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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Egoist, by George Meredith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Egoist
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Posting Date: September 12, 2012 [EBook #1684]
+Release Date: March, 1999
+Last Updated: November 27, 2004
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EGOIST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jim Tinsley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EGOIST
+
+A Comedy in Narrative
+
+
+by GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+
+
+
+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 animated world bear witness.
+
+She added: "You have not found him sympathetic? He is. You fancy him
+brooding, gloomy? He is the reverse, he is cheerful, he is indifferent
+to personal misfortune. Dr. Corney says there is no laugh like Vernon
+Whitford's, and no humour like his. Latterly he certainly . . . But it
+has not been your cruel word grumpiness. The truth is, he is anxious
+about Crossjay: and about other things; and he wants to leave. He is at
+a disadvantage beside very lively and careless gentlemen at present,
+but your 'Triton ashore' is unfair, it is ugly. He is, I can say, the
+truest man I know."
+
+"I did not question his goodness, Laetitia."
+
+"You threw an accent on it."
+
+"Did I? I must be like Crossjay, who declares he likes fun best."
+
+"Crossjay ought to know him, if anybody should. Mr. Whitford has
+defended you against me, Clara, even since I took to calling you Clara.
+Perhaps when you supposed him so like your ancient governess, he was
+meditating how he could aid you. Last night he gave me reasons for
+thinking you would do wisely to confide in Mrs. Mountstuart. It is no
+longer necessary. I merely mention it. He is a devoted friend."
+
+"He is an untiring pedestrian."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Colonel De Craye, after hovering near the ladies in the hope of seeing
+them divide, now adopted the system of making three that two may come
+of it.
+
+As he joined them with his glittering chatter, Laetitia looked at Clara
+to consult her, and saw the face rosy as a bride's.
+
+The suspicion she had nursed sprung out of her arms a muscular fact on
+the spot.
+
+"Where is my dear boy?" Clara said.
+
+"Out for a holiday," the colonel answered in her tone.
+
+"Advise Mr. Whitford not to waste his time in searching for Crossjay,
+Laetitia. Crossjay is better out of the way to-day. At least, I thought
+so just now. Has he pocket-money, Colonel De Craye?"
+
+"My lord can command his inn."
+
+"How thoughtful you are!"
+
+Laetitia's bosom swelled upon a mute exclamation, equivalent to:
+"Woman! woman! snared ever by the sparkling and frivolous!
+undiscerning of the faithful, the modest and beneficent!"
+
+In the secret musings of moralists this dramatic rhetoric survives.
+
+The comparison was all of her own making, and she was indignant at the
+contrast, though to what end she was indignant she could not have said,
+for she had no idea of Vernon as a rival of De Craye in the favour of a
+plighted lady. But she was jealous on behalf of her sex: her sex's
+reputation seemed at stake, and the purity of it was menaced by Clara's
+idle preference of the shallower man. When the young lady spoke so
+carelessly of being like Crossjay, she did not perhaps know that a
+likeness, based on a similarity of their enthusiasms, loves, and
+appetites, had been established between women and boys. Laetitia had
+formerly chafed at it, rejecting it utterly, save when now and then in
+a season of bitterness she handed here and there a volatile young lady
+(none but the young) to be stamped with the degrading brand. Vernon
+might be as philosophical as he pleased. To her the gaiety of these
+two, Colonel De Craye and Clara Middleton, was distressingly musical:
+they harmonized painfully. The representative of her sex was hurt by
+it.
+
+She had to stay beside them: Clara held her arm. The colonel's voice
+dropped at times to something very like a whisper. He was answered
+audibly and smoothly. The quickwitted gentleman accepted the
+correction: but in immediately paying assiduous attentions to Miss
+Dale, in the approved intriguer's fashion, he showed himself in need of
+another amounting to a reproof. Clara said: "We have been consulting,
+Laetitia, what is to be done to cure Professor Crooklyn of his cold."
+De Craye perceived that he had taken a wrong step, and he was mightily
+surprised that a lesson in intrigue should be read to him of all men.
+Miss Middleton's audacity was not so astonishing: he recognized grand
+capabilities in the young lady. Fearing lest she should proceed further
+and cut away from him his vantage-ground of secrecy with her, he turned
+the subject and was adroitly submissive.
+
+Clara's manner of meeting Sir Willoughby expressed a timid disposition
+to friendliness upon a veiled inquiry, understood by none save
+Laetitia, whose brain was racked to convey assurances to herself of her
+not having misinterpreted him. Could there be any doubt? She resolved
+that there could not be; and it was upon this basis of reason that she
+fancied she had led him to it. Legitimate or not, the fancy sprang from
+a solid foundation. Yesterday morning she could not have conceived it.
