Middlemarch

IX.

“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.