“It would be a great honor to any one to be his companion,” said Dorothea, energetically.
“You like him, eh?” said Mr. Brooke, without showing any surprise, or other emotion. “Well, now, I’ve known Casaubon ten years, ever since he came to Lowick. But I never got anything out of him—any ideas, you know. However, he is a tiptop man and may be a bishop—that kind of thing, you know, if Peel stays in. And he has a very high opinion of you, my dear.”
Dorothea could not speak.
“The fact is, he has a very high opinion indeed of you. And he speaks uncommonly well—does Casaubon. He has deferred to me, you not being of age. In short, I have promised to speak to you, though I told him I thought there was not much chance. I was bound to tell him that. I said, my niece is very young, and that kind of thing. But I didn’t think it necessary to go into everything. However, the long and the short of it is, that he has asked my permission to make you an offer of marriage—of marriage, you know,” said Mr. Brooke, with his explanatory nod. “I thought it better to tell you, my dear.”
No one could have detected any anxiety in Mr. Brooke’s manner, but he did really wish to know something of his niece’s mind, that, if there were any need for advice, he might give it in time. What feeling he, as a magistrate who had taken in so many ideas, could make room for, was unmixedly kind. Since Dorothea did not speak immediately, he repeated, “I thought it better to tell you, my dear.”
“Thank you, uncle,” said Dorothea, in a clear unwavering tone. “I am very grateful to Mr. Casaubon. If he makes me an offer, I shall accept him. I admire and honor him more than any man I ever saw.”
Mr. Brooke paused a little, and then said in a lingering low tone, “Ah? … Well! He is a good match in some respects. But now, Chettam is a good match. And our land lies together. I shall never interfere against your wishes, my dear. 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; and I have good reason to believe that Chettam wishes to marry you. I mention it, you know.”
“It is impossible that I should ever marry Sir James Chettam,” said Dorothea. “If he thinks of marrying me, he has made a great mistake.”
“That is it, you see. One never knows. I should have thought Chettam was just the sort of man a woman would like, now.”
“Pray do not mention him in that light again, uncle,” said Dorothea, feeling some of her late irritation revive.
Mr. Brooke wondered, and felt that women were an inexhaustible subject of study, since even he at his age was not in a perfect state of scientific prediction about them. Here was a fellow like Chettam with no chance at all.
“Well, but Casaubon, now. There is no hurry—I mean for you. It’s true, every year will tell upon him. He is over five-and-forty, you know. I should say a good seven-and-twenty years older than you. To be sure,—if you like learning and standing, and that sort of thing, we can’t have everything. And his income is good—he has a handsome property independent of the Church—his income is good. Still he is not young, and I must not conceal from you, my dear, that I think his health is not over-strong. I know nothing else against him.”
“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.”
Mr. Brooke repeated his subdued, “Ah?—I thought you had more of your own opinion than most girls. I thought you liked your own opinion—liked it, you know.”
“I cannot imagine myself living without some opinions, but I should wish to have good reasons for them, and a wise man could help me to see which opinions had the best foundation, and would help me to live according to them.”
“Very true. You couldn’t put the thing better—couldn’t put it better, beforehand, you know. But there are oddities in things,” continued Mr. Brooke, whose conscience was really roused to do the best he could for his niece on this occasion. “Life isn’t cast in a mould—not cut out by rule and line, and that sort of thing. I never married myself, and it will be the better for you and yours. The fact 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.
“Well, you are not fond of show, a great establishment, balls, dinners, that kind of thing. I can see that Casaubon’s ways might suit you better than Chettam’s. And you shall do as you like, my dear. I would not hinder Casaubon; I said so at once; for there is no knowing how anything may turn out. You have not the same tastes as every young lady; and a clergyman and scholar—who may be a bishop—that kind of thing—may suit you better than Chettam. Chettam is a good fellow, a good sound-hearted fellow, you know; but he doesn’t go much into ideas. I did, when I was his age. But Casaubon’s eyes, now. I think he has hurt them a little with too much reading.”
“I should be all the happier, uncle, the more room there was for me to help him,” said Dorothea, ardently.
“You have quite made up your mind, I see. Well, my dear, the fact is, I have a letter for you in my pocket.” Mr. Brooke handed the letter to Dorothea, but as she rose to go away, he added, “There is not too much hurry, my dear. Think about it, you know.”
When Dorothea had left him, he reflected that he had certainly spoken strongly: he had put the risks of marriage before her in a striking manner. It was his duty to do so. But as to pretending to be wise for young people,—no uncle, however much he had travelled in his youth, absorbed the new ideas, and dined with celebrities now deceased, could pretend to judge what sort of marriage would turn out well for a young girl who preferred Casaubon to Chettam. In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr. Brooke’s mind felt blank before it, could be hardly less complicated than the revolutions of an irregular solid.
CHAPTER V.
“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. If you will not believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus and Thomas Aquainas’ works; and tell me whether those men took pains.”—BURTON’S Anatomy of Melancholy, P. I, s. 2.
This was Mr. Casaubon’s letter.
MY DEAR MISS BROOKE,—I have your guardian’s permission to address you on a subject than which I have none more at heart. I am not, I trust, mistaken in the recognition of some deeper correspondence than that of date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my own life had arisen contemporaneously with the possibility of my becoming acquainted with you. For in the first hour of meeting you, I had an impression of your eminent and perhaps exclusive fitness to supply that need (connected, I may say, with such activity of the affections as even the preoccupations of a work too special to be abdicated could not uninterruptedly dissimulate); and each succeeding opportunity for observation has given the impression an added depth by convincing me more emphatically of that fitness which I had preconceived, and thus evoking more decisively those affections to which I have but now referred. Our conversations have, I think, made sufficiently clear to you the tenor of my life and purposes: a tenor unsuited, I am aware, to the commoner order of minds. But I have discerned in you an elevation of thought and a capability of devotedness, which I had hitherto not conceived to be compatible either with the early bloom of youth or with those graces of sex that may be said at once to win and to confer distinction when combined, as they notably are in you, with the mental qualities above indicated. It was, I confess, beyond my hope to meet with this rare combination of elements both solid and attractive, adapted to supply aid in graver labors and to cast a charm over vacant hours; and but for the event of my introduction to you (which, let me again say, I trust not to be superficially coincident with foreshadowing needs, but providentially related thereto as stages towards the completion of a life’s plan), I should presumably have gone on to the last without any attempt to lighten my solitariness by a matrimonial union.