PRELUDE
A CHAPTER OF WHICH THE LAST PAGE ONLY IS OF
ANY IMPORTANCE
Comedy is a game played to throw reflections
upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the
drawing-room of civilized men and women, where we have no
dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent
crashes, to make the correctness of the representation
convincing. Credulity is not wooed through the
impressionable senses; nor have we recourse to the small
circular glow of the watchmaker's eye to raise in bright
relief minutest grains of evidence for the routing of
incredulity. The Comic Spirit conceives a definite situation
for a number of characters, and rejects all accessories in
the exclusive pursuit of them and their speech. For being a
spirit, he hunts the spirit in men; vision and ardour
constitute his merit; he has not a thought of persuading you
to believe in him. Follow and you will see. But there is a
question of the value of a run at his heels.
Now the world is possessed of a certain big
book, the biggest book on earth; that might indeed be called
the Book of Earth; whose title is the Book of Egoism, and it
is a book full of the world's wisdom. So full of it, and of
such dimensions is this book, in which the generations have
written ever since they took to writing, that to be
profitable to us the Book needs a powerful compression.
Who, says the notable humourist, in allusion
to this Book, who can studiously travel through sheets of
leaves now capable of a stretch from the Lizard to the last
few poor pulmonary snips and shreds of leagues dancing on
their toes for cold, explorers tell us, and catching breath
by good luck, like dogs at bones about a table, on the edge
of the Pole? Inordinate unvaried length, sheer longinquity,
staggers the heart, ages the very heart of us at a view. And
how if we manage finally to print one of our pages on the
crow-scalp of that solitary majestic outsider? We may get
him into the Book; yet the knowledge we want will not be
more present with us than it was when the chapters hung
their end over the cliff you ken of at Dover, where sits our
great lord and master contemplating the seas without upon
the reflex of that within!
In other words, as I venture to translate
him (humourists are difficult: it is a piece of their humour
to puzzle our wits), the inward mirror, the embracing and
condensing spirit, is required to give us those interminable
milepost piles of matter (extending well-nigh to the very
Pole) in essence, in chosen samples, digestibly. I conceive
him to indicate that the realistic method of a conscientious
transcription of all the visible, and a repetition of all
the audible, is mainly accountable for our present
branfulness, and that prolongation of the vasty and the
noisy, out of which, as from an undrained fen, steams the
malady of sameness, our modern malady. We have the malady,
whatever may be the cure or the cause. We drove in a body to
Science the other day for an antidote; which was as if tired
pedestrians should mount the engine-box of headlong trains;
and Science introduced us to our o'er-hoary ancestry—them in
the Oriental posture; whereupon we set up a primaeval
chattering to rival the Amazon forest nigh nightfall, cured,
we fancied. And before daybreak our disease was hanging on
to us again, with the extension of a tail. We had it fore
and aft. We were the same, and animals into the bargain.
That is all we got from Science.
Art is the specific. We have little to learn
of apes, and they may be left. The chief consideration for
us is, what particular practice of Art in letters is the
best for the perusal of the Book of our common wisdom; so
that with clearer minds and livelier manners we may escape,
as it were, into daylight and song from a land of fog-horns.
Shall we read it by the watchmaker's eye in luminous rings
eruptive of the infinitesimal, or pointed with examples and
types under the broad Alpine survey of the spirit born of
our united social intelligence, which is the Comic Spirit?
Wise men say the latter. They tell us that there is a
constant tendency in the Book to accumulate excess of
substance, and such repleteness, obscuring the glass it
holds to mankind, renders us inexact in the recognition of
our individual countenances: a perilous thing for
civilization. And these wise men are strong in their opinion
that we should encourage the Comic Spirit, who is after all
our own offspring, to relieve the Book. Comedy, they say, is
the true diversion, as it is likewise the key of the great
Book, the music of the Book. They tell us how it condenses
whole sections of the book in a sentence, volumes in a
character; so that a fair pan of a book outstripping
thousands of leagues when unrolled may be compassed in one
comic sitting.
For verily, say they, we must read what we
can of it, at least the page before us, if we would be men.
One, with an index on the Book, cries out, in a style
pardonable to his fervency: The remedy of your frightful
affliction is here, through the stillatory of Comedy, and
not in Science, nor yet in Speed, whose name is but another
for voracity. Why, to be alive, to be quick in the soul,
there should be diversity in the companion throbs of your
pulses. Interrogate them. They lump along like the old
loblegs of Dobbin the horse; or do their business like
cudgels of carpet-thwackers expelling dust or the
cottage-clock pendulum teaching the infant hour over
midnight simple arithmetic. This too in spite of Bacchus.
And let them gallop; let them gallop with the God bestriding
them; gallop to Hymen, gallop to Hades, they strike the same
note. Monstrous monotonousness has enfolded us as with the
arms of Amphitrite! We hear a shout of war for a
diversion.—Comedy he pronounces to be our means of reading
swiftly and comprehensively. She it is who proposes the
correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dulness, and
of the vestiges of rawness and grossness to be found among
us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher, a sweet
cook. If, he says, she watches over sentimentalism with a
birch-rod, she is not opposed to romance. You may love, and
warmly love, so long as you are honest. Do not offend
reason. A lover pretending too much by one foot's length of
pretence, will have that foot caught in her trap. In Comedy
is the singular scene of charity issuing of disdain under
the stroke of honourable laughter: an Ariel released by
Prospero's wand from the fetters of the damned witch
Sycorax. And this laughter of reason refreshed is
floriferous, like the magical great gale of the shifty
Spring deciding for Summer. You hear it giving the delicate
spirit his liberty. Listen, for comparison, to an unleavened
society: a low as of the udderful cow past milking hour! O
for a titled ecclesiastic to curse to excommunication that
unholy thing!—So far an enthusiast perhaps; but he should
have a hearing.
Concerning pathos, no ship can now set sail
without pathos; and we are not totally deficient of pathos;
which is, I do not accurately know what, if not the ballast,
reducible to moisture by patent process, on board our modern
vessel; for it can hardly be the cargo, and the general
water supply has other uses; and ships well charged with it
seem to sail the stiffest:—there is a touch of pathos. The
Egoist surely inspires pity. He who would desire to clothe
himself at everybody's expense, and is of that desire
condemned to strip himself stark naked, he, if pathos ever
had a form, might be taken for the actual person. Only he is
not allowed to rush at you, roll you over and squeeze your
body for the briny drops. There is the innovation.
You may as well know him out of hand, as a
gentleman of our time and country, of wealth and station; a
not flexile figure, do what we may with him; the humour of
whom scarcely dimples the surface and is distinguishable but
by very penetrative, very wicked imps, whose fits of roaring
below at some generally imperceptible stroke of his quality,
have first made the mild literary angels aware of something
comic in him, when they were one and all about to describe
the gentleman on the heading of the records baldly (where
brevity is most complimentary) as a gentleman of family and
property, an idol of a decorous island that admires the
concrete. Imps have their freakish wickedness in them to
kindle detective vision: malignly do they love to uncover
ridiculousness in imposing figures. Wherever they catch
sight of Egoism they pitch their camps, they circle and
squat, and forthwith they trim their lanterns, confident of
the ludicrous to come. So confident that their grip of an
English gentleman, in whom they have spied their game, never
relaxes until he begins insensibly to frolic and antic,
unknown to himself, and comes out in the native steam which
is their scent of the chase. Instantly off they scour,
Egoist and imps. They will, it is known of them, dog a great
House for centuries, and be at the birth of all the new
heirs in succession, diligently taking confirmatory notes,
to join hands and chime their chorus in one of their merry
rings round the tottering pillar of the House, when his turn
arrives; as if they had (possibly they had) smelt of old
date a doomed colossus of Egoism in that unborn, unconceived
inheritor of the stuff of the family. They dare not be
chuckling while Egoism is valiant, while sober, while
socially valuable, nationally serviceable. They wait.
Aforetime a grand old Egoism built the
House. It would appear that ever finer essences of it are
demanded to sustain the structure; but especially would it
appear that a reversion to the gross original, beneath a
mask and in a vein of fineness, is an earthquake at the
foundations of the House. Better that it should not have
consented to motion, and have held stubbornly to all
ancestral ways, than have bred that anachronic spectre. The
sight, however, is one to make our squatting imps in circle
grow restless on their haunches, as they bend eyes
instantly, ears at full cock, for the commencement of the
comic drama of the suicide. If this line of verse be not yet
in our literature,
Through very love of self himself he slew,
let it be admitted for his epitaph.
CHAPTER I
A MINOR INCIDENT SHOWING AN HEREDITARY
APTITUDE IN THE USE OF THE KNIFE
There was an ominously anxious watch of eyes
visible and invisible over the infancy of Willoughby, fifth
in descent from Simon Patterne, of Patterne Hall, premier of
this family, a lawyer, a man of solid acquirements and stout
ambition, who well understood the foundation-work of a
House, and was endowed with the power of saying No to those
first agents of destruction, besieging relatives. He said it
with the resonant emphasis of death to younger sons. For if
the oak is to become a stately tree, we must provide against
the crowding of timber. Also the tree beset with parasites
prospers not. A great House in its beginning lives, we may
truly say, by the knife. Soil is easily got, and so are
bricks, and a wife, and children come of wishing for them,
but the vigorous use of the knife is a natural gift and
points to growth. Pauper Patternes were numerous when the
fifth head of the race was the hope of his county. A
Patterne was in the Marines.
The country and the chief of this family
were simultaneously informed of the existence of one
Lieutenant Crossjay Patterne, of the corps of the famous
hard fighters, through an act of heroism of the unpretending
cool sort which kindles British blood, on the part of the
modest young officer, in the storming of some eastern
riverain stronghold, somewhere about the coast of China. The
officer's youth was assumed on the strength of his rank,
perhaps likewise from the tale of his modesty: "he had only
done his duty". Our Willoughby was then at College, emulous
of the generous enthusiasm of his years, and strangely
impressed by the report, and the printing of his name in the
newspapers. He thought over it for several months, when,
coming to his title and heritage, he sent Lieutenant
Crossjay Patterne a cheque for a sum of money amounting to
the gallant fellow's pay per annum, at the same time showing
his acquaintance with the first, or chemical, principles of
generosity, in the remark to friends at home, that "blood is
thicker than water". The man is a Marine, but he is a
Patterne. How any Patterne should have drifted into the
Marines, is of the order of questions which are senselessly
asked of the great dispensary. In the complimentary letter
accompanying his cheque, the lieutenant was invited to
present himself at the ancestral Hall, when convenient to
him, and he was assured that he had given his relative and
friend a taste for a soldier's life. Young Sir Willoughby
was fond of talking of his "military namesake and distant
cousin, young Patterne—the Marine". It was funny; and not
less laughable was the description of his namesake's deed of
valour: with the rescued British sailor inebriate, and the
hauling off to captivity of the three braves of the black
dragon on a yellow ground, and the tying of them together
back to back by their pigtails, and driving of them into our
lines upon a newly devised dying-top style of march that
inclined to the oblique, like the astonished six eyes of the
celestial prisoners, for straight they could not go. The
humour of gentlemen at home is always highly excited by such
cool feats. We are a small island, but you see what we do.
The ladies at the Hall, Sir Willoughby's mother, and his
aunts Eleanor and Isabel, were more affected than he by the
circumstance of their having a Patterne in the Marines. But
how then! We English have ducal blood in business: we have,
genealogists tell us, royal blood in common trades. For all
our pride we are a queer people; and you may be ordering
butcher's meat of a Tudor, sitting on the cane-bottom chairs
of a Plantagenet. By and by you may . . . but cherish your
reverence. Young Willoughby made a kind of shock-head or
football hero of his gallant distant cousin, and wondered
occasionally that the fellow had been content to dispatch a
letter of effusive thanks without availing himself of the
invitation to partake of the hospitalities of Patterne.
He was one afternoon parading between
showers on the stately garden terrace of the Hall, in
company with his affianced, the beautiful and dashing
Constantia Durham, followed by knots of ladies and gentlemen
vowed to fresh air before dinner, while it was to be had.
Chancing with his usual happy fortune (we call these things
dealt to us out of the great hidden dispensary, chance) to
glance up the avenue of limes, as he was in the act of
turning on his heel at the end of the terrace, and it should
be added, discoursing with passion's privilege of the
passion of love to Miss Durham, Sir Willoughby, who was
anything but obtuse, experienced a presentiment upon espying
a thick-set stumpy man crossing the gravel space from the
avenue to the front steps of the Hall, decidedly not bearing
the stamp of the gentleman "on his hat, his coat, his feet,
or anything that was his," Willoughby subsequently observed
to the ladies of his family in the Scriptural style of
gentlemen who do bear the stamp. His brief sketch of the
creature was repulsive. The visitor carried a bag, and his
coat-collar was up, his hat was melancholy; he had the
appearance of a bankrupt tradesman absconding; no gloves, no
umbrella.
As to the incident we have to note, it was
very slight. The card of Lieutenant Patterne was handed to
Sir Willoughby, who laid it on the salver, saying to the
footman, "Not at home."
He had been disappointed in the age, grossly
deceived in the appearance of the man claiming to be his
relative in this unseasonable fashion; and his acute
instinct advised him swiftly of the absurdity of introducing
to his friends a heavy unpresentable senior as the
celebrated gallant Lieutenant of Marines, and the same as a
member of his family! He had talked of the man too much, too
enthusiastically, to be able to do so. A young subaltern,
even if passably vulgar in figure, can be shuffled through
by the aid of the heroical story humourously exaggerated in
apology for his aspect. Nothing can be done with a mature
and stumpy Marine of that rank. Considerateness dismisses
him on the spot, without parley. It was performed by a
gentleman supremely advanced at a very early age in the art
of cutting.
Young Sir Willoughby spoke a word of the
rejected visitor to Miss Durham, in response to her startled
look: "I shall drop him a cheque," he said, for she seemed
personally wounded, and had a face of crimson.
The young lady did not reply.
Dating from the humble departure of
Lieutenant Crossjay Patterne up the limes-avenue under a
gathering rain-cloud, the ring of imps in attendance on Sir
Willoughby maintained their station with strict observation
of his movements at all hours; and were comparisons in
quest, the sympathetic eagerness of the eyes of caged
monkeys for the hand about to feed them, would supply one.
They perceived in him a fresh development and very subtle
manifestation of the very old thing from which he had
sprung.
CHAPTER II
THE YOUNG SIR WILLOUGHBY
These little scoundrel imps, who have
attained to some respectability as the dogs and pets of the
Comic Spirit, had been curiously attentive three years
earlier, long before the public announcement of his
engagement to the beautiful Miss Durham, on the day of Sir
Willoughby's majority, when Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson said
her word of him. Mrs. Mountstuart was a lady certain to say
the remembered, if not the right, thing. Again and again was
it confirmed on days of high celebration, days of birth or
bridal, how sure she was to hit the mark that rang the bell;
and away her word went over the county: and had she been an
uncharitable woman she could have ruled the county with an
iron rod of caricature, so sharp was her touch. A grain of
malice would have sent county faces and characters awry into
the currency. She was wealthy and kindly, and resembled our
mother Nature in her reasonable antipathies to one or two
things which none can defend, and her decided preference of
persons that shone in the sun. Her word sprang out of her.
She looked at you, and forth it came: and it stuck to you,
as nothing laboured or literary could have adhered. Her
saying of Laetitia Dale: "Here she comes with a romantic
tale on her eyelashes," was a portrait of Laetitia. And that
of Vernon Whitford: "He is a Phoebus Apollo turned fasting
friar," painted the sunken brilliancy of the lean
long-walker and scholar at a stroke.
Of the young Sir Willoughby, her word was
brief; and there was the merit of it on a day when he was
hearing from sunrise to the setting of the moon salutes in
his honour, songs of praise and Ciceronian eulogy. Rich,
handsome, courteous, generous, lord of the Hall, the feast
and the dance, he excited his guests of both sexes to a
holiday of flattery. And, says Mrs. Mountstuart, while grand
phrases were mouthing round about him, "You see he has a
leg."
That you saw, of course. But after she had
spoken you saw much more. Mrs. Mountstuart said it just as
others utter empty nothings, with never a hint of a stress.
Her word was taken up, and very soon, from the extreme end
of the long drawing-room, the circulation of something of
Mrs. Mountstuart's was distinctly perceptible. Lady Patterne
sent a little Hebe down, skirting the dancers, for an
accurate report of it; and even the inappreciative lips of a
very young lady transmitting the word could not damp the
impression of its weighty truthfulness. It was perfect!
Adulation of the young Sir Willoughby's beauty and wit, and
aristocratic bearing and mien, and of his moral virtues, was
common; welcome if you like, as a form of homage; but
common, almost vulgar, beside Mrs. Mountstuart's quiet
little touch of nature. In seeming to say infinitely less
than others, as Miss Isabel Patterne pointed out to Lady
Busshe, Mrs. Mountstuart comprised all that the others had
said, by showing the needlessness of allusions to the
saliently evident. She was the aristocrat reproving the
provincial. "He is everything you have had the goodness to
remark, ladies and dear sirs, he talks charmingly, dances
divinely, rides with the air of a commander-in-chief, has
the most natural grand pose possible without ceasing for a
moment to be the young English gentleman he is. Alcibiades,
fresh from a Louis IV perruquier, could not surpass him:
whatever you please; I could outdo you in sublime
comparisons, were I minded to pelt him. Have you noticed
that he has a leg?"
So might it be amplified. A simple-seeming
word of this import is the triumph of the spiritual, and
where it passes for coin of value, the society has reached a
high refinement: Arcadian by the aesthetic route.
Observation of Willoughby was not, as Miss Eleanor Patterne
pointed out to Lady Culmer, drawn down to the leg, but
directed to estimate him from the leg upward. That, however,
is prosaic. Dwell a short space on Mrs. Mountstuart's word;
and whither, into what fair region, and with how decorously
voluptuous a sensation, do not we fly, who have, through
mournful veneration of the Martyr Charles, a coy attachment
to the Court of his Merrie Son, where the leg was ribanded
with love-knots and reigned. Oh! it was a naughty Court. Yet
have we dreamed of it as the period when an English cavalier
was grace incarnate; far from the boor now hustling us in
another sphere; beautifully mannered, every gesture dulcet.
And if the ladies were . . . we will hope they have been
traduced. But if they were, if they were too tender, ah!
gentlemen were gentlemen then—worth perishing for! There is
this dream in the English country; and it must be an
aspiration after some form of melodious gentlemanliness
which is imagined to have inhabited the island at one time;
as among our poets the dream of the period of a circle of
chivalry here is encouraged for the pleasure of the
imagination.
Mrs. Mountstuart touched a thrilling chord.
"In spite of men's hateful modern costume, you see he has a
leg."
That is, the leg of the born cavalier is
before you: and obscure it as you will, dress degenerately,
there it is for ladies who have eyes. You see it: or, you
see he has it. Miss Isabel and Miss Eleanor disputed the
incidence of the emphasis, but surely, though a slight
difference of meaning may be heard, either will do: many,
with a good show of reason, throw the accent upon leg. And
the ladies knew for a fact that Willoughby's leg was
exquisite; he had a cavalier court-suit in his wardrobe.
Mrs. Mountstuart signified that the leg was to be seen
because it was a burning leg. There it is, and it will shine
through! He has the leg of Rochester, Buckingham, Dorset,
Suckling; the leg that smiles, that winks, is obsequious to
you, yet perforce of beauty self-satisfied; that twinkles to
a tender midway between imperiousness and seductiveness,
audacity and discretion; between "You shall worship me", and
"I am devoted to you;" is your lord, your slave, alternately
and in one. It is a leg of ebb and flow and high-tide
ripples. Such a leg, when it has done with pretending to
retire, will walk straight into the hearts of women. Nothing
so fatal to them.
Self-satisfied it must be. Humbleness does
not win multitudes or the sex. It must be vain to have a
sheen. Captivating melodies (to prove to you the
unavoidableness of self-satisfaction when you know that you
have hit perfection), listen to them closely, have an inner
pipe of that conceit almost ludicrous when you detect the
chirp.
And you need not be reminded that he has the
leg without the naughtiness. You see eminent in him what we
would fain have brought about in a nation that has lost its
leg in gaining a possibly cleaner morality. And that is
often contested; but there is no doubt of the loss of the
leg.
Well, footmen and courtiers and Scottish
Highlanders, and the corps de ballet, draymen too, have
legs, and staring legs, shapely enough. But what are they?
not the modulated instrument we mean—simply legs for
leg-work, dumb as the brutes. Our cavalier's is the poetic
leg, a portent, a valiance. He has it as Cicero had a
tongue. It is a lute to scatter songs to his mistress; a
rapier, is she obdurate. In sooth a leg with brains in it,
soul.
And its shadows are an ambush, its lights a
surprise. It blushes, it pales, can whisper, exclaim. It is
a peep, a part revelation, just sufferable, of the Olympian
god—Jove playing carpet-knight.
For the young Sir Willoughby's family and
his thoughtful admirers, it is not too much to say that Mrs.
Mountstuart's little word fetched an epoch of our history to
colour the evening of his arrival at man's estate. He was
all that Merrie Charles's court should have been,
subtracting not a sparkle from what it was. Under this light
he danced, and you may consider the effect of it on his
company.
He had received the domestic education of a
prince. Little princes abound in a land of heaped riches.
Where they have not to yield military service to an Imperial
master, they are necessarily here and there dainty during
youth, sometimes unmanageable, and as they are bound in no
personal duty to the State, each is for himself, with full
present, and what is more, luxurious, prospective leisure
for the practice of that allegiance. They are sometimes
enervated by it: that must be in continental countries.
Happily our climate and our brave blood precipitate the
greater number upon the hunting-field, to do the public
service of heading the chase of the fox, with benefit to
their constitutions. Hence a manly as well as useful race of
little princes, and Willoughby was as manly as any. He
cultivated himself, he would not be outdone in popular
accomplishments. Had the standard of the public taste been
set in philosophy, and the national enthusiasm centred in
philosophers, he would at least have worked at books. He did
work at science, and had a laboratory. His admirable passion
to excel, however, was chiefly directed in his youth upon
sport; and so great was the passion in him, that it was
commonly the presence of rivals which led him to the
declaration of love.
He knew himself, nevertheless, to be the
most constant of men in his attachment to the sex. He had
never discouraged Laetitia Dale's devotion to him, and even
when he followed in the sweeping tide of the beautiful
Constantia Durham (whom Mrs. Mountstuart called "The Racing
Cutter"), he thought of Laetitia, and looked at her. She was
a shy violet.
Willoughby's comportment while the showers
of adulation drenched him might be likened to the composure
of Indian Gods undergoing worship, but unlike them he
reposed upon no seat of amplitude to preserve him from a
betrayal of intoxication; he had to continue tripping,
dancing, exactly balancing himself, head to right, head to
left, addressing his idolaters in phrases of perfect
choiceness. This is only to say that it is easier to be a
wooden idol than one in the flesh; yet Willoughby was equal
to his task. The little prince's education teaches him that
he is other than you, and by virtue of the instruction he
receives, and also something, we know not what, within, he
is enabled to maintain his posture where you would be
tottering.
Urchins upon whose curly pates grave seniors
lay their hands with conventional encomium and speculation,
look older than they are immediately, and Willoughby looked
older than his years, not for want of freshness, but because
he felt that he had to stand eminently and correctly poised.
Hearing of Mrs. Mountstuart's word on him,
he smiled and said, "It is at her service."
The speech was communicated to her, and she
proposed to attach a dedicatory strip of silk. And then they
came together, and there was wit and repartee suitable to
the electrical atmosphere of the dancing-room, on the march
to a magical hall of supper. Willoughby conducted Mrs.
Mountstuart to the supper-table.
"Were I," said she, "twenty years younger, I
think I would marry you, to cure my infatuation."
"Then let me tell you in advance, madam,"
said he, "that I will do everything to obtain a new lease of
it, except divorce you."
They were infinitely wittier, but so much
was heard and may be reported.
"It makes the business of choosing a wife
for him superhumanly difficult!" Mrs. Mountstuart observed,
after listening to the praises she had set going again when
the ladies were weeded of us, in Lady Patterne's Indian
room, and could converse unhampered upon their own ethereal
themes.
"Willoughby will choose a wife for himself,"
said his mother.
CHAPTER III
CONSTANTIA DURHAM
The great question for the county was
debated in many households, daughter-thronged and
daughterless, long subsequent to the memorable day of
Willoughby's coming of age. Lady Busshe was for Constantia
Durham. She laughed at Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson's notion of
Laetitia Dale. She was a little older than Mrs. Mountstuart,
and had known Willoughby's father, whose marriage into the
wealthiest branch of the Whitford family had been strictly
sagacious. "Patternes marry money; they are not romantic
people," she said. Miss Durham had money, and she had health
and beauty: three mighty qualifications for a Patterne
bride. Her father, Sir John Durham, was a large landowner in
the western division of the county; a pompous gentleman, the
picture of a father-in-law for Willoughby. The father of
Miss Dale was a battered army surgeon from India, tenant of
one of Sir Willoughby's cottages bordering Patterne Park.
His girl was portionless and a poetess. Her writing of the
song in celebration of the young baronet's birthday was
thought a clever venture, bold as only your timid creatures
can be bold. She let the cat out of her bag of verse before
the multitude; she almost proposed to her hero in her
rhymes. She was pretty; her eyelashes were long and dark,
her eyes dark-blue, and her soul was ready to shoot like a
rocket out of them at a look from Willoughby. And he looked,
he certainly looked, though he did not dance with her once
that night, and danced repeatedly with Miss Durham. He gave
Laetitia to Vernon Whitford for the final dance of the
night, and he may have looked at her so much in pity of an
elegant girl allied to such a partner. The "Phoebus Apollo
turned fasting friar" had entirely forgotten his musical
gifts in motion. He crossed himself and crossed his
bewildered lady, and crossed everybody in the figure,
extorting shouts of cordial laughter from his cousin
Willoughby. Be it said that the hour was four in the
morning, when dancers must laugh at somebody, if only to
refresh their feet, and the wit of the hour administers to
the wildest laughter. Vernon was likened to Theseus in the
maze, entirely dependent upon his Ariadne; to a fly released
from a jam-pot; to a "salvage", or green, man caught in a
web of nymphs and made to go the paces. Willoughby was
inexhaustible in the happy similes he poured out to Miss
Durham across the lines of Sir Roger de Coverley, and they
were not forgotten, they procured him a reputation as a
convivial sparkler. Rumour went the round that he intended
to give Laetitia to Vernon for good, when he could decide to
take Miss Durham to himself; his generosity was famous; but
that decision, though the rope was in the form of a knot,
seemed reluctant for the conclusive close haul; it preferred
the state of slackness; and if he courted Laetitia on behalf
of his cousin, his cousinly love must have been greater than
his passion, one had to suppose. He was generous enough for
it, or for marrying the portionless girl himself.
There was a story of a brilliant young widow
of our aristocracy who had very nearly snared him. Why
should he object to marry into our aristocracy? Mrs.
Mountstuart asked him, and he replied that the girls of that
class have no money, and he doubted the quality of their
blood. He had his eyes awake. His duty to his House was a
foremost thought with him, and for such a reason he may have
been more anxious to give the slim and not robust Laetitia
to Vernon than accede to his personal inclination. The
mention of the widow singularly offended him,
notwithstanding the high rank of the lady named. "A widow?"
he said. "I!" He spoke to a widow; an oldish one truly; but
his wrath at the suggestion of his union with a widow led
him to be for the moment oblivious of the minor shades of
good taste. He desired Mrs. Mountstuart to contradict the
story in positive terms. He repeated his desire; he was
urgent to have it contradicted, and said again, "A widow!"
straightening his whole figure to the erectness of the
letter I. She was a widow unmarried a second time, and it
has been known of the stedfast women who retain the name of
their first husband, or do not hamper his title with a
little new squire at their skirts, that they can partially
approve the objections indicated by Sir Willoughby. They are
thinking of themselves when they do so, and they will rarely
say, "I might have married;" rarely within them will they
avow that, with their permission, it might have been. They
can catch an idea of a gentleman's view of the widow's cap.
But a niceness that could feel sharply wounded by the simple
rumour of his alliance with the young relict of an earl was
mystifying. Sir Willoughby unbent. His military letter I
took a careless glance at itself lounging idly and proudly
at ease in the glass of his mind, decked with a wanton
wreath, as he dropped a hint, generously vague, just to show
the origin of the rumour, and the excellent basis it had for
not being credited. He was chidden. Mrs. Mountstuart read
him a lecture. She was however able to contradict the tale
of the young countess. "There is no fear of his marrying
her, my dears."
Meanwhile there was a fear that he would
lose his chance of marrying the beautiful Miss Durham.
The dilemmas of little princes are often
grave. They should be dwelt on now and then for an example
to poor struggling commoners, of the slings and arrows
assailing fortune's most favoured men, that we may preach
contentment to the wretch who cannot muster wherewithal to
marry a wife, or has done it and trots the streets,
pack-laden, to maintain the dame and troops of children
painfully reared to fill subordinate stations. According to
our reading, a moral is always welcome in a moral country,
and especially so when silly envy is to be chastised by it,
the restless craving for change rebuked. Young Sir
Willoughby, then, stood in this dilemma:—a lady was at
either hand of him; the only two that had ever, apart from
metropolitan conquests, not to be recited, touched his
emotions. Susceptible to beauty, he had never seen so
beautiful a girl as Constantia Durham. Equally susceptible
to admiration of himself, he considered Laetitia Dale a
paragon of cleverness. He stood between the queenly rose and
the modest violet. One he bowed to; the other bowed to him.
He could not have both; it is the law governing princes and
pedestrians alike. But which could he forfeit? His growing
acquaintance with the world taught him to put an increasing
price on the sentiments of Miss Dale. Still Constantia's
beauty was of a kind to send away beholders aching. She had
the glory of the racing cutter full sail on a whining
breeze; and she did not court to win him, she flew. In his
more reflective hour the attractiveness of that lady which
held the mirror to his features was paramount. But he had
passionate snatches when the magnetism of the flyer drew him
in her wake. Further to add to the complexity, he loved his
liberty; he was princelier free; he had more subjects, more
slaves; he ruled arrogantly in the world of women; he was
more himself. His metropolitan experiences did not answer to
his liking the particular question, Do we bind the woman
down to us idolatrously by making a wife of her?
In the midst of his deliberations, a report
of the hot pursuit of Miss Durham, casually mentioned to him
by Lady Busshe, drew an immediate proposal from Sir
Willoughby. She accepted him, and they were engaged. She had
been nibbled at, all but eaten up, while he hung dubitative;
and though that was the cause of his winning her, it
offended his niceness. She had not come to him out of
cloistral purity, out of perfect radiancy. Spiritually,
likewise, was he a little prince, a despotic prince. He
wished for her to have come to him out of an egg-shell,
somewhat more astonished at things than a chicken, but as
completely enclosed before he tapped the shell, and seeing
him with her sex's eyes first of all men. She talked frankly
of her cousins and friends, young males. She could have
replied to his bitter wish: "Had you asked me on the night
of your twenty-first birthday, Willoughby!" Since then she
had been in the dust of the world, and he conceived his
peculiar antipathy, destined to be so fatal to him, from the
earlier hours of his engagement. He was quaintly incapable
of a jealousy of individuals. A young Captain Oxford had
been foremost in the swarm pursuing Constantia. Willoughby
thought as little of Captain Oxford as he did of Vernon
Whitford. His enemy was the world, the mass, which confounds
us in a lump, which has breathed on her whom we have
selected, whom we cannot, can never, rub quite clear of her
contact with the abominated crowd. The pleasure of the world
is to bowl down our soldierly letter I; to encroach on our
identity, soil our niceness. To begin to think is the
beginning of disgust of the world.
As soon the engagement was published all the
county said that there had not been a chance for Laetitia,
and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson humbly remarked, in an
attitude of penitence, "I'm not a witch." Lady Busshe could
claim to be one; she had foretold the event. Laetitia was of
the same opinion as the county. She had looked up, but not
hopefully. She had only looked up to the brightest, and, as
he was the highest, how could she have hoped? She was the
solitary companion of a sick father, whose inveterate
prognostic of her, that she would live to rule at Patterne
Hall, tortured the poor girl in proportion as he seemed to
derive comfort from it. The noise of the engagement merely
silenced him; recluse invalids cling obstinately to their
ideas. He had observed Sir Willoughby in the society of his
daughter, when the young baronet revived to a sprightly
boyishness immediately. Indeed, as big boy and little girl,
they had played together of old. Willoughby had been a
handsome, fair boy. The portrait of him at the Hall, in a
hat, leaning on his pony, with crossed legs, and long flaxen
curls over his shoulders, was the image of her soul's most
present angel; and, as a man, he had—she did not suppose
intentionally—subjected her nature to bow to him; so
submissive was she, that it was fuller happiness for her to
think him right in all his actions than to imagine the
circumstances different. This may appear to resemble the
ecstasy of the devotee of Juggernaut, It is a form of the
passion inspired by little princes, and we need not marvel
that a conservative sex should assist to keep them in their
lofty places. What were there otherwise to look up to? We
should have no dazzling beacon-lights if they were levelled
and treated as clod earth; and it is worth while for here
and there a woman to be burned, so long as women's general
adoration of an ideal young man shall be preserved. Purity
is our demand of them. They may justly cry for attraction.
They cannot have it brighter than in the universal bearing
of the eyes of their sisters upon a little prince, one who
has the ostensible virtues in his pay, and can practise them
without injuring himself to make himself unsightly. Let the
races of men be by-and-by astonished at their Gods, if they
please. Meantime they had better continue to worship.
Laetitia did continue. She saw Miss Durham
at Patterne on several occasions. She admired the pair. She
had a wish to witness the bridal ceremony. She was looking
forward to the day with that mixture of eagerness and
withholding which we have as we draw nigh the disenchanting
termination of an enchanting romance, when Sir Willoughby
met her on a Sunday morning, as she crossed his park
solitarily to church. They were within ten days of the
appointed ceremony. He should have been away at Miss
Durham's end of the county. He had, Laetitia knew, ridden
over to her the day before; but there he was; and very
unwontedly, quite surprisingly, he presented his arm to
conduct Laetitia to the church-door, and talked and laughed
in a way that reminded her of a hunting gentleman she had
seen once rising to his feet, staggering from an ugly fall
across hedge and fence into one of the lanes of her short
winter walks. "All's well, all sound, never better, only a
scratch!" the gentleman had said, as he reeled and pressed a
bleeding head. Sir Willoughby chattered of his felicity in
meeting her. "I am really wonderfully lucky," he said, and
he said that and other things over and over, incessantly
talking, and telling an anecdote of county occurrences, and
laughing at it with a mouth that would not widen. He went on
talking in the church porch, and murmuring softly some steps
up the aisle, passing the pews of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson
and Lady Busshe. Of course he was entertaining, but what a
strangeness it was to Laetitia! His face would have been
half under an antique bonnet. It came very close to hers,
and the scrutiny he bent on her was most solicitous.
After the service, he avoided the great
ladies by sauntering up to within a yard or two of where she
sat; he craved her hand on his arm to lead her forth by the
park entrance to the church, all the while bending to her,
discoursing rapidly, appearing radiantly interested in her
quiet replies, with fits of intentness that stared itself
out into dim abstraction. She hazarded the briefest replies
for fear of not having understood him.
One question she asked: "Miss Durham is
well, I trust?"
And he answered "Durham?" and said, "There
is no Miss Durham to my knowledge."
The impression he left with her was, that he
might yesterday during his ride have had an accident and
fallen on his head.
She would have asked that, if she had not
known him for so thorough an Englishman, in his dislike to
have it thought that accidents could hurt even when they
happened to him.
He called the next day to claim her for a
walk. He assured her she had promised it, and he appealed to
her father, who could not testify to a promise he had not
heard, but begged her to leave him to have her walk. So once
more she was in the park with Sir Willoughby, listening to
his raptures over old days. A word of assent from her
sufficed him. "I am now myself," was one of the remarks he
repeated this day. She dilated on the beauty of the park and
the Hall to gratify him.
He did not speak of Miss Durham, and
Laetitia became afraid to mention her name.
At their parting, Willoughby promised
Laetitia that he would call on the morrow. He did not come;
and she could well excuse him, after her hearing of the
tale.
It was a lamentable tale. He had ridden to
Sir John Durham's mansion, a distance of thirty miles, to
hear, on his arrival, that Constantia had quitted her
father's house two days previously on a visit to an aunt in
London, and had just sent word that she was the wife of
Captain Oxford, hussar, and messmate of one of her brothers.
A letter from the bride awaited Willoughby at the Hall. He
had ridden back at night, not caring how he used his horse
in order to get swiftly home, so forgetful of himself was he
under the terrible blow. That was the night of Saturday. On
the day following, being Sunday, he met Laetitia in his
park, led her to church, led her out of it, and the day
after that, previous to his disappearance for some weeks,
was walking with her in full view of the carriages along the
road.
He had, indeed, you see, been very
fortunately, if not considerately, liberated by Miss Durham.
He, as a man of honour, could not have taken the initiative,
but the frenzy of a jealous girl might urge her to such a
course; and how little he suffered from it had been shown to
the world. Miss Durham, the story went, was his mother's
choice for him against his heart's inclinations; which had
finally subdued Lady Patterne. Consequently, there was no
longer an obstacle between Sir Willoughby and Miss Dale. It
was a pleasant and romantic story, and it put most people in
good humour with the county's favourite, as his choice of a
portionless girl of no position would not have done without
the shock of astonishment at the conduct of Miss Durham, and
the desire to feel that so prevailing a gentleman was not in
any degree pitiable. Constantia was called "that mad thing".
Laetitia broke forth in novel and abundant merits; and one
of the chief points of requisition in relation to Patterne—a
Lady Willoughby who would entertain well and animate the
deadness of the Hall, became a certainty when her gentleness
and liveliness and exceeding cleverness were considered. She
was often a visitor at the Hall by Lady Patterne's express
invitation, and sometimes on these occasions Willoughby was
there too, superintending the filling up of his laboratory,
though he was not at home to the county; it was not expected
that he should be yet. He had taken heartily to the pursuit
of science, and spoke of little else. Science, he said, was
in our days the sole object worth a devoted pursuit. But the
sweeping remark could hardly apply to Laetitia, of whom he
was the courteous, quiet wooer you behold when a man has
broken loose from an unhappy tangle to return to the lady of
his first and strongest affections.
Some months of homely courtship ensued, and
then, the decent interval prescribed by the situation having
elapsed, Sir Willoughby Patterne left his native land on a
tour of the globe.
CHAPTER IV
LAETITIA DALE
That was another surprise to the county.
Let us not inquire into the feelings of
patiently starving women; they must obtain some sustenance
of their own, since, as you perceive, they live; evidently
they are not in need of a great amount of nourishment; and
we may set them down for creatures with a rush-light of
animal fire to warm them. They cannot have much vitality who
are so little exclamatory. A corresponding sentiment of
patient compassion, akin to scorn, is provoked by persons
having the opportunity for pathos, and declining to use it.
The public bosom was open to Laetitia for several weeks, and
had she run to it to bewail herself she would have been
cherished in thankfulness for a country drama. There would
have been a party against her, cold people, critical of her
pretensions to rise from an unrecognized sphere to be
mistress of Patterne Hall, but there would also have been a
party against Sir Willoughby, composed of the two or three
revolutionists, tired of the yoke, which are to be found in
England when there is a stir; a larger number of born
sympathetics, ever ready to yield the tear for the tear; and
here and there a Samaritan soul prompt to succour poor
humanity in distress. The opportunity passed undramatized.
Laetitia presented herself at church with a face mildly
devout, according to her custom, and she accepted
invitations to the Hall, she assisted at the reading of
Willoughby's letters to his family, and fed on dry husks of
him wherein her name was not mentioned; never one note of
the summoning call for pathos did this young lady blow.
So, very soon the public bosom closed. She
had, under the fresh interpretation of affairs, too small a
spirit to be Lady Willoughby of Patterne; she could not have
entertained becomingly; he must have seen that the girl was
not the match for him in station, and off he went to conquer
the remainder of a troublesome first attachment, no longer
extremely disturbing, to judge from the tenour of his
letters; really incomparable letters! Lady Busshe and Mrs.
Mountstuart Jenkinson enjoyed a perusal of them. Sir
Willoughby appeared as a splendid young representative
island lord in these letters to his family, despatched from
the principal cities of the United States of America. He
would give them a sketch of "our democratic cousins", he
said. Such cousins! They might all have been in the Marines.
He carried his English standard over that continent, and by
simply jotting down facts, he left an idea of the results of
the measurement to his family and friends at home. He was an
adept in the irony of incongruously grouping. The nature of
the Equality under the stars and stripes was presented in
this manner. Equality! Reflections came occasionally: "These
cousins of ours are highly amusing. I am among the
descendants of the Roundheads. Now and then an allusion to
old domestic differences, in perfect good temper. We go on
in our way; they theirs, in the apparent belief that
Republicanism operates remarkable changes in human nature.
Vernon tries hard to think it does. The upper ten of our
cousins are the Infernal of Paris. The rest of them is
Radical England, as far as I am acquainted with that section
of my country."—Where we compared, they were absurd; where
we contrasted, they were monstrous. The contrast of Vernon's
letters with Willoughby's was just as extreme. You could
hardly have taken them for relatives travelling together, or
Vernon Whitford for a born and bred Englishman. The same
scenes furnished by these two pens might have been sketched
in different hemispheres. Vernon had no irony. He had
nothing of Willoughby's epistolary creative power, which,
causing his family and friends to exclaim: "How like him
that is!" conjured them across the broad Atlantic to behold
and clap hands at his lordliness.
They saw him distinctly, as with the naked
eye; a word, a turn of the pen, or a word unsaid, offered
the picture of him in America, Japan, China, Australia, nay,
the continent of Europe, holding an English review of his
Maker's grotesques. Vernon seemed a sheepish fellow, without
stature abroad, glad of a compliment, grateful for a dinner,
endeavouring sadly to digest all he saw and heard. But one
was a Patterne; the other a Whitford. One had genius; the
other pottered after him with the title of student. One was
the English gentleman wherever he went; the other was a new
kind of thing, nondescript, produced in England of late, and
not likely to come to much good himself, or do much good to
the country.
Vernon's dancing in America was capitally
described by Willoughby. "Adieu to our cousins!" the latter
wrote on his voyage to Japan. "I may possibly have had some
vogue in their ball-rooms, and in showing them an English
seat on horseback: I must resign myself if I have not been
popular among them. I could not sing their national song—if
a congery of states be a nation—and I must confess I
listened with frigid politeness to their singing of it. A
great people, no doubt. Adieu to them. I have had to tear
old Vernon away. He had serious thoughts of settling, means
to correspond with some of them." On the whole, forgetting
two or more "traits of insolence" on the part of his hosts,
which he cited, Willoughby escaped pretty comfortably. The
President had been, consciously or not, uncivil, but one
knew his origin! Upon these interjections, placable flicks
of the lionly tail addressed to Britannia the Ruler, who
expected him in some mildish way to lash terga cauda in
retiring, Sir Willoughby Patterne passed from a land of
alien manners; and ever after he spoke of America
respectfully and pensively, with a tail tucked in, as it
were. His travels were profitable to himself. The fact is,
that there are cousins who come to greatness and must be
pacified, or they will prove annoying. Heaven forefend a
collision between cousins!
Willoughby returned to his England after an
absence of three years. On a fair April morning, the last of
the month, he drove along his park palings, and, by the luck
of things, Laetitia was the first of his friends whom he
met. She was crossing from field to field with a band of
school-children, gathering wild flowers for the morrow
May-day. He sprang to the ground and seized her hand.
"Laetitia Dale!" he said. He panted. "Your name is sweet
English music! And you are well?" The anxious question
permitted him to read deeply in her eyes. He found the man
he sought there, squeezed him passionately, and let her go,
saying: "I could not have prayed for a lovelier home-scene
to welcome me than you and these children flower-gathering.
I don't believe in chance. It was decreed that we should
meet. Do not you think so?"
Laetitia breathed faintly of her gladness.
He begged her to distribute a gold coin
among the little ones; asked for the names of some of them,
and repeated: "Mary, Susan, Charlotte—only the Christian
names, pray! Well, my dears, you will bring your garlands to
the Hall to-morrow morning; and mind, early! no slugabeds
tomorrow; I suppose I am browned, Laetitia?" He smiled in
apology for the foreign sun, and murmured with rapture: "The
green of this English country is unsurpassed. It is
wonderful. Leave England and be baked, if you would
appreciate it. You can't, unless you taste exile as I have
done—for how many years? How many?"
"Three," said Laetitia.
"Thirty!" said he. "It seems to me that
length. At least, I am immensely older. But looking at you,
I could think it less than three. You have not changed. You
are absolutely unchanged. I am bound to hope so. I shall see
you soon. I have much to talk of, much to tell you. I shall
hasten to call on your father. I have specially to speak
with him. I—what happiness this is, Laetitia! But I must not
forget I have a mother. Adieu; for some hours—not for many!"
He pressed her hand again. He was gone.
She dismissed the children to their homes.
Plucking primroses was hard labour now—a dusty business. She
could have wished that her planet had not descended to
earth, his presence agitated her so; but his enthusiastic
patriotism was like a shower that, in the Spring season of
the year, sweeps against the hard-binding East and melts the
air and brings out new colours, makes life flow; and her
thoughts recurred in wonderment to the behaviour of
Constantia Durham. That was Laetitia's manner of taking up
her weakness once more. She could almost have reviled the
woman who had given this beneficent magician, this pathetic
exile, of the aristocratic sunburned visage and deeply
scrutinizing eyes, cause for grief. How deeply his eyes
could read! The starveling of patience awoke to the idea of
a feast. The sense of hunger came with it, and hope came,
and patience fled. She would have rejected hope to keep
patience nigh her; but surely it can not always be Winter!
said her reasoning blood, and we must excuse her as best we
can if she was assured, by her restored warmth that
Willoughby came in the order of the revolving seasons,
marking a long Winter past. He had specially to speak with
her father, he had said. What could that mean? What, but—She
dared not phrase it or view it.
At their next meeting she was "Miss Dale".
A week later he was closeted with her
father.
Mr. Dale, in the evening of that pregnant
day, eulogized Sir Willoughby as a landlord. A new lease of
the cottage was to be granted him on the old terms, he said.
Except that Sir Willoughby had congratulated him in the
possession of an excellent daughter, their interview was one
of landlord and tenant, it appeared; and Laetitia said, "So
we shall not have to leave the cottage?" in a tone of
satisfaction, while she quietly gave a wrench to the neck of
the young hope in her breast. At night her diary received
the line: "This day I was a fool. To-morrow?"
To-morrow and many days afterwards there
were dashes instead of words.
Patience travelled back to her sullenly. As
we must have some kind of food, and she had nothing else,
she took to that and found it dryer than of yore. It is a
composing but a lean dietary. The dead are patient, and we
get a certain likeness to them in feeding on it
unintermittingly overlong. Her hollowed cheeks with the
fallen leaf in them pleaded against herself to justify her
idol for not looking down on one like her. She saw him when
he was at the Hall. He did not notice any change. He was
exceedingly gentle and courteous. More than once she
discovered his eyes dwelling on her, and then he looked
hurriedly at his mother, and Laetitia had to shut her mind
from thinking, lest thinking should be a sin and hope a
guilty spectre. But had his mother objected to her? She
could not avoid asking herself. His tour of the globe had
been undertaken at his mother's desire; she was an ambitious
lady, in failing health; and she wished to have him living
with her at Patterne, yet seemed to agree that he did wisely
to reside in London.
One day Sir Willoughby, in the quiet manner
which was his humour, informed her that he had become a
country gentleman; he had abandoned London, he loathed it as
the burial-place of the individual man. He intended to sit
down on his estates and have his cousin Vernon Whitford to
assist him in managing them, he said; and very amusing was
his description of his cousin's shifts to live by
literature, and add enough to a beggarly income to get his
usual two months of the year in the Alps. Previous to his
great tour, Willoughby had spoken of Vernon's judgement with
derision; nor was it entirely unknown that Vernon had
offended his family pride by some extravagant act. But after
their return he acknowledged Vernon's talents, and seemed
unable to do without him.
The new arrangement gave Laetitia a
companion for her walks. Pedestrianism was a sour business
to Willoughby, whose exclamation of the word indicated a
willingness for any amount of exercise on horseback; but she
had no horse, and so, while he hunted, Laetitia and Vernon
walked, and the neighbourhood speculated on the
circumstances, until the ladies Eleanor and Isabel Patterne
engaged her more frequently for carriage exercise, and Sir
Willoughby was observed riding beside them.
A real and sunny pleasure befell Laetitia in
the establishment of young Crossjay Patterne under her roof;
the son of the lieutenant, now captain, of Marines; a boy of
twelve with the sprights of twelve boys in him, for whose
board and lodgement Vernon provided by arrangement with her
father. Vernon was one of your men that have no occupation
for their money, no bills to pay for repair of their
property, and are insane to spend. He had heard of Captain
Patterne's large family, and proposed to have his eldest boy
at the Hall, to teach him; but Willoughby declined to house
the son of such a father, predicting that the boy's hair
would be red, his skin eruptive, and his practices
detestable. So Vernon, having obtained Mr. Dale's consent to
accommodate this youth, stalked off to Devonport, and
brought back a rosy-cheeked, round-bodied rogue of a boy,
who fell upon meats and puddings, and defeated them, with a
captivating simplicity in his confession that he had never
had enough to eat in his life. He had gone through a
training for a plentiful table. At first, after a number of
helps, young Crossjay would sit and sigh heavily, in
contemplation of the unfinished dish. Subsequently, he told
his host and hostess that he had two sisters above his own
age, and three brothers and two sisters younger than he:
"All hungry!" said die boy.
His pathos was most comical. It was a good
month before he could see pudding taken away from table
without a sigh of regret that he could not finish it as
deputy for the Devonport household. The pranks of the little
fellow, and his revel in a country life, and muddy wildness
in it, amused Laetitia from morning to night. She, when she
had caught him, taught him in the morning; Vernon, favoured
by the chase, in the afternoon. Young Crossjay would have
enlivened any household. He was not only indolent, he was
opposed to the acquisition of knowledge through the medium
of books, and would say: "But I don't want to!" in a tone to
make a logician thoughtful. Nature was very strong in him.
He had, on each return of the hour for instruction, to be
plucked out of the earth, rank of the soil, like a root, for
the exercise of his big round headpiece on those tyrannous
puzzles. But the habits of birds, and the place for their
eggs, and the management of rabbits, and the tickling of
fish, and poaching joys with combative boys of the district,
and how to wheedle a cook for a luncheon for a whole day in
the rain, he soon knew of his great nature. His passion for
our naval service was a means of screwing his attention to
lessons after he had begun to understand that the desert had
to be traversed to attain midshipman's rank. He boasted
ardently of his fighting father, and, chancing to be near
the Hall as he was talking to Vernon and Laetitia of his
father, he propounded a question close to his heart, and he
put it in these words, following: "My father's the one to
lead an army!" when he paused. "I say, Mr. Whitford, Sir
Willoughby's kind to me, and gives me crown-pieces, why
wouldn't he see my father, and my father came here ten miles
in the rain to see him, and had to walk ten miles back, and
sleep at an inn?"
The only answer to be given was, that Sir
Willoughby could not have been at home. "Oh! my father saw
him, and Sir Willoughby said he was not at home," the boy
replied, producing an odd ring in the ear by his repetition
of "not at home" in the same voice as the apology, plainly
innocent of malice. Vernon told Laetitia, however, that the
boy never asked an explanation of Sir Willoughby.
Unlike the horse of the adage, it was easier
to compel young Crossjay to drink of the waters of
instruction than to get him to the brink. His heart was not
so antagonistic as his nature, and by degrees, owing to a
proper mixture of discipline and cajolery, he imbibed. He
was whistling at the cook's windows after a day of wicked
truancy, on an April night, and reported adventures over the
supper supplied to him. Laetitia entered the kitchen with a
reproving forefinger. He jumped to kiss her, and went on
chattering of a place fifteen miles distant, where he had
seen Sir Willoughby riding with a young lady. The
impossibility that the boy should have got so far on foot
made Laetitia doubtful of his veracity, until she heard that
a gentleman had taken him up on the road in a gig, and had
driven him to a farm to show him strings of birds' eggs and
stuffed birds of every English kind, kingfishers, yaffles,
black woodpeckers, goat-sucker owls, more mouth than head,
with dusty, dark-spotted wings, like moths; all very
circumstantial. Still, in spite of his tea at the farm, and
ride back by rail at the gentleman's expense, the tale
seemed fictitious to Laetitia until Crossjay related how
that he had stood to salute on the road to the railway, and
taken off his cap to Sir Willoughby, and Sir Willoughby had
passed him, not noticing him, though the young lady did, and
looked back and nodded. The hue of truth was in that
picture.
Strange eclipse, when the hue of truth comes
shadowing over our bright ideal planet. It will not seem the
planet's fault, but truth's. Reality is the offender;
delusion our treasure that we are robbed of. Then begins
with us the term of wilful delusion, and its necessary
accompaniment of the disgust of reality; exhausting the
heart much more than patient endurance of starvation.
Hints were dropping about the neighbourhood;
the hedgeways twittered, the tree-tops cawed. Mrs.
Mountstuart Jenkinson was loud on the subject: "Patterne is
to have a mistress at last, you say? But there never was a
doubt of his marrying—he must marry; and, so long as he does
not marry a foreign woman, we have no cause to complain. He
met her at Cherriton. Both were struck at the same moment.
Her father is, I hear, some sort of learned man; money; no
land. No house either, I believe. People who spend half
their time on the Continent. They are now for a year at
Upton Park. The very girl to settle down and entertain when
she does think of settling. Eighteen, perfect manners; you
need not ask if a beauty. Sir Willoughby will have his dues.
We must teach her to make amends to him—but don't listen to
Lady Busshe! He was too young at twenty-three or
twenty-four. No young man is ever jilted; he is allowed to
escape. A young man married is a fire-eater bound over to
keep the peace; if he keeps it he worries it. At thirty-one
or thirty-two he is ripe for his command, because he knows
how to bend. And Sir Willoughby is a splendid creature, only
wanting a wife to complete him. For a man like that to go on
running about would never do. Soberly—no! It would soon be
getting ridiculous. He has been no worse than other men,
probably better—infinitely more excusable; but now we have
him, and it was time we should. I shall see her and study
her, sharply, you may be sure; though I fancy I can rely on
his judgement."
In confirmation of the swelling buzz, the
Rev. Dr. Middleton and his daughter paid a flying visit to
the Hall, where they were seen only by the members of the
Patterne family. Young Crossjay had a short conversation
with Miss Middleton, and ran to the cottage full of her—she
loved the navy and had a merry face. She had a smile of very
pleasant humour according to Vernon. The young lady was
outlined to Laetitia as tall, elegant, lively; and painted
as carrying youth like a flag. With her smile of "very
pleasant humour", she could not but be winning.
Vernon spoke more of her father, a scholar
of high repute; happily, a scholar of an independent
fortune. His maturer recollection of Miss Middleton grew
poetic, or he described her in an image to suit a poetic
end: "She gives you an idea of the Mountain Echo. Doctor
Middleton has one of the grandest heads in England."
"What is her Christian name?" said Laetitia.
He thought her Christian name was Clara.
Laetitia went to bed and walked through the
day conceiving the Mountain Echo the swift, wild spirit,
Clara by name, sent fleeting on a far half circle by the
voice it is roused to subserve; sweeter than beautiful, high
above drawing-room beauties as the colours of the sky; and
if, at the same time, elegant and of loveable smiling, could
a man resist her? To inspire the title of Mountain Echo in
any mind, a young lady must be singularly spiritualized. Her
father doated on her, Vernon said. Who would not? It seemed
an additional cruelty that the grace of a poetical
attractiveness should be round her, for this was robbing
Laetitia of some of her own little fortune, mystical though
that might be. But a man like Sir Willoughby had claims on
poetry, possessing as he did every manly grace; and to think
that Miss Middleton had won him by virtue of something
native to her likewise, though mystically, touched Laetitia
with a faint sense of relationship to the chosen girl. "What
is in me, he sees on her." It decked her pride to think so,
as a wreath on the gravestone. She encouraged her
imagination to brood over Clara, and invested her designedly
with romantic charms, in spite of pain; the ascetic zealot
hugs his share of Heaven—most bitter, most blessed—in his
hair-shirt and scourge, and Laetitia's happiness was to
glorify Clara. Through that chosen rival, through her
comprehension of the spirit of Sir Willoughby's choice of
one such as Clara, she was linked to him yet.
Her mood of ecstatic fidelity was a
dangerous exaltation; one that in a desert will distort the
brain, and in the world where the idol dwells will put him,
should he come nigh, to its own furnace-test, and get a
clear brain out of a burnt heart. She was frequently at the
Hall, helping to nurse Lady Patterne. Sir Willoughby had
hitherto treated her as a dear insignificant friend, to whom
it was unnecessary that he should mention the object of his
rides to Upton Park.
He had, however, in the contemplation of
what he was gaining, fallen into anxiety about what he might
be losing. She belonged to his brilliant youth; her devotion
was the bride of his youth; he was a man who lived backward
almost as intensely as in the present; and, notwithstanding
Laetitia's praiseworthy zeal in attending on his mother, he
suspected some unfaithfulness: hardly without cause: she had
not looked paler of late; her eyes had not reproached him;
the secret of the old days between them had been as little
concealed as it was exposed. She might have buried it, after
the way of woman, whose bosoms can be tombs, if we and the
world allow them to be; absolutely sepulchres, where you lie
dead, ghastly. Even if not dead and horrible to think of,
you may be lying cold, somewhere in a corner. Even if
embalmed, you may not be much visited. And how is the world
to know you are embalmed? You are no better than a rotting
wretch to the world that does not have peeps of you in the
woman's breast, and see lights burning and an occasional
exhibition of the services of worship. There are women—tell
us not of her of Ephesus!—that have embalmed you, and have
quitted the world to keep the tapers alight, and a stranger
comes, and they, who have your image before them, will
suddenly blow out the vestal flames and treat you as dust to
fatten the garden of their bosoms for a fresh flower of
love. Sir Willoughby knew it; he had experience of it in the
form of the stranger; and he knew the stranger's feelings
toward his predecessor and the lady.
He waylaid Laetitia, to talk of himself and
his plans: the project of a run to Italy. Enviable? Yes, but
in England you live the higher moral life. Italy boasts of
sensual beauty; the spiritual is yours. "I know Italy well;
I have often wished to act as a cicerone to you there. As it
is, I suppose I shall be with those who know the land as
well as I do, and will not be particularly enthusiastic:—if
you are what you were?" He was guilty of this perplexing
twist from one person to another in a sentence more than
once. While he talked exclusively of himself it seemed to
her a condescension. In time he talked principally of her,
beginning with her admirable care of his mother; and he
wished to introduce "a Miss Middleton" to her; he wanted her
opinion of Miss Middleton; he relied on her intuition of
character, had never known it err.
"If I supposed it could err, Miss Dale, I
should not be so certain of myself. I am bound up in my good
opinion of you, you see; and you must continue the same, or
where shall I be?" Thus he was led to dwell upon friendship,
and the charm of the friendship of men and women,
"Platonism", as it was called. "I have laughed at it in the
world, but not in the depth of my heart. The world's
platonic attachments are laughable enough. You have taught
me that the ideal of friendship is possible—when we find two
who are capable of a disinterested esteem. The rest of life
is duty; duty to parents, duty to country. But friendship is
the holiday of those who can be friends. Wives are
plentiful, friends are rare. I know how rare!"
Laetitia swallowed her thoughts as they
sprang up. Why was he torturing her?—to give himself a
holiday? She could bear to lose him—she was used to it—and
bear his indifference, but not that he should disfigure
himself; it made her poor. It was as if he required an oath
of her when he said: "Italy! But I shall never see a day in
Italy to compare with the day of my return to England, or
know a pleasure so exquisite as your welcome of me. Will you
be true to that? May I look forward to just another such
meeting?"
He pressed her for an answer. She gave the
best she could. He was dissatisfied, and to her hearing it
was hardly in the tone of manliness that he entreated her to
reassure him; he womanized his language. She had to say: "I
am afraid I can not undertake to make it an appointment, Sir
Willoughby," before he recovered his alertness, which he
did, for he was anything but obtuse, with the reply, "You
would keep it if you promised, and freeze at your post. So,
as accidents happen, we must leave it to fate. The will's
the thing. You know my detestation of changes. At least I
have you for my tenant, and wherever I am, I see your light
at the end of my park."
"Neither my father nor I would willingly
quit Ivy Cottage," said
Laetitia.
"So far, then," he murmured. "You will give
me a long notice, and it must be with my consent if you
think of quitting?"
"I could almost engage to do that," she
said.
"You love the place?"
"Yes; I am the most contented of cottagers."
"I believe, Miss Dale, it would be well for
my happiness were I a cottager."
"That is the dream of the palace. But to be
one, and not to wish to be other, is quiet sleep in
comparison."
"You paint a cottage in colours that tempt
one to run from big houses and households."
"You would run back to them faster, Sir
Willoughby."
"You may know me," said he, bowing and
passing on contentedly. He stopped. "But I am not
ambitious."
"Perhaps you are too proud for ambition, Sir
Willoughby."
"You hit me to the life!"
He passed on regretfully. Clara Middleton
did not study and know him like Laetitia Dale.
Laetitia was left to think it pleased him to
play at cat and mouse. She had not "hit him to the life", or
she would have marvelled in acknowledging how sincere he
was.
At her next sitting by the bedside of Lady
Patterne she received a certain measure of insight that
might have helped her to fathom him, if only she could have
kept her feelings down.
The old lady was affectionately confidential
in talking of her one subject, her son. "And here is another
dashing girl, my dear; she has money and health and beauty;
and so has he; and it appears a fortunate union; I hope and
pray it may be; but we begin to read the world when our eyes
grow dim, because we read the plain lines, and I ask myself
whether money and health and beauty on both sides have not
been the mutual attraction. We tried it before; and that
girl Durham was honest, whatever we may call her. I should
have desired an appreciative thoughtful partner for him, a
woman of mind, with another sort of wealth and beauty. She
was honest, she ran away in time; there was a worse thing
possible than that. And now we have the same chapter, and
the same kind of person, who may not be quite as honest; and
I shall not see the end of it. Promise me you will always be
good to him; be my son's friend; his Egeria, he names you.
Be what you were to him when that girl broke his heart, and
no one, not even his mother, was allowed to see that he
suffered anything. Comfort him in his sensitiveness.
Willoughby has the most entire faith in you. Were that
destroyed—I shudder! You are, he says, and he has often
said, his image of the constant woman."
Laetitia's hearing took in no more. She
repeated to herself for days: "His image of the constant
woman!" Now, when he was a second time forsaking her, his
praise of her constancy wore the painful ludicrousness of
the look of a whimper on the face.
CHAPTER V
CLARA MIDDLETON
The great meeting of Sir Willoughby Patterne
and Miss Middleton had taken place at Cherriton Grange, the
seat of a county grandee, where this young lady of eighteen
was first seen rising above the horizon. She had money and
health and beauty, the triune of perfect starriness, which
makes all men astronomers. He looked on her, expecting her
to look at him. But as soon as he looked he found that he
must be in motion to win a look in return. He was one of a
pack; many were ahead of him, the whole of them were eager.
He had to debate within himself how best to communicate to
her that he was Willoughby Patterne, before her gloves were
too much soiled to flatter his niceness, for here and there,
all around, she was yielding her hand to partners—obscurant
males whose touch leaves a stain. Far too generally gracious
was Her Starriness to please him. The effect of it,
nevertheless, was to hurry him with all his might into the
heat of the chase, while yet he knew no more of her than
that he was competing for a prize, and Willoughby Patterne
was only one of dozens to the young lady.
A deeper student of Science than his rivals,
he appreciated Nature's compliment in the fair ones choice
of you. We now scientifically know that in this department
of the universal struggle, success is awarded to the
bettermost. You spread a handsomer tail than your fellows,
you dress a finer top-knot, you pipe a newer note, have a
longer stride; she reviews you in competition, and selects
you. The superlative is magnetic to her. She may be looking
elsewhere, and you will see—the superlative will simply have
to beckon, away she glides. She cannot help herself; it is
her nature, and her nature is the guarantee for the noblest
races of men to come of her. In complimenting you, she is a
promise of superior offspring. Science thus—or it is better
to say—an acquaintance with science facilitates the
cultivation of aristocracy. Consequently a successful
pursuit and a wresting of her from a body of competitors,
tells you that you are the best man. What is more, it tells
the world so.
Willoughby aired his amiable superlatives in
the eye of Miss Middleton; he had a leg. He was the heir of
successful competitors. He had a style, a tone, an artist
tailor, an authority of manner; he had in the hopeful ardour
of the chase among a multitude a freshness that gave him
advantage; and together with his undeviating energy when
there was a prize to be won and possessed, these were scarce
resistible. He spared no pains, for he was adust and athirst
for the winning-post. He courted her father, aware that men
likewise, and parents pre-eminently, have their preference
for the larger offer, the deeper pocket, the broader lands,
the respectfuller consideration. Men, after their fashion,
as well as women, distinguish the bettermost, and aid him to
succeed, as Dr. Middleton certainly did in the crisis of the
memorable question proposed to his daughter within a month
of Willoughby's reception at Upton Park. The young lady was
astonished at his whirlwind wooing of her, and bent to it
like a sapling. She begged for time; Willoughby could barely
wait. She unhesitatingly owned that she liked no one better,
and he consented. A calm examination of his position told
him that it was unfair so long as he stood engaged, and she
did not. She pleaded a desire to see a little of the world
before she plighted herself. She alarmed him; he assumed the
amazing god of love under the subtlest guise of the
divinity. Willingly would he obey her behests, resignedly
languish, were it not for his mother's desire to see the
future lady of Patterne established there before she died.
Love shone cunningly through the mask of filial duty, but
the plea of urgency was reasonable. Dr. Middleton thought it
reasonable, supposing his daughter to have an inclination.
She had no disinclination, though she had a maidenly desire
to see a little of the world—grace for one year, she said.
Willoughby reduced the year to six months, and granted that
term, for which, in gratitude, she submitted to stand
engaged; and that was no light whispering of a word. She was
implored to enter the state of captivity by the
pronunciation of vows—a private but a binding ceremonial.
She had health and beauty, and money to gild these gifts;
not that he stipulated for money with his bride, but it adds
a lustre to dazzle the world; and, moreover, the pack of
rival pursuers hung close behind, yelping and raising their
dolorous throats to the moon. Captive she must be.
He made her engagement no light whispering
matter. It was a solemn plighting of a troth. Why not?
Having said, I am yours, she could say, I am wholly yours, I
am yours forever, I swear it, I will never swerve from it, I
am your wife in heart, yours utterly; our engagement is
written above. To this she considerately appended, "as far
as I am concerned"; a piece of somewhat chilling generosity,
and he forced her to pass him through love's catechism in
turn, and came out with fervent answers that bound him to
her too indissolubly to let her doubt of her being loved.
And I am loved! she exclaimed to her heart's echoes, in
simple faith and wonderment. Hardly had she begun to think
of love ere the apparition arose in her path. She had not
thought of love with any warmth, and here it was. She had
only dreamed of love as one of the distant blessings of the
mighty world, lying somewhere in the world's forests, across
wild seas, veiled, encompassed with beautiful perils, a
throbbing secrecy, but too remote to quicken her bosom's
throbs. Her chief idea of it was, the enrichment of the
world by love.
Thus did Miss Middleton acquiesce in the
principle of selection.
And then did the best man of a host blow his
triumphant horn, and loudly.
He looked the fittest; he justified the
dictum of Science. The survival of the Patternes was
assured. "I would," he said to his admirer, Mrs. Mountstuart
Jenkinson, "have bargained for health above everything, but
she has everything besides—lineage, beauty, breeding: is
what they call an heiress, and is the most accomplished of
her sex." With a delicate art he conveyed to the lady's
understanding that Miss Middleton had been snatched from a
crowd, without a breath of the crowd having offended his
niceness. He did it through sarcasm at your modern young
women, who run about the world nibbling and nibbled at,
until they know one sex as well as the other, and are not a
whit less cognizant of the market than men; pure, possibly;
it is not so easy to say innocent; decidedly not our
feminine ideal. Miss Middleton was different: she was the
true ideal, fresh-gathered morning fruit in a basket,
warranted by her bloom.
Women do not defend their younger sisters
for doing what they perhaps have done—lifting a veil to be
seen, and peeping at a world where innocence is as poor a
guarantee as a babe's caul against shipwreck. Women of the
world never think of attacking the sensual stipulation for
perfect bloom, silver purity, which is redolent of the
Oriental origin of the love-passion of their lords. Mrs.
Mountstuart congratulated Sir Willoughby on the prize he had
won in the fair western-eastern.
"Let me see her," she said; and Miss
Middleton was introduced and critically observed.
She had the mouth that smiles in repose. The
lips met full on the centre of the bow and thinned along to
a lifting dimple; the eyelids also lifted slightly at the
outer corners, and seemed, like the lip into the limpid
cheek, quickening up the temples, as with a run of light, or
the ascension indicated off a shoot of colour. Her features
were playfellows of one another, none of them pretending to
rigid correctness, nor the nose to the ordinary dignity of
governess among merry girls, despite which the nose was of a
fair design, not acutely interrogative or inviting to
gambols. Aspens imaged in water, waiting for the breeze,
would offer a susceptible lover some suggestion of her face:
a pure, smooth-white face, tenderly flushed in the cheeks,
where the gentle dints, were faintly intermelting even
during quietness. Her eyes were brown, set well between mild
lids, often shadowed, not unwakeful. Her hair of lighter
brown, swelling above her temples on the sweep to the knot,
imposed the triangle of the fabulous wild woodland visage
from brow to mouth and chin, evidently in agreement with her
taste; and the triangle suited her; but her face was not
significant of a tameless wildness or of weakness; her
equable shut mouth threw its long curve to guard the small
round chin from that effect; her eyes wavered only in
humour, they were steady when thoughtfulness was awakened;
and at such seasons the build of her winter-beechwood hair
lost the touch of nymphlike and whimsical, and strangely, by
mere outline, added to her appearance of studious
concentration. Observe the hawk on stretched wings over the
prey he spies, for an idea of this change in the look of a
young lady whom Vernon Whitford could liken to the Mountain
Echo, and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson pronounced to be "a
dainty rogue in porcelain".
Vernon's fancy of her must have sprung from
her prompt and most musical responsiveness. He preferred the
society of her learned father to that of a girl under twenty
engaged to his cousin, but the charm of her ready tongue and
her voice was to his intelligent understanding wit, natural
wit, crystal wit, as opposed to the paste-sparkle of the wit
of the town. In his encomiums he did not quote Miss
Middleton's wit; nevertheless, he ventured to speak of it to
Mrs. Mountstuart, causing that lady to say: "Ah, well, I
have not noticed the wit. You may have the art of drawing it
out."
