MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 83

"And now good-morrow to our waking souls

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room, an everywhere."

--DR. DONNE.

On the second morning after Dorothea's visit to Rosamond, she had had

two nights of sound sleep, and had not only lost all traces of fatigue,

but felt as if she had a great deal of superfluous strength--

that is to say, more strength than she could manage to concentrate

on any occupation. The day before, she had taken long walks

outside the grounds, and had paid two visits to the Parsonage;

but she never in her life told any one the reason why she spent

her time in that fruitless manner, and this morning she was rather

angry with herself for her childish restlessness. To-day was to be

spent quite differently. What was there to be done in the village?

Oh dear! nothing. Everybody was well and had flannel; nobody's pig

had died; and it was Saturday morning, when there was a general

scrubbing of doors and door-stones, and when it was useless to go

into the school. But there were various subjects that Dorothea

was trying to get clear upon, and she resolved to throw herself

energetically into the gravest of all. She sat down in the library

before her particular little heap of books on political economy and

kindred matters, out of which she was trying to get light as to the

best way of spending money so as not to injure one's neighbors, or--

what comes to the same thing--so as to do them the most good.

Here was a weighty subject which, if she could but lay hold of it,

would certainly keep her mind steady. Unhappily her mind slipped

off it for a whole hour; and at the end she found herself reading

sentences twice over with an intense consciousness of many things,

but not of any one thing contained in the text. This was hopeless.

Should she order the carriage and drive to Tipton? No; for some

reason or other she preferred staying at Lowick. But her vagrant

mind must be reduced to order: there was an art in self-discipline;

and she walked round and round the brown library considering by

what sort of manoeuvre she could arrest her wandering thoughts.

Perhaps a mere task was the best means--something to which she

must go doggedly. Was there not the geography of Asia Minor,

in which her slackness had often been rebuked by Mr. Casaubon?

She went to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one: this morning