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, "It is his fault, not mine." In the jar of her whole being, Pity was overthrown. Was it her fault that she had believed in him--had believed in his worthiness?--And what, exactly, was he?--She was able enough to estimate him--she who waited on his glances with trembling, and shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that she might be petty enough to please him.
In such a crisis as this, some women begin to hate.
The sun was low when Dorothea was thinking that she would not go down again, but would send a message to her husband saying that she was not well and preferred remaining up-stairs. She had never deliberately allowed her resentment to govern her in this way before, but she believed now that she could not see him again without telling him the truth about her feeling, and she must wait till she could do it without interruption. He might wonder and be hurt at her message. It was good that he should wonder and be hurt.
Her anger said, as anger is apt to say, that God was with her--that all heaven, though it were crowded with spirits watching them, must be on her side. She had determined to ring her bell, when there came a rap at the door.
Mr. Casaubon had sent to say that he would have his dinner in the library. He wished to be quite alone this evening, being much occupied.
"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.