Mr. Lydgate, of course, was out of hearing.
He had quitted the party early, and would have thought
it altogether tedious but for the novelty of certain
introductions, especially the introduction to Miss
Brooke, whose youthful bloom, with her approaching
marriage to that faded scholar, and her interest in
matters socially useful, gave her the piquancy of
an unusual combination.
“She is a good creature—that fine
girl—but a little too earnest,” he
thought. “It is troublesome to talk to
such women. They are always wanting reasons,
yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits
of any question, and usually fall hack on their moral
sense to settle things after their own taste.”
Evidently Miss Brooke was not Mr. Lydgate’s
style of woman any more than Mr. Chichely’s.
Considered, indeed, in relation to the latter, whose
mied was matured, she was altogether a mistake, and
calculated to shock his trust in final causes, including
the adaptation of fine young women to purplefaced
bachelors. But Lydgate was less ripe, and might
possibly have experience before him which would modify
his opinion as to the most excellent things in woman.
Miss Brooke, however, was not again seen by either
of these gentlemen under her maiden name. Not
long after that dinner-party she had become Mrs. Casaubon,
and was on her way to Rome.
“But deeds and language such as
men do use,
And persons such as comedy would choose,
When she would show an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.”
—BEN
JONSON.
Lydgate, in fact, was already conscious of being fascinated
by a woman strikingly different from Miss Brooke:
he did not in the least suppose that he had lost his
balance and fallen in love, but he had said of that
particular woman, “She is grace itself; she
is perfectly lovely and accomplished. That is
what a woman ought to be: she ought to produce
the effect of exquisite music.” Plain women
he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life,
to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.
But Rosamond Vincy seemed to have the true melodic
charm; and when a man has seen the woman whom he would
have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily,
his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her
resolution rather than on his. Lydgate believed
that he should not marry for several years: not
marry until he had trodden out a good clear path for
himself away from the broad road which was quite ready
made. He had seen Miss Vincy above his horizon
almost as long as it had taken Mr. Casaubon to become
engaged and married: but this learned gentleman
was possessed of a fortune; he had assembled his voluminous
notes, and had made that sort of reputation which precedes
performance,—often the larger part of a
