MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 28

1st Gent. All times are good to seek your wedded home

Bringing a mutual delight.

2d Gent. Why, true.

The calendar hath not an evil day

For souls made one by love, and even death

Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves

While they two clasped each other, and foresaw

No life apart.

Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon, returning from their wedding journey,

arrived at Lowick Manor in the middle of January. A light snow

was falling as they descended at the door, and in the morning,

when Dorothea passed from her dressing-room avenue the blue-green

boudoir that we know of, she saw the long avenue of limes lifting

their trunks from a white earth, and spreading white branches

against the dun and motionless sky. The distant flat shrank

in uniform whiteness and low-hanging uniformity of cloud.

The very furniture in the room seemed to have shrunk since she

saw it before: the slag in the tapestry looked more like a ghost

in his ghostly blue-green world; the volumes of polite literature

in the bookcase looked more like immovable imitations of books.

The bright fire of dry oak-boughs burning on the dogs seemed an

incongruous renewal of life and glow--like the figure of Dorothea

herself as she entered carrying the red-leather cases containing

the cameos for Celia.

She was glowing from her morning toilet as only healthful youth

can glow: there was gem-like brightness on her coiled hair

and in her hazel eyes; there was warm red life in her lips;

her throat had a breathing whiteness above the differing white

of the fur which itself seemed to wind about her neck and cling

down her blue-gray pelisse with a tenderness gathered from her own,

a sentient commingled innocence which kept its loveliness against

the crystalline purity of the outdoor snow. As she laid the cameo-

cases on the table in the bow-window, she unconsciously kept her

hands on them, immediately absorbed in looking out on the still,

white enclosure which made her visible world.

Mr. Casaubon, who had risen early complaining of palpitation,

was in the library giving audience to his curate Mr. Tucker.

By-and-by Celia would come in her quality of bridesmaid as well

as sister, and through the next weeks there would be wedding visits

received and given; all in continuance of that transitional life

understood to correspond with the excitement of bridal felicity,