+Now she was endowed to feel that she had power to influence him,
+because now, since the midnight, she felt some emancipation from the
+spell of his physical mastery. He did not appear to her as a different
+man, but she had grown sensible of being a stronger woman. He was no
+more the cloud over her, nor the magnet; the cloud once
+heaven-suffused, the magnet fatally compelling her to sway round to
+him. She admired him still: his handsome air, his fine proportions, the
+courtesy of his bending to Clara and touching of her hand, excused a
+fanatical excess of admiration on the part of a woman in her youth, who
+is never the anatomist of the hero's lordly graces. But now she admired
+him piecemeal. When it came to the putting of him together, she did it
+coldly. To compassionate him was her utmost warmth. Without conceiving
+in him anything of the strange old monster of earth which had struck
+the awakened girl's mind of Miss Middleton, Laetitia classed him with
+other men; he was "one of them". And she did not bring her
+disenchantment as a charge against him. She accused herself,
+acknowledged the secret of the change to be, and her youthfulness was
+dead:--otherwise could she have given him compassion, and not herself
+have been carried on the flood of it? The compassion was fervent, and
+pure too. She supposed he would supplicate; she saw that Clara
+Middleton was pleasant with him only for what she expected of his
+generosity. She grieved. Sir Willoughby was fortified by her sorrowful
+gaze as he and Clara passed out together to the laboratory arm in arm.
+
+Laetitia had to tell Vernon of the uselessness of his beating the house
+and grounds for Crossjay. Dr. Middleton held him fast in discussion
+upon an overnight's classical wrangle with Professor Crooklyn, which
+was to be renewed that day. The Professor had appointed to call
+expressly to renew it. "A fine scholar," said the Rev. Doctor, "but
+crotchety, like all men who cannot stand their Port."
+
+"I hear that he had a cold," Vernon remarked. "I hope the wine was
+good, sir."
+
+As when the foreman of a sentimental jury is commissioned to inform an
+awful Bench exact in perspicuous English, of a verdict that must of
+necessity be pronounced in favour of the hanging of the culprit, yet
+would fain attenuate the crime of a palpable villain by a
+recommendation to mercy, such foreman, standing in the attentive eye of
+a master of grammatical construction, and feeling the weight of at
+least three sentences on his brain, together with a prospect of
+Judicial interrogation for the discovery of his precise meaning, is
+oppressed, himself is put on trial, in turn, and he hesitates, he
+recapitulates, the fear of involution leads him to be involved; as far
+as a man so posted may, he on his own behalf appeals for mercy;
+entreats that his indistinct statement of preposterous reasons may be
+taken for understood, and would gladly, were permission to do it
+credible, throw in an imploring word that he may sink back among the
+crowd without for the one imperishable moment publicly swinging in his
+lordship's estimation:--much so, moved by chivalry toward a lady,
+courtesy to the recollection of a hostess, and particularly by the
+knowledge that his hearer would expect with a certain frigid rigour
+charity of him, Dr. Middleton paused, spoke and paused: he stammered.
+Ladies, he said, were famous poisoners in the Middle Ages. His opinion
+was, that we had a class of manufacturing wine merchants on the watch
+for widows in this country. But he was bound to state the fact of his
+waking at his usual hour to the minute unassailed by headache. On the
+other hand, this was a condition of blessedness unanticipated when he
+went to bed. Mr. Whitford, however, was not to think that he
+entertained rancour toward the wine. It was no doubt dispensed with the
+honourable intention of cheering. In point of flavour execrable,
+judging by results it was innocuous.
+
+"The test of it shall be the effect of it upon Professor Crooklyn, and
+his appearance in the forenoon according to promise," Dr. Middleton
+came to an end with his perturbed balancings. "If I hear more of the
+eight or twelve winds discharged at once upon a railway platform, and
+the young lady who dries herself of a drenching by drinking brandy and
+water with a gentleman at a railway inn, I shall solicit your sanction
+to my condemnation of the wine as anti-Bacchic and a counterfeit
+presentment. Do not misjudge me. Our hostess is not responsible. But
+widows should marry."
+
+"You must contrive to stop the Professor, sir, if he should attack his
+hostess in that manner," said Vernon.
+
+"Widows should marry!" Dr. Middleton repeated.
+
+He murmured of objecting to be at the discretion of a butler; unless,
+he was careful to add, the aforesaid functionary could boast of an
+University education; and even then, said he, it requires a line of
+ancestry to train a man's taste.