No one had noticed the wit. The corrupted
hearing of people required a collision of sounds, Vernon
supposed. For his part, to prove their excellence, he
recollected a great many of Miss Middleton's remarks; they
came flying to him; and so long as he forbore to speak them
aloud, they had a curious wealth of meaning. It could not be
all her manner, however much his own manner might spoil
them. It might be, to a certain degree, her quickness at
catching the hue and shade of evanescent conversation.
Possibly by remembering the whole of a conversation wherein
she had her place, the wit was to be tested; only how could
any one retain the heavy portion? As there was no use in
being argumentative on a subject affording him personally,
and apparently solitarily, refreshment and enjoyment, Vernon
resolved to keep it to himself. The eulogies of her beauty,
a possession in which he did not consider her so very
conspicuous, irritated him in consequence. To flatter Sir
Willoughby, it was the fashion to exalt her as one of the
types of beauty; the one providentially selected to set off
his masculine type. She was compared to those delicate
flowers, the ladies of the Court of China, on rice-paper. A
little French dressing would make her at home on the sward
by the fountain among the lutes and whispers of the
bewitching silken shepherdesses who live though they never
were. Lady Busshe was reminded of the favourite lineaments
of the women of Leonardo, the angels of Luini. Lady Culmer
had seen crayon sketches of demoiselles of the French
aristocracy resembling her. Some one mentioned an antique
statue of a figure breathing into a flute: and the mouth at
the flutestop might have a distant semblance of the bend of
her mouth, but this comparison was repelled as grotesque.
For once Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson was
unsuccessful.
Her "dainty rogue in porcelain" displeased
Sir Willoughby. "Why rogue?" he said. The lady's fame for
hitting the mark fretted him, and the grace of his bride's
fine bearing stood to support him in his objection. Clara
was young, healthy, handsome; she was therefore fitted to be
his wife, the mother of his children, his companion picture.
Certainly they looked well side by side. In walking with
her, in drooping to her, the whole man was made conscious of
the female image of himself by her exquisite unlikeness. She
completed him, added the softer lines wanting to his
portrait before the world. He had wooed her rageingly; he
courted her becomingly; with the manly self-possession
enlivened by watchful tact which is pleasing to girls. He
never seemed to undervalue himself in valuing her: a secret
priceless in the courtship of young women that have heads;
the lover doubles their sense of personal worth through not
forfeiting his own. Those were proud and happy days when he
rode Black Norman over to Upton Park, and his lady looked
forth for him and knew him coming by the faster beating of
her heart.
Her mind, too, was receptive. She took
impressions of his characteristics, and supplied him a
feast. She remembered his chance phrases; noted his ways,
his peculiarities, as no one of her sex had done. He thanked
his cousin Vernon for saying she had wit. She had it, and of
so high a flavour that the more he thought of the epigram
launched at her the more he grew displeased. With the wit to
understand him, and the heart to worship, she had a dignity
rarely seen in young ladies.
"Why rogue?" he insisted with Mrs.
Mountstuart.
"I said—in porcelain," she replied.
"Rogue perplexes me."
"Porcelain explains it."
"She has the keenest sense of honour."
"I am sure she is a paragon of rectitude."
"She has a beautiful bearing."
"The carriage of a young princess!"
"I find her perfect."
"And still she may be a dainty rogue in
porcelain."
"Are you judging by the mind or the person,
ma'am?"
"Both."
"And which is which?"
"There's no distinction."
"Rogue and mistress of Patterne do not go
together."
"Why not? She will be a novelty to our
neighbourhood and an animation of the Hall."
"To be frank, rogue does not rightly match
with me."
"Take her for a supplement."
"You like her?"
"In love with her! I can imagine life-long
amusement in her company.
Attend to my advice: prize the porcelain and play with the
rogue."
Sir Willoughby nodded, unilluminated. There
was nothing of rogue in himself, so there could be nothing
of it in his bride. Elfishness, tricksiness, freakishness,
were antipathetic to his nature; and he argued that it was
impossible he should have chosen for his complement a person
deserving the title. It would not have been sanctioned by
his guardian genius. His closer acquaintance with Miss
Middleton squared with his first impressions; you know that
this is convincing; the common jury justifies the
presentation of the case to them by the grand jury; and his
original conclusion that she was essentially feminine, in
other words, a parasite and a chalice, Clara's conduct
confirmed from day to day. He began to instruct her in the
knowledge of himself without reserve, and she, as she grew
less timid with him, became more reflective.
"I judge by character," he said to Mrs.
Mountstuart.
"If you have caught the character of a
girl," said she.
"I think I am not far off it."
"So it was thought by the man who dived for
the moon in a well."
"How women despise their sex!"
"Not a bit. She has no character yet. You
are forming it, and pray be advised and be merry; the solid
is your safest guide; physiognomy and manners will give you
more of a girl's character than all the divings you can do.
She is a charming young woman, only she is one of that
sort."
"Of what sort?" Sir Willoughby asked,
impatiently.
"Rogues in porcelain."
"I am persuaded I shall never comprehend
it."
"I cannot help you one bit further."
"The word rogue!"
"It was dainty rogue."
"Brittle, would you say?"
"I am quite unable to say."
"An innocent naughtiness?"
"Prettily moulded in a delicate substance."
"You are thinking of some piece of Dresden
you suppose her to resemble."
"I dare say."
"Artificial?"
"You would not have her natural?"
"I am heartily satisfied with her from head
to foot, my dear Mrs.
Mountstuart."
"Nothing could be better. And sometimes she
will lead, and generally you will lead, and everything will
go well, my dear Sir Willoughby."
Like all rapid phrasers, Mrs. Mountstuart
detested the analysis of her sentence. It had an outline in
vagueness, and was flung out to be apprehended, not
dissected. Her directions for the reading of Miss
Middleton's character were the same that she practised in
reading Sir Willoughby's, whose physiognomy and manners
bespoke him what she presumed him to be, a splendidly proud
gentleman, with good reason.
Mrs. Mountstuart's advice was wiser than her
procedure, for she stopped short where he declined to begin.
He dived below the surface without studying that index-page.
He had won Miss Middleton's hand; he believed he had
captured her heart; but he was not so certain of his
possession of her soul, and he went after it. Our enamoured
gentleman had therefore no tally of Nature's writing above
to set beside his discoveries in the deeps. Now it is a
dangerous accompaniment of this habit of driving, that where
we do not light on the discoveries we anticipate, we fall to
work sowing and planting; which becomes a disturbance of the
gentle bosom. Miss Middleton's features were legible as to
the mainspring of her character. He could have seen that she
had a spirit with a natural love of liberty, and required
the next thing to liberty, spaciousness, if she was to own
allegiance. Those features, unhappily, instead of serving
for an introduction to the within, were treated as the
mirror of himself. They were indeed of an amiable sweetness
to tempt an accepted lover to angle for the first person in
the second. But he had made the discovery that their minds
differed on one or two points, and a difference of view in
his bride was obnoxious to his repose. He struck at it
recurringly to show her error under various aspects. He
desired to shape her character to the feminine of his own,
and betrayed the surprise of a slight disappointment at her
advocacy of her ideas. She said immediately: "It is not too
late, Willoughby," and wounded him, for he wanted her simply
to be material in his hands for him to mould her; he had no
other thought. He lectured her on the theme of the infinity
of love. How was it not too late? They were plighted; they
were one eternally; they could not be parted. She listened
gravely, conceiving the infinity as a narrow dwelling where
a voice droned and ceased not. However, she listened. She
became an attentive listener.
CHAPTER VI
HIS COURTSHIP
The world was the principal topic of
dissension between these lovers. His opinion of the world
affected her like a creature threatened with a deprivation
of air. He explained to his darling that lovers of necessity
do loathe the world. They live in the world, they accept its
benefits, and assist it as well as they can. In their hearts
they must despise it, shut it out, that their love for one
another may pour in a clear channel, and with all the force
they have. They cannot enjoy the sense of security for their
love unless they fence away the world. It is, you will
allow, gross; it is a beast. Formally we thank it for the
good we get of it; only we two have an inner temple where
the worship we conduct is actually, if you would but see it,
an excommunication of the world. We abhor that beast to
adore that divinity. This gives us our oneness, our
isolation, our happiness. This is to love with the soul. Do
you see, darling?
She shook her head; she could not see it.
She would admit none of the notorious errors, of the world;
its backbiting, selfishness, coarseness, intrusiveness,
infectiousness. She was young. She might, Willoughby
thought, have let herself be led; she was not docile. She
must be up in arms as a champion of the world; and one saw
she was hugging her dream of a romantic world, nothing else.
She spoilt the secret bower-song he delighted to tell over
to her. And how, Powers of Love! is love-making to be
pursued if we may not kick the world out of our bower and
wash our hands of it? Love that does not spurn the world
when lovers curtain themselves is a love—is it not so?—that
seems to the unwhipped, scoffing world to go slinking into
basiation's obscurity, instead of on a glorious march behind
the screen. Our hero had a strong sentiment as to the policy
of scorning the world for the sake of defending his personal
pride and (to his honour, be it said) his lady's delicacy.
The act of seeming put them both above the
world, said retro Sathanas! So much, as a piece of tactics:
he was highly civilized: in the second instance, he knew it
to be the world which must furnish the dry sticks for the
bonfire of a woman's worship. He knew, too, that he was
prescribing poetry to his betrothed, practicable poetry. She
had a liking for poetry, and sometimes quoted the stuff in
defiance of his pursed mouth and pained murmur: "I am no
poet;" but his poetry of the enclosed and fortified bower,
without nonsensical rhymes to catch the ears of women,
appeared incomprehensible to her, if not adverse. She would
not burn the world for him; she would not, though a purer
poetry is little imaginable, reduce herself to ashes, or
incense, or essence, in honour of him, and so, by love's
transmutation, literally be the man she was to marry. She
preferred to be herself, with the egoism of women. She said
it: she said: "I must be myself to be of any value to you,
Willoughby." He was indefatigable in his lectures on the
aesthetics of love. Frequently, for an indemnification to
her (he had no desire that she should be a loser by ceasing
to admire the world), he dwelt on his own youthful ideas;
and his original fancies about the world were presented to
her as a substitute for the theme.
Miss Middleton bore it well, for she was
sure that he meant well. Bearing so well what was
distasteful to her, she became less well able to bear what
she had merely noted in observation before; his view of
scholarship; his manner toward Mr. Vernon Whitford, of whom
her father spoke warmly; the rumour concerning his treatment
of a Miss Dale. And the country tale of Constantia Durham
sang itself to her in a new key. He had no contempt for the
world's praises. Mr. Whitford wrote the letters to the
county paper which gained him applause at various great
houses, and he accepted it, and betrayed a tingling fright
lest he should be the victim of a sneer of the world he
contemned. Recollecting his remarks, her mind was afflicted
by the "something illogical" in him that we readily discover
when our natures are no longer running free, and then at
once we yearn for a disputation. She resolved that she would
one day, one distant day, provoke it—upon what? The special
point eluded her. The world is too huge a client, and too
pervious, too spotty, for a girl to defend against a man.
That "something illogical" had stirred her feelings more
than her intellect to revolt. She could not constitute
herself the advocate of Mr. Whitford. Still she marked the
disputation for an event to come.
Meditating on it, she fell to picturing Sir
Willoughby's face at the first accents of his bride's
decided disagreement with him. The picture once conjured up
would not be laid. He was handsome; so correctly handsome,
that a slight unfriendly touch precipitated him into
caricature. His habitual air of happy pride, of indignant
contentment rather, could easily be overdone. Surprise, when
he threw emphasis on it, stretched him with the tall
eyebrows of a mask—limitless under the spell of caricature;
and in time, whenever she was not pleased by her thoughts,
she had that, and not his likeness, for the vision of him.
And it was unjust, contrary to her deeper feelings; she
rebuked herself, and as much as her naughty spirit
permitted, she tried to look on him as the world did; an
effort inducing reflections upon the blessings of ignorance.
She seemed to herself beset by a circle of imps, hardly
responsible for her thoughts.
He outshone Mr. Whitford in his behaviour to
young Crossjay. She had seen him with the boy, and he was
amused, indulgent, almost frolicsome, in contradistinction
to Mr. Whitford's tutorly sharpness. He had the English
father's tone of a liberal allowance for boys' tastes and
pranks, and he ministered to the partiality of the genus for
pocket-money. He did not play the schoolmaster, like
bookworms who get poor little lads in their grasp.
Mr. Whitford avoided her very much. He came
to Upton Park on a visit to her father, and she was not
particularly sorry that she saw him only at table. He
treated her by fits to a level scrutiny of deep-set eyes
unpleasantly penetrating. She had liked his eyes. They
became unbearable; they dwelt in the memory as if they had
left a phosphorescent line. She had been taken by playmate
boys in her infancy to peep into hedge-leaves, where the
mother-bird brooded on the nest; and the eyes of the bird in
that marvellous dark thickset home, had sent her away with
worlds of fancy. Mr. Whitford's gaze revived her
susceptibility, but not the old happy wondering. She was
glad of his absence, after a certain hour that she passed
with Willoughby, a wretched hour to remember. Mr. Whitford
had left, and Willoughby came, bringing bad news of his
mother's health. Lady Patterne was fast failing. Her son
spoke of the loss she would be to him; he spoke of the
dreadfulness of death. He alluded to his own death to come
carelessly, with a philosophical air.
"All of us must go! our time is short."
"Very," she assented.
It sounded like want of feeling.
"If you lose me, Clara!"
"But you are strong, Willoughby."
"I may be cut off to-morrow."
"Do not talk in such a manner."
"It is as well that it should be faced."
"I cannot see what purpose it serves."
"Should you lose me, my love!"
"Willoughby!"
"Oh, the bitter pang of leaving you!"
"Dear Willoughby, you are distressed; your
mother may recover; let us hope she will; I will help to
nurse her; I have offered, you know; I am ready, most
anxious. I believe I am a good nurse."
"It is this belief—that one does not die
with death!"
"That is our comfort."
"When we love?"
"Does it not promise that we meet again?"
"To walk the world and see you perhaps—with
another!"
"See me?—Where? Here?"
"Wedded . . . to another. You! my bride;
whom I call mine; and you are! You would be still—in that
horror! But all things are possible; women are women; they
swim in infidelity, from wave to wave! I know them."
"Willoughby, do not torment yourself and me,
I beg you."
He meditated profoundly, and asked her:
"Could you be such a saint among women?"
"I think I am a more than usually childish
girl."
"Not to forget me?"
"Oh! no."
"Still to be mine?"
"I am yours."
"To plight yourself?"
"It is done."
"Be mine beyond death?"
"Married is married, I think."
"Clara! to dedicate your life to our love!
Never one touch; not one whisper! not a thought, not a
dream! Could you—it agonizes me to imagine . . . be
inviolate? mine above?—mine before all men, though I am
gone:—true to my dust? Tell me. Give me that assurance. True
to my name!—Oh, I hear them. 'His relict!' Buzzings about
Lady Patterne. 'The widow.' If you knew their talk of
widows! Shut your ears, my angel! But if she holds them off
and keeps her path, they are forced to respect her. The dead
husband is not the dishonoured wretch they fancied him,
because he was out of their way. He lives in the heart of
his wife. Clara! my Clara! as I live in yours, whether here
or away; whether you are a wife or widow, there is no
distinction for love—I am your husband—say it—eternally. I
must have peace; I cannot endure the pain. Depressed, yes; I
have cause to be. But it has haunted me ever since we joined
hands. To have you—to lose you!"
"Is it not possible that I may be the first
to die?" said Miss
Middleton.
"And lose you, with the thought that you,
lovely as you are, and the dogs of the world barking round
you, might . . . Is it any wonder that I have my feeling for
the world? This hand!—the thought is horrible. You would be
surrounded; men are brutes; the scent of unfaithfulness
excites them, overjoys them. And I helpless! The thought is
maddening. I see a ring of monkeys grinning. There is your
beauty, and man's delight in desecrating. You would be
worried night and day to quit my name, to . . . I feel the
blow now. You would have no rest for them, nothing to cling
to without your oath."
"An oath!" said Miss Middleton.
"It is no delusion, my love, when I tell you
that with this thought upon me I see a ring of monkey faces
grinning at me; they haunt me. But you do swear it! Once,
and I will never trouble you on the subject again. My
weakness! if you like. You will learn that it is love, a
man's love, stronger than death."
"An oath?" she said, and moved her lips to
recall what she might have said and forgotten. "To what?
what oath?"
"That you will be true to me dead as well as
living! Whisper it."
"Willoughby, I shall be true to my vows at
the altar."
"To me! me!"
"It will be to you."
"To my soul. No heaven can be for me—I see
none, only torture, unless I have your word, Clara. I trust
it. I will trust it implicitly. My confidence in you is
absolute."
"Then you need not be troubled."
"It is for you, my love; that you may be
armed and strong when I am not by to protect you."
"Our views of the world are opposed,
Willoughby."
"Consent; gratify me; swear it. Say: 'Beyond
death.' Whisper it. I ask for nothing more. Women think the
husband's grave breaks the bond, cuts the tie, sets them
loose. They wed the flesh—pah! What I call on you for is
nobility; the transcendent nobility of faithfulness beyond
death. 'His widow!' let them say; a saint in widowhood."
"My vows at the altar must suffice."
"You will not? Clara!"
"I am plighted to you."
"Not a word?—a simple promise? But you love
me?"
"I have given you the best proof of it that
I can."
"Consider how utterly I place confidence in
you."
"I hope it is well placed."
"I could kneel to you, to worship you, if
you would, Clara!"
"Kneel to Heaven, not to me, Willoughby. I
am—I wish I were able to tell what I am. I may be
inconstant; I do not know myself. Think; question yourself
whether I am really the person you should marry. Your wife
should have great qualities of mind and soul. I will consent
to hear that I do not possess them, and abide by the
verdict."
"You do; you do possess them!" Willoughby
cried. "When you know better what the world is, you will
understand my anxiety. Alive, I am strong to shield you from
it; dead, helpless—that is all. You would be clad in mail,
steel-proof, inviolable, if you would . . . But try to enter
into my mind; think with me, feel with me. When you have
once comprehended the intensity of the love of a man like
me, you will not require asking. It is the difference of the
elect and the vulgar; of the ideal of love from the coupling
of the herds. We will let it drop. At least, I have your
hand. As long as I live I have your hand. Ought I not to be
satisfied? I am; only I see further than most men, and feel
more deeply. And now I must ride to my mother's bedside. She
dies Lady Patterne! It might have been that she . . . But
she is a woman of women! With a father-in-law! Just heaven!
Could I have stood by her then with the same feelings of
reverence? A very little, my love, and everything gained for
us by civilization crumbles; we fall back to the first
mortar-bowl we were bruised and stirred in. My thoughts,
when I take my stand to watch by her, come to this
conclusion, that, especially in women, distinction is the
thing to be aimed at. Otherwise we are a weltering human
mass. Women must teach us to venerate them, or we may as
well be bleating and barking and bellowing. So, now enough.
You have but to think a little. I must be off. It may have
happened during my absence. I will write. I shall hear from
you? Come and see me mount Black Norman. My respects to your
father. I have no time to pay them in person. One!"
He took the one—love's mystical number—from
which commonly spring multitudes; but, on the present
occasion, it was a single one, and cold. She watched him
riding away on his gallant horse, as handsome a cavalier as
the world could show, and the contrast of his recent
language and his fine figure was a riddle that froze her
blood. Speech so foreign to her ears, unnatural in tone,
unmanlike even for a lover (who is allowed a softer
dialect), set her vainly sounding for the source and drift
of it. She was glad of not having to encounter eyes like Mr.
Vernon Whitford's.
On behalf of Sir Willoughby, it is to be
said that his mother, without infringing on the degree of
respect for his decisions and sentiments exacted by him, had
talked to him of Miss Middleton, suggesting a volatility of
temperament in the young lady that struck him as
consentaneous with Mrs Mountstuart's "rogue in porcelain",
and alarmed him as the independent observations of two
world-wise women. Nor was it incumbent upon him personally
to credit the volatility in order, as far as he could, to
effect the soul-insurance of his bride, that he might hold
the security of the policy. The desire for it was in him;
his mother had merely tolled a warning bell that he had put
in motion before. Clara was not a Constantia. But she was a
woman, and he had been deceived by women, as a man fostering
his high ideal of them will surely be. The strain he adopted
was quite natural to his passion and his theme. The language
of the primitive sentiments of men is of the same expression
at all times, minus the primitive colours when a modern
gentleman addresses his lady.
Lady Patterne died in the winter season of
the new year. In April Dr Middleton had to quit Upton Park,
and he had not found a place of residence, nor did he quite
know what to do with himself in the prospect of his
daughter's marriage and desertion of him. Sir Willoughby
proposed to find him a house within a circuit of the
neighbourhood of Patterne. Moreover, he invited the Rev.
Doctor and his daughter to come to Patterne from Upton for a
month, and make acquaintance with his aunts, the ladies
Eleanor and Isabel Patterne, so that it might not be so
strange to Clara to have them as her housemates after her
marriage. Dr. Middleton omitted to consult his daughter
before accepting the invitation, and it appeared, when he
did speak to her, that it should have been done. But she
said, mildly, "Very well, papa."
Sir Willoughby had to visit the metropolis
and an estate in another county, whence he wrote to his
betrothed daily. He returned to Patterne in time to arrange
for the welcome of his guests; too late, however, to ride
over to them; and, meanwhile, during his absence, Miss
Middleton had bethought herself that she ought to have given
her last days of freedom to her friends. After the weeks to
be passed at Patterne, very few weeks were left to her, and
she had a wish to run to Switzerland or Tyrol and see the
Alps; a quaint idea, her father thought. She repeated it
seriously, and Dr. Middleton perceived a feminine shuttle of
indecision at work in her head, frightful to him,
considering that they signified hesitation between the
excellent library and capital wine-cellar of Patterne Hall,
together with the society of that promising young scholar,
Mr. Vernon Whitford, on the one side, and a career of
hotels—equivalent to being rammed into monster artillery
with a crowd every night, and shot off on a day's journey
through space every morning—on the other.
"You will have your travelling and your Alps
after the ceremony," he said.
"I think I would rather stay at home," said
she.
Dr Middleton rejoined: "I would."
"But I am not married yet papa."
"As good, my dear."
"A little change of scene, I thought . . ."
"We have accepted Willoughby's invitation.
And he helps me to a house near you."
"You wish to be near me, papa?"
"Proximate—at a remove: communicable."
"Why should we separate?"
"For the reason, my dear, that you exchange
a father for a husband."
"If I do not want to exchange?"
"To purchase, you must pay, my child.
Husbands are not given for nothing."
"No. But I should have you, papa!"
"Should?"
"They have not yet parted us, dear papa."
"What does that mean?" he asked, fussily. He
was in a gentle stew already, apprehensive of a disturbance
of the serenity precious to scholars by postponements of the
ceremony and a prolongation of a father's worries.
"Oh, the common meaning, papa," she said,
seeing how it was with him.
"Ah!" said he, nodding and blinking
gradually back to a state of composure, glad to be appeased
on any terms; for mutability is but another name for the
sex, and it is the enemy of the scholar.
She suggested that two weeks of Patterne
would offer plenty of time to inspect the empty houses of
the district, and should be sufficient, considering the
claims of friends, and the necessity of going the round of
London shops.
"Two or three weeks," he agreed, hurriedly,
by way of compromise with that fearful prospect.
CHAPTER VII
THE BETROTHED
During the drive from Upton to Patterne,
Miss Middleton hoped, she partly believed, that there was to
be a change in Sir Willoughby's manner of courtship. He had
been so different a wooer. She remembered with some
half-conscious desperation of fervour what she had thought
of him at his first approaches, and in accepting him. Had
she seen him with the eyes of the world, thinking they were
her own? That look of his, the look of "indignant
contentment", had then been a most noble conquering look,
splendid as a general's plume at the gallop. It could not
have altered. Was it that her eyes had altered?
The spirit of those days rose up within her
to reproach, her and whisper of their renewal: she
remembered her rosy dreams and the image she had of him, her
throbbing pride in him, her choking richness of happiness:
and also her vain attempting to be very humble, usually
ending in a carol, quaint to think of, not without charm,
but quaint, puzzling.
Now men whose incomes have been restricted
to the extent that they must live on their capital, soon
grow relieved of the forethoughtful anguish wasting them by
the hilarious comforts of the lap upon which they have sunk
back, insomuch that they are apt to solace themselves for
their intolerable anticipations of famine in the household
by giving loose to one fit or more of reckless lavishness.
Lovers in like manner live on their capital from failure of
income: they, too, for the sake of stifling apprehension and
piping to the present hour, are lavish of their stock, so as
rapidly to attenuate it: they have their fits of
intoxication in view of coming famine: they force memory
into play, love retrospectively, enter the old house of the
past and ravage the larder, and would gladly, even
resolutely, continue in illusion if it were possible for the
broadest honey-store of reminiscences to hold out for a
length of time against a mortal appetite: which in good
sooth stands on the alternative of a consumption of the hive
or of the creature it is for nourishing. Here do lovers show
that they are perishable. More than the poor clay world they
need fresh supplies, right wholesome juices; as it were,
life in the burst of the bud, fruits yet on the tree, rather
than potted provender. The latter is excellent for
by-and-by, when there will be a vast deal more to remember,
and appetite shall have but one tooth remaining. Should
their minds perchance have been saturated by their first
impressions and have retained them, loving by the
accountable light of reason, they may have fair harvests, as
in the early time; but that case is rare. In other words,
love is an affair of two, and is only for two that can be as
quick, as constant in intercommunication as are sun and
earth, through the cloud or face to face. They take their
breath of life from one another in signs of affection,
proofs of faithfulness, incentives to admiration. Thus it is
with men and women in love's good season. But a solitary
soul dragging a log must make the log a God to rejoice in
the burden. That is not love.
Clara was the least fitted of all women to
drag a log. Few girls would be so rapid in exhausting
capital. She was feminine indeed, but she wanted
comradeship, a living and frank exchange of the best in
both, with the deeper feelings untroubled. To be fixed at
the mouth of a mine, and to have to descend it daily, and
not to discover great opulence below; on the contrary, to be
chilled in subterranean sunlessness, without any substantial
quality that she could grasp, only the mystery of the
inefficient tallow-light in those caverns of the
complacent-talking man: this appeared to her too extreme a
probation for two or three weeks. How of a lifetime of it!
She was compelled by her nature to hope,
expect and believe that Sir Willoughby would again be the
man she had known when she accepted him. Very singularly, to
show her simple spirit at the time, she was unaware of any
physical coldness to him; she knew of nothing but her mind
at work, objecting to this and that, desiring changes. She
did not dream of being on the giddy ridge of the passive or
negative sentiment of love, where one step to the wrong side
precipitates us into the state of repulsion.
Her eyes were lively at their meeting—so
were his. She liked to see him on the steps, with young
Crossjay under his arm. Sir Willoughby told her in his
pleasantest humour of the boy's having got into the
laboratory that morning to escape his task-master, and blown
out the windows. She administered a chiding to the
delinquent in the same spirit, while Sir Willoughby led her
on his arm across the threshold, whispering: "Soon for
good!" In reply to the whisper, she begged for more of the
story of young Crossjay. "Come into the laboratory," said
he, a little less laughingly than softly; and Clara begged
her father to come and see young Crossjay's latest pranks.
Sir Willoughby whispered to her of the length of their
separation, and his joy to welcome her to the house where
she would reign as mistress very won. He numbered the weeks.
He whispered: "Come." In the hurry of the moment she did not
examine a lightning terror that shot through her. It passed,
and was no more than the shadow which bends the summer
grasses, leaving a ruffle of her ideas, in wonder of her
having feared herself for something. Her father was with
them. She and Willoughby were not yet alone.
Young Crossjay had not accomplished so fine
a piece of destruction as Sir Willoughby's humour proclaimed
of him. He had connected a battery with a train of
gunpowder, shattering a window-frame and unsettling some
bricks. Dr. Middleton asked if the youth was excluded from
the library, and rejoiced to hear that it was a sealed door
to him. Thither they went. Vernon Whitford was away on one
of his long walks.
"There, papa, you see he is not so very
faithful to you," said Clara.
Dr Middleton stood frowning over MS notes on
the table, in Vernon's handwriting. He flung up the hair
from his forehead and dropped into a seat to inspect them
closely. He was now immoveable. Clara was obliged to leave
him there. She was led to think that Willoughby had drawn
them to the library with the design to be rid of her
protector, and she began to fear him. She proposed to pay
her respects to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. They were not
seen, and a footman reported in the drawing-room that they
were out driving. She grasped young Crossjay's hand. Sir
Willoughby dispatched him to Mrs. Montague, the housekeeper,
for a tea of cakes and jam.
"Off!" he said, and the boy had to run.
Clara saw herself without a shield.
"And the garden!" she cried. "I love the
garden; I must go and see what flowers are up with you. In
spring I care most for wild flowers, and if you will show me
daffodils and crocuses and anemones . . ."
"My dearest Clara! my bride!" said he.
"Because they are vulgar flowers?" she asked
him, artlessly, to account for his detaining her.
Why would he not wait to deserve her!—no,
not deserve—to reconcile her with her real position; not
reconcile, but to repair the image of him in her mind,
before he claimed his apparent right!
He did not wait. He pressed her to his
bosom.
"You are mine, my Clara—utterly mine; every
thought, every feeling. We are one: the world may do its
worst. I have been longing for you, looking forward. You
save me from a thousand vexations. One is perpetually
crossed. That is all outside us. We two! With you I am
secure! Soon! I could not tell you whether the world's alive
or dead. My dearest!"
She came out of it with the sensations of
the frightened child that has had its dip in sea-water,
sharpened to think that after all it was not so severe a
trial. Such was her idea; and she said to herself
immediately: What am I that I should complain? Two minutes
earlier she would not have thought it; but humiliated pride
falls lower than humbleness.
She did not blame him; she fell in her own
esteem; less because she was the betrothed Clara Middleton,
which was now palpable as a shot in the breast of a bird,
than that she was a captured woman, of whom it is absolutely
expected that she must submit, and when she would rather be
gazing at flowers. Clara had shame of her sex. They cannot
take a step without becoming bondwomen: into what a slavery!
For herself, her trial was over, she thought. As for
herself, she merely complained of a prematureness and
crudity best unanalyzed. In truth, she could hardly be said
to complain. She did but criticize him and wonder that a man
was unable to perceive, or was not arrested by perceiving,
unwillingness, discordance, dull compliance; the bondwoman's
due instead of the bride's consent. Oh, sharp distinction,
as between two spheres!
She meted him justice; she admitted that he
had spoken in a lover-like tone. Had it not been for the
iteration of "the world", she would not have objected
critically to his words, though they were words of downright
appropriation. He had the right to use them, since she was
to be married to him. But if he had only waited before
playing the privileged lover!
Sir Willoughby was enraptured with her. Even
so purely coldly, statue-like, Dian-like, would he have
prescribed his bride's reception of his caress. The
suffusion of crimson coming over her subsequently, showing
her divinely feminine in reflective bashfulness, agreed with
his highest definitions of female character.
"Let me conduct you to the garden, my love,"
he said.
She replied: "I think I would rather go to
my room."
"I will send you a wild-flower posy."
"Flowers, no; I do not like them to be
gathered."
"I will wait for you on the lawn."
"My head is rather heavy."
His deep concern and tenderness brought him
close.
She assured him sparklingly that she was
well. She was ready to accompany him to the garden and
stroll over the park.
"Headache it is not," she added.
But she had to pay the fee for inviting a
solicitous accepted gentleman's proximity.
This time she blamed herself and him, and
the world he abused, and destiny into the bargain. And she
cared less about the probation; but she craved for liberty.
With a frigidity that astonished her, she marvelled at the
act of kissing, and at the obligation it forced upon an
inanimate person to be an accomplice. Why was she not free?
By what strange right was it that she was treated as a
possession?
"I will try to walk off the heaviness," she
said.
"My own girl must not fatigue herself."
"Oh, no; I shall not."
"Sit with me. Your Willoughby is your
devoted attendant."
"I have a desire for the air."
"Then we will walk out."
She was horrified to think how far she had
drawn away from him, and now placed her hand on his arm to
appease her self-accusations and propitiate duty. He spoke
as she had wished, his manner was what she had wished; she
was his bride, almost his wife; her conduct was a kind of
madness; she could not understand it.
Good sense and duty counselled her to
control her wayward spirit.
He fondled her hand, and to that she grew
accustomed; her hand was at a distance. And what is a hand?
Leaving it where it was, she treated it as a link between
herself and dutiful goodness. Two months hence she was a
bondwoman for life! She regretted that she had not gone to
her room to strengthen herself with a review of her
situation, and meet him thoroughly resigned to her fate. She
fancied she would have come down to him amicably. It was his
present respectfulness and easy conversation that tricked
her burning nerves with the fancy. Five weeks of perfect
liberty in the mountains, she thought, would have prepared
her for the days of bells. All that she required was a
separation offering new scenes, where she might reflect
undisturbed, feel clear again.
He led her about the flower-beds; too much
as if he were giving a convalescent an airing. She chafed at
it, and pricked herself with remorse. In contrition she
expatiated on the beauty of the garden.
"All is yours, my Clara."
An oppressive load it seemed to her! She
passively yielded to the man in his form of attentive
courtier; his mansion, estate, and wealth overwhelmed her.
They suggested the price to be paid. Yet she recollected
that on her last departure through the park she had been
proud of the rolling green and spreading trees. Poison of
some sort must be operating in her. She had not come to him
to-day with this feeling of sullen antagonism; she had
caught it here.
"You have been well, my Clara?"
"Quite."
"Not a hint of illness?"
"None."
"My bride must have her health if all the
doctors in the kingdom die for it! My darling!"
"And tell me: the dogs?"
"Dogs and horses are in very good
condition."
"I am glad. Do you know, I love those
ancient French chateaux and farms in one, where salon
windows look on poultry-yard and stalls. I like that
homeliness with beasts and peasants."
He bowed indulgently.
"I am afraid we can't do it for you in
England, my Clara."
"No."
"And I like the farm," said he. "But I think
our drawing-rooms have a better atmosphere off the garden.
As to our peasantry, we cannot, I apprehend, modify our
class demarcations without risk of disintegrating the social
structure."
"Perhaps. I proposed nothing."
"My love, I would entreat you to propose if
I were convinced that I could obey."
"You are very good."
"I find my merit nowhere but in your
satisfaction."
Although she was not thirsting for dulcet
sayings, the peacefulness of other than invitations to the
exposition of his mysteries and of their isolation in
oneness, inspired her with such calm that she beat about in
her brain, as if it were in the brain, for the specific
injury he had committed. Sweeping from sensation to
sensation, the young, whom sensations impel and distract,
can rarely date their disturbance from a particular one;
unless it be some great villain injury that has been done;
and Clara had not felt an individual shame in his caress;
the shame of her sex was but a passing protest, that left no
stamp. So she conceived she had been behaving cruelly, and
said, "Willoughby"; because she was aware of the omission of
his name in her previous remarks.
His whole attention was given to her.
She had to invent the sequel. "I was going
to beg you, Willoughby, do not seek to spoil me. You
compliment me. Compliments are not suited to me. You think
too highly of me. It is nearly as bad as to be slighted. I
am . . . I am a . . ." But she could not follow his example;
even as far as she had gone, her prim little sketch of
herself, set beside her real, ugly, earnest feelings, rang
of a mincing simplicity, and was a step in falseness. How
could she display what she was?
"Do I not know you?" he said.
The melodious bass notes, expressive of
conviction on that point, signified as well as the words
that no answer was the right answer. She could not dissent
without turning his music to discord, his complacency to
amazement. She held her tongue, knowing that he did not know
her, and speculating on the division made bare by their
degrees of the knowledge, a deep cleft.
He alluded to friends in her neighbourhood
and his own. The bridesmaids were mentioned.
"Miss Dale, you will hear from my aunt
Eleanor, declines, on the plea of indifferent health. She is
rather a morbid person, with all her really estimable
qualities. It will do no harm to have none but young ladies
of your own age; a bouquet of young buds: though one blowing
flower among them . . . However, she has decided. My
principal annoyance has been Vernon's refusal to act as my
best man."
"Mr. Whitford refuses?"
"He half refuses. I do not take no from him.
His pretext is a dislike to the ceremony."
"I share it with him."
"I sympathize with you. If we might say the
words and pass from sight! There is a way of cutting off the
world: I have it at times completely: I lose it again, as if
it were a cabalistic phrase one had to utter. But with you!
You give it me for good. It will be for ever, eternally, my
Clara. Nothing can harm, nothing touch us; we are one
another's. Let the world fight it out; we have nothing to do
with it."
"If Mr. Whitford should persist in
refusing?"
"So entirely one, that there never can be
question of external influences. I am, we will say, riding
home from the hunt: I see you awaiting me: I read your heart
as though you were beside me. And I know that I am coming to
the one who reads mine! You have me, you have me like an
open book, you, and only you!"
"I am to be always at home?" Clara said,
unheeded, and relieved by his not hearing.
"Have you realized it?—that we are
invulnerable! The world cannot hurt us: it cannot touch us.
Felicity is ours, and we are impervious in the enjoyment of
it. Something divine! surely something divine on earth?
Clara!—being to one another that between which the world can
never interpose! What I do is right: what you do is right.
Perfect to one another! Each new day we rise to study and
delight in new secrets. Away with the crowd! We have not
even to say it; we are in an atmosphere where the world
cannot breathe."
"Oh, the world!" Clara partly carolled on a
sigh that sunk deep.
Hearing him talk as one exulting on the
mountain-top, when she knew him to be in the abyss, was very
strange, provocative of scorn.
"My letters?" he said, incitingly.
"I read them."
"Circumstances have imposed a long courtship
on us, my Clara; and I, perhaps lamenting the laws of
decorum—I have done so!—still felt the benefit of the
gradual initiation. It is not good for women to be surprised
by a sudden revelation of man's character. We also have
things to learn—there is matter for learning everywhere.
Some day you will tell me the difference of what you think
of me now, from what you thought when we first . . . ?"
An impulse of double-minded acquiescence
caused Clara to stammer as on a sob.
"I—I daresay I shall."
She added, "If it is necessary."
Then she cried out: "Why do you attack the
world? You always make me pity it."
He smiled at her youthfulness. "I have
passed through that stage. It leads to my sentiment. Pity
it, by all means."
"No," said she, "but pity it, side with it,
not consider it so bad. The world has faults; glaciers have
crevices, mountains have chasms; but is not the effect of
the whole sublime? Not to admire the mountain and the
glacier because they can be cruel, seems to me . . . And the
world is beautiful."
"The world of nature, yes. The world of
men?"
"Yes."
"My love, I suspect you to be thinking of
the world of ballrooms."
"I am thinking of the world that contains
real and great generosity, true heroism. We see it round
us."
"We read of it. The world of the romance
writer!"
"No: the living world. I am sure it is our
duty to love it. I am sure we weaken ourselves if we do not.
If I did not, I should be looking on mist, hearing a
perpetual boom instead of music. I remember hearing Mr.
Whitford say that cynicism is intellectual dandyism without
the coxcomb's feathers; and it seems to me that cynics are
only happy in making the world as barren to others as they
have made it for themselves."
"Old Vernon!" ejaculated Sir Willoughby,
with a countenance rather uneasy, as if it had been flicked
with a glove. "He strings his phrases by the dozen."
"Papa contradicts that, and says he is very
clever and very simple."
"As to cynics, my dear Clara, oh, certainly,
certainly: you are right. They are laughable, contemptible.
But understand me. I mean, we cannot feel, or if we feel we
cannot so intensely feel, our oneness, except by dividing
ourselves from the world."
"Is it an art?"
"If you like. It is our poetry! But does not
love shun the world? Two that love must have their
sustenance in isolation."
"No: they will be eating themselves up."
"The purer the beauty, the more it will be
out of the world."
"But not opposed."
"Put it in this way," Willoughby
condescended. "Has experience the same opinion of the world
as ignorance?"
"It should have more charity."
"Does virtue feel at home in the world?"
"Where it should be an example, to my idea."
"Is the world agreeable to holiness?"
"Then, are you in favour of monasteries?"
He poured a little runlet of half laughter
over her head, of the sound assumed by genial compassion.
It is irritating to hear that when we
imagine we have spoken to the point.
"Now in my letters, Clara . . ."
"I have no memory, Willoughby!"
"You will, however, have observed that I am
not completely myself in my letters . . ."
"In your letters to men you may be."
The remark threw a pause across his
thoughts. He was of a sensitiveness terribly tender. A
single stroke on it reverberated swellingly within the man,
and most, and infuriately searching, at the spots where he
had been wounded, especially where he feared the world might
have guessed the wound. Did she imply that he had no hand
for love-letters? Was it her meaning that women would not
have much taste for his epistolary correspondence? She had
spoken in the plural, with an accent on "men". Had she heard
of Constantia? Had she formed her own judgement about the
creature? The supernatural sensitiveness of Sir Willoughby
shrieked a peal of affirmatives. He had often meditated on
the moral obligation of his unfolding to Clara the whole
truth of his conduct to Constantia; for whom, as for other
suicides, there were excuses. He at least was bound to
supply them. She had behaved badly; but had he not given her
some cause? If so, manliness was bound to confess it.
Supposing Clara heard the world's version
first! Men whose pride is their backbone suffer convulsions
where other men are barely aware of a shock, and Sir
Willoughby was taken with galvanic jumpings of the spirit
within him, at the idea of the world whispering to Clara
that he had been jilted.
"My letters to men, you say, my love?"
"Your letters of business."
"Completely myself in my letters of
business?" He stared indeed.
She relaxed the tension of his figure by
remarking: "You are able to express yourself to men as your
meaning dictates. In writing to . . . to us it is, I
suppose, more difficult."
"True, my love. I will not exactly say
difficult. I can acknowledge no difficulty. Language, I
should say, is not fitted to express emotion. Passion
rejects it."
"For dumb-show and pantomime?"
"No; but the writing of it coldly."
"Ah, coldly!"
"My letters disappoint you?"
"I have not implied that they do."
"My feelings, dearest, are too strong for
transcription. I feel, pen in hand, like the mythological
Titan at war with Jove, strong enough to hurl mountains, and
finding nothing but pebbles. The simile is a good one. You
must not judge of me by my letters."
"I do not; I like them," said Clara.
She blushed, eyed him hurriedly, and seeing
him complacent, resumed, "I prefer the pebble to the
mountain; but if you read poetry you would not think human
speech incapable of. . ."
"My love, I detest artifice. Poetry is a
profession."
"Our poets would prove to you . . ."
"As I have often observed, Clara, I am no
poet."
"I have not accused you, Willoughby."
"No poet, and with no wish to be a poet.
Were I one, my life would supply material, I can assure you,
my love. My conscience is not entirely at rest. Perhaps the
heaviest matter troubling it is that in which I was least
wilfully guilty. You have heard of a Miss Durham?"
"I have heard—yes—of her."
"She may be happy. I trust she is. If she is
not, I cannot escape some blame. An instance of the
difference between myself and the world, now. The world
charges it upon her. I have interceded to exonerate her."
"That was generous, Willoughby."
"Stay. I fear I was the primary offender.
But I, Clara, I, under a sense of honour, acting under a
sense of honour, would have carried my engagement through."
"What had you done?"
"The story is long, dating from an early
day, in the 'downy antiquity of my youth', as Vernon says."
"Mr. Whitford says that?"
"One of old Vernon's odd sayings. It's a
story of an early fascination."
"Papa tells me Mr. Whitford speaks at times
with wise humour."
"Family considerations—the lady's health
among other things; her position in the calculations of
relatives—intervened. Still there was the fascination. I
have to own it. Grounds for feminine jealousy."
"Is it at an end?"
"Now? with you? my darling Clara! indeed at
an end, or could I have opened my inmost heart to you! Could
I have spoken of myself so unreservedly that in part you
know me as I know myself! Oh, but would it have been
possible to enclose you with myself in that intimate union?
so secret, unassailable!"
"You did not speak to her as you speak to
me?"
"In no degree."
"What could have! . . ." Clara checked the
murmured exclamation.
Sir Willoughby's expoundings on his latest
of texts would have poured forth, had not a footman stepped
across the lawn to inform him that his builder was in the
laboratory and requested permission to consult with him.
Clara's plea of a horror of the talk of
bricks and joists excused her from accompanying him. He had
hardly been satisfied by her manner, he knew not why. He
left her, convinced that he must do and say more to reach
down to her female intelligence.
She saw young Crossjay, springing with pots
of jam in him, join his patron at a bound, and taking a lift
of arms, fly aloft, clapping heels. Her reflections were
confused. Sir Willoughby was admirable with the lad. "Is he
two men?" she thought; and the thought ensued, "Am I
unjust?" She headed a run with young Crossjay to divert her
mind.
CHAPTER VIII
A RUN WITH THE TRUANT; A WALK WITH THE
MASTER
The sight of Miss Middleton running inflamed
young Crossjay with the passion of the game of hare and
hounds. He shouted a view-halloo, and flung up his legs. She
was fleet; she ran as though a hundred little feet were
bearing her onward smooth as water over the lawn and the
sweeps of grass of the park, so swiftly did the hidden pair
multiply one another to speed her. So sweet was she in her
flowing pace, that the boy, as became his age, translated
admiration into a dogged frenzy of pursuit, and continued
pounding along, when far outstripped, determined to run her
down or die. Suddenly her flight wound to an end in a dozen
twittering steps, and she sank. Young Crossjay attained her,
with just breath enough to say: "You are a runner!"
"I forgot you had been having your tea, my
poor boy," said she.
"And you don't pant a bit!" was his
encomium.
"Dear me, no; not more than a bird. You
might as well try to catch a bird."
Young Crossjay gave a knowing nod. "Wait
till I get my second wind."
"Now you must confess that girls run faster
than boys."
"They may at the start."
"They do everything better."
"They're flash-in-the-pans."
"They learn their lessons."
"You can't make soldiers or sailors of them,
though."
"And that is untrue. Have you never read of
Mary Ambree? and Mistress
Hannah Snell of Pondicherry? And there was the bride of the
celebrated
William Taylor. And what do you say to Joan of Arc? What do
you say to
Boadicea? I suppose you have never heard of the Amazons."
"They weren't English."
"Then it is your own countrywomen you decry,
sir!"
Young Crossjay betrayed anxiety about his
false position, and begged for the stories of Mary Ambree
and the others who were English.
"See, you will not read for yourself, you
hide and play truant with Mr. Whitford, and the consequence
is you are ignorant of your country's history."
Miss Middleton rebuked him, enjoying his
wriggle between a perception of her fun and an
acknowledgment of his peccancy. She commanded him to tell
her which was the glorious Valentine's day of our naval
annals; the name of the hero of the day, and the name of his
ship. To these questions his answers were as ready as the
guns of the good ship Captain, for the Spanish four-decker.
"And that you owe to Mr. Whitford," said
Miss Middleton.
"He bought me the books," young Crossjay
growled, and plucked at grass blades and bit them,
foreseeing dimly but certainly the termination of all this.
Miss Middleton lay back on the grass and
said: "Are you going to be fond of me, Crossjay?"
The boy sat blinking. His desire was to
prove to her that lie was immoderately fond of her already;
and he might have flown at her neck had she been sitting up,
but her recumbency and eyelids half closed excited wonder in
him and awe. His young heart beat fast.
"Because, my dear boy," she said, leaning on
her elbow, "you are a very nice boy, but an ungrateful boy,
and there is no telling whether you will not punish any one
who cares for you. Come along with me; pluck me some of
these cowslips, and the speedwells near them; I think we
both love wild-flowers." She rose and took his arm. "You
shall row me on the lake while I talk to you seriously."
It was she, however, who took the sculls at
the boat-house, for she had been a playfellow with boys, and
knew that one of them engaged in a manly exercise is not
likely to listen to a woman.
"Now, Crossjay," she said. Dense gloom
overcame him like a cowl. She bent across her hands to
laugh. "As if I were going to lecture you, you silly boy!"
He began to brighten dubiously. "I used to be as fond of
birdsnesting as you are. I like brave boys, and I like you
for wanting to enter the Royal Navy. Only, how can you if
you do not learn? You must get the captains to pass you, you
know. Somebody spoils you: Miss Dale or Mr. Whitford."
"Do they?" sung out young Crossjay.
"Sir Willoughby does?"
"I don't know about spoil. I can come round
him."
"I am sure he is very kind to you. I dare
say you think Mr. Whitford rather severe. You should
remember he has to teach you, so that you may pass for the
navy. You must not dislike him because he makes you work.
Supposing you had blown yourself up to-day! You would have
thought it better to have been working with Mr. Whitford."
"Sir Willoughby says, when he's married, you
won't let me hide."
"Ah! It is wrong to pet a big boy like you.
Does not he what you call tip you, Crossjay?"
"Generally half-crown pieces. I've had a
crown-piece. I've had sovereigns."
"And for that you do as he bids you? And he
indulges you because you . . . Well, but though Mr. Whitford
does not give you money, he gives you his time, he tries to
get you into the navy."
"He pays for me."
"What do you say?"
"My keep. And, as for liking him, if he were
at the bottom of the water here, I'd go down after him. I
mean to learn. We're both of us here at six o'clock in the
morning, when it's light, and have a swim. He taught me.
Only, I never cared for schoolbooks."
"Are you quite certain that Mr. Whitford
pays for you."
"My father told me he did, and I must obey
him. He heard my father was poor, with a family. He went
down to see my father. My father came here once, and Sir
Willoughby wouldn't see him. I know Mr. Whitford does. And
Miss Dale told me he did. My mother says she thinks he does
it to make up to us for my father's long walk in the rain
and the cold he caught coming here to Patterne."
"So you see you should not vex him,
Crossjay. He is a good friend to your father and to you. You
ought to love him."
"I like him, and I like his face."
"Why his face?"
"It's not like those faces! Miss Dale and I
talk about him. She thinks that Sir Willoughby is the
best-looking man ever born."
"Were you not speaking of Mr. Whitford?"
"Yes; old Vernon. That's what Sir Willoughby
calls him," young Crossjay excused himself to her look of
surprise. "Do you know what he makes me think of?—his eyes,
I mean. He makes me think of Robinson Crusoe's old goat in
the cavern. I like him because he's always the same, and
you're not positive about some people. Miss Middleton, if
you look on at cricket, in comes a safe man for ten runs. He
may get more, and he never gets less; and you should hear
the old farmers talk of him in the booth. That's just my
feeling."
Miss Middleton understood that some
illustration from the cricketing-field was intended to throw
light on the boy's feeling for Mr. Whitford. Young Crossjay
was evidently warming to speak from his heart. But the sun
was low, she had to dress for the dinner-table, and she
landed him with regret, as at a holiday over. Before they
parted, he offered to swim across the lake in his clothes,
or dive to the bed for anything she pleased to throw,
declaring solemnly that it should not be lost.
She walked back at a slow pace, and sung to
herself above her darker-flowing thoughts, like the
reed-warbler on the branch beside the night-stream; a simple
song of a lighthearted sound, independent of the shifting
black and grey of the flood underneath.
A step was at her heels.
"I see you have been petting my scapegrace."
"Mr. Whitford! Yes; not petting, I hope. I
tried to give him a lecture.
He's a dear lad, but, I fancy, trying."
She was in fine sunset colour, unable to
arrest the mounting tide. She had been rowing, she said;
and, as he directed his eyes, according to his wont,
penetratingly, she defended herself by fixing her mind on
Robinson Crusoe's old goat in the recess of the cavern.
"I must have him away from here very soon,"
said Vernon. "Here he's quite spoiled. Speak of him to
Willoughby. I can't guess at his ideas of the boy's future,
but the chance of passing for the navy won't bear trifling
with, and if ever there was a lad made for the navy, it's
Crossjay."
The incident of the explosion in the
laboratory was new to Vernon.
"And Willoughby laughed?" he said. "There
are sea-port crammers who stuff young fellows for
examination, and we shall have to pack off the boy at once
to the best one of the lot we can find. I would rather have
had him under me up to the last three months, and have made
sure of some roots to what is knocked into his head. But
he's ruined here. And I am going. So I shall not trouble him
for many weeks longer. Dr. Middleton is well?"
"My father is well, yes. He pounced like a
falcon on your notes in the library."
Vernon came out with a chuckle.
"They were left to attract him. I am in for
a controversy."
"Papa will not spare you, to judge from his
look."
"I know the look."
"Have you walked far to-day?"
"Nine and a half hours. My Flibbertigibbet
is too much for me at times, and I had to walk off my
temper."
She cast her eyes on him, thinking of the
pleasure of dealing with a temper honestly coltish, and
manfully open to a specific.
"All those hours were required?"
"Not quite so long."
"You are training for your Alpine tour."
"It's doubtful whether I shall get to the
Alps this year. I leave the
Hall, and shall probably be in London with a pen to sell."
"Willoughby knows that you leave him?"
"As much as Mont Blanc knows that he is
going to be climbed by a party below. He sees a speck or two
in the valley."
"He has not spoken of it."
"He would attribute it to changes . . ."
Vernon did not conclude the sentence.
She became breathless, without emotion, but
checked by the barrier confronting an impulse to ask, what
changes? She stooped to pluck a cowslip.
"I saw daffodils lower down the park," she
said. "One or two; they're nearly over."
"We are well off for wild flowers here," he
answered.
"Do not leave him, Mr. Whitford."
"He will not want me."
"You are devoted to him."
"I can't pretend that."
"Then it is the changes you imagine you
foresee . . . If any occur, why should they drive you away?"
"Well, I'm two and thirty, and have never
been in the fray: a kind of nondescript, half scholar, and
by nature half billman or bowman or musketeer; if I'm worth
anything, London's the field for me. But that's what I have
to try."
"Papa will not like your serving with your
pen in London: he will say you are worth too much for that."
"Good men are at it; I should not care to be
ranked above them."
"They are wasted, he says."
"Error! If they have their private ambition,
they may suppose they are wasted. But the value to the world
of a private ambition, I do not clearly understand."
"You have not an evil opinion of the world?"
said Miss Middleton, sick at heart as she spoke, with the
sensation of having invited herself to take a drop of
poison.
He replied: "One might as well have an evil
opinion of a river: here it's muddy, there it's clear; one
day troubled, another at rest. We have to treat it with
common sense."
"Love it?"
"In the sense of serving it."
"Not think it beautiful?"
"Part of it is, part of it the reverse."
"Papa would quote the 'mulier formosa'".
"Except that 'fish' is too good for the
black extremity. 'Woman' is excellent for the upper."
"How do you say that?—not cynically, I
believe. Your view commends itself to my reason."
She was grateful to him for not stating it
in ideal contrast with Sir Willoughby's view. If he had, so
intensely did her youthful blood desire to be enamoured of
the world, that she felt he would have lifted her off her
feet. For a moment a gulf beneath had been threatening. When
she said, "Love it?" a little enthusiasm would have wafted
her into space fierily as wine; but the sober, "In the sense
of serving it", entered her brain, and was matter for
reflection upon it and him.
She could think of him in pleasant liberty,
uncorrected by her woman's instinct of peril. He had neither
arts nor graces; nothing of his cousin's easy social
front-face. She had once witnessed the military precision of
his dancing, and had to learn to like him before she ceased
to pray that she might never be the victim of it as his
partner. He walked heroically, his pedestrian vigour being
famous, but that means one who walks away from the sex, not
excelling in the recreations where men and women join hands.
He was not much of a horseman either. Sir Willoughby enjoyed
seeing him on horseback. And he could scarcely be said to
shine in a drawingroom, unless when seated beside a person
ready for real talk. Even more than his merits, his demerits
pointed him out as a man to be a friend to a young woman who
wanted one. His way of life pictured to her troubled spirit
an enviable smoothness; and his having achieved that smooth
way she considered a sign of strength; and she wished to
lean in idea upon some friendly strength. His reputation for
indifference to the frivolous charms of girls clothed him
with a noble coldness, and gave him the distinction of a
far-seen solitary iceberg in Southern waters. The popular
notion of hereditary titled aristocracy resembles her
sentiment for a man that would not flatter and could not be
flattered by her sex: he appeared superior almost to
awfulness. She was young, but she had received much flattery
in her ears, and by it she had been snared; and he,
disdaining to practise the fowler's arts or to cast a
thought on small fowls, appeared to her to have a pride
founded on natural loftiness.
They had not spoken for awhile, when Vernon
said abruptly, "The boy's future rather depends on you, Miss
Middleton. I mean to leave as soon as possible, and I do not
like his being here without me, though you will look after
him, I have no doubt. But you may not at first see where the
spoiling hurts him. He should be packed off at once to the
crammer, before you are Lady Patterne. Use your influence.
Willoughby will support the lad at your request. The cost
cannot be great. There are strong grounds against my having
him in London, even if I could manage it. May I count on
you?"
"I will mention it: I will do my best," said
Miss Middleton, strangely dejected.
They were now on the lawn, where Sir
Willoughby was walking with the ladies Eleanor and Isabel,
his maiden aunts.
"You seem to have coursed the hare and
captured the hart." he said to his bride.
"Started the truant and run down the
paedagogue," said Vernon.
"Ay, you won't listen to me about the
management of that boy," Sir
Willoughby retorted.
The ladies embraced Miss Middleton. One
offered up an ejaculation in eulogy of her looks, the other
of her healthfulness: then both remarked that with
indulgence young Crossjay could be induced to do anything.
Clara wondered whether inclination or Sir Willoughby had
disciplined their individuality out of them and made them
his shadows, his echoes. She gazed from them to him, and
feared him. But as yet she had not experienced the power in
him which could threaten and wrestle to subject the members
of his household to the state of satellites. Though she had
in fact been giving battle to it for several months, she had
held her own too well to perceive definitely the character
of the spirit opposing her.
She said to the ladies, "Ah, no! Mr.
Whitford has chosen the only method for teaching a boy like
Crossjay."
"I propose to make a man of him," said Sir
Willoughby.
"What is to become of him if he learns
nothing?"
"If he pleases me, he will be provided for.
I have never abandoned a dependent."
Clara let her eyes rest on his and, without
turning or dropping, shut them.
The effect was discomforting to him. He was
very sensitive to the intentions of eyes and tones; which
was one secret of his rigid grasp of the dwellers in his
household. They were taught that they had to render
agreement under sharp scrutiny. Studious eyes, devoid of
warmth, devoid of the shyness of sex, that suddenly closed
on their look, signified a want of comprehension of some
kind, it might be hostility of understanding. Was it
possible he did not possess her utterly? He frowned up.
Clara saw the lift of his brows, and
thought, "My mind is my own, married or not."
It was the point in dispute.
CHAPTER IX
CLARA AND LAETITIA MEET: THEY ARE COMPARED
An hour before the time for lessons next
morning young Crossjay was on the lawn with a big bunch of
wild flowers. He left them at the hall door for Miss
Middleton, and vanished into bushes.
These vulgar weeds were about to be
dismissed to the dustheap by the great officials of the
household; but as it happened that Miss Middleton had seen
them from the window in Crossjay's hands, the discovery was
made that they were indeed his presentation-bouquet, and a
footman received orders to place them before her. She was
very pleased. The arrangement of the flowers bore witness to
fairer fingers than the boy's own in the disposition of the
rings of colour, red campion and anemone, cowslip and
speedwell, primroses and wood-hyacinths; and rising out of
the blue was a branch bearing thick white blossom, so thick,
and of so pure a whiteness, that Miss Middleton, while
praising Crossjay for soliciting the aid of Miss Dale, was
at a loss to name the tree.
"It is a gardener's improvement on the
Vestal of the forest, the wild cherry," said Dr. Middleton,
"and in this case we may admit the gardener's claim to be
valid, though I believe that, with his gift of double
blossom, he has improved away the fruit. Call this the
Vestal of civilization, then; he has at least done something
to vindicate the beauty of the office as well as the
justness of the title."
"It is Vernon's Holy Tree the young rascal
has been despoiling," said
Sir Willoughby merrily.
Miss Middleton was informed that this
double-blossom wild cherry-tree was worshipped by Mr.
Whitford.
Sir Willoughby promised he would conduct her
to it.
"You," he said to her, "can bear the trial;
few complexions can; it is to most ladies a crueller test
than snow. Miss Dale, for example, becomes old lace within a
dozen yards of it. I should like to place her under the tree
beside you."
"Dear me, though; but that is investing the
hamadryad with novel and terrible functions," exclaimed Dr.
Middleton.
Clara said: "Miss Dale could drag me into a
superior Court to show me fading beside her in gifts more
valuable than a complexion."
"She has a fine ability," said Vernon.
All the world knew, so Clara knew of Miss
Dales romantic admiration of Sir Willoughby; she was curious
to see Miss Dale and study the nature of a devotion that
might be, within reason, imitable—for a man who could speak
with such steely coldness of the poor lady he had
fascinated? Well, perhaps it was good for the hearts of
women to be beneath a frost; to be schooled, restrained,
turned inward on their dreams. Yes, then, his coldness was
desireable; it encouraged an ideal of him. It suggested and
seemed to propose to Clara's mind the divineness of
separation instead of the deadly accuracy of an intimate
perusal. She tried to look on him as Miss Dale might look,
and while partly despising her for the dupery she envied,
and more than criticizing him for the inhuman numbness of
sentiment which offered up his worshipper to point a
complimentary comparison, she was able to imagine a distance
whence it would be possible to observe him uncritically,
kindly, admiringly; as the moon a handsome mortal, for
example.
In the midst of her thoughts, she surprised
herself by saying: "I certainly was difficult to instruct. I
might see things clearer if I had a fine ability. I never
remember to have been perfectly pleased with my immediate
lesson . . ."
She stopped, wondering whither her tongue
was leading her; then added, to save herself, "And that may
be why I feel for poor Crossjay."
Mr. Whitford apparently did not think it
remarkable that she should have been set off gabbling of "a
fine ability", though the eulogistic phrase had been
pronounced by him with an impressiveness to make his ear
aware of an echo.
Sir Willoughby dispersed her vapourish
confusion. "Exactly," he said. "I have insisted with Vernon,
I don't know how often, that you must have the lad by his
affections. He won't bear driving. It had no effect on me.
Boys of spirit kick at it. I think I know boys, Clara."
He found himself addressing eyes that
regarded him as though he were a small speck, a pin's head,
in the circle of their remote contemplation. They were wide;
they closed.
She opened them to gaze elsewhere.
He was very sensitive.
Even then, when knowingly wounding him, or
because of it, she was trying to climb back to that altitude
of the thin division of neutral ground, from which we see a
lover's faults and are above them, pure surveyors. She
climbed unsuccessfully, it is true; soon despairing and
using the effort as a pretext to fall back lower.
Dr. Middleton withdrew Sir Willoughby's
attention from the imperceptible annoyance. "No, sir, no:
the birch! the birch! Boys of spirit commonly turn into
solid men, and the solider the men the more surely do they
vote for Busby. For me, I pray he may be immortal in Great
Britain. Sea-air nor mountain-air is half so bracing. I
venture to say that the power to take a licking is better
worth having than the power to administer one. Horse him and
birch him if Crossjay runs from his books."
"It is your opinion, sir?" his host bowed to
him affably, shocked on behalf of the ladies.
"So positively so, sir, that I will
undertake, without knowledge of their antecedents, to lay my
finger on the men in public life who have not had early
Busby. They are ill-balanced men. Their seat of reason is
not a concrete. They won't take rough and smooth as they
come. They make bad blood, can't forgive, sniff right and
left for approbation, and are excited to anger if an East
wind does not flatter them. Why, sir, when they have grown
to be seniors, you find these men mixed up with the nonsense
of their youth; you see they are unthrashed. We English beat
the world because we take a licking well. I hold it for a
surety of a proper sweetness of blood."
The smile of Sir Willoughby waxed ever
softer as the shakes of his head increased in
contradictoriness. "And yet," said he, with the air of
conceding a little after having answered the Rev. Doctor and
convicted him of error, "Jack requires it to keep him in
order. On board ship your argument may apply. Not, I
suspect, among gentlemen. No."
"Good-night to you, gentlemen!" said Dr.
Middleton.
Clara heard Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel
interchange remarks:
"Willoughby would not have suffered it!"
"It would entirely have altered him!"
She sighed and put a tooth on her under-lip.
The gift of humourous fancy is in women fenced round with
forbidding placards; they have to choke it; if they perceive
a piece of humour, for instance, the young Willoughby
grasped by his master,—and his horrified relatives rigid at
the sight of preparations for the seed of sacrilege, they
have to blindfold the mind's eye. They are society's
hard-drilled soldiery. Prussians that must both march and
think in step. It is for the advantage of the civilized
world, if you like, since men have decreed it, or matrons
have so read the decree; but here and there a younger woman,
haply an uncorrected insurgent of the sex matured here and
there, feels that her lot was cast with her head in a
narrower pit than her limbs.
Clara speculated as to whether Miss Dale
might be perchance a person of a certain liberty of mind.
She asked for some little, only some little, free play of
mind in a house that seemed to wear, as it were, a cap of
iron. Sir Willoughby not merely ruled, he throned, he
inspired: and how? She had noticed an irascible
sensitiveness in him alert against a shadow of disagreement;
and as he was kind when perfectly appeased, the sop was
offered by him for submission. She noticed that even Mr.
Whitford forbore to alarm the sentiment of authority in his
cousin. If he did not breathe Sir Willoughby, like the
ladies Eleanor and Isabel, he would either acquiesce in a
syllable or be silent. He never strongly dissented. The
habit of the house, with its iron cap, was on him, as it was
on the servants, and would be, oh, shudders of the
shipwrecked that see their end in drowning! on the wife.
"When do I meet Miss Dale?" she inquired.
"This very evening, at dinner," replied Sir
Willoughby.
Then, thought she, there is that to look
forward to.
She indulged her morbid fit, and shut up her
senses that she might live in the anticipation of meeting
Miss Dale; and, long before the approach of the hour, her
hope of encountering any other than another dull adherent of
Sir Willoughby had fled. So she was languid for two of the
three minutes when she sat alone with Laetitia in the
drawing-room before the rest had assembled.
"It is Miss Middleton?" Laetitia said,
advancing to her. "My jealousy tells me; for you have won my
boy Crossjay's heart, and done more to bring him to
obedience in a few minutes than we have been able to do in
months."
"His wild flowers were so welcome to me,"
said Clara.
"He was very modest over them. And I mention
it because boys of his age usually thrust their gifts in our
faces fresh as they pluck them, and you were to be treated
quite differently."
"We saw his good fairy's hand."
"She resigns her office; but I pray you not
to love him too well in return; for he ought to be away
reading with one of those men who get boys through their
examinations. He is, we all think, a born sailor, and his
place is in the navy."
"But, Miss Dale, I love him so well that I
shall consult his interests and not my own selfishness. And,
if I have influence, he will not be a week with you longer.
It should have been spoke of to-day; I must have been in
some dream; I thought of it, I know. I will not forget to do
what may be in my power."
Clara's heart sank at the renewed engagement
and plighting of herself involved in her asking a favour,
urging any sort of petition. The cause was good. Besides,
she was plighted already.
"Sir Willoughby is really fond of the boy,"
she said.
"He is fond of exciting fondness in the
boy," said Miss Dale. "He has not dealt much with children.
I am sure he likes Crossjay; he could not otherwise be so
forbearing; it is wonderful what he endures and laughs at."
Sir Willoughby entered. The presence of Miss
Dale illuminated him as the burning taper lights up
consecrated plate. Deeply respecting her for her constancy,
esteeming her for a model of taste, he was never in her
society without that happy consciousness of shining which
calls forth the treasures of the man; and these it is no
exaggeration to term unbounded, when all that comes from him
is taken for gold.
The effect of the evening on Clara was to
render her distrustful of her later antagonism. She had
unknowingly passed into the spirit of Miss Dale, Sir
Willoughby aiding; for she could sympathize with the view of
his constant admirer on seeing him so cordially and smoothly
gay; as one may say, domestically witty, the most agreeable
form of wit. Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson discerned that he had
a leg of physical perfection; Miss Dale distinguished it in
him in the vital essence; and before either of these ladies
he was not simply a radiant, he was a productive creature,
so true it is that praise is our fructifying sun. He had
even a touch of the romantic air which Clara remembered as
her first impression of the favourite of the county; and
strange she found it to observe this resuscitated idea
confronting her experience. What if she had been captious,
inconsiderate? Oh, blissful revival of the sense of peace!
The happiness of pain departing was all that she looked for,
and her conception of liberty was to learn to love her
chains, provided that he would spare her the caress. In this
mood she sternly condemned Constantia. "We must try to do
good; we must not be thinking of ourselves; we must make the
best of our path in life." She revolved these infantile
precepts with humble earnestness; and not to be tardy in her
striving to do good, with a remote but pleasurable glimpse
of Mr. Whitford hearing of it, she took the opportunity to
speak to Sir Willoughby on the subject of young Crossjay, at
a moment when, alighting from horseback, he had shown
himself to advantage among a gallant cantering company. He
showed to great advantage on horseback among men, being
invariably the best mounted, and he had a cavalierly style,
possibly cultivated, but effective. On foot his raised head
and half-dropped eyelids too palpably assumed superiority.
"Willoughby, I want to speak," she said, and shrank as she
spoke, lest he should immediately grant everything in the
mood of courtship, and invade her respite; "I want to speak
of that dear boy Crossjay. You are fond of him. He is rather
an idle boy here, and wasting time . . ."
"Now you are here, and when you are here for
good, my love for good . . ." he fluttered away in
loverliness, forgetful of Crossjay, whom he presently took
up. "The boy recognizes his most sovereign lady, and will do
your bidding, though you should order him to learn his
lessons! Who would not obey? Your beauty alone commands. But
what is there beyond?—a grace, a hue divine, that sets you
not so much above as apart, severed from the world."
Clara produced an active smile in duty, and
pursued: "If Crossjay were sent at once to some house where
men prepare boys to pass for the navy, he would have his
chance, and the navy is distinctly his profession. His
father is a brave man, and he inherits bravery, and he has a
passion for a sailor's life; only he must be able to pass
his examination, and he has not much time."
Sir Willoughby gave a slight laugh in sad
amusement.
"My dear Clara, you adore the world; and I
suppose you have to learn that there is not a question in
this wrangling world about which we have not disputes and
contests ad nauseam. I have my notions concerning Crossjay,
Vernon has his. I should wish to make a gentleman of him.
Vernon marks him for a sailor. But Vernon is the lad's
protector, I am not. Vernon took him from his father to
instruct him, and he has a right to say what shall be done
with him. I do not interfere. Only I can't prevent the lad
from liking me. Old Vernon seems to feel it. I assure you I
hold entirely aloof. If I am asked, in spite of my
disapproval of Vernon's plans for the boy, to subscribe to
his departure, I can but shrug, because, as you see, I have
never opposed. Old Vernon pays for him, he is the master, he
decides, and if Crossjay is blown from the masthead in a
gale, the blame does not fall on me. These, my dear, are
matters of reason."
