“I shall not dine, then, Tantripp.”
“Oh, madam, let me bring you a little something?”
“No; I am not well. Get everything ready
in my dressing room, but pray do not disturb me again.”
Dorothea sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle,
while the evening slowly deepened into night.
But the struggle changed continually, as that of
a man who begins with a movement towards striking
and ends with conquering his desire to strike.
The energy that would animate a crime is not more than
is wanted to inspire a resolved submission, when the
noble habit of the soul reasserts itself. That
thought with which Dorothea had gone out to meet her
husband—her conviction that he had been
asking about the possible arrest of all his work,
and that the answer must have wrung his heart, could
not be long without rising beside the image of him,
like a shadowy monitor looking at her anger with sad
remonstrance. It cost her a litany of pictured
sorrows and of silent cries that she might be the
mercy for those sorrows— but the resolved
submission did come; and when the house was still,
and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon
habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently
and stood outside in the darkness waiting for his
coming up-stairs with a light in his hand. If
he did not come soon she thought that she would go
down and even risk incurring another pang. She
would never again expect anything else. But she
did hear the library door open, and slowly the light
advanced up the staircase without noise from the footsteps
on the carpet. When her husband stood opposite
to her, she saw that his face was more haggard.
He started slightly on seeing her, and she looked
up at him beseechingly, without speaking.
“Dorothea!” he said, with a gentle surprise
in his tone. “Were you waiting for me?”
“Yes, I did not like to disturb you.”
“Come, my dear, come. You are young, and
need not to extend your life by watching.”
When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell
on Dorothea’s ears, she felt something like
the thankfulness that might well up in us if we had
narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature. She
put her hand into her husband’s, and they went
along the broad corridor together.
THE DEAD HAND.
This figure hath high price:
’t was wrought with love
Ages ago in finest ivory;
Nought modish in it, pure
and noble lines
Of generous womanhood that
fits all time
That too is costly ware; majolica
Of deft design, to please
a lordly eye:
The smile, you see, is perfect—wonderful
As mere Faience! a table ornament
To suit the richest mounting.”
