“To be sure, I will write, my dear. He’s a very clever young fellow—this young Ladislaw—I dare say will be a rising young man. It’s a good letter—marks his sense of things, you know. However, I will tell him about Casaubon.”
But the end of Mr. Brooke’s pen was a thinking organ, evolving sentences, especially of a benevolent kind, before the rest of his mind could well overtake them. It expressed regrets and proposed remedies, which, when Mr. Brooke read them, seemed felicitously worded—surprisingly the right thing, and determined a sequel which he had never before thought of. In this case, his pen 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? They could find a great many things to do together, and this was a period of peculiar growth—the political horizon was expanding, and—in short, Mr. Brooke’s pen went off into a little speech which it had lately reported for that imperfectly edited organ the “Middlemarch Pioneer.” While Mr. Brooke was sealing this letter, he felt elated with an influx of dim projects:—a young man capable of putting ideas into form, the “Pioneer” purchased to clear the pathway for a new candidate, documents utilized—who knew what might come of it all? Since Celia was going to marry immediately, it would be very pleasant to have a young fellow at table with him, at least for a time.
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.
CHAPTER XXXI.
How will you know the pitch of that great bell
Too large for you to stir? Let but a flute
Play ’neath the fine-mixed metal: listen close
Till the right note flows forth, a silvery rill:
Then shall the huge bell tremble—then the mass
With myriad waves concurrent shall respond
In low soft unison.
Lydgate that evening spoke to Miss Vincy of Mrs. Casaubon, and laid some emphasis on the strong feeling she appeared to have for that formal studious man thirty years older than herself.
“Of course she is devoted to her husband,” said Rosamond, implying a notion of necessary sequence which the scientific man regarded as the prettiest possible for a woman; but she was thinking at the same time that it was not so very melancholy to be mistress of Lowick Manor with a husband likely to die soon. “Do you think her very handsome?”
“She certainly is handsome, but I have not thought about it,” said Lydgate.
“I suppose it would be unprofessional,” said Rosamond, dimpling. “But how your practice is spreading! You were called in before to the Chettams, I think; and now, the Casaubons.”
“Yes,” said Lydgate, in a tone of compulsory admission. “But I don’t really like attending such people so well as the poor. The cases are more monotonous, and one has to go through more fuss and listen more deferentially to nonsense.”