"I would not venture to intrude on them,"
said Clara, "if I had not suspected that money . . ."
"Yes," cried Willoughby; "and it is a part.
And let old Vernon surrender the boy to me, I will
immediately relieve him of the burden on his purse. Can I do
that, my dear, for the furtherance of a scheme I condemn?
The point is thus: latterly I have invited Captain Patterne
to visit me: just previous to his departure for the African
Coast, where Government despatches Marines when there is no
other way of killing them, I sent him a special invitation.
He thanked me and curtly declined. The man, I may almost
say, is my pensioner. Well, he calls himself a Patterne, he
is undoubtedly a man of courage, he has elements of our
blood, and the name. I think I am to be approved for
desiring to make a better gentleman of the son than I behold
in the father: and seeing that life from an early age on
board ship has anything but made a gentleman of the father,
I hold that I am right in shaping another course for the
son."
"Naval officers . . ." Clara suggested.
"Some," said Willoughby. "But they must be
men of birth, coming out of homes of good breeding. Strip
them of the halo of the title of naval officers, and I fear
you would not often say gentlemen when they step into a
drawing-room. I went so far as to fancy I had some claim to
make young Crossjay something different. It can be done: the
Patterne comes out in his behaviour to you, my love; it can
be done. But if I take him, I claim undisputed sway over
him. I cannot make a gentleman of the fellow if I am to
compete with this person and that. In fine, he must look up
to me, he must have one model."
"Would you, then, provide for him
subsequently?"
"According to his behaviour."
"Would not that be precarious for him?"
"More so than the profession you appear
inclined to choose for him?"
"But there he would be under clear
regulations."
"With me he would have to respond to
affection."
"Would you secure to him a settled income?
For an idle gentleman is bad enough; a penniless gentleman .
. ."
"He has only to please me, my dear, and he
will be launched and protected."
"But if he does not succeed in pleasing
you?"
"Is it so difficult?"
"Oh!" Clara fretted.
"You see, my love, I answer you," said Sir
Willoughby.
He resumed: "But let old Vernon have his
trial with the lad. He has his own ideas. Let him carry them
out. I shall watch the experiment."
Clara was for abandoning her task in sheer
faintness.
"Is not the question one of money?" she
said, shyly, knowing Mr.
Whitford to be poor.
"Old Vernon chooses to spend his money that
way." replied Sir Willoughby. "If it saves him from breaking
his shins and risking his neck on his Alps, we may consider
it well employed."
"Yes," Clara's voice occupied a pause.
She seized her languor as it were a curling
snake and cast it off. "But I understand that Mr. Whitford
wants your assistance. Is he not—not rich? When he leaves
the Hall to try his fortune in literature in London, he may
not be so well able to support Crossjay and obtain the
instruction necessary for the boy: and it would be generous
to help him."
"Leaves the Hall!" exclaimed Willoughby. "I
have not heard a word of it. He made a bad start at the
beginning, and I should have thought that would have tamed
him: had to throw over his Fellowship; ahem. Then he
received a small legacy some time back, and wanted to be off
to push his luck in Literature: rank gambling, as I told
him. Londonizing can do him no good. I thought that nonsense
of his was over years ago. What is it he has from me?—about
a hundred and fifty a year: and it might be doubled for the
asking: and all the books he requires: and these writers and
scholars no sooner think of a book than they must have it.
And do not suppose me to complain. I am a man who will not
have a single shilling expended by those who serve
immediately about my person. I confess to exacting that kind
of dependency. Feudalism is not an objectionable thing if
you can be sure of the lord. You know, Clara, and you should
know me in my weakness too, I do not claim servitude, I
stipulate for affection. I claim to be surrounded by persons
loving me. And with one? . . . dearest! So that we two can
shut out the world; we live what is the dream of others.
Nothing imaginable can be sweeter. It is a veritable heaven
on earth. To be the possessor of the whole of you! Your
thoughts, hopes, all."
Sir Willoughby intensified his imagination
to conceive more: he could not, or could not express it, and
pursued: "But what is this talk of Vernon's leaving me? He
cannot leave. He has barely a hundred a year of his own. You
see, I consider him. I do not speak of the ingratitude of
the wish to leave. You know, my dear, I have a deadly
abhorrence of partings and such like. As far as I can, I
surround myself with healthy people specially to guard
myself from having my feelings wrung; and excepting Miss
Dale, whom you like—my darling does like her?"—the answer
satisfied him; "with that one exception, I am not aware of a
case that threatens to torment me. And here is a man, under
no compulsion, talking of leaving the Hall! In the name of
goodness, why? But why? Am I to imagine that the sight of
perfect felicity distresses him? We are told that the world
is 'desperately wicked'. I do not like to think it of my
friends; yet otherwise their conduct is often hard to
account for."
"If it were true, you would not punish
Crossjay?" Clara feebly interposed.
"I should certainly take Crossjay and make a
man of him after my own model, my dear. But who spoke to you
of this?"
"Mr. Whitford himself. And let me give you
my opinion, Willoughby, that he will take Crossjay with him
rather than leave him, if there is a fear of the boy's
missing his chance of the navy."
"Marines appear to be in the ascendant,"
said Sir Willoughby, astonished at the locution and pleading
in the interests of a son of one. "Then Crossjay he must
take. I cannot accept half the boy. I am," he laughed, "the
legitimate claimant in the application for judgement before
the wise king. Besides, the boy has a dose of my blood in
him; he has none of Vernon's, not one drop."
"Ah!"
"You see, my love?"
"Oh, I do see; yes."
"I put forth no pretensions to perfection,"
Sir Willoughby continued. "I can bear a considerable amount
of provocation; still I can be offended, and I am
unforgiving when I have been offended. Speak to Vernon, if a
natural occasion should spring up. I shall, of course, have
to speak to him. You may, Clara, have observed a man who
passed me on the road as we were cantering home, without a
hint of a touch to his hat. That man is a tenant of mine,
farming six hundred acres, Hoppner by name: a man bound to
remember that I have, independently of my position, obliged
him frequently. His lease of my ground has five years to
run. I must say I detest the churlishness of our country
population, and where it comes across me I chastise it.
Vernon is a different matter: he will only require to be
spoken to. One would fancy the old fellow laboured now and
then under a magnetic attraction to beggary. My love," he
bent to her and checked their pacing up and down, "you are
tired?"
"I am very tired to-day," said Clara.
His arm was offered. She laid two fingers on
it, and they dropped when he attempted to press them to his
rib.
He did not insist. To walk beside her was to
share in the stateliness of her walking.
He placed himself at a corner of the
door-way for her to pass him into the house, and doated on
her cheek, her ear, and the softly dusky nape of her neck,
where this way and that the little lighter-coloured
irreclaimable curls running truant from the comb and the
knot—curls, half-curls, root-curls, vine-ringlets,
wedding-rings, fledgling feathers, tufts of down, blown
wisps—waved or fell, waved over or up or involutedly, or
strayed, loose and downward, in the form of small silken
paws, hardly any of them much thicker than a crayon shading,
cunninger than long round locks of gold to trick the heart.
Laetitia had nothing to show resembling such
beauty.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH SIR WILLOUGHBY CHANCES TO SUPPLY
THE TITLE FOR HIMSELF
Now Vernon was useful to his cousin; he was
the accomplished secretary of a man who governed his estate
shrewdly and diligently, but had been once or twice unlucky
in his judgements pronounced from the magisterial bench as a
justice of the Peace, on which occasions a half column of
trenchant English supported by an apposite classical
quotation impressed Sir Willoughby with the value of such a
secretary in a controversy. He had no fear of that fiery
dragon of scorching breath—the newspaper press—while Vernon
was his right hand man; and as he intended to enter
Parliament, he foresaw the greater need of him. Furthermore,
he liked his cousin to date his own controversial writings,
on classical subjects, from Patterne Hall. It caused his
house to shine in a foreign field; proved the service of
scholarship by giving it a flavour of a bookish aristocracy
that, though not so well worth having, and indeed in itself
contemptible, is above the material and titular; one cannot
quite say how. There, however, is the flavour. Dainty sauces
are the life, the nobility, of famous dishes; taken alone,
the former would be nauseating, the latter plebeian. It is
thus, or somewhat so, when you have a poet, still better a
scholar, attached to your household. Sir Willoughby deserved
to have him, for he was above his county friends in his
apprehension of the flavour bestowed by the man; and having
him, he had made them conscious of their deficiency. His
cook, M. Dehors, pupil of the great Godefroy, was not the
only French cook in the county; but his cousin and
secretary, the rising scholar, the elegant essayist, was an
unparalleled decoration; of his kind, of course. Personally,
we laugh at him; you had better not, unless you are fain to
show that the higher world of polite literature is unknown
to you. Sir Willoughby could create an abject silence at a
county dinner-table by an allusion to Vernon "at work at
home upon his Etruscans or his Dorians"; and he paused a
moment to let the allusion sink, laughed audibly to himself
over his eccentric cousin, and let him rest.
In addition, Sir Willoughby abhorred the
loss of a familiar face in his domestic circle. He thought
ill of servants who could accept their dismissal without
petitioning to stay with him. A servant that gave warning
partook of a certain fiendishness. Vernon's project of
leaving the Hall offended and alarmed the sensitive
gentleman. "I shall have to hand Letty Dale to him at last!"
he thought, yielding in bitter generosity to the conditions
imposed on him by the ungenerousness of another. For, since
his engagement to Miss Middleton, his electrically
forethoughtful mind had seen in Miss Dale, if she stayed in
the neighbourhood, and remained unmarried, the governess of
his infant children, often consulting with him. But here was
a prospect dashed out. The two, then, may marry, and live in
a cottage on the borders of his park; and Vernon can retain
his post, and Laetitia her devotion. The risk of her casting
it of had to be faced. Marriage has been known to have such
an effect on the most faithful of women that a great passion
fades to naught in their volatile bosoms when they have
taken a husband. We see in women especially the triumph of
the animal over the spiritual. Nevertheless, risks must be
run for a purpose in view.
Having no taste for a discussion with
Vernon, whom it was his habit to confound by breaking away
from him abruptly when he had delivered his opinion, he left
it to both the persons interesting themselves in young
Crossjay to imagine that he was meditating on the question
of the lad, and to imagine that it would be wise to leave
him to meditate; for he could be preternaturally acute in
reading any of his fellow-creatures if they crossed the
current of his feelings. And, meanwhile, he instructed the
ladies Eleanor and Isabel to bring Laetitia Dale on a visit
to the Hall, where dinner-parties were soon to be given and
a pleasing talker would be wanted, where also a woman of
intellect, steeped in a splendid sentiment, hitherto a
miracle of female constancy, might stir a younger woman to
some emulation. Definitely to resolve to bestow Laetitia
upon Vernon was more than he could do; enough that he held
the card.
Regarding Clara, his genius for perusing the
heart which was not in perfect harmony with him through the
series of responsive movements to his own, informed him of a
something in her character that might have suggested to Mrs
Mountstuart Jenkinson her indefensible, absurd "rogue in
porcelain". Idea there was none in that phrase; yet, if you
looked on Clara as a delicately inimitable porcelain beauty,
the suspicion of a delicately inimitable ripple over her
features touched a thought of innocent roguery, wildwood
roguery; the likeness to the costly and lovely substance
appeared to admit a fitness in the dubious epithet. He
detested but was haunted by the phrase.
She certainly had at times the look of the
nymph that has gazed too long on the faun, and has
unwittingly copied his lurking lip and long sliding eye. Her
play with young Crossjay resembled a return of the lady to
the cat; she flung herself into it as if her real vitality
had been in suspense till she saw the boy. Sir Willoughby by
no means disapproved of a physical liveliness that promised
him health in his mate; but he began to feel in their
conversations that she did not sufficiently think of making
herself a nest for him. Steely points were opposed to him
when he, figuratively, bared his bosom to be taken to the
softest and fairest. She reasoned: in other words, armed her
ignorance. She reasoned against him publicly, and lured
Vernon to support her. Influence is to be counted for power,
and her influence over Vernon was displayed in her
persuading him to dance one evening at Lady Culmer's, after
his melancholy exhibitions of himself in the art; and not
only did she persuade him to stand up fronting her, she
manoeuvred him through the dance like a clever boy cajoling
a top to come to him without reeling, both to Vernon's
contentment and to Sir Willoughby's; for he was the last man
to object to a manifestation of power in his bride.
Considering her influence with Vernon, he renewed the
discourse upon young Crossjay; and, as he was addicted to
system, he took her into his confidence, that she might be
taught to look to him and act for him.
"Old Vernon has not spoken to you again of
that lad?" he said.
"Yes, Mr. Whitford has asked me."
"He does not ask me, my dear!"
"He may fancy me of greater aid than I am."
"You see, my love, if he puts Crossjay on
me, he will be off. He has this craze for 'enlisting' his
pen in London, as he calls it; and I am accustomed to him; I
don't like to think of him as a hack scribe, writing
nonsense from dictation to earn a pitiful subsistence; I
want him here; and, supposing he goes, he offends me; he
loses a friend; and it will not be the first time that a
friend has tried me too far; but if he offends me, he is
extinct."
"Is what?" cried Clara, with a look of
fright.
"He becomes to me at once as if he had never
been. He is extinct."
"In spite of your affection?"
"On account of it, I might say. Our nature
is mysterious, and mine as much so as any. Whatever my
regrets, he goes out. This is not a language I talk to the
world. I do the man no harm; I am not to be named
unchristian. But . . . !"
Sir Willoughby mildly shrugged, and
indicated a spreading out of the arms.
"But do, do talk to me as you talk to the
world, Willoughby; give me some relief!"
"My own Clara, we are one. You should know
me at my worst, we will say, if you like, as well as at my
best."
"Should I speak too?"
"What could you have to confess?"
She hung silent; the wave of an insane
resolution swelled in her bosom and subsided before she
said, "Cowardice, incapacity to speak."
"Women!" said he.
We do not expect so much of women; the
heroic virtues as little as the vices. They have not to
unfold the scroll of character.
He resumed, and by his tone she understood
that she was now in the inner temple of him: "I tell you
these things; I quite acknowledge they do not elevate me.
They help to constitute my character. I tell you most humbly
that I have in me much—too much of the fallen archangel's
pride."
Clara bowed her head over a sustained
in-drawn breath.
"It must be pride," he said, in a reverie
superinduced by her thoughtfulness over the revelation, and
glorying in the black flames demoniacal wherewith he crowned
himself.
"Can you not correct it?" said she.
He replied, profoundly vexed by
disappointment: "I am what I am. It might be demonstrated to
you mathematically that it is corrected by equivalents or
substitutions in my character. If it be a failing—assuming
that."
"It seems one to me: so cruelly to punish
Mr. Whitford for seeking to improve his fortunes."
"He reflects on my share in his fortunes. He
has had but to apply to me for his honorarium to be
doubled."
"He wishes for independence."
"Independence of me!"
"Liberty!"
"At my expense!"
"Oh, Willoughby!"
"Ay, but this is the world, and I know it,
my love; and beautiful as your incredulity may be, you will
find it more comforting to confide in my knowledge of the
selfishness of the world. My sweetest, you will?—you do! For
a breath of difference between us is intolerable. Do you not
feel how it breaks our magic ring? One small fissure, and we
have the world with its muddy deluge!—But my subject was old
Vernon. Yes, I pay for Crossjay, if Vernon consents to stay.
I waive my own scheme for the lad, though I think it the
better one. Now, then, to induce Vernon to stay. He has his
ideas about staying under a mistress of the household; and
therefore, not to contest it—he is a man of no argument; a
sort of lunatic determination takes the place of it with old
Vernon!—let him settle close by me, in one of my cottages;
very well, and to settle him we must marry him."
"Who is there?" said Clara, beating for the
lady in her mind.
"Women," said Willoughby, "are born
match-makers, and the most persuasive is a young bride. With
a man—and a man like old Vernon!— she is irresistible. It is
my wish, and that arms you. It is your wish, that subjugates
him. If he goes, he goes for good. If he stays, he is my
friend. I deal simply with him, as with every one. It is the
secret of authority. Now Miss Dale will soon lose her
father. He exists on a pension; she has the prospect of
having to leave the neighbourhood of the Hall, unless she is
established near us. Her whole heart is in this region; it
is the poor soul's passion. Count on her agreeing. But she
will require a little wooing: and old Vernon wooing! Picture
the scene to yourself, my love. His notion of wooing. I
suspect, will be to treat the lady like a lexicon, and turn
over the leaves for the word, and fly through the leaves for
another word, and so get a sentence. Don't frown at the poor
old fellow, my Clara; some have the language on their
tongues, and some have not. Some are very dry sticks; manly
men, honest fellows, but so cut away, so polished away from
the sex, that they are in absolute want of outsiders to
supply the silken filaments to attach them. Actually!" Sir
Willoughby laughed in Clara's face to relax the dreamy
stoniness of her look. "But I can assure you, my dearest, I
have seen it. Vernon does not know how to speak—as we speak.
He has, or he had, what is called a sneaking affection for
Miss Dale. It was the most amusing thing possible; his
courtship!—the air of a dog with an uneasy conscience,
trying to reconcile himself with his master! We were all in
fits of laughter. Of course it came to nothing."
"Will Mr. Whitford," said Clara, "offend you
to extinction if he declines?"
Willoughby breathed an affectionate "Tush!"
to her silliness.
"We bring them together, as we best can. You
see, Clara, I desire, and
I will make some sacrifices to detain him."
"But what do you sacrifice?—a cottage?" said
Clara, combative at all points.
"An ideal, perhaps. I lay no stress on
sacrifice. I strongly object to separations. And therefore,
you will say, I prepare the ground for unions? Put your
influence to good service, my love. I believe you could
persuade him to give us the Highland fling on the
drawing-room table."
"There is nothing to say to him of
Crossjay?"
"We hold Crossjay in reserve."
"It is urgent."
"Trust me. I have my ideas. I am not idle.
That boy bids fair for a capital horseman. Eventualities
might . . ." Sir Willoughby murmured to himself, and
addressing his bride, "The cavalry? If we put him into the
cavalry, we might make a gentleman of him—not be ashamed of
him. Or, under certain eventualities, the Guards. Think it
over, my love. De Craye, who will, I suppose, act best man
for me, supposing old Vernon to pull at the collar, is a
Lieutenant-Colonel in the Guards, a thorough gentleman—of
the brainless class, if you like, but an elegant fellow; an
Irishman; you will see him, and I should like to set a naval
lieutenant beside him in a drawingroom, for you to compare
them and consider the model you would choose for a boy you
are interested in. Horace is grace and gallantry incarnate;
fatuous, probably: I have always been too friendly with him
to examine closely. He made himself one of my dogs, though
my elder, and seemed to like to be at my heels. One of the
few men's faces I can call admirably handsome;—with nothing
behind it, perhaps. As Vernon says, 'a nothing picked by the
vultures and bleached by the desert'. Not a bad talker, if
you are satisfied with keeping up the ball. He will amuse
you. Old Horace does not know how amusing he is!"
"Did Mr. Whitford say that of Colonel De
Craye?"
"I forget the person of whom he said it. So
you have noticed old Vernon's foible? Quote him one of his
epigrams, and he is in motion head and heels! It is an
infallible receipt for tuning him. If I want to have him in
good temper, I have only to remark, 'as you said'. I
straighten his back instantly."
"I," said Clara, "have noticed chiefly his
anxiety concerning the boy; for which I admire him."
"Creditable, if not particularly far-sighted
and sagacious. Well, then, my dear, attack him at once; lead
him to the subject of our fair neighbour. She is to be our
guest for a week or so, and the whole affair might be
concluded far enough to fix him before she leaves. She is at
present awaiting the arrival of a cousin to attend on her
father. A little gentle pushing will precipitate old Vernon
on his knees as far as he ever can unbend them; but when a
lady is made ready to expect a declaration, you know, why,
she does not—does she?—demand the entire formula?—though
some beautiful fortresses . . ."
He enfolded her. Clara was growing hardened
to it. To this she was fated; and not seeing any way to
escape, she invoked a friendly frost to strike her blood,
and passed through the minute unfeelingly. Having passed it,
she reproached herself for making so much of it, thinking it
a lesser endurance than to listen to him. What could she
do?—she was caged; by her word of honour, as she at one time
thought; by her cowardice, at another; and dimly sensible
that the latter was a stronger lock than the former, she
mused on the abstract question whether a woman's cowardice
can be so absolute as to cast her into the jaws of her
aversion. Is it to be conceived? Is there not a moment when
it stands at bay? But haggard-visaged Honour then starts up
claiming to be dealt with in turn; for having courage
restored to her, she must have the courage to break with
honour, she must dare to be faithless, and not merely say, I
will be brave, but be brave enough to be dishonourable. The
cage of a plighted woman hungering for her disengagement has
two keepers, a noble and a vile; where on earth is creature
so dreadfully enclosed? It lies with her to overcome what
degrades her, that she may win to liberty by overcoming what
exalts.
Contemplating her situation, this idea (or
vapour of youth taking the god-like semblance of an idea)
sprang, born of her present sickness, in Clara's mind; that
it must be an ill-constructed tumbling world where the hour
of ignorance is made the creator of our destiny by being
forced to the decisive elections upon which life's main
issues hang. Her teacher had brought her to contemplate his
view of the world.
She thought likewise: how must a man despise
women, who can expose himself as he does to me!
Miss Middleton owed it to Sir Willoughby
Patterne that she ceased to think like a girl. When had the
great change begun? Glancing back, she could imagine that it
was near the period we call in love the first—almost from
the first. And she was led to imagine it through having
become barred from imagining her own emotions of that
season. They were so dead as not to arise even under the
form of shadows in fancy. Without imputing blame to him, for
she was reasonable so far, she deemed herself a person
entrapped. In a dream somehow she had committed herself to a
life-long imprisonment; and, oh terror! not in a quiet
dungeon; the barren walls closed round her, talked, called
for ardour, expected admiration.
She was unable to say why she could not give
it; why she retreated more and more inwardly; why she
invoked the frost to kill her tenderest feelings. She was in
revolt, until a whisper of the day of bells reduced her to
blank submission; out of which a breath of peace drew her to
revolt again in gradual rapid stages, and once more the
aspect of that singular day of merry blackness felled her to
earth. It was alive, it advanced, it had a mouth, it had a
song. She received letters of bridesmaids writing of it, and
felt them as waves that hurl a log of wreck to shore.
Following which afflicting sense of antagonism to the whole
circle sweeping on with her, she considered the possibility
of her being in a commencement of madness. Otherwise might
she not be accused of a capriciousness quite as deplorable
to consider? She had written to certain of these young
ladies not very long since of this gentleman—how?—in what
tone? And was it her madness then?—her recovery now? It
seemed to her that to have written of him enthusiastically
resembled madness more than to shudder away from the union;
but standing alone, opposing all she has consented to set in
motion, is too strange to a girl for perfect justification
to be found in reason when she seeks it.
Sir Willoughby was destined himself to
supply her with that key of special insight which revealed
and stamped him in a title to fortify her spirit of revolt,
consecrate it almost.
The popular physician of the county and
famous anecdotal wit, Dr. Corney, had been a guest at dinner
overnight, and the next day there was talk of him, and of
the resources of his art displayed by Armand Dehors on his
hearing that he was to minister to the tastes of a gathering
of hommes d'esprit. Sir Willoughby glanced at Dehors with
his customary benevolent irony in speaking of the persons,
great in their way, who served him. "Why he cannot give us
daily so good a dinner, one must, I suppose, go to French
nature to learn. The French are in the habit of making up
for all their deficiencies with enthusiasm. They have no
reverence; if I had said to him, 'I want something
particularly excellent, Dehors', I should have had a
commonplace dinner. But they have enthusiasm on draught, and
that is what we must pull at. Know one Frenchman and you
know France. I have had Dehors under my eye two years, and I
can mount his enthusiasm at a word. He took hommes d'esprit
to denote men of letters. Frenchmen have destroyed their
nobility, so, for the sake of excitement, they put up the
literary man—not to worship him; that they can't do; it's to
put themselves in a state of effervescence. They will not
have real greatness above them, so they have sham. That they
may justly call it equality, perhaps! Ay, for all your shake
of the head, my good Vernon! You see, human nature comes
round again, try as we may to upset it, and the French only
differ from us in wading through blood to discover that they
are at their old trick once more; 'I am your equal, sir,
your born equal. Oh! you are a man of letters? Allow me to
be in a bubble about you!' Yes, Vernon, and I believe the
fellow looks up to you as the head of the establishment. I
am not jealous. Provided he attends to his functions!
There's a French philosopher who's for naming the days of
the year after the birthdays of French men of letters.
Voltaire-day, Rousseau-day, Racine-day, so on. Perhaps
Vernon will inform us who takes April 1st."
"A few trifling errors are of no consequence
when you are in the vein of satire," said Vernon. "Be
satisfied with knowing a nation in the person of a cook."
"They may be reading us English off in a
jockey!" said Dr. Middleton. "I believe that jockeys are the
exchange we make for cooks; and our neighbours do not get
the best of the bargain."
"No; but, my dear good Vernon, it's
nonsensical," said Sir Willoughby; "why be bawling every day
the name of men of letters?"
"Philosophers."
"Well, philosophers."
"Of all countries and times. And they are
the benefactors of humanity."
"Bene—!" Sir Willoughby's derisive laugh
broke the word. "There's a pretension in all that,
irreconcilable with English sound sense. Surely you see it?"
"We might," said Vernon, "if you like, give
alternative titles to the days, or have alternating days,
devoted to our great families that performed meritorious
deeds upon such a day."
The rebel Clara, delighting in his banter,
was heard: "Can we furnish sufficient?"
"A poet or two could help us."
"Perhaps a statesman," she suggested.
"A pugilist, if wanted."
"For blowy days," observed Dr. Middleton,
and hastily in penitence picked up the conversation he had
unintentionally prostrated, with a general remark on
new-fangled notions, and a word aside to Vernon; which
created the blissful suspicion in Clara that her father was
indisposed to second Sir Willoughby's opinions even when
sharing them.
Sir Willoughby had led the conversation.
Displeased that the lead should be withdrawn from him, he
turned to Clara and related one of the after-dinner
anecdotes of Dr. Corney; and another, with a vast deal of
human nature in it, concerning a valetudinarian gentleman,
whose wife chanced to be desperately ill, and he went to the
physicians assembled in consultation outside the sick-room,
imploring them by all he valued, and in tears, to save the
poor patient for him, saying: "She is everything to me,
everything; and if she dies I am compelled to run the risks
of marrying again; I must marry again; for she has
accustomed me so to the little attentions of a wife, that in
truth I can't. I can't lose her! She must be saved!" And the
loving husband of any devoted wife wrung his hands.
"Now, there, Clara, there you have the
Egoist," added Sir Willoughby.
"That is the perfect Egoist. You see what he comes to—and
his wife!
The man was utterly unconscious of giving vent to the
grossest
selfishness."
"An Egoist!" said Clara.
"Beware of marrying an Egoist, my dear!" He
bowed gallantly; and so blindly fatuous did he appear to
her, that she could hardly believe him guilty of uttering
the words she had heard from him, and kept her eyes on him
vacantly till she came to a sudden full stop in the thoughts
directing her gaze. She looked at Vernon, she looked at her
father, and at the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. None of them
saw the man in the word, none noticed the word; yet this
word was her medical herb, her illuminating lamp, the key of
him (and, alas, but she thought it by feeling her need of
one), the advocate pleading in apology for her. Egoist! She
beheld him—unfortunate, self-designated man that he was!—in
his good qualities as well as bad under the implacable lamp,
and his good were drenched in his first person singular. His
generosity roared of I louder than the rest. Conceive him at
the age of Dr. Corney's hero: "Pray, save my wife for me. I
shall positively have to get another if I lose her, and one
who may not love me half so well, or understand the
peculiarities of my character and appreciate my attitudes."
He was in his thirty-second year, therefore a young man,
strong and healthy, yet his garrulous return to his
principal theme, his emphasis on I and me, lent him the
seeming of an old man spotted with decaying youth.
"Beware of marrying an Egoist."
Would he help her to escape? The idea of the
scene ensuing upon her petition for release, and the being
dragged round the walls of his egoism, and having her head
knocked against the corners, alarmed her with sensations of
sickness.
There was the example of Constantia. But
that desperate young lady had been assisted by a gallant,
loving gentleman; she had met a Captain Oxford.
Clara brooded on those two until they seemed
heroic. She questioned herself. Could she . . . ? were one
to come? She shut her eyes in languor, leaning the wrong way
of her wishes, yet unable to say No.
Sir Willoughby had positively said beware!
Marrying him would be a deed committed in spite of his
express warning. She went so far as to conceive him
subsequently saying: "I warned you." She conceived the state
of marriage with him as that of a woman tied not to a man of
heart, but to an obelisk lettered all over with
hieroglyphics, and everlastingly hearing him expound them,
relishing renewing his lectures on them.
Full surely this immovable stone-man would
not release her. This petrifaction of egoism would from
amazedly to austerely refuse the petition. His pride would
debar him from understanding her desire to be released. And
if she resolved on it, without doing it straightway in
Constantia's manner, the miserable bewilderment of her
father, for whom such a complication would be a tragic
dilemma, had to be thought of. Her father, with all his
tenderness for his child, would make a stand on the point of
honour; though certain to yield to her, he would be
distressed in a tempest of worry; and Dr. Middleton thus
afflicted threw up his arms, he shunned books, shunned
speech, and resembled a castaway on the ocean, with nothing
between himself and his calamity. As for the world, it would
be barking at her heels. She might call the man she wrenched
her hand from, Egoist; jilt, the world would call her. She
dwelt bitterly on her agreement with Sir Willoughby
regarding the world, laying it to his charge that her garden
had become a place of nettles, her horizon an unlighted
fourth side of a square.
Clara passed from person to person visiting
the Hall. There was universal, and as she was compelled to
see, honest admiration of the host. Not a soul had a
suspicion of his cloaked nature. Her agony of hypocrisy in
accepting their compliments as the bride of Sir Willoughby
Patterne was poorly moderated by contempt of them for their
infatuation. She tried to cheat herself with the thought
that they were right and that she was the foolish and wicked
inconstant. In her anxiety to strangle the rebelliousness
which had been communicated from her mind to her blood, and
was present with her whether her mind was in action or not,
she encouraged the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to magnify the
fictitious man of their idolatry, hoping that she might
enter into them imaginatively, that she might to some degree
subdue herself to the necessity of her position. If she
partly succeeded in stupefying her antagonism, five minutes
of him undid the work.
He requested her to wear the Patterne pearls
for a dinner-party of grand ladies, telling her that he
would commission Miss Isabel to take them to her. Clara
begged leave to decline them, on the plea of having no right
to wear them. He laughed at her modish modesty. "But really
it might almost be classed with affectation," said he. "I
give you the right. Virtually you are my wife."
"No."
"Before heaven?"
"No. We are not married."
"As my betrothed, will you wear them, to
please me?"
"I would rather not. I cannot wear borrowed
jewels. These I cannot wear. Forgive me, I cannot. And,
Willoughby," she said, scorning herself for want of
fortitude in not keeping to the simply blunt provocative
refusal, "does one not look like a victim decked for the
sacrifice?—the garlanded heifer you see on Greek vases, in
that array of jewellery?"
"My dear Clara!" exclaimed the astonished
lover, "how can you term them borrowed, when they are the
Patterne jewels, our family heirloom pearls, unmatched, I
venture to affirm, decidedly in my county and many others,
and passing to the use of the mistress of the house in the
natural course of things?"
"They are yours, they are not mine."
"Prospectively they are yours."
"It would be to anticipate the fact to wear
them."
"With my consent, my approval? at my
request?"
"I am not yet . . . I never may be . . ."
"My wife?" He laughed triumphantly, and
silenced her by manly smothering.
Her scruple was perhaps an honourable one,
he said. Perhaps the jewels were safer in their iron box. He
had merely intended a surprise and gratification to her.
Courage was coming to enable her to speak
more plainly, when his discontinuing to insist on her
wearing the jewels, under an appearance of deference of her
wishes, disarmed her by touching her sympathies.
She said, however, "I fear we do not often
agree, Willoughby."
"When you are a little older!" was the
irritating answer.
"It would then be too late to make the
discovery."
"The discovery, I apprehend, is not
imperative, my love."
"It seems to me that our minds are opposed."
"I should," said he, "have been awake to it
at a single indication, be sure."
"But I know," she pursued, "I have learned
that the ideal of conduct for women is to subject their
minds to the part of an accompaniment."
"For women, my love? my wife will be in
natural harmony with me."
"Ah!" She compressed her lips. The yawn
would come. "I am sleepier here than anywhere."
"Ours, my Clara, is the finest air of the
kingdom. It has the effect of sea-air."
"But if I am always asleep here?"
"We shall have to make a public exhibition
of the Beauty."
This dash of his liveliness defeated her.
She left him, feeling the contempt of the
brain feverishly quickened and fine-pointed, for the brain
chewing the cud in the happy pastures of unawakedness. So
violent was the fever, so keen her introspection, that she
spared few, and Vernon was not among them. Young Crossjay,
whom she considered the least able of all to act as an ally,
was the only one she courted with a real desire to please
him, he was the one she affectionately envied; he was the
youngest, the freest, he had the world before him, and he
did not know how horrible the world was, or could be made to
look. She loved the boy from expecting nothing of him.
Others, Vernon Whitford, for instance, could help, and moved
no hand. He read her case. A scrutiny so penetrating under
its air of abstract thoughtfulness, though his eyes did but
rest on her a second or two, signified that he read her line
by line, and to the end—excepting what she thought of him
for probing her with that sharp steel of insight without a
purpose.
She knew her mind's injustice. It was her
case, her lamentable case—the impatient panic-stricken
nerves of a captured wild creature which cried for help. She
exaggerated her sufferings to get strength to throw them
off, and lost it in the recognition that they were
exaggerated: and out of the conflict issued recklessness,
with a cry as wild as any coming of madness; for she did not
blush in saying to herself. "If some one loved me!" Before
hearing of Constantia, she had mused upon liberty as a
virgin Goddess—men were out of her thoughts; even the figure
of a rescuer, if one dawned in her mind, was more angel than
hero. That fair childish maidenliness had ceased. With her
body straining in her dragon's grasp, with the savour of
loathing, unable to contend, unable to speak aloud, she
began to speak to herself, and all the health of her nature
made her outcry womanly: "If I were loved!"—not for the sake
of love, but for free breathing; and her utterance of it was
to insure life and enduringness to the wish, as the yearning
of a mother on a drowning ship is to get her infant to
shore. "If some noble gentleman could see me as I am and not
disdain to aid me! Oh! to be caught up out of this prison of
thorns and brambles. I cannot tear my own way out. I am a
coward. My cry for help confesses that. A beckoning of a
finger would change me, I believe. I could fly bleeding and
through hootings to a comrade. Oh! a comrade! I do not want
a lover. I should find another Egoist, not so bad, but
enough to make me take a breath like death. I could follow a
soldier, like poor Sally or Molly. He stakes his life for
his country, and a woman may be proud of the worst of men
who do that. Constantia met a soldier. Perhaps she prayed
and her prayer was answered. She did ill. But, oh, how I
love her for it! His name was Harry Oxford. Papa would call
him her Perseus. She must have felt that there was no
explaining what she suffered. She had only to act, to
plunge. First she fixed her mind on Harry Oxford. To be able
to speak his name and see him awaiting her, must have been
relief, a reprieve. She did not waver, she cut the links,
she signed herself over. Oh, brave girl! what do you think
of me? But I have no Harry Whitford, I am alone. Let
anything be said against women; we must be very bad to have
such bad things written of us: only, say this, that to ask
them to sign themselves over by oath and ceremony, because
of an ignorant promise, to the man they have been mistaken
in, is . . . it is—" the sudden consciousness that she had
put another name for Oxford, struck her a buffet, drowning
her in crimson.
CHAPTER XI
THE DOUBLE-BLOSSOM WILD CHERRY-TREE
Sir Willoughby chose a moment when Clara was
with him and he had a good retreat through folding-windows
to the lawn, in case of cogency on the enemy's part, to
attack his cousin regarding the preposterous plot to upset
the family by a scamper to London: "By the way, Vernon, what
is this you've been mumbling to everybody save me, about
leaving us to pitch yourself into the stew-pot and be made
broth of? London is no better, and you are fit for
considerably better. Don't, I beg you, continue to annoy me.
Take a run abroad, if you are restless. Take two or three
months, and join us as we are travelling home; and then
think of settling, pray. Follow my example, if you like. You
can have one of my cottages, or a place built for you.
Anything to keep a man from destroying the sense of
stability about one. In London, my dear old fellow, you lose
your identity. What are you there? I ask you, what? One has
the feeling of the house crumbling when a man is perpetually
for shifting and cannot fix himself. Here you are known, you
can study at your ease; up in London you are nobody; I tell
you honestly, I feel it myself, a week of London literally
drives me home to discover the individual where I left him.
Be advised. You don't mean to go."
"I have the intention," said Vernon.
"Why?"
"I've mentioned it to you."
"To my face?"
"Over your shoulder is generally the only
chance you give me."
"You have not mentioned it to me, to my
knowledge. As to the reason, I might hear a dozen of your
reasons, and I should not understand one. It's against your
interests and against my wishes. Come, friend, I am not the
only one you distress. Why, Vernon, you yourself have said
that the English would be very perfect Jews if they could
manage to live on the patriarchal system. You said it, yes,
you said it!—but I recollect it clearly. Oh, as for your
double-meanings, you said the thing, and you jeered at the
incapacity of English families to live together, on account
of bad temper; and now you are the first to break up our
union! I decidedly do not profess to be a perfect Jew, but I
do . . ."
Sir Willoughby caught signs of a probably
smiling commerce between his bride and his cousin. He raised
his face, appeared to be consulting his eyelids, and
resolved to laugh: "Well, I own it. I do like the idea of
living patriarchally." He turned to Clara. "The Rev. Doctor
one of us!"
"My father?" she said.
"Why not?"
"Papa's habits are those of a scholar."
"That you might not be separated from him,
my dear!"
Clara thanked Sir Willoughby for the
kindness of thinking of her father, mentally analysing the
kindness, in which at least she found no unkindness,
scarcely egoism, though she knew it to be there.
"We might propose it," said he.
"As a compliment?"
"If he would condescend to accept it as a
compliment. These great scholars! . . . And if Vernon goes,
our inducement for Dr. Middleton to stay . . . But it is too
absurd for discussion . . . Oh, Vernon, about Master
Crossjay; I will see to it."
He was about to give Vernon his shoulder and
step into the garden, when
Clara said, "You will have Crossjay trained for the navy,
Willoughby?
There is not a day to lose."
"Yes, yes; I will see to it. Depend on me
for holding the young rascal in view."
He presented his hand to her to lead her
over the step to the gravel, surprised to behold how flushed
she was.
She responded to the invitation by putting
her hand forth from a bent elbow, with hesitating fingers.
"It should not be postponed, Willoughby."
Her attitude suggested a stipulation before
she touched him.
"It's an affair of money, as you know,
Willoughby," said Vernon. "If I'm in London, I can't well
provide for the boy for some time to come, or it's not
certain that I can."
"Why on earth should you go?"
"That's another matter. I want you to take
my place with him."
"In which case the circumstances are
changed. I am responsible for him, and I have a right to
bring him up according to my own prescription."
"We are likely to have one idle lout the
more."
"I guarantee to make a gentleman of him."
"We have too many of your gentlemen
already."
"You can't have enough, my good Vernon."
"They're the national apology for indolence.
Training a penniless boy to be one of them is nearly as bad
as an education in a thieves' den; he will be just as much
at war with society, if not game for the police."
"Vernon, have you seen Crossjay's father,
the now Captain of Marines? I think you have."
"He's a good man and a very gallant
officer."
"And in spite of his qualities he's a cub,
and an old cub. He is a captain now, but he takes that rank
very late, you will own. There you have what you call a good
man, undoubtedly a gallant officer, neutralized by the fact
that he is not a gentleman. Holding intercourse with him is
out of the question. No wonder Government declines to
advance him rapidly. Young Crossjay does not bear your name.
He bears mine, and on that point alone I should have a voice
in the settlement of his career. And I say emphatically that
a drawing-room approval of a young man is the best
certificate for his general chances in life. I know of a
City of London merchant of some sort, and I know a firm of
lawyers, who will have none but University men at their
office; at least, they have the preference."
"Crossjay has a bullet head, fit neither for
the University nor the drawing-room," said Vernon; "equal to
fighting and dying for you, and that's all."
Sir Willoughby contented himself with
replying, "The lad is a favourite of mine."
His anxiety to escape a rejoinder caused him
to step into the garden, leaving Clara behind him. "My
love!" said he, in apology, as he turned to her. She could
not look stern, but she had a look without a dimple to
soften it, and her eyes shone. For she had wagered in her
heart that the dialogue she provoked upon Crossjay would
expose the Egoist. And there were other motives, wrapped up
and intertwisted, unrecognizable, sufficient to strike her
with worse than the flush of her self-knowledge of
wickedness when she detained him to speak of Crossjay before
Vernon.
At last it had been seen that she was
conscious of suffering in her association with this Egoist!
Vernon stood for the world taken into her confidence. The
world, then, would not think so ill of her, she thought
hopefully, at the same time that she thought most evilly of
herself. But self-accusations were for the day of reckoning;
she would and must have the world with her, or the belief
that it was coming to her, in the terrible struggle she
foresaw within her horizon of self, now her utter boundary.
She needed it for the inevitable conflict. Little sacrifices
of her honesty might be made. Considering how weak she was,
how solitary, how dismally entangled, daily disgraced beyond
the power of any veiling to conceal from her fiery
sensations, a little hypocrisy was a poor girl's natural
weapon. She crushed her conscientious mind with the
assurance that it was magnifying trifles: not entirely
unaware that she was thereby preparing it for a convenient
blindness in the presence of dread alternatives; but the
pride of laying such stress on small sins gave her purity a
blush of pleasure and overcame the inner warning. In truth
she dared not think evilly of herself for long, sailing into
battle as she was. Nuns and anchorites may; they have
leisure. She regretted the forfeits she had to pay for
self-assistance, and, if it might be won, the world's;
regretted, felt the peril of the loss, and took them up and
flung them.
"You see, old Vernon has no argument,"
Willoughby said to her.
He drew her hand more securely on his arm to
make her sensible that she leaned on a pillar of strength.
"Whenever the little brain is in doubt,
perplexed, undecided which course to adopt, she will come to
me, will she not? I shall always listen," he resumed,
soothingly. "My own! and I to you when the world vexes me.
So we round our completeness. You will know me; you will
know me in good time. I am not a mystery to those to whom I
unfold myself. I do not pretend to mystery: yet, I will
confess, your home—your heart's—Willoughby is not exactly
identical with the Willoughby before the world. One must be
armed against that rough beast."
Certain is the vengeance of the young upon
monotony; nothing more certain. They do not scheme it, but
sameness is a poison to their systems; and vengeance is
their heartier breathing, their stretch of the limbs, run in
the fields; nature avenges them.
"When does Colonel De Craye arrive?" said
Clara.
"Horace? In two or three days. You wish him
to be on the spot to learn his part, my love?"
She had not flown forward to the thought of
Colonel De Craye's arrival; she knew not why she had
mentioned him; but now she flew back, shocked, first into
shadowy subterfuge, and then into the criminal's dock.
"I do not wish him to be here. I do not know
that he has a part to learn. I have no wish. Willoughby, did
you not say I should come to you and you would listen?—will
you listen? I am so commonplace that I shall not be
understood by you unless you take my words for the very
meaning of the words. I am unworthy. I am volatile. I love
my liberty. I want to be free . . ."
"Flitch!" he called.
It sounded necromantic.
"Pardon me, my love," he said. "The man you
see yonder violates my express injunction that he is not to
come on my grounds, and here I find him on the borders of my
garden!"
Sir Willoughby waved his hand to the abject
figure of a man standing to intercept him.
"Volatile, unworthy, liberty—my dearest!" he
bent to her when the man had appeased him by departing, "you
are at liberty within the law, like all good women; I shall
control and direct your volatility; and your sense of
worthiness must be re-established when we are more intimate;
it is timidity. The sense of unworthiness is a guarantee of
worthiness ensuing. I believe I am in the vein of a sermon!
Whose the fault? The sight of that man was annoying. Flitch
was a stable-boy, groom, and coachman, like his father
before him, at the Hall thirty years; his father died in our
service. Mr. Flitch had not a single grievance here; only
one day the demon seizes him with the notion of bettering
himself he wants his independence, and he presents himself
to me with a story of a shop in our county town.—Flitch!
remember, if you go you go for good.—Oh, he quite
comprehended.—Very well; good-bye, Flitch;—the man was
respectful: he looked the fool he was very soon to turn out
to be. Since then, within a period of several years, I have
had him, against my express injunctions, ten times on my
grounds. It's curious to calculate. Of course the shop
failed, and Flitch's independence consists in walking about
with his hands in his empty pockets, and looking at the Hall
from some elevation near."
"Is he married? Has he children?" said
Clara.
"Nine; and a wife that cannot cook or sew or
wash linen."
"You could not give him employment?"
"After his having dismissed himself?"
"It might be overlooked."
"Here he was happy. He decided to go
elsewhere, to be free—of course, of my yoke. He quitted my
service against my warning. Flitch, we will say, emigrated
with his wife and children, and the ship foundered. He
returns, but his place is filled; he is a ghost here, and I
object to ghosts."
"Some work might be found for him."
"It will be the same with old Vernon, my
dear. If he goes, he goes for good. It is the vital
principle of my authority to insist on that. A dead leaf
might as reasonably demand to return to the tree. Once off,
off for all eternity! I am sorry, but such was your
decision, my friend. I have, you see, Clara, elements in
me—"
"Dreadful!"
"Exert your persuasive powers with Vernon.
You can do well-nigh what you will with the old fellow. We
have Miss Dale this evening for a week or two. Lead him to
some ideas of her.—Elements in me, I was remarking, which
will no more bear to be handled carelessly than gunpowder.
At the same time, there is no reason why they should not be
respected, managed with some degree of regard for me and
attention to consequences. Those who have not done so have
repented."
"You do not speak to others of the elements
in you," said Clara.
"I certainly do not: I have but one bride,"
was his handsome reply.
"Is it fair to me that you should show me
the worst of you?"
"All myself, my own?"
His ingratiating droop and familiar smile
rendered "All myself" so affectionately meaningful in its
happy reliance upon her excess of love, that at last she
understood she was expected to worship him and uphold him
for whatsoever he might be, without any estimation of
qualities: as indeed love does, or young love does: as she
perhaps did once, before he chilled her senses. That was
before her "little brain" had become active and had turned
her senses to revolt.
It was on the full river of love that Sir
Willoughby supposed the whole floating bulk of his
personality to be securely sustained; and therefore it was
that, believing himself swimming at his ease, he discoursed
of himself.
She went straight away from that idea with
her mental exclamation: "Why does he not paint himself in
brighter colours to me!" and the question: "Has he no ideal
of generosity and chivalry?"
But the unfortunate gentleman imagined
himself to be loved, on Love's very bosom. He fancied that
everything relating to himself excited maidenly curiosity,
womanly reverence, ardours to know more of him, which he was
ever willing to satisfy by repeating the same things. His
notion of women was the primitive black and white: there are
good women, bad women; and he possessed a good one. His high
opinion of himself fortified the belief that Providence, as
a matter of justice and fitness, must necessarily select a
good one for him—or what are we to think of Providence? And
this female, shaped by that informing hand, would naturally
be in harmony with him, from the centre of his profound
identity to the raying circle of his variations. Know the
centre, you know the circle, and you discover that the
variations are simply characteristics, but you must travel
on the rays from the circle to get to the centre.
Consequently Sir Willoughby put Miss Middleton on one or
other of these converging lines from time to time. Us, too,
he drags into the deeps, but when we have harpooned a whale
and are attached to the rope, down we must go; the miracle
is to see us rise again.
Women of mixed essences shading off the
divine to the considerably lower were outside his vision of
woman. His mind could as little admit an angel in pottery as
a rogue in porcelain. For him they were what they were when
fashioned at the beginning; many cracked, many stained, here
and there a perfect specimen designed for the elect of men.
At a whisper of the world he shut the prude's door on them
with a slam; himself would have branded them with the
letters in the hue of fire. Privately he did so; and he was
constituted by his extreme sensitiveness and taste for
ultra-feminine refinement to be a severe critic of them
during the carnival of egoism, the love-season. Constantia .
. . can it be told? She had been, be it said, a fair and
frank young merchant with him in that season; she was of a
nature to be a mother of heroes; she met the salute, almost
half-way, ingenuously unlike the coming mothers of the
regiments of marionettes, who retire in vapours, downcast,
as by convention; ladies most flattering to the egoistical
gentleman, for they proclaim him the "first". Constantia's
offence had been no greater, but it was not that dramatic
performance of purity which he desired of an affianced lady,
and so the offence was great.
The love-season is the carnival of egoism,
and it brings the touchstone to our natures. I speak of
love, not the mask, and not of the flutings upon the theme
of love, but of the passion; a flame having, like our
mortality, death in it as well as life, that may or may not
be lasting. Applied to Sir Willoughby, as to thousands of
civilized males, the touchstone found him requiring to be
dealt with by his betrothed as an original savage. She was
required to play incessantly on the first reclaiming chord
which led our ancestral satyr to the measures of the dance,
the threading of the maze, and the setting conformably to
his partner before it was accorded to him to spin her with
both hands and a chirrup of his frisky heels. To keep him in
awe and hold him enchained, there are things she must never
do, dare never say, must not think. She must be cloistral.
Now, strange and awful though it be to hear, women perceive
this requirement of them in the spirit of the man; they
perceive, too, and it may be gratefully, that they address
their performances less to the taming of the green and
prankish monsieur of the forest than to the pacification of
a voracious aesthetic gluttony, craving them insatiably,
through all the tenses, with shrieks of the lamentable
letter "I" for their purity. Whether they see that it has
its foundation in the sensual, and distinguish the
ultra-refined but lineally great-grandson of the Hoof in
this vast and dainty exacting appetite is uncertain. They
probably do not; the more the damage; for in the appeasement
of the glutton they have to practise much simulation; they
are in their way losers like their ancient mothers. It is
the palpable and material of them still which they are
tempted to flourish, wherewith to invite and allay pursuit:
a condition under which the spiritual, wherein their hope
lies, languishes. The capaciously strong in soul among women
will ultimately detect an infinite grossness in the demand
for purity infinite, spotless bloom. Earlier or later they
see they have been victims of the singular Egoist, have worn
a mask of ignorance to be named innocent, have turned
themselves into market produce for his delight, and have
really abandoned the commodity in ministering to the lust
for it, suffered themselves to be dragged ages back in
playing upon the fleshly innocence of happy accident to
gratify his jealous greed of possession, when it should have
been their task to set the soul above the fairest fortune
and the gift of strength in women beyond ornamental
whiteness. Are they not of nature warriors, like men?—men's
mates to bear them heroes instead of puppets? But the
devouring male Egoist prefers them as inanimate overwrought
polished pure metal precious vessels, fresh from the hands
of the artificer, for him to walk away with hugging, call
all his own, drink of, and fill and drink of, and forget
that he stole them.
This running off on a by-road is no
deviation from Sir Willoughby Patterne and Miss Clara
Middleton. He, a fairly intelligent man, and very sensitive,
was blinded to what was going on within her visibly enough,
by her production of the article he demanded of her sex. He
had to leave the fair young lady to ride to his county-town,
and his design was to conduct her through the covert of a
group of laurels, there to revel in her soft confusion. She
resisted; nay, resolutely returned to the lawn-sward. He
contrasted her with Constantia in the amorous time, and
rejoiced in his disappointment. He saw the goddess Modesty
guarding Purity; and one would be bold to say that he did
not hear the Precepts, Purity's aged grannams maternal and
paternal, cawing approval of her over their munching gums.
And if you ask whether a man, sensitive and a lover, can be
so blinded, you are condemned to re-peruse the foregoing
paragraph.
Miss Middleton was not sufficiently
instructed in the position of her sex to know that she had
plunged herself in the thick of the strife of one of their
great battles. Her personal position, however, was
instilling knowledge rapidly, as a disease in the frame
teaches us what we are and have to contend with. Could she
marry this man? He was evidently manageable. Could she
condescend to the use of arts in managing him to obtain a
placable life?—a horror of swampy flatness! So vividly did
the sight of that dead heaven over an unvarying level earth
swim on her fancy, that she shut her eyes in angry exclusion
of it as if it were outside, assailing her; and she nearly
stumbled upon young Crossjay.
"Oh, have I hurt you?" he cried.
"No," said she, "it was my fault. Lead me
somewhere away from everybody."
The boy took her hand, and she resumed her
thoughts; and, pressing his fingers and feeling warm to him
both for his presence and silence, so does the blood in
youth lead the mind, even cool and innocent blood, even with
a touch, that she said to herself, "And if I marry, and then
. . . Where will honour be then? I marry him to be true to
my word of honour, and if then . . . !" An intolerable
languor caused her to sigh profoundly. It is written as she
thought it; she thought in blanks, as girls do, and some
women. A shadow of the male Egoist is in the chamber of
their brains overawing them.
"Were I to marry, and to run!" There is the
thought; she is offered up to your mercy. We are dealing
with a girl feeling herself desperately situated, and not a
fool.
"I'm sure you're dead tired, though," said
Crossjay.
"No, I am not; what makes you think so?"
said Clara.
"I do think so."
"But why do you think so?"
"You're so hot."
"What makes you think that?"
"You're so red."
"So are you, Crossjay."
"I'm only red in the middle of the cheeks,
except when I've been running. And then you talk to
yourself, just as boys do when they are blown."
"Do they?"
"They say: 'I know I could have kept up
longer', or, 'my buckle broke', all to themselves, when they
break down running."
"And you have noticed that?"
"And, Miss Middleton, I don't wish you were
a boy, but I should like to live near you all my life and be
a gentleman. I'm coming with Miss Dale this evening to stay
at the Hall and be looked after, instead of stopping with
her cousin who takes care of her father. Perhaps you and
I'll play chess at night."
"At night you will go to bed, Crossjay."
"Not if I have Sir Willoughby to catch hold
of. He says I'm an authority on birds' eggs. I can manage
rabbits and poultry. Isn't a farmer a happy man? But he
doesn't marry ladies. A cavalry officer has the best
chance."
"But you are going to be a naval officer."
"I don't know. It's not positive. I shall
bring my two dormice, and make them perform gymnastics on
the dinnertable. They're such dear little things. Naval
officers are not like Sir Willoughby."
"No, they are not," said Clara, "they give
their lives to their country."
"And then they're dead," said Crossjay.
Clara wished Sir Willoughby were confronting
her: she could have spoken.
She asked the boy where Mr. Whitford was.
Crossjay pointed very secretly in the direction of the
double-blossom wild-cherry. Coming within gaze of the stem,
she beheld Vernon stretched at length, reading, she
supposed; asleep, she discovered: his finger in the leaves
of a book; and what book? She had a curiosity to know the
title of the book he would read beneath these boughs, and
grasping Crossjay's hand fast she craned her neck, as one
timorous of a fall in peeping over chasms, for a glimpse of
the page; but immediately, and still with a bent head, she
turned her face to where the load of virginal blossom,
whiter than summer-cloud on the sky, showered and drooped
and clustered so thick as to claim colour and seem, like
higher Alpine snows in noon-sunlight, a flush of white. From
deep to deeper heavens of white, her eyes perched and
soared. Wonder lived in her. Happiness in the beauty of the
tree pressed to supplant it, and was more mortal and
narrower. Reflection came, contracting her vision and
weighing her to earth. Her reflection was: "He must be good
who loves to be and sleep beneath the branches of this
tree!" She would rather have clung to her first impression:
wonder so divine, so unbounded, was like soaring into homes
of angel-crowded space, sweeping through folded and on to
folded white fountain-bow of wings, in innumerable columns;
but the thought of it was no recovery of it; she might as
well have striven to be a child. The sensation of happiness
promised to be less short-lived in memory, and would have
been had not her present disease of the longing for
happiness ravaged every corner of it for the secret of its
existence. The reflection took root. "He must be good . . .
!" That reflection vowed to endure. Poor by comparison with
what it displaced, it presented itself to her as conferring
something on him, and she would not have had it absent
though it robbed her.
She looked down. Vernon was dreamily looking
up.
She plucked Crossjay hurriedly away,
whispering that he had better not wake Mr. Whitford, and
then she proposed to reverse their previous chase, and she
be the hound and he the hare. Crossjay fetched a magnificent
start. On his glancing behind he saw Miss Middleton walking
listlessly, with a hand at her side.
"There's a regular girl!" said he in some
disgust; for his theory was, that girls always have
something the matter with them to spoil a game.
CHAPTER XII
MISS MIDDLETON AND MR. VERNON WHITFORD
Looking upward, not quite awakened out of a
transient doze, at a fair head circled in dazzling blossom,
one may temporize awhile with common sense, and take it for
a vision after the eyes have regained direction of the mind.
Vernon did so until the plastic vision interwound with
reality alarmingly. This is the embrace of a Melusine who
will soon have the brain if she is encouraged. Slight
dalliance with her makes the very diminutive seem as big as
life. He jumped to his feet, rattled his throat, planted
firmness on his brows and mouth, and attacked the
dream-giving earth with tremendous long strides, that his
blood might be lively at the throne of understanding. Miss
Middleton and young Crossjay were within hail: it was her
face he had seen, and still the idea of a vision, chased
from his reasonable wits, knocked hard and again for
readmission. There was little for a man of humble mind
toward the sex to think of in the fact of a young lady's
bending rather low to peep at him asleep, except that the
poise of her slender figure, between an air of spying and of
listening, vividly recalled his likening of her to the
Mountain Echo. Man or maid sleeping in the open air provokes
your tiptoe curiosity. Men, it is known, have in that state
cruelly been kissed; and no rights are bestowed on them,
they are teased by a vapourish rapture; what has happened to
them the poor fellows barely divine: they have a crazy step
from that day. But a vision is not so distracting; it is our
own, we can put it aside and return to it, play at rich and
poor with it, and are not to be summoned before your laws
and rules for secreting it in our treasury. Besides, it is
the golden key of all the possible; new worlds expand
beneath the dawn it brings us. Just outside reality, it
illumines, enriches and softens real things;—and to desire
it in preference to the simple fact is a damning proof of
enervation.
Such was Vernon's winding up of his brief
drama of fantasy. He was aware of the fantastical element in
him and soon had it under. Which of us who is of any worth
is without it? He had not much vanity to trouble him, and
passion was quiet, so his task was not gigantic. Especially
be it remarked, that he was a man of quick pace, the
sovereign remedy for the dispersing of the mental fen-mist.
He had tried it and knew that nonsense is to be walked off.
Near the end of the park young Crossjay
overtook him, and after acting the pumped one a trifle more
than needful, cried: "I say, Mr. Whitford, there's Miss
Middleton with her handkerchief out."
"What for, my lad?" said Vernon.
"I'm sure I don't know. All of a sudden she
bumped down. And, look what fellows girls are!—here she
comes as if nothing had happened, and I saw her feel at her
side."
Clara was shaking her head to express a
denial. "I am not at all unwell," she said, when she came
near. "I guessed Crossjay's business in running up to you;
he's a good-for-nothing, officious boy. I was tired, and
rested for a moment."
Crossjay peered at her eyelids. Vernon
looked away and said: "Are you too tired for a stroll?"
"Not now."
"Shall it be brisk?"
"You have the lead."
He led at a swing of the legs that
accelerated young Crossjay's to the double, but she with her
short, swift, equal steps glided along easily on a fine by
his shoulder, and he groaned to think that of all the girls
of earth this one should have been chosen for the position
of fine lady.
"You won't tire me," said she, in answer to
his look.
"You remind me of the little Piedmontese
Bersaglieri on the march."
"I have seen them trotting into Como from
Milan."
"They cover a quantity of ground in a day,
if the ground's flat. You want another sort of step for the
mountains."
"I should not attempt to dance up."
"They soon tame romantic notions of them."
"The mountains tame luxurious dreams, you
mean. I see how they are conquered. I can plod. Anything to
be high up!"
"Well, there you have the secret of good
work: to plod on and still keep the passion fresh."
"Yes, when we have an aim in view."
"We always have one."
"Captives have?"
"More than the rest of us."
Ignorant man! What of wives miserably
wedded? What aim in view have these most woeful captives?
Horror shrouds it, and shame reddens through the folds to
tell of innermost horror.
"Take me back to the mountains, if you
please, Mr. Whitford," Miss Middleton said, fallen out of
sympathy with him. "Captives have death in view, but that is
not an aim."
"Why may not captives expect a release?"
"Hardly from a tyrant."
"If you are thinking of tyrants, it may be
so. Say the tyrant dies?"
"The prison-gates are unlocked and out comes
a skeleton. But why will you talk of skeletons! The very
name of mountain seems life in comparison with any other
subject."
"I assure you," said Vernon, with the
fervour of a man lighting on an actual truth in his
conversation with a young lady, "it's not the first time I
have thought you would be at home in the Alps. You would
walk and climb as well as you dance."
She liked to hear Clara Middleton talked of,
and of her having been thought of, and giving him friendly
eyes, barely noticing that he was in a glow, she said: "If
you speak so encouragingly I shall fancy we are near an
ascent."
"I wish we were," said he.
"We can realize it by dwelling on it, don't
you think?"
"We can begin climbing."
"Oh!" she squeezed herself shadowily.
"Which mountain shall it be?" said Vernon,
in the right real earnest tone.
Miss Middleton suggested a lady's mountain
first, for a trial. "And then, if you think well enough of
me—if I have not stumbled more than twice, or asked more
than ten times how far it is from the top, I should like to
be promoted to scale a giant."
They went up to some of the lesser heights
of Switzerland and Styria, and settled in South Tyrol, the
young lady preferring this district for the strenuous
exercise of her climbing powers because she loved Italian
colour; and it seemed an exceedingly good reason to the
genial imagination she had awakened in Mr. Whitford.
"Though," said he, abruptly, "you are not so much Italian as
French."
She hoped she was English, she remarked.
"Of course you are English; . . . yes." He
moderated his ascent with the halting affirmative.
She inquired wonderingly why he spoke in
apparent hesitation.
"Well, you have French feet, for example:
French wits, French impatience," he lowered his voice, "and
charm"
"And love of compliments."
"Possibly. I was not conscious of paying
them"
"And a disposition to rebel?"
"To challenge authority, at least."
"That is a dreadful character."
"At all events, it is a character."
"Fit for an Alpine comrade?"
"For the best of comrades anywhere."
"It is not a piece of drawing-room
sculpture: that is the most one can say for it!" she dropped
a dramatic sigh.
Had he been willing she would have continued
the theme, for the pleasure a poor creature long gnawing her
sensations finds in seeing herself from the outside. It fell
away. After a silence, she could not renew it; and he was
evidently indifferent, having to his own satisfaction
dissected and stamped her a foreigner. With it passed her
holiday. She had forgotten Sir Willoughby: she remembered
him and said. "You knew Miss Durham, Mr. Whitford?"
He answered briefly, "I did."
"Was she? . . ." some hot-faced inquiry
peered forth and withdrew.
"Very handsome," said Vernon.
"English?"
"Yes; the dashing style of English."
"Very courageous."
"I dare say she had a kind of courage."
"She did very wrong."
"I won't say no. She discovered a man more
of a match with herself; luckily not too late. We're at the
mercy . . ."
"Was she not unpardonable?"
"I should be sorry to think that of any
one."
"But you agree that she did wrong."
"I suppose I do. She made a mistake and she
corrected it. If she had not, she would have made a greater
mistake."
"The manner. . ."
"That was bad—as far as we know. The world
has not much right to judge. A false start must now and then
be made. It's better not to take notice of it, I think."
"What is it we are at the mercy of?"
"Currents of feeling, our natures. I am the
last man to preach on the subject: young ladies are enigmas
to me; I fancy they must have a natural perception of the
husband suitable to them, and the reverse; and if they have
a certain degree of courage, it follows that they please
themselves."
"They are not to reflect on the harm they
do?" said Miss Middleton.
"By all means let them reflect; they hurt
nobody by doing that."
"But a breach of faith!"
"If the faith can be kept through life,
all's well."
"And then there is the cruelty, the injury!"
"I really think that if a young lady came to
me to inform me she must break our engagement—I have never
been put to the proof, but to suppose it:—I should not think
her cruel."
"Then she would not be much of a loss."
"And I should not think so for this reason,
that it is impossible for a girl to come to such a
resolution without previously showing signs of it to her . .
. the man she is engaged to. I think it unfair to engage a
girl for longer than a week or two, just time enough for her
preparations and publications."
"If he is always intent on himself, signs
are likely to be unheeded by him," said Miss Middleton.
He did not answer, and she said, quickly:
"It must always be a cruelty. The world will
think so. It is an act of inconstancy."
"If they knew one another well before they
were engaged."
"Are you not singularly tolerant?" said she.
To which Vernon replied with airy
cordiality:—
"In some cases it is right to judge by
results; we'll leave severity to the historian, who is bound
to be a professional moralist and put pleas of human nature
out of the scales. The lady in question may have been to
blame, but no hearts were broken, and here we have four
happy instead of two miserable."
His persecuting geniality of countenance
appealed to her to confirm this judgement by results, and
she nodded and said: "Four," as the awe-stricken speak.
From that moment until young Crossjay fell
into the green-rutted lane from a tree, and was got on his
legs half stunned, with a hanging lip and a face like the
inside of a flayed eel-skin, she might have been walking in
the desert, and alone, for the pleasure she had in society.
They led the fated lad home between them,
singularly drawn together by their joint ministrations to
him, in which her delicacy had to stand fire, and sweet
good-nature made naught of any trial. They were hand in hand
with the little fellow as physician and professional nurse.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FIRST EFFORT AFTER FREEDOM
Crossjay's accident was only another proof,
as Vernon told Miss Dale, that the boy was but half monkey.
"Something fresh?" she exclaimed on seeing
him brought into the Hall, where she had just arrived.
"Simply a continuation," said Vernon. "He is
not so prehensile as he should be. He probably in extremity
relies on the tail that has been docked. Are you a man,
Crossjay?"
"I should think I was!" Crossjay replied,
with an old man's voice, and a ghastly twitch for a smile
overwhelmed the compassionate ladies.
Miss Dale took possession of him. "You err
in the other direction," she remarked to Vernon.
"But a little bracing roughness is better
than spoiling him." said Miss
Middleton.
She did not receive an answer, and she
thought: "Whatever Willoughby does is right, to this lady!"
Clara's impression was renewed when Sir
Willoughby sat beside Miss Dale in the evening; and
certainly she had never seen him shine so picturesquely as
in his bearing with Miss Dale. The sprightly sallies of the
two, their rallyings, their laughter, and her fine eyes, and
his handsome gestures, won attention like a fencing match of
a couple keen with the foils to display the mutual skill.
And it was his design that she should admire the display; he
was anything but obtuse; enjoying the match as he did and
necessarily did to act so excellent a part in it, he meant
the observer to see the man he was with a lady not of raw
understanding. So it went on from day to day for three days.
She fancied once that she detected the
agreeable stirring of the brood of jealousy, and found it
neither in her heart nor in her mind, but in the book of
wishes, well known to the young where they write matter
which may sometimes be independent of both those volcanic
albums. Jealousy would have been a relief to her, a dear
devil's aid. She studied the complexion of jealousy to
delude herself with the sense of the spirit being in her,
and all the while she laughed, as at a vile theatre whereof
the imperfection of the stage machinery rather than the
performance is the wretched source of amusement.
Vernon had deeply depressed her. She was
hunted by the figure 4. Four happy instead of two miserable.
He had said it, involving her among the four; and so it must
be, she considered, and she must be as happy as she could;
for not only was he incapable of perceiving her state, he
was unable to imagine other circumstances to surround her.
How, to be just to him, were they imaginable by him or any
one?
Her horrible isolation of secrecy in a world
amiable in unsuspectingness frightened her. To fling away
her secret, to conform, to be unrebellious, uncritical,
submissive, became an impatient desire; and the task did not
appear so difficult since Miss Dale's arrival. Endearments
had been rare, more formal; living bodily untroubled and
unashamed, and, as she phrased it, having no one to care for
her, she turned insensibly in the direction where she was
due; she slightly imitated Miss Dale's colloquial
responsiveness. To tell truth, she felt vivacious in a
moderate way with Willoughby after seeing him with Miss
Dale. Liberty wore the aspect of a towering prison-wall; the
desperate undertaking of climbing one side and dropping to
the other was more than she, unaided, could resolve on;
consequently, as no one cared for her, a worthless creature
might as well cease dreaming and stipulating for the
fulfilment of her dreams; she might as well yield to her
fate; nay, make the best of it.
Sir Willoughby was flattered and satisfied.
Clara's adopted vivacity proved his thorough knowledge of
feminine nature; nor did her feebleness in sustaining it
displease him. A steady look of hers had of late perplexed
the man, and he was comforted by signs of her inefficiency
where he excelled. The effort and the failure were both of
good omen.
But she could not continue the effort. He
had overweighted her too much for the mimicry of a sentiment
to harden and have an apparently natural place among her
impulses; and now an idea came to her that he might, it
might be hoped, possibly see in Miss Dale, by present
contrast, the mate he sought; by contrast with an
unanswering creature like herself, he might perhaps realize
in Miss Dale's greater accomplishments and her devotion to
him the merit of suitability; he might be induced to do her
justice. Dim as the loop-hole was, Clara fixed her mind on
it till it gathered light. And as a prelude to action, she
plunged herself into a state of such profound humility, that
to accuse it of being simulated would be venturesome, though
it was not positive. The tempers of the young are liquid
fires in isles of quicksand; the precious metals not yet
cooled in a solid earth. Her compassion for Laetitia was
less forced, but really she was almost as earnest in her
self-abasement, for she had not latterly been brilliant, not
even adequate to the ordinary requirements of conversation.
She had no courage, no wit, no diligence, nothing that she
could distinguish save discontentment like a corroding acid,
and she went so far in sincerity as with a curious shift of
feeling to pity the man plighted to her. If it suited her
purpose to pity Sir Willoughby, she was not moved by policy,
be assured; her needs were her nature, her moods her mind;
she had the capacity to make anything serve her by passing
into it with the glance which discerned its usefulness; and
this is how it is that the young, when they are in trouble,
without approaching the elevation of scientific hypocrites,
can teach that able class lessons in hypocrisy.
"Why should not Willoughby be happy?" she
said; and the exclamation was pushed forth by the second
thought: "Then I shall be free!" Still that thought came
second.
