. “There was no need to think long, uncle. I know of nothing to make me vacillate. If I changed my mind, it must be because of something important and entirely new to me.”
having once said what she wanted to say, Celia had no disposition to recur to disagreeable subjects. It had been her nature when a child never to quarrel with any one—only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her,
And as to Dorothea, it had always been her way to find something wrong in her sister’s words, though Celia inwardly protested that she always said just how things were,
But now Celia was really startled at the suspicion which had darted into her mind. She was seldom taken by surprise in this way, her marvellous quickness in observing a certain order of signs generally preparing her to expect such outward events as she had an interest in.
“Then I think the commonest minds must be rather useful. I think it is a pity Mr. Casaubon’s mother had not a commoner mind: she might have taught him better.”
“Oh, Dodo, I hope you will be happy.” Her sisterly tenderness could not but surmount other feelings at this moment, and her fears were the fears of affection.
she talked to him with more freedom than she had ever felt before, even pouring out her joy at the thought of devoting herself to him, and of learning how she might best share and further all his great ends.
he was not surprised (what lover would have been?) that he should be the object of it.
The great charm of your sex is its capability of an ardent self-sacrificing affection, and herein we see its fitness to round and complete the existence of our own.
feeling that heaven had vouchsafed him a blessing in every way suited to his peculiar wants.
She was not in the least teaching Mr. Casaubon to ask if he were good enough for her, but merely asking herself anxiously how she could be good enough for Mr. Casaubon.
