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 one's self, 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 labor 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 neighbor'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 Isaw 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 Mr. 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 labor 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 was a new light, but still a mysterious light, for Will in Dorothea's last words. The question how she had come to accept Mr. Casaubon--which he had dismissed when he first saw her by saying that she must be disagreeable in spite of appearances--was not now to be answered on any such short and easy method. Whatever else she might be, she was not disagreeable. She was not coldly clever and indirectly satirical, but adorably simple and full of feeling.