The desire for the happiness of Willoughby
was fervent on his behalf and wafted her far from friends
and letters to a narrow Tyrolean valley, where a shallow
river ran, with the indentations of a remotely seen army of
winding ranks in column, topaz over the pebbles to hollows
of ravishing emerald. There sat Liberty, after her fearful
leap over the prison-wall, at peace to watch the water and
the falls of sunshine on the mountain above, between
descending pine-stem shadows. Clara's wish for his
happiness, as soon as she had housed herself in the
imagination of her freedom, was of a purity that made it
seem exceedingly easy for her to speak to him.
The opportunity was offered by Sir
Willoughby. Every morning after breakfast Miss Dale walked
across the park to see her father, and on this occasion Sir
Willoughby and Miss Middleton went with her as far as the
lake, all three discoursing of the beauty of various trees,
birches, aspens, poplars, beeches, then in their new green.
Miss Dale loved the aspen, Miss Middleton the beech, Sir
Willoughby the birch, and pretty things were said by each in
praise of the favoured object, particularly by Miss Dale. So
much so that when she had gone on he recalled one of her
remarks, and said: "I believe, if the whole place were swept
away to-morrow, Laetitia Dale could reconstruct it and put
those aspens on the north of the lake in number and
situation correctly where you have them now. I would
guarantee her description of it in absence correct."
"Why should she be absent?" said Clara,
palpitating.
"Well, why!" returned Sir Willoughby. "As
you say, there is no reason why. The art of life, and mine
will be principally a country life—town is not life, but a
tornado whirling atoms—the art is to associate a group of
sympathetic friends in our neighbourhood; and it is a fact
worth noting that if ever I feel tired of the place, a short
talk with Laetitia Dale refreshes it more than a month or
two on the Continent. She has the well of enthusiasm. And
there is a great advantage in having a cultivated person at
command, with whom one can chat of any topic under the sun.
I repeat, you have no need of town if you have friends like
Laetitia Dale within call. My mother esteemed her highly."
"Willoughby, she is not obliged to go."
"I hope not. And, my love, I rejoice that
you have taken to her. Her father's health is poor. She
would be a young spinster to live alone in a country
cottage."
"What of your scheme?"
"Old Vernon is a very foolish fellow."
"He has declined?"
"Not a word on the subject! I have only to
propose it to be snubbed, I know."
"You may not be aware how you throw him into
the shade with her."
"Nothing seems to teach him the art of
dialogue with ladies."
"Are not gentlemen shy when they see
themselves outshone?"
"He hasn't it, my love: Vernon is deficient
in the lady's tongue."
"I respect him for that."
"Outshone, you say? I do not know of any
shining—save to one, who lights me, path and person!"
The identity of the one was conveyed to her
in a bow and a soft pressure.
"Not only has he not the lady's tongue,
which I hold to be a man's proper accomplishment," continued
Sir Willoughby, "he cannot turn his advantages to account.
Here has Miss Dale been with him now four days in the house.
They are exactly on the same footing as when she entered it.
You ask? I will tell you. It is this: it is want of warmth.
Old Vernon is a scholar—and a fish. Well, perhaps he has
cause to be shy of matrimony; but he is a fish."
"You are reconciled to his leaving you?"
"False alarm! The resolution to do anything
unaccustomed is quite beyond old Vernon."
"But if Mr. Oxford—Whitford . . . your swans
coming sailing up the lake, how beautiful they look when
they are indignant! I was going to ask you, surely men
witnessing a marked admiration for some one else will
naturally be discouraged?"
Sir Willoughby stiffened with sudden
enlightenment.
Though the word jealousy had not been
spoken, the drift of her observations was clear. Smiling
inwardly, he said, and the sentences were not enigmas to
her: "Surely, too, young ladies . . . a little?—Too far? But
an old friendship! About the same as the fitting of an old
glove to a hand. Hand and glove have only to meet. Where
there is natural harmony you would not have discord. Ay, but
you have it if you check the harmony. My dear girl! You
child!"
He had actually, in this parabolic, and
commendable, obscureness, for which she thanked him in her
soul, struck the very point she had not named and did not
wish to hear named, but wished him to strike; he was
anything but obtuse. His exultation, of the compressed sort,
was extreme, on hearing her cry out:
"Young ladies may be. Oh! not I, not I. I
can convince you. Not that. Believe me, Willoughby. I do not
know what it is to feel that, or anything like it. I cannot
conceive a claim on any one's life—as a claim: or the
continuation of an engagement not founded on perfect,
perfect sympathy. How should I feel it, then? It is, as you
say of Mr. Ox—Whitford, beyond me."
Sir Willoughby caught up the Ox—Whitford.
Bursting with laughter in his joyful pride,
he called it a portrait of old Vernon in society. For she
thought a trifle too highly of Vernon, as here and there a
raw young lady does think of the friends of her plighted
man, which is waste of substance properly belonging to him,
as it were, in the loftier sense, an expenditure in
genuflexions to wayside idols of the reverence she should
bring intact to the temple. Derision instructs her.
Of the other subject—her jealousy—he had no
desire to hear more. She had winced: the woman had been
touched to smarting in the girl: enough. She attempted the
subject once, but faintly, and his careless parrying threw
her out. Clara could have bitten her tongue for that
reiterated stupid slip on the name of Whitford; and because
she was innocent at heart she persisted in asking herself
how she could be guilty of it.
"You both know the botanic titles of these
wild flowers," she said.
"Who?" he inquired.
"You and Miss Dale."
Sir Willoughby shrugged. He was amused.
"No woman on earth will grace a barouche so
exquisitely as my Clara."
"Where?" said she.
"During our annual two months in London. I
drive a barouche there, and venture to prophesy that my
equipage will create the greatest excitement of any in
London. I see old Horace De Craye gazing!"
She sighed. She could not drag him to the
word, or a hint of it necessary to her subject.
But there it was; she saw it. She had nearly
let it go, and blushed at being obliged to name it.
"Jealousy, do you mean. Willoughby? the
people in London would be jealous?—Colonel De Craye? How
strange! That is a sentiment I cannot understand."
Sir Willoughby gesticulated the "Of course
not" of an established assurance to the contrary.
"Indeed, Willoughby, I do not."
"Certainly not."
He was now in her trap. And he was imagining
himself to be anatomizing her feminine nature.
"Can I give you a proof, Willoughby? I am so
utterly incapable of it that—listen to me—were you to come
to me to tell me, as you might, how much better suited to
you Miss Dale has appeared than I am—and I fear I am not; it
should be spoken plainly; unsuited altogether, perhaps—I
would, I beseech you to believe—you must believe me—give you
. . . give you your freedom instantly; most truly; and
engage to speak of you as I should think of you. Willoughby,
you would have no one to praise you in public and in private
as I should, for you would be to me the most honest,
truthful, chivalrous gentleman alive. And in that case I
would undertake to declare that she would not admire you
more than I; Miss Dale would not; she would not admire you
more than I; not even Miss Dale."
This, her first direct leap for liberty, set
Clara panting, and so much had she to say that the nervous
and the intellectual halves of her dashed like cymbals,
dazing and stunning her with the appositeness of things to
be said, and dividing her in indecision as to the cunningest
to move him of the many pressing.
The condition of feminine jealousy stood
revealed.
He had driven her farther than he intended.
"Come, let me allay these . . ." he soothed
her with hand and voice, while seeking for his phrase;
"these magnified pinpoints. Now, my Clara! on my honour! and
when I put it forward in attestation, my honour has the most
serious meaning speech can have; ordinarily my word has to
suffice for bonds, promises, or asseverations; on my honour!
not merely is there, my poor child! no ground of suspicion,
I assure you, I declare to you, the fact of the case is the
very reverse. Now, mark me; of her sentiments I cannot
pretend to speak; I did not, to my knowledge, originate, I
am not responsible for them, and I am, before the law, as we
will say, ignorant of them; that is, I have never heard a
declaration of them, and I, am, therefore, under pain of the
stigma of excessive fatuity, bound to be non-cognizant. But
as to myself I can speak for myself and, on my honour!
Clara—to be as direct as possible, even to baldness, and you
know I loathe it—I could not, I repeat, I could not marry
Laetitia Dale! Let me impress it on you. No flatteries—we
are all susceptible more or less—no conceivable condition
could bring it about; no amount of admiration. She and I are
excellent friends; we cannot be more. When you see us
together, the natural concord of our minds is of course
misleading. She is a woman of genius. I do not conceal, I
profess my admiration of her. There are times when, I
confess, I require a Laetitia Dale to bring me out, give and
take. I am indebted to her for the enjoyment of the duet few
know, few can accord with, fewer still are allowed the
privilege of playing with a human being. I am indebted, I
own, and I feel deep gratitude; I own to a lively friendship
for Miss Dale, but if she is displeasing in the sight of my
bride by . . . by the breadth of an eyelash, then . . ."
Sir Willoughby's arm waved Miss Dale off
away into outer darkness in the wilderness.
Clara shut her eyes and rolled her eyeballs
in a frenzy of unuttered revolt from the Egoist.
But she was not engaged in the colloquy to
be an advocate of Miss Dale or of common humanity.
"Ah!" she said, simply determining that the
subject should not drop.
"And, ah!" he mocked her tenderly. "True,
though! And who knows better than my Clara that I require
youth, health, beauty, and the other undefinable attributes
fitting with mine and beseeming the station of the lady
called to preside over my household and represent me? What
says my other self? my fairer? But you are! my love, you
are! Understand my nature rightly, and you . . . "
"I do! I do!" interposed Clara; "if I did
not by this time I should be idiotic. Let me assure you, I
understand it. Oh! listen to me: one moment. Miss Dale
regards me as the happiest woman on earth. Willoughby, if I
possessed her good qualities, her heart and mind, no doubt I
should be. It is my wish—you must hear me, hear me out—my
wish, my earnest wish, my burning prayer, my wish to make
way for her. She appreciates you: I do not—to my shame, I do
not. She worships you: I do not, I cannot. You are the
rising sun to her. It has been so for years. No one can
account for love; I daresay not for the impossibility of
loving . . . loving where we should; all love bewilders me.
I was not created to understand it. But she loves you, she
has pined. I believe it has destroyed the health you demand
as one item in your list. But you, Willoughby, can restore
that. Travelling, and . . . and your society, the pleasure
of your society would certainly restore it. You look so
handsome together! She has unbounded devotion! as for me, I
cannot idolize. I see faults: I see them daily. They
astonish and wound me. Your pride would not bear to hear
them spoken of, least of all by your wife. You warned me to
beware—that is, you said, you said something."
Her busy brain missed the subterfuge to
cover her slip of the tongue.
Sir Willoughby struck in: "And when I say
that the entire concatenation is based on an erroneous
observation of facts, and an erroneous deduction from that
erroneous observation!—? No, no. Have confidence in me. I
propose it to you in this instance, purely to save you from
deception. You are cold, my love? you shivered."
"I am not cold," said Clara. "Some one, I
suppose, was walking over my grave."
The gulf of a caress hove in view like an
enormous billow hollowing under the curled ridge.
She stooped to a buttercup; the monster
swept by.
"Your grave!" he exclaimed over her head;
"my own girl!"
"Is not the orchid naturally a stranger in
ground so far away from the chalk, Willoughby?"
"I am incompetent to pronounce an opinion on
such important matters. My mother had a passion for every
description of flower. I fancy I have some recollection of
her scattering the flower you mention over the park."
"If she were living now!"
"We should be happy in the blessing of the
most estimable of women, my
Clara."
"She would have listened to me. She would
have realized what I mean."
"Indeed, Clara—poor soul!" he murmured to
himself, aloud; "indeed you are absolutely in error. If I
have seemed—but I repeat, you are deceived. The idea of
'fitness' is a total hallucination. Supposing you—I do it
even in play painfully—entirely out of the way, unthought
of. . ."
"Extinct," Clara said low.
"Non-existent for me," he selected a
preferable term. "Suppose it; I should still, in spite of an
admiration I have never thought it incumbent on me to
conceal, still be—I speak emphatically—utterly incapable of
the offer of my hand to Miss Dale. It may be that she is
embedded in my mind as a friend, and nothing but a friend. I
received the stamp in early youth. People have noticed it—we
do, it seems, bring one another out, reflecting,
counter-reflecting."
She glanced up at him with a shrewd
satisfaction to see that her wicked shaft had stuck.
"You do; it is a common remark," she said.
"The instantaneous difference when she comes near, any one
might notice."
"My love," he opened the iron gate into the
garden, "you encourage the naughty little suspicion."
"But it is a beautiful sight, Willoughby. I
like to see you together. I like it as I like to see colours
match."
"Very well. There is no harm then. We shall
often be together. I like my fair friend. But the
instant!—you have only to express a sentiment of
disapprobation."
"And you dismiss her."
"I dismiss her. That is, as to the word, I
constitute myself your echo, to clear any vestige of
suspicion. She goes."
"That is a case of a person doomed to
extinction without offending."
"Not without: for whoever offends my bride,
my wife, my sovereign lady, offends me: very deeply offends
me."
"Then the caprices of your wife . . ." Clara
stamped her foot imperceptibly on the lawn-sward, which was
irresponsively soft to her fretfulness. She broke from the
inconsequent meaningless mild tone of irony, and said:
"Willoughby, women have their honour to swear by equally
with men:—girls have: they have to swear an oath at the
altar; may I to you now? Take it for uttered when I tell you
that nothing would make me happier than your union with Miss
Dale. I have spoken as much as I can. Tell me you release
me."
With the well-known screw-smile of duty
upholding weariness worn to inanition, he rejoined: "Allow
me once more to reiterate, that it is repulsive,
inconceivable, that I should ever, under any mortal
conditions, bring myself to the point of taking Miss Dale
for my wife. You reduce me to this perfectly childish
protestation—pitiably childish! But, my love, have I to
remind you that you and I are plighted, and that I am an
honourable man?"
"I know it, I feel it—release me!" cried
Clara.
Sir Willoughby severely reprehended his
short-sightedness for seeing but the one proximate object in
the particular attention he had bestowed on Miss Dale. He
could not disavow that they had been marked, and with an
object, and he was distressed by the unwonted want of wisdom
through which he had been drawn to overshoot his object. His
design to excite a touch of the insane emotion in Clara's
bosom was too successful, and, "I was not thinking of her,"
he said to himself in his candour, contrite.
She cried again: "Will you not,
Willoughby—release me?"
He begged her to take his arm.
To consent to touch him while petitioning
for a detachment, appeared discordant to Clara, but, if she
expected him to accede, it was right that she should do as
much as she could, and she surrendered her hand at arm's
length, disdaining the imprisoned fingers. He pressed them
and said: "Dr Middleton is in the library. I see Vernon is
at work with Crossjay in the West-room—the boy has had
sufficient for the day. Now, is it not like old Vernon to
drive his books at a cracked head before it's half mended?"
He signalled to young Crossjay, who was up
and out through the folding windows in a twinkling.
"And you will go in, and talk to Vernon of
the lady in question," Sir Willoughby whispered to Clara.
"Use your best persuasions in our joint names. You have my
warrant for saying that money is no consideration; house and
income are assured. You can hardly have taken me seriously
when I requested you to undertake Vernon before. I was quite
in earnest then as now. I prepare Miss Dale. I will not have
a wedding on our wedding-day; but either before or after it,
I gladly speed their alliance. I think now I give you the
best proof possible, and though I know that with women a
delusion may be seen to be groundless and still be
cherished, I rely on your good sense."
Vernon was at the window and stood aside for
her to enter. Sir Willoughby used a gentle insistence with
her. She bent her head as if she were stepping into a cave.
So frigid was she, that a ridiculous dread of calling Mr.
Whitford Mr. Oxford was her only present anxiety when Sir
Willoughby had closed the window on them.
CHAPTER XIV
SIR WILLOUGHBY AND LAETITIA
"I prepare Miss Dale."
Sir Willoughby thought of his promise to
Clara. He trifled awhile with young Crossjay, and then sent
the boy flying, and wrapped himself in meditation. So shall
you see standing many a statue of statesmen who have died in
harness for their country.
In the hundred and fourth chapter of the
thirteenth volume of the Book of Egoism it is written:
Possession without obligation to the object possessed
approaches felicity.
It is the rarest condition of ownership. For
example: the possession of land is not without obligation
both to the soil and the tax-collector; the possession of
fine clothing is oppressed by obligation; gold, jewelry,
works of art, enviable household furniture, are positive
fetters; the possession of a wife we find surcharged with
obligation. In all these cases possession is a gentle term
for enslavement, bestowing the sort of felicity attained to
by the helot drunk. You can have the joy, the pride, the
intoxication of possession; you can have no free soul.
But there is one instance of possession, and
that the most perfect, which leaves us free, under not a
shadow of obligation, receiving ever, never giving, or if
giving, giving only of our waste; as it were (sauf votre
respect), by form of perspiration, radiation, if you like;
unconscious poral bountifulness; and it is a beneficent
process for the system. Our possession of an adoring
female's worship is this instance.
The soft cherishable Parsee is hardly at any
season other than prostrate. She craves nothing save that
you continue in being—her sun: which is your firm
constitutional endeavour: and thus you have a most exact
alliance; she supplying spirit to your matter, while at the
same time presenting matter to your spirit, verily a
comfortable apposition. The Gods do bless it.
That they do so indeed is evident in the men
they select for such a felicitous crown and aureole. Weak
men would be rendered nervous by the flattery of a woman's
worship; or they would be for returning it, at least
partially, as though it could be bandied to and fro without
emulgence of the poetry; or they would be pitiful, and quite
spoil the thing. Some would be for transforming the
beautiful solitary vestal flame by the first effort of the
multiplication-table into your hearth-fire of slippered
affection. So these men are not they whom the Gods have ever
selected, but rather men of a pattern with themselves, very
high and very solid men, who maintain the crown by holding
divinely independent of the great emotion they have sown.
Even for them a pass of danger is ahead, as
we shall see in our sample of one among the highest of them.
A clear approach to felicity had long been
the portion of Sir Willoughby Patterne in his relations with
Laetitia Dale. She belonged to him; he was quite unshackled
by her. She was everything that is good in a parasite,
nothing that is bad. His dedicated critic she was, reviewing
him with a favour equal to perfect efficiency in her office;
and whatever the world might say of him, to her the happy
gentleman could constantly turn for his refreshing balsamic
bath. She flew to the soul in him, pleasingly arousing
sensations of that inhabitant; and he allowed her the right
to fly, in the manner of kings, as we have heard, consenting
to the privileges acted on by cats. These may not address
their Majesties, but they may stare; nor will it be
contested that the attentive circular eyes of the humble
domestic creatures are an embellishment to Royal pomp and
grandeur, such truly as should one day gain for them an
inweaving and figurement—in the place of bees, ermine tufts,
and their various present decorations—upon the august great
robes back-flowing and foaming over the gaspy page-boys.
Further to quote from the same volume of The
Book: There is pain in the surrendering of that we are fain
to relinquish.
The idea is too exquisitely attenuate, as
are those of the whole body-guard of the heart of Egoism,
and will slip through you unless you shall have made a study
of the gross of volumes of the first and second sections of
The Book, and that will take you up to senility; or you must
make a personal entry into the pages, perchance; or an
escape out of them. There was once a venerable gentleman for
whom a white hair grew on the cop of his nose, laughing at
removals. He resigned himself to it in the end, and
lastingly contemplated the apparition. It does not concern
us what effect was produced on his countenance and his mind;
enough that he saw a fine thing, but not so fine as the idea
cited above; which has been between the two eyes of humanity
ever since women were sought in marriage. With yonder old
gentleman it may have been a ghostly hair or a disease of
the optic nerves; but for us it is a real growth, and
humanity might profitably imitate him in his patient
speculation upon it.
Sir Willoughby Patterne, though ready in the
pursuit of duty and policy (an oft-united couple) to cast
Miss Dale away, had to consider that he was not simply, so
to speak, casting her over a hedge, he was casting her for a
man to catch her; and this was a much greater trial than it
had been on the previous occasion, when she went over bump
to the ground. In the arms of a husband, there was no
knowing how soon she might forget her soul's fidelity. It
had not hurt him to sketch the project of the conjunction;
benevolence assisted him; but he winced and smarted on
seeing it take shape. It sullied his idea of Laetitia.
Still, if, in spite of so great a change in
her fortune, her spirit could be guaranteed changeless, he,
for the sake of pacifying his bride, and to keep two
serviceable persons near him, at command, might resolve to
join them. The vision of his resolution brought with it a
certain pallid contempt of the physically faithless woman;
no wonder he betook himself to The Book, and opened it on
the scorching chapters treating of the sex, and the
execrable wiles of that foremost creature of the chase, who
runs for life. She is not spared in the Biggest of Books.
But close it.
The writing in it having been done chiefly
by men, men naturally receive their fortification from its
wisdom, and half a dozen of the popular sentences for the
confusion of women (cut in brass worn to a polish like
sombre gold), refreshed Sir Willoughby for his undertaking.
An examination of Laetitia's faded
complexion braced him very cordially.
His Clara, jealous of this poor leaf!
He could have desired the transfusion of a
quality or two from Laetitia to his bride; but you cannot,
as in cookery, obtain a mixture of the essences of these
creatures; and if, as it is possible to do, and as he had
been doing recently with the pair of them at the Hall, you
stew them in one pot, you are far likelier to intensify
their little birthmarks of individuality. Had they a
tendency to excellence it might be otherwise; they might
then make the exchanges we wish for; or scientifically
concocted in a harem for a sufficient length of time by a
sultan anything but obtuse, they might. It is, however,
fruitless to dwell on what was only a glimpse of a wild
regret, like the crossing of two express trains along the
rails in Sir Willoughby's head.
The ladies Eleanor and Isabel were sitting
with Miss Dale, all three at work on embroideries. He had
merely to look at Miss Eleanor. She rose. She looked at Miss
Isabel, and rattled her chatelaine to account for her
departure. After a decent interval Miss Isabel glided out.
Such was the perfect discipline of the household.
Sir Willoughby played an air on the knee of
his crossed leg.
Laetitia grew conscious of a meaning in the
silence. She said, "You have not been vexed by affairs
to-day?"
"Affairs," he replied, "must be peculiarly
vexatious to trouble me.
Concerning the country or my personal affairs?"
"I fancy I was alluding to the country."
"I trust I am as good a patriot as any man
living," said he; "but I am used to the follies of my
countrymen, and we are on board a stout ship. At the worst
it's no worse than a rise in rates and taxes; soup at the
Hall gates, perhaps; license to fell timber in one of the
outer copses, or some dozen loads of coal. You hit my
feudalism."
"The knight in armour has gone," said
Laetitia, "and the castle with the draw-bridge. Immunity for
our island has gone too since we took to commerce."
"We bartered independence for commerce. You
hit our old controversy. Ay, but we do not want this
overgrown population! However, we will put politics and
sociology and the pack of their modern barbarous words
aside. You read me intuitively. I have been, I will not say
annoyed, but ruffled. I have much to do, and going into
Parliament would make me almost helpless if I lose Vernon.
You know of some absurd notion he has?—literary fame, and
bachelor's chambers, and a chop-house, and the rest of it."
She knew, and thinking differently in the
matter of literary fame, she flushed, and, ashamed of the
flush, frowned.
He bent over to her with the perusing
earnestness of a gentleman about to trifle.
"You cannot intend that frown?"
"Did I frown?"
"You do."
"Now?"
"Fiercely."
"Oh!"
"Will you smile to reassure me?"
"Willingly, as well as I can."
A gloom overcame him. With no woman on earth
did he shine so as to recall to himself seigneur and dame of
the old French Court as he did with Laetitia Dale. He did
not wish the period revived, but reserved it as a garden to
stray into when he was in the mood for displaying elegance
and brightness in the society of a lady; and in speech
Laetitia helped him to the nice delusion. She was not devoid
of grace of bearing either.
Would she preserve her beautiful
responsiveness to his ascendency? Hitherto she had, and for
years, and quite fresh. But how of her as a married woman?
Our souls are hideously subject to the conditions of our
animal nature! A wife, possibly mother, it was within sober
calculation that there would be great changes in her. And
the hint of any change appeared a total change to one of the
lofty order who, when they are called on to relinquish
possession instead of aspiring to it, say, All or nothing!
Well, but if there was danger of the
marriage-tie effecting the slightest alteration of her
character or habit of mind, wherefore press it upon a
tolerably hardened spinster!
Besides, though he did once put her hand in
Vernon's for the dance, he remembered acutely that the
injury then done by his generosity to his tender
sensitiveness had sickened and tarnished the effulgence of
two or three successive anniversaries of his coming of age.
Nor had he altogether yet got over the passion of greed for
the whole group of the well-favoured of the fair sex, which
in his early youth had made it bitter for him to submit to
the fickleness, not to say the modest fickleness, of any
handsome one of them in yielding her hand to a man and
suffering herself to be led away. Ladies whom he had only
heard of as ladies of some beauty incurred his wrath for
having lovers or taking husbands. He was of a vast embrace;
and do not exclaim, in covetousness;—for well he knew that
even under Moslem law he could not have them all—but as the
enamoured custodian of the sex's purity, that blushes at
such big spots as lovers and husbands; and it was unbearable
to see it sacrificed for others. Without their purity what
are they!—what are fruiterer's plums?—unsaleable. O for the
bloom on them!
"As I said, I lose my right hand in Vernon,"
he resumed, "and I am, it seems, inevitably to lose him,
unless we contrive to fasten him down here. I think, my dear
Miss Dale, you have my character. At least, I should
recommend my future biographer to you—with a caution, of
course. You would have to write selfishness with a dash
under it. I cannot endure to lose a member of my
household—not under any circumstances; and a change of
feeling toward me on the part of any of my friends because
of marriage, I think hard. I would ask you, how can it be
for Vernon's good to quit an easy pleasant home for the
wretched profession of Literature?—wretchedly paying, I
mean," he bowed to the authoress. "Let him leave the house,
if he imagines he will not harmonize with its young
mistress. He is queer, though a good fellow. But he ought,
in that event, to have an establishment. And my scheme for
Vernon—men, Miss Dale, do not change to their old friends
when they marry—my scheme, which would cause the alteration
in his system of life to be barely perceptible, is to build
him a poetical little cottage, large enough for a couple, on
the borders of my park. I have the spot in my eye. The point
is, can he live alone there? Men, I say, do not change. How
is it that we cannot say the same of women?"
Laetitia remarked: "The generic woman
appears to have an extraordinary faculty for swallowing the
individual."
"As to the individual, as to a particular
person, I may be wrong. Precisely because it is her case I
think of, my strong friendship inspires the fear: unworthy
of both, no doubt, but trace it to the source. Even pure
friendship, such is the taint in us, knows a kind of
jealousy; though I would gladly see her established, and
near me, happy and contributing to my happiness with her
incomparable social charm. Her I do not estimate
generically, be sure."
"If you do me the honour to allude to me,
Sir Willoughby," said
Laetitia, "I am my father's housemate."
"What wooer would take that for a refusal?
He would beg to be a third in the house and sharer of your
affectionate burden. Honestly, why not? And I may be arguing
against my own happiness; it may be the end of me!"
"The end?"
"Old friends are captious, exacting. No, not
the end. Yet if my friend is not the same to me, it is the
end to that form of friendship: not to the degree possibly.
But when one is used to the form! And do you, in its
application to friendship, scorn the word 'use'? We are
creatures of custom. I am, I confess, a poltroon in my
affections; I dread changes. The shadow of the tenth of an
inch in the customary elevation of an eyelid!—to give you an
idea of my susceptibility. And, my dear Miss Dale, I throw
myself on your charity, with all my weakness bare, let me
add, as I could do to none but you. Consider, then, if I
lose you! The fear is due to my pusillanimity entirely.
High-souled women may be wives, mothers, and still reserve
that home for their friend. They can and will conquer the
viler conditions of human life. Our states, I have always
contended, our various phases have to be passed through, and
there is no disgrace in it so long as they do not levy toll
on the quintessential, the spiritual element. You understand
me? I am no adept in these abstract elucidations."
"You explain yourself clearly," said
Laetitia.
"I have never pretended that psychology was
my forte," said he, feeling overshadowed by her cold
commendation: he was not less acutely sensitive to the
fractional divisions of tones than of eyelids, being, as it
were, a melody with which everything was out of tune that
did not modestly or mutely accord; and to bear about a
melody in your person is incomparably more searching than
the best of touchstones and talismans ever invented. "Your
father's health has improved latterly?"
"He did not complain of his health when I
saw him this morning. My cousin Amelia is with him, and she
is an excellent nurse."
"He has a liking for Vernon."
"He has a great respect for Mr. Whitford."
"You have?"
"Oh, yes; I have it equally."
"For a foundation, that is the surest. I
would have the friends dearest to me begin on that. The
headlong match is—how can we describe it? By its finale I am
afraid. Vernon's abilities are really to be respected. His
shyness is his malady. I suppose he reflected that he was
not a capitalist. He might, one would think, have addressed
himself to me; my purse is not locked."
"No, Sir Willoughby!" Laetitia said, warmly,
for his donations in charity were famous.
Her eyes gave him the food he enjoyed, and
basking in them, he continued:
"Vernon's income would at once have been
regulated commensurately with a new position requiring an
increase. This money, money, money! But the world will have
it so. Happily I have inherited habits of business and
personal economy. Vernon is a man who would do fifty times
more with a companion appreciating his abilities and making
light of his little deficiencies. They are palpable, small
enough. He has always been aware of my wishes:—when perhaps
the fulfilment might have sent me off on another tour of the
world, homebird though I am. When was it that our friendship
commenced? In my boyhood, I know. Very many years back."
"I am in my thirtieth year," said Laetitia.
Surprised and pained by a baldness
resembling the deeds of ladies (they have been known, either
through absence of mind, or mania, to displace a wig) in the
deadly intimacy which slaughters poetic admiration, Sir
Willoughby punished her by deliberately reckoning that she
did not look less.
"Genius," he observed, "is unacquainted with
wrinkles"; hardly one of his prettiest speeches; but he had
been wounded, and he never could recover immediately. Coming
on him in a mood of sentiment, the wound was sharp. He could
very well have calculated the lady's age. It was the jarring
clash of her brazen declaration of it upon his low rich
flute-notes that shocked him.
He glanced at the gold cathedral-clock on
the mantel-piece, and proposed a stroll on the lawn before
dinner. Laetitia gathered up her embroidery work.
"As a rule," he said, "authoresses are not
needle-women."
"I shall resign the needle or the pen if it
stamps me an exception," she replied.
He attempted a compliment on her truly
exceptional character. As when the player's finger rests in
distraction on the organ, it was without measure and
disgusted his own hearing. Nevertheless, she had been so
good as to diminish his apprehension that the marriage of a
lady in her thirtieth year with his cousin Vernon would be
so much of a loss to him; hence, while parading the lawn,
now and then casting an eye at the window of the room where
his Clara and Vernon were in council, the schemes he
indulged for his prospective comfort and his feelings of the
moment were in such striving harmony as that to which we
hear orchestral musicians bringing their instruments under
the process called tuning. It is not perfect, but it
promises to be so soon. We are not angels, which have their
dulcimers ever on the choral pitch. We are mortals attaining
the celestial accord with effort, through a stage of pain.
Some degree of pain was necessary to Sir Willoughby,
otherwise he would not have seen his generosity confronting
him. He grew, therefore, tenderly inclined to Laetitia once
more, so far as to say within himself. "For conversation she
would be a valuable wife". And this valuable wife he was
presenting to his cousin.
Apparently, considering the duration of the
conference of his Clara and
Vernon, his cousin required strong persuasion to accept the
present.
CHAPTER XV
THE PETITION FOR A RELEASE
Neither Clara nor Vernon appeared at the
mid-day table. Dr. Middleton talked with Miss Dale on
classical matters, like a good-natured giant giving a child
the jump from stone to stone across a brawling mountain
ford, so that an unedified audience might really suppose,
upon seeing her over the difficulty, she had done something
for herself. Sir Willoughby was proud of her, and therefore
anxious to settle her business while he was in the humour to
lose her. He hoped to finish it by shooting a word or two at
Vernon before dinner. Clara's petition to be set free,
released from him, had vaguely frightened even more than it
offended his pride.
Miss Isabel quitted the room.
She came back, saying: "They decline to
lunch."
"Then we may rise," remarked Sir Willoughby.
"She was weeping," Miss Isabel murmured to
him.
"Girlish enough," he said.
The two elderly ladies went away together.
Miss Dale, pursuing her theme with the Rev. Doctor, was
invited by him to a course in the library. Sir Willoughby
walked up and down the lawn, taking a glance at the
West-room as he swung round on the turn of his leg. Growing
impatient, he looked in at the window and found the room
vacant.
Nothing was to be seen of Clara and Vernon
during the afternoon. Near the dinner-hour the ladies were
informed by Miss Middleton's maid that her mistress was
lying down on her bed, too unwell with headache to be
present. Young Crossjay brought a message from Vernon
(delayed by birds' eggs in the delivery), to say that he was
off over the hills, and thought of dining with Dr. Corney.
Sir Willoughby despatched condolences to his
bride. He was not well able to employ his mind on its
customary topic, being, like the dome of a bell, a man of so
pervading a ring within himself concerning himself, that the
recollection of a doubtful speech or unpleasant circumstance
touching him closely deranged his inward peace; and as
dubious and unpleasant things will often occur, he had great
need of a worshipper, and was often compelled to appeal to
her for signs of antidotal idolatry. In this instance, when
the need of a worshipper was sharply felt, he obtained no
signs at all. The Rev. Doctor had fascinated Miss Dale; so
that, both within and without, Sir Willoughby was
uncomforted. His themes in public were those of an English
gentleman; horses, dogs, game, sport, intrigue, scandal,
politics, wines, the manly themes; with a condescension to
ladies' tattle, and approbation of a racy anecdote. What
interest could he possibly take in the Athenian Theatre and
the girl whose flute-playing behind the scenes, imitating
the nightingale, enraptured a Greek audience! He would have
suspected a motive in Miss Dale's eager attentiveness, if
the motive could have been conceived. Besides, the ancients
were not decorous; they did not, as we make our moderns do,
write for ladies. He ventured at the dinner-table to
interrupt Dr. Middleton once:—
"Miss Dale will do wisely, I think, sir, by
confining herself to your present edition of the classics."
"That," replied Dr. Middleton, "is the
observation of a student of the dictionary of classical
mythology in the English tongue."
"The Theatre is a matter of climate, sir.
You will grant me that."
"If quick wits come of climate, it is as you
say, sir."
"With us it seems a matter of painful
fostering, or the need of it," said Miss Dale, with a
question to Dr. Middleton, excluding Sir Willoughby, as
though he had been a temporary disturbance of the flow of
their dialogue.
The ladies Eleanor and Isabel, previously
excellent listeners to the learned talk, saw the necessity
of coming to his rescue; but you cannot converse with your
aunts, inmates of your house, on general subjects at table;
the attempt increased his discomposure; he considered that
he had ill-chosen his father-in-law; that scholars are an
impolite race; that young or youngish women are devotees of
power in any form, and will be absorbed by a scholar for a
variation of a man; concluding that he must have a round of
dinner-parties to friends, especially ladies, appreciating
him, during the Doctor's visit. Clara's headache above, and
Dr. Middleton's unmannerliness below, affected his instincts
in a way to make him apprehend that a stroke of misfortune
was impending; thunder was in the air. Still he learned
something, by which he was to profit subsequently. The topic
of wine withdrew the doctor from his classics; it was
magical on him. A strong fraternity of taste was discovered
in the sentiments of host and guest upon particular wines
and vintages; they kindled one another by naming great years
of the grape, and if Sir Willoughby had to sacrifice the
ladies to the topic, he much regretted a condition of things
that compelled him to sin against his habit, for the sake of
being in the conversation and probing an elderly gentleman's
foible.
Late at night he heard the house-bell, and
meeting Vernon in the hall, invited him to enter the
laboratory and tell him Dr. Corney's last. Vernon was brief,
Corney had not let fly a single anecdote, he said, and
lighted his candle.
"By the way, Vernon, you had a talk with
Miss Middleton?"
"She will speak to you to-morrow at twelve."
"To-morrow at twelve?"
"It gives her four-and-twenty hours."
Sir Willoughby determined that his
perplexity should be seen; but Vernon said good-night to
him, and was shooting up the stairs before the dramatic
exhibition of surprise had yielded to speech.
Thunder was in the air and a blow coming.
Sir Willoughby's instincts were awake to the many signs,
nor, though silenced, were they hushed by his harping on the
frantic excesses to which women are driven by the passion of
jealousy. He believed in Clara's jealousy because he really
had intended to rouse it; under the form of emulation,
feebly. He could not suppose she had spoken of it to Vernon.
And as for the seriousness of her desire to be released from
her engagement, that was little credible. Still the fixing
of an hour for her to speak to him after an interval of
four-and-twenty hours, left an opening for the incredible to
add its weight to the suspicious mass; and who would have
fancied Clara Middleton so wild a victim of the intemperate
passion! He muttered to himself several assuaging
observations to excuse a young lady half demented, and
rejected them in a lump for their nonsensical
inapplicability to Clara. In order to obtain some sleep, he
consented to blame himself slightly, in the style of the
enamoured historian of erring beauties alluding to their
peccadilloes. He had done it to edify her. Sleep, however,
failed him. That an inordinate jealousy argued an
overpowering love, solved his problem until he tried to fit
the proposition to Clara's character. He had discerned
nothing southern in her. Latterly, with the blushing Day in
prospect, she had contracted and frozen. There was no
reading either of her or of the mystery.
In the morning, at the breakfast-table, a
confession of sleeplessness was general. Excepting Miss Dale
and Dr. Middleton, none had slept a wink. "I, sir," the
Doctor replied to Sir Willoughby, "slept like a lexicon in
your library when Mr. Whitford and I are out of it."
Vernon incidentally mentioned that he had
been writing through the night.
"You fellows kill yourselves," Sir
Willoughby reproved him. "For my part, I make it a principle
to get through my work without self-slaughter."
Clara watched her father for a symptom of
ridicule. He gazed mildly on the systematic worker. She was
unable to guess whether she would have in him an ally or a
judge. The latter, she feared. Now that she had embraced the
strife, she saw the division of the line where she stood
from that one where the world places girls who are affianced
wives; her father could hardly be with her; it had gone too
far. He loved her, but he would certainly take her to be
moved by a maddish whim; he would not try to understand her
case. The scholar's detestation of a disarrangement of human
affairs that had been by miracle contrived to run smoothly,
would of itself rank him against her; and with the world to
back his view of her, he might behave like a despotic
father. How could she defend herself before him? At one
thought of Sir Willoughby, her tongue made ready, and
feminine craft was alert to prompt it; but to her father she
could imagine herself opposing only dumbness and obstinacy.
"It is not exactly the same kind of work,"
she said.
Dr Middleton rewarded her with a bushy
eyebrow's beam of his revolting humour at the baronet's
notion of work.
So little was needed to quicken her that she
sunned herself in the beam, coaxing her father's eyes to
stay with hers as long as she could, and beginning to hope
he might be won to her side, if she confessed she had been
more in the wrong than she felt; owned to him, that is, her
error in not earlier disturbing his peace.
"I do not say it is the same," observed Sir
Willoughby, bowing to their alliance of opinion. "My poor
work is for the day, and Vernon's, no doubt, for the day to
come. I contend, nevertheless, for the preservation of
health as the chief implement of work."
"Of continued work; there I agree with you,"
said Dr. Middleton, cordially.
Clara's heart sunk; so little was needed to
deaden her.
Accuse her of an overweening antagonism to
her betrothed; yet remember that though the words had not
been uttered to give her good reason for it, nature reads
nature; captives may be stript of everything save that power
to read their tyrant; remember also that she was not, as she
well knew, blameless; her rage at him was partly against
herself.
The rising from table left her to Sir
Willoughby. She swam away after Miss Dale, exclaiming: "The
laboratory! Will you have me for a companion on your walk to
see your father? One breathes earth and heaven to-day out of
doors. Isn't it Summer with a Spring Breeze? I will wander
about your garden and not hurry your visit, I promise."
"I shall be very happy indeed. But I am
going immediately," said
Laetitia, seeing Sir Willoughby hovering to snap up his
bride.
"Yes; and a garden-hat and I am on the
march."
"I will wait for you on the terrace."
"You will not have to wait."
"Five minutes at the most," Sir Willoughby
said to Laetitia, and she passed out, leaving them alone
together.
"Well, and my love!" he addressed his bride
almost huggingly; "and what is the story? and how did you
succeed with old Vernon yesterday? He will and he won't?
He's a very woman in these affairs. I can't forgive him for
giving you a headache. You were found weeping."
"Yes, I cried," said Clara.
"And now tell me about it. You know, my dear
girl, whether he does or doesn't, our keeping him somewhere
in the neighbourhood—perhaps not in the house—that is the
material point. It can hardly be necessary in these days to
urge marriages on. I'm sure the country is over . . . Most
marriages ought to be celebrated with the funeral knell!"
"I think so," said Clara.
"It will come to this, that marriages of
consequence, and none but those, will be hailed with joyful
peals."
"Do not say such things in public,
Willoughby."
"Only to you, to you! Don't think me likely
to expose myself to the world. Well, and I sounded Miss
Dale, and there will be no violent obstacle. And now about
Vernon?"
"I will speak to you, Willoughby, when I
return from my walk with Miss
Dale, soon after twelve."
"Twelve!" said he
"I name an hour. It seems childish. I can
explain it. But it is named, I cannot deny, because I am a
rather childish person perhaps, and have it prescribed to me
to delay my speaking for a certain length of time. I may
tell you at once that Mr. Whitford is not to be persuaded by
me, and the breaking of our engagement would not induce him
to remain."
"Vernon used those words?"
"It was I."
"'The breaking of our engagement!' Come into
the laboratory, my love."
"I shall not have time."
"Time shall stop rather than interfere with
our conversation! 'The breaking . . .'! But it's a sort of
sacrilege to speak of it."
"That I feel; yet it has to be spoken of"
"Sometimes? Why? I can't conceive the
occasion. You know, to me, Clara, plighted faith, the
affiancing of two lovers, is a piece of religion. I rank it
as holy as marriage; nay, to me it is holier; I really
cannot tell you how; I can only appeal to you in your bosom
to understand me. We read of divorces with comparative
indifference. They occur between couples who have rubbed off
all romance."
She could have asked him in her fit of
ironic iciness, on hearing him thus blindly challenge her to
speak out, whether the romance might be his piece of
religion.
He propitiated the more unwarlike sentiments
in her by ejaculating, "Poor souls! let them go their
several ways. Married people no longer lovers are in the
category of the unnameable. But the hint of the breaking of
an engagement—our engagement!—between us? Oh!"
"Oh!" Clara came out with a swan's note
swelling over mechanical imitation of him to dolorousness
illimitable. "Oh!" she breathed short, "let it be now. Do
not speak till you have heard me. My head may not be clear
by-and-by. And two scenes—twice will be beyond my endurance.
I am penitent for the wrong I have done you. I grieve for
you. All the blame is mine. Willoughby, you must release me.
Do not let me hear a word of that word; jealousy is unknown
to me . . . Happy if I could call you friend and see you
with a worthier than I, who might by-and-by call me friend!
You have my plighted troth . . . given in ignorance of my
feelings. Reprobate a weak and foolish girl's ignorance. I
have thought of it, and I cannot see wickedness, though the
blame is great, shameful. You have none. You are without any
blame. You will not suffer as I do. You will be generous to
me? I have no respect for myself when I beg you to be
generous and release me."
"But was this the . . ." Willoughby
preserved his calmness, "this, then, the subject of your
interview with Vernon?"
"I have spoken to him. I did my commission,
and I spoke to him."
"Of me?"
"Of myself. I see how I hurt you; I could
not avoid it. Yes, of you, as far as we are related. I said
I believed you would release me. I said I could be true to
my plighted word, but that you would not insist. Could a
gentleman insist? But not a step beyond; not love; I have
none. And, Willoughby, treat me as one perfectly worthless;
I am. I should have known it a year back. I was deceived in
myself. There should be love."
"Should be!" Willoughby's tone was a pungent
comment on her.
"Love, then, I find I have not. I think I am
antagonistic to it. What people say of it I have not
experienced. I find I was mistaken. It is lightly said, but
very painful. You understand me, that my prayer is for
liberty, that I may not be tied. If you can release and
pardon me, or promise ultimately to pardon me, or say some
kind word, I shall know it is because I am beneath you
utterly that I have been unable to give you the love you
should have with a wife. Only say to me, go! It is you who
break the match, discovering my want of a heart. What people
think of me matters little. My anxiety will be to save you
annoyance."
She waited for him; he seemed on the verge
of speaking.
He perceived her expectation; he had nothing
but clownish tumult within, and his dignity counselled him
to disappoint her.
Swaying his head, like the oriental palm
whose shade is a blessing to the perfervid wanderer below,
smiling gravely, he was indirectly asking his dignity what
he could say to maintain it and deal this mad young woman a
bitterly compassionate rebuke. What to think, hung remoter.
The thing to do struck him first.
He squeezed both her hands, threw the door
wide open, and said, with countless blinkings: "In the
laboratory we are uninterrupted. I was at a loss to guess
where that most unpleasant effect on the senses came from.
They are always 'guessing' through the nose. I mean, the
remainder of breakfast here. Perhaps I satirized them too
smartly—if you know the letters. When they are not
'calculating'. More offensive than debris of a midnight
banquet! An American tour is instructive, though not so
romantic. Not so romantic as Italy, I mean. Let us escape."
She held back from his arm. She had
scattered his brains; it was pitiable: but she was in the
torrent and could not suffer a pause or a change of place.
"It must be here; one minute more—I cannot
go elsewhere to begin again. Speak to me here; answer my
request. Once; one word. If you forgive me, it will be
superhuman. But, release me."
"Seriously," he rejoined, "tea-cups and
coffee-cups, breadcrumbs. egg-shells, caviare, butter, beef,
bacon! Can we? The room reeks."
"Then I will go for my walk with Miss Dale.
And you will speak to me when I return?"
"At all seasons. You shall go with Miss
Dale. But, my dear! my love! Seriously, where are we? One
hears of lover's quarrels. Now I never quarrel. It is a
characteristic of mine. And you speak of me to my cousin
Vernon! Seriously, plighted faith signifies plighted faith,
as much as an iron-cable is iron to hold by. Some little
twist of the mind? To Vernon, of all men! Tush! she has been
dreaming of a hero of perfection, and the comparison is
unfavourable to her Willoughby. But, my Clara, when I say to
you, that bride is bride, and you are mine, mine!"
"Willoughby, you mentioned them,—those
separations of two married. You said, if they do not love .
. . Oh! say, is it not better—instead of later?"
He took advantage of her modesty in speaking
to exclaim. "Where are we now? Bride is bride, and wife is
wife, and affianced is, in honour, wedded. You cannot be
released. We are united. Recognize it; united. There is no
possibility of releasing a wife!"
"Not if she ran . . . ?"
This was too direct to be histrionically
misunderstood. He had driven her to the extremity of more
distinctly imagining the circumstance she had cited, and
with that cleared view the desperate creature gloried in
launching such a bolt at the man's real or assumed
insensibility as must, by shivering it, waken him.
But in a moment she stood in burning rose,
with dimmed eyesight. She saw his horror, and, seeing,
shared it; shared just then only by seeing it; which led her
to rejoice with the deepest of sighs that some shame was
left in her.
"Ran? ran? ran?" he said as rapidly as he
blinked. "How? where? what idea . . . ?"
Close was he upon an explosion that would
have sullied his conception of the purity of the younger
members of the sex hauntingly.
That she, a young lady, maiden, of strictest
education, should, and without his teaching, know that wives
ran!—know that by running they compelled their husbands to
abandon pursuit, surrender possession!—and that she should
suggest it of herself as a wife!—that she should speak of
running!
His ideal, the common male Egoist ideal of a
waxwork sex, would have been shocked to fragments had she
spoken further to fill in the outlines of these awful
interjections.
She was tempted: for during the last few
minutes the fire of her situation had enlightened her
understanding upon a subject far from her as the ice-fields
of the North a short while before; and the prospect offered
to her courage if she would only outstare shame and seem at
home in the doings of wickedness, was his loathing and
dreading so vile a young woman. She restrained herself;
chiefly, after the first bridling of maidenly timidity,
because she could not bear to lower the idea of her sex even
in his esteem.
The door was open. She had thoughts of
flying out to breathe in an interval of truce.
She reflected on her situation hurriedly
askance:
"If one must go through this, to be
disentangled from an engagement, what must it be to poor
women seeking to be free of a marriage?"
Had she spoken it, Sir Willoughby might have
learned that she was not so iniquitously wise of the things
of this world as her mere sex's instinct, roused to the
intemperateness of a creature struggling with fetters, had
made her appear in her dash to seize a weapon, indicated
moreover by him.
Clara took up the old broken vow of women to
vow it afresh: "Never to any man will I give my hand."
She replied to Sir Willoughby, "I have said
all. I cannot explain what
I have said."
She had heard a step in the passage. Vernon
entered.
Perceiving them, he stated his mission in
apology: "Doctor Middleton left a book in this room. I see
it; it's a Heinsius."
"Ha! by the way, a book; books would not be
left here if they were not brought here, with my compliments
to Doctor Middleton, who may do as he pleases, though,
seriously, order is order," said Sir Willoughby. "Come away
to the laboratory, Clara. It's a comment on human beings
that wherever they have been there's a mess, and you
admirers of them," he divided a sickly nod between Vernon
and the stale breakfast-table, "must make what you can of
it. Come, Clara."
Clara protested that she was engaged to walk
with Miss Dale.
"Miss Dale is waiting in the hall," said
Vernon.
"Miss Dale is waiting?" said Clara.
"Walk with Miss Dale; walk with Miss Dale,"
Sir Willoughby remarked, pressingly. "I will beg her to wait
another two minutes. You shall find her in the hall when you
come down."
He rang the bell and went out.
"Take Miss Dale into your confidence; she is
quite trustworthy," Vernon said to Clara.
"I have not advanced one step," she replied.
"Recollect that you are in a position of
your own choosing; and if, after thinking over it, you mean
to escape, you must make up your mind to pitched battles,
and not be dejected if you are beaten in all of them; there
is your only chance."
"Not my choosing; do not say choosing, Mr.
Whitford. I did not choose.
I was incapable of really choosing. I consented."
"It's the same in fact. But be sure of what
you wish."
"Yes," she assented, taking it for her just
punishment that she should be supposed not quite to know her
wishes. "Your advice has helped me to-day."
"Did I advise?"
"Do you regret advising?"
"I should certainly regret a word that
intruded between you and him."
"But you will not leave the Hall yet? You
will not leave me without a friend? If papa and I were to
leave to-morrow, I foresee endless correspondence. I have to
stay at least some days, and wear through it, and then, if I
have to speak to my poor father, you can imagine the effect
on him."
Sir Willoughby came striding in, to correct
the error of his going out.
"Miss Dale awaits you, my dear. You have
bonnet, hat?—No? Have you forgotten your appointment to walk
with her?"
"I am ready," said Clara, departing.
The two gentlemen behind her separated in
the passage. They had not spoken.
She had read of the reproach upon women,
that they divide the friendships of men. She reproached
herself but she was in action, driven by necessity, between
sea and rock. Dreadful to think of! she was one of the
creatures who are written about.
CHAPTER XVI
CLARA AND LAETITIA
In spite of his honourable caution, Vernon
had said things to render Miss Middleton more angrily
determined than she had been in the scene with Sir
Willoughby. His counting on pitched battles and a defeat for
her in all of them, made her previous feelings appear slack
in comparison with the energy of combat now animating her.
And she could vehemently declare that she had not chosen;
she was too young, too ignorant to choose. He had wrongly
used that word; it sounded malicious; and to call consenting
the same in fact as choosing was wilfully unjust. Mr.
Whitford meant well; he was conscientious, very
conscientious. But he was not the hero descending from
heaven bright-sworded to smite a woman's fetters of her
limbs and deliver her from the yawning mouth-abyss.
His logical coolness of expostulation with
her when she cast aside the silly mission entrusted to her
by Sir Willoughby and wept for herself, was unheroic in
proportion to its praiseworthiness. He had left it to her to
do everything she wished done, stipulating simply that there
should be a pause of four-and-twenty hours for her to
consider of it before she proceeded in the attempt to
extricate herself. Of consolation there had not been a word.
Said he, "I am the last man to give advice in such a case".
Yet she had by no means astonished him when her confession
came out. It came out, she knew not how. It was led up to by
his declining the idea of marriage, and her congratulating
him on his exemption from the prospect of the yoke, but
memory was too dull to revive the one or two fiery minutes
of broken language when she had been guilty of her dire
misconduct.
This gentleman was no flatterer, scarcely a
friend. He could look on her grief without soothing her.
Supposing he had soothed her warmly? All her sentiments
collected in her bosom to dash in reprobation of him at the
thought. She nevertheless condemned him for his excessive
coolness; his transparent anxiety not to be compromised by a
syllable; his air of saying, "I guessed as much, but why
plead your case to me?" And his recommendation to her to be
quite sure she did know what she meant, was a little
insulting. She exonerated him from the intention; he treated
her as a girl. By what he said of Miss Dale, he proposed
that lady for imitation.
"I must be myself or I shall be playing
hypocrite to dig my own pitfall," she said to herself, while
taking counsel with Laetitia as to the route for their walk,
and admiring a becoming curve in her companion's hat.
Sir Willoughby, with many protestations of
regret that letters of business debarred him from the
pleasure of accompanying them, remarked upon the path
proposed by Miss Dale, "In that case you must have a
footman."
"Then we adopt the other," said Clara, and
they set forth.
"Sir Willoughby," Miss Dale said to her, "is
always in alarm about our unprotectedness."
Clara glanced up at the clouds and closed
her parasol. She replied, "It inspires timidity."
There was that in the accent and character
of the answer which warned
Laetitia to expect the reverse of a quiet chatter with Miss
Middleton.
"You are fond of walking?" She chose a
peaceful topic.
"Walking or riding; yes, of walking," said
Clara. "The difficulty is to find companions."
"We shall lose Mr. Whitford next week."
"He goes?"
"He will be a great loss to me, for I do not
ride," Laetitia replied to the off-hand inquiry.
"Ah!"
Miss Middleton did not fan conversation when
she simply breathed her voice.
Laetitia tried another neutral theme.
"The weather to-day suits our country," she
said.
"England, or Patterne Park? I am so devoted
to mountains that I have no enthusiasm for flat land."
"Do you call our country flat, Miss
Middleton? We have undulations, hills, and we have
sufficient diversity, meadows, rivers, copses, brooks, and
good roads, and pretty by-paths."
"The prettiness is overwhelming. It is very
pretty to see; but to live with, I think I prefer ugliness.
I can imagine learning to love ugliness. It's honest.
However young you are, you cannot be deceived by it. These
parks of rich people are a part of the prettiness. I would
rather have fields, commons."
"The parks give us delightful green walks,
paths through beautiful woods."
"If there is a right-of-way for the public."
"There should be," said Miss Dale,
wondering; and Clara cried: "I chafe at restraint: hedges
and palings everywhere! I should have to travel ten years to
sit down contented among these fortifications. Of course I
can read of this rich kind of English country with pleasure
in poetry. But it seems to me to require poetry. What would
you say of human beings requiring it?"
"That they are not so companionable but that
the haze of distance improves the view."
"Then you do know that you are the wisest?"
Laetitia raised her dark eyelashes; she
sought to understand. She could only fancy she did; and if
she did, it meant that Miss Middleton thought her wise in
remaining single.
Clara was full of a sombre preconception
that her "jealousy" had been hinted to Miss Dale.
"You knew Miss Durham?" she said.
"Not intimately."
"As well as you know me?"
"Not so well."
"But you saw more of her?"
"She was more reserved with me."
"Oh! Miss Dale, I would not be reserved with
you."
The thrill of the voice caused Laetitia to
steal a look. Clara's eyes were bright, and she had the
readiness to run to volubility of the fever-stricken;
otherwise she did not betray excitement.
"You will never allow any of these noble
trees to be felled, Miss
Middleton?"
"The axe is better than decay, do you not
think?"
"I think your influence will be great and
always used to good purpose."
"My influence, Miss Dale? I have begged a
favour this morning and can not obtain the grant."
It was lightly said, but Clara's face was
more significant, and "What?" leaped from Laetitia's lips.
Before she could excuse herself, Clara had
answered: "My liberty."
In another and higher tone Laetitia said,
"What?" and she looked round on her companion; she looked in
the doubt that is open to conviction by a narrow aperture,
and slowly and painfully yields access. Clara saw the
vacancy of her expression gradually filling with woefulness.
"I have begged him to release me from my
engagement, Miss Dale."
"Sir Willoughby?"
"It is incredible to you. He refuses. You
see I have no influence."
"Miss Middleton, it is terrible!"
"To be dragged to the marriage service
against one's will? Yes."
"Oh! Miss Middleton!"
"Do you not think so?"
"That cannot be your meaning."
"You do not suspect me of trifling? You know
I would not. I am as much in earnest as a mouse in a trap."
"No, you will not misunderstand me! Miss
Middleton, such a blow to Sir
Willoughby would be shocking, most cruel! He is devoted to
you."
"He was devoted to Miss Durham."
"Not so deeply: differently."
"Was he not very much courted at that time?
He is now; not so much: he is not so young. But my reason
for speaking of Miss Durham was to exclaim at the
strangeness of a girl winning her freedom to plunge into
wedlock. Is it comprehensible to you? She flies from one
dungeon into another. These are the acts which astonish men
at our conduct, and cause them to ridicule and, I dare say,
despise us."
"But, Miss Middleton, for Sir Willoughby to
grant such a request, if it was made . . ."
"It was made, and by me, and will be made
again. I throw it all on my unworthiness, Miss Dale. So the
county will think of me, and quite justly. I would rather
defend him than myself. He requires a different wife from
anything I can be. That is my discovery; unhappily a late
one. The blame is all mine. The world cannot be too hard on
me. But I must be free if I am to be kind in my judgements
even of the gentleman I have injured."
"So noble a gentleman!" Laetitia sighed.
"I will subscribe to any eulogy of him,"
said Clara, with a penetrating thought as to the possibility
of a lady experienced in him like Laetitia taking him for
noble. "He has a noble air. I say it sincerely, that your
appreciation of him proves his nobility." Her feeling of
opposition to Sir Willoughby pushed her to this
extravagance, gravely perplexing Laetitia. "And it is,"
added Clara, as if to support what she had said, "a
withering rebuke to me; I know him less, at least have not
had so long an experience of him."
Laetitia pondered on an obscurity in these
words which would have accused her thick intelligence but
for a glimmer it threw on another most obscure
communication. She feared it might be, strange though it
seemed, jealousy, a shade of jealousy affecting Miss
Middleton, as had been vaguely intimated by Sir Willoughby
when they were waiting in the hall. "A little feminine
ailment, a want of comprehension of a perfect friendship;"
those were his words to her: and he suggested vaguely that
care must be taken in the eulogy of her friend.
She resolved to be explicit.
"I have not said that I think him beyond
criticism, Miss Middleton."
"Noble?"
"He has faults. When we have known a person
for years the faults come out, but custom makes light of
them; and I suppose we feel flattered by seeing what it
would be difficult to be blind to! A very little flatters
us! Now, do you not admire that view? It is my favourite."
Clara gazed over rolling richness of
foliage, wood and water, and a church-spire, a town and
horizon hills. There sung a sky-lark.
"Not even the bird that does not fly away!"
she said; meaning, she had no heart for the bird satisfied
to rise and descend in this place.
Laetitia travelled to some notion, dim and
immense, of Miss Middleton's fever of distaste. She shrunk
from it in a kind of dread lest it might be contagious and
rob her of her one ever-fresh possession of the homely
picturesque; but Clara melted her by saying, "For your sake
I could love it . . . in time; or some dear old English
scene. Since . . . since this . . . this change in me, I
find I cannot separate landscape from associations. Now I
learn how youth goes. I have grown years older in a
week.—Miss Dale, if he were to give me my freedom? if he
were to cast me off? if he stood alone?"
"I should pity him."
"Him—not me! Oh! right! I hoped you would; I
knew you would."
Laetitia's attempt to shift with Miss
Middleton's shiftiness was vain; for now she seemed really
listening to the language of Jealousy:—jealous of the
ancient Letty Dale—and immediately before the tone was quite
void of it.
"Yes," she said, "but you make me feel
myself in the dark, and when I do I have the habit of
throwing myself for guidance upon such light as I have
within. You shall know me, if you will, as well as I know
myself. And do not think me far from the point when I say I
have a feeble health. I am what the doctors call anaemic; a
rather bloodless creature. The blood is life, so I have not
much life. Ten years back—eleven, if I must be precise, I
thought of conquering the world with a pen! The result is
that I am glad of a fireside, and not sure of always having
one: and that is my achievement. My days are monotonous, but
if I have a dread, it is that there will be an alteration in
them. My father has very little money. We subsist on what
private income he has, and his pension: he was an army
doctor. I may by-and-by have to live in a town for pupils. I
could be grateful to any one who would save me from that. I
should be astonished at his choosing to have me burden his
household as well.—Have I now explained the nature of my
pity? It would be the pity of common sympathy, pure lymph of
pity, as nearly disembodied as can be. Last year's sheddings
from the tree do not form an attractive garland. Their merit
is, that they have not the ambition. I am like them. Now,
Miss Middleton, I cannot make myself more bare to you. I
hope you see my sincerity."
"I do see it," Clara said.
With the second heaving of her heart, she
cried: "See it, and envy you that humility! proud if I could
ape it! Oh, how proud if I could speak so truthfully
true!—You would not have spoken so to me without some good
feeling out of which friends are made. That I am sure of. To
be very truthful to a person, one must have a liking. So I
judge by myself. Do I presume too much?"
Kindness was on Laetitia's face.
"But now," said Clara, swimming on the wave
in her bosom, "I tax you with the silliest suspicion ever
entertained by one of your rank. Lady, you have deemed me
capable of the meanest of our vices!—Hold this hand,
Laetitia; my friend, will you? Something is going on in me."
Laetitia took her hand, and saw and felt
that something was going on.
Clara said, "You are a woman."
It was her effort to account for the
something.
She swam for a brilliant instant on tears,
and yielded to the overflow.
When they had fallen, she remarked upon her
first long breath quite coolly: "An encouraging picture of a
rebel, is it not?"
Her companion murmured to soothe her.
"It's little, it's nothing," said Clara,
pained to keep her lips in line.
They walked forward, holding hands,
deep-hearted to one another.
"I like this country better now," the shaken
girl resumed. "I could lie down in it and ask only for
sleep. I should like to think of you here. How nobly
self-respecting you must be, to speak as you did! Our dreams
of heroes and heroines are cold glitter beside the reality.
I have been lately thinking of myself as an outcast of my
sex, and to have a good woman liking me a little . . .
loving? Oh, Laetitia, my friend, I should have kissed you,
and not made this exhibition of myself—and if you call it
hysterics, woe to you! for I bit my tongue to keep it off
when I had hardly strength to bring my teeth together—if
that idea of jealousy had not been in your head. You had it
from him."
"I have not alluded to it in any word that I
can recollect."
"He can imagine no other cause for my wish
to be released. I have noticed, it is his instinct to reckon
on women as constant by their nature. They are the needles,
and he the magnet. Jealousy of you, Miss Dale! Laetitia, may
I speak?"
"Say everything you please."
"I could wish:—Do you know my baptismal
name?"
"Clara."
"At last! I could wish . . . that is, if it
were your wish. Yes, I could wish that. Next to
independence, my wish would be that. I risk offending you.
Do not let your delicacy take arms against me. I wish him
happy in the only way that he can be made happy. There is my
jealousy."
"Was it what you were going to say just
now?"
"No."
"I thought not."
"I was going to say—and I believe the rack
would not make me truthful like you, Laetitia—well, has it
ever struck you: remember, I do see his merits; I speak to
his faithfullest friend, and I acknowledge he is attractive,
he has manly tastes and habits; but has it never struck you
. . . I have no right to ask; I know that men must have
faults, I do not expect them to be saints; I am not one; I
wish I were."
"Has it never struck me . . . ?" Laetitia
prompted her.
"That very few women are able to be
straightforwardly sincere in their speech, however much they
may desire to be?"
"They are differently educated. Great
misfortune brings it to them."
"I am sure your answer is correct. Have you
ever known a woman who was entirely an Egoist?"
"Personally known one? We are not better
than men."
"I do not pretend that we are. I have
latterly become an Egoist, thinking of no one but myself,
scheming to make use of every soul I meet. But then, women
are in the position of inferiors. They are hardly out of the
nursery when a lasso is round their necks; and if they have
beauty, no wonder they turn it to a weapon and make as many
captives as they can. I do not wonder! My sense of shame at
my natural weakness and the arrogance of men would urge me
to make hundreds captive, if that is being a coquette. I
should not have compassion for those lofty birds, the hawks.
To see them with their wings clipped would amuse me. Is
there any other way of punishing them?"
"Consider what you lose in punishing them."
"I consider what they gain if we do not."
Laetitia supposed she was listening to
discursive observations upon the inequality in the relations
of the sexes. A suspicion of a drift to a closer meaning had
been lulled, and the colour flooded her swiftly when Clara
said: "Here is the difference I see; I see it; I am certain
of it: women who are called coquettes make their conquests
not of the best of men; but men who are Egoists have good
women for their victims; women on whose devoted constancy
they feed; they drink it like blood. I am sure I am not
taking the merely feminine view. They punish themselves too
by passing over the one suitable to them, who could really
give them what they crave to have, and they go where they .
. ." Clara stopped. "I have not your power to express
ideas," she said.
"Miss Middleton, you have a dreadful power,"
said Laetitia.
Clara smiled affectionately. "I am not aware
of any. Whose cottage is this?"
"My father's. Will you not come in? into the
garden?"
Clara took note of ivied windows and roses
in the porch. She thanked
Laetitia and said: "I will call for you in an hour."
"Are you walking on the road alone?" said
Laetitia, incredulously, with an eye to Sir Willoughby's
dismay.
"I put my trust in the high-road," Clara
replied, and turned away, but turned back to Laetitia and
offered her face to be kissed.
The "dreadful power" of this young lady had
fervently impressed Laetitia, and in kissing her she
marvelled at her gentleness and girlishness.
Clara walked on, unconscious of her
possession of power of any kind.
CHAPTER XVII
THE PORCELAIN VASE
During the term of Clara's walk with
Laetitia, Sir Willoughby's shrunken self-esteem, like a
garment hung to the fire after exposure to tempestuous
weather, recovered some of the sleekness of its velvet pile
in the society of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, who
represented to him the world he feared and tried to keep
sunny for himself by all the arts he could exercise. She
expected him to be the gay Sir Willoughby, and her look
being as good as an incantation summons, he produced the
accustomed sprite, giving her sally for sally. Queens govern
the polite. Popularity with men, serviceable as it is for
winning favouritism with women, is of poor value to a
sensitive gentleman, anxious even to prognostic apprehension
on behalf of his pride, his comfort and his prevalence. And
men are grossly purchasable; good wines have them, good
cigars, a goodfellow air: they are never quite worth their
salt even then; you can make head against their ill looks.
But the looks of women will at one blow work on you the
downright difference which is between the cock of lordly
plume and the moulting. Happily they may be gained: a clever
tongue will gain them, a leg. They are with you to a
certainty if Nature is with you; if you are elegant and
discreet: if the sun is on you, and they see you shining in
it; or if they have seen you well-stationed and handsome in
the sun. And once gained they are your mirrors for life, and
far more constant than the glass. That tale of their caprice
is absurd. Hit their imaginations once, they are your
slaves, only demanding common courtier service of you. They
will deny that you are ageing, they will cover you from
scandal, they will refuse to see you ridiculous. Sir
Willoughby's instinct, or skin, or outfloating feelers, told
him of these mysteries of the influence of the sex; he had
as little need to study them as a lady breathed on.
He had some need to know them in fact; and
with him the need of a protection for himself called it
forth; he was intuitively a conjurer in self-defence,
long-sighted, wanting no directions to the herb he was to
suck at when fighting a serpent. His dulness of vision into
the heart of his enemy was compensated by the agile
sensitiveness obscuring but rendering him miraculously
active, and, without supposing his need immediate, he deemed
it politic to fascinate Mrs. Mountstuart and anticipate
ghastly possibilities in the future by dropping a hint; not
of Clara's fickleness, you may be sure; of his own, rather;
or, more justly, of an altered view of Clara's character. He
touched on the rogue in porcelain.
Set gently laughing by his relishing humour.
"I get nearer to it," he said.
"Remember I'm in love with her," said Mrs.
Mountstuart.
"That is our penalty."
"A pleasant one for you."
He assented. "Is the 'rogue' to be
eliminated?"
"Ask when she's a mother, my dear Sir
Willoughby."
"This is how I read you:—"
"I shall accept any interpretation that is
complimentary."
"Not one will satisfy me of being
sufficiently so, and so I leave it to the character to fill
out the epigram."
"Do. What hurry is there? And don't be
misled by your objection to rogue; which would be reasonable
if you had not secured her."
The door of a hollow chamber of horrible
reverberation was opened within him by this remark.
He tried to say in jest, that it was not
always a passionate admiration that held the rogue fast; but
he muddled it in the thick of his conscious thunder, and
Mrs. Mountstuart smiled to see him shot from the
smooth-flowing dialogue into the cataracts by one simple
reminder to the lover of his luck. Necessarily, after a
fall, the pitch of their conversation relaxed.
"Miss Dale is looking well," he said.
"Fairly: she ought to marry," said Mrs.
Mountstuart.
He shook his head. "Persuade her."
She nodded. "Example may have some effect."
He looked extremely abstracted. "Yes, it is
time. Where is the man you could recommend for her
complement? She has now what was missing before, a ripe
intelligence in addition to her happy disposition—romantic,
you would say. I can't think women the worse for that."
"A dash of it."
"She calls it 'leafage'."
"Very pretty. And have you relented about
your horse Achmet?"
"I don't sell him under four hundred."
"Poor Johnny Busshe! You forget that his
wife doles him out his money.
You're a hard bargainer, Sir Willoughby."
"I mean the price to be prohibitive."
"Very well; and 'leafage' is good for
hide-and-seek; especially when there is no rogue in ambush.
And that's the worst I can say of Laetitia Dale. An
exaggerated devotion is the scandal of our sex. They say
you're the hardest man of business in the county too, and I
can believe it; for at home and abroad your aim is to get
the best of everybody. You see I've no leafage, I am
perfectly matter-of-fact, bald."
"Nevertheless, my dear Mrs. Mountstuart, I
can assure you that conversing with you has much the same
exhilarating effect on me as conversing with Miss Dale."
"But, leafage! leafage! You hard bargainers
have no compassion for devoted spinsters."
"I tell you my sentiments absolutely."
"And you have mine moderately expressed."