+
+The Rev. Doctor smothered a yawn. The repression of it caused a second
+one, a real monster, to come, big as our old friend of the sea
+advancing on the chained-up Beauty.
+
+Disconcerted by this damning evidence of indigestion, his countenance
+showed that he considered himself to have been too lenient to the wine
+of an unhusbanded hostess. He frowned terribly.
+
+In the interval Laetitia told Vernon of Crossjay's flight for the day,
+hastily bidding the master to excuse him: she had no time to hint the
+grounds of excuse. Vernon mentally made a guess.
+
+Dr Middleton took his arm and discharged a volley at the crotchetty
+scholarship of Professor Crooklyn, whom to confute by book, he directed
+his march to the library. Having persuaded himself that he was
+dyspeptic, he had grown irascible. He denounced all dining out,
+eulogized Patterne Hall as if it were his home, and remembered he had
+dreamed in the night--a most humiliating sign of physical disturbance.
+"But let me find a house in proximity to Patterne, as I am induced to
+suppose I shall," he said, "and here only am I to be met when I stir
+abroad."
+
+Laetitia went to her room. She was complacently anxious enough to
+prefer solitude and be willing to read. She was more seriously anxious
+about Crossjay than about any of the others. For Clara would be certain
+to speak very definitely, and how then could a gentleman oppose her? He
+would supplicate, and could she be brought to yield? It was not to be
+expected of a young lady who had turned from Sir Willoughby. His
+inferiors would have had a better chance. Whatever his faults, he had
+that element of greatness which excludes the intercession of pity.
+Supplication would be with him a form of condescension. It would be
+seen to be such. His was a monumental pride that could not stoop. She
+had preserved this image of the gentleman for a relic in the shipwreck
+of her idolatry. So she mused between the lines of her book, and
+finishing her reading and marking the page, she glanced down on the
+lawn. Dr. Middleton was there, and alone; his hands behind his back,
+his head bent. His meditative pace and unwonted perusal of the turf
+proclaimed that a non-sentimental jury within had delivered an
+unmitigated verdict upon the widow's wine.
+
+Laetitia hurried to find Vernon.
+
+He was in the hall. As she drew near him, the laboratory door opened
+and shut.
+
+"It is being decided," said Laetitia.
+
+Vernon was paler than the hue of perfect calmness.
+
+"I want to know whether I ought to take to my heels like Crossjay, and
+shun the Professor," he said.
+
+They spoke in under-tones, furtively watching the door.
+
+"I wish what she wishes, I am sure; but it will go badly with the boy,"
+said Laetitia.
+
+"Oh, well, then I'll take him," said Vernon, "I would rather. I think I
+can manage it."
+
+Again the laboratory door opened. This time it shut behind Miss
+Middleton. She was highly flushed. Seeing them, she shook the storm
+from her brows, with a dead smile; the best piece of serenity she could
+put on for public wear.
+
+She took a breath before she moved.
+
+Vernon strode out of the house.
+
+Clara swept up to Laetitia.
+
+"You were deceived!"
+
+The hard sob of anger barred her voice.
+
+Laetitia begged her to come to her room with her.
+
+"I want air: I must be by myself," said Clara, catching at her
+garden-hat.
+
+She walked swiftly to the portico steps and turned to the right, to
+avoid the laboratory windows.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+IN WHICH THE COMIC MUSE HAS AN EYE ON TWO GOOD SOULS
+
+Clara met Vernon on the bowling-green among the laurels. She asked him
+where her father was.
+
+"Don't speak to him now," said Vernon.
+
+"Mr. Whitford, will you?"
+
+"It is not advisable just now. Wait."
+
+"Wait? Why not now?"
+
+"He is not in the right humour."
+
+She choked. There are times when there is no medicine for us in sages,
+we want slaves; we scorn to temporize, we must overbear. On she sped,
+as if she had made the mistake of exchanging words with a post.
+
+The scene between herself and Willoughby was a thick mist in her head,
+except the burden and result of it, that he held to her fast, would
+neither assist her to depart nor disengage her.
