Thus it happened, that after Sir James had ridden
rather fast for half an hour in a direction away from
Tipton Grange, he slackened his pace, and at last
turned into a road which would lead him back by a
shorter cut. Various feelings wrought in him
the determination after all to go to the Grange to-day
as if nothing new had happened. He could not
help rejoicing that he had never made the offer and
been rejected; mere friendly politeness required that
he should call to see Dorothea about the cottages,
and now happily Mrs. Cadwallader had prepared him
to offer his congratulations, if necessary, without
showing too much awkwardness. He really did
not like it: giving up Dorothea was very painful
to him; but there was something in the resolve to
make this visit forthwith and conquer all show of
feeling, which was a sort of file-biting and counter-irritant.
And without his distinctly recognizing the impulse,
there certainly was present in him the sense that Celia
would be there, and that he should pay her more attention
than he had done before.
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment
between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears
and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer
to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride
helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only
urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt
others.
CHAPTER VII.
“Piacer e popone
Vuol la sua stagione.”
—Italian Proverb.
Mr. Casaubon, as might be expected, spent a great
deal of his time at the Grange in these weeks, and
the hindrance which courtship occasioned to the progress
of his great work—the Key to all Mythologies—naturally
made him look forward the more eagerly to the happy
termination of courtship. But he had deliberately
incurred the hindrance, having made up his mind that
it was now time for him to adorn his life with the
graces of female companionship, to irradiate the gloom
which fatigue was apt to hang over the intervals of
studious labor with the play of female fancy, and to
secure in this, his culminating age, the solace of
female tendance for his declining years. Hence
he determined to abandon himself to the stream of feeling,
and perhaps was surprised to find what an exceedingly
shallow rill it was. As in droughty regions
baptism by immersion could only be performed symbolically,
Mr. Casaubon found that sprinkling was the utmost
approach to a plunge which his stream would afford
him; and he concluded that the poets had much exaggerated
the force of masculine passion. Nevertheless,
he observed with pleasure that Miss Brooke showed
an ardent submissive affection which promised to fulfil
his most agreeable previsions of marriage. It
had once or twice crossed his mind that possibly there
was some deficiency in Dorothea to account for the
moderation of his abandonment; but he was unable to
discern the deficiency, or to figure to himself a
woman who would have pleased him better; so that there
was clearly no reason to fall back upon but the exaggerations
of human tradition.