She recollected the purpose of her morning's
visit, which was to engage Dr. Middleton to dine with her,
and Sir Willoughby conducted her to the library-door.
"Insist," he said.
Awaiting her reappearance, the refreshment
of the talk he had sustained, not without point, assisted
him to distinguish in its complete abhorrent orb the offence
committed against him by his bride. And this he did through
projecting it more and more away from him, so that in the
outer distance it involved his personal emotions less, while
observation was enabled to compass its vastness, and, as it
were, perceive the whole spherical mass of the wretched
girl's guilt impudently turning on its axis.
Thus to detach an injury done to us, and
plant it in space, for mathematical measurement of its
weight and bulk, is an art; it may also be an instinct of
self-preservation; otherwise, as when mountains crumble
adjacent villages are crushed, men of feeling may at any
moment be killed outright by the iniquitous and the callous.
But, as an art, it should be known to those who are for
practising an art so beneficent, that circumstances must
lend their aid. Sir Willoughby's instinct even had sat dull
and crushed before his conversation with Mrs. Mountstuart.
She lifted him to one of his ideals of himself. Among
gentlemen he was the English gentleman; with ladies his aim
was the Gallican courtier of any period from Louis Treize to
Louis Quinze. He could doat on those who led him to talk in
that character—backed by English solidity, you understand.
Roast beef stood eminent behind the souffle and champagne.
An English squire excelling his fellows at hazardous leaps
in public, he was additionally a polished whisperer, a
lively dialoguer, one for witty bouts, with something in
him—capacity for a drive and dig or two—beyond mere wit, as
they soon learned who called up his reserves, and had a
bosom for pinking. So much for his ideal of himself. Now,
Clara not only never evoked, never responded to it, she
repelled it; there was no flourishing of it near her. He
considerately overlooked these facts in his ordinary
calculations; he was a man of honour and she was a girl of
beauty; but the accidental blooming of his ideal, with Mrs.
Mountstuart, on the very heels of Clara's offence, restored
him to full command of his art of detachment, and he thrust
her out, quite apart from himself, to contemplate her
disgraceful revolutions.
Deeply read in the Book of Egoism that he
was, he knew the wisdom of the sentence: An injured pride
that strikes not out will strike home. What was he to strike
with? Ten years younger, Laetitia might have been the
instrument. To think of her now was preposterous. Beside
Clara she had the hue of Winter under the springing bough.
He tossed her away, vexed to the very soul by an
ostentatious decay that shrank from comparison with the
blooming creature he had to scourge in self-defence, by some
agency or other.
Mrs. Mountstuart was on the step of her
carriage when the silken parasols of the young ladies were
descried on a slope of the park, where the yellow green of
May-clothed beeches flowed over the brown ground of last
year's leaves.
"Who's the cavalier?" she inquired.
A gentleman escorted them.
"Vernon? No! he's pegging at Crossjay,"
quoth Willoughby.
Vernon and Crossjay came out for the boy's
half-hour's run before his dinner. Crossjay spied Miss
Middleton and was off to meet her at a bound. Vernon
followed him leisurely.
"The rogue has no cousin, has she?" said
Mrs. Mountstuart.
"It's a family of one son or one daughter
for generations," replied
Willoughby.
"And Letty Dale?"
"Cousin!" he exclaimed, as if wealth had
been imputed to Miss Dale; adding: "No male cousin."
A railway station fly drove out of the
avenue on the circle to the hall-entrance. Flitch was
driver. He had no right to be there, he was doing wrong, but
he was doing it under cover of an office, to support his
wife and young ones, and his deprecating touches of the hat
spoke of these apologies to his former master with dog-like
pathos.
Sir Willoughby beckoned to him to approach.
"So you are here," he said. "You have
luggage."
Flitch jumped from the box and read one of
the labels aloud:
"Lieutenant-Colonel H. De Craye."
"And the colonel met the ladies? Overtook
them?"
Here seemed to come dismal matter for Flitch
to relate.
He began upon the abstract origin of it: he
had lost his place in Sir Willoughby's establishment, and
was obliged to look about for work where it was to be got,
and though he knew he had no right to be where he was, he
hoped to be forgiven because of the mouths he had to feed as
a flyman attached to the railway station, where this
gentleman, the colonel, hired him, and he believed Sir
Willoughby would excuse him for driving a friend, which the
colonel was, he recollected well, and the colonel
recollected him, and he said, not noticing how he was
rigged: "What! Flitch! back in your old place? Am I
expected?" and he told the colonel his unfortunate
situation. "Not back, colonel; no such luck for me" and
Colonel De Craye was a very kind-hearted gentleman, as he
always had been, and asked kindly after his family. And it
might be that such poor work as he was doing now he might be
deprived of, such is misfortune when it once harpoons a man;
you may dive, and you may fly, but it sticks in you, once do
a foolish thing. "May I humbly beg of you, if you'll be so
good, Sir Willoughby," said Flitch, passing to evidence of
the sad mishap. He opened the door of the fly, displaying
fragments of broken porcelain.
"But, what, what! what's the story of this?"
cried Sir Willoughby.
"What is it?" said Mrs. Mountstuart,
pricking up her ears.
"It was a vaws," Flitch replied in elegy.
"A porcelain vase!" interpreted Sir
Willoughby.
"China!" Mrs. Mountstuart faintly shrieked.
One of the pieces was handed to her
inspection.
She held it close, she held it distant. She
sighed horribly.
"The man had better have hanged himself,"
said she.
Flitch bestirred his misfortune-sodden
features and members for a continuation of the doleful
narrative.
"How did this occur?" Sir Willoughby
peremptorily asked him.
Flitch appealed to his former master for
testimony that he was a good and a careful driver.
Sir Willoughby thundered: "I tell you to
tell me how this occurred."
"Not a drop, my lady! not since my supper
last night, if there's any truth in me!" Flitch implored
succour of Mrs Mountstuart.
"Drive straight," she said, and braced him.
His narrative was then direct.
Near Piper's mill, where the Wicker brook
crossed the Rebdon road, one of Hoppner's wagons, overloaded
as usual, was forcing the horses uphill, when Flitch drove
down at an easy pace, and saw himself between Hoppner's cart
come to a stand and a young lady advancing: and just then
the carter smacks his whip, the horses pull half mad. The
young lady starts behind the cart, and up jumps the colonel,
and, to save the young lady, Flitch dashed ahead and did
save her, he thanked Heaven for it, and more when he came to
see who the young lady was.
"She was alone?" said Sir Willoughby in
tragic amazement, staring at
Flitch.
"Very well, you saved her, and you upset the
fly," Mountstuart jogged him on.
"Bardett, our old head-keeper, was a
witness, my lady, had to drive half up the bank, and it's
true—over the fly did go; and the vaws it shoots out against
the twelfth mile-stone, just as though there was the chance
for it! for nobody else was injured, and knocked against
anything else, it never would have flown all to pieces, so
that it took Bardett and me ten minutes to collect every
one, down to the smallest piece there was; and he said, and
I can't help thinking myself, there was a Providence in it,
for we all come together so as you might say we was made to
do as we did."
"So then Horace adopted the prudent course
of walking on with the ladies instead of trusting his limbs
again to this capsizing fly," Sir Willoughby said to Mrs.
Mountstuart; and she rejoined: "Lucky that no one was hurt."
Both of them eyed the nose of poor Flitch,
and simultaneously they delivered a verdict in "Humph!"
Mrs. Mountstuart handed the wretch a
half-crown from her purse. Sir Willoughby directed the
footman in attendance to unload the fly and gather up the
fragments of porcelain carefully, bidding Flitch be quick in
his departing.
"The colonel's wedding-present! I shall call
to-morrow." Mrs.
Mountstuart waved her adieu.
"Come every day!—Yes, I suppose we may guess
the destination of the vase." He bowed her off, and she
cried:
"Well, now, the gift can be shared, if
you're either of you for a division." In the crash of the
carriage-wheels he heard, "At any rate there was a rogue in
that porcelain."
These are the slaps we get from a heedless
world.
As for the vase, it was Horace De Craye's
loss. Wedding-present he would have to produce, and
decidedly not in chips. It had the look of a costly vase,
but that was no question for the moment:—What was meant by
Clara being seen walking on the high-road alone?—What snare,
traceable ad inferas, had ever induced Willoughby Patterne
to make her the repository and fortress of his honour!
CHAPTER XVIII
COLONEL DE CRAYE
Clara came along chatting and laughing with
Colonel De Craye, young Crossjay's hand under one of her
arms, and her parasol flashing; a dazzling offender; as if
she wished to compel the spectator to recognize the dainty
rogue in porcelain; really insufferably fair: perfect in
height and grace of movement; exquisitely tressed;
red-lipped, the colour striking out to a distance from her
ivory skin; a sight to set the woodland dancing, and turn
the heads of the town; though beautiful, a jury of art
critics might pronounce her not to be. Irregular features
are condemned in beauty. Beautiful figure, they could say. A
description of her figure and her walking would have won her
any praises: and she wore a dress cunning to embrace the
shape and flutter loose about it, in the spirit of a
Summer's day. Calypso-clad, Dr. Middleton would have called
her. See the silver birch in a breeze: here it swells, there
it scatters, and it is puffed to a round and it streams like
a pennon, and now gives the glimpse and shine of the white
stem's line within, now hurries over it, denying that it was
visible, with a chatter along the sweeping folds, while
still the white peeps through. She had the wonderful art of
dressing to suit the season and the sky. To-day the art was
ravishingly companionable with her sweet-lighted face: too
sweet, too vividly meaningful for pretty, if not of the
strict severity for beautiful. Millinery would tell us that
she wore a fichu of thin white muslin crossed in front on a
dress of the same light stuff, trimmed with deep rose. She
carried a grey-silk parasol, traced at the borders with
green creepers, and across the arm devoted to Crossjay a
length of trailing ivy, and in that hand a bunch of the
first long grasses. These hues of red rose and pale green
ruffled and pouted in the billowy white of the dress
ballooning and valleying softly, like a yacht before the
sail bends low; but she walked not like one blown against;
resembling rather the day of the South-west driving the
clouds, gallantly firm in commotion; interfusing colour and
varying in her features from laugh to smile and look of
settled pleasure, like the heavens above the breeze.
Sir Willoughby, as he frequently had
occasion to protest to Clara, was no poet: he was a more
than commonly candid English gentleman in his avowed dislike
of the poet's nonsense, verbiage, verse; not one of those
latterly terrorized by the noise made about the fellow into
silent contempt; a sentiment that may sleep, and has not to
be defended. He loathed the fellow, fought the fellow. But
he was one with the poet upon that prevailing theme of
verse, the charms of women. He was, to his ill-luck,
intensely susceptible, and where he led men after him to
admire, his admiration became a fury. He could see at a
glance that Horace De Craye admired Miss Middleton. Horace
was a man of taste, could hardly, could not, do other than
admire; but how curious that in the setting forth of Clara
and Miss Dale, to his own contemplation and comparison of
them, Sir Willoughby had given but a nodding approbation of
his bride's appearance! He had not attached weight to it
recently.
Her conduct, and foremost, if not chiefly,
her having been discovered, positively met by his friend
Horace, walking on the high-road without companion or
attendant, increased a sense of pain so very unusual with
him that he had cause to be indignant. Coming on this
condition, his admiration of the girl who wounded him was as
bitter a thing as a man could feel. Resentment, fed from the
main springs of his nature, turned it to wormwood, and not a
whit the less was it admiration when he resolved to chastise
her with a formal indication of his disdain. Her present
gaiety sounded to him like laughter heard in the shadow of
the pulpit.
"You have escaped!" he said to her, while
shaking the hand of his friend Horace and cordially
welcoming him. "My dear fellow! and, by the way, you had a
squeak for it, I hear from Flitch."
"I, Willoughby? not a bit," said the
colonel; "we get into a fly to get, out of it; and Flitch
helped me out as well as in, good fellow; just dusting my
coat as he did it. The only bit of bad management was that
Miss Middleton had to step aside a trifle hurriedly."
"You knew Miss Middleton at once?"
"Flitch did me the favour to introduce me.
He first precipitated me at Miss Middleton's feet, and then
he introduced me, in old oriental fashion, to my sovereign."
Sir Willoughby's countenance was enough for
his friend Horace. Quarter-wheeling to Clara, he said: "'Tis
the place I'm to occupy for life, Miss Middleton, though one
is not always fortunate to have a bright excuse for taking
it at the commencement."
Clara said: "Happily you were not hurt,
Colonel De Craye."
"I was in the hands of the Loves. Not the
Graces, I'm afraid; I've an image of myself. Dear, no! My
dear Willoughby, you never made such a headlong declaration
as that. It would have looked like a magnificent impulse, if
the posture had only been choicer. And Miss Middleton didn't
laugh. At least I saw nothing but pity."
"You did not write," said Willoughby.
"Because it was a toss-up of a run to
Ireland or here, and I came here not to go there; and, by
the way, fetched a jug with me to offer up to the gods of
ill-luck; and they accepted the propitiation."
"Wasn't it packed in a box?"
"No, it was wrapped in paper, to show its
elegant form. I caught sight of it in the shop yesterday and
carried it off this morning, and presented it to Miss
Middleton at noon, without any form at all."
Willoughby knew his friend Horace's mood
when the Irish tongue in him threatened to wag.
"You see what may happen," he said to Clara.
"As far as I am in fault I regret it," she
answered.
"Flitch says the accident occurred through
his driving up the bank to save you from the wheels."
"Flitch may go and whisper that down the
neck of his empty whisky-flask," said Horace De Craye. "And
then let him cork it."
"The consequence is that we have a porcelain
vase broken. You should not walk on the road alone, Clara.
You ought to have a companion, always. It is the rule here."
"I had left Miss Dale at the cottage."
"You ought to have had the dogs."
"Would they have been any protection to the
vase?"
Horace De Craye crowed cordially.
"I'm afraid not, Miss Middleton. One must go
to the witches for protection to vases; and they're all in
the air now, having their own way with us, which accounts
for the confusion in politics and society, and the rise in
the price of broomsticks, to prove it true, as they tell us,
that every nook and corner wants a mighty sweeping. Miss
Dale looks beaming," said De Craye, wishing to divert
Willoughby from his anger with sense as well as nonsense.
"You have not been visiting Ireland
recently?" said Sir Willoughby.
"No, nor making acquaintance with an actor
in an Irish part in a drama cast in the Green Island. 'Tis
Flitch, my dear Willoughby, has been and stirred the native
in me, and we'll present him to you for the like good office
when we hear after a number of years that you've not
wrinkled your forehead once at your liege lady. Take the
poor old dog back home, will you? He's crazed to be at the
Hall. I say, Willoughby, it would be a good bit of work to
take him back. Think of it; you'll do the popular thing, I'm
sure. I've a superstition that Flitch ought to drive you
from the church-door. If I were in luck, I'd have him drive
me."
"The man's a drunkard, Horace."
"He fuddles his poor nose. 'Tis merely
unction to the exile. Sober struggles below. He drinks to
rock his heart, because he has one. Now let me intercede for
poor Flitch."
"Not a word of him. He threw up his place."
"To try his fortune in the world, as the
best of us do, though livery runs after us to tell us
there's no being an independent gentleman, and comes a cold
day we haul on the metal-button coat again, with a good ha!
of satisfaction. You'll do the popular thing. Miss Middleton
joins in the pleading."
"No pleading!"
"When I've vowed upon my eloquence,
Willoughby, I'd bring you to pardon the poor dog?"
"Not a word of him!"
"Just one!"
Sir Willoughby battled with himself to
repress a state of temper that put him to marked
disadvantage beside his friend Horace in high spirits.
Ordinarily he enjoyed these fits of Irish of him, which were
Horace's fun and play, at times involuntary, and then they
indicated a recklessness that might embrace mischief. De
Craye, as Willoughby had often reminded him, was properly
Norman. The blood of two or three Irish mothers in his line,
however, was enough to dance him, and if his fine profile
spoke of the stiffer race, his eyes and the quick run of the
lip in the cheek, and a number of his qualities, were
evidence of the maternal legacy.
"My word has been said about the man,"
Willoughby replied.
"But I've wagered on your heart against your
word, and cant afford to lose; and there's a double reason
for revoking for you!"
"I don't see either of them. Here are the
ladies."
"You'll think of the poor beast,
Willoughby."
"I hope for better occupation."
"If he drives a wheelbarrow at the Hall
he'll be happier than on board a chariot at large. He's
broken-hearted."
"He's too much in the way of breakages, my
dear Horace."
"Oh, the vase! the bit of porcelain!" sung
De Craye. "Well, we'll talk him over by and by."
"If it pleases you; but my rules are never
amended."
"Inalterable, are they?—like those of an
ancient people, who might as well have worn a jacket of lead
for the comfort they had of their boast. The beauty of laws
for human creatures is their adaptability to new
stitchings."
Colonel De Craye walked at the heels of his
leader to make his bow to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.
Sir Willoughby had guessed the person who
inspired his friend Horace to plead so pertinaciously and
inopportunely for the man Flitch: and it had not improved
his temper or the pose of his rejoinders; he had winced
under the contrast of his friend Horace's easy, laughing,
sparkling, musical air and manner with his own stiffness;
and he had seen Clara's face, too, scanning the contrast—he
was fatally driven to exaggerate his discontentment, which
did not restore him to serenity. He would have learned more
from what his abrupt swing round of the shoulder precluded
his beholding. There was an interchange between Colonel De
Craye and Miss Middleton; spontaneous on both sides. His was
a look that said: "You were right"; hers: "I knew it". Her
look was calmer, and after the first instant clouded as by
wearifulness of sameness; his was brilliant, astonished,
speculative, and admiring, pitiful: a look that poised over
a revelation, called up the hosts of wonder to question
strange fact.
It had passed unseen by Sir Willoughby. The
observer was the one who could also supply the key of the
secret. Miss Dale had found Colonel De Craye in company with
Miss Middleton at her gateway. They were laughing and
talking together like friends of old standing, De Craye as
Irish as he could be: and the Irish tongue and gentlemanly
manner are an irresistible challenge to the opening steps of
familiarity when accident has broken the ice. Flitch was
their theme; and: "Oh, but if we go tip to Willoughby hand
in hand; and bob a courtesy to 'm and beg his pardon for
Mister Flitch, won't he melt to such a pair of suppliants?
of course he will!" Miss Middleton said he would not.
Colonel De Craye wagered he would; he knew Willoughby best.
Miss Middleton looked simply grave; a way of asserting the
contrary opinion that tells of rueful experience. "We'll
see," said the colonel. They chatted like a couple
unexpectedly discovering in one another a common dialect
among strangers. Can there be an end to it when those two
meet? They prattle, they fill the minutes, as though they
were violently to be torn asunder at a coming signal, and
must have it out while they can; it is a meeting of mountain
brooks; not a colloquy, but a chasing, impossible to say
which flies, which follows, or what the topic, so
interlinguistic are they and rapidly counterchanging. After
their conversation of an hour before, Laetitia watched Miss
Middleton in surprise at her lightness of mind. Clara bathed
in mirth. A boy in a summer stream shows not heartier
refreshment of his whole being. Laetitia could now
understand Vernon's idea of her wit. And it seemed that she
also had Irish blood. Speaking of Ireland, Miss Middleton
said she had cousins there, her only relatives.
"The laugh told me that," said Colonel De
Craye.
Laetitia and Vernon paced up and down the
lawn. Colonel De Craye was talking with English sedateness
to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. Clara and young Crossjay
strayed.
"If I might advise, I would say, do not
leave the Hall immediately, not yet," Laetitia said to
Vernon.
"You know, then?"
"I cannot understand why it was that I was
taken into her confidence."
"I counselled it."
"But it was done without an object that I
can see."
"The speaking did her good."
"But how capricious! how changeful!"
"Better now than later."
"Surely she has only to ask to be
released?—to ask earnestly: if it is her wish."
"You are mistaken."
"Why does she not make a confidant of her
father?"
"That she will have to do. She wished to
spare him."
"He cannot be spared if she is to break the
engagement."
She thought of sparing him the annoyance.
"Now there's to be a tussle, he must share in it."
"Or she thought he might not side with her?"
"She has not a single instinct of cunning.
You judge her harshly."
"She moved me on the walk out. Coming home I
felt differently."
Vernon glanced at Colonel De Craye.
"She wants good guidance," continued
Laetitia.
"She has not an idea of treachery."
"You think so? It may be true. But she seems
one born devoid of patience, easily made reckless. There is
a wildness . . . I judge by her way of speaking; that at
least appeared sincere. She does not practise concealment.
He will naturally find it almost incredible. The change in
her, so sudden, so wayward, is unintelligible to me. To me
it is the conduct of a creature untamed. He may hold her to
her word and be justified."
"Let him look out if he does!"
"Is not that harsher than anything I have
said of her?"
"I'm not appointed to praise her. I fancy I
read the case; and it's a case of opposition of
temperaments. We never can tell the person quite suited to
us; it strikes us in a flash."
"That they are not suited to us? Oh, no;
that comes by degrees."
"Yes, but the accumulation of evidence, or
sentience, if you like, is combustible; we don't command the
spark; it may be late in falling. And you argue in her
favour. Consider her as a generous and impulsive girl,
outwearied at last."
"By what?"
"By anything; by his loftiness, if you like.
He flies too high for her, we will say."
"Sir Willoughby an eagle?"
"She may be tired of his eyrie."
The sound of the word in Vernon's mouth
smote on a consciousness she had of his full grasp of Sir
Willoughby and her own timid knowledge, though he was not a
man who played on words.
If he had eased his heart in stressing the
first syllable, it was only temporary relief. He was
heavy-browed enough.
"But I cannot conceive what she expects me
to do by confiding her sense of her position to me," said
Laetitia.
"We none of us know what will be done. We
hang on Willoughby, who hangs on whatever it is that
supports him: and there we are in a swarm."
"You see the wisdom of staying, Mr.
Whitford."
"It must be over in a day or two. Yes, I
stay."
"She inclines to obey you."
"I should be sorry to stake my authority on
her obedience. We must decide something about Crossjay, and
get the money for his crammer, if it is to be got. If not, I
may get a man to trust me. I mean to drag the boy away.
Willoughby has been at him with the tune of gentleman, and
has laid hold of him by one ear. When I say 'her obedience,'
she is not in a situation, nor in a condition to be led
blindly by anybody. She must rely on herself, do everything
herself. It's a knot that won't bear touching by any hand
save hers."
"I fear . . ." said Laetitia.
"Have no such fear."
"If it should come to his positively
refusing."
"He faces the consequences."
"You do not think of her."
Vernon looked at his companion.
CHAPTER XIX
COLONEL DE CRAYE AND CLARA MIDDLETON
MISS MIDDLETON finished her stroll with
Crossjay by winding her trailer of ivy in a wreath round his
hat and sticking her bunch of grasses in the wreath. She
then commanded him to sit on the ground beside a big
rhododendron, there to await her return. Crossjay had
informed her of a design he entertained to be off with a
horde of boys nesting in high trees, and marking spots where
wasps and hornets were to be attacked in Autumn: she thought
it a dangerous business, and as the boy's dinner-bell had
very little restraint over him when he was in the flush of a
scheme of this description, she wished to make tolerably
sure of him through the charm she not unreadily believed she
could fling on lads of his age. "Promise me you will not
move from here until I come back, and when I come I will
give you a kiss." Crossjay promised. She left him and forgot
him.
Seeing by her watch fifteen minutes to the
ringing of the bell, a sudden resolve that she would speak
to her father without another minute's delay had prompted
her like a superstitious impulse to abandon her aimless
course and be direct. She knew what was good for her; she
knew it now more clearly than in the morning. To be taken
away instantly! was her cry. There could be no further
doubt. Had there been any before? But she would not in the
morning have suspected herself of a capacity for evil, and
of a pressing need to be saved from herself. She was not
pure of nature: it may be that we breed saintly souls which
are: she was pure of will: fire rather than ice. And in
beginning to see the elements she was made of she did not
shuffle them to a heap with her sweet looks to front her.
She put to her account some strength, much weakness; she
almost dared to gaze unblinking at a perilous evil tendency.
The glimpse of it drove her to her father.
"He must take me away at once; to-morrow!"
She wished to spare her father. So unsparing
of herself was she, that, in her hesitation to speak to him
of her change of feeling for Sir Willoughby, she would not
suffer it to be attributed in her own mind to a daughter's
anxious consideration about her father's loneliness; an idea
she had indulged formerly. Acknowledging that it was
imperative she should speak, she understood that she had
refrained, even to the inflicting upon herself of such
humiliation as to run dilating on her woes to others,
because of the silliest of human desires to preserve her
reputation for consistency. She had heard women abused for
shallowness and flightiness: she had heard her father
denounce them as veering weather-vanes, and his oft-repeated
quid femina possit: for her sex's sake, and also to appear
an exception to her sex, this reasoning creature desired to
be thought consistent.
Just on the instant of her addressing him,
saying: "Father," a note of seriousness in his ear, it
struck her that the occasion for saying all had not yet
arrived, and she quickly interposed: "Papa"; and helped him
to look lighter. The petition to be taken away was uttered.
"To London?" said Dr. Middleton. "I don't
know who'll take us in."
"To France, papa?"
"That means hotel-life."
"Only for two or three weeks."
"Weeks! I am under an engagement to dine
with Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson five days hence: that is, on
Thursday."
"Could we not find an excuse?"
"Break an engagement? No, my dear, not even
to escape drinking a widow's wine."
"Does a word bind us?"
"Why, what else should?"
"I think I am not very well."
"We'll call in that man we met at dinner
here: Corney: a capital doctor; an old-fashioned anecdotal
doctor. How is it you are not well, my love? You look well.
I cannot conceive your not being well."
"It is only that I want change of air,
papa."
"There we are—a change! semper eadem! Women
will be wanting a change of air in Paradise; a change of
angels too, I might surmise. A change from quarters like
these to a French hotel would be a descent!—'this the seat,
this mournful gloom for that celestial light.' I am
perfectly at home in the library here. That excellent fellow
Whitford and I have real days: and I like him for showing
fight to his elder and better."
"He is going to leave."
"I know nothing of it, and I shall append no
credit to the tale until I do know. He is headstrong, but he
answers to a rap."
Clara's bosom heaved. The speechless
insurrection threatened her eyes.
A South-west shower lashed the window-panes
and suggested to Dr.
Middleton shuddering visions of the Channel passage on board
a steamer.
"Corney shall see you: he is a sparkling
draught in person; probably illiterate, if I may judge from
one interruption of my discourse when he sat opposite me,
but lettered enough to respect Learning and write out his
prescription: I do not ask more of men or of physicians."
Dr. Middleton said this rising, glancing at the clock and at
the back of his hands. "'Quod autem secundum litteras
difficillimum esse artificium?' But what after letters is
the more difficult practice? 'Ego puto medicum.' The medicus
next to the scholar: though I have not to my recollection
required him next me, nor ever expected child of mine to be
crying for that milk. Daughter she is—of the unexplained
sex: we will send a messenger for Corney. Change, my dear,
you will speedily have, to satisfy the most craving of
women, if Willoughby, as I suppose, is in the neoteric
fashion of spending a honeymoon on a railway: apt image,
exposition and perpetuation of the state of mania conducting
to the institution! In my time we lay by to brood on
happiness; we had no thought of chasing it over a continent,
mistaking hurly-burly clothed in dust for the divinity we
sought. A smaller generation sacrifices to excitement. Dust
and hurly-burly must perforce be the issue. And that is your
modern world. Now, my dear, let us go and wash our hands.
Midday-bells expect immediate attention. They know of no
anteroom of assembly."
Clara stood gathered up, despairing at
opportunity lost. He had noticed her contracted shape and
her eyes, and had talked magisterially to smother and
overbear the something disagreeable prefigured in her
appearance.
"You do not despise your girl, father?"
"I do not; I could not; I love her; I love
my girl. But you need not sing to me like a gnat to propound
that question, my dear."
"Then, father, tell Willoughby to-day we
have to leave tomorrow. You shall return in time for Mrs.
Mountstuart's dinner. Friends will take us in, the
Darletons, the Erpinghams. We can go to Oxford, where you
are sure of welcome. A little will recover me. Do not
mention doctors. But you see I am nervous. I am quite
ashamed of it; I am well enough to laugh at it, only I
cannot overcome it; and I feel that a day or two will
restore me. Say you will. Say it in First-Lesson-Book
language; anything above a primer splits my foolish head
to-day."
Dr Middleton shrugged, spreading out his
arms.
"The office of ambassador from you to
Willoughby, Clara? You decree me to the part of ball between
two bats. The Play being assured, the prologue is a bladder
of wind. I seem to be instructed in one of the mysteries of
erotic esotery, yet on my word I am no wiser. If Willoughby
is to hear anything from you, he will hear it from your
lips."
"Yes, father, yes. We have differences. I am
not fit for contests at present; my head is giddy. I wish to
avoid an illness. He and I . . . I accuse myself."
"There is the bell!" ejaculated Dr.
Middleton. "I'll debate on it with
Willoughby."
"This afternoon?"
"Somewhen, before the dinner-bell. I cannot
tie myself to the minute-hand of the clock, my dear child.
And let me direct you, for the next occasion when you shall
bring the vowels I and A, in verbally detached letters, into
collision, that you do not fill the hiatus with so
pronounced a Y. It is the vulgarization of our tongue of
which I accuse you. I do not like my girl to be guilty of
it."
He smiled to moderate the severity of the
correction, and kissed her forehead.
She declared her inability to sit and eat;
she went to her room, after begging him very earnestly to
send her the assurance that he had spoken. She had not shed
a tear, and she rejoiced in her self-control; it whispered
to her of true courage when she had given herself such
evidence of the reverse.
Shower and sunshine alternated through the
half-hours of the afternoon, like a procession of dark and
fair holding hands and passing. The shadow came, and she was
chill; the light yellow in moisture, and she buried her face
not to be caught up by cheerfulness. Believing that her head
ached, she afflicted herself with all the heavy symptoms,
and oppressed her mind so thoroughly that its occupation was
to speculate on Laetitia Dale's modest enthusiasm for rural
pleasures, for this place especially, with its rich foliage
and peeps of scenic peace. The prospect of an escape from it
inspired thoughts of a loveable round of life where the sun
was not a naked ball of fire, but a friend clothed in
woodland; where park and meadow swept to well-known features
East and West; and distantly circling hills, and the hearts
of poor cottagers too—sympathy with whom assured her of
goodness—were familiar, homely to the dweller in the place,
morning and night. And she had the love of wild flowers, the
watchful happiness in the seasons; poets thrilled her, books
absorbed. She dwelt strongly on that sincerity of feeling;
it gave her root in our earth; she needed it as she pressed
a hand on her eyeballs, conscious of acting the invalid,
though the reasons she had for languishing under headache
were so convincing that her brain refused to disbelieve in
it and went some way to produce positive throbs. Otherwise
she had no excuse for shutting herself in her room. Vernon
Whitford would be sceptical. Headache or none, Colonel De
Craye must be thinking strangely of her; she had not shown
him any sign of illness. His laughter and his talk sung
about her and dispersed the fiction; he was the very
sea-wind for bracing unstrung nerves. Her ideas reverted to
Sir Willoughby, and at once they had no more cohesion than
the foam on a torrent-water.
But soon she was undergoing a variation of
sentiment. Her maid Barclay brought her this pencilled line
from her father:
"Factum est; laetus est; amantium irae,
etc."
That it was done, that Willoughby had put on
an air of glad acquiescence, and that her father assumed the
existence of a lovers' quarrel, was wonderful to her at
first sight, simple the succeeding minute. Willoughby indeed
must be tired of her, glad of her going. He would know that
it was not to return. She was grateful to him for perhaps
hinting at the amantium irae, though she rejected the folly
of the verse. And she gazed over dear homely country through
her windows now. Happy the lady of the place, if happy she
can be in her choice! Clara Middleton envied her the
double-blossom wild cherry-tree, nothing else. One sprig of
it, if it had not faded and gone to dust-colour like crusty
Alpine snow in the lower hollows, and then she could depart,
bearing away a memory of the best here! Her fiction of the
headache pained her no longer. She changed her muslin dress
for silk; she was contented with the first bonnet Barclay
presented. Amicable toward every one in the house,
Willoughby included, she threw up her window, breathed,
blessed mankind; and she thought: "If Willoughby would open
his heart to nature, he would be relieved of his wretched
opinion of the world." Nature was then sparkling refreshed
in the last drops of a sweeping rain-curtain, favourably
disposed for a background to her joyful optimism. A little
nibble of hunger within, real hunger, unknown to her of
late, added to this healthy view, without precipitating her
to appease it; she was more inclined to foster it, for the
sake of the sinewy activity of mind and limb it gave her;
and in the style of young ladies very light of heart, she
went downstairs like a cascade, and like the meteor observed
in its vanishing trace she alighted close to Colonel De
Craye and entered one of the rooms off the hall.
He cocked an eye at the half-shut door.
Now you have only to be reminded that it is
the habit of the sportive gentleman of easy life, bewildered
as he would otherwise be by the tricks, twists, and windings
of the hunted sex, to parcel out fair women into classes;
and some are flyers and some are runners; these birds are
wild on the wing, those exposed their bosoms to the shot.
For him there is no individual woman. He grants her a
characteristic only to enroll her in a class. He is our
immortal dunce at learning to distinguish her as a personal
variety, of a separate growth.
Colonel De Craye's cock of the eye at the
door said that he had seen a rageing coquette go behind it.
He had his excuse for forming the judgement. She had spoken
strangely of the fall of his wedding-present, strangely of
Willoughby; or there was a sound of strangeness in an
allusion to her appointed husband: and she had treated
Willoughby strangely when they met. Above all, her word
about Flitch was curious. And then that look of hers! And
subsequently she transferred her polite attentions to
Willoughby's friend. After a charming colloquy, the sweetest
give and take rattle he had ever enjoyed with a girl, she
developed headache to avoid him; and next she developed
blindness, for the same purpose.
He was feeling hurt, but considered it
preferable to feel challenged.
Miss Middleton came out of another door. She
had seen him when she had passed him and when it was too
late to convey her recognition; and now she addressed him
with an air of having bowed as she went by.
"No one?" she said. "Am I alone in the
house?"
"There is a figure naught," said he, "but
it's as good as annihilated, and no figure at all, if you
put yourself on the wrong side of it, and wish to be alone
in the house."
"Where is Willoughby?"
"Away on business."
"Riding?"
"Achmet is the horse, and pray don't let him
be sold, Miss Middleton. I am deputed to attend on you."
"I should like a stroll."
"Are you perfectly restored?"
"Perfectly."
"Strong?"
"I was never better."
"It was the answer of the ghost of the
wicked old man's wife when she came to persuade him he had
one chance remaining. Then, says he, I'll believe in heaven
if ye'll stop that bottle, and hurls it; and the bottle
broke and he committed suicide, not without suspicion of her
laying a trap for him. These showers curling away and
leaving sweet scents are divine, Miss Middleton. I have the
privilege of the Christian name on the nuptial-day. This
park of Willoughby's is one of the best things in England.
There's a glimpse over the lake that smokes of a corner of
Killarney; tempts the eye to dream, I mean." De Craye wound
his finger spirally upward, like a smoke-wreath. "Are you
for Irish scenery?"
"Irish, English, Scottish."
"All's one so long as it's beautiful: yes,
you speak for me. Cosmopolitanism of races is a different
affair. I beg leave to doubt the true union of some; Irish
and Saxon, for example, let Cupid be master of the
ceremonies and the dwelling-place of the happy couple at the
mouth of a Cornucopia. Yet I have seen a flower of Erin worn
by a Saxon gentleman proudly; and the Hibernian courting a
Rowena! So we'll undo what I said, and consider it
cancelled."
"Are you of the rebel party, Colonel De
Craye?"
"I am Protestant and Conservative, Miss
Middleton."
"I have not a head for politics."
"The political heads I have seen would tempt
me to that opinion."
"Did Willoughby say when he would be back?"
"He named no particular time. Doctor
Middleton and Mr. Whitford are in the library upon a battle
of the books."
"Happy battle!"
"You are accustomed to scholars. They are
rather intolerant of us poor fellows."
"Of ignorance perhaps; not of persons."
"Your father educated you himself, I
presume?"
"He gave me as much Latin as I could take.
The fault is mine that it is little."
"Greek?"
"A little Greek."
"Ah! And you carry it like a feather."
"Because it is so light."
"Miss Middleton, I could sit down to be
instructed, old as I am. When women beat us, I verily
believe we are the most beaten dogs in existence. You like
the theatre?"
"Ours?"
"Acting, then."
"Good acting, of course."
"May I venture to say you would act
admirably?"
"The venture is bold, for I have never
tried."
"Let me see; there is Miss Dale and Mr.
Whitford; you and I; sufficient for a two-act piece. THE
IRISHMAN IN SPAIN would do." He bent to touch the grass as
she stepped on it. "The lawn is wet."
She signified that she had no dread of wet,
and said: "English women afraid of the weather might as well
be shut up."
De Craye proceeded: "Patrick O'Neill passes
over from Hibernia to Iberia, a disinherited son of a father
in the claws of the lawyers, with a letter of introduction
to Don Beltran d'Arragon, a Grandee of the First Class, who
has a daughter Dona Seraphina (Miss Middleton), the proudest
beauty of her day, in the custody of a duenna (Miss Dale),
and plighted to Don Fernan, of the Guzman family (Mr.
Whitford). There you have our dramatis personae."
"You are Patrick?"
"Patrick himself. And I lose my letter, and
I stand on the Prado of Madrid with the last portrait of
Britannia in the palm of my hand, and crying in the purest
brogue of my native land: 'It's all through dropping a
letter I'm here in Iberia instead of Hibernia, worse luck to
the spelling!'"
"But Patrick will be sure to aspirate the
initial letter of Hibernia."
"That is clever criticism, upon my word,
Miss Middleton! So he would. And there we have two letters
dropped. But he'd do it in a groan, so that it wouldn't
count for more than a ghost of one; and everything goes on
the stage, since it's only the laugh we want on the brink of
the action. Besides you are to suppose the performance
before a London audience, who have a native opposite to the
aspirate and wouldn't bear to hear him spoil a joke, as if
he were a lord or a constable. It's an instinct of the
English democracy. So with my bit of coin turning over and
over in an undecided way, whether it shall commit suicide to
supply me a supper, I behold a pair of Spanish eyes like
violet lightning in the black heavens of that favoured
clime. Won't you have violet?"
"Violet forbids my impersonation."
"But the lustre on black is dark violet
blue."
"You remind me that I have no pretension to
black."
Colonel De Craye permitted himself to take a
flitting gaze at Miss Middleton's eyes. "Chestnut," he said.
"Well, and Spain is the land of chestnuts."
"Then it follows that I am a daughter of
Spain."
"Clearly."
"Logically?"
"By positive deduction."
"And do I behold Patrick?"
"As one looks upon a beast of burden."
"Oh!"
Miss Middleton's exclamation was louder than
the matter of the dialogue seemed to require. She caught her
hands up.
In the line of the outer extremity of the
rhododendron, screened from the house windows, young
Crossjay lay at his length, with his head resting on a
doubled arm, and his ivy-wreathed hat on his cheek, just
where she had left him, commanding him to stay. Half-way
toward him up the lawn, she saw the poor boy, and the spur
of that pitiful sight set her gliding swiftly. Colonel De
Craye followed, pulling an end of his moustache.
Crossjay jumped to his feet.
"My dear, dear Crossjay!" she addressed him
and reproached him. "And how hungry you must be! And you
must be drenched! This is really too had."
"You told me to wait here," said Crossjay,
in shy self-defence.
"I did, and you should not have done it,
foolish boy! I told him to wait for me here before luncheon,
Colonel De Craye, and the foolish, foolish boy!—he has had
nothing to eat, and he must have been wet through two or
three times:—because I did not come to him!"
"Quite right. And the lava might overflow
him and take the mould of him, like the sentinel at Pompeii,
if he's of the true stuff."
"He may have caught cold, he may have a
fever."
"He was under your orders to stay."
"I know, and I cannot forgive myself. Run
in, Crossjay, and change your clothes. Oh, run, run to Mrs.
Montague, and get her to give you a warm bath, and tell her
from me to prepare some dinner for you. And change every
garment you have. This is unpardonable of me. I said—'not
for politics!'—I begin to think I have not a head for
anything. But could it be imagined that Crossjay would not
move for the dinner-bell! through all that rain! I forgot
you, Crossjay. I am so sorry; so sorry! You shall make me
pay any forfeit you like. Remember, I am deep, deep in your
debt. And now let me see you run fast. You shall come in to
dessert this evening."
Crossjay did not run. He touched her hand.
"You said something?"
"What did I say, Crossjay?"
"You promised."
"What did I promise?"
"Something."
"Name it, my dear boy."
He mumbled, ". . . kiss me."
Clara plumped down on him, enveloped him and
kissed him.
The affectionately remorseful impulse was
too quick for a conventional note of admonition to arrest
her from paying that portion of her debt. When she had sped
him off to Mrs Montague, she was in a blush.
"Dear, dear Crossjay!" she said, sighing.
"Yes, he's a good lad," remarked the
colonel. "The fellow may well be a faithful soldier and
stick to his post, if he receives promise of such a solde.
He is a great favourite with you."
"He is. You will do him a service by
persuading Willoughby to send him to one of those men who
get boys through their naval examination. And, Colonel De
Craye, will you be kind enough to ask at the dinner-table
that Crossjay may come in to dessert?"
"Certainly," said he, wondering.
"And will you look after him while you are
here? See that no one spoils him. If you could get him away
before you leave, it would be much to his advantage. He is
born for the navy and should be preparing to enter it now."
"Certainly, certainly," said De Craye,
wondering more.
"I thank you in advance."
"Shall I not be usurping . . ."
"No, we leave to-morrow."
"For a day?"
"For longer."
"Two?"
"It will be longer."
"A week? I shall not see you again?"
"I fear not."
Colonel De Craye controlled his
astonishment; he smothered a sensation of veritable pain,
and amiably said: "I feel a blow, but I am sure you would
not willingly strike. We are all involved in the regrets."
Miss Middleton spoke of having to see Mrs.
Montague, the housekeeper, with reference to the bath for
Crossjay, and stepped off the grass. He bowed, watched her a
moment, and for parallel reasons, running close enough to
hit one mark, he commiserated his friend Willoughby. The
winning or the losing of that young lady struck him as
equally lamentable for Willoughby.
CHAPTER XX
AN AGED AND A GREAT WINE
THE leisurely promenade up and down the lawn
with ladies and deferential gentlemen, in anticipation of
the dinner-bell, was Dr. Middleton's evening pleasure. He
walked as one who had formerly danced (in Apollo's time and
the young god Cupid's), elastic on the muscles of the calf
and foot, bearing his broad iron-grey head in grand
elevation. The hard labour of the day approved the cooling
exercise and the crowning refreshments of French cookery and
wines of known vintages. He was happy at that hour in
dispensing wisdom or nugae to his hearers, like the Western
sun whose habit it is, when he is fairly treated, to break
out in quiet splendours, which by no means exhaust his
treasury. Blessed indeed above his fellows, by the height of
the bow-winged bird in a fair weather sunset sky above the
pecking sparrow, is he that ever in the recurrent evening of
his day sees the best of it ahead and soon to come. He has
the rich reward of a youth and manhood of virtuous living.
Dr. Middleton misdoubted the future as well as the past of
the man who did not, in becoming gravity, exult to dine.
That man he deemed unfit for this world and the next.
An example of the good fruit of temperance,
he had a comfortable pride in his digestion, and his
political sentiments were attuned by his veneration of the
Powers rewarding virtue. We must have a stable world where
this is to be done.
The Rev. Doctor was a fine old picture; a
specimen of art peculiarly English; combining in himself
piety and epicurism, learning and gentlemanliness, with good
room for each and a seat at one another's table: for the
rest, a strong man, an athlete in his youth, a keen reader
of facts and no reader of persons, genial, a giant at a
task, a steady worker besides, but easily discomposed. He
loved his daughter and he feared her. However much he liked
her character, the dread of her sex and age was constantly
present to warn him that he was not tied to perfect sanity
while the damsel Clara remained unmarried. Her mother had
been an amiable woman, of the poetical temperament
nevertheless, too enthusiastic, imaginative, impulsive, for
the repose of a sober scholar; an admirable woman, still, as
you see, a woman, a fire-work. The girl resembled her. Why
should she wish to run away from Patterne Hall for a single
hour? Simply because she was of the sex born mutable and
explosive. A husband was her proper custodian, justly
relieving a father. With demagogues abroad and daughters at
home, philosophy is needed for us to keep erect. Let the
girl be Cicero's Tullia: well, she dies! The choicest of
them will furnish us examples of a strange perversity.
Miss Dale was beside Dr. Middleton. Clara
came to them and took the other side.
"I was telling Miss Dale that the signal for
your subjection is my enfranchisement," he said to her,
sighing and smiling. "We know the date. The date of an event
to come certifies to it as a fact to be counted on."
"Are you anxious to lose me?" Clara
faltered.
"My dear, you have planted me on a field
where I am to expect the trumpet, and when it blows I shall
be quit of my nerves, no more."
Clara found nothing to seize on for a reply
in these words. She thought upon the silence of Laetitia.
Sir Willoughby advanced, appearing in a
cordial mood.
"I need not ask you whether you are better,"
he said to Clara, sparkled to Laetitia, and raised a key to
the level of Dr. Middleton's breast, remarking, "I am going
down to my inner cellar."
"An inner cellar!" exclaimed the doctor.
"Sacred from the butler. It is interdicted
to Stoneman. Shall I offer myself as guide to you? My
cellars are worth a visit."
"Cellars are not catacombs. They are, if
rightly constructed, rightly considered, cloisters, where
the bottle meditates on joys to bestow, not on dust misused!
Have you anything great?"
"A wine aged ninety."
"Is it associated with your pedigree that
you pronounce the age with such assurance?"
"My grandfather inherited it."
"Your grandfather, Sir Willoughby, had
meritorious offspring, not to speak of generous progenitors.
What would have happened had it fallen into the female line!
I shall be glad to accompany you. Port? Hermitage?"
"Port."
"Ah! We are in England!"
"There will just be time," said Sir
Willoughby, inducing Dr. Middleton to step out.
A chirrup was in the reverend doctor's tone:
"Hocks, too, have compassed age. I have tasted senior Hocks.
Their flavours are as a brook of many voices; they have
depth also. Senatorial Port! we say. We cannot say that of
any other wine. Port is deep-sea deep. It is in its flavour
deep; mark the difference. It is like a classic tragedy,
organic in conception. An ancient Hermitage has the light of
the antique; the merit that it can grow to an extreme old
age; a merit. Neither of Hermitage nor of Hock can you say
that it is the blood of those long years, retaining the
strength of youth with the wisdom of age. To Port for that!
Port is our noblest legacy! Observe, I do not compare the
wines; I distinguish the qualities. Let them live together
for our enrichment; they are not rivals like the Idaean
Three. Were they rivals, a fourth would challenge them.
Burgundy has great genius. It does wonders within its
period; it does all except to keep up in the race; it is
short-lived. An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I
cherish the fancy that Port speaks the sentences of wisdom,
Burgundy sings the inspired Ode. Or put it, that Port is the
Homeric hexameter, Burgundy the pindaric dithyramb. What do
you say?"
"The comparison is excellent, sir."
"The distinction, you would remark. Pindar
astounds. But his elder brings us the more sustaining cup.
One is a fountain of prodigious ascent. One is the unsounded
purple sea of marching billows."
"A very fine distinction."
"I conceive you to be now commending the
similes. They pertain to the time of the first critics of
those poets. Touch the Greeks, and you can nothing new; all
has been said: 'Graiis . . . praeter, laudem nullius
avaris.' Genius dedicated to Fame is immortal. We, sir,
dedicate genius to the cloacaline floods. We do not address
the unforgetting gods, but the popular stomach."
Sir Willoughby was patient. He was about as
accordantly coupled with Dr. Middleton in discourse as a
drum duetting with a bass-viol; and when he struck in he
received correction from the paedagogue-instrument. If he
thumped affirmative or negative, he was wrong. However, he
knew scholars to be an unmannered species; and the doctor's
learnedness would be a subject to dilate on.
In the cellar, it was the turn for the drum.
Dr. Middleton was tongue-tied there. Sir Willoughby gave the
history of his wine in heads of chapters; whence it came to
the family originally, and how it had come down to him in
the quantity to be seen. "Curiously, my grandfather, who
inherited it, was a water-drinker. My father died early."
"Indeed! Dear me!" the doctor ejaculated in
astonishment and condolence. The former glanced at the
contrariety of man, the latter embraced his melancholy
destiny.
He was impressed with respect for the
family. This cool vaulted cellar, and the central square
block, or enceinte, where the thick darkness was not
penetrated by the intruding lamp, but rather took it as an
eye, bore witness to forethoughtful practical solidity in
the man who had built the house on such foundations. A house
having a great wine stored below lives in our imaginations
as a joyful house, fast and splendidly rooted in the soil.
And imagination has a place for the heir of the house. His
grandfather a water-drinker, his father dying early, present
circumstances to us arguing predestination to an illustrious
heirship and career. Dr Middleton's musings were coloured by
the friendly vision of glasses of the great wine; his mind
was festive; it pleased him, and he chose to indulge in his
whimsical, robustious, grandiose-airy style of thinking:
from which the festive mind will sometimes take a certain
print that we cannot obliterate immediately. Expectation is
grateful, you know; in the mood of gratitude we are waxen.
And he was a self-humouring gentleman.
He liked Sir Willoughby's tone in ordering
the servant at his heels to take up "those two bottles": it
prescribed, without overdoing it, a proper amount of
caution, and it named an agreeable number.
Watching the man's hand keenly, he said:
"But here is the misfortune of a thing
super-excellent:—not more than one in twenty will do it
justice."
Sir Willoughby replied: "Very true, sir; and
I think we may pass over the nineteen."
"Women, for example; and most men."
"This wine would be a scaled book to them."
"I believe it would. It would be a grievous
waste."
"Vernon is a claret man; and so is Horace De
Craye. They are both below the mark of this wine. They will
join the ladies. Perhaps you and I, sir, might remain
together."
"With the utmost good-will on my part."
"I am anxious for your verdict, sir."
"You shall have it, sir, and not out of
harmony with the chorus preceding me, I can predict. Cool,
not frigid." Dr. Middleton summed the attributes of the
cellar on quitting it. "North side and South. No musty damp.
A pure air. Everything requisite. One might lie down one's
self and keep sweet here."
Of all our venerable British of the two
Isles professing a suckling attachment to an ancient
port-wine, lawyer, doctor, squire, rosy admiral, city
merchant, the classic scholar is he whose blood is most
nuptial to the webbed bottle. The reason must be, that he is
full of the old poets. He has their spirit to sing with, and
the best that Time has done on earth to feed it. He may also
perceive a resemblance in the wine to the studious mind,
which is the obverse of our mortality, and throws off acids
and crusty particles in the piling of the years, until it is
fulgent by clarity. Port hymns to his conservatism. It is
magical: at one sip he is off swimming in the purple flood
of the ever-youthful antique.
By comparison, then, the enjoyment of others
is brutish; they have not the soul for it; but he is worthy
of the wine, as are poets of Beauty. In truth, these should
be severally apportioned to them, scholar and poet, as his
own good thing. Let it be so.
Meanwhile Dr. Middleton sipped.
After the departure of the ladies, Sir
Willoughby had practised a studied curtness upon Vernon and
Horace.
"You drink claret," he remarked to them,
passing it round. "Port, I think, Doctor Middleton? The wine
before you may serve for a preface. We shall have your wine
in five minutes."
The claret jug empty, Sir Willoughby offered
to send for more. De Craye was languid over the question.
Vernon rose from the table.
"We have a bottle of Doctor Middleton's port
coming in," Willoughby said to him.
"Mine, you call it?" cried the doctor.
"It's a royal wine, that won't suffer
sharing," said Vernon.
"We'll be with you, if you go into the
billiard-room, Vernon."
"I shall hurry my drinking of good wine for
no man," said the Rev.
Doctor.
"Horace?"
"I'm beneath it, ephemeral, Willoughby. I am
going to the ladies."
Vernon and De Craye retired upon the arrival
of the wine; and Dr.
Middleton sipped. He sipped and looked at the owner of it.
"Some thirty dozen?" he said.
"Fifty."
The doctor nodded humbly.
"I shall remember, sir," his host addressed
him, "whenever I have the honour of entertaining you, I am
cellarer of that wine."
The Rev. Doctor set down his glass. "You
have, sir, in some sense, an enviable post. It is a
responsible one, if that be a blessing. On you it devolves
to retard the day of the last dozen."
"Your opinion of the wine is favourable,
sir?"
"I will say this:—shallow souls run to
rhapsody:—I will say, that I am consoled for not having
lived ninety years back, or at any period but the present,
by this one glass of your ancestral wine."
"I am careful of it," Sir Willoughby said,
modestly; "still its natural destination is to those who can
appreciate it. You do, sir."
"Still my good friend, still! It is a
charge; it is a possession, but part in trusteeship. Though
we cannot declare it an entailed estate, our consciences are
in some sort pledged that it shall be a succession not too
considerably diminished."
"You will not object to drink it, sir, to
the health of your grandchildren. And may you live to toast
them in it on their marriage-day!"
"You colour the idea of a prolonged
existence in seductive hues. Ha!
It is a wine for Tithonus. This wine would speed him to the
rosy
Morning—aha!"
"I will undertake to sit you through it up
to morning," said Sir
Willoughby, innocent of the Bacchic nuptiality of the
allusion.
Dr Middleton eyed the decanter. There is a
grief in gladness, for a premonition of our mortal state.
The amount of wine in the decanter did not promise to
sustain the starry roof of night and greet the dawn. "Old
wine, my friend, denies us the full bottle!"
"Another bottle is to follow."
"No!"
"It is ordered."
"I protest."
"It is uncorked."
"I entreat."
"It is decanted."
"I submit. But, mark, it must be honest
partnership. You are my worthy host, sir, on that
stipulation. Note the superiority of wine over Venus!—I may
say, the magnanimity of wine; our jealousy turns on him that
will not share! But the corks, Willoughby. The corks excite
my amazement."
"The corking is examined at regular
intervals. I remember the occurrence in my father's time. I
have seen to it once."
"It must be perilous as an operation for
tracheotomy; which I should assume it to resemble in
surgical skill and firmness of hand, not to mention the
imminent gasp of the patient."
A fresh decanter was placed before the
doctor.
He said: "I have but a girl to give!" He was
melted.
Sir Willoughby replied: "I take her for the
highest prize this world affords."
"I have beaten some small stock of Latin
into her head, and a note of Greek. She contains a savour of
the classics. I hoped once . . . But she is a girl. The
nymph of the woods is in her. Still she will bring you her
flower-cup of Hippocrene. She has that aristocracy—the
noblest. She is fair; a Beauty, some have said, who judge
not by lines. Fair to me, Willoughby! She is my sky. There
were applicants. In Italy she was besought of me. She has no
history. You are the first heading of the chapter. With you
she will have her one tale, as it should be. 'Mulier tum
bene olet', you know. Most fragrant she that smells of
naught. She goes to you from me, from me alone, from her
father to her husband. 'Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur
hortis.'" He murmured on the lines to, "'Sic virgo, dum . .
.' I shall feel the parting. She goes to one who will have
my pride in her, and more. I will add, who will be envied.
Mr. Whitford must write you a Carmen Nuptiale."
The heart of the unfortunate gentleman
listening to Dr. Middleton set in for irregular leaps. His
offended temper broke away from the image of Clara,
revealing her as he had seen her in the morning beside
Horace De Craye, distressingly sweet; sweet with the breezy
radiance of an English soft-breathing day; sweet with
sharpness of young sap. Her eyes, her lips, her fluttering
dress that played happy mother across her bosom, giving
peeps of the veiled twins; and her laughter, her slim
figure, peerless carriage, all her terrible sweetness
touched his wound to the smarting quick.
Her wish to be free of him was his anguish.
In his pain he thought sincerely. When the pain was easier
he muffled himself in the idea of her jealousy of Laetitia
Dale, and deemed the wish a fiction. But she had expressed
it. That was the wound he sought to comfort; for the double
reason, that he could love her better after punishing her,
and that to meditate on doing so masked the fear of losing
her—the dread abyss she had succeeded in forcing his nature
to shudder at as a giddy edge possibly near, in spite of his
arts of self-defence.
"What I shall do to-morrow evening!" he
exclaimed. "I do not care to fling a bottle to Colonel De
Craye and Vernon. I cannot open one for myself. To sit with
the ladies will be sitting in the cold for me. When do you
bring me back my bride, sir?"
"My dear Willoughby!" The Rev. Doctor
puffed, composed himself, and sipped. "The expedition is an
absurdity. I am unable to see the aim of it. She had a
headache, vapours. They are over, and she will show a return
of good sense. I have ever maintained that nonsense is not
to be encouraged in girls. I can put my foot on it. My
arrangements are for staying here a further ten days, in the
terms of your hospitable invitation. And I stay."
"I applaud your resolution, sir. Will you
prove firm?"
"I am never false to my engagement,
Willoughby."
"Not under pressure?"
"Under no pressure."
"Persuasion, I should have said."
"Certainly not. The weakness is in the
yielding, either to persuasion or to pressure. The latter
brings weight to bear on us; the former blows at our want of
it."
"You gratify me, Doctor Middleton, and
relieve me."
"I cordially dislike a breach in good
habits, Willoughby. But I do remember—was I wrong?—informing
Clara that you appeared light-hearted in regard to a
departure, or gap in a visit, that was not, I must confess,
to my liking."
"Simply, my dear doctor, your pleasure was
my pleasure; but make my pleasure yours, and you remain to
crack many a bottle with your son-in-law."
"Excellently said. You have a courtly
speech, Willoughby. I can imagine you to conduct a lovers'
quarrel with a politeness to read a lesson to well-bred
damsels. Aha?"
"Spare me the futility of the quarrel."
"All's well?"
"Clara," replied Sir Willoughby, in dramatic
epigram, "is perfection."
"I rejoice," the Rev. Doctor responded;
taught thus to understand that the lovers' quarrel between
his daughter and his host was at an end.
He left the table a little after eleven
o'clock. A short dialogue ensued upon the subject of the
ladies. They must have gone to bed? Why, yes; of course they
must. It is good that they should go to bed early to
preserve their complexions for us. Ladies are creation's
glory, but they are anti-climax, following a wine of a
century old. They are anti-climax, recoil, cross-current;
morally, they are repentance, penance; imagerially, the
frozen North on the young brown buds bursting to green. What
know they of a critic in the palate, and a frame all
revelry! And mark you, revelry in sobriety, containment in
exultation; classic revelry. Can they, dear though they be
to us, light up candelabras in the brain, to illuminate all
history and solve the secret of the destiny of man? They
cannot; they cannot sympathize with them that can. So
therefore this division is between us; yet are we not
turbaned Orientals, nor are they inmates of the harem. We
are not Moslem. Be assured of it in the contemplation of the
table's decanter.
Dr Middleton said: "Then I go straight to
bed."
"I will conduct you to your door, sir," said
his host.
The piano was heard. Dr. Middleton laid his
hand on the banisters, and remarked: "The ladies must have
gone to bed?"
Vernon came out of the library and was
hailed, "Fellow-student!"
He waved a good-night to the Doctor, and
said to Willoughby: "The ladies are in the drawing-room."
"I am on my way upstairs," was the reply.
"Solitude and sleep, after such a wine as
that; and forefend us human society!" the Doctor shouted.
"But, Willoughby!"
"Sir."
"One to-morrow."
"You dispose of the cellar, sir."
"I am fitter to drive the horses of the sun.
I would rigidly counsel, one, and no more. We have made a
breach in the fiftieth dozen. Daily one will preserve us
from having to name the fortieth quite so unseasonably. The
couple of bottles per diem prognosticates disintegration,
with its accompanying recklessness. Constitutionally, let me
add, I bear three. I speak for posterity."
During Dr. Middleton's allocution the ladies
issued from the drawing-room, Clara foremost, for she had
heard her father's voice, and desired to ask him this in
reference to their departure: "Papa, will you tell me the
hour to-morrow?"
She ran up the stairs to kiss him, saying
again: "When will you be ready to-morrow morning?"
Dr Middleton announced a stoutly
deliberative mind in the bugle-notes of a repeated ahem. He
bethought him of replying in his doctorial tongue. Clara's
eager face admonished him to brevity: it began to look
starved. Intruding on his vision of the houris couched in
the inner cellar to be the reward of valiant men, it annoyed
him. His brows joined. He said: "I shall not be ready
to-morrow morning."
"In the afternoon?"
"Nor in the afternoon."
"When?"
"My dear, I am ready for bed at this moment,
and know of no other readiness. Ladies," he bowed to the
group in the hall below him, "may fair dreams pay court to
you this night!"
Sir Willoughby had hastily descended and
shaken the hands of the ladies, directed Horace De Craye to
the laboratory for a smoking-room, and returned to Dr.
Middleton. Vexed by the scene, uncertain of his temper if he
stayed with Clara, for whom he had arranged that her
disappointment should take place on the morrow, in his
absence, he said: "Good-night, good-night," to her, with due
fervour, bending over her flaccid finger-tips; then offered
his arm to the Rev. Doctor.
"Ay, son Willoughby, in friendliness, if you
will, though I am a man to
bear my load," the father of the stupefied girl addressed
him.
"Candles, I believe, are on the first landing. Good-night,
my love.
Clara!"
"Papa!"
"Good-night."
"Oh!" she lifted her breast with the
interjection, standing in shame of the curtained conspiracy
and herself, "good night".
Her father wound up the stairs. She stepped
down.
"There was an understanding that papa and I
should go to London to-morrow early," she said,
unconcernedly, to the ladies, and her voice was clear, but
her face too legible. De Craye was heartily unhappy at the
sight.
CHAPTER XXI
CLARA'S MEDITATIONS
Two were sleepless that night: Miss
Middleton and Colonel De Craye.
She was in a fever, lying like stone, with
her brain burning. Quick natures run out to calamity in any
little shadow of it flung before. Terrors of apprehension
drive them. They stop not short of the uttermost when they
are on the wings of dread. A frown means tempest, a wind
wreck; to see fire is to be seized by it. When it is the
approach of their loathing that they fear, they are in the
tragedy of the embrace at a breath; and then is the wrestle
between themselves and horror, between themselves and evil,
which promises aid; themselves and weakness, which calls on
evil; themselves and the better part of them, which whispers
no beguilement.
The false course she had taken through
sophistical cowardice appalled the girl; she was lost. The
advantage taken of it by Willoughby put on the form of
strength, and made her feel abject, reptilious; she was
lost, carried away on the flood of the cataract. He had won
her father for an ally. Strangely, she knew not how, he had
succeeded in swaying her father, who had previously not more
than tolerated him. "Son Willoughby" on her father's lips
meant something that scenes and scenes would have to
struggle with, to the out-wearying of her father and
herself. She revolved the "Son Willoughby" through moods of
stupefaction, contempt, revolt, subjection. It meant that
she was vanquished. It meant that her father's esteem for
her was forfeited. She saw him a gigantic image of
discomposure.
Her recognition of her cowardly feebleness
brought the brood of fatalism. What was the right of so
miserable a creature as she to excite disturbance, let her
fortunes be good or ill? It would be quieter to float,
kinder to everybody. Thank heaven for the chances of a short
life! Once in a net, desperation is graceless. We may be
brutes in our earthly destinies: in our endurance of them we
need not be brutish.
She was now in the luxury of passivity, when
we throw our burden on the Powers above, and do not love
them. The need to love them drew her out of it, that she
might strive with the unbearable, and by sheer striving,
even though she were graceless, come to love them humbly. It
is here that the seed of good teaching supports a soul, for
the condition might be mapped, and where kismet whispers us
to shut eyes, and instruction bids us look up, is at a
well-marked cross-road of the contest.
Quick of sensation, but not courageously
resolved, she perceived how blunderingly she had acted. For
a punishment, it seemed to her that she who had not known
her mind must learn to conquer her nature, and submit. She
had accepted Willoughby; therefore she accepted him. The
fact became a matter of the past, past debating.
In the abstract this contemplation of
circumstances went well. A plain duty lay in her way. And
then a disembodied thought flew round her, comparing her
with Vernon to her discredit. He had for years borne much
that was distasteful to him, for the purpose of studying,
and with his poor income helping the poorer than himself.
She dwelt on him in pity and envy; he had lived in this
place, and so must she; and he had not been dishonoured by
his modesty: he had not failed of self-control, because he
had a life within. She was almost imagining she might
imitate him when the clash of a sharp physical thought, "The
difference! the difference!" told her she was woman and
never could submit. Can a woman have an inner life apart
from him she is yoked to? She tried to nestle deep away in
herself: in some corner where the abstract view had
comforted her, to flee from thinking as her feminine blood
directed. It was a vain effort. The difference, the cruel
fate, the defencelessness of women, pursued her, strung her
to wild horses' backs, tossed her on savage wastes. In her
case duty was shame: hence, it could not be broadly duty.
That intolerable difference proscribed the word.
But the fire of a brain burning high and
kindling everything lighted up herself against herself.—Was
one so volatile as she a person with a will?—Were they not a
multitude of flitting wishes that she took for a will? Was
she, feather-headed that she was, a person to make a stand
on physical pride?—If she could yield her hand without
reflection (as she conceived she had done, from incapacity
to conceive herself doing it reflectively) was she much
better than purchaseable stuff that has nothing to say to
the bargain?
Furthermore, said her incandescent reason,
she had not suspected such art of cunning in Willoughby.
Then might she not be deceived altogether—might she not have
misread him? Stronger than she had fancied, might he not be
likewise more estimable? The world was favourable to him; he
was prized by his friends.
She reviewed him. It was all in one flash.
It was not much less intentionally favourable than the
world's review and that of his friends, but, beginning with
the idea of them, she recollected—heard Willoughby's voice
pronouncing his opinion of his friends and the world; of
Vernon Whitford and Colonel De Craye for example, and of men
and women. An undefined agreement to have the same regard
for him as his friends and the world had, provided that he
kept at the same distance from her, was the termination of
this phase, occupying about a minute in time, and reached
through a series of intensely vivid pictures:—his face, at
her petition to be released, lowering behind them for a
background and a comment.
"I cannot! I cannot!" she cried, aloud; and
it struck her that her repulsion was a holy warning. Better
be graceless than a loathing wife: better appear
inconsistent. Why should she not appear such as she was?
Why? We answer that question usually in
angry reliance on certain superb qualities, injured fine
qualities of ours undiscovered by the world, not much more
than suspected by ourselves, which are still our fortress,
where pride sits at home, solitary and impervious as an
octogenarian conservative. But it is not possible to answer
it so when the brain is rageing like a pine-torch and the
devouring illumination leaves not a spot of our nature
covert. The aspect of her weakness was unrelieved, and
frightened her back to her loathing. From her loathing, as
soon as her sensations had quickened to realize it, she was
hurled on her weakness. She was graceless, she was
inconsistent, she was volatile, she was unprincipled, she
was worse than a prey to wickedness—capable of it; she was
only waiting to be misled. Nay, the idea of being misled
suffused her with languor; for then the battle would be over
and she a happy weed of the sea no longer suffering those
tugs at the roots, but leaving it to the sea to heave and
contend. She would be like Constantia then: like her in her
fortunes: never so brave, she feared.
Perhaps very like Constantia in her
fortunes!
Poor troubled bodies waking up in the night
to behold visually the spectre cast forth from the perplexed
machinery inside them, stare at it for a space, till
touching consciousness they dive down under the sheets with
fish-like alacrity. Clara looked at her thought, and
suddenly headed downward in a crimson gulf.
She must have obtained absolution, or else
it was oblivion, below. Soon after the plunge her first
object of meditation was Colonel De Craye. She thought of
him calmly: he seemed a refuge. He was very nice, he was a
holiday character. His lithe figure, neat firm footing of
the stag, swift intelligent expression, and his ready
frolicsomeness, pleasant humour, cordial temper, and his
Irishry, whereon he was at liberty to play, as on the emblem
harp of the Isle, were soothing to think of. The suspicion
that she tricked herself with this calm observation of him
was dismissed. Issuing out of torture, her young nature
eluded the irradiating brain in search of refreshment, and
she luxuriated at a feast in considering him—shower on a
parched land that he was! He spread new air abroad. She had
no reason to suppose he was not a good man: she could
securely think of him. Besides he was bound by his
prospective office in support of his friend Willoughby to be
quite harmless. And besides (you are not to expect logical
sequences) the showery refreshment in thinking of him lay in
the sort of assurance it conveyed, that the more she
thought, the less would he be likely to figure as an
obnoxious official—that is, as the man to do by Willoughby
at the altar what her father would, under the supposition,
be doing by her. Her mind reposed on Colonel De Craye.
His name was Horace. Her father had worked
with her at Horace. She knew most of the Odes and some of
the Satires and Epistles of the poet. They reflected
benevolent beams on the gentleman of the poet's name. He too
was vivacious, had fun, common sense, elegance; loved
rusticity, he said, sighed for a country life, fancied
retiring to Canada to cultivate his own domain; "modus agri
non ita magnus:" a delight. And he, too, when in the
country, sighed for town. There were strong features of
resemblance. He had hinted in fun at not being rich. "Quae
virtus et quanta sit vivere parvo." But that quotation
applied to and belonged to Vernon Whitford. Even so little
disarranged her meditations.
She would have thought of Vernon, as her
instinct of safety prompted, had not his exactions been
excessive. He proposed to help her with advice only. She was
to do everything for herself, do and dare everything, decide
upon everything. He told her flatly that so would she learn
to know her own mind; and flatly, that it was her penance.
She had gained nothing by breaking down and pouring herself
out to him. He would have her bring Willoughby and her
father face to face, and be witness of their
interview—herself the theme. What alternative was
there?—obedience to the word she had pledged. He talked of
patience, of self-examination and patience. But all of
her—she was all marked urgent. This house was a cage, and
the world—her brain was a cage, until she could obtain her
prospect of freedom.
As for the house, she might leave it; yonder
was the dawn.
She went to her window to gaze at the first
colour along the grey. Small satisfaction came of gazing at
that or at herself. She shunned glass and sky. One and the
other stamped her as a slave in a frame. It seemed to her
she had been so long in this place that she was fixed here:
it was her world, and to imagine an Alp was like seeking to
get back to childhood. Unless a miracle intervened here she
would have to pass her days. Men are so little chivalrous
now that no miracle ever intervenes. Consequently she was
doomed.
She took a pen and began a letter to a dear
friend, Lucy Darleton, a promised bridesmaid, bidding her
countermand orders for her bridal dress, and purposing a
tour in Switzerland. She wrote of the mountain country with
real abandonment to imagination. It became a visioned
loophole of escape. She rose and clasped a shawl over her
night-dress to ward off chillness, and sitting to the table
again, could not produce a word. The lines she had written
were condemned: they were ludicrously inefficient. The
letter was torn to pieces. She stood very clearly doomed.
After a fall of tears, upon looking at the
scraps, she dressed herself, and sat by the window and
watched the blackbird on the lawn as he hopped from shafts
of dewy sunlight to the long-stretched dewy tree-shadows,
considering in her mind that dark dews are more meaningful
than bright, the beauty of the dews of woods more sweet than
meadow-dews. It signified only that she was quieter. She had
gone through her crisis in the anticipation of it. That is
how quick natures will often be cold and hard, or not much
moved, when the positive crisis arrives, and why it is that
they are prepared for astonishing leaps over the gradations
which should render their conduct comprehensible to us, if
not excuseable. She watched the blackbird throw up his head
stiffly, and peck to right and left, dangling the worm on
each side his orange beak. Specklebreasted thrushes were at
work, and a wagtail that ran as with Clara's own rapid
little steps. Thrush and blackbird flew to the nest. They
had wings. The lovely morning breathed of sweet earth into
her open window, and made it painful, in the dense twitter,
chirp, cheep, and song of the air, to resist the innocent
intoxication. O to love! was not said by her, but if she had
sung, as her nature prompted, it would have been. Her war
with Willoughby sprang of a desire to love repelled by
distaste. Her cry for freedom was a cry to be free to love:
she discovered it, half shuddering: to love, oh! no—no shape
of man, nor impalpable nature either: but to love
unselfishness, and helpfulness, and planted strength in
something. Then, loving and being loved a little, what
strength would be hers! She could utter all the words needed
to Willoughby and to her father, locked in her love: walking
in this world, living in that.
Previously she had cried, despairing: If I
were loved! Jealousy of Constantia's happiness, envy of her
escape, ruled her then: and she remembered the cry, though
not perfectly her plain-speaking to herself: she chose to
think she had meant: If Willoughby were capable of truly
loving! For now the fire of her brain had sunk, and refuges
and subterfuges were round about it. The thought of personal
love was encouraged, she chose to think, for the sake of the
strength it lent her to carve her way to freedom. She had
just before felt rather the reverse, but she could not exist
with that feeling; and it was true that freedom was not so
indistinct in her fancy as the idea of love.
Were men, when they were known, like him she
knew too well?
The arch-tempter's question to her was
there.
She put it away. Wherever she turned it
stood observing her. She knew so much of one man, nothing of
the rest: naturally she was curious. Vernon might be sworn
to be unlike. But he was exceptional. What of the other in
the house?
Maidens are commonly reduced to read the
masters of their destinies by their instincts; and when
these have been edged by over-activity they must hoodwink
their maidenliness to suffer themselves to read; and then
they must dupe their minds, else men would soon see they
were gifted to discern. Total ignorance being their pledge
of purity to men, they have to expunge the writing of their
perceptives on the tablets of the brain: they have to know
not when they do know. The instinct of seeking to know,
crossed by the task of blotting knowledge out, creates that
conflict of the natural with the artificial creature to
which their ultimately revealed double-face, complained of
by ever-dissatisfied men, is owing. Wonder in no degree that
they indulge a craving to be fools, or that many of them act
the character. Jeer at them as little for not showing
growth. You have reared them to this pitch, and at this
pitch they have partly civilized you. Supposing you to want
it done wholly, you must yield just as many points in your
requisitions as are needed to let the wits of young women
reap their due harvest and be of good use to their souls.
You will then have a fair battle, a braver, with better
results.
Clara's inner eye traversed Colonel De Craye
at a shot.
She had immediately to blot out the vision
of Captain Oxford in him, the revelation of his laughing
contempt for Willoughby, the view of mercurial principles,
the scribbled histories of light love-passages.
She blotted it out, kept it from her mind:
so she knew him, knew him to be a sweeter and a variable
Willoughby, a generous kind of Willoughby, a
Willoughby-butterfly, without having the free mind to
summarize him and picture him for a warning. Scattered
features of him, such as the instincts call up, were not
sufficiently impressive. Besides, the clouded mind was
opposed to her receiving impressions.
Young Crossjay's voice in the still morning
air came to her cars. The dear guileless chatter of the
boy's voice. Why, assuredly it was young Crossjay who was
the man she loved. And he loved her. And he was going to be
an unselfish, sustaining, true, strong man, the man she
longed for, for anchorage. Oh, the dear voice! woodpecker
and thrush in one. He never ceased to chatter to Vernon
Whitford walking beside him with a swinging stride off to
the lake for their morning swim. Happy couple! The morning
gave them both a freshness and innocence above human. They
seemed to Clara made of morning air and clear lake water.
Crossjay's voice ran up and down a diatonic scale with here
and there a query in semitone and a laugh on a ringing note.
She wondered what he could have to talk of so incessantly,
and imagined all the dialogue. He prattled of his yesterday,
to-day, and to-morrow, which did not imply past and future,
but his vivid present. She felt like one vainly trying to
fly in hearing him; she felt old. The consolation she
arrived at was to feel maternal. She wished to hug the boy.
Trot and stride, Crossjay and Vernon entered
the park, careless about wet grass, not once looking at the
house. Crossjay ranged ahead and picked flowers, bounding
back to show them. Clara's heart beat at a fancy that her
name was mentioned. If those flowers were for her she would
prize them.
The two bathers dipped over an undulation.
Her loss of them rattled her chains.
Deeply dwelling on their troubles has the
effect upon the young of helping to forgetfulness; for they
cannot think without imagining, their imaginations are
saturated with their Pleasures, and the collision, though
they are unable to exchange sad for sweet, distills an
opiate.
"Am I solemnly engaged?" she asked herself.
She seemed to be awakening.
She glanced at her bed, where she had passed
the night of ineffectual moaning, and out on the high wave
of grass, where Crossjay and his good friend had vanished.
Was the struggle all to be gone over again?
Little by little her intelligence of her
actual position crept up to submerge her heart.
"I am in his house!" she said. It resembled
a discovery, so strangely had her opiate and power of
dreaming wrought through her tortures. She said it gasping.
She was in his house, his guest, his betrothed, sworn to
him. The fact stood out cut in steel on the pitiless
daylight.
That consideration drove her to be an early
wanderer in the wake of
Crossjay.
Her station was among the beeches on the
flank of the boy's return; and while waiting there the
novelty of her waiting to waylay anyone—she who had played
the contrary part!—told her more than it pleased her to
think. Yet she could admit that she did desire to speak with
Vernon, as with a counsellor, harsh and curt, but wholesome.
The bathers reappeared on the grass-ridge,
racing and flapping wet towels.
Some one hailed them. A sound of the
galloping hoof drew her attention to the avenue. She saw
Willoughby dash across the park level, and dropping a word
to Vernon, ride away. Then she allowed herself to be seen.
Crossjay shouted. Willoughby turned his
head, but not his horse's head. The boy sprang up to Clara.
He had swum across the lake and back; he had raced Mr.
Whitford—and beaten him! How he wished Miss Middleton had
been able to be one of them!
Clara listened to him enviously. Her thought
was: We women are nailed to our sex!
She said: "And you have just been talking to
Sir Willoughby."
Crossjay drew himself up to give an
imitation of the baronet's hand-moving in adieu.
He would not have done that had he not
smelled sympathy with the performance.
She declined to smile. Crossjay repeated it,
and laughed. He made a broader exhibition of it to Vernon
approaching: "I say. Mr. Whitford, who's this?"
Vernon doubled to catch him. Crossjay fled
and resumed his magnificent air in the distance.
"Good-morning, Miss Middleton; you are out
early," said Vernon, rather pale and stringy from his cold
swim, and rather hard-eyed with the sharp exercise following
it.
She had expected some of the kindness she
wanted to reject, for he could speak very kindly, and she
regarded him as her doctor of medicine, who would at least
present the futile drug.
"Good morning," she replied.
"Willoughby will not be home till the
evening."
"You could not have had a finer morning for
your bath."
"No."
"I will walk as fast as you like."
"I'm perfectly warm."
"But you prefer fast walking."
"Out."
"Ah! yes, that I understand. The walk back!
Why is Willoughby away to-day?"
"He has business."
After several steps she said: "He makes very
sure of papa."
"Not without reason, you will find," said
Vernon.
"Can it be? I am bewildered. I had papa's
promise."
"To leave the Hall for a day or two."
"It would have been . . ."
"Possibly. But other heads are at work as
well as yours. If you had been in earnest about it you would
have taken your father into your confidence at once. That
was the course I ventured to propose, on the supposition."
"In earnest! I cannot imagine that you doubt
it. I wished to spare him."
"This is a case in which he can't be
spared."
"If I had been bound to any other! I did not
know then who held me a prisoner. I thought I had only to
speak to him sincerely."
"Not many men would give up their prize for
a word, Willoughby the last of any."
"Prize" rang through her thrillingly from
Vernon's mouth, and soothed her degradation.
She would have liked to protest that she was
very little of a prize; a poor prize; not one at all in
general estimation; only one to a man reckoning his
property; no prize in the true sense.
The importunity of pain saved her.
"Does he think I can change again? Am I
treated as something won in a lottery? To stay here is
indeed more than I can bear. And if he is calculating—Mr.
Whitford, if he calculates on another change, his plotting
to keep me here is inconsiderate, not very wise. Changes may
occur in absence."
"Wise or not, he has the right to scheme his
best to keep you."
She looked on Vernon with a shade of
wondering reproach.
"Why? What right?"
"The right you admit when you ask him to
release you. He has the right to think you deluded; and to
think you may come to a better mood if you remain—a mood
more agreeable to him, I mean. He has that right absolutely.
You are bound to remember also that you stand in the wrong.
You confess it when you appeal to his generosity. And every
man has the right to retain a treasure in his hand if he
can. Look straight at these facts."
"You expect me to be all reason!"
"Try to be. It's the way to learn whether
you are really in earnest."
"I will try. It will drive me to worse!"
"Try honestly. What is wisest now is, in my
opinion, for you to resolve to stay. I speak in the
character of the person you sketched for yourself as
requiring. Well, then, a friend repeats the same advice. You
might have gone with your father: now you will only disturb
him and annoy him. The chances are he will refuse to go."
"Are women ever so changeable as men, then?
Papa consented; he agreed; he had some of my feeling; I saw
it. That was yesterday. And at night! He spoke to each of us
at night in a different tone from usual. With me he was
hardly affectionate. But when you advise me to stay, Mr.
Whitford, you do not perhaps reflect that it would be at the
sacrifice of all candour."
"Regard it as a probational term."
"It has gone too far with me."
"Take the matter into the head: try the case
there."
"Are you not counselling me as if I were a
woman of intellect?"
The crystal ring in her voice told him that
tears were near to flowing.
He shuddered slightly. "You have intellect,"
he said, nodded, and crossed the lawn, leaving her. He had
to dress.
She was not permitted to feel lonely, for
she was immediately joined by
Colonel De Craye.
CHAPTER XXII
THE RIDE
Crossjay darted up to her a nose ahead of
the colonel.
"I say, Miss Middleton, we're to have the
whole day to ourselves, after morning lessons. Will you come
and fish with me and see me bird's-nest?"
"Not for the satisfaction of beholding
another cracked crown, my son," the colonel interposed: and
bowing to Clara: "Miss Middleton is handed over to my
exclusive charge for the day, with her consent?"
"I scarcely know," said she, consulting a
sensation of languor that seemed to contain some
reminiscence. "If I am here. My father's plans are
uncertain. I will speak to him. If I am here, perhaps
Crossjay would like a ride in the afternoon."
"Oh, yes," cried the boy; "out over
Bournden, through Mewsey up to Closharn Beacon, and down on
Aspenwell, where there's a common for racing. And ford the
stream!"
"An inducement for you," De Craye said to
her.
She smiled and squeezed the boy's hand.
"We won't go without you, Crossjay."
"You don't carry a comb, my man, when you
bathe?"
At this remark of the colonel's young
Crossjay conceived the appearance of his matted locks in the
eyes of his adorable lady. He gave her one dear look through
his redness, and fled.
"I like that boy," said De Craye.
"I love him," said Clara.
Crossjay's troubled eyelids in his honest
young face became a picture for her.
"After all, Miss Middleton, Willoughby's
notions about him are not so bad, if we consider that you
will be in the place of a mother to him."
"I think them bad."
"You are disinclined to calculate the good
fortune of the boy in having more of you on land than he
would have in crown and anchor buttons!"
"You have talked of him with Willoughby."
"We had a talk last night."
Of how much? thought she.
"Willoughby returns?" she said.
"He dines here, I know; for he holds the key
of the inner cellar, and Doctor Middleton does him the
honour to applaud his wine. Willoughby was good enough to
tell me that he thought I might contribute to amuse you."
She was brooding in stupefaction on her
father and the wine as she requested Colonel De Craye to
persuade Willoughby to take the general view of Crossjay's
future and act on it.
"He seems fond of the boy, too," said De
Craye, musingly.
"You speak in doubt?"
"Not at all. But is he not—men are queer
fish!—make allowance for us—a trifle tyrannical, pleasantly,
with those he is fond of?"
"If they look right and left?"
It was meant for an interrogation; it was
not with the sound of one that the words dropped. "My dear
Crossjay!" she sighed. "I would willingly pay for him out of
my own purse, and I will do so rather than have him miss his
chance. I have not mustered resolution to propose it."
"I may be mistaken, Miss Middleton. He
talked of the boy's fondness of him."
"He would."
"I suppose he is hardly peculiar in liking
to play Pole-star."
"He may not be."
"For the rest, your influence should be
all-powerful."
"It is not."
De Craye looked with a wandering eye at the
heavens.
"We are having a spell of weather perfectly
superb. And the odd thing is, that whenever we have splendid
weather at home we're all for rushing abroad. I'm booked for
a Mediterranean cruise—postponed to give place to your
ceremony."
"That?" she could not control her accent.
"What worthier?"
She was guilty of a pause.
De Craye saved it from an awkward length. "I
have written half an essay on Honeymoons, Miss Middleton."
"Is that the same as a half-written essay,
Colonel De Craye?"
"Just the same, with the difference that
it's a whole essay written all on one side."
"On which side?"
"The bachelor's."
"Why does he trouble himself with such
topics?"
"To warm himself for being left out in the
cold."
"Does he feel envy?"
"He has to confess it."
"He has liberty."
"A commodity he can't tell the value of if
there's no one to buy."
"Why should he wish to sell?"
"He's bent on completing his essay."
"To make the reading dull."
"There we touch the key of the subject. For
what is to rescue the pair from a monotony multiplied by
two? And so a bachelor's recommendation, when each has
discovered the right sort of person to be dull with, pushes
them from the churchdoor on a round of adventures containing
a spice of peril, if 'tis to be had. Let them be in danger
of their lives the first or second day. A bachelor's
loneliness is a private affair of his own; he hasn't to look
into a face to be ashamed of feeling it and inflicting it at
the same time; 'tis his pillow; he can punch it an he
pleases, and turn it over t'other side, if he's for a mighty
variation; there's a dream in it. But our poor couple are
staring wide awake. All their dreaming's done. They've
emptied their bottle of elixir, or broken it; and she has a
thirst for the use of the tongue, and he to yawn with a
crony; and they may converse, they're not aware of it, more
than the desert that has drunk a shower. So as soon as
possible she's away to the ladies, and he puts on his Club.
That's what your bachelor sees and would like to spare them;
and if he didn't see something of the sort he'd be off with
a noose round his neck, on his knees in the dew to the
morning milkmaid."
"The bachelor is happily warned and on his
guard," said Clara, diverted, as he wished her to be.
"Sketch me a few of the adventures you propose."
"I have a friend who rowed his bride from
the Houses of Parliament up the Thames to the Severn on into
North Wales. They shot some pretty weirs and rapids."
"That was nice."
"They had an infinity of adventures, and the
best proof of the benefit they derived is, that they forgot
everything about them except that the adventures occurred."
"Those two must have returned bright enough
to please you."
"They returned, and shone like a wrecker's
beacon to the mariner. You see, Miss Middleton, there was
the landscape, and the exercise, and the occasional bit of
danger. I think it's to be recommended. The scene is always
changing, and not too fast; and 'tis not too sublime, like
big mountains, to tire them of their everlasting big Ohs.
There's the difference between going into a howling wind and
launching among zephyrs. They have fresh air and movement,
and not in a railway carriage; they can take in what they
look on. And she has the steering ropes, and that's a wise
commencement. And my lord is all day making an exhibition of
his manly strength, bowing before her some sixty to the
minute; and she, to help him, just inclines when she's in
the mood. And they're face to face in the nature of things,
and are not under the obligation of looking the unutterable,
because, you see, there's business in hand; and the boat's
just the right sort of third party, who never interferes,
but must be attended to. And they feel they're labouring
together to get along, all in the proper proportion; and
whether he has to labour in life or not, he proves his
ability. What do you think of it, Miss Middleton?"
"I think you have only to propose it,
Colonel De Craye."
"And if they capsize, why, 'tis a natural
ducking!"
"You forgot the lady's dressing-bag."
"The stain on the metal for a constant
reminder of his prowess in saving it! Well, and there's an
alternative to that scheme, and a finer:—This, then: they
read dramatic pieces during courtship, to stop the saying of
things over again till the drum of the car becomes nothing
but a drum to the poor head, and a little before they affix
their signatures to the fatal Registry-book of the vestry,
they enter into an engagement with a body of provincial
actors to join the troop on the day of their nuptials, and
away they go in their coach and four, and she is Lady Kitty
Caper for a month, and he Sir Harry Highflyer. See the
honeymoon spinning! The marvel to me is that none of the
young couples do it. They could enjoy the world, see life,
amuse the company, and come back fresh to their own
characters, instead of giving themselves a dose of Africa
without a savage to diversify it: an impression they never
get over, I'm told. Many a character of the happiest
auspices has irreparable mischief done it by the ordinary
honeymoon. For my part, I rather lean to the second plan of
campaign."
Clara was expected to reply, and she said:
"Probably because you are fond of acting. It would require
capacity on both sides."
"Miss Middleton, I would undertake to
breathe the enthusiasm for the stage and the adventure."
"You are recommending it generally."
"Let my gentleman only have a fund of
enthusiasm. The lady will kindle.
She always does at a spark."
"If he has not any?"
"Then I'm afraid they must be mortally
dull."
She allowed her silence to speak; she knew
that it did so too eloquently, and could not control the
personal adumbration she gave to the one point of light
revealed in, "if he has not any". Her figure seemed
immediately to wear a cap and cloak of dulness.
She was full of revolt and anger, she was
burning with her situation; if sensible of shame now at
anything that she did, it turned to wrath and threw the
burden on the author of her desperate distress. The hour for
blaming herself had gone by, to be renewed ultimately
perhaps in a season of freedom. She was bereft of her
insight within at present, so blind to herself that, while
conscious of an accurate reading of Willoughby's friend, she
thanked him in her heart for seeking simply to amuse her and
slightly succeeding. The afternoon's ride with him and
Crossjay was an agreeable beguilement to her in prospect.
Laetitia came to divide her from Colonel De
Craye. Dr. Middleton was not seen before his appearance at
the breakfast-table, where a certain air of anxiety in his
daughter's presence produced the semblance of a raised map
at intervals on his forehead. Few sights on earth are more
deserving of our sympathy than a good man who has a troubled
conscience thrust on him.
The Rev. Doctor's perturbation was observed.
The ladies Eleanor and Isabel, seeing his daughter to be the
cause of it, blamed her, and would have assisted him to
escape, but Miss Dale, whom he courted with that object, was
of the opposite faction. She made way for Clara to lead her
father out. He called to Vernon, who merely nodded while
leaving the room by the window with Crossjay.
Half an eye on Dr. Middleton's pathetic exit
in captivity sufficed to tell Colonel De Craye that parties
divided the house. At first he thought how deplorable it
would be to lose Miss Middleton for two days or three: and
it struck him that Vernon Whitford and Laetitia Dale were
acting oddly in seconding her, their aim not being
discernible. For he was of the order of gentlemen of the
obscurely-clear in mind who have a predetermined acuteness
in their watch upon the human play, and mark men and women
as pieces of a bad game of chess, each pursuing an
interested course. His experience of a section of the world
had educated him—as gallant, frank, and manly a comrade as
one could wish for—up to this point. But he soon abandoned
speculations, which may be compared to a shaking anemometer
that will not let the troubled indicator take station.
Reposing on his perceptions and his instincts, he fixed his
attention on the chief persons, only glancing at the others
to establish a postulate, that where there are parties in a
house the most bewitching person present is the origin of
them. It is ever Helen's achievement. Miss Middleton
appeared to him bewitching beyond mortal; sunny in her
laughter, shadowy in her smiling; a young lady shaped for
perfect music with a lover.
She was that, and no less, to every man's
eye on earth. High breeding did not freeze her lovely
girlishness.—But Willoughby did. This reflection intervened
to blot luxurious picturings of her, and made itself
acceptable by leading him back to several instances of an
evident want of harmony of the pair.
And now (for purely undirected impulse all
within us is not, though we may be eye-bandaged agents under
direction) it became necessary for an honourable gentleman
to cast vehement rebukes at the fellow who did not
comprehend the jewel he had won. How could Willoughby behave
like so complete a donkey! De Craye knew him to be in his
interior stiff, strange, exacting: women had talked of him;
he had been too much for one woman—the dashing Constantia:
he had worn one woman, sacrificing far more for him than
Constantia, to death. Still, with such a prize as Clara
Middleton, Willoughby's behaviour was past calculating in
its contemptible absurdity. And during courtship! And
courtship of that girl! It was the way of a man ten years
after marriage.
The idea drew him to picture her doatingly
in her young matronly bloom ten years after marriage:
without a touch of age, matronly wise, womanly sweet:
perhaps with a couple of little ones to love, never having
known the love of a man.
To think of a girl like Clara Middleton
never having at nine-and-twenty, and with two fair children!
known the love of a man or the loving of a man, possibly,
became torture to the Colonel.
For a pacification he had to reconsider that
she was as yet only nineteen and unmarried.
But she was engaged, and she was unloved.
One might swear to it, that she was unloved. And she was not
a girl to be satisfied with a big house and a high-nosed
husband.
There was a rapid alteration of the sad
history of Clara the unloved matron solaced by two little
ones. A childless Clara tragically loving and beloved
flashed across the dark glass of the future.
Either way her fate was cruel.
Some astonishment moved De Craye in the
contemplation of the distance he had stepped in this morass
of fancy. He distinguished the choice open to him of forward
or back, and he selected forward. But fancy was dead: the
poetry hovering about her grew invisible to him: he stood in
the morass; that was all he knew; and momently he plunged
deeper; and he was aware of an intense desire to see her
face, that he might study her features again: he understood
no more.
It was the clouding of the brain by the
man's heart, which had come to the knowledge that it was
caught.
A certain measure of astonishment moved him
still. It had hitherto been his portion to do mischief to
women and avoid the vengeance of the sex. What was there in
Miss Middleton's face and air to ensnare a veteran handsome
man of society numbering six-and-thirty years, nearly as
many conquests? "Each bullet has got its commission." He was
hit at last. That accident effected by Mr. Flitch had fired
the shot. Clean through the heart, does not tell us of our
misfortune, till the heart is asked to renew its natural
beating. It fell into the condition of the porcelain vase
over a thought of Miss Middleton standing above his
prostrate form on the road, and walking beside him to the
Hall. Her words? What have they been? She had not uttered
words, she had shed meanings. He did not for an instant
conceive that he had charmed her: the charm she had cast on
him was too thrilling for coxcombry to lift a head; still
she had enjoyed his prattle. In return for her touch upon
the Irish fountain in him, he had manifestly given her
relief And could not one see that so sprightly a girl would
soon be deadened by a man like Willoughby? Deadened she was:
she had not responded to a compliment on her approaching
marriage. An allusion to it killed her smiling. The case of
Mr. Flitch, with the half wager about his reinstation in the
service of the Hall, was conclusive evidence of her opinion
of Willoughby.
It became again necessary that he should
abuse Willoughby for his folly. Why was the man worrying
her? In some way he was worrying her.
What if Willoughby as well as Miss Middleton
wished to be quit of the engagement? . . .
For just a second, the handsome,
woman-flattered officer proved his man's heart more whole
than he supposed it. That great organ, instead of leaping at
the thought, suffered a check.
Bear in mind that his heart was not merely
man's, it was a conqueror's. He was of the race of amorous
heroes who glory in pursuing, overtaking, subduing: wresting
the prize from a rival, having her ripe from exquisitely
feminine inward conflicts, plucking her out of resistance in
good old primitive fashion. You win the creature in her
delicious flutterings. He liked her thus, in cooler blood,
because of society's admiration of the capturer, and
somewhat because of the strife, which always enhances the
value of a prize, and refreshes our vanity in recollection.
Moreover, he had been matched against
Willoughby: the circumstance had occurred two or three
times. He could name a lady he had won, a lady he had lost.
Willoughby's large fortune and grandeur of style had given
him advantages at the start. But the start often means the
race—with women, and a bit of luck.
The gentle check upon the galloping heart of
Colonel De Craye endured no longer than a second—a simple
side-glance in a headlong pace. Clara's enchantingness for a
temperament like his, which is to say, for him specially, in
part through the testimony her conquest of himself presented
as to her power of sway over the universal heart known as
man's, assured him she was worth winning even from a hand
that dropped her.
He had now a double reason for exclaiming at
the folly of Willoughby. Willoughby's treatment of her
showed either temper or weariness. Vanity and judgement led
De Craye to guess the former. Regarding her sentiments for
Willoughby, he had come to his own conclusion. The certainty
of it caused him to assume that he possessed an absolute
knowledge of her character: she was an angel, born supple;
she was a heavenly soul, with half a dozen of the tricks of
earth. Skittish filly was among his phrases; but she had a
bearing and a gaze that forbade the dip in the common gutter
for wherewithal to paint the creature she was.
Now, then, to see whether he was wrong for
the first time in his life!
If not wrong, he had a chance.
There could be nothing dishonourable in
rescuing a girl from an engagement she detested. An attempt
to think it a service to Willoughby faded midway. De Craye
dismissed that chicanery. It would be a service to
Willoughby in the end, without question. There was that to
soothe his manly honour. Meanwhile he had to face the
thought of Willoughby as an antagonist, and the world
looking heavy on his honour as a friend.
Such considerations drew him tenderly close
to Miss Middleton. It must, however, be confessed that the
mental ardour of Colonel De Craye had been a little sobered
by his glance at the possibility of both of the couple being
of one mind on the subject of their betrothal. Desirable as
it was that they should be united in disagreeing, it reduced
the romance to platitude, and the third person in the drama
to the appearance of a stick. No man likes to play that
part. Memoirs of the favourites of Goddesses, if we had
them, would confirm it of men's tastes in this respect,
though the divinest be the prize. We behold what part they
played.
De Craye chanced to be crossing the hall
from the laboratory to the stables when Clara shut the
library-door behind her. He said something whimsical, and
did not stop, nor did he look twice at the face he had been
longing for.
What he had seen made him fear there would
be no ride out with her that day. Their next meeting
reassured him; she was dressed in her riding-habit, and wore
a countenance resolutely cheerful. He gave himself the word
of command to take his tone from her.
He was of a nature as quick as Clara's.
Experience pushed him farther than she could go in fancy;
but experience laid a sobering finger on his practical
steps, and bade them hang upon her initiative. She talked
little. Young Crossjay cantering ahead was her favourite
subject. She was very much changed since the early morning:
his liveliness, essayed by him at a hazard, was
unsuccessful; grave English pleased her best. The descent
from that was naturally to melancholy. She mentioned a
regret she had that the Veil was interdicted to women in
Protestant countries. De Craye was fortunately silent; he
could think of no other veil than the Moslem, and when her
meaning struck his witless head, he admitted to himself that
devout attendance on a young lady's mind stupefies man's
intelligence. Half an hour later, he was as foolish in
supposing it a confidence. He was again saved by silence.
In Aspenwell village she drew a letter from
her bosom and called to Crossjay to post it. The boy sang
out, "Miss Lucy Darleton! What a nice name!"
Clara did not show that the name betrayed
anything.
She said to De Craye. "It proves he should
not be here thinking of nice names."
Her companion replied, "You may be right."
He added, to avoid feeling too subservient: "Boys will."
"Not if they have stern masters to teach
them their daily lessons, and some of the lessons of
existence."
"Vernon Whitford is not stern enough?"
"Mr. Whitford has to contend with other
influences here."
"With Willoughby?"
"Not with Willoughby."
He understood her. She touched the delicate
indication firmly. The man's, heart respected her for it;
not many girls could be so thoughtful or dare to be so
direct; he saw that she had become deeply serious, and he
felt her love of the boy to be maternal, past maiden
sentiment.
By this light of her seriousness, the
posting of her letter in a distant village, not entrusting
it to the Hall post-box, might have import; not that she
would apprehend the violation of her private correspondence,
but we like to see our letter of weighty meaning pass into
the mouth of the public box.
Consequently this letter was important. It
was to suppose a sequency in the conduct of a variable
damsel. Coupled with her remark about the Veil, and with
other things, not words, breathing from her (which were the
breath of her condition), it was not unreasonably to be
supposed. She might even be a very consistent person. If one
only had the key of her!
She spoke once of an immediate visit to
London, supposing that she could induce her father to go. De
Craye remembered the occurrence in the Hall at night, and
her aspect of distress.
They raced along Aspenwell Common to the
ford; shallow, to the chagrin of young Crossjay, between
whom and themselves they left a fitting space for his
rapture in leading his pony to splash up and down, lord of
the stream.
Swiftness of motion so strikes the blood on
the brain that our thoughts are lightnings, the heart is
master of them.
De Craye was heated by his gallop to venture
on the angling question:
"Am I to hear the names of the bridesmaids?"
The pace had nerved Clara to speak to it
sharply: "There is no need."
"Have I no claim?"
She was mute.
"Miss Lucy Darleton, for instance; whose
name I am almost as much in love with as Crossjay."
"She will not be bridesmaid to me."
"She declines? Add my petition, I beg."
"To all? or to her?"
"Do all the bridesmaids decline?"
"The scene is too ghastly."
"A marriage?"
"Girls have grown sick of it."
"Of weddings? We'll overcome the sickness."
"With some."
"Not with Miss Darleton? You tempt my
eloquence."
"You wish it?"
"To win her consent? Certainly."
"The scene?"
"Do I wish that?"
"Marriage!" exclaimed Clara, dashing into
the ford, fearful of her ungovernable wildness and of what
it might have kindled.—You, father! you have driven me to
unmaidenliness!—She forgot Willoughby, in her father, who
would not quit a comfortable house for her all but prostrate
beseeching; would not bend his mind to her explanations,
answered her with the horrid iteration of such deaf
misunderstanding as may be associated with a tolling bell.
De Craye allowed her to catch Crossjay by
herself. They entered a narrow lane, mysterious with
possible birds' eggs in the May-green hedges. As there was
not room for three abreast, the colonel made up the
rear-guard, and was consoled by having Miss Middleton's
figure to contemplate; but the readiness of her joining in
Crossjay's pastime of the nest-hunt was not so pleasing to a
man that she had wound to a pitch of excitement. Her
scornful accent on "Marriage" rang through him. Apparently
she was beginning to do with him just as she liked, herself
entirely unconcerned.
She kept Crossjay beside her till she
dismounted, and the colonel was left to the procession of
elephantine ideas in his head, whose ponderousness he took
for natural weight. We do not with impunity abandon the
initiative. Men who have yielded it are like cavalry put on
the defensive; a very small force with an ictus will scatter
them.
Anxiety to recover lost ground reduced the
dimensions of his ideas to a practical standard.
Two ideas were opposed like duellists bent
on the slaughter of one another. Either she amazed him by
confirming the suspicions he had gathered of her sentiments
for Willoughby in the moments of his introduction to her; or
she amazed him as a model for coquettes—the married and the
widow might apply to her for lessons.
These combatants exchanged shots, but
remained standing; the encounter was undecided. Whatever the
result, no person so seductive as Clara Middleton had he
ever met. Her cry of loathing, "Marriage!" coming from a
girl, rang faintly clear of an ancient virginal aspiration
of the sex to escape from their coil, and bespoke a pure,
cold, savage pride that transplanted his thirst for her to
higher fields.
CHAPTER XXIII
TREATS OF THE UNION OF TEMPER AND POLICY
Sir Willoughby meanwhile was on a line of
conduct suiting his appreciation of his duty to himself. He
had deluded himself with the simple notion that good fruit
would come of the union of temper and policy.
No delusion is older, none apparently so
promising, both parties being eager for the alliance. Yet,
the theorist upon human nature will say, they are obviously
of adverse disposition. And this is true, inasmuch as
neither of them win submit to the yoke of an established
union; as soon as they have done their mischief, they set to
work tugging for a divorce. But they have attractions, the
one for the other, which precipitate them to embrace
whenever they meet in a breast; each is earnest with the
owner of it to get him to officiate forthwith as
wedding-priest. And here is the reason: temper, to warrant
its appearance, desires to be thought as deliberative as
policy, and policy, the sooner to prove its shrewdness, is
impatient for the quick blood of temper.
It will be well for men to resolve at the
first approaches of the amorous but fickle pair upon
interdicting even an accidental temporary junction: for the
astonishing sweetness of the couple when no more than the
ghosts of them have come together in a projecting mind is an
intoxication beyond fermented grapejuice or a witch's
brewage; and under the guise of active wits they will lead
us to the parental meditation of antics compared with which
a Pagan Saturnalia were less impious in the sight of sanity.
This is full-mouthed language; but on our studious way
through any human career we are subject to fits of moral
elevation; the theme inspires it, and the sage residing in
every civilized bosom approves it.
Decide at the outset, that temper is fatal
to policy: hold them with both hands in division. One might
add, be doubtful of your policy and repress your temper: it
would be to suppose you wise. You can, however, by
incorporating two or three captains of the great army of
truisms bequeathed to us by ancient wisdom, fix in your
service those veteran old standfasts to check you. They will
not be serviceless in their admonitions to your
understanding, and they will so contrive to reconcile with
it the natural caperings of the wayward young sprig Conduct,
that the latter, who commonly learns to walk upright and
straight from nothing softer than raps of a bludgeon on his
crown, shall foot soberly, appearing at least wary of
dangerous corners.
Now Willoughby had not to be taught that
temper is fatal to policy; he was beginning to see in
addition that the temper he encouraged was particularly
obnoxious to the policy he adopted; and although his purpose
in mounting horse after yesterday frowning on his bride was
definite, and might be deemed sagacious, he bemoaned already
the fatality pushing him ever farther from her in chase of a
satisfaction impossible to grasp.
But the bare fact that her behaviour
demanded a line of policy crossed the grain of his temper:
it was very offensive.
Considering that she wounded him severely,
her reversal of their proper parts, by taking the part
belonging to him, and requiring his watchfulness, and the
careful dealings he was accustomed to expect from others,
and had a right to exact of her, was injuriously unjust. The
feelings of a man hereditarily sensitive to property accused
her of a trespassing imprudence, and knowing himself, by
testimony of his household, his tenants, and the
neighbourhood, and the world as well, amiable when he
received his dues, he contemplated her with an air of
stiff-backed ill-treatment, not devoid of a certain
sanctification of martyrdom.
His bitterest enemy would hardly declare
that it was he who was in the wrong.
Clara herself had never been audacious
enough to say that. Distaste of his person was inconceivable
to the favourite of society. The capricious creature
probably wanted a whipping to bring her to the understanding
of the principle called mastery, which is in man.
But was he administering it? If he retained
a hold on her, he could undoubtedly apply the scourge at
leisure; any kind of scourge; he could shun her, look on her
frigidly, unbend to her to find a warmer place for sarcasm,
pityingly smile, ridicule, pay court elsewhere. He could do
these things if he retained a hold on her; and he could do
them well because of the faith he had in his renowned
amiability; for in doing them, he could feel that he was
other than he seemed, and his own cordial nature was there
to comfort him while he bestowed punishment. Cordial indeed,
the chills he endured were flung from the world. His heart
was in that fiction: half the hearts now beating have a mild
form of it to keep them merry: and the chastisement he
desired to inflict was really no more than righteous
vengeance for an offended goodness of heart. Clara
figuratively, absolutely perhaps, on her knees, he would
raise her and forgive her. He yearned for the situation. To
let her understand how little she had known him! It would be
worth the pain she had dealt, to pour forth the stream of
re-established confidences, to paint himself to her as he
was; as he was in the spirit, not as he was to the world:
though the world had reason to do him honour.
First, however, she would have to be
humbled.
Something whispered that his hold on her was
lost.
In such a case, every blow he struck would
set her flying farther, till the breach between them would
be past bridging.
Determination not to let her go was the best
finish to this perpetually revolving round which went like
the same old wheel-planks of a water mill in his head at a
review of the injury he sustained. He had come to it before,
and he came to it again. There was his vengeance. It melted
him, she was so sweet! She shone for him like the sunny
breeze on water. Thinking of her caused a catch of his
breath.
The dreadful young woman had a keener edge
for the senses of men than sovereign beauty.
It would be madness to let her go.
She affected him like an outlook on the
great Patterne estate after an absence, when his welcoming
flag wept for pride above Patterne Hall!
It would be treason to let her go.
It would be cruelty to her.
He was bound to reflect that she was of
tender age, and the foolishness of the wretch was excusable
to extreme youth.
We toss away a flower that we are tired of
smelling and do not wish to carry. But the rose—young
woman—is not cast off with impunity. A fiend in shape of man
is always behind us to appropriate her. He that touches that
rejected thing is larcenous. Willoughby had been sensible of
it in the person of Laetitia: and by all the more that
Clara's charms exceeded the faded creature's, he felt it
now. Ten thousand Furies thickened about him at a thought of
her lying by the road-side without his having crushed all
bloom and odour out of her which might tempt even the
curiosity of the fiend, man.
On the other hand, supposing her to be there
untouched, universally declined by the sniffling, sagacious
dog-fiend, a miserable spinster for years, he could conceive
notions of his remorse. A soft remorse may be adopted as an
agreeable sensation within view of the wasted penitent whom
we have struck a trifle too hard. Seeing her penitent, he
certainly would be willing to surround her with little
offices of compromising kindness. It would depend on her
age. Supposing her still youngish, there might be
captivating passages between them, as thus, in a style not
unfamiliar:
"And was it my fault, my poor girl? Am I to
blame, that you have passed a lonely, unloved youth?"
"No, Willoughby! The irreparable error was
mine, the blame is mine, mine only. I live to repent it. I
do not seek, for I have not deserved, your pardon. Had I it,
I should need my own self-esteem to presume to clasp it to a
bosom ever unworthy of you."
"I may have been impatient, Clara: we are
human!"
"Never be it mine to accuse one on whom I
laid so heavy a weight of forbearance!"
"Still, my old love!—for I am merely quoting
history in naming you so—I cannot have been perfectly
blameless."
"To me you were, and are."
"Clara!"
"Willoughby!"
"Must I recognize the bitter truth that we
two, once nearly one! so nearly one! are eternally
separated?"
"I have envisaged it. My friend—I may call
you friend; you have ever been my friend, my best friend!
oh, that eyes had been mine to know the friend I
had!—Willoughby, in the darkness of night, and during days
that were as night to my soul, I have seen the inexorable
finger pointing my solitary way through the wilderness from
a Paradise forfeited by my most wilful, my wanton, sin. We
have met. It is more than I have merited. We part. In mercy
let it be for ever. Oh, terrible word! Coined by the
passions of our youth, it comes to us for our sole riches
when we are bankrupt of earthly treasures, and is the
passport given by Abnegation unto Woe that prays to quit
this probationary sphere. Willoughby, we part. It is better
so."
"Clara! one—one only—one last—one holy
kiss!"
"If these poor lips, that once were sweet to
you . . ."
The kiss, to continue the language of the
imaginative composition of his time, favourite readings in
which had inspired Sir Willoughby with a colloquy so
pathetic, was imprinted.
Ay, she had the kiss, and no mean one. It
was intended to swallow every vestige of dwindling
attractiveness out of her, and there was a bit of scandal
springing of it in the background that satisfactorily
settled her business, and left her 'enshrined in memory, a
divine recollection to him,' as his popular romances would
say, and have said for years.
Unhappily, the fancied salute of her lips
encircled him with the breathing Clara. She rushed up from
vacancy like a wind summoned to wreck a stately vessel.
His reverie had thrown him into severe
commotion. The slave of a passion thinks in a ring, as hares
run: he will cease where he began. Her sweetness had set him
off, and he whirled back to her sweetness: and that being
incalculable and he insatiable, you have the picture of his
torments when you consider that her behaviour made her as a
cloud to him.
Riding slack, horse and man, in the likeness
of those two ajog homeward from the miry hunt, the horse
pricked his cars, and Willoughby looked down from his road
along the bills on the race headed by young Crossjay with a
short start over Aspenwell Common to the ford. There was no
mistaking who they were, though they were well-nigh a mile
distant below. He noticed that they did not overtake the
boy. They drew rein at the ford, talking not simply face to
face, but face in face. Willoughby's novel feeling of he
knew not what drew them up to him, enabling him to fancy
them bathing in one another's eyes. Then she sprang through
the ford, De Craye following, but not close after—and why
not close? She had flicked him with one of her peremptorily
saucy speeches when she was bold with the gallop. They were
not unknown to Willoughby. They signified intimacy.
Last night he had proposed to De Craye to
take Miss Middleton for a ride the next afternoon. It never
came to his mind then that he and his friend had formerly
been rivals. He wished Clara to be amused. Policy dictated
that every thread should be used to attach her to her
residence at the Hall until he could command his temper to
talk to her calmly and overwhelm her, as any man in earnest,
with command of temper and a point of vantage, may be sure
to whelm a young woman. Policy, adulterated by temper, yet
policy it was that had sent him on his errand in the early
morning to beat about for a house and garden suitable to Dr.
Middleton within a circuit of five, six, or seven miles of
Patterne Hall. If the Rev. Doctor liked the house and took
it (and Willoughby had seen the place to suit him), the
neighbourhood would be a chain upon Clara: and if the house
did not please a gentleman rather hard to please (except in
a venerable wine), an excuse would have been started for his
visiting other houses, and he had that response to his
importunate daughter, that he believed an excellent house
was on view. Dr. Middleton had been prepared by numerous
hints to meet Clara's black misreading of a lovers' quarrel,
so that everything looked full of promise as far as
Willoughby's exercise of policy went.
But the strange pang traversing him now
convicted him of a large adulteration of profitless temper
with it. The loyalty of De Craye to a friend, where a woman
walked in the drama, was notorious. It was there, and a most
flexible thing it was: and it soon resembled reason
manipulated by the sophists. Not to have reckoned on his
peculiar loyalty was proof of the blindness cast on us by
temper.
And De Craye had an Irish tongue; and he had
it under control, so that he could talk good sense and airy
nonsense at discretion. The strongest overboiling of English
Puritan contempt of a gabbler, would not stop women from
liking it. Evidently Clara did like it, and Willoughby
thundered on her sex. Unto such brainless things as these do
we, under the irony of circumstances, confide our honour!
For he was no gabbler. He remembered having
rattled in earlier days; he had rattled with an object to
gain, desiring to be taken for an easy, careless, vivacious,
charming fellow, as any young gentleman may be who gaily
wears the golden dish of Fifty thousand pounds per annum,
nailed to the back of his very saintly young pate. The
growth of the critical spirit in him, however, had informed
him that slang had been a principal component of his
rattling; and as he justly supposed it a betraying art for
his race and for him, he passed through the prim and the
yawning phases of affected indifference, to the pine
Puritanism of a leaden contempt of gabblers.
They snare women, you see—girls! How
despicable the host of girls!—at least, that girl below
there!
Married women understood him: widows did. He
placed an exceedingly handsome and flattering young widow of
his acquaintance, Lady Mary Lewison, beside Clara for a
comparison, involuntarily; and at once, in a flash, in
despite of him (he would rather it had been otherwise), and
in despite of Lady Mary's high birth and connections as
well, the silver lustre of the maid sicklied the poor widow.
The effect of the luckless comparison was to
produce an image of surpassingness in the features of Clara
that gave him the final, or mace-blow. Jealousy invaded him.
He had hitherto been free of it, regarding
jealousy as a foreign devil, the accursed familiar of the
vulgar. Luckless fellows might be victims of the disease; he
was not; and neither Captain Oxford, nor Vernon, nor De
Craye, nor any of his compeers, had given him one shrewd
pinch: the woman had, not the man; and she in quite a
different fashion from his present wallowing anguish: she
had never pulled him to earth's level, where jealousy gnaws
the grasses. He had boasted himself above the humiliating
visitation.
If that had been the case, we should not
have needed to trouble ourselves much about him. A run or
two with the pack of imps would have satisfied us. But he
desired Clara Middleton manfully enough at an intimation of
rivalry to be jealous; in a minute the foreign devil had
him, he was flame: flaming verdigris, one might almost dare
to say, for an exact illustration; such was actually the
colour; but accept it as unsaid.
Remember the poets upon jealousy. It is to
be haunted in the heaven of two by a Third; preceded or
succeeded, therefore surrounded, embraced, bugged by this
infernal Third: it is Love's bed of burning marl; to see and
taste the withering Third in the bosom of sweetness; to be
dragged through the past and find the fair Eden of it
sulphurous; to be dragged to the gates of the future and
glory to behold them blood: to adore the bitter creature
trebly and with treble power to clutch her by the windpipe:
it is to be cheated, derided, shamed, and abject and
supplicating, and consciously demoniacal in treacherousness,
and victoriously self-justified in revenge.
And still there is no change in what men
feel, though in what they do the modern may be judicious.
You know the many paintings of man
transformed to rageing beast by the curse: and this, the
fieriest trial of our egoism, worked in the Egoist to
produce division of himself from himself, a concentration of
his thoughts upon another object, still himself, but in
another breast, which had to be looked at and into for the
discovery of him. By the gaping jaw-chasm of his greed we
may gather comprehension of his insatiate force of jealousy.
Let her go? Not though he were to become a mark of public
scorn in strangling her with the yoke! His concentration was
marvellous. Unused to the exercise of imaginative powers, he
nevertheless conjured her before him visually till his
eyeballs ached. He saw none but Clara, hated none, loved
none, save the intolerable woman. What logic was in him
deduced her to be individual and most distinctive from the
circumstance that only she had ever wrought these pangs. She
had made him ready for them, as we know. An idea of De Craye
being no stranger to her when he arrived at the Hall, dashed
him at De Craye for a second: it might be or might not be
that they had a secret;—Clara was the spell. So prodigiously
did he love and hate, that he had no permanent sense except
for her. The soul of him writhed under her eyes at one
moment, and the next it closed on her without mercy. She was
his possession escaping; his own gliding away to the Third.
There would be pangs for him too, that
Third! Standing at the altar to see her fast-bound, soul and
body, to another, would be good roasting fire.
It would be good roasting fire for her too,
should she be averse. To conceive her aversion was to burn
her and devour her. She would then be his!—what say you?
Burned and devoured! Rivals would vanish then. Her
reluctance to espouse the man she was plighted to would
cease to be uttered, cease to be felt.
At last he believed in her reluctance. All
that had been wanted to bring him to the belief was the
scene on the common; such a mere spark, or an imagined
spark! But the presence of the Third was necessary;
otherwise he would have had to suppose himself personally
distasteful.
Women have us back to the conditions of
primitive man, or they shoot us higher than the topmost
star. But it is as we please. Let them tell us what we are
to them: for us, they are our back and front of life: the
poet's Lesbia, the poet's Beatrice; ours is the choice. And
were it proved that some of the bright things are in the pay
of Darkness, with the stamp of his coin on their palms, and
that some are the very angels we hear sung of, not the less
might we say that they find us out; they have us by our
leanings. They are to us what we hold of best or worst
within. By their state is our civilization judged: and if it
is hugely animal still, that is because primitive men abound
and will have their pasture. Since the lead is ours, the
leaders must bow their heads to the sentence. Jealousy of a
woman is the primitive egoism seeking to refine in a blood
gone to savagery under apprehension of an invasion of
rights; it is in action the tiger threatened by a rifle when
his paw is rigid on quick flesh; he tears the flesh for rage
at the intruder. The Egoist, who is our original male in
giant form, had no bleeding victim beneath his paw, but
there was the sex to mangle. Much as he prefers the
well-behaved among women, who can worship and fawn, and in
whom terror can be inspired, in his wrath he would make of
Beatrice a Lesbia Quadrantaria.
Let women tell us of their side of the
battle. We are not so much the test of the Egoist in them as
they to us. Movements of similarity shown in crowned and
undiademed ladies of intrepid independence, suggest their
occasional capacity to be like men when it is given to them
to hunt. At present they fly, and there is the difference.
Our manner of the chase informs them of the creature we are.
Dimly as young women are informed, they have
a youthful ardour of detestation that renders them less
tolerant of the Egoist than their perceptive elder sisters.
What they do perceive, however, they have a redoubtable
grasp of, and Clara's behaviour would be indefensible if her
detective feminine vision might not sanction her acting on
its direction. Seeing him as she did, she turned from him
and shunned his house as the antre of an ogre. She had
posted her letter to Lucy Darleton. Otherwise, if it had
been open to her to dismiss Colonel De Craye, she might,
with a warm kiss to Vernon's pupil, have seriously thought
of the next shrill steam-whistle across yonder hills for a
travelling companion on the way to her friend Lucy; so
abhorrent was to her the putting of her horse's head toward
the Hall. Oh, the breaking of bread there! It had to be gone
through for another day and more; that is to say, forty
hours, it might be six-and-forty hours; and no prospect of
sleep to speed any of them on wings!
Such were Clara's inward interjections while
poor Willoughby burned himself out with verdigris flame
having the savour of bad metal, till the hollow of his
breast was not unlike to a corroded old cuirass, found, we
will assume, by criminal lantern-beams in a digging beside
green-mantled pools of the sullen soil, lumped with a
strange adhesive concrete. How else picture the sad man?—the
cavity felt empty to him, and heavy; sick of an ancient and
mortal combat, and burning; deeply dinted too:
With the starry hole
Whence fled the soul:
very sore; important for aught save sluggish
agony; a specimen and the issue of strife.
Measurelessly to loathe was not sufficient
to save him from pain: he tried it: nor to despise; he went
to a depth there also. The fact that she was a healthy young
woman returned to the surface of his thoughts like the
murdered body pitched into the river, which will not drown,
and calls upon the elements of dissolution to float it. His
grand hereditary desire to transmit his estates, wealth and
name to a solid posterity, while it prompted him in his
loathing and contempt of a nature mean and ephemeral
compared with his, attached him desperately to her splendid
healthiness. The council of elders, whose descendant he was,
pointed to this young woman for his mate. He had wooed her
with the idea that they consented. O she was healthy! And he
likewise: but, as if it had been a duel between two clearly
designated by quality of blood to bid a House endure, she
was the first who taught him what it was to have sensations
of his mortality.
He could not forgive her. It seemed to him
consequently politic to continue frigid and let her have a
further taste of his shadow, when it was his burning wish to
strain her in his arms to a flatness provoking his
compassion.
"You have had your ride?" he addressed her
politely in the general assembly on the lawn.
"I have had my ride, yes," Clara replied.
"Agreeable, I trust?"
"Very agreeable."
So it appeared. Oh, blushless!
The next instant he was in conversation with
Laetitia, questioning her upon a dejected droop of her
eyelashes.
"I am, I think," said she, "constitutionally
melancholy."
He murmured to her: "I believe in the
existence of specifics, and not far to seek, for all our
ailments except those we bear at the hands of others."
She did not dissent.
De Craye, whose humour for being convinced
that Willoughby cared about as little for Miss Middleton as
she for him was nourished by his immediate observation of
them, dilated on the beauty of the ride and his fair
companion's equestrian skill.
"You should start a travelling circus,"
Willoughby rejoined. "But the idea's a worthy one!—There's
another alternative to the expedition I proposed, Miss
Middleton," said De Craye. "And I be clown? I haven't a
scruple of objection. I must read up books of jokes."
"Don't," said Willoughby.
"I'd spoil my part! But a natural clown
won't keep up an artificial performance for an entire month,
you see; which is the length of time we propose. He'll
exhaust his nature in a day and be bowled over by the
dullest regular donkey-engine with paint on his cheeks and a
nodding topknot."
"What is this expedition 'we' propose?"
De Craye was advised in his heart to spare
Miss Middleton any allusion to honeymoons.
"Merely a game to cure dulness."
"Ah!" Willoughby acquiesced. "A month, you
said?"
"One'd like it to last for years."
"Ah! You are driving one of Mr. Merriman's
witticisms at me, Horace; I am dense."
Willoughby bowed to Dr. Middleton, and drew
him from Vernon, filially taking his turn to talk with him
closely.
De Craye saw Clara's look as her father and
Willoughby went aside thus linked.
It lifted him over anxieties and casuistries
concerning loyalty. Powder was in the look to make a
warhorse breathe high and shiver for the signal.
CHAPTER XXIV
CONTAINS AN INSTANCE OF THE GENEROSITY OF
WILLOUGHBY
Observers of a gathering complication and a
character in action commonly resemble gleaners who are
intent only on picking up the cars of grain and huddling
their store. Disinterestedly or interestedly they wax
over-eager for the little trifles, and make too much of
them. Observers should begin upon the precept, that not all
we see is worth hoarding, and that the things we see are to
be weighed in the scale with what we know of the situation,
before we commit ourselves to a measurement. And they may be
accurate observers without being good judges. They do not
think so, and their bent is to glean hurriedly and form
conclusions as hasty, when their business should be sift at
each step, and question.
Miss Dale seconded Vernon Whitford in the
occupation of counting looks and tones, and noting scraps of
dialogue. She was quite disinterested; he quite believed
that he was; to this degree they were competent for their
post; and neither of them imagined they could be personally
involved in the dubious result of the scenes they witnessed.
They were but anxious observers, diligently collecting. She
fancied Clara susceptible to his advice: he had fancied it,
and was considering it one of his vanities. Each mentally
compared Clara's abruptness in taking them into her
confidence with her abstention from any secret word since
the arrival of Colonel De Craye. Sir Willoughby requested
Laetitia to give Miss Middleton as much of her company as
she could; showing that he was on the alert. Another
Constantia Durham seemed beating her wings for flight. The
suddenness of the evident intimacy between Clara and Colonel
De Craye shocked Laetitia; their acquaintance could be
computed by hours. Yet at their first interview she had
suspected the possibility of worse than she now supposed to
be; and she had begged Vernon not immediately to quit the
Hall, in consequence of that faint suspicion. She had been
led to it by meeting Clara and De Craye at her cottage-gate,
and finding them as fluent and laughter-breathing in
conversation as friends. Unable to realize the rapid advance
to a familiarity, more ostensible than actual, of two lively
natures, after such an introduction as they had undergone:
and one of the two pining in a drought of liveliness:
Laetitia listened to their wager of nothing at all—a no
against a yes—in the case of poor Flitch; and Clara's,
"Willoughby will not forgive"; and De Craye's "Oh, he's
human": and the silence of Clara and De Craye's hearty cry,
"Flitch shall be a gentleman's coachman in his old seat or I
haven't a tongue!" to which there was a negative of Clara's
head: and it then struck Laetitia that this young betrothed
lady, whose alienated heart acknowledged no lord an hour
earlier, had met her match, and, as the observer would have
said, her destiny. She judged of the alarming possibility by
the recent revelation to herself of Miss Middleton's
character, and by Clara's having spoken to a man as well (to
Vernon), and previously. That a young lady should speak on
the subject of the inner holies to a man, though he were
Vernon Whitford, was incredible to Laetitia; but it had to
be accepted as one of the dread facts of our inexplicable
life, which drag our bodies at their wheels and leave our
minds exclaiming. Then, if Clara could speak to Vernon,
which Laetitia would not have done for a mighty bribe, she
could speak to De Craye, Laetitia thought deductively: this
being the logic of untrained heads opposed to the proceeding
whereby their condemnatory deduction hangs.—Clara must have
spoken to De Craye!
Laetitia remembered how winning and
prevailing Miss Middleton could be in her confidences. A
gentleman hearing her might forget his duty to his friend,
she thought, for she had been strangely swayed by Clara:
ideas of Sir Willoughby that she had never before imagined
herself to entertain had been sown in her, she thought; not
asking herself whether the searchingness of the young lady
had struck them and bidden them rise from where they lay
imbedded. Very gentle women take in that manner impressions
of persons, especially of the worshipped person, wounding
them; like the new fortifications with embankments of soft
earth, where explosive missiles bury themselves harmlessly
until they are plucked out; and it may be a reason why those
injured ladies outlive a Clara Middleton similarly battered.
Vernon less than Laetitia took into account
that Clara was in a state of fever, scarcely reasonable. Her
confidences to him he had excused, as a piece of conduct, in
sympathy with her position. He had not been greatly
astonished by the circumstances confided; and, on the whole,
as she was excited and unhappy, he excused her thoroughly;
he could have extolled her: it was natural that she should
come to him, brave in her to speak so frankly, a compliment
that she should condescend to treat him as a friend. Her
position excused her widely. But she was not excused for
making a confidential friend of De Craye. There was a
difference.
Well, the difference was, that De Craye had
not the smarting sense of honour with women which our
meditator had: an impartial judiciary, it will be seen: and
he discriminated between himself and the other justly: but
sensation surging to his brain at the same instant, he
reproached Miss Middleton for not perceiving that difference
as clearly, before she betrayed her position to De Craye,
which Vernon assumed that she had done. Of course he did.
She had been guilty of it once: why, then, in the mind of an
offended friend, she would be guilty of it twice. There was
evidence. Ladies, fatally predestined to appeal to that from
which they have to be guarded, must expect severity when
they run off their railed highroad: justice is out of the
question: man's brains might, his blood cannot administer it
to them. By chilling him to the bone they may get what they
cry for. But that is a method deadening to their point of
appeal.
I the evening, Miss Middleton and the
colonel sang a duet. She had of late declined to sing. Her
voice was noticeably firm. Sir Willoughby said to her, "You
have recovered your richness of tone, Clara." She smiled and
appeared happy in pleasing him. He named a French ballad.
She went to the music-rack and gave the song unasked. He
should have been satisfied, for she said to him at the
finish, "Is that as you like it?" He broke from a murmur to
Miss Dale, "Admirable." Some one mentioned a Tuscan popular
canzone. She waited for Willoughby's approval, and took his
nod for a mandate.
Traitress! he could have bellowed.
He had read of this characteristic of
caressing obedience of the women about to deceive. He had in
his time profited by it.
"Is it intuitively or by their experience
that our neighbours across Channel surpass us in the
knowledge of your sex?" he said to Miss Dale, and talked
through Clara's apostrophe to the 'Santissinia Virgine
Maria,' still treating temper as a part of policy, without
any effect on Clara; and that was matter for sickly green
reflections. The lover who cannot wound has indeed lost
anchorage; he is woefully adrift: he stabs air, which is to
stab himself. Her complacent proof-armour bids him know
himself supplanted.
During the short conversational period
before the ladies retired for the night, Miss Eleanor
alluded to the wedding by chance. Miss Isabel replied to
her, and addressed an interrogation to Clara. De Craye
foiled it adroitly. Clara did not utter a syllable. Her
bosom lifted to a wavering height and sank. Subsequently she
looked at De Craye vacantly, like a person awakened, but she
looked. She was astonished by his readiness, and thankful
for the succour. Her look was cold, wide, unfixed, with
nothing of gratitude or of personal in it. The look,
however, stood too long for Willoughby's endurance.
Ejaculating "Porcelain!" he uncrossed his
legs; a signal for the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to retire.
Vernon bowed to Clara as she was rising. He had not been
once in her eyes, and he expected a partial recognition at
the good-night. She said it, turning her head to Miss
Isabel, who was condoling once more with Colonel De Craye
over the ruins of his wedding-present, the porcelain vase,
which she supposed to have been in Willoughby's mind when he
displayed the signal. Vernon walked off to his room, dark as
one smitten blind: bile tumet jecur: her stroke of neglect
hit him there where a blow sends thick obscuration upon
eyeballs and brain alike.
Clara saw that she was paining him and
regretted it when they were separated. That was her real
friend! But he prescribed too hard a task. Besides, she had
done everything he demanded of her, except the consenting to
stay where she was and wear out Willoughby, whose dexterity
wearied her small stock of patience. She had vainly tried
remonstrance and supplication with her father hoodwinked by
his host, she refused to consider how; through wine?—the
thought was repulsive.
Nevertheless, she was drawn to the edge of
it by the contemplation of her scheme of release. If Lucy
Darleton was at home; if Lucy invited her to come: if she
flew to Lucy: oh! then her father would have cause for
anger. He would not remember that but for hateful wine! . .
.
What was there in this wine of great age
which expelled reasonableness, fatherliness? He was her dear
father: she was his beloved child: yet something divided
them; something closed her father's ears to her: and could
it be that incomprehensible seduction of the wine? Her
dutifulness cried violently no. She bowed, stupefied, to his
arguments for remaining awhile, and rose clear-headed and
rebellious with the reminiscence of the many strong reasons
she had urged against them.
The strangeness of men, young and old, the
little things (she regarded a grand wine as a little thing)
twisting and changing them, amazed her. And these are they
by whom women are abused for variability! Only the most
imperious reasons, never mean trifles, move women, thought
she. Would women do an injury to one they loved for oceans
of that—ah, pah!
And women must respect men. They necessarily
respect a father. "My dear, dear father!" Clara said in the
solitude of her chamber, musing on all his goodness, and she
endeavoured to reconcile the desperate sentiments of the
position he forced her to sustain, with those of a
venerating daughter. The blow which was to fall on him beat
on her heavily in advance. "I have not one excuse!" she
said, glancing at numbers and a mighty one. But the idea of
her father suffering at her hands cast her down lower than
self-justification. She sought to imagine herself sparing
him. It was too fictitious.
The sanctuary of her chamber, the pure white
room so homely to her maidenly feelings, whispered peace,
only to follow the whisper with another that went through
her swelling to a roar, and leaving her as a suing of music
unkindly smitten. If she stayed in this house her chamber
would no longer be a sanctuary. Dolorous bondage! Insolent
death is not worse. Death's worm we cannot keep away, but
when he has us we are numb to dishonour, happily senseless.
Youth weighed her eyelids to sleep, though
she was quivering, and quivering she awoke to the sound of
her name beneath her window. "I can love still, for I love
him," she said, as she luxuriated in young Crossjay's boy's
voice, again envying him his bath in the lake waters, which
seemed to her to have the power to wash away grief and
chains. Then it was that she resolved to let Crossjay see
the last of her in this place. He should be made gleeful by
doing her a piece of service; he should escort her on her
walk to the railway station next morning, thence be sent
flying for a long day's truancy, with a little note of
apology on his behalf that she would write for him to
deliver to Vernon at night.
Crossjay came running to her after his
breakfast with Mrs Montague, the housekeeper, to tell her he
had called her up.
"You won't to-morrow: I shall be up far
ahead of you," said she; and musing on her father, while
Crossjay vowed to be up the first, she thought it her duty
to plunge into another expostulation.
Willoughby had need of Vernon on private
affairs. Dr. Middleton betook himself as usual to the
library, after answering "I will ruin you yet," to
Willoughby's liberal offer to despatch an order to London
for any books he might want.
His fine unruffled air, as of a mountain in
still morning beams, made Clara not indisposed to a
preliminary scene with Willoughby that might save her from
distressing him, but she could not stop Willoughby; as
little could she look an invitation. He stood in the Hall,
holding Vernon by the arm. She passed him; he did not speak,
and she entered the library.
"What now, my dear? what is it?" said Dr.
Middleton, seeing that the door was shut on them.
"Nothing, papa," she replied, calmly.
"You've not locked the door, my child? You
turned something there: try the handle."
"I assure you, papa, the door is not
locked."
"Mr. Whitford will be here instantly. We are
engaged on tough matter. Women have not, and opinion is
universal that they never will have, a conception of the
value of time."
"We are vain and shallow, my dear papa."
"No, no, not you, Clara. But I suspect you
to require to learn by having work in progress how important
is . . . is a quiet commencement of the day's task. There is
not a scholar who will not tell you so. We must have a
retreat. These invasions!—So you intend to have another ride
to-day? They do you good. To-morrow we dine with Mrs.
Mountstuart Jenkinson, an estimable person indeed, though I
do not perfectly understand our accepting.—You have not to
accuse me of sitting over wine last night, my Clara! I never
do it, unless I am appealed to for my judgement upon a
wine."
"I have come to entreat you to take me away,
papa."
In the midst of the storm aroused by this
renewal of perplexity, Dr Middleton replaced a book his
elbow had knocked over in his haste to dash the hair off his
forehead, crying: "Whither? To what spot? That reading of
guide-books, and idle people's notes of Travel, and
picturesque correspondence in the newspapers, unsettles man
and maid. My objection to the living in hotels is known. I
do not hesitate to say that I do cordially abhor it. I have
had penitentially to submit to it in your dear mother's
time, [Greek], up to the full ten thousand times. But will
you not comprehend that to the older man his miseries are
multiplied by his years? But is it utterly useless to
solicit your sympathy with an old man, Clara?"
"General Darleton will take us in, papa."
"His table is detestable. I say nothing of
that; but his wine is poison. Let that pass—I should rather
say, let it not pass!—but our political views are not in
accord. True, we are not under the obligation to propound
them in presence, but we are destitute of an opinion in
common. We have no discourse. Military men have produced, or
diverged in, noteworthy epicures; they are often devout;
they have blossomed in lettered men: they are gentlemen; the
country rightly holds them in honour; but, in fine, I reject
the proposal to go to General Darleton.—Tears?"
"No, papa."
"I do hope not. Here we have everything man
can desire; without contest, an excellent host. You have
your transitory tea-cup tempests, which you magnify to
hurricanes, in the approved historic manner of the book of
Cupid. And all the better; I repeat, it is the better that
you should have them over in the infancy of the alliance.
Come in!" Dr. Middleton shouted cheerily in response to a
knock at the door.
He feared the door was locked: he had a fear
that his daughter intended to keep it locked.
"Clara!" he cried.
She reluctantly turned the handle, and the
ladies Eleanor and Isabel came in, apologizing with as much
coherence as Dr. Middleton ever expected from their sex.
They wished to speak to Clara, but they declined to take her
away. In vain the Rev. Doctor assured them she was at their
service; they protested that they had very few words to say,
and would not intrude one moment further than to speak them.
Like a shy deputation of young scholars
before the master, these very words to come were preceded by
none at all; a dismal and trying cause; refreshing however
to Dr. Middleton, who joyfully anticipated that the ladies
could be induced to take away Clara when they had finished.
"We may appear to you a little formal," Miss
Isabel began, and turned to her sister.
"We have no intention to lay undue weight on
our mission, if mission it can be called," said Miss
Eleanor.
"Is it entrusted to you by Willoughby?" said
Clara.
"Dear child, that you may know it all the
more earnest with us, and our personal desire to contribute
to your happiness: therefore does Willoughby entrust the
speaking of it to us."
Hereupon the sisters alternated in
addressing Clara, and she gazed from one to the other,
piecing fragments of empty signification to get the full
meaning when she might.
"—And in saying your happiness, dear Clara,
we have our Willoughby's in view, which is dependent on
yours."
"—And we never could sanction that our own
inclinations should stand in the way."
"—No. We love the old place; and if it were
only our punishment for loving it too idolatrously, we
should deem it ground enough for our departure."
"—Without, really, an idea of unkindness;
none, not any."
"—Young wives naturally prefer to be
undisputed queens of their own establishment."
"—Youth and age!"
"But I," said Clara, "have never mentioned,
never had a thought . . ."
"—You have, dear child, a lover who in his
solicitude for your happiness both sees what you desire and
what is due to you."
"—And for us, Clara, to recognize what is
due to you is to act on it."
"—Besides, dear, a sea-side cottage has
always been one of our dreams."
"—We have not to learn that we are a couple
of old maids, incongruous associates for a young wife in the
government of a great house."
"—With our antiquated notions, questions of
domestic management might arise, and with the best will in
the world to be harmonious!"
"—So, dear Clara, consider it settled."
"—From time to time gladly shall we be your
guests."
"—Your guests, dear, not censorious
critics."
"And you think me such an Egoist!—dear
ladies! The suggestion of so cruel a piece of selfishness
wounds me. I would not have had you leave the Hall. I like
your society; I respect you. My complaint, if I had one,
would be, that you do not sufficiently assert yourselves. I
could have wished you to be here for an example to me. I
would not have allowed you to go. What can he think of me!
Did Willoughby speak of it this morning?"
It was hard to distinguish which was the
completer dupe of these two echoes of one another in worship
of a family idol.
"Willoughby," Miss Eleanor presented herself
to be stamped with the title hanging ready for the first
that should open her lips, "our Willoughby is observant—he
is ever generous—and he is not less forethoughtful. His
arrangement is for our good on all sides."
"An index is enough," said Miss Isabel,
appearing in her turn the monster dupe.
"You will not have to leave, dear ladies.
Were I mistress here I should oppose it."
"Willoughby blames himself for not
reassuring you before."
"Indeed we blame ourselves for not
undertaking to go."
"Did he speak of it first this morning?"
said Clara; but she could draw no reply to that from them.
They resumed the duet, and she resigned herself to have her
cars boxed with nonsense.
"So, it is understood?" said Miss Eleanor.
"I see your kindness, ladies."
"And I am to be Aunt Eleanor again?"
"And I Aunt Isabel?"
Clara could have wrung her hands at the
impediment which prohibited her delicacy from telling them
why she could not name them so as she had done in the
earlier days of Willoughby's courtship. She kissed them
warmly, ashamed of kissing, though the warmth was real.
They retired with a flow of excuses to Dr.
Middleton for disturbing him. He stood at the door to bow
them out, and holding the door for Clara, to wind up the
procession, discovered her at a far corner of the room.
He was debating upon the advisability of
leaving her there, when Vernon Whitford crossed the hall
from the laboratory door, a mirror of himself in his
companion air of discomposure.
That was not important, so long as Vernon
was a check on Clara; but the moment Clara, thus baffled,
moved to quit the library, Dr. Middleton felt the horror of
having an uncomfortable face opposite.
"No botheration, I hope? It's the worst
thing possible to work on. Where have you been? I suspect
your weak point is not to arm yourself in triple brass
against bother and worry, and no good work can you do unless
you do. You have come out of that laboratory."
"I have, sir.—Can I get you any book?"
Vernon said to Clara.
She thanked him, promising to depart
immediately.
"Now you are at the section of Italian
literature, my love," said Dr Middleton. "Well, Mr.
