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MIDDLEMARCH-Part73_GEORGE ELIOT(1819-1880)_English Literature(文学)-第2页

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anxieties of self-assertion. What was Mr. Casaubon's bias his acts

will give us a clew to. He held himself to be, with some private



scholarly reservations, a believing Christian, as to estimates of

the present and hopes of the future. But what we strive to gratify,



though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire:

the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already



in their imagination and love. And Mr. Casaubon's immediate desire

was not for divinecommunion and light divested of earthly conditions;



his passionate longings, poor man, clung low and mist-like in very

shady places.



Dorothea had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had

stepped into the garden, with the impulse to go at once to her husband.



But she hesitated, fearing to offend him by obtruding herself;

for her ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory,



to heighten her dread, as thwarted energy subsides into a shudder;

and she wandered slowly round the nearer clumps of trees until



she saw him advancing. Then she went towards him, and might have

represented a heaven-sent angel coming with a promise that the



short hours remaining should yet be filled with that faithful

love which clings the closer to a comprehended grief. His glance



in reply to hers was so chill that she felt her timidity increased;

yet she turned and passed her hand through his arm.



Mr. Casaubon kept his hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm

to cling with difficulty against his rigid arm.



There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this

unresponsive hardness inflicted on her. That is a strong word,



but not too strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that

the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round



with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made,

and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness--calling their



denial knowledge. You may ask why, in the name of manliness,

Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in that way. Consider that his



was a mind which shrank from pity: have you ever watched in such

a mind the effect of a suspicion that what is pressing it as a grief



may be really a source of contentment, either actual or future,

to the being who already offends by pitying? Besides, he knew



little of Dorothea's sensations, and had not reflected that on

such an occasion as the present they were comparable in strength



to his own sensibilities about Carp's criticisms.

Dorothea did not withdraw her arm, but she could not venture to speak.



Mr. Casaubon did not say, "I wish to be alone," but he directed his

steps in silence towards the house, and as they entered by the glass



door on this eastern side, Dorothea withdrew her arm and lingered

on the matting, that she might leave her husband quite free.



He entered the library and shut himself in, alone with his sorrow.

She went up to her boudoir. The open bow-window let in the serene



glory of the afternoon lying in the avenue, where the lime-trees

east long shadows. But Dorothea knew nothing of the scene.



She threw herself on a chair, not heeding that she was in the

dazzling sun-rays: if there were discomfort in that, how could



she tell that it was not part of her inward misery?

She was in the reaction of a rebellious anger stronger than any she



had felt since her marriage. Instead of tears there came words:--

"What have I done--what am I--that he should treat me so?



He never knows what is in my mind--he never cares. What is the use

of anything I do? He wishes he had never married me."



She began to hear herself, and was checked into stillness. Like one

who has lost his way and is weary, she sat and saw as in one glance



all the paths of her young hope which she should never find again.

And just as clearly in the miserable light she saw her own and her



husband's solitude--how they walked apart so that she was obliged

to survey him. If he had drawn her towards him, she would never have



surveyed him--never have said, "Is he worth living for?" but would

have felt him simply a part of her own life. Now she said bitterly,






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