+
+Oh, men! men! They astounded the girl; she could not define them to her
+understanding. Their motives, their tastes, their vanity, their
+tyranny, and the domino on their vanity, the baldness of their tyranny,
+clinched her in feminine antagonism to brute power. She was not the
+less disposed to rebellion by a very present sense of the justice of
+what could be said to reprove her. She had but one answer: "Anything
+but marry him!" It threw her on her nature, our last and headlong
+advocate, who is quick as the flood to hurry us from the heights to our
+level, and lower, if there be accidental gaps in the channel. For say
+we have been guilty of misconduct: can we redeem it by violating that
+which we are and live by? The question sinks us back to the
+luxuriousness of a sunny relinquishment of effort in the direction
+against tide. Our nature becomes ingenious in devices, penetrative of
+the enemy, confidently citing its cause for being frankly elvish or
+worse. Clara saw a particular way of forcing herself to be
+surrendered. She shut her eyes from it: the sight carried her too
+violently to her escape; but her heart caught it up and huzzaed. To
+press the points of her fingers at her bosom, looking up to the sky as
+she did, and cry: "I am not my own; I am his!" was instigation
+sufficient to make her heart leap up with all her body's blush to urge
+it to recklessness. A despairing creature then may say she has
+addressed the heavens and has had no answer to restrain her.
+
+Happily for Miss Middleton, she had walked some minutes in her chafing
+fit before the falcon eye of Colonel De Craye spied her away on one of
+the beech-knots.
+
+Vernon stood irresolute. It was decidedly not a moment for disturbing
+Dr. Middleton's composure. He meditated upon a conversation, as
+friendly as possible, with Willoughby. Round on the front-lawn, he
+beheld Willoughby and Dr. Middleton together, the latter having halted
+to lend attentive ear to his excellent host. Unnoticed by them or
+disregarded, Vernon turned back to Laetitia, and sauntered, talking
+with her of things current for as long as he could endure to listen to
+praise of his pure self-abnegation; proof of how well he had disguised
+himself, but it smacked unpleasantly to him. His humourous intimacy
+with men's minds likened the source of this distaste to the gallant
+all-or-nothing of the gambler, who hates the little when he cannot have
+the much, and would rather stalk from the tables clean-picked than
+suffer ruin to be tickled by driblets of the glorious fortune he has
+played for and lost. If we are not to be beloved, spare us the small
+coin of compliments on character; especially when they compliment only
+our acting. It is partly endurable to win eulogy for our stately
+fortitude in losing, but Laetitia was unaware that he flung away a
+stake; so she could not praise him for his merits.
+
+"Willoughby makes the pardoning of Crossjay conditional," he said, "and
+the person pleading for him has to grant the terms. How could you
+imagine Willoughby would give her up! How could he! Who! . . . He
+should, is easily said. I was no witness of the scene between them just
+now, but I could have foretold the end of it; I could almost recount
+the passages. The consequence is, that everything depends upon the
+amount of courage she possesses. Dr. Middleton won't leave Patterne
+yet. And it is of no use to speak to him to-day. And she is by nature
+impatient, and is rendered desperate."
+
+"Why is it of no use to speak to Dr. Middleton today?" cried Laetitia.
+
+"He drank wine yesterday that did not agree with him; he can't work.
+To-day he is looking forward to Patterne Port. He is not likely to
+listen to any proposals to leave to-day."
+
+"Goodness!"
+
+"I know the depth of that cry!"
+
+"You are excluded, Mr. Whitford."
+
+"Not a bit of it; I am in with the rest. Say that men are to be
+exclaimed at. Men have a right to expect you to know your own minds
+when you close on a bargain. You don't know the world or yourselves
+very well, it's true; still the original error is on your side, and
+upon that you should fix your attention. She brought her father here,
+and no sooner was he very comfortably established than she wished to
+dislocate him."
+
+"I cannot explain it; I cannot comprehend it," said Laetitia.
+
+"You are Constancy."
+
+"No." She coloured. "I am 'in with rest'. I do not say I should have
+done the same. But I have the knowledge that I must not sit in
+judgement on her. I can waver."
+
+She coloured again. She was anxious that he should know her to be not
+that stupid statue of Constancy in a corner doating on the antic
+Deception. Reminiscences of the interview overnight made it oppressive
+to her to hear herself praised for always pointing like the needle. Her
+newly enfranchised individuality pressed to assert its existence.