Whitford, the laboratory—ah!—where the amount of labour done
within the space of a year would not stretch an electric
current between this Hall and the railway station: say, four
miles, which I presume the distance to be. Well, sir, and a
dilettantism costly in time and machinery is as ornamental
as foxes' tails and deers' horns to an independent gentleman
whose fellows are contented with the latter decorations for
their civic wreath. Willoughby, let me remark, has recently
shown himself most considerate for my girl. As far as I
could gather—I have been listening to a dialogue of
ladies—he is as generous as he is discreet. There are
certain combats in which to be the one to succumb is to
claim the honours;—and that is what women will not learn. I
doubt their seeing the glory of it."
"I have heard of it; I have been with
Willoughby," Vernon said, hastily, to shield Clara from her
father's allusive attacks. He wished to convey to her that
his interview with Willoughby had not been profitable in her
interests, and that she had better at once, having him
present to support her, pour out her whole heart to her
father. But how was it to be conveyed? She would not meet
his eyes, and he was too poor an intriguer to be ready on
the instant to deal out the verbal obscurities which are
transparencies to one.
"I shall regret it, if Willoughby has
annoyed you, for he stands high in my favour," said Dr.
Middleton.
Clara dropped a book. Her father started
higher than the nervous impulse warranted in his chair.
Vernon tried to win a glance, and she was conscious of his
effort, but her angry and guilty feelings, prompting her
resolution to follow her own counsel, kept her eyelids on
the defensive.
"I don't say he annoys me, sir. I am here to
give him my advice, and if he does not accept it I have no
right to be annoyed. Willoughby seems annoyed that Colonel
De Craye should talk of going to-morrow or next day."
"He likes his friends about him. Upon my
word, a man of a more genial heart you might march a day
without finding. But you have it on the forehead, Mr.
Whitford."
"Oh! no, sir."
"There," Dr. Middleton drew his finger along
his brows.
Vernon felt along his own, and coined an
excuse for their blackness; not aware that the direction of
his mind toward Clara pushed him to a kind of clumsy double
meaning, while he satisfied an inward and craving wrath, as
he said: "By the way, I have been racking my head; I must
apply to you, sir. I have a line, and I am uncertain of the
run of the line. Will this pass, do you think?
'In Asination's tongue he asinates';
signifying that he excels any man of us at
donkey-dialect."
After a decent interval for the genius of
criticism to seem to have been sitting under his frown, Dr.
Middleton rejoined with sober jocularity: "No, sir, it will
not pass; and your uncertainty in regard to the run of the
line would only be extended were the line centipedal. Our
recommendation is, that you erase it before the arrival of
the ferule. This might do:
'In Assignation's name he assignats';
signifying that he pre-eminently flourishes
hypothetical promises, to pay by appointment. That might
pass. But you will forbear to cite me for your authority."
"The line would be acceptable if I could get
it to apply," said Vernon.
"Or this . . ." Dr. Middleton was offering a
second suggestion, but Clara fled, astonished at men as she
never yet had been. Why, in a burning world they would be
exercising their minds in absurdities! And those two were
scholars, learned men! And both knew they were in the
presence of a soul in a tragic fever!
A minute after she had closed the door they
were deep in their work.
Dr. Middleton forgot his alternative line.
"Nothing serious?" he said in reproof of the
want of honourable clearness on Vernon's brows.
"I trust not, sir; it's a case for common
sense."
"And you call that not serious?"
"I take Hermann's praise of the versus
dochmiachus to be not only serious but unexaggerated," said
Vernon.
Dr. Middleton assented and entered on the
voiceful ground of Greek metres, shoving your dry dusty
world from his elbow.
CHAPTER XXV
THE FLIGHT IN WILD WEATHER
The morning of Lucy Darleton's letter of
reply to her friend Clara was fair before sunrise, with
luminous colours that are an omen to the husbandman. Clara
had no weather-eye for the rich Eastern crimson, nor a quiet
space within her for the beauty. She looked on it as her
gate of promise, and it set her throbbing with a revived
belief in radiant things which she had once dreamed of to
surround her life, but her accelerated pulses narrowed her
thoughts upon the machinery of her project. She herself was
metal, pointing all to her one aim when in motion. Nothing
came amiss to it, everything was fuel; fibs, evasions, the
serene battalions of white lies parallel on the march with
dainty rogue falsehoods. She had delivered herself of many
yesterday in her engagements for to-day. Pressure was put on
her to engage herself, and she did so liberally, throwing
the burden of deceitfulness on the extraordinary pressure.
"I want the early part of the morning; the rest of the day I
shall be at liberty." She said it to Willoughby, Miss Dale,
Colonel De Craye, and only the third time was she aware of
the delicious double meaning. Hence she associated it with
the colonel.
Your loudest outcry against the wretch who
breaks your rules is in asking how a tolerably conscientious
person could have done this and the other besides the main
offence, which you vow you could overlook but for the minor
objections pertaining to conscience, the incomprehensible
and abominable lies, for example, or the brazen coolness of
the lying. Yet you know that we live in an undisciplined
world, where in our seasons of activity we are servants of
our design, and that this comes of our passions, and those
of our position. Our design shapes us for the work in hand,
the passions man the ship, the position is their apology:
and now should conscience be a passenger on board, a merely
seeming swiftness of our vessel will keep him dumb as the
unwilling guest of a pirate captain scudding from the
cruiser half in cloven brine through rocks and shoals to
save his black flag. Beware the false position.
That is easy to say: sometimes the tangle
descends on us like a net of blight on a rose-bush. There is
then an instant choice for us between courage to cut loose,
and desperation if we do not. But not many men are trained
to courage; young women are trained to cowardice. For them
to front an evil with plain speech is to be guilty of
effrontery and forfeit the waxen polish of purity, and
therewith their commanding place in the market. They are
trained to please man's taste, for which purpose they soon
learn to live out of themselves, and look on themselves as
he looks, almost as little disturbed as he by the
undiscovered. Without courage, conscience is a sorry guest;
and if all goes well with the pirate captain, conscience
will be made to walk the plank for being of no service to
either party.
Clara's fibs and evasions disturbed her not
in the least that morning. She had chosen desperation, and
she thought herself very brave because she was just brave
enough to fly from her abhorrence. She was light-hearted,
or, more truly, drunken-hearted. Her quick nature realized
the out of prison as vividly and suddenly as it had sunk
suddenly and leadenly under the sense of imprisonment.
Vernon crossed her mind: that was a friend! Yes, and there
was a guide; but he would disapprove, and even he, thwarting
her way to sacred liberty, must be thrust aside.
What would he think? They might never meet,
for her to know. Or one day in the Alps they might meet, a
middle-aged couple, he famous, she regretful only to have
fallen below his lofty standard. "For, Mr. Whitford," says
she, very earnestly, "I did wish at that time, believe me or
not, to merit your approbation." The brows of the phantom
Vernon whom she conjured up were stern, as she had seen them
yesterday in the library.
She gave herself a chiding for thinking of
him when her mind should be intent on that which he was
opposed to.
It was a livelier relaxation to think of
young Crossjay's shame-faced confession presently, that he
had been a laggard in bed while she swept the dews. She
laughed at him, and immediately Crossjay popped out on her
from behind a tree, causing her to clap hand to heart and
stand fast. A conspirator is not of the stuff to bear
surprises. He feared he had hurt her, and was manly in his
efforts to soothe: he had been up "hours", he said, and had
watched her coming along the avenue, and did not mean to
startle her: it was the kind of fun he played with fellows,
and if he had hurt her, she might do anything to him she
liked, and she would see if he could not stand to be
punished. He was urgent with her to inflict corporal
punishment on him.
"I shall leave it to the boatswain to do
that when you're in the navy," said Clara.
"The boatswain daren't strike an officer! so
now you see what you know of the navy," said Crossjay.
"But you could not have been out before me,
you naughty boy, for I found all the locks and bolts when I
went to the door."
"But you didn't go to the back door, and Sir
Willoughby's private door: you came out by the hall door;
and I know what you want, Miss Middleton, you want not to
pay what you've lost."
"What have I lost, Crossjay?"
"Your wager."
"What was that?"
"You know."
"Speak."
"A kiss."
"Nothing of the sort. But, dear boy, I don't
love you less for not kissing you. All that is nonsense: you
have to think only of learning, and to be truthful. Never
tell a story: suffer anything rather than be dishonest." She
was particularly impressive upon the silliness and
wickedness of falsehood, and added: "Do you hear?"
"Yes: but you kissed me when I had been out
in the rain that day."
"Because I promised."
"And, Miss Middleton, you betted a kiss
yesterday."
"I am sure, Crossjay—no, I will not say I am
sure: but can you say you are sure you were out first this
morning? Well, will you say you are sure that when you left
the house you did not see me in the avenue? You can't: ah!"
"Miss Middleton, I do really believe I was
dressed first."
"Always be truthful, my dear boy, and then
you may feel that Clara
Middleton will always love you."
"But, Miss Middleton, when you're married
you won't be Clara
Middleton."
"I certainly shall, Crossjay."
"No, you won't, because I'm so fond of your
name!"
She considered, and said: "You have warned
me, Crossjay, and I shall not marry. I shall wait," she was
going to say, "for you," but turned the hesitation to a
period. "Is the village where I posted my letter the day
before yesterday too far for you?"
Crossjay howled in contempt. "Next to Clara,
my favourite's Lucy," he said.
"I thought Clara came next to Nelson," said
she; "and a long way off too, if you're not going to be a
landlubber."
"I'm not going to be a landlubber. Miss
Middleton, you may be absolutely positive on your solemn
word."
"You're getting to talk like one a little
now and then, Crossjay."
"Then I won't talk at all."
He stuck to his resolution for one whole
minute.
Clara hoped that on this morning of a
doubtful though imperative venture she had done some good.
They walked fast to cover the distance to
the village post-office, and back before the breakfast hour:
and they had plenty of time, arriving too early for the
opening of the door, so that Crossjay began to dance with an
appetite, and was despatched to besiege a bakery. Clara felt
lonely without him: apprehensively timid in the shuttered,
unmoving village street. She was glad of his return. When at
last her letter was handed to her, on the testimony of the
postman that she was the lawful applicant, Crossjay and she
put out on a sharp trot to be back at the Hall in good time.
She took a swallowing glance of the first page of Lucy's
writing:
"Telegraph, and I will meet you. I will
supply you with everything you can want for the two nights,
if you cannot stop longer."
That was the gist of the letter. A second,
less voracious, glance at it along the road brought
sweetness:—Lucy wrote:
"Do I love you as I did? my best friend, you
must fall into unhappiness to have the answer to that."
Clara broke a silence.
"Yes, dear Crossjay, and if you like you
shall have another walk with me after breakfast. But,
remember, you must not say where you have gone with me. I
shall give you twenty shillings to go and buy those bird's
eggs and the butterflies you want for your collection; and
mind, promise me, to-day is your last day of truancy. Tell
Mr. Whitford how ungrateful you know you have been, that he
may have some hope of you. You know the way across the
fields to the railway station?"
"You save a mile; you drop on the road by
Combline's mill, and then there's another five-minutes' cut,
and the rest's road."
"Then, Crossjay, immediately after breakfast
run round behind the pheasantry, and there I'll find you.
And if any one comes to you before I come, say you are
admiring the plumage of the Himalaya—the beautiful Indian
bird; and if we're found together, we run a race, and of
course you can catch me, but you mustn't until we're out of
sight. Tell Mr. Vernon at night—tell Mr. Whitford at night
you had the money from me as part of my allowance to you for
pocket-money. I used to like to have pocket-money, Crossjay.
And you may tell him I gave you the holiday, and I may write
to him for his excuse, if he is not too harsh to grant it.
He can be very harsh."
"You look right into his eyes next time,
Miss Middleton. I used to think him awful till he made me
look at him. He says men ought to look straight at one
another, just as we do when he gives me my boxing-lesson,
and then we won't have quarrelling half so much. I can't
recollect everything he says."
"You are not bound to, Crossjay."
"No, but you like to hear."
"Really, dear boy. I can't accuse myself of
having told you that."
"No, but, Miss Middleton, you do. And he's
fond of your singing and playing on the piano, and watches
you."
"We shall be late if we don't mind," said
Clara, starting to a pace close on a run.
They were in time for a circuit in the park
to the wild double cherry-blossom, no longer all white.
Clara gazed up from under it, where she had imagined a
fairer visible heavenliness than any other sight of earth
had ever given her. That was when Vernon lay beneath. But
she had certainly looked above, not at him. The tree seemed
sorrowful in its withering flowers of the colour of trodden
snow.
Crossjay resumed the conversation.
"He says ladies don't like him much."
"Who says that?"
"Mr. Whitford."
"Were those his words?"
"I forget the words: but he said they
wouldn't be taught by him, like me, ever since you came; and
since you came I've liked him ten times more."
"The more you like him the more I shall like
you, Crossjay."
The boy raised a shout and scampered away to
Sir Willoughby, at the appearance of whom Clara felt herself
nipped and curling inward. Crossjay ran up to him with every
sign of pleasure. Yet he had not mentioned him during the
walk; and Clara took it for a sign that the boy understood
the entire satisfaction Willoughby had in mere shows of
affection, and acted up to it. Hardly blaming Crossjay, she
was a critic of the scene, for the reason that youthful
creatures who have ceased to love a person, hunger for
evidence against him to confirm their hard animus, which
will seem to them sometimes, when he is not immediately
irritating them, brutish, because they can not analyze it
and reduce it to the multitude of just antagonisms whereof
it came. It has passed by large accumulation into a sombre
and speechless load upon the senses, and fresh evidence, the
smallest item, is a champion to speak for it. Being about to
do wrong, she grasped at this eagerly, and brooded on the
little of vital and truthful that there was in the man and
how he corrupted the boy. Nevertheless, she instinctively
imitated Crossjay in an almost sparkling salute to him.
"Good-morning, Willoughby; it was not a
morning to lose: have you been out long?"
He retained her hand. "My dear Clara! and
you, have you not overfatigued yourself? Where have you
been?"
"Round—everywhere! And I am certainly not
tired."
"Only you and Crossjay? You should have
loosened the dogs."
"Their barking would have annoyed the
house."
"Less than I am annoyed to think of you
without protection."
He kissed her fingers: it was a loving
speech.
"The household . . ." said Clara, but would
not insist to convict him of what he could not have
perceived.
"If you outstrip me another morning, Clara,
promise me to take the dogs; will you?"
"Yes."
"To-day I am altogether yours."
"Are you?"
"From the first to the last hour of it!—So
you fall in with Horace's humour pleasantly?"
"He is very amusing."
"As good as though one had hired him."
"Here comes Colonel De Craye."
"He must think we have hired him!"
She noticed the bitterness of Willoughby's
tone. He sang out a good-morning to De Craye, and remarked
that he must go to the stables.
"Darleton? Darleton, Miss Middleton?" said
the colonel, rising from his bow to her: "a daughter of
General Darleton? If so, I have had the honour to dance with
her. And have not you?—practised with her, I mean; or gone
off in a triumph to dance it out as young ladies do? So you
know what a delightful partner she is."
"She is!" cried Clara, enthusiastic for her
succouring friend, whose letter was the treasure in her
bosom.
"Oddly, the name did not strike me
yesterday, Miss Middleton. In the middle of the night it
rang a little silver bell in my ear, and I remembered the
lady I was half in love with, if only for her dancing. She
is dark, of your height, as light on her feet; a sister in
another colour. Now that I know her to be your friend . . .
!"
"Why, you may meet her, Colonel De Craye."
"It'll be to offer her a castaway. And one
only meets a charming girl to hear that she's engaged! 'Tis
not a line of a ballad, Miss Middleton, but out of the
heart."
"Lucy Darleton . . . You were leading me to
talk seriously to you,
Colonel De Craye."
"Will you one day?—and not think me a
perpetual tumbler! You have heard of melancholy clowns. You
will find the face not so laughable behind my paint. When I
was thirteen years younger I was loved, and my dearest sank
to the grave. Since then I have not been quite at home in
life; probably because of finding no one so charitable as
she. 'Tis easy to win smiles and hands, but not so easy to
win a woman whose faith you would trust as your own heart
before the enemy. I was poor then. She said. 'The day after
my twenty-first birthday'; and that day I went for her, and
I wondered they did not refuse me at the door. I was shown
upstairs, and I saw her, and saw death. She wished to marry
me, to leave me her fortune!"
"Then, never marry," said Clara, in an
underbreath.
She glanced behind.
Sir Willoughby was close, walking on turf.
"I must be cunning to escape him after
breakfast," she thought.
He had discarded his foolishness of the
previous days, and the thought in him could have replied: "I
am a dolt if I let you out of my sight."
Vernon appeared, formal as usual of late.
Clara begged his excuse for withdrawing Crossjay from his
morning swim. He nodded.
De Craye called to Willoughby for a book of
the trains.
"There's a card in the smoking-room; eleven,
one, and four are the hours, if you must go," said
Willoughby.
"You leave the Hall, Colonel De Craye?"
"In two or three days, Miss Middleton."
She did not request him to stay: his
announcement produced no effect on her. Consequently,
thought he—well, what? nothing: well, then, that she might
not be minded to stay herself. Otherwise she would have
regretted the loss of an amusing companion: that is the
modest way of putting it. There is a modest and a vain for
the same sentiment; and both may be simultaneously in the
same breast; and each one as honest as the other; so shy is
man's vanity in the presence of here and there a lady. She
liked him: she did not care a pin for him—how could she? yet
she liked him: O, to be able to do her some kindling bit of
service! These were his consecutive fancies, resolving
naturally to the exclamation, and built on the conviction
that she did not love Willoughby, and waited for a spirited
lift from circumstances. His call for a book of the trains
had been a sheer piece of impromptu, in the mind as well as
on the mouth. It sprang, unknown to him, of conjectures he
had indulged yesterday and the day before. This morning she
would have an answer to her letter to her friend, Miss Lucy
Darleton, the pretty dark girl, whom De Craye was astonished
not to have noticed more when he danced with her. She,
pretty as she was, had come to his recollection through the
name and rank of her father, a famous general of cavalry,
and tactician in that arm. The colonel despised himself for
not having been devoted to Clara Middleton's friend.
The morning's letters were on the bronze
plate in the hall. Clara passed on her way to her room
without inspecting them. De Craye opened an envelope and
went upstairs to scribble a line. Sir Willoughby observed
their absence at the solemn reading to the domestic servants
in advance of breakfast. Three chairs were unoccupied.
Vernon had his own notions of a mechanical service—and a
precious profit he derived from them! but the other two
seats returned the stare Willoughby cast at their backs with
an impudence that reminded him of his friend Horace's
calling for a book of the trains, when a minute afterward he
admitted he was going to stay at the Hall another two days,
or three. The man possessed by jealousy is never in need of
matter for it: he magnifies; grass is jungle, hillocks are
mountains. Willoughby's legs crossing and uncrossing
audibly, and his tight-folded arms and clearing of the
throat, were faint indications of his condition.
"Are you in fair health this morning,
Willoughby?" Dr. Middleton said to him after he had closed
his volumes.
"The thing is not much questioned by those
who know me intimately," he replied.
"Willoughby unwell!" and, "He is health
incarnate!" exclaimed the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.
Laetitia grieved for him. Sun-rays on a
pest-stricken city, she thought, were like the smile of his
face. She believed that he deeply loved Clara, and had
learned more of her alienation.
He went into the ball to look into the well
for the pair of malefactors; on fire with what he could not
reveal to a soul.
De Craye was in the housekeeper's room,
talking to young Crossjay, and Mrs. Montague just come up to
breakfast. He had heard the boy chattering, and as the door
was ajar he peeped in, and was invited to enter. Mrs.
Montague was very fond of hearing him talk: he paid her the
familiar respect which a lady of fallen fortunes, at a
certain period after the fall, enjoys as a befittingly sad
souvenir, and the respectfulness of the lord of the house
was more chilling.
She bewailed the boy's trying his
constitution with long walks before he had anything in him
to walk on.
"And where did you go this morning, my lad?"
said De Craye.
"Ah, you know the ground, colonel," said
Crossjay. "I am hungry! I shall eat three eggs and some
bacon, and buttered cakes, and jam, then begin again, on my
second cup of coffee."
"It's not braggadocio," remarked Mrs.
Montague. "He waits empty from five in the morning till
nine, and then he comes famished to my table, and cats too
much."
"Oh! Mrs. Montague, that is what the country
people call roemancing. For, Colonel De Craye, I had a bun
at seven o'clock. Miss Middleton forced me to go and buy it"
"A stale bun, my boy?"
"Yesterday's: there wasn't much of a stopper
to you in it, like a new bun."
"And where did you leave Miss Middleton when
you went to buy the bun? You should never leave a lady; and
the street of a country town is lonely at that early hour.
Crossjay, you surprise me."
"She forced me to go, colonel. Indeed she
did. What do I care for a bun! And she was quite safe. We
could hear the people stirring in the post-office, and I met
our postman going for his letter-bag. I didn't want to go:
bother the bun!—but you can't disobey Miss Middleton. I
never want to, and wouldn't."
"There we're of the same mind," said the
colonel, and Crossjay shouted, for the lady whom they
exalted was at the door.
"You will be too tired for a ride this
morning," De Craye said to her, descending the stairs.
She swung a bonnet by the ribands. "I don't
think of riding to-day."
"Why did you not depute your mission to me?"
"I like to bear my own burdens, as far as I
can."
"Miss Darleton is well?"
"I presume so."
"Will you try her recollection for me?"
"It will probably be quite as lively as
yours was."
"Shall you see her soon?"
"I hope so."
Sir Willoughby met her at the foot of the
stairs, but refrained from giving her a hand that shook.
"We shall have the day together," he said.
Clara bowed.
At the breakfast-table she faced a clock.
De Craye took out his watch. "You are five
and a half minutes too slow by that clock, Willoughby."
"The man omitted to come from Rendon to set
it last week, Horace. He will find the hour too late here
for him when he does come."
One of the ladies compared the time of her
watch with De Craye's, and Clara looked at hers and
gratefully noted that she was four minutes in arrear.
She left the breakfast-room at a quarter to
ten, after kissing her father. Willoughby was behind her. He
had been soothed by thinking of his personal advantages over
De Craye, and he felt assured that if he could be solitary
with his eccentric bride and fold her in himself, he would,
cutting temper adrift, be the man he had been to her not so
many days back. Considering how few days back, his temper
was roused, but he controlled it.
They were slightly dissenting as De Craye
stepped into the hall.
"A present worth examining," Willoughby said
to her: "and I do not dwell on the costliness. Come
presently, then. I am at your disposal all day. I will drive
you in the afternoon to call on Lady Busshe to offer your
thanks: but you must see it first. It is laid out in the
laboratory."
"There is time before the afternoon," said
Clara.
"Wedding presents?" interposed De Craye.
"A porcelain service from Lady Busshe,
Horace."
"Not in fragments? Let me have a look at it.
I'm haunted by an idea that porcelain always goes to pieces.
I'll have a look and take a hint. We're in the laboratory,
Miss Middleton."
He put his arm under Willoughby's. The
resistance to him was momentary:
Willoughby had the satisfaction of the thought that De Craye
being with
him was not with Clara; and seeing her giving orders to her
maid
Barclay, he deferred his claim on her company for some short
period.
De Craye detained him in the laboratory,
first over the China cups and saucers, and then with the
latest of London—tales of youngest Cupid upon subterranean
adventures, having high titles to light him. Willoughby
liked the tale thus illuminated, for without the title there
was no special savour in such affairs, and it pulled down
his betters in rank. He was of a morality to reprobate the
erring dame while he enjoyed the incidents. He could not
help interrupting De Craye to point at Vernon through the
window, striding this way and that, evidently on the hunt
for young Crossjay. "No one here knows how to manage the boy
except myself But go on, Horace," he said, checking his
contemptuous laugh; and Vernon did look ridiculous, out
there half-drenched already in a white rain, again shuffled
off by the little rascal. It seemed that he was determined
to have his runaway: he struck up the avenue at full
pedestrian racing pace.
"A man looks a fool cutting after a
cricket-ball; but, putting on steam in a storm of rain to
catch a young villain out of sight, beats anything I've
witnessed," Willoughby resumed, in his amusement.
"Aiha!" said De Craye, waving a hand to
accompany the melodious accent, "there are things to beat
that for fun."
He had smoked in the laboratory, so
Willoughby directed a servant to transfer the porcelain
service to one of the sitting-rooms for Clara's inspection
of it.
"You're a bold man," De Craye remarked. "The
luck may be with you, though. I wouldn't handle the fragile
treasure for a trifle."
"I believe in my luck," said Willoughby.
Clara was now sought for. The lord of the
house desired her presence impatiently, and had to wait. She
was in none of the lower rooms. Barclay, her maid, upon
interrogation, declared she was in none of the upper.
Willoughby turned sharp on De Craye: he was there.
The ladies Eleanor and Isabel and Miss Dale
were consulted. They had nothing to say about Clara's
movements, more than that they could not understand her
exceeding restlessness. The idea of her being out of doors
grew serious; heaven was black, hard thunder rolled, and
lightning flushed the battering rain. Men bearing umbrellas,
shawls, and cloaks were dispatched on a circuit of the park.
De Craye said: "I'll be one."
"No," cried Willoughby, starting to
interrupt him, "I can't allow it."
"I've the scent of a hound, Willoughby; I'll
soon be on the track."
"My dear Horace, I won't let you go."
"Adieu, dear boy! and if the lady's
discoverable, I'm the one to find her."
He stepped to the umbrella-stand. There was
then a general question whether Clara had taken her
umbrella. Barclay said she had. The fact indicated a wider
stroll than round inside the park: Crossjay was likewise
absent. De Craye nodded to himself.
Willoughby struck a rattling blow on the
barometer.
"Where's Pollington?" he called, and sent
word for his man Pollington to bring big fishing-boots and
waterproof wrappers.
An urgent debate within him was in progress.
Should he go forth alone on his chance of
discovering Clara and forgiving her under his umbrella and
cloak? or should he prevent De Craye from going forth alone
on the chance he vaunted so impudently?
"You will offend me, Horace, if you insist,"
he said.
"Regard me as an instrument of destiny,
Willoughby," replied De Craye.
"Then we go in company."
"But that's an addition of one that cancels
the other by conjunction, and's worse than simple division:
for I can't trust my wits unless I rely on them alone, you
see."
"Upon my word, you talk at times most
unintelligible stuff, to be frank with you, Horace. Give it
in English."
"'Tis not suited, perhaps, to the genius of
the language, for I thought
I talked English."
"Oh, there's English gibberish as well as
Irish, we know!"
"And a deal foolisher when they do go at it;
for it won't bear squeezing, we think, like Irish."
"Where!" exclaimed the ladies, "where can
she be! The storm is terrible."
Laetitia suggested the boathouse.
"For Crossjay hadn't a swim this morning!"
said De Craye.
No one reflected on the absurdity that Clara
should think of taking Crossjay for a swim in the lake, and
immediately after his breakfast: it was accepted as a
suggestion at least that she and Crossjay had gone to the
lake for a row.
In the hopefulness of the idea, Willoughby
suffered De Craye to go on his chance unaccompanied. He was
near chuckling. He projected a plan for dismissing Crossjay
and remaining in the boathouse with Clara, luxuriating in
the prestige which would attach to him for seeking and
finding her. Deadly sentiments intervened. Still he might
expect to be alone with her where she could not slip from
him.
The throwing open of the hall-doors for the
gentlemen presented a framed picture of a deluge. All the
young-leaved trees were steely black, without a gradation of
green, drooping and pouring, and the song of rain had become
an inveterate hiss.
The ladies beholding it exclaimed against
Clara, even apostrophized her, so dark are trivial errors
when circumstances frown. She must be mad to tempt such
weather: she was very giddy; she was never at rest. Clara!
Clara! how could you be so wild! Ought we not to tell Dr.
Middleton?
Laetitia induced them to spare him.
"Which way do you take?" said Willoughby,
rather fearful that his companion was not to be got rid of
now.
"Any way," said De Craye. "I chuck up my
head like a halfpenny, and go by the toss."
This enraging nonsense drove off Willoughby.
De Craye saw him cast a furtive eye at his heels to make
sure he was not followed, and thought, "Jove! he may be fond
of her. But he's not on the track. She's a determined girl,
if I'm correct. She's a girl of a hundred thousand. Girls
like that make the right sort of wives for the right men.
They're the girls to make men think of marrying. To-morrow!
only give me a chance. They stick to you fast when they do
stick."
Then a thought of her flower-like drapery
and face caused him fervently to hope she had escaped the
storm.
Calling at the West park-lodge he heard that
Miss Middleton had been seen passing through the gate with
Master Crossjay; but she had not been seen coming back. Mr.
Vernon Whitford had passed through half an hour later.
"After his young man!" said the colonel.
The lodge-keeper's wife and daughter knew of
Master Crossjay's pranks; Mr. Whitford, they said, had made
inquiries about him and must have caught him and sent him
home to change his dripping things; for Master Crossjay had
come back, and had declined shelter in the lodge; he seemed
to be crying; he went away soaking over the wet grass,
hanging his head. The opinion at the lodge was that Master
Crossjay was unhappy.
"He very properly received a wigging from
Mr. Whitford, I have no doubt," said Colonel Do Craye.
Mother and daughter supposed it to be the
case, and considered Crossjay very wilful for not going
straight home to the Hall to change his wet clothes; he was
drenched.
Do Craye drew out his watch. The time was
ten minutes past eleven. If the surmise he had distantly
spied was correct, Miss Middleton would have been caught in
the storm midway to her destination. By his guess at her
character (knowledge of it, he would have said), he judged
that no storm would daunt her on a predetermined expedition.
He deduced in consequence that she was at the present moment
flying to her friend, the charming brunette Lucy Darleton.
Still, as there was a possibility of the
rain having been too much for her, and as he had no other
speculation concerning the route she had taken, he decided
upon keeping along the road to Rendon, with a keen eye at
cottage and farmhouse windows.
CHAPTER XXVI
VERNON IN PURSUIT
The lodge-keeper had a son, who was a chum
of Master Crossjay's, and errant-fellow with him upon many
adventures; for this boy's passion was to become a
gamekeeper, and accompanied by one of the head-gamekeeper's
youngsters, he and Crossjay were in the habit of rangeing
over the country, preparing for a profession delightful to
the tastes of all three. Crossjay's prospective connection
with the mysterious ocean bestowed the title of captain on
him by common consent; he led them, and when missing for
lessons he was generally in the society of Jacob Croom or
Jonathan Fernaway. Vernon made sure of Crossjay when he
perceived Jacob Croom sitting on a stool in the little
lodge-parlour. Jacob's appearance of a diligent perusal of a
book he had presented to the lad, he took for a decent piece
of trickery. It was with amazement that he heard from the
mother and daughter, as well as Jacob, of Miss Middleton's
going through the gate before ten o'clock with Crossjay
beside her, the latter too hurried to spare a nod to Jacob.
That she, of all on earth, should be encouraging Crossjay to
truancy was incredible. Vernon had to fall back upon Greek
and Latin aphoristic shots at the sex to believe it.
Rain was universal; a thick robe of it swept
from hill to hill; thunder rumbled remote, and between the
ruffled roars the downpour pressed on the land with a great
noise of eager gobbling, much like that of the swine's
trough fresh filled, as though a vast assembly of the
hungered had seated themselves clamorously and fallen to on
meats and drinks in a silence, save of the chaps. A rapid
walker poetically and humourously minded gathers multitudes
of images on his way. And rain, the heaviest you can meet,
is a lively companion when the resolute pacer scorns
discomfort of wet clothes and squealing boots. South-western
rain-clouds, too, are never long sullen: they enfold and
will have the earth in a good strong glut of the kissing
overflow; then, as a hawk with feathers on his beak of the
bird in his claw lifts head, they rise and take veiled
feature in long climbing watery lines: at any moment they
may break the veil and show soft upper cloud, show sun on
it, show sky, green near the verge they spring from, of the
green of grass in early dew; or, along a travelling sweep
that rolls asunder overhead, heaven's laughter of purest
blue among titanic white shoulders: it may mean fair smiling
for awhile, or be the lightest interlude; but the watery
lines, and the drifting, the chasing, the upsoaring, all in
a shadowy fingering of form, and the animation of the leaves
of the trees pointing them on, the bending of the tree-tops,
the snapping of branches, and the hurrahings of the stubborn
hedge at wrestle with the flaws, yielding but a leaf at
most, and that on a fling, make a glory of contest and
wildness without aid of colour to inflame the man who is at
home in them from old association on road, heath, and
mountain. Let him be drenched, his heart will sing. And
thou, trim cockney, that jeerest, consider thyself, to whom
it may occur to be out in such a scene, and with what steps
of a nervous dancing-master it would be thine to play the
hunted rat of the elements, for the preservation of the one
imagined dryspot about thee, somewhere on thy luckless
person! The taking of rain and sun alike befits men of our
climate, and he who would have the secret of a strengthening
intoxication must court the clouds of the South-west with a
lover's blood.
Vernon's happy recklessness was dashed by
fears for Miss Middleton. Apart from those fears, he had the
pleasure of a gull wheeling among foam-streaks of the wave.
He supposed the Swiss and Tyrol Alps to have hidden their
heads from him for many a day to come, and the springing and
chiming South-west was the next best thing. A milder rain
descended; the country expanded darkly defined underneath
the moving curtain; the clouds were as he liked to see them,
scaling; but their skirts dragged. Torrents were in store,
for they coursed streamingly still and had not the higher
lift, or eagle ascent, which he knew for one of the signs of
fairness, nor had the hills any belt of mist-like vapour.
On a step of the stile leading to the
short-cut to Rendon young
Crossjay was espied. A man-tramp sat on the top-bar.
"There you are; what are you doing there?
Where's Miss Middleton?" said
Vernon. "Now, take care before you open your mouth."
Crossjay shut the mouth he had opened.
"The lady has gone away over to a station,
sir," said the tramp.
"You fool!" roared Crossjay, ready to fly at
him.
"But ain't it now, young gentleman? Can you
say it ain't?"
"I gave you a shilling, you ass!"
"You give me that sum, young gentleman, to
stop here and take care of you, and here I stopped."
"Mr. Whitford!" Crossjay appealed to his
master, and broke of in disgust. "Take care of me! As if
anybody who knows me would think I wanted taking care of!
Why, what a beast you must be, you fellow!"
"Just as you like, young gentleman. I
chaunted you all I know, to keep up your downcast spirits.
You did want comforting. You wanted it rarely. You cried
like an infant."
"I let you 'chaunt', as you call it, to keep
you from swearing."
"And why did I swear, young gentleman?
because I've got an itchy coat in the wet, and no shirt for
a lining. And no breakfast to give me a stomach for this
kind of weather. That's what I've come to in this world! I'm
a walking moral. No wonder I swears, when I don't strike up
a chaunt."
"But why are you sitting here wet through,
Crossjay! Be off home at once, and change, and get ready for
me."
"Mr. Whitford, I promised, and I tossed this
fellow a shilling not to go bothering Miss Middleton."
"The lady wouldn't have none o" the young
gentleman, sir, and I offered to go pioneer for her to the
station, behind her, at a respectful distance."
"As if!—you treacherous cur!" Crossjay
ground his teeth at the betrayer. "Well, Mr. Whitford, and I
didn't trust him, and I stuck to him, or he'd have been
after her whining about his coat and stomach, and talking of
his being a moral. He repeats that to everybody."
"She has gone to the station?" said Vernon.
Not a word on that subject was to be won
from Crossjay.
"How long since?" Vernon partly addressed
Mr. Tramp.
The latter became seized with shivers as he
supplied the information that it might be a quarter of an
hour or twenty minutes. "But what's time to me, sir? If I
had reglar meals, I should carry a clock in my inside. I got
the rheumatics instead."
"Way there!" Vernon cried, and took the
stile at a vault.
"That's what gentlemen can do, who sleeps in
their beds warm," moaned the tramp. "They've no joints."
Vernon handed him a half-crown piece, for he
had been of use for once.
"Mr. Whitford, let me come. If you tell me
to come I may. Do let me come," Crossjay begged with great
entreaty. "I sha'n't see her for . . ."
"Be off, quick!" Vernon cut him short and
pushed on.
The tramp and Crossjay were audible to him;
Crossjay spurning the consolations of the professional sad
man.
Vernon spun across the fields, timing
himself by his watch to reach Rendon station ten minutes
before eleven, though without clearly questioning the nature
of the resolution which precipitated him. Dropping to the
road, he had better foothold than on the slippery
field-path, and he ran. His principal hope was that Clara
would have missed her way. Another pelting of rain agitated
him on her behalf. Might she not as well be suffered to
go?—and sit three hours and more in a railway-carriage with
wet feet!
He clasped the visionary little feet to warm
them on his breast.—But Willoughby's obstinate fatuity
deserved the blow!—But neither she nor her father deserved
the scandal. But she was desperate. Could reasoning touch
her? if not, what would? He knew of nothing. Yesterday he
had spoken strongly to Willoughby, to plead with him to
favour her departure and give her leisure to sound her mind,
and he had left his cousin, convinced that Clara's best
measure was flight: a man so cunning in a pretended
obtuseness backed by senseless pride, and in petty tricks
that sprang of a grovelling tyranny, could only be taught by
facts.
Her recent treatment of him, however, was
very strange; so strange that he might have known himself
better if he had reflected on the bound with which it shot
him to a hard suspicion. De Craye had prepared the world to
hear that he was leaving the Hall. Were they in concert? The
idea struck at his heart colder than if her damp little feet
had been there.
Vernon's full exoneration of her for making
a confidant of himself, did not extend its leniency to the
young lady's character when there was question of her doing
the same with a second gentleman. He could suspect much: he
could even expect to find De Craye at the station.
That idea drew him up in his run, to
meditate on the part he should play; and by drove little Dr.
Corney on the way to Rendon and hailed him, and gave his
cheerless figure the nearest approach to an Irish bug in the
form of a dry seat under an umbrella and water-proof
covering.
"Though it is the worst I can do for you, if
you decline to supplement it with a dose of hot brandy and
water at the Dolphin," said he: "and I'll see you take it,
if you please. I'm bound to ease a Rendon patient out of the
world. Medicine's one of their superstitions, which they
cling to the harder the more useless it gets. Pill and
priest launch him happy between them.—'And what's on your
conscience, Pat?—It's whether your blessing, your Riverence,
would disagree with another drop. Then put the horse before
the cart, my son, and you shall have the two in harmony, and
God speed ye!'—Rendon station, did you say, Vernon? You
shall have my prescription at the Railway Arms, if you're
hurried. You have the look. What is it? Can I help?"
"No. And don't ask."
"You're like the Irish Grenadier who had a
bullet in a humiliating situation. Here's Rendon, and
through it we go with a spanking clatter. Here's Doctor
Corney's dog-cart post-haste again. For there's no dying
without him now, and Repentance is on the death-bed for not
calling him in before. Half a charge of humbug hurts no son
of a gun, friend Vernon, if he'd have his firing take
effect. Be tender to't in man or woman, particularly woman.
So, by goes the meteoric doctor, and I'll bring noses to
window-panes, you'll see, which reminds me of the sweetest
young lady I ever saw, and the luckiest man. When is she off
for her bridal trousseau? And when are they spliced? I'll
not call her perfection, for that's a post, afraid to move.
But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next it. Poetry's
wanted to speak of her. I'm Irish and inflammable, I
suppose, but I never looked on a girl to make a man
comprehend the entire holy meaning of the word rapturous,
like that one. And away she goes! We'll not say another
word. But you're a Grecian, friend Vernon. Now, couldn't you
think her just a whiff of an idea of a daughter of a
peccadillo-Goddess?"
"Deuce take you, Corney, drop me here; I
shall be late for the train," said Vernon, laying hand on
the doctor's arm to check him on the way to the station in
view.
Dr Corney had a Celtic intelligence for a
meaning behind an illogical tongue. He drew up, observing.
"Two minutes run won't hurt you."
He slightly fancied he might have given
offence, though he was well acquainted with Vernon and had a
cordial grasp at the parting.
The truth must be told that Vernon could not
at the moment bear any more talk from an Irishman. Dr.
Corney had succeeded in persuading him not to wonder at
Clara Middleton's liking for Colonel de Craye.
CHAPTER XXVII
AT THE RAILWAY STATION
Clara stood in the waiting-room
contemplating the white rails of the rain-swept line. Her
lips parted at the sight of Vernon.
"You have your ticket?" said he.
She nodded, and breathed more freely; the
matter-of-fact question was reassuring.
"You are wet," he resumed; and it could not
be denied.
"A little. I do not feel it."
"I must beg you to come to the inn hard
by—half a dozen steps. We shall see your train signalled.
Come."
She thought him startlingly authoritative,
but he had good sense to back him; and depressed as she was
by the dampness, she was disposed to yield to reason if he
continued to respect her independence. So she submitted
outwardly, resisted inwardly, on the watch to stop him from
taking any decisive lead.
"Shall we be sure to see the signal, Mr.
Whitford?"
"I'll provide for that."
He spoke to the station-clerk, and conducted
her across the road.
"You are quite alone, Miss Middleton?"
"I am: I have not brought my maid."
"You must take off boots and stockings at
once, and have them dried.
I'll put you in the hands of the landlady."
"But my train!"
"You have full fifteen minutes, besides fair
chances of delay."
He seemed reasonable, the reverse of
hostile, in spite of his commanding air, and that was not
unpleasant in one friendly to her adventure. She controlled
her alert distrustfulness, and passed from him to the
landlady, for her feet were wet and cold, the skirts of her
dress were soiled; generally inspecting herself, she was an
object to be shuddered at, and she was grateful to Vernon
for his inattention to her appearance.
Vernon ordered Dr. Corney's dose, and was
ushered upstairs to a room of portraits, where the
publican's ancestors and family sat against the walls, flat
on their canvas as weeds of the botanist's portfolio,
although corpulency was pretty generally insisted on, and
there were formidable battalions of bust among the females.
All of them had the aspect of the national energy which has
vanquished obstacles to subside on its ideal. They all gazed
straight at the guest. "Drink, and come to this!" they might
have been labelled to say to him. He was in the private
Walhalla of a large class of his countrymen. The existing
host had taken forethought to be of the party in his prime,
and in the central place, looking fresh-fattened there and
sanguine from the performance. By and by a son would shove
him aside; meanwhile he shelved his parent, according to the
manners of energy.
One should not be a critic of our works of
Art in uncomfortable garments. Vernon turned from the
portraits to a stuffed pike in a glass case, and plunged
into sympathy with the fish for a refuge.
Clara soon rejoined him, saying: "But you,
you must be very wet. You were without an umbrella. You must
be wet through, Mr. Whitford."
"We're all wet through, to-day," said
Vernon. "Crossjay's wet through, and a tramp he met."
"The horrid man! But Crossjay should have
turned back when I told him.
Cannot the landlord assist you? You are not tied to time. I
begged
Crossjay to turn back when it began to rain: when it became
heavy I
compelled him. So you met my poor Crossjay?"
"You have not to blame him for betraying
you. The tramp did that. I was thrown on your track quite by
accident. Now pardon me for using authority, and don't be
alarmed, Miss Middleton; you are perfectly free for me; but
you must not run a risk to your health. I met Doctor Corney
coming along, and he prescribed hot brandy and water for a
wet skin, especially for sitting in it. There's the stuff on
the table; I see you have been aware of a singular odour;
you must consent to sip some, as medicine; merely to give
you warmth."
"Impossible, Mr. Whitford: I could not taste
it. But pray, obey Dr.
Corney, if he ordered it for you."
"I can't, unless you do."
"I will, then: I will try."
She held the glass, attempted, and was
baffled by the reek of it.
"Try: you can do anything," said Vernon.
"Now that you find me here, Mr. Whitford!
Anything for myself it would seem, and nothing to save a
friend. But I will really try."
"It must be a good mouthful."
"I will try. And you will finish the glass?"
"With your permission, if you do not leave
too much."
They were to drink out of the same glass;
and she was to drink some of this infamous mixture: and she
was in a kind of hotel alone with him: and he was drenched
in running after her:—all this came of breaking loose for an
hour!
"Oh! what a misfortune that it should be
such a day, Mr. Whitford!"
"Did you not choose the day?"
"Not the weather."
"And the worst of it is, that Willoughby
will come upon Crossjay wet to the bone, and pump him and
get nothing but shufflings, blank lies, and then find him
out and chase him from the house."
Clara drank immediately, and more than she
intended. She held the glass as an enemy to be delivered
from, gasping, uncertain of her breath.
"Never let me be asked to endure such a
thing again!"
"You are unlikely to be running away from
father and friends again."
She panted still with the fiery liquid she
had gulped: and she wondered that it should belie its
reputation in not fortifying her, but rendering her
painfully susceptible to his remarks.
"Mr. Whitford, I need not seek to know what
you think of me."
"What I think? I don't think at all; I wish
to serve you if I can."
"Am I right in supposing you a little afraid
of me? You should not be. I have deceived no one. I have
opened my heart to you, and am not ashamed of having done
so."
"It is an excellent habit, they say."
"It is not a habit with me."
He was touched, and for that reason, in his
dissatisfaction with himself, not unwilling to hurt. "We
take our turn, Miss Middleton. I'm no hero, and a bad
conspirator, so I am not of much avail."
"You have been reserved—but I am going, and
I leave my character behind. You condemned me to the
poison-bowl; you have not touched it yourself"
"In vino veritas: if I do I shall be
speaking my mind."
"Then do, for the sake of mind and body."
"It won't be complimentary."
"You can be harsh. Only say everything."
"Have we time?"
They looked at their watches.
"Six minutes," Clara said.
Vernon's had stopped, penetrated by his
total drenching.
She reproached herself. He laughed to quiet
her. "My dies solemnes are sure to give me duckings; I'm
used to them. As for the watch, it will remind me that it
stopped when you went."
She raised the glass to him. She was happier
and hoped for some little harshness and kindness mixed that
she might carry away to travel with and think over.
He turned the glass as she had given it,
turned it round in putting it to his lips: a scarce
perceptible manoeuvre, but that she had given it expressly
on one side.
It may be hoped that it was not done by
design. Done even accidentally, without a taint of
contrivance, it was an affliction to see, and coiled through
her, causing her to shrink and redden.
Fugitives are subject to strange incidents;
they are not vessels lying safe in harbour. She shut her
lips tight, as if they had stung. The realizing
sensitiveness of her quick nature accused them of a loss of
bloom. And the man who made her smart like this was formal
as a railway official on a platform.
"Now we are both pledged in the
poison-bowl," said he. "And it has the taste of rank poison,
I confess. But the doctor prescribed it, and at sea we must
be sailors. Now, Miss Middleton, time presses: will you
return with me?"
"No! no!"
"Where do you propose to go?"
"To London; to a friend—Miss Darleton."
"What message is there for your father?"
"Say I have left a letter for him in a
letter to be delivered to you."
"To me! And what message for Willoughby?"
"My maid Barclay will hand him a letter at
noon."
"You have sealed Crossjay's fate."
"How?"
"He is probably at this instant undergoing
an interrogation. You may guess at his replies. The letter
will expose him, and Willoughby does not pardon."
"I regret it. I cannot avoid it. Poor boy!
My dear Crossjay! I did not think of how Willoughby might
punish him. I was very thoughtless. Mr. Whitford, my
pin-money shall go for his education. Later, when I am a
little older, I shall be able to support him."
"That's an encumbrance; you should not tie
yourself to drag it about. You are unalterable, of course,
but circumstances are not, and as it happens, women are more
subject to them than we are."
"But I will not be!"
"Your command of them is shown at the
present moment."
"Because I determine to be free?"
"No: because you do the contrary; you don't
determine: you run away from the difficulty, and leave it to
your father and friends to bear. As for Crossjay, you see
you destroy one of his chances. I should have carried him
off before this, if I had not thought it prudent to keep him
on terms with Willoughby. We'll let Crossjay stand aside.
He'll behave like a man of honour, imitating others who have
had to do the same for ladies."
"Have spoken falsely to shelter cowards, you
mean, Mr. Whitford. Oh, I know.—I have but two minutes. The
die is cast. I cannot go back. I must get ready. Will you
see me to the station? I would rather you should hurry
home."
"I will see the last of you. I will wait for
you here. An express runs ahead of your train, and I have
arranged with the clerk for a signal; I have an eye on the
window."
"You are still my best friend, Mr.
Whitford."
"Though?"
"Well, though you do not perfectly
understand what torments have driven me to this."
"Carried on tides and blown by winds?"
"Ah! you do not understand."
"Mysteries?"
"Sufferings are not mysteries, they are very
simple facts."
"Well, then, I don't understand. But decide
at once. I wish you to have your free will."
She left the room.
Dry stockings and boots are better for
travelling in than wet ones, but in spite of her direct
resolve, she felt when drawing them on like one that has
been tripped. The goal was desirable, the ardour was damped.
Vernon's wish that she should have her free will compelled
her to sound it: and it was of course to go, to be
liberated, to cast off incubus and hurt her father? injure
Crossjay? distress her friends? No, and ten times no!
She returned to Vernon in haste, to shun the
reflex of her mind.
He was looking at a closed carriage drawn up
at the station door.
"Shall we run over now, Mr. Whitford?"
"There's no signal. Here it's not so
chilly."
"I ventured to enclose my letter to papa in
yours, trusting you would attend to my request to you to
break the news to him gently and plead for me."
"We will all do the utmost we can."
"I am doomed to vex those who care for me. I
tried to follow your counsel."
"First you spoke to me, and then you spoke
to Miss Dale; and at least you have a clear conscience."
"No."
"What burdens it?"
"I have done nothing to burden it."
"Then it's a clear conscience."
"No."
Vernon's shoulders jerked. Our patience with
an innocent duplicity in women is measured by the place it
assigns to us and another. If he had liked he could have
thought: "You have not done but meditated something to
trouble conscience." That was evident, and her speaking of
it was proof too of the willingness to be dear. He would not
help her. Man's blood, which is the link with women and
responsive to them on the instant for or against, obscured
him. He shrugged anew when she said: "My character would
have been degraded utterly by my staying there. Could you
advise it?"
"Certainly not the degradation of your
character," he said, black on the subject of De Craye, and
not lightened by feelings which made him sharply sensible of
the beggarly dependant that he was, or poor adventuring
scribbler that he was to become.
"Why did you pursue me and wish to stop me,
Mr. Whitford?" said Clara, on the spur of a wound from his
tone.
He replied: "I suppose I'm a busybody; I was
never aware of it till now."
"You are my friend. Only you speak in irony
so much. That was irony, about my clear conscience. I spoke
to you and to Miss Dale: and then I rested and drifted. Can
you not feel for me, that to mention it is like a scorching
furnace? Willoughby has entangled papa. He schemes
incessantly to keep me entangled. I fly from his cunning as
much as from anything. I dread it. I have told you that I am
more to blame than he, but I must accuse him. And
wedding-presents! and congratulations! And to be his guest!"
"All that makes up a plea in mitigation,"
said Vernon.
"Is it not sufficient for you?" she asked
him timidly.
"You have a masculine good sense that tells
you you won't be respected if you run. Three more days there
might cover a retreat with your father."
"He will not listen to me. He confuses me;
Willoughby has bewitched him."
"Commission me: I will see that he listens."
"And go back? Oh, no! To London! Besides,
there is the dining with Mrs. Mountstuart this evening; and
I like her very well, but I must avoid her. She has a kind
of idolatry . . . And what answers can I give? I supplicate
her with looks. She observes them, my efforts to divert them
from being painful produce a comic expression to her, and I
am a charming 'rogue', and I am entertained on the topic she
assumes to be principally interesting me. I must avoid her.
The thought of her leaves me no choice. She is clever. She
could tattoo me with epigrams."
"Stay . . . there you can hold your own."
"She has told me you give me credit for a
spice of wit. I have not discovered my possession. We have
spoken of it; we call it your delusion. She grants me some
beauty; that must be hers."
"There's no delusion in one case or the
other, Miss Middleton. You have beauty and wit; public
opinion will say, wildness: indifference to your reputation
will be charged on you, and your friends will have to admit
it. But you will be out of this difficulty."
"Ah—to weave a second?"
"Impossible to judge until we see how you
escape the first. And I have no more to say. I love your
father. His humour of sententiousness and doctorial stilts
is a mask he delights in, but you ought to know him and not
be frightened by it. If you sat with him an hour at a Latin
task, and if you took his hand and told him you could not
leave him, and no tears!—he would answer you at once. It
would involve a day or two further; disagreeable to you, no
doubt: preferable to the present mode of escape, as I think.
But I have no power whatever to persuade. I have not the
'lady's tongue'. My appeal is always to reason."
"It is a compliment. I loathe the 'lady's
tongue'."
"It's a distinctly good gift, and I wish I
had it. I might have succeeded instead of failing, and
appearing to pay a compliment."
"Surely the express train is very late, Mr.
Whitford?"
"The express has gone by."
"Then we will cross over."
"You would rather not be seen by Mrs.
Mountstuart. That is her carriage drawn up at the station,
and she is in it."
Clara looked, and with the sinking of her
heart said: "I must brave her!"
"In that case I will take my leave of you
here, Miss Middleton."
She gave him her hand. "Why is Mrs.
Mountstuart at the station to-day?"
"I suppose she has driven to meet one of the
guests for her dinner-party. Professor Crooklyn was promised
to your father, and he may be coming by the down-train."
"Go back to the Hall!" exclaimed Clara. "How
can I? I have no more endurance left in me. If I had some
support!—if it were the sense of secretly doing wrong, it
might help me through. I am in a web. I cannot do right,
whatever I do. There is only the thought of saving Crossjay.
Yes, and sparing papa.—Good-bye, Mr. Whitford. I shall
remember your kindness gratefully. I cannot go back."
"You will not?" said he, tempting her to
hesitate.
"No."
"But if you are seen by Mrs. Mountstuart,
you must go back. I'll do my best to take her away. Should
she see you, you must patch up a story and apply to her for
a lift. That, I think, is imperative."
"Not to my mind," said Clara.
He bowed hurriedly, and withdrew. After her
confession, peculiar to her, of possibly finding sustainment
in secretly doing wrong, her flying or remaining seemed to
him a choice of evils: and whilst she stood in bewildered
speculation on his reason for pursuing her—which was not
evident—he remembered the special fear inciting him, and so
far did her justice as to have at himself on that subject.
He had done something perhaps to save her from a cold: such
was his only consolatory thought. He had also behaved like a
man of honour, taking no personal advantage of her
situation; but to reflect on it recalled his astonishing
dryness. The strict man of honour plays a part that he
should not reflect on till about the fall of the curtain,
otherwise he will be likely sometimes to feel the shiver of
foolishness at his good conduct.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE RETURN
Posted in observation at a corner of the
window Clara saw Vernon cross the road to Mrs. Mountstuart
Jenkinson's carriage, transformed to the leanest pattern of
himself by narrowed shoulders and raised coat-collar. He had
such an air of saying, "Tom's a-cold", that her skin crept
in sympathy.
Presently he left the carriage and went into
the station: a bell had rung. Was it her train? He approved
her going, for he was employed in assisting her to go: a
proceeding at variance with many things he had said, but he
was as full of contradiction to-day as women are accused of
being. The train came up. She trembled: no signal had
appeared, and Vernon must have deceived her.
He returned; he entered the carriage, and
the wheels were soon in motion. Immediately thereupon,
Flitch's fly drove past, containing Colonel De Craye.
Vernon could not but have perceived him!
But what was it that had brought the colonel
to this place? The pressure of Vernon's mind was on her and
foiled her efforts to assert her perfect innocence, though
she knew she had done nothing to allure the colonel hither.
Excepting Willoughby, Colonel De Craye was the last person
she would have wished to encounter.
She had now a dread of hearing the bell
which would tell her that Vernon had not deceived her, and
that she was out of his hands, in the hands of some one
else.
She bit at her glove; she glanced at the
concentrated eyes of the publican's family portraits, all
looking as one; she noticed the empty tumbler, and went
round to it and touched it, and the silly spoon in it.
A little yielding to desperation shoots us
to strange distances!
Vernon had asked her whether she was alone.
Connecting that inquiry, singular in itself, and singular in
his manner of putting it, with the glass of burning liquid,
she repeated: "He must have seen Colonel De Craye!" and she
stared at the empty glass, as at something that witnessed to
something: for Vernon was not your supple cavalier
assiduously on the smirk to pin a gallantry to commonplaces.
But all the doors are not open in a young lady's
consciousness, quick of nature though she may be: some are
locked and keyless, some will not open to the key, some are
defended by ghosts inside. She could not have said what the
something witnessed to. If we by chance know more, we have
still no right to make it more prominent than it was with
her. And the smell of the glass was odious; it disgraced
her. She had an impulse to pocket the spoon for a memento,
to show it to grandchildren for a warning. Even the prelude
to the morality to be uttered on the occasion sprang to her
lips: "Here, my dears, is a spoon you would be ashamed to
use in your teacups, yet it was of more value to me at one
period of my life than silver and gold in pointing out,
etc.": the conclusion was hazy, like the conception; she had
her idea.
And in this mood she ran down-stairs and met
Colonel De Craye on the station steps.
The bright illumination of his face was that
of the confident man confirmed in a risky guess in the
crisis of doubt and dispute.
"Miss Middleton!" his joyful surprise
predominated; the pride of an accurate forecast, adding: "I
am not too late to be of service?"
She thanked him for the offer.
"Have you dismissed the fly, Colonel De
Craye?"
"I have just been getting change to pay Mr.
Flitch. He passed me on the road. He is interwound with our
fates to a certainty. I had only to jump in; I knew it, and
rolled along like a magician commanding a genie."
"Have I been . . ."
"Not seriously, nobody doubts you being
under shelter. You will allow me to protect you? My time is
yours."
"I was thinking of a running visit to my
friend Miss Darleton."
"May I venture? I had the fancy that you
wished to see Miss Darleton to-day. You cannot make the
journey unescorted."
"Please retain the fly. Where is
Willoughby?"
"He is in jack-boots. But may I not, Miss
Middleton? I shall never be forgiven if you refuse me."
"There has been searching for me?"
"Some hallooing. But why am I rejected?
Besides, I don't require the fly; I shall walk if I am
banished. Flitch is a wonderful conjurer, but the virtue is
out of him for the next four-and-twenty hours. And it will
be an opportunity to me to make my bow to Miss Darleton!"
"She is rigorous on the conventionalities,
Colonel De Craye."
"I'll appear before her as an ignoramus or a
rebel, whichever she likes best to take in leading-strings.
I remember her. I was greatly struck by her."
"Upon recollection!"
"Memory didn't happen to be handy at the
first mention of the lady's name. As the general said of his
ammunition and transport, there's the army!—but it was
leagues in the rear. Like the footman who went to sleep
after smelling fire in the house, I was thinking of other
things. It will serve me right to be forgotten—if I am. I've
a curiosity to know: a remainder of my coxcombry. Not that
exactly: a wish to see the impression I made on your
friend.—None at all? But any pebble casts a ripple."
"That is hardly an impression," said Clara,
pacifying her irresoluteness with this light talk.
"The utmost to be hoped for by men like me!
I have your permission?—one minute—I will get my ticket."
"Do not," said Clara.
"Your man-servant entreats you!"
She signified a decided negative with the
head, but her eyes were dreamy. She breathed deep: this
thing done would cut the cord. Her sensation of languor
swept over her.
De Craye took a stride. He was accosted by
one of the railway-porters. Flitch's fly was in request for
a gentleman. A portly old gentleman bothered about luggage
appeared on the landing.
"The gentleman can have it," said De Craye,
handing Flitch his money.
"Open the door." Clara said to Flitch.
He tugged at the handle with enthusiasm. The
door was open: she stepped in.
"Then mount the box and I'll jump up beside
you," De Craye called out, after the passion of regretful
astonishment had melted from his features.
Clara directed him to the seat fronting her;
he protested indifference to the wet; she kept the door
unshut. His temper would have preferred to buffet the angry
weather. The invitation was too sweet.
She heard now the bell of her own train.
Driving beside the railway embankment she met the train: it
was eighteen minutes late, by her watch. And why, when it
flung up its whale-spouts of steam, she was not journeying
in it, she could not tell. She had acted of her free will:
that she could say. Vernon had not induced her to remain;
assuredly her present companion had not; and her whole heart
was for flight: yet she was driving back to the Hall, not
devoid of calmness. She speculated on the circumstance
enough to think herself incomprehensible, and there left it,
intent on the scene to come with Willoughby.
"I must choose a better day for London," she
remarked.
De Craye bowed, but did not remove his eyes
from her.
"Miss Middleton, you do not trust me."
She answered: "Say in what way. It seems to
me that I do."
"I may speak?"
"If it depends on my authority."
"Fully?"
"Whatever you have to say. Let me stipulate,
be not very grave. I want cheering in wet weather."
"Miss Middleton, Flitch is charioteer once
more. Think of it. There's a tide that carries him
perpetually to the place where he was cast forth, and a
thread that ties us to him in continuity. I have not the
honour to be a friend of long standing: one ventures on
one's devotion: it dates from the first moment of my seeing
you. Flitch is to blame, if any one. Perhaps the spell would
be broken, were he reinstated in his ancient office."
"Perhaps it would," said Clara, not with her
best of smiles. Willoughby's pride of relentlessness
appeared to her to be receiving a blow by rebound, and that
seemed high justice.
"I am afraid you were right; the poor fellow
has no chance," De Craye pursued. He paused, as for decorum
in the presence of misfortune, and laughed sparklingly:
"Unless I engage him, or pretend to! I verily believe that
Flitch's melancholy person on the skirts of the Hall
completes the picture of the Eden within.—Why will you not
put some trust in me, Miss Middleton?"
"But why should you not pretend to engage
him then, Colonel De Craye?"
"We'll plot it, if you like. Can you trust
me for that?"
"For any act of disinterested kindness, I am
sure."
"You mean it?"
"Without reserve. You could talk publicly of
taking him to London."
"Miss Middleton, just now you were going. My
arrival changed your mind. You distrust me: and ought I to
wonder? The wonder would be all the other way. You have not
had the sort of report of me which would persuade you to
confide, even in a case of extremity. I guessed you were
going. Do you ask me how? I cannot say. Through what they
call sympathy, and that's inexplicable. There's natural
sympathy, natural antipathy. People have to live together to
discover how deep it is!"
Clara breathed her dumb admission of his
truth.
The fly jolted and threatened to lurch.
"Flitch, my dear man!" the colonel gave a
murmuring remonstrance; "for," said he to Clara, whom his
apostrophe to Flitch had set smiling, "we're not safe with
him, however we make believe, and he'll be jerking the heart
out of me before he has done.—But if two of us have not the
misfortune to be united when they come to the discovery,
there's hope. That is, if one has courage and the other has
wisdom. Otherwise they may go to the yoke in spite of
themselves. The great enemy is Pride, who has them both in a
coach and drives them to the fatal door, and the only thing
to do is to knock him off his box while there's a minute to
spare. And as there's no pride like the pride of possession,
the deadliest wound to him is to make that doubtful. Pride
won't be taught wisdom in any other fashion. But one must
have the courage to do it!"
De Craye trifled with the window-sash, to
give his words time to sink in solution.
Who but Willoughby stood for Pride? And who,
swayed by languor, had dreamed of a method that would be
surest and swiftest to teach him the wisdom of surrendering
her?
"You know, Miss Middleton, I study
character," said the colonel.
"I see that you do," she answered.
"You intend to return?"
"Oh, decidedly."
"The day is unfavourable for travelling, I
must say."
"It is."
"You may count on my discretion in the
fullest degree. I throw myself on your generosity when I
assure you that it was not my design to surprise a secret. I
guessed the station, and went there, to put myself at your
disposal."
"Did you," said Clara, reddening slightly,
"chance to see Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson's carriage pass
you when you drove up to the station?"
De Craye had passed a carriage. "I did not
see the lady. She was in it?"
"Yes. And therefore it is better to put
discretion on one side: we may be certain she saw you."
"But not you, Miss Middleton."
"I prefer to think that I am seen. I have a
description of courage,
Colonel De Craye, when it is forced on me."
"I have not suspected the reverse. Courage
wants training, as well as other fine capacities. Mine is
often rusty and rheumatic."
"I cannot hear of concealment or plotting."
"Except, pray, to advance the cause of poor
Flitch!"
"He shall be excepted."
The colonel screwed his head round for a
glance at his coachman's back.
"Perfectly guaranteed to-day!" he said of
Flitch's look of solidity. "The convulsion of the elements
appears to sober our friend; he is only dangerous in calms.
Five minutes will bring us to the park-gates."
Clara leaned forward to gaze at the
hedgeways in the neighbourhood of the Hall strangely
renewing their familiarity with her. Both in thought and
sensation she was like a flower beaten to earth, and she
thanked her feminine mask for not showing how nerveless and
languid she was. She could have accused Vernon of a
treacherous cunning for imposing it on her free will to
decide her fate.
Involuntarily she sighed.
"There is a train at three," said De Craye,
with splendid promptitude.
"Yes, and one at five. We dine with Mrs.
Mountstuart tonight. And I have a passion for solitude! I
think I was never intended for obligations. The moment I am
bound I begin to brood on freedom."
"Ladies who say that, Miss Middleton!. . ."
"What of them?"
"They're feeling too much alone."
She could not combat the remark: by her
self-assurance that she had the principle of faithfulness,
she acknowledged to herself the truth of it:—there is no
freedom for the weak. Vernon had said that once. She tried
to resist the weight of it, and her sheer inability
precipitated her into a sense of pitiful dependence.
Half an hour earlier it would have been a
perilous condition to be traversing in the society of a
closely scanning reader of fair faces. Circumstances had
changed. They were at the gates of the park.
"Shall I leave you?" said De Craye.
"Why should you?" she replied.
He bent to her gracefully.
The mild subservience flattered Clara's
languor. He had not compelled her to be watchful on her
guard, and she was unaware that he passed it when she
acquiesced to his observation, "An anticipatory story is a
trap to the teller."
"It is," she said. She had been thinking as
much.
He threw up his head to consult the brain
comically with a dozen little blinks.
"No, you are right, Miss Middleton,
inventing beforehand never prospers; 't is a way to trip our
own cleverness. Truth and mother-wit are the best
counsellors: and as you are the former, I'll try to act up
to the character you assign me."
Some tangle, more prospective than present,
seemed to be about her as she reflected. But her intention
being to speak to Willoughby without subterfuge, she was
grateful to her companion for not tempting her to swerve. No
one could doubt his talent for elegant fibbing, and she was
in the humour both to admire and adopt the art, so she was
glad to be rescued from herself. How mother-wit was to
second truth she did not inquire, and as she did not happen
to be thinking of Crossjay, she was not troubled by having
to consider how truth and his tale of the morning would be
likely to harmonize.
Driving down the park, she had full
occupation in questioning whether her return would be
pleasing to Vernon, who was the virtual cause of it, though
he had done so little to promote it: so little that she
really doubted his pleasure in seeing her return.
CHAPTER XXIX
IN WHICH THE SENSITIVENESS OF SIR
WILLOUGHBY IS EXPLAINED: AND HE RECEIVES MUCH INSTRUCTION
THE Hall-dock over the stables was then
striking twelve. It was the hour for her flight to be made
known, and Clara sat in a turmoil of dim apprehension that
prepared her nervous frame for a painful blush on her being
asked by Colonel De Craye whether she had set her watch
correctly. He must, she understood, have seen through her at
the breakfast table: and was she not cruelly indebted to him
for her evasion of Willoughby? Such perspicacity of vision
distressed and frightened her; at the same time she was
obliged to acknowledge that he had not presumed on it. Her
dignity was in no way the worse for him. But it had been at
a man's mercy, and there was the affliction.
She jumped from the fly as if she were
leaving danger behind. She could at the moment have greeted
Willoughby with a conventionally friendly smile. The doors
were thrown open and young Crossjay flew out to her. He hung
and danced on her hand, pressed the hand to his mouth,
hardly believing that he saw and touched her, and in a lingo
of dashes and asterisks related how Sir Willoughby had found
him under the boathouse eaves and pumped him, and had been
sent off to Hoppner's farm, where there was a sick child,
and on along the road to a labourer's cottage: "For I said
you're so kind to poor people, Miss Middleton; that's true,
now that is true. And I said you wouldn't have me with you
for fear of contagion!" This was what she had feared.
"Every crack and bang in a boys vocabulary,"
remarked the colonel, listening to him after he had paid
Flitch.
The latter touched his hat till he had drawn
attention to himself, when he exclaimed, with rosy
melancholy: "Ah! my lady, ah! colonel, if ever I lives to
drink some of the old port wine in the old Hall at
Christmastide!" Their healths would on that occasion be
drunk, it was implied. He threw up his eyes at the windows,
humped his body and drove away.
"Then Mr. Whitford has not come back?" said
Clara to Crossjay.
"No, Miss Middleton. Sir Willoughby has, and
he's upstairs in his room dressing."
"Have you seen Barclay?"
"She has just gone into the laboratory. I
told her Sir Willoughby wasn't there."
"Tell me, Crossjay, had she a letter?"
"She had something."
"Run: say I am here; I want the letter, it
is mine."
Crossjay sprang away and plunged into the
arms of Sir Willoughby.
"One has to catch the fellow like a
football," exclaimed the injured gentleman, doubled across
the boy and holding him fast, that he might have an object
to trifle with, to give himself countenance: he needed it.
"Clara, you have not been exposed to the weather?"
"Hardly at all."
"I rejoice. You found shelter?"
"Yes."
"In one of the cottages?"
"Not in a cottage; but I was perfectly
sheltered. Colonel De Craye passed a fly before he met me .
. ."
"Flitch again!" ejaculated the colonel.
"Yes, you have luck, you have luck,"
Willoughby addressed him, still clutching Crossjay and
treating his tugs to get loose as an invitation to caresses.
But the foil barely concealed his livid perturbation.
"Stay by me, sir," he said at last sharply
to Crossjay, and Clara touched the boy's shoulder in
admonishment of him.
She turned to the colonel as they stepped
into the hall: "I have not thanked you, Colonel De Craye."
She dropped her voice to its lowest: "A letter in my
handwriting in the laboratory."
Crossjay cried aloud with pain.
"I have you!" Willoughby rallied him with a
laugh not unlike the squeak of his victim.
"You squeeze awfully hard, sir."
"Why, you milksop!"
"Am I! But I want to get a book."
"Where is the book?"
"In the laboratory."
Colonel De Craye, sauntering by the
laboratory door, sung out: "I'll fetch you your book. What
is it? EARLY NAVIGATORS? INFANT HYMNS? I think my cigar-case
is in here."
"Barclay speaks of a letter for me,"
Willoughby said to Clara, "marked to be delivered to me at
noon!"
"In case of my not being back earlier; it
was written to avert anxiety," she replied.
"You are very good."
"Oh, good! Call me anything but good. Here
are the ladies. Dear ladies!" Clara swam to meet them as
they issued from a morning-room into the hall, and
interjections reigned for a couple of minutes.
Willoughby relinquished his grasp of
Crossjay, who darted instantaneously at an angle to the
laboratory, whither he followed, and he encountered De Craye
coming out, but passed him in silence.
Crossjay was rangeing and peering all over
the room. Willoughby went to his desk and the battery-table
and the mantelpiece. He found no letter. Barclay had
undoubtedly informed him that she had left a letter for him
in the laboratory, by order of her mistress after breakfast.
He hurried out and ran upstairs in time to
see De Craye and Barclay breaking a conference.
He beckoned to her. The maid lengthened her
upper lip and beat her dress down smooth: signs of the
apprehension of a crisis and of the getting ready for
action.
"My mistress's bell has just rung, Sir
Willoughby."
"You had a letter for me."
"I said . . ."
"You said when I met you at the foot of the
stairs that you had left a letter for me in the laboratory."
"It is lying on my mistress's toilet-table."
"Get it."
Barclay swept round with another of her
demure grimaces. It was apparently necessary with her that
she should talk to herself in this public manner.
Willoughby waited for her; but there was no
reappearance of the maid.
Struck by the ridicule of his posture of
expectation, and of his whole behaviour, he went to his
bedroom suite, shut himself in, and paced the chambers,
amazed at the creature he had become. Agitated like the
commonest of wretches, destitute of self-control, not able
to preserve a decent mask, be, accustomed to inflict these
emotions and tremours upon others, was at once the puppet
and dupe of an intriguing girl. His very stature seemed
lessened. The glass did not say so, but the shrunken heart
within him did, and wailfully too. Her compunction—'Call me
anything but good'—coming after her return to the Hall
beside De Craye, and after the visible passage of a secret
between them in his presence, was a confession: it blew at
him with the fury of a furnace-blast in his face. Egoist
agony wrung the outcry from him that dupery is a more
blessed condition. He desired to be deceived.
He could desire such a thing only in a
temporary transport; for above all he desired that no one
should know of his being deceived; and were he a dupe the
deceiver would know it, and her accomplice would know it,
and the world would soon know of it: that world against
whose tongue he stood defenceless. Within the shadow of his
presence he compressed opinion, as a strong frost binds the
springs of earth, but beyond it his shivering sensitiveness
ran about in dread of a stripping in a wintry atmosphere.
This was the ground of his hatred of the world: it was an
appalling fear on behalf of his naked eidolon, the tender
infant Self swaddled in his name before the world, for which
he felt as the most highly civilized of men alone can feel,
and which it was impossible for him to stretch out hands to
protect. There the poor little loveable creature ran for any
mouth to blow on; and frostnipped and bruised, it cried to
him, and he was of no avail! Must we not detest a world that
so treats us? We loathe it the more, by the measure of our
contempt for them, when we have made the people within the
shadow-circle of our person slavish.
And he had been once a young prince in
popularity: the world had been his possession. Clara's
treatment of him was a robbery of land and subjects. His
grander dream had been a marriage with a lady of so glowing
a fame for beauty and attachment to her lord that the world
perforce must take her for witness to merits which would
silence detraction and almost, not quite (it was
undesireable), extinguish envy. But for the nature of women
his dream would have been realized. He could not bring
himself to denounce Fortune. It had cost him a grievous pang
to tell Horace De Craye he was lucky; he had been educated
in the belief that Fortune specially prized and cherished
little Willoughby: hence of necessity his maledictions fell
upon women, or he would have forfeited the last blanket of a
dream warm as poets revel in.
But if Clara deceived him, he inspired her
with timidity. There was matter in that to make him wish to
be deceived. She had not looked him much in the face: she
had not crossed his eyes: she had looked deliberately
downward, keeping her head up, to preserve an exterior
pride. The attitude had its bewitchingness: the girl's
physical pride of stature scorning to bend under a load of
conscious guilt, had a certain black-angel beauty for which
he felt a hugging hatred: and according to his policy when
these fits of amorous meditation seized him, he burst from
the present one in the mood of his more favourable
conception of Clara, and sought her out.
The quality of the mood of hugging hatred
is, that if you are disallowed the hug, you do not hate the
fiercer.
Contrariwise the prescription of a decorous
distance of two feet ten inches, which is by measurement the
delimitation exacted of a rightly respectful deportment, has
this miraculous effect on the great creature man, or often
it has: that his peculiar hatred returns to the reluctant
admiration begetting it, and his passion for the hug falls
prostrate as one of the Faithful before the shrine; he is
reduced to worship by fasting.
(For these mysteries, consult the sublime
chapter in the GREAT BOOK, the Seventy-first on LOVE,
wherein nothing is written, but the Reader receives a
Lanthorn, a Powder-cask and a Pick-axe, and therewith
pursues his yellow-dusking path across the rubble of
preceding excavators in the solitary quarry: a yet more
instructive passage than the overscrawled Seventieth, or
French Section, whence the chapter opens, and where hitherto
the polite world has halted.)
The hurry of the hero is on us, we have no
time to spare for mining works: he hurried to catch her
alone, to wreak his tortures on her in a bitter semblance of
bodily worship, and satiated, then comfortably to spurn. He
found her protected by Barclay on the stairs.
"That letter for me?" he said.
"I think I told you, Willoughby, there was a
letter I left with Barclay to reassure you in case of my not
returning early," said Clara. "It was unnecessary for her to
deliver it."
"Indeed? But any letter, any writing of
yours, and from you to me! You have it still?"
"No, I have destroyed it."
"That was wrong."
"It could not have given you pleasure."
"My dear Clara, one line from you!"
"There were but three."
Barclay stood sucking her lips. A maid in
the secrets of her mistress is a purchaseable maid, for if
she will take a bribe with her right hand she will with her
left; all that has to be calculated is the nature and amount
of the bribe: such was the speculation indulged by Sir
Willoughby, and he shrank from the thought and declined to
know more than that he was on a volcanic hillside where a
thin crust quaked over lava. This was a new condition with
him, representing Clara's gain in their combat. Clara did
not fear his questioning so much as he feared her candour.
Mutually timid, they were of course formally
polite, and no plain speaking could have told one another
more distinctly that each was defensive. Clara stood pledged
to the fib; packed, scaled and posted; and he had only to
ask to have it, supposing that he asked with a voice not
exactly peremptory.
She said in her heart, "It is your fault:
you are relentless and you would ruin Crossjay to punish him
for devoting himself to me, like the poor thoughtless boy he
is! and so I am bound in honour to do my utmost for him."
The reciprocal devotedness, moreover, served
two purposes: it preserved her from brooding on the
humiliation of her lame flight, and flutter back, and it
quieted her mind in regard to the precipitate intimacy of
her relations with Colonel De Craye. Willoughby's boast of
his implacable character was to blame. She was at war with
him, and she was compelled to put the case in that light.
Crossjay must be shielded from one who could not spare an
offender, so Colonel De Craye quite naturally was called on
for his help, and the colonel's dexterous aid appeared to
her more admirable than alarming.
Nevertheless, she would not have answered a
direct question falsely. She was for the fib, but not the
lie; at a word she could be disdainful of subterfuges. Her
look said that. Willoughby perceived it. She had written him
a letter of three lines: "There were but three": and she had
destroyed the letter. Something perchance was repented by
her? Then she had done him an injury! Between his wrath at
the suspicion of an injury, and the prudence enjoined by his
abject coveting of her, he consented to be fooled for the
sake of vengeance, and something besides.
"Well! here you are, safe; I have you!" said
he, with courtly exultation: "and that is better than your
handwriting. I have been all over the country after you."
"Why did you? We are not in a barbarous
land," said Clara.
"Crossjay talks of your visiting a sick
child, my love:—you have changed your dress?"
"You see."
"The boy declared you were going to that
farm of Hoppner's, and some cottage. I met at my gates a
tramping vagabond who swore to seeing you and the boy in a
totally contrary direction."
"Did you give him money?"
"I fancy so."
"Then he was paid for having seen me."
Willoughby tossed his head: it might be as
she suggested; beggars are liars.
"But who sheltered you, my dear Clara? You
had not been heard of at
Hoppner's."
"The people have been indemnified for their
pains. To pay them more would be to spoil them. You disperse
money too liberally. There was no fever in the place. Who
could have anticipated such a downpour! I want to consult
Miss Dale on the important theme of a dress I think of
wearing at Mrs Mountstuart's to-night."
"Do. She is unerring."
"She has excellent taste."
"She dresses very simply herself."
"But it becomes her. She is one of the few
women whom I feel I could not improve with a touch."
"She has judgement."
He reflected and repeated his encomium.
The shadow of a dimple in Clara's cheek
awakened him to the idea that she had struck him somewhere:
and certainly he would never again be able to put up the
fiction of her jealousy of Laetitia. What, then, could be
this girl's motive for praying to be released? The
interrogation humbled him: he fled from the answer.
Willoughby went in search of De Craye. That
sprightly intriguer had no intention to let himself be
caught solus. He was undiscoverable until the assembly
sounded, when Clara dropped a public word or two, and he
spoke in perfect harmony with her. After that, he gave his
company to Willoughby for an hour at billiards, and was well
beaten.
The announcement of a visit of Mrs.
Mountstuart Jenkinson took the gentlemen to the
drawing-room, rather suspecting that something stood in the
way of her dinner-party. As it happened, she was lamenting
only the loss of one of the jewels of the party: to wit, the
great Professor Crooklyn, invited to meet Dr. Middleton at
her table; and she related how she had driven to the station
by appointment, the professor being notoriously a
bother-headed traveller: as was shown by the fact that he
had missed his train in town, for he had not arrived;
nothing had been seen of him. She cited Vernon Whitford for
her authority that the train had been inspected, and the
platform scoured to find the professor.
"And so," said she, "I drove home your Green
Man to dry him; he was wet through and chattering; the man
was exactly like a skeleton wrapped in a sponge, and if he
escapes a cold he must be as invulnerable as he boasts
himself. These athletes are terrible boasters."
"They climb their Alps to crow," said Clara,
excited by her apprehension that Mrs. Mountstuart would
speak of having seen the colonel near the station.
There was a laugh, and Colonel De Craye
laughed loudly as it flashed through him that a quick-witted
impressionable girl like Miss Middleton must, before his
arrival at the Hall, have speculated on such obdurate clay
as Vernon Whitford was, with humourous despair at his
uselessness to her. Glancing round, he saw Vernon standing
fixed in a stare at the young lady.
"You heard that, Whitford?" he said, and
Clara's face betokening an extremer contrition than he
thought was demanded, the colonel rallied the Alpine climber
for striving to be the tallest of them—Signor Excelsior!—and
described these conquerors of mountains pancaked on the
rocks in desperate embraces, bleached here, burned there,
barked all over, all to be able to say they had been up "so
high"—had conquered another mountain! He was extravagantly
funny and self-satisfied: a conqueror of the sex having such
different rewards of enterprise.
Vernon recovered in time to accept the
absurdities heaped on him.
"Climbing peaks won't compare with hunting a
wriggler," said he.
His allusion to the incessant pursuit of
young Crossjay to pin him to lessons was appreciated.
Clara felt the thread of the look he cast
from herself to Colonel De Craye. She was helpless, if he
chose to misjudge her. Colonel De Craye did not!
Crossjay had the misfortune to enter the
drawing-room while Mrs. Mountstuart was compassionating
Vernon for his ducking in pursuit of the wriggler; which De
Craye likened to "going through the river after his eel:"
and immediately there was a cross-questioning of the boy
between De Craye and Willoughby on the subject of his latest
truancy, each gentleman trying to run him down in a palpable
fib. They were succeeding brilliantly when Vernon put a stop
to it by marching him off to hard labour. Mrs. Mountstuart
was led away to inspect the beautiful porcelain service, the
present of Lady Busshe. "Porcelain again!" she said to
Willoughby, and would have signalled to the "dainty rogue"
to come with them, had not Clara been leaning over to
Laetitia, talking to her in an attitude too graceful to be
disturbed. She called his attention to it, slightly
wondering at his impatience. She departed to meet an
afternoon train on the chance that it would land the
professor. "But tell Dr. Middleton," said she, "I fear I
shall have no one worthy of him! And," she added to
Willoughby, as she walked out to her carriage, "I shall
expect you to do the great-gunnery talk at table."
"Miss Dale keeps it up with him best," said
Willoughby.
"She does everything best! But my
dinner-table is involved, and I cannot count on a young
woman to talk across it. I would hire a lion of a menagerie,
if one were handy, rather than have a famous scholar at my
table, unsupported by another famous scholar. Doctor
Middleton would ride down a duke when the wine is in him. He
will terrify my poor flock. The truth is, we can't leaven
him: I foresee undigested lumps of conversation, unless you
devote yourself."
"I will devote myself," said Willoughby.
"I can calculate on Colonel De Craye and our
porcelain beauty for any quantity of sparkles, if you
promise that. They play well together. You are not to be one
of the gods to-night, but a kind of Jupiter's
cup-bearer;—Juno's, if you like; and Lady Busshe and Lady
Culmer, and all your admirers shall know subsequently what
you have done. You see my alarm. I certainly did not rank
Professor Crooklyn among the possibly faithless, or I never
would have ventured on Doctor Middleton at my table. My
dinner-parties have hitherto been all successes. Naturally I
feel the greater anxiety about this one. For a single
failure is all the more conspicuous. The exception is
everlastingly cited! It is not so much what people say, but
my own sentiments. I hate to fail. However, if you are true,
we may do."
"Whenever the great gun goes off I will fall
on my face, madam!"
"Something of that sort," said the dame,
smiling, and leaving him to reflect on the egoism of women.
For the sake of her dinner-party he was to be a cipher in
attendance on Dr. Middleton, and Clara and De Craye were to
be encouraged in sparkling together! And it happened that he
particularly wished to shine. The admiration of his county
made him believe he had a flavour in general society that
was not yet distinguished by his bride, and he was to
relinquish his opportunity in order to please Mrs.
Mountstuart! Had she been in the pay of his rival, she could
not have stipulated for more.
He remembered young Crossjay's instant
quietude, after struggling in his grasp, when Clara laid her
hand on the boy: and from that infinitesimal circumstance he
deduced the boy's perception of a differing between himself
and his bride, and a transfer of Crossjay's allegiance from
him to her. She shone; she had the gift of female beauty;
the boy was attracted to it. That boy must be made to feel
his treason. But the point of the cogitation was, that
similarly were Clara to see her affianced shining, as shine
he could when lighted up by admirers, there was the
probability that the sensation of her littleness would
animate her to take aim at him once more. And then was the
time for her chastisement.
A visit to Dr. Middleton in the library
satisfied him that she had not been renewing her entreaties
to leave Patterne. No, the miserable coquette had now her
pastime, and was content to stay. Deceit was in the air: he
heard the sound of the shuttle of deceit without seeing it;
but, on the whole, mindful of what he had dreaded during the
hours of her absence, he was rather flattered, witheringly
flattered. What was it that he had dreaded? Nothing less
than news of her running away. Indeed a silly fancy, a
lover's fancy! yet it had led him so far as to suspect,
after parting with De Craye in the rain, that his friend and
his bride were in collusion, and that he should not see them
again. He had actually shouted on the rainy road the
theatric call "Fooled!" one of the stage-cries which are
cries of nature! particularly the cry of nature with men who
have driven other men to the cry.
Constantia Durham had taught him to believe
women capable of explosions of treason at half a minute's
notice. And strangely, to prove that women are all of a
pack, she had worn exactly the same placidity of countenance
just before she fled, as Clara yesterday and to-day; no
nervousness, no flushes, no twitches of the brows, but
smoothness, ease of manner—an elegant sisterliness, one
might almost say: as if the creature had found a midway and
borderline to walk on between cruelty and kindness, and
between repulsion and attraction; so that up to the verge of
her breath she did forcefully attract, repelling at one
foot's length with her armour of chill serenity. Not with
any disdain, with no passion: such a line as she herself
pursued she indicated to him on a neighbouring parallel. The
passion in her was like a place of waves evaporated to a
crust of salt. Clara's resemblance to Constantia in this
instance was ominous. For him whose tragic privilege it had
been to fold each of them in his arms, and weigh on their
eyelids, and see the dissolving mist-deeps in their eyes, it
was horrible. Once more the comparison overcame him.
Constantia he could condemn for revealing too much to his
manly sight: she had met him almost half-way: well, that was
complimentary and sanguine: but her frankness was a baldness
often rendering it doubtful which of the two, lady or
gentleman, was the object of the chase—an extreme perplexity
to his manly soul. Now Clara's inner spirit was shyer, shy
as a doe down those rose-tinged abysses; she allured both
the lover and the hunter; forests of heavenliness were in
her flitting eyes. Here the difference of these fair women
made his present fate an intolerable anguish. For if
Constantia was like certain of the ladies whom he had
rendered unhappy, triumphed over, as it is queerly called,
Clara was not. Her individuality as a woman was a thing he
had to bow to. It was impossible to roll her up in the sex
and bestow a kick on the travelling bundle. Hence he loved
her, though she hurt him. Hence his wretchedness, and but
for the hearty sincerity of his faith in the Self he loved
likewise and more, he would have been hangdog abject.
As for De Craye, Willoughby recollected his
own exploits too proudly to put his trust in a man. That
fatal conjunction of temper and policy had utterly thrown
him off his guard, or he would not have trusted the fellow
even in the first hour of his acquaintance with Clara. But
he had wished her to be amused while he wove his plans to
retain her at the Hall:—partly imagining that she would
weary of his neglect: vile delusion! In truth he should have
given festivities, he should have been the sun of a circle,
and have revealed himself to her in his more dazzling form.
He went near to calling himself foolish after the tremendous
reverberation of "Fooled!" had ceased to shake him.
How behave? It slapped the poor gentleman's
pride in the face to ask. A private talk with her would
rouse her to renew her supplications. He saw them flickering
behind the girl's transparent calmness. That calmness really
drew its dead ivory hue from the suppression of them:
something as much he guessed; and he was not sure either of
his temper or his policy if he should hear her repeat her
profane request.
An impulse to address himself to Vernon and
discourse with him jocularly on the childish whim of a young
lady, moved perhaps by some whiff of jealousy, to shun the
yoke, was checked. He had always taken so superior a pose
with Vernon that he could not abandon it for a moment: on
such a subject too! Besides, Vernon was one of your men who
entertain the ideas about women of fellows that have never
conquered one: or only one, we will say in his case, knowing
his secret history; and that one no flag to boast of.
Densely ignorant of the sex, his nincompoopish
idealizations, at other times preposterous, would now be
annoying. He would probably presume on Clara's inconceivable
lapse of dignity to read his master a lecture: he was quite
equal to a philippic upon woman's rights. This man had not
been afraid to say that he talked common sense to women. He
was an example of the consequence!
Another result was that Vernon did not talk
sense to men. Willoughby's wrath at Clara's exposure of him
to his cousin dismissed the proposal of a colloquy so likely
to sting his temper, and so certain to diminish his
loftiness. Unwilling to speak to anybody, he was isolated,
yet consciously begirt by the mysterious action going on all
over the house, from Clara and De Craye to Laetitia and
young Crossjay, down to Barclay the maid. His blind
sensitiveness felt as we may suppose a spider to feel when
plucked from his own web and set in the centre of another's.
Laetitia looked her share in the mystery. A burden was on
her eyelashes. How she could have come to any suspicion of
the circumstances, he was unable to imagine. Her intense
personal sympathy, it might be; he thought so with some
gentle pity for her—of the paternal pat-back order of pity.
She adored him, by decree of Venus; and the Goddess had not
decreed that he should find consolation in adoring her. Nor
could the temptings of prudent counsel in his head induce
him to run the risk of such a total turnover as the
incurring of Laetitia's pity of himself by confiding in her.
He checked that impulse also, and more sovereignly. For him
to be pitied by Laetitia seemed an upsetting of the scheme
of Providence. Providence, otherwise the discriminating
dispensation of the good things of life, had made him the
beacon, her the bird: she was really the last person to whom
he could unbosom. The idea of his being in a position that
suggested his doing so, thrilled him with fits of rage; and
it appalled him. There appeared to be another Power. The
same which had humiliated him once was menacing him anew.
For it could not be Providence, whose favourite he had ever
been. We must have a couple of Powers to account for
discomfort when Egoism is the kernel of our religion.
Benevolence had singled him for uncommon benefits:
malignancy was at work to rob him of them. And you think
well of the world, do you!
Of necessity he associated Clara with the
darker Power pointing the knife at the quick of his pride.
Still, he would have raised her weeping: he would have
stanched her wounds bleeding: he had an infinite thirst for
her misery, that he might ease his heart of its charitable
love. Or let her commit herself, and be cast off. Only she
must commit herself glaringly, and be cast off by the world
as well. Contemplating her in the form of a discarded weed,
he had a catch of the breath: she was fair. He implored his
Power that Horace De Craye might not be the man! Why any
man? An illness, fever, fire, runaway horses, personal
disfigurement, a laming, were sufficient. And then a formal
and noble offer on his part to keep to the engagement with
the unhappy wreck: yes, and to lead the limping thing to the
altar, if she insisted. His imagination conceived it, and
the world's applause besides.
Nausea, together with a sense of duty to his
line, extinguished that loathsome prospect of a mate, though
without obscuring his chivalrous devotion to his gentleman's
word of honour, which remained in his mind to compliment him
permanently.
On the whole, he could reasonably hope to
subdue her to admiration. He drank a glass of champagne at
his dressing; an unaccustomed act, but, as he remarked
casually to his man Pollington, for whom the rest of the
bottle was left, he had taken no horse-exercise that day.
Having to speak to Vernon on business, he
went to the schoolroom, where he discovered Clara, beautiful
in full evening attire, with her arm on young Crossjay's
shoulder, and heard that the hard task-master had abjured
Mrs. Mountstuart's party, and had already excused himself,
intending to keep Crossjay to the grindstone. Willoughby was
for the boy, as usual, and more sparklingly than usual.
Clara looked at him in some surprise. He rallied Vernon with
great zest, quite silencing him when he said: "I bear
witness that the fellow was here at his regular hour for
lessons, and were you?" He laid his hand on Crossjay,
touching Clara's.
"You will remember what I told you,
Crossjay," said she, rising from the seat gracefully to
escape the touch. "It is my command."
Crossjay frowned and puffed.
"But only if I'm questioned," he said.
"Certainly," she replied.
"Then I question the rascal," said
Willoughby, causing a start. "What, sir, is your opinion of
Miss Middleton in her robe of state this evening?"
"Now, the truth, Crossjay!" Clara held up a
finger; and the boy could see she was playing at archness,
but for Willoughby it was earnest. "The truth is not likely
to offend you or me either," he murmured to her.
"I wish him never, never, on any excuse, to
speak anything else."
"I always did think her a Beauty," Crossjay
growled. He hated the having to say it.
"There!" exclaimed Sir Willoughby, and bent,
extending an arm to her.
"You have not suffered from the truth, my Clara!"
Her answer was: "I was thinking how he might
suffer if he were taught to tell the reverse."
"Oh! for a fair lady!"
"That is the worst of teaching, Willoughby."
"We'll leave it to the fellow's instinct; he
has our blood in him. I could convince you, though, if I
might cite circumstances. Yes! But yes! And yes again! The
entire truth cannot invariably be told. I venture to say it
should not."
"You would pardon it for the 'fair lady'?"
"Applaud, my love."
He squeezed the hand within his arm,
contemplating her.
She was arrayed in a voluminous robe of pale
blue silk vapourous with trimmings of light gauze of the
same hue, gaze de Chambery, matching her fair hair and dear
skin for the complete overthrow of less inflammable men than
Willoughby.
"Clara!" sighed be.
"If so, it would really be generous," she
said, "though the teaching h bad."
"I fancy I can be generous."
"Do we ever know?"
He turned his head to Vernon, issuing brief
succinct instructions for letters to be written, and drew
her into the hall, saying: "Know? There are people who do
not know themselves and as they are the majority they
manufacture the axioms. And it is assumed that we have to
swallow them. I may observe that I think I know. I decline
to be engulphed in those majorities. 'Among them, but not of
them.' I know this, that my aim in life is to be generous."
"Is it not an impulse or disposition rather
than an aim?"
"So much I know," pursued Willoughby,
refusing to be tripped. But she rang discordantly in his
ear. His "fancy that he could be generous" and his "aim at
being generous" had met with no response. "I have given
proofs," he said, briefly, to drop a subject upon which he
was not permitted to dilate; and he murmured, "People
acquainted with me . . . !" She was asked if she expected
him to boast of generous deeds. "From childhood!" she heard
him mutter; and she said to herself, "Release me, and you
shall be everything!"
The unhappy gentleman ached as he talked:
for with men and with hosts of women to whom he was
indifferent, never did he converse in this shambling,
third-rate, sheepish manner, devoid of all highness of tone
and the proper precision of an authority. He was unable to
fathom the cause of it, but Clara imposed it on him, and
only in anger could he throw it off. The temptation to an
outburst that would flatter him with the sound of his
authoritative voice had to be resisted on a night when he
must be composed if he intended to shine, so he merely
mentioned Lady Busshe's present, to gratify spleen by
preparing the ground for dissension, and prudently
acquiesced in her anticipated slipperiness. She would rather
not look at it now, she said.
"Not now; very well," said he.
His immediate deference made her regretful.
"There is hardly time,
Willoughby."
"My dear, we shall have to express our
thanks to her."
"I cannot."
His arm contracted sharply. He was obliged
to be silent.
Dr Middleton, Laetitia, and the ladies
Eleanor and Isabel joining them in the hall, found two
figures linked together in a shadowy indication of halves
that have fallen apart and hang on the last thread of
junction. Willoughby retained her hand on his arm; he held
to it as the symbol of their alliance, and oppressed the
girl's nerves by contact, with a frame labouring for breath.
De Craye looked on them from overhead. The carriages were at
the door, and Willoughby said, "Where's Horace? I suppose
he's taking a final shot at his Book of Anecdotes and neat
collection of Irishisms."
"No," replied the colonel, descending.
"That's a spring works of itself and has discovered the
secret of continuous motion, more's the pity!—unless you'll
be pleased to make it of use to Science."
He gave a laugh of good-humour.
"Your laughter, Horace, is a capital comment
on your wit."
Willoughby said it with the air of one who
has flicked a whip.
"'Tis a genial advertisement of a vacancy,"
said De Craye.
"Precisely: three parts auctioneer to one
for the property."
"Oh, if you have a musical quack, score it a
point in his favour,
Willoughby, though you don't swallow his drug."
"If he means to be musical, let him keep
time."
"Am I late?" said De Craye to the ladies,
proving himself an adept in the art of being gracefully
vanquished, and so winning tender hearts.
Willoughby had refreshed himself. At the
back of his mind there was a suspicion that his adversary
would not have yielded so flatly without an assurance of
practically triumphing, secretly getting the better of him;
and it filled him with venom for a further bout at the next
opportunity: but as he had been sarcastic and mordant, he
had shown Clara what he could do in a way of speaking
different from the lamentable cooing stuff, gasps and feeble
protestations to which, he knew not how, she reduced him.
Sharing the opinion of his race, that blunt personalities,
or the pugilistic form, administered directly on the salient
features, are exhibitions of mastery in such encounters, he
felt strong and solid, eager for the successes of the
evening. De Craye was in the first carriage as escort to the
ladies Eleanor and Isabel. Willoughby, with Clara, Laetitia,
and Dr. Middleton, followed, all silent, for the Rev. Doctor
was ostensibly pondering; and Willoughby was damped a little
when he unlocked his mouth to say:
"And yet I have not observed that Colonel de
Craye is anything of a Celtiberian Egnatius meriting
fustigation for an untimely display of well-whitened teeth,
sir: 'quicquid est, ubicunque est, quodcunque agit,
renidet:':—ha? a morbus neither charming nor urbane to the
general eye, however consolatory to the actor. But this
gentleman does not offend so, or I am so strangely
prepossessed in his favour as to be an incompetent witness."
Dr Middleton's persistent ha? eh? upon an
honest frown of inquiry plucked an answer out of Willoughby
that was meant to be humourously scornful, and soon became
apologetic under the Doctor's interrogatively grasping gaze.
"These Irishmen," Willoughby said, "will
play the professional jester as if it were an office they
were born to. We must play critic now and then, otherwise we
should have them deluging us with their Joe Millerisms."
"With their O'Millerisms you would say,
perhaps?"
Willoughby did his duty to the joke, but the
Rev. Doctor, though he wore the paternal smile of a man that
has begotten hilarity, was not perfectly propitiated, and
pursued: "Nor to my apprehension is 'the man's laugh the
comment on his wit' unchallengeably new: instances of
cousinship germane to the phrase will recur to you. But it
has to be noted that it was a phrase of assault; it was
ostentatiously battery; and I would venture to remind you,
friend, that among the elect, considering that it is as
fatally facile to spring the laugh upon a man as to deprive
him of his life, considering that we have only to condescend
to the weapon, and that the more popular necessarily the
more murderous that weapon is,—among the elect, to which it
is your distinction to aspire to belong, the rule holds to
abstain from any employment of the obvious, the percoct, and
likewise, for your own sake, from the epitonic, the
overstrained; for if the former, by readily assimilating
with the understandings of your audience, are empowered to
commit assassination on your victim, the latter come under
the charge of unseemliness, inasmuch as they are a
description of public suicide. Assuming, then, manslaughter
to be your pastime, and hari-kari not to be your bent, the
phrase, to escape criminality, must rise in you as you would
have it fall on him, ex improviso. Am I right?"
"I am in the habit of thinking it
impossible, sir, that you can be in error," said Willoughby.
Dr Middleton left it the more emphatic by
saying nothing further.
Both his daughter and Miss Dale, who had
disapproved the waspish snap at Colonel De Craye, were in
wonderment of the art of speech which could so soothingly
inform a gentleman that his behaviour had not been
gentlemanly.
Willoughby was damped by what he
comprehended of it for a few minutes. In proportion as he
realized an evening with his ancient admirers he was
restored, and he began to marvel greatly at his folly in not
giving banquets and Balls, instead of making a solitude
about himself and his bride. For solitude, thought he, is
good for the man, the man being a creature consumed by
passion; woman's love, on the contrary, will only be
nourished by the reflex light she catches of you in the eyes
of others, she having no passion of her own, but simply an
instinct driving her to attach herself to whatsoever is most
largely admired, most shining. So thinking, he determined to
change his course of conduct, and he was happier. In the
first gush of our wisdom drawn directly from experience
there is a mental intoxication that cancels the old world
and establishes a new one, not allowing us to ask whether it
is too late.
CHAPTER XXX
TREATING OF THE DINNER-PARTY AT MRS.
MOUNTSTUART JENKINSON'S
Vernon and young Crossjay had tolerably
steady work together for a couple of hours, varied by the
arrival of a plate of meat on a tray for the master, and
some interrogations put to him from time to time by the boy
in reference to Miss Middleton. Crossjay made the discovery
that if he abstained from alluding to Miss Middleton's
beauty he might water his dusty path with her name nearly as
much as he liked. Mention of her beauty incurred a
reprimand. On the first occasion his master was wistful.
"Isn't she glorious!" Crossjay fancied he had started a
sovereign receipt for blessed deviations. He tried it again,
but paedagogue-thunder broke over his head.
"Yes, only I can't understand what she
means, Mr. Whitford," he excused himself "First I was not to
tell; I know I wasn't, because she said so; she quite as
good as said so. Her last words were: 'Mind, Crossjay, you
know nothing about me', when I stuck to that beast of a
tramp, who's a 'walking moral,' and gets money out of people
by snuffling it."
"Attend to your lesson, or you'll be one,"
said Vernon.
"Yes, but, Mr. Whitford, now I am to tell.
I'm to answer straight out to every question."
"Miss Middleton is anxious that you should
be truthful."
"Yes; but in the morning she told me not to
tell."
"She was in a hurry. She has it on her
conscience that you may have misunderstood her, and she
wishes you never to be guilty of an untruth, least of all on
her account."
Crossjay committed an unspoken resolution to
the air in a violent sigh:
"Ah!" and said: "If I were sure!"
"Do as she bids you, my boy."
"But I don't know what it is she wants."
"Hold to her last words to you."
"So I do. If she told me to run till I
dropped, on I'd go."
"She told you to study your lessons; do
that."
Crossjay buckled to his book, invigorated by
an imagination of his liege lady on the page.
After a studious interval, until the
impression of his lady had subsided, he resumed: "She's so
funny. She's just like a girl, and then she's a lady, too.
She's my idea of a princess. And Colonel De Craye! Wasn't he
taught dancing! When he says something funny he ducks and
seems to be setting to his partner. I should like to be as
clever as her father. That is a clever man. I dare say
Colonel De Craye will dance with her tonight. I wish I was
there."
"It's a dinner-party, not a dance," Vernon
forced himself to say, to dispel that ugly vision.
"Isn't it, sir? I thought they danced after
dinner-parties, Mr.
Whitford, have you ever seen her run?"
Vernon pointed him to his task.
They were silent for a lengthened period.
"But does Miss Middleton mean me to speak
out if Sir Willoughby asks me?" said Crossjay.
"Certainly. You needn't make much of it.
All's plain and simple."
"But I'm positive, Mr. Whitford, he wasn't
to hear of her going to the post-office with me before
breakfast. And how did Colonel De Craye find her and bring
her back, with that old Flitch? He's a man and can go where
he pleases, and I'd have found her, too, give me the chance.
You know. I'm fond of Miss Dale, but she—I'm very fond of
her—but you can't think she's a girl as well. And about Miss
Dale, when she says a thing, there it is, clear. But Miss
Middleton has a lot of meanings. Never mind; I go by what's
inside, and I'm pretty sure to please her."
"Take your chin off your hand and your elbow
off the book, and fix yourself," said Vernon, wrestling with
the seduction of Crossjay's idolatry, for Miss Middleton's
appearance had been preternaturally sweet on her departure,
and the next pleasure to seeing her was hearing of her from
the lips of this passionate young poet.
"Remember that you please her by speaking
truth," Vernon added, and laid himself open to questions
upon the truth, by which he learnt, with a perplexed sense
of envy and sympathy, that the boy's idea of truth strongly
approximated to his conception of what should be agreeable
to Miss Middleton.
He was lonely, bereft of the bard, when he
had tucked Crossjay up in his bed and left him. Books he
could not read; thoughts were disturbing. A seat in the
library and a stupid stare helped to pass the hours, and but
for the spot of sadness moving meditation in spite of his
effort to stun himself, he would have borne a happy
resemblance to an idiot in the sun. He had verily no command
of his reason. She was too beautiful! Whatever she did was
best. That was the refrain of the fountain-song in him; the
burden being her whims, variations, inconsistencies, wiles;
her tremblings between good and naughty, that might be
stamped to noble or to terrible; her sincereness, her
duplicity, her courage, cowardice, possibilities for heroism
and for treachery. By dint of dwelling on the theme, he
magnified the young lady to extraordinary stature. And he
had sense enough to own that her character was yet liquid in
the mould, and that she was a creature of only naturally
youthful wildness provoked to freakishness by the ordeal of
a situation shrewd as any that can happen to her sex in
civilized life. But he was compelled to think of her
extravagantly, and he leaned a little to the discrediting of
her, because her actual image ummanned him and was
unbearable; and to say at the end of it: "She is too
beautiful! whatever she does is best," smoothed away the
wrong he did her. Had it been in his power he would have
thought of her in the abstract—the stage contiguous to that
which he adopted: but the attempt was luckless; the
Stagyrite would have faded in it. What philosopher could
have set down that face of sun and breeze and nymph in
shadow as a point in a problem?
The library door was opened at midnight by
Miss Dale. She dosed it quietly. "You are not working, Mr.
Whitford? I fancied you would wish to hear of the evening.
Professor Crooklyn arrived after all! Mrs. Mountstuart is
bewildered: she says she expected you, and that you did not
excuse yourself to her, and she cannot comprehend, et
caetera. That is to say, she chooses bewilderment to indulge
in the exclamatory. She must be very much annoyed. The
professor did come by the train she drove to meet!"
"I thought it probable," said Vernon.
"He had to remain a couple of hours at the
Railway Inn; no conveyance was to be found for him. He
thinks he has caught a cold, and cannot stifle his
fretfulness about it. He may be as learned as Doctor
Middleton; he has not the same happy constitution. Nothing
more unfortunate could have occurred; he spoilt the party.
Mrs. Mountstuart tried petting him, which drew attention to
him, and put us all in his key for several awkward minutes,
more than once. She lost her head; she was unlike herself I
may be presumptuous in criticizing her, but should not the
president of a dinner-table treat it like a battlefield, and
let the guest that sinks descend, and not allow the voice of
a discordant, however illustrious, to rule it? Of course, it
is when I see failures that I fancy I could manage so well:
comparison is prudently reserved in the other cases. I am a
daring critic, no doubt, because I know I shall never be
tried by experiment. I have no ambition to be tried."
She did not notice a smile of Vernon's, and
continued: "Mrs Mountstuart gave him the lead upon any
subject he chose. I thought the professor never would have
ceased talking of a young lady who had been at the inn
before him drinking hot brandy and water with a gentleman!"
"How did he hear of that?" cried Vernon,
roused by the malignity of the
Fates.
"From the landlady, trying to comfort him.
And a story of her lending shoes and stockings while those
of the young lady were drying. He has the dreadful snappish
humourous way of recounting which impresses it; the table
took up the subject of this remarkable young lady, and
whether she was a lady of the neighbourhood, and who she
could be that went abroad on foot in heavy rain. It was
painful to me; I knew enough to be sure of who she was."
"Did she betray it?"
"No."
"Did Willoughby look at her?"
"Without suspicion then."
"Then?"
"Colonel De Craye was diverting us, and he
was very amusing. Mrs. Mountstuart told him afterward that
he ought to be paid salvage for saving the wreck of her
party. Sir Willoughby was a little too cynical; he talked
well; what he said was good, but it was not good-humoured;
he has not the reckless indifference of Colonel De Craye to
uttering nonsense that amusement may come of it. And in the
drawing-room he lost such gaiety as he had. I was close to
Mrs. Mountstuart when Professor Crooklyn approached her and
spoke in my hearing of that gentleman and that young lady.
They were, you could see by his nods, Colonel De Craye and
Miss Middleton."
"And she at once mentioned it to
Willoughby?"
"Colonel De Craye gave her no chance, if she
sought it. He courted her profusely. Behind his rattle he
must have brains. It ran in all directions to entertain her
and her circle."
"Willoughby knows nothing?"
"I cannot judge. He stood with Mrs.
Mountstuart a minute as we were taking leave. She looked
strange. I heard her say: 'The rogue!' He laughed. She
lifted her shoulders. He scarcely opened his mouth on the
way home."
"The thing must run its course," Vernon
said, with the philosophical air which is desperation
rendered decorous. "Willoughby deserves it. A man of full
growth ought to know that nothing on earth tempts Providence
so much as the binding of a young woman against her will.
Those two are mutually attracted: they're both . . . They
meet, and the mischief's done: both are bright. He can
persuade with a word. Another might discourse like an angel
and it would be useless. I said everything I could think of,
to no purpose. And so it is: there are those
attractions!—just as, with her, Willoughby is the reverse,
he repels. I'm in about the same predicament—or should be if
she were plighted to me. That is, for the length of five
minutes; about the space of time I should require for the
formality of handing her back her freedom. How a sane man
can imagine a girl like that . . . ! But if she has changed,
she has changed! You can't conciliate a withered affection.
This detaining her, and tricking, and not listening, only
increases her aversion; she learns the art in turn. Here she
is, detained by fresh plots to keep Dr. Middleton at the
Hall. That's true, is it not?" He saw that it was. "No,
she's not to blame! She has told him her mind; he won't
listen. The question then is, whether she keeps to her word,
or breaks it. It's a dispute between a conventional idea of
obligation and an injury to her nature. Which is the more
dishonourable thing to do? Why, you and I see in a moment
that her feelings guide her best. It's one of the few cases
in which nature may be consulted like an oracle."
"Is she so sure of her nature?" said Miss
Dale.
"You may doubt it; I do not. I am surprised
at her coming back. De Craye is a man of the world, and
advised it, I suppose. He—well, I never had the persuasive
tongue, and my failing doesn't count for much."
"But the suddenness of the intimacy!"
"The disaster is rather famous 'at first
sight'. He came in a fortunate hour . . . for him. A pigmy's
a giant if he can manage to arrive in season. Did you not
notice that there was danger, at their second or third
glance? You counselled me to hang on here, where the amount
of good I do in proportion to what I have to endure is
microscopic."
"It was against your wishes, I know," said
Laetitia, and when the words were out she feared that they
were tentative. Her delicacy shrank from even seeming to
sound him in relation to a situation so delicate as Miss
Middleton's.
The same sentiment guarded him from
betraying himself, and he said: "Partly against. We both
foresaw the possible—because, like most prophets, we knew a
little more of circumstances enabling us to see the fatal. A
pigmy would have served, but De Craye is a handsome,
intelligent, pleasant fellow."
"Sir Willoughby's friend!"
"Well, in these affairs! A great deal must
be charged on the goddess."
"That is really Pagan fatalism!"
"Our modern word for it is Nature. Science
condescends to speak of natural selection. Look at these!
They are both graceful and winning and witty, bright to mind
and eye, made for one another, as country people say. I
can't blame him. Besides, we don't know that he's guilty.
We're quite in the dark, except that we're certain how it
must end. If the chance should occur to you of giving
Willoughby a word of counsel—it may—you might, without
irritating him as my knowledge of his plight does, hint at
your eyes being open. His insane dread of a detective world
makes him artificially blind. As soon as he fancies himself
seen, he sets to work spinning a web, and he discerns
nothing else. It's generally a clever kind of web; but if
it's a tangle to others it's the same to him, and a veil as
well. He is preparing the catastrophe, he forces the issue.
Tell him of her extreme desire to depart. Treat her as mad,
to soothe him. Otherwise one morning he will wake a second
time . . . ! It is perfectly certain. And the second time it
will be entirely his own fault. Inspire him with some
philosophy."
"I have none."
"I if I thought so, I would say you have
better. There are two kinds of philosophy, mine and yours.
Mine comes of coldness, yours of devotion."
"He is unlikely to choose me for his
confidante."
Vernon meditated. "One can never quite guess
what he will do, from never knowing the heat of the centre
in him which precipitates his actions: he has a great art of
concealment. As to me, as you perceive, my views are too
philosophical to let me be of use to any of them. I blame
only the one who holds to the bond. The sooner I am gone!—in
fact, I cannot stay on. So Dr. Middleton and the Professor
did not strike fire together?"
"Doctor Middleton was ready, and pursued
him, but Professor Crooklyn insisted on shivering. His line
of blank verse, 'A Railway platform and a Railway inn!'
became pathetic in repetition. He must have suffered."
"Somebody has to!"
"Why the innocent?"
"He arrives a propos. But remember that
Fridolin sometimes contrives to escape and have the guilty
scorched. The Professor would not have suffered if he had
missed his train, as he appears to be in the habit of doing.
Thus his unaccustomed good-fortune was the cause of his
bad."
"You saw him on the platform?"
"I am unacquainted with the professor. I had
to get Mrs Mountstuart out of the way."
"She says she described him to you.
'Complexion of a sweetbread, consistency of a quenelle,
grey, and like a Saint without his dish behind the head.'"
"Her descriptions are strikingly accurate,
but she forgot to sketch his back, and all that I saw was a
narrow sloping back and a broad hat resting the brim on it.
My report to her spoke of an old gentleman of dark
complexion, as the only traveller on the platform. She has
faith in the efficiency of her descriptive powers, and so
she was willing to drive off immediately. The intention was
a start to London. Colonel De Craye came up and effected in
five minutes what I could not compass in thirty."
"But you saw Colonel De Craye pass you?"
"My work was done; I should have been an
intruder. Besides I was acting wet jacket with Mrs.
Mountstuart to get her to drive off fast, or she might have
jumped out in search of her Professor herself."
"She says you were lean as a fork, with the
wind whistling through the prongs."
"You see how easy it is to deceive one who
is an artist in phrases. Avoid them, Miss Dale; they dazzle
the penetration of the composer. That is why people of
ability like Mrs Mountstuart see so little; they are so bent
on describing brilliantly. However, she is kind and
charitable at heart. I have been considering to-night that,
to cut this knot as it is now, Miss Middleton might do worse
than speak straight out to Mrs. Mountstuart. No one else
would have such influence with Willoughby. The simple fact
of Mrs. Mountstuart's knowing of it would be almost enough.
But courage would be required for that. Good-night, Miss
Dale."
"Good-night, Mr. Whitford. You pardon me for
disturbing you?"
Vernon pressed her hand reassuringly. He had
but to look at her and review her history to think his
cousin Willoughby punished by just retribution. Indeed, for
any maltreatment of the dear boy Love by man or by woman,
coming under your cognizance, you, if you be of common
soundness, shall behold the retributive blow struck in your
time.
Miss Dale retired thinking how like she and
Vernon were to one another in the toneless condition they
had achieved through sorrow. He succeeded in masking himself
from her, owing to her awe of the circumstances. She
reproached herself for not having the same devotion to the
cold idea of duty as he had; and though it provoked inquiry,
she would not stop to ask why he had left Miss Middleton a
prey to the sparkling colonel. It seemed a proof of the
philosophy he preached.
As she was passing by young Crossjay's
bedroom door a face appeared. Sir Willoughby slowly emerged
and presented himself in his full length, beseeching her to
banish alarm.
He said it in a hushed voice, with a face
qualified to create sentiment.
"Are you tired? sleepy?" said he.
She protested that she was not: she intended
to read for an hour.
He begged to have the hour dedicated to him.
"I shall be relieved by conversing with a friend."
No subterfuge crossed her mind; she thought
his midnight visit to the boy's bedside a pretty feature in
him; she was full of pity, too; she yielded to the strange
request, feeling that it did not become "an old woman" to
attach importance even to the public discovery of midnight
interviews involving herself as one, and feeling also that
she was being treated as an old friend in the form of a very
old woman. Her mind was bent on arresting any recurrence to
the project she had so frequently outlined in the tongue of
innuendo, of which, because of her repeated tremblings under
it, she thought him a master.
He conducted her along the corridor to the
private sitting-room of the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.
"Deceit!" he said, while lighting the
candles on the mantelpiece.
She was earnestly compassionate, and a word
that could not relate to her personal destinies refreshed
her by displacing her apprehensive antagonism and giving
pity free play.
CHAPTER XXXI
SIR WILLOUGHBY ATTEMPTS AND ACHIEVES PATHOS
Both were seated. Apparently he would have
preferred to watch her dark downcast eyelashes in silence
under sanction of his air of abstract meditation and the
melancholy superinducing it. Blood-colour was in her cheeks;
the party had inspirited her features. Might it be that
lively company, an absence of economical solicitudes, and a
flourishing home were all she required to make her bloom
again? The supposition was not hazardous in presence of her
heightened complexion.
She raised her eyes. He could not meet her
look without speaking.
"Can you forgive deceit?"
"It would be to boast of more charity than I
know myself to possess, were I to say that I can, Sir
Willoughby. I hope I am able to forgive. I cannot tell. I
should like to say yes."
"Could you live with the deceiver?"
"No."
"No. I could have given that answer for you.
No semblance of union should be maintained between the
deceiver and ourselves. Laetitia!"
"Sir Willoughby?"
"Have I no right to your name?"
"If it pleases you to . . ."
"I speak as my thoughts run, and they did
not know a Miss Dale so well as a dear Laetitia: my truest
friend! You have talked with Clara Middleton?"
"We had a conversation."
Her brevity affrighted him. He flew off in a
cloud.
"Reverting to that question of deceivers: is
it not your opinion that to pardon, to condone, is to
corrupt society by passing off as pure what is false? Do we
not," he wore the smile of haggard playfulness of a
convalescent child the first day back to its toys,
"Laetitia, do we not impose a counterfeit on the currency?"
"Supposing it to be really deception."
"Apart from my loathing of deception, of
falseness in any shape, upon any grounds, I hold it an
imperious duty to expose, punish, off with it. I take it to
be one of the forms of noxiousness which a good citizen is
bound to extirpate. I am not myself good citizen enough, I
confess, for much more than passive abhorrence. I do not
forgive: I am at heart serious and I cannot forgive:—there
is no possible reconciliation, there can be only an
ostensible truce, between the two hostile powers dividing
this world."
She glanced at him quickly.
"Good and evil!" he said.
Her face expressed a surprise relapsing on
the heart.
He spelt the puckers of her forehead to mean
that she feared he might be speaking unchristianly.
"You will find it so in all religions, my
dear Laetitia: the Hindoo, the Persian, ours. It is
universal; an experience of our humanity. Deceit and
sincerity cannot live together. Truth must kill the lie, or
the lie will kill truth. I do not forgive. All I say to the
person is, go!"
"But that is right! that is generous!"
exclaimed Laetitia, glad to approve him for the sake of
escaping her critical soul, and relieved by the idea of
Clara's difficulty solved.
"Capable of generosity, perhaps," he mused,
aloud.
She wounded him by not supplying the
expected enthusiastic asseveration of her belief in his
general tendency to magnanimity.
He said, after a pause: "But the world is
not likely to be impressed by anything not immediately
gratifying it. People change, I find: as we increase in
years we cease to be the heroes we were. I myself am
insensible to change: I do not admit the charge. Except in
this we will say: personal ambition. I have it no more. And
what is it when we have it? Decidedly a confession of
inferiority! That is, the desire to be distinguished is an
acknowledgement of insufficiency. But I have still the
craving for my dearest friends to think well of me. A
weakness? Call it so. Not a dishonourable weakness!"
Laetitia racked her brain for the connection
of his present speech with the preceding dialogue. She was
baffled, from not knowing "the heat of the centre in him",
as Vernon opaquely phrased it in charity to the object of
her worship.
"Well," said he, unappeased, "and besides
the passion to excel, I have changed somewhat in the
heartiness of my thirst for the amusements incident to my
station. I do not care to keep a stud—I was once tempted:
nor hounds. And I can remember the day when I determined to
have the best kennels and the best breed of horses in the
kingdom. Puerile! What is distinction of that sort, or of
any acquisition and accomplishment? We ask! one's self is
not the greater. To seek it, owns to our smallness, in real
fact; and when it is attained, what then? My horses are
good, they are admired, I challenge the county to surpass
them: well? These are but my horses; the praise is of the
animals, not of me. I decline to share in it. Yet I know men
content to swallow the praise of their beasts and be
semi-equine. The littleness of one's fellows in the mob of
life is a very strange experience! One may regret to have
lost the simplicity of one's forefathers, which could accept
those and other distinctions with a cordial pleasure, not to
say pride. As, for instance, I am, as it is called, a dead
shot. 'Give your acclamations, gentlemen, to my ancestors,
from whom I inherited a steady hand and quick sight.' They
do not touch me. Where I do not find myself—that I am
essentially I—no applause can move me. To speak to you as I
would speak to none, admiration—you know that in my early
youth I swam in flattery—I had to swim to avoid
drowning!—admiration of my personal gifts has grown
tasteless. Changed, therefore, inasmuch as there has been a
growth of spirituality. We are all in submission to mortal
laws, and so far I have indeed changed. I may add that it is
unusual for country gentlemen to apply themselves to
scientific researches. These are, however, in the spirit of
the time. I apprehended that instinctively when at College.
I forsook the classics for science. And thereby escaped the
vice of domineering self-sufficiency peculiar to classical
men, of which you had an amusing example in the carriage, on
the way to Mrs. Mountstuart's this evening. Science is
modest; slow, if you like; it deals with facts, and having
mastered them, it masters men; of necessity, not with a
stupid, loud-mouthed arrogance: words big and oddly garbed
as the Pope's body-guard. Of course, one bows to the
Infallible; we must, when his giant-mercenaries level
bayonets."
Sir Willoughby offered Miss Dale half a
minute that she might in gentle feminine fashion acquiesce
in the implied reproof of Dr. Middleton's behaviour to him
during the drive to Mrs. Mountstuart's. She did not.
Her heart was accusing Clara of having done
it a wrong and a hurt. For while he talked he seemed to her
to justify Clara's feelings and her conduct: and her own
reawakened sensations of injury came to the surface a moment
to look at him, affirming that they pardoned him, and
pitied, but hardly wondered.
The heat of the centre in him had
administered the comfort he wanted, though the conclusive
accordant notes he loved on woman's lips, that subservient
harmony of another instrument desired of musicians when they
have done their solo-playing, came not to wind up the
performance: not a single bar. She did not speak. Probably
his Laetitia was overcome, as he had long known her to be
when they conversed; nerve-subdued, unable to deploy her
mental resources or her musical. Yet ordinarily she had
command of the latter.—Was she too condoling? Did a reason
exist for it? Had the impulsive and desperate girl spoken
out to Laetitia to the fullest?—shameless daughter of a
domineering sire that she was! Ghastlier inquiry (it struck
the centre of him with a sounding ring), was Laetitia
pitying him overmuch for worse than the pain of a little
difference between lovers—for treason on the part of his
bride? Did she know of a rival? know more than he?
When the centre of him was violently struck
he was a genius in penetration. He guessed that she did
know: and by this was he presently helped to achieve pathos.
"So my election was for Science," he
continued; "and if it makes me, as I fear, a rara avis among
country gentlemen, it unites me, puts me in the main, I may
say, in the only current of progress—a word sufficiently
despicable in their political jargon.—You enjoyed your
evening at Mrs. Mountstuart's?"
"Very greatly."
"She brings her Professor to dine here the
day after tomorrow. Does it astonish you? You started."
"I did not hear the invitation."
"It was arranged at the table: you and I
were separated—cruelly, I told her: she declared that we see
enough of one another, and that it was good for me that we
should be separated; neither of which is true. I may not
have known what is the best for me: I do know what is good.
If in my younger days I egregiously erred, that, taken of
itself alone, is, assuming me to have sense and feeling, the
surer proof of present wisdom. I can testify in person that
wisdom is pain. If pain is to add to wisdom, let me suffer!
Do you approve of that, Laetitia?"
"It is well said."
"It is felt. Those who themselves have
suffered should know the benefit of the resolution."
"One may have suffered so much as to wish
only for peace."
"True: but you! have you?"
"It would be for peace, if I prayed for any
earthly gift."
Sir Willoughby dropped a smile on her. "I
mentioned the Pope's parti-coloured body-guard just now. In
my youth their singular attire impressed me. People tell me
they have been re-uniformed: I am sorry. They remain one of
my liveliest recollections of the Eternal City. They
affected my sense of humour, always alert in me, as you are
aware. We English have humour. It is the first thing struck
in us when we land on the Continent: our risible faculties
are generally active all through the tour. Humour, or the
clash of sense with novel examples of the absurd, is our
characteristic. I do not condescend to boisterous displays
of it. I observe, and note the people's comicalities for my
correspondence. But you have read my letters—most of them,
if not all?"
"Many of them."
"I was with you then!—I was about to
say—that Swiss-guard reminded me—you have not been in Italy.
I have constantly regretted it. You are the very woman, you
have the soul for Italy. I know no other of whom I could say
it, with whom I should not feel that she was out of place,
discordant with me. Italy and Laetitia! often have I joined
you together. We shall see. I begin to have hopes. Here you
have literally stagnated. Why, a dinner-party refreshes you!
What would not travel do, and that heavenly climate! You are
a reader of history and poetry. Well, poetry! I never yet
saw the poetry that expressed the tenth part of what I feel
in the presence of beauty and magnificence, and when I
really meditate—profoundly. Call me a positive mind. I feel:
only I feel too intensely for poetry. By the nature of it,
poetry cannot be sincere. I will have sincerity. Whatever
touches our emotions should be spontaneous, not a craft. I
know you are in favour of poetry. You would win me, if any
one could. But history! there I am with you. Walking over
ruins: at night: the arches of the solemn black amphitheatre
pouring moonlight on us—the moonlight of Italy!"
"You would not laugh there, Sir Willoughby?"
said Laetitia, rousing herself from a stupor of apprehensive
amazement, to utter something and realize actual
circumstances.
"Besides, you, I think, or I am mistaken in
you"—he deviated from his projected speech—"you are not a
victim of the sense of association and the ludicrous."
"I can understand the influence of it: I
have at least a conception of the humourous, but ridicule
would not strike me in the Coliseum of Rome. I could not
bear it, no, Sir Willoughby!"
She appeared to be taking him in very strong
earnest, by thus petitioning him not to laugh in the
Coliseum, and now he said: "Besides, you are one who could
accommodate yourself to the society of the ladies, my aunts.
Good women, Laetitia! I cannot imagine them de trop in
Italy, or in a household. I have of course reason to be
partial in my judgement."
"They are excellent and most amiable ladies;
I love them," said Laetitia, fervently; the more strongly
excited to fervour by her enlightenment as to his drift.
She read it that he designed to take her to
Italy with the ladies: —after giving Miss Middleton her
liberty; that was necessarily implied. And that was truly
generous. In his boyhood he had been famous for his
bountifulness in scattering silver and gold. Might he not
have caused himself to be misperused in later life?
Clara had spoken to her of the visit and
mission of the ladies to the library: and Laetitia daringly
conceived herself to be on the certain track of his meaning,
she being able to enjoy their society as she supposed him to
consider that Miss Middleton did not, and would not either
abroad or at home.
Sir Willoughby asked her: "You could travel
with them?"
"Indeed I could!"
"Honestly?"
"As affirmatively as one may protest.
Delightedly."
"Agreed. It is an undertaking." He put his
hand out.
"Whether I be of the party or not! To Italy,
Laetitia! It would give me pleasure to be with you, and it
will, if I must be excluded, to think of you in Italy."
His hand was out. She had to feign
inattention or yield her own. She had not the effrontery to
pretend not to see, and she yielded it. He pressed it, and
whenever it shrunk a quarter inch to withdraw, he shook it
up and down, as an instrument that had been lent him for due
emphasis to his remarks. And very emphatic an amorous orator
can make it upon a captive lady.
"I am unable to speak decisively on that or
any subject. I am, I think you once quoted, 'tossed like a
weed on the ocean.' Of myself I can speak: I cannot speak
for a second person. I am infinitely harassed. If I could
cry, 'To Italy tomorrow!' Ah! . . . Do not set me down for
complaining. I know the lot of man. But, Laetitia, deceit!
deceit! It is a bad taste in the mouth. It sickens us of
humanity. I compare it to an earthquake: we lose all our
reliance on the solidity of the world. It is a betrayal not
simply of the person; it is a betrayal of humankind. My
friend! Constant friend! No, I will not despair. Yes, I have
faults; I will remember them. Only, forgiveness is another
question. Yes, the injury I can forgive; the falseness
never. In the interests of humanity, no. So young, and such
deceit!"
Laetitia's bosom rose: her hand was
detained: a lady who has yielded it cannot wrestle to have
it back; those outworks which protect her treacherously
shelter the enemy aiming at the citadel when he has taken
them. In return for the silken armour bestowed on her by our
civilization, it is exacted that she be soft and civil nigh
up to perishing-point. She breathed tremulously high, saying
on her top-breath: "If it—it may not be so; it can scarcely.
. ." A deep sigh intervened. It saddened her that she knew
so much.
"For when I love I love," said Sir
Willoughby; "my friends and my servants know that. There can
be no medium: not with me. I give all, I claim all. As I am
absorbed, so must I absorb. We both cancel and create, we
extinguish and we illumine one another. The error may be in
the choice of an object: it is not in the passion. Perfect
confidence, perfect abandonment. I repeat, I claim it
because I give it. The selfishness of love may be denounced:
it is a part of us. My answer would be, it is an element
only of the noblest of us! Love, Laetitia! I speak of love.
But one who breaks faith to drag us through the mire, who
betrays, betrays and hands us over to the world, whose prey
we become identically because of virtues we were educated to
think it a blessing to possess: tell me the name for
that!—Again, it has ever been a principle with me to respect
the sex. But if we see women false, treacherous . . . Why
indulge in these abstract views, you would ask! The world
presses them on us, full as it is of the vilest specimens.
They seek to pluck up every rooted principle: they sneer at
our worship: they rob us of our religion. This bitter
experience of the world drives us back to the antidote of
what we knew before we plunged into it: of one . . . of
something we esteemed and still esteem. Is that antidote
strong enough to expel the poison? I hope so! I believe so!
To lose faith in womankind is terrible."
He studied her. She looked distressed: she
was not moved.
She was thinking that, with the exception of
a strain of haughtiness, he talked excellently to men, at
least in the tone of the things he meant to say; but that
his manner of talking to women went to an excess in the
artificial tongue—the tutored tongue of sentimental
deference of the towering male: he fluted exceedingly; and
she wondered whether it was this which had wrecked him with
Miss Middleton.
His intuitive sagacity counselled him to
strive for pathos to move her. It was a task; for while he
perceived her to be not ignorant of his plight, he doubted
her knowing the extent of it, and as his desire was merely
to move her without an exposure of himself, he had to
compass being pathetic as it were under the impediments of a
mailed and gauntletted knight, who cannot easily heave the
bosom, or show it heaving.
Moreover, pathos is a tide: often it carries
the awakener of it off his feet, and whirls him over and
over armour and all in ignominious attitudes of helpless
prostration, whereof he may well be ashamed in the
retrospect. We cannot quite preserve our dignity when we
stoop to the work of calling forth tears. Moses had probably
to take a nimble jump away from the rock after that
venerable Law-giver had knocked the water out of it.
However, it was imperative in his mind that
he should be sure he had the power to move her.
He began; clumsily at first, as yonder
gauntletted knight attempting the briny handkerchief.
"What are we! We last but a very short time.
Why not live to gratify our appetites? I might really ask
myself why. All the means of satiating them are at my
disposal. But no: I must aim at the highest:—at that which
in my blindness I took for the highest. You know the
sportsman's instinct, Laetitia; he is not tempted by the
stationary object. Such are we in youth, toying with
happiness, leaving it, to aim at the dazzling and
attractive."
"We gain knowledge," said Laetitia.
"At what a cost!"
The exclamation summoned self-pity to his
aid, and pathos was handy.
"By paying half our lives for it and all our
hopes! Yes, we gain knowledge, we are the wiser; very
probably my value surpasses now what it was when I was
happier. But the loss! That youthful bloom of the soul is
like health to the body; once gone, it leaves cripples
behind. Nay, my friend and precious friend, these four
fingers I must retain. They seem to me the residue of a
wreck: you shall be released shortly: absolutely, Laetitia,
I have nothing else remaining—We have spoken of deception;
what of being undeceived?—when one whom we adored is laid
bare, and the wretched consolation of a worthy object is
denied to us. No misfortune can be like that. Were it death,
we could worship still. Death would be preferable. But may
you be spared to know a situation in which the comparison
with your inferior is forced on you to your disadvantage and
your loss because of your generously giving up your whole
heart to the custody of some shallow, light-minded, self—! .
. . We will not deal in epithets. If I were to find as many
bad names for the serpent as there are spots on his body, it
would be serpent still, neither better nor worse. The
loneliness! And the darkness! Our luminary is extinguished.
Self-respect refuses to continue worshipping, but the
affection will not be turned aside. We are literally in the
dust, we grovel, we would fling away self-respect if we
could; we would adopt for a model the creature preferred to
us; we would humiliate, degrade ourselves; we cry for
justice as if it were for pardon . . ."
"For pardon! when we are straining to grant
it!" Laetitia murmured, and it was as much as she could do.
She remembered how in her old misery her efforts after
charity had twisted her round to feel herself the sinner,
and beg forgiveness in prayer: a noble sentiment, that
filled her with pity of the bosom in which it had sprung.
There was no similarity between his idea and hers, but her
idea had certainly been roused by his word "pardon", and he
had the benefit of it in the moisture of her eyes. Her lips
trembled, tears fell.
He had heard something; he had not caught
the words, but they were manifestly favourable; her sign of
emotion assured him of it and of the success he had sought.
There was one woman who bowed to him to all eternity! He had
inspired one woman with the mysterious, man-desired passion
of self-abandonment, self-immolation! The evidence was
before him. At any instant he could, if he pleased, fly to
her and command her enthusiasm.
He had, in fact, perhaps by sympathetic
action, succeeded in striking the same springs of pathos in
her which animated his lively endeavour to produce it in
himself.
He kissed her hand; then released it,
quitting his chair to bend above her soothingly.
"Do not weep, Laetitia, you see that I do
not; I can smile. Help me to bear it; you must not unman
me."
She tried to stop her crying, but self-pity
threatened to rain all her long years of grief on her head,
and she said: "I must go . . . I am unfit . . . good-night,
Sir Willoughby."
Fearing seriously that he had sunk his pride
too low in her consideration, and had been carried farther
than he intended on the tide of pathos, he remarked: "We
will speak about Crossjay to-morrow. His deceitfulness has
been gross. As I said, I am grievously offended by
deception. But you are tired. Good-night, my dear friend."
"Good-night, Sir Willoughby."
She was allowed to go forth.
Colonel De Craye coming up from the
smoking-room, met her and noticed the state of her eyelids,
as he wished her goodnight. He saw Willoughby in the room
she had quitted, but considerately passed without speaking,
and without reflecting why he was considerate.
Our hero's review of the scene made him, on
the whole, satisfied with his part in it. Of his power upon
one woman he was now perfectly sure:—Clara had agonized him
with a doubt of his personal mastery of any. One was a poor
feast, but the pangs of his flesh during the last few days
and the latest hours caused him to snatch at it, hungrily if
contemptuously. A poor feast, she was yet a fortress, a
point of succour, both shield and lance; a cover and an
impetus. He could now encounter Clara boldly. Should she
resist and defy him, he would not be naked and alone; he
foresaw that he might win honour in the world's eye from his
position—a matter to be thought of only in most urgent need.
The effect on him of his recent exercise in pathos was to
compose him to slumber. He was for the period well
satisfied.
His attendant imps were well satisfied
likewise, and danced around about his bed after the vigilant
gentleman had ceased to debate on the question of his
unveiling of himself past forgiveness of her to Laetitia,
and had surrendered to sleep the present direction of his
affairs.
CHAPTER XXXII
LAETITIA DALE DISCOVERS A SPIRITUAL CHANGE
AND DR MIDDLETON A PHYSICAL
Clara tripped over the lawn in the early
morning to Laetitia to greet her. She broke away from a
colloquy with Colonel De Craye under Sir Willoughby's
windows. The colonel had been one of the bathers, and he
stood like a circus-driver flicking a wet towel at Crossjay
capering.
"My dear, I am very unhappy!" said Clara.
"My dear, I bring you news," Laetitia
replied.
"Tell me. But the poor boy is to be
expelled! He burst into Crossjay's bedroom last night and
dragged the sleeping boy out of bed to question him, and he
had the truth. That is one comfort: only Crossjay is to be
driven from the Hall, because he was untruthful
previously—for me; to serve me; really, I feel it was at my
command. Crossjay will be out of the way to-day, and has
promised to come back at night to try to be forgiven. You
must help me, Laetitia."
"You are free, Clara! If you desire it, you
have but to ask for your freedom."
"You mean . . ."
"He will release you."
"You are sure?"
"We had a long conversation last night."
"I owe it to you?"
"Nothing is owing to me. He volunteered it."
Clara made as if to lift her eyes in
apostrophe. "Professor Crooklyn!
Professor Crooklyn! I see. I did not guess that."
"Give credit for some generosity, Clara; you
are unjust!"
"By and by: I will be more than just by and
by. I will practise on the trumpet: I will lecture on the
greatness of the souls of men when we know them thoroughly.
At present we do but half know them, and we are unjust. You
are not deceived, Laetitia? There is to be no speaking to
papa? no delusions? You have agitated me. I feel myself a
very small person indeed. I feel I can understand those who
admire him. He gives me back my word simply? clearly?
without—Oh, that long wrangle in scenes and letters? And it
will be arranged for papa and me to go not later than
to-morrow? Never shall I be able to explain to any one how I
fell into this! I am frightened at myself when I think of
it. I take the whole blame: I have been scandalous. And,
dear Laetitia! you came out so early in order to tell me?"
"I wished you to hear it."
"Take my heart."
"Present me with a part—but for good."
"Fie! But you have a right to say it."
"I mean no unkindness; but is not the heart
you allude to an alarmingly searching one?"
"Selfish it is, for I have been forgetting
Crossjay. If we are going to be generous, is not Crossjay to
be forgiven? If it were only that the boy's father is away
fighting for his country, endangering his life day by day,
and for a stipend not enough to support his family, we are
bound to think of the boy! Poor dear silly lad! with his 'I
say, Miss Middleton, why wouldn't (some one) see my father
when he came here to call on him, and had to walk back ten
miles in the rain?'—I could almost fancy that did me
mischief. . . But we have a splendid morning after
yesterday's rain. And we will be generous. Own, Laetitia,
that it is possible to gild the most glorious day of
creation."
"Doubtless the spirit may do it and make its
hues permanent," said
Laetitia.
"You to me, I to you, he to us. Well, then,
if he does, it shall be one of my heavenly days. Which is
for the probation of experience. We are not yet at sunset."
"Have you seen Mr. Whitford this morning?"
"He passed me."
"Do not imagine him ever ill-tempered."
"I had a governess, a learned lady, who
taught me in person the picturesqueness of grumpiness. Her
temper was ever perfect, because she was never in the wrong,
but I being so, she was grumpy. She carried my iniquity
under her brows, and looked out on me through it. I was a
trying child."
Laetitia said, laughing: "I can believe it!"
"Yet I liked her and she liked me: we were a
kind of foreground and background: she threw me into relief
and I was an apology for her existence."
"You picture her to me."
"She says of me now that I am the only
creature she has loved. Who knows that I may not come to say
the same of her?"
"You would plague her and puzzle her still."
"Have I plagued and puzzled Mr. Whitford?"
"He reminds you of her?"
"You said you had her picture."
"Ah! do not laugh at him. He is a true
friend."
"The man who can be a friend is the man who
will presume to be a censor."
"A mild one."
"As to the sentence he pronounces, I am
unable to speak, but his forehead is Rhadamanthine
condemnation."
"Dr Middleton!"
Clara looked round. "Who? I? Did you hear an
echo of papa? He would never have put Rhadamanthus over
European souls, because it appears that Rhadamanthus judged
only the Asiatic; so you are wrong, Miss Dale. My father is
infatuated with Mr. Whitford. What can it be? We women
cannot sound the depths of scholars, probably because their
pearls have no value in our market; except when they deign
to chasten an impertinent; and Mr. Whitford stands aloof
from any notice of small fry. He is deep, studious,
excellent; and does it not strike you that if he descended
among us he would be like a Triton ashore?"
Laetitia's habit of wholly subservient
sweetness, which was her ideal of the feminine, not yet
conciliated with her acuter character, owing to the absence
of full pleasure from her life—the unhealed wound she had
sustained and the cramp of a bondage of such old date as to
seem iron—induced her to say, as if consenting: "You think
he is not quite at home in society?" But she wished to
defend him strenuously, and as a consequence she had to quit
the self-imposed ideal of her daily acting, whereby—the case
being unwonted, very novel to her—the lady's intelligence
became confused through the process that quickened it; so
sovereign a method of hoodwinking our bright selves is the
acting of a part, however naturally it may come to us! and
to this will each honest autobiographical member of the
