Ladislaw had now accepted his bit of work, though it was not that

indeterminate loftiest thing which he had once dreamed of as alone

worthy of continuous effort. His nature warmed easily in the presence

of subjects which were visibly mixed with life and action, and the

easily stirred rebellion in him helped the glow of public spirit. In

spite of Mr. Casaubon and the banishment from Lowick, he was rather

happy; getting a great deal of fresh knowledge in a vivid way and for

practical purposes, and making the "Pioneer" celebrated as far as

Brassing (never mind the smallness of the area; the writing was not

worse than much that reaches the four corners of the earth).

Mr. Brooke was occasionally irritating; but Will's impatience was

relieved by the division of his time between visits to the Grange and

retreats to his Middlemarch lodgings, which gave variety to his life.

"Shift the pegs a little," he said to himself, "and Mr. Brooke might be

in the Cabinet, while I was Under-Secretary. That is the common order

of things: the little waves make the large ones and are of the same

pattern. I am better here than in the sort of life Mr. Casaubon would

have trained me for, where the doing would be all laid down by a

precedent too rigid for me to react upon. I don't care for prestige or

high pay."

As Lydgate had said of him, he was a sort of gypsy, rather enjoying the

sense of belonging to no class; he had a feeling of romance in his

position, and a pleasant consciousness of creating a little surprise

wherever he went. That sort of enjoyment had been disturbed when he

had felt some new distance between himself and Dorothea in their

accidental meeting at Lydgate's, and his irritation had gone out

towards Mr. Casaubon, who had declared beforehand that Will would lose

caste. "I never had any caste," he would have said, if that prophecy

had been uttered to him, and the quick blood would have come and gone

like breath in his transparent skin. But it is one thing to like

defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.

Meanwhile, the town opinion about the new editor of the "Pioneer" was

tending to confirm Mr. Casaubon's view. Will's relationship in that

distinguished quarter did not, like Lydgate's high connections, serve

as an advantageous introduction: if it was rumored that young Ladislaw

was Mr. Casaubon's nephew or cousin, it was also rumored that "Mr.

Casaubon would have nothing to do with him."

"Brooke has taken him up," said Mr. Hawley, "because that is what no

man in his senses could have expected. Casaubon has devilish good

reasons, you may be sure, for turning the cold shoulder on a young

fellow whose bringing-up he paid for. Just like Brooke--one of those

fellows who would praise a cat to sell a horse."




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024