"What you say now justifies my own view," said Lydgate. "I think it is one's function as a medical man to hinder regrets of that sort as far as possible. But I beg you to observe that Mr. Casaubon's case is precisely of the kind in which the issue is most difficult to pronounce upon. He may possibly live for fifteen years or more, without much worse health than he has had hitherto."Dorothea had turned very pale, and when Lydgate paused she said in a low voice, "You mean if we are very careful.""Yes--careful against mental agitation of all kinds, and against excessive application.""He would be miserable, if he had to give up his work," said Dorothea, with a quick prevision of that wretchedness.
"I am aware of that. The only course is to try by all means, direct and indirect, to moderate and vary his occupations.
With a happy concurrence of circumstances, there is, as I said, no immediate danger from that affection of the heart, which I believe to have been the cause of his late attack. On the other hand, it is possible that the disease may develop itself more rapidly:
it is one of those eases in which death is sometimes sudden.
Nothing should be neglected which might be affected by such an issue."There was silence for a few moments, while Dorothea sat as if she had been turned to marble, though the life within her was so intense that her mind had never before swept in brief time over an equal range of scenes and motives.
"Help me, pray," she said, at last, in the same low voice as before.
"Tell me what I can do."
"What do you think of foreign travel? You have been lately in Rome, I think."The memories which made this resource utterly hopeless were a new current that shook Dorothea out of her pallid immobility.
"Oh, that would not do--that would be worse than anything," she said with a more childlike despondency, while the tears rolled down.
"Nothing will be of any use that he does not enjoy.""I wish that I could have spared you this pain," said Lydgate, deeply touched, yet wondering about her marriage. Women just like Dorothea had not entered into his traditions.
"It was right of you to tell me. I thank you for telling me the truth.""I wish you to understand that I shall not say anything to enlighten Mr. Casaubon himself. I think it desirable for him to know nothing more than that he must not overwork him self, and must observe certain rules. Anxiety of any kind would be precisely the most unfavorable condition for him."Lydgate rose, and Dorothea mechanically rose at the same time?
unclasping her cloak and throwing it off as if it stifled her.
He was bowing and quitting her, when an impulse which if she had been alone would have turned into a prayer, made her say with a sob in her voice--"Oh, you are a wise man, are you not? You know all about life and death. Advise me. Think what I can do. He has been laboring all his life and looking forward. He minds about nothing else.--And I mind about nothing else--"
For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary appeal--this cry from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully illuminated life.
But what could he say now except that he should see Mr. Casaubon again to-morrow?
When he was gone, Dorothea's tears gushed forth, and relieved her stifling oppression. Then she dried her eyes, reminded that her distress must not be betrayed to her husband; and looked round the room thinking that she must order the servant to attend to it as usual, since Mr. Casaubon might now at any moment wish to enter. On his writing-table there were letters which had lain untouched since the morning when he was taken ill, and among them, as Dorothea. well remembered, there were young Ladislaw's letters, the one addressed to her still unopened. The associations of these letters had been made the more painful by that sudden attack of illness which she felt that the agitation caused by her anger might have helped to bring on: it would be time enough to read them when they were again thrust upon her, and she had had no inclination to fetch them from the library. But now it occurred to her that they should be put out of her husband's sight: