‘He goes to read in the Library of the Vatican every day, and you can hardly see him except by an appointment. Especially now. We are about to leave Rome, and he is very busy. He is usually away almost from breakfast till dinner. But I am sure he will wish you to dine with us.’
Will Ladislaw was struck mute for a few moments. He had never been fond of Mr Casaubon, and if it had not been for the sense of obligation, would have laughed at him as a Bat of erudition. But the idea of this dried-up pedant, this elaborator of small explanations about as important as the surplus stock of false antiquities kept in a vender’s back chamber, having first got this adorable young creature to marry him, and then passing his honeymoon away from her, groping after his mouldy futilities (Will was given to hyperbole)—-this sudden picture stirred him with a sort of comic disgust: he was divided between the impulse to laugh aloud and the equally unseasonable impulse to burst into scornful invective. For an instant he felt that the struggle was causing a queer contortion of his mobile features, but with a good effort he resolved it into nothing more offensive than a merry smile.
Dorothea wondered; but the smile was irresistible, and shone back from her face too. Will Ladislaw’s smile was delightful, unless you were angry with him beforehand: it was a gush of inward light illuminating the transparent skin as well as the eyes, and playing about every curve and line as if some Ariel were touching them with a new charm, and banishing for ever the traces of moodiness. The reflection of that smile could not but have a little merriment in it too, even under dark eyelashes still moist, as Dorothea said inquiringly, ‘Something amuses you?’
‘Yes,’ said Will, quick in finding resources. ‘I am thinking of the sort of figure I cut the first time I saw you, when you annihilated my poor sketch with your criticism.’
‘My criticism?’ said Dorothea, wondering still more. ‘Surely not. I always feel particularly ignorant about painting.’
‘I suspected you of knowing so much, that you knew how to say just what was most cutting. You said—I dare say you don’t remember it as I do—that the relation of my sketch to nature was quite hidden from you. At least, you implied that.’ Will could laugh now as well as smile.
‘That was really my ignorance,’ said Dorothea, admiring Will’s good humour. ‘I must have said so only because I never could see any beauty in the pictures which my uncle told me all judges thought very fine. And I have gone about with just the same ignorance in Rome. There are comparatively few paintings that I can really enjoy. At first when I enter a room where the walls are covered with frescoes, or with rare pictures, I feel a kind of awe—like a child present at great ceremonies where there are grand robes and processions; I feel myself in the presence of some higher life than my own. But when I begin to examine the pictures one by one, the life goes out of them, or else is something violent and strange to me. It must be my own dullness. I am seeing so much all at once, and not understanding half of it. That always makes one feel stupid. It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine—something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.’
‘Oh, there is a great deal in the feeling for art which must be acquired,’ said Will. (It was impossible now to doubt the directness of Dorothea’s confession.) ‘Art is an old language with a great many artificial affected styles, and sometimes the chief pleasure one gets out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing. I enjoy the art of all sorts here immensely; but I suppose if I could pick my enjoyment to pieces I should find it made up of many different threads. There is something in daubing a little oneself, and having an idea of the process.’
‘You mean perhaps to be a painter?’ said Dorothea, with a new direction of interest. ‘You mean to make painting your profession. Mr Casaubon will like to hear that you have chosen a profession.’
‘No, oh no,’ said Will, with some coldness. ‘I have quite made up my mind against it. It is too one-sided a life. I have been seeing a great deal of the German artists here: I travelled from Frankfort with one of them. Some are fine, even brilliant fellows—but I should not like to get into their way of looking at the world entirely from the studio point of view.’
‘That I can understand,’ said Dorothea, cordially. ‘And in Rome it seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures. But if you have a genius for painting, would it not be right to take that as a guide? Perhaps you might do better things than these—or different, so that there might not be so many pictures almost all alike in the same place.’
There was no mistaking this simplicity, and Will was won by it into frankness. ‘A man must have a very rare genius to make changes of that sort. I am afraid mine would not carry me even to the pitch of doing well what has been done already, at least not so well as to make it worth while. And I should never succeed in anything by dint of drudgery. If things don’t come easily to me I never get them.’
‘I have heard Mr Casaubon say that he regrets your want of patience,’ said Dorothea, gently. She was rather shocked at this mode of taking all life as a holiday.
‘Yes, I know Mr Casaubon’s opinion. He and I differ.’
The slight streak of contempt in this hasty reply offended Dorothea. She was all the more susceptible about Mr Casaubon because of her morning’s trouble.
‘Certainly you differ,’ she said, rather proudly. ‘I did not think of comparing you: such power of persevering devoted labour as Mr Casaubon’s is not common.’
Will saw that she was offended, but this only gave an additional impulse to the new irritation of his latent dislike towards Mr Casaubon. It was too intolerable that Dorothea should be worshipping this husband: such weakness in a woman is pleasant to no man but the husband in question. Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour’s buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.
‘No, indeed,’ he answered, promptly. ‘And therefore it is a pity that it should be thrown away, as so much English scholarship is, for want of knowing what is being done by the rest of the world. If Mr Casaubon read German he would save himself a great deal of trouble.’
‘I do not understand you,’ said Dorothea, startled and anxious.
‘I merely mean,’ said Will, in an offhand way, ‘that the Germans have taken the lead in historical inquiries, and they laugh at results which are got by groping about in woods with a pocket-compass while they have made good roads. When I was with Mr Casaubon I saw that he deafened himself in that direction: it was almost against his will that he read a Latin treatise written by a German. I was very sorry.’
Will only thought of giving a good pinch that would annihilate that vaunted laboriousness, and was unable to imagine the mode in which Dorothea would be wounded. Young Ladislaw was not at all deep himself in German writers; but very little achievement is required in order to pity another man’s shortcomings.
Poor Dorothea felt a pang at the thought that the labour of her husband’s life might be void, which left her no energy to spare for the question whether this young relative who was so much obliged to him ought not to have repressed his observation. She did not even speak, but sat looking at her hands, absorbed in the piteousness of that thought.
Will, however, having given that annihilating pinch, was rather ashamed, imagining from Dorothea’s silence that he had offended her still more; and having also a conscience about plucking the tail-feathers from a benefactor.
‘I regretted it especially,’ he resumed, taking the usual course from detraction to insincere eulogy, ‘because of my gratitude and respect towards my cousin. It would not signify so much in a man whose talents and character were less distinguished.’
Dorothea raised her eyes, brighter than usual with excited feeling, and said, in her saddest recitative, ‘How I wish I had learned German when I was at Lausanne! There were plenty of German teachers. But now I can be of no use.’
There