Middlemarch

CHAPTER XXX.

Mr. Casaubon had no second attack of equal severity with the first, and in a few days began to recover his usual condition. But Lydgate seemed to think the case worth a great deal of attention. He not only used his stethoscope, but sat quietly by his patient and watched him. To Mr. Casaubon’s questions about himself, he replied that the source of the illness was the common error of intellectual men—a too eager and monotonous application: the remedy was, to be satisfied with moderate work, and to seek variety of relaxation. Mr. Brooke, who sat by on one occasion, suggested that Mr. Casaubon should go fishing, as Cadwallader did, and have a turning-room, make toys, table-legs, and that kind of thing. “In short, you recommend me to anticipate the arrival of my second childhood,” said poor Mr. Casaubon, with some bitterness.

“You see,” said the able magistrate to Lydgate, when they were outside the door, “Casaubon has been a little narrow: it leaves him rather at a loss when you forbid him his particular work. I would never give way to that; I was always versatile. But a clergyman is tied a little tight. I recommend you to talk to Mrs. Casaubon. She is clever enough for anything, is my niece. Tell her, her husband wants liveliness, diversion: put her on amusing tactics.”

Without Mr. Brooke’s advice, Lydgate had determined on speaking to Dorothea. He asked for Mrs. Casaubon, but being told that she was out walking, he was going away, when Dorothea and Celia appeared. When Lydgate begged to speak with her alone, Dorothea opened the library door, thinking of nothing at the moment but what he might have to say about Mr. Casaubon. “You will not mind this sombre light,” said Dorothea, standing in the middle of the room. “You do not fear that the illness will return?” said Dorothea, whose quick ear had detected some significance in Lydgate’s tone. “I think it is one’s function as a medical man to hinder regrets of that sort as far as possible. But I beg you to observe that Mr. Casaubon’s case is precisely of the kind in which the issue is most difficult to pronounce upon. He may possibly live for fifteen years or more, without much worse health than he has had hitherto.”

Dorothea had turned very pale. “You mean if we are very careful.” “Yes—careful against mental agitation of all kinds, and against excessive application.” “He would be miserable, if he had to give up his work.” “I am aware of that. The only course is to try by all means, direct and indirect, to moderate and vary his occupations. With a happy concurrence of circumstances, there is, as I said, no immediate danger from that affection of the heart, which I believe to have been the cause of his late attack. On the other hand, it is possible that the disease may develop itself more rapidly: it is one of those cases in which death is sometimes sudden. Nothing should be neglected which might be affected by such an issue.”

“Help me, pray,” she said, at last. “Tell me what I can do.” “What do you think of foreign travel? You have been lately in Rome, I think.” “Oh, that would not do—that would be worse than anything,” she said with a more childlike despondency, while the tears rolled down. “Nothing will be of any use that he does not enjoy.” “I wish that I could have spared you this pain,” said Lydgate, deeply touched, yet wondering about her marriage. “It was right of you to tell me. I thank you for telling me the truth.” Lydgate rose, and Dorothea mechanically rose at the same time, unclasping her cloak and throwing it off as if it stifled her. He was bowing and quitting her, when an impulse which if she had been alone would have turned into a prayer, made her say with a sob in her voice—“Oh, you are a wise man, are you not? You know all about life and death. Advise me. Think what I can do. He has been laboring all his life and looking forward. He minds about nothing else.— And I mind about nothing else—”

When he was gone, Dorothea’s tears gushed forth, and relieved her stifling oppression. Then she dried her eyes, reminded that her distress must not be betrayed to her husband; and looked round the room. On his writing-table there were letters which had lain untouched since the morning when he was taken ill, and among them, as Dorothea well remembered, there were young Ladislaw’s letters. But now it occurred to her that they should be put out of her husband’s sight: whatever might have been the sources of his annoyance about them, he must, if possible, not be annoyed again; and she ran her eyes first over the letter addressed to him. Will wrote from Rome, and began by saying that his obligations to Mr. Casaubon were too deep for all thanks not to seem impertinent. He was coming to England, to try his fortune. His friend Naumann had desired him to take charge of the “Dispute”—the picture painted for Mr. Casaubon, with whose permission, and Mrs. Casaubon’s, Will would convey it to Lowick in person.

Dorothea ended by giving the letter to her uncle, who was still in the house, and begging him to let Will know that Mr. Casaubon had been ill, and that his health would not allow the reception of any visitors. Mr. Brooke’s pen, however, found it such a pity young Ladislaw should not have come into the neighborhood just at that time, in order that Mr. Brooke might make his acquaintance more fully, and that they might go over the long-neglected Italian drawings together—it also felt such an interest in a young man who was starting in life with a stock of ideas—that by the end of the second page it had persuaded Mr. Brooke to invite young Ladislaw, since he could not be received at Lowick, to come to Tipton Grange. Why not? But he went away without telling Dorothea what he had put into the letter, for she was engaged with her husband, and—in fact, these things were of no importance to her.