The next day, Mr. Casaubon received the following answer from Will
Ladislaw:--
"DEAR MR. CASAUBON,--I have given all due consideration to your letter
of yesterday, but I am unable to take precisely your view of our mutual
position. With the fullest acknowledgment of your generous conduct to
me in the past, I must still maintain that an obligation of this kind
cannot fairly fetter me as you appear to expect that it should.
Granted that a benefactor's wishes may constitute a claim; there must
always be a reservation as to the quality of those wishes. They may
possibly clash with more imperative considerations. Or a benefactor's
veto might impose such a negation on a man's life that the consequent
blank might be more cruel than the benefaction was generous. I am
merely using strong illustrations. In the present case I am unable to
take your view of the bearing which my acceptance of occupation--not
enriching certainly, but not dishonorable--will have on your own
position which seems to me too substantial to be affected in that
shadowy manner. And though I do not believe that any change in our
relations will occur (certainly none has yet occurred) which can
nullify the obligations imposed on me by the past, pardon me for not
seeing that those obligations should restrain me from using the
ordinary freedom of living where I choose, and maintaining myself by
any lawful occupation I may choose. Regretting that there exists this
difference between us as to a relation in which the conferring of
benefits has been entirely on your side--
I remain, yours with persistent obligation,
WILL LADISLAW."
Poor Mr. Casaubon felt (and must not we, being impartial, feel with him
a little?) that no man had juster cause for disgust and suspicion than
he. Young Ladislaw, he was sure, meant to defy and annoy him, meant to
win Dorothea's confidence and sow her mind with disrespect, and perhaps
aversion, towards her husband. Some motive beneath the surface had
been needed to account for Will's sudden change of course in rejecting Mr.
Casaubon's aid and quitting his travels; and this defiant determination
to fix himself in the neighborhood by taking up something so much at
variance with his former choice as Mr. Brooke's Middlemarch projects,
revealed clearly enough that the undeclared motive had relation to
Dorothea. Not for one moment did Mr. Casaubon suspect Dorothea of any
doubleness: he had no suspicions of her, but he had (what was little
less uncomfortable) the positive knowledge that her tendency to form
opinions about her husband's conduct was accompanied with a disposition
to regard Will Ladislaw favorably and be influenced by what he said.
His own proud reticence had prevented him from ever being undeceived in
the supposition that Dorothea had originally asked her uncle to invite
Will to his house.