“As new as eating thistles,” would have been an answer to represent Mr. Casaubon’s feelings. But he only bowed resignedly, with due respect to his wife’s uncle, and observed that doubtless the works he mentioned had “served as a resource to a certain order of minds.”
“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, which I believe is something very deep indeed—in the line of research, you know. I would never give way to that; I was always versatile. But a clergyman is tied a little tight. If they would make him a bishop, now!—he did a very good pamphlet for Peel. He would have more movement then, more show; he might get a little flesh. But 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. She had not been present while her uncle was throwing out his pleasant suggestions as to the mode in which life at Lowick might be enlivened, but she was usually by her husband’s side, and the unaffected signs of intense anxiety in her face and voice about whatever touched his mind or health, made a drama which Lydgate was inclined to watch. He said to himself that he was only doing right in telling her the truth about her husband’s probable future, but he certainly thought also that it would be interesting to talk confidentially with her. A medical man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought. Lydgate had often been satirical on this gratuitous prediction, and he meant now to be guarded.
He asked for Mrs. Casaubon, but being told that she was out walking, he was going away, when Dorothea and Celia appeared, both glowing from their struggle with the March wind. When Lydgate begged to speak with her alone, Dorothea opened the library door which happened to be the nearest, thinking of nothing at the moment but what he might have to say about Mr. Casaubon. It was the first time she had entered this room since her husband had been taken ill, and the servant had chosen not to open the shutters. But there was light enough to read by from the narrow upper panes of the windows.
“You will not mind this sombre light,” said Dorothea, standing in the middle of the room. “Since you forbade books, the library has been out of the question. But Mr. Casaubon will soon be here again, I hope. Is he not making progress?”
“Yes, much more rapid progress than I at first expected. Indeed, he is already nearly in his usual state of health.”
“You do not fear that the illness will return?” said Dorothea, whose quick ear had detected some significance in Lydgate’s tone.
“Such cases are peculiarly difficult to pronounce upon,” said Lydgate. “The only point on which I can be confident is that it will be desirable to be very watchful on Mr. Casaubon’s account, lest he should in any way strain his nervous power.”
“I beseech you to speak quite plainly,” said Dorothea, in an imploring tone. “I cannot bear to think that there might be something which I did not know, and which, if I had known it, would have made me act differently.” The words came out like a cry: it was evident that they were the voice of some mental experience which lay not very far off.
“Sit down,” she added, placing herself on the nearest chair, and throwing off her bonnet and gloves, with an instinctive discarding of formality where a great question of destiny was concerned.