+Vernon, however, not seeing this novelty, continued, to her excessive
+discomfort, to baste her old abandoned image with his praises. They
+checked hers; and, moreover, he had suddenly conceived an envy of her
+life-long, uncomplaining, almost unaspiring, constancy of sentiment. If
+you know lovers when they have not reason to be blissful, you will
+remember that in this mood of admiring envy they are given to fits of
+uncontrollable maundering. Praise of constancy, moreover, smote
+shadowily a certain inconstant, enough to seem to ruffle her smoothness
+and do no hurt. He found his consolation in it, and poor Laetitia
+writhed. Without designing to retort, she instinctively grasped at a
+weapon of defence in further exalting his devotedness; which reduced
+him to cast his head to the heavens and implore them to partially
+enlighten her. Nevertheless, maunder he must; and he recurred to it in
+a way so utterly unlike himself that Laetitia stared in his face. She
+wondered whether there could be anything secreted behind this
+everlasting theme of constancy. He took her awakened gaze for a summons
+to asseverations of sincerity, and out they came. She would have fled
+from him, but to think of flying was to think how little it was that
+urged her to fly, and yet the thought of remaining and listening to
+praises undeserved and no longer flattering, was a torture.
+
+"Mr. Whitford, I bear no comparison with you."
+
+"I do and must set you for my example, Miss Dale."
+
+"Indeed, you do wrongly; you do not know me."
+
+"I could say that. For years . . ."
+
+"Pray, Mr. Whitford!"
+
+"Well, I have admired it. You show us how self can be smothered."
+
+"An echo would be a retort on you!"
+
+"On me? I am never thinking of anything else."
+
+"I could say that."
+
+"You are necessarily conscious of not swerving."
+
+"But I do; I waver dreadfully; I am not the same two days running."
+
+"You are the same, with 'ravishing divisions' upon the same."
+
+"And you without the 'divisions.' I draw such support as I have from
+you."
+
+"From some simulacrum of me, then. And that will show you how little
+you require support."
+
+"I do not speak my own opinion only."
+
+"Whose?"
+
+"I am not alone."
+
+"Again let me say, I wish I were like you!"
+
+"Then let me add, I would willingly make the exchange!"
+
+"You would be amazed at your bargain."
+
+"Others would be!"
+
+"Your exchange would give me the qualities I'm in want of, Miss Dale."
+
+"Negative, passive, at the best, Mr. Whitford. But I should have . . ."
+
+"Oh!--pardon me. But you inflict the sensations of a boy, with a dose
+of honesty in him, called up to receive a prize he has won by the
+dexterous use of a crib."
+
+"And how do you suppose she feels who has a crown of Queen o' the May
+forced on her head when she is verging on November?"
+
+He rejected her analogy, and she his. They could neither of them bring
+to light the circumstances which made one another's admiration so
+unbearable. The more he exalted her for constancy, the more did her
+mind become bent upon critically examining the object of that imagined
+virtue; and the more she praised him for possessing the spirit of
+perfect friendliness, the fiercer grew the passion in him which
+disdained the imputation, hissing like a heated iron-bar that flings
+the waterdrops to steam. He would none of it; would rather have stood
+exposed in his profound foolishness.
+
+Amiable though they were, and mutually affectionate, they came to a
+stop in their walk, longing to separate, and not seeing how it was to
+be done, they had so knit themselves together with the pelting of their
+interlaudation.
+
+"I think it is time for me to run home to my father for an hour," said
+Laetitia.
+
+"I ought to be working," said Vernon.
+
+Good progress was made to the disgarlanding of themselves thus far;
+yet, an acutely civilized pair, the abruptness of the transition from
+floweriness to commonplace affected them both, Laetitia chiefly, as she
+had broken the pause, and she remarked:--"I am really Constancy in my
+opinions."
+
+"Another title is customary where stiff opinions are concerned. Perhaps
+by and by you will learn your mistake, and then you will acknowledge
+the name for it."
+
+"How?" said she. "What shall I learn?"
+
+"If you learn that I am a grisly Egoist?"
+
+"You? And it would not be egoism," added Laetitia, revealing to him at
+the same instant as to herself that she swung suspended on a scarce
+credible guess.
+
+"--Will nothing pierce your ears, Mr. Whitford?"
+
+He heard the intruding voice, but he was bent on rubbing out the cloudy
+letters Laetitia had begun to spell, and he stammered, in a tone of
+matter-of-fact: "Just that and no better"; then turned to Mrs.
+Mountstuart Jenkinson.
+
+"--Or are you resolved you will never see Professor Crooklyn when you
+look on him?" said the great lady.
+
+Vernon bowed to the Professor and apologized to him shufflingly and
+rapidly, incoherently, and with a red face; which induced Mrs.
+Mountstuart to scan Laetitia's.
+
+After lecturing Vernon for his abandonment of her yesterday evening,
+and flouting his protestations, she returned to the business of the
+day. "We walked from the lodge-gates to see the park and prepare
+ourselves for Dr. Middleton. We parted last night in the middle of a
+controversy and are rageing to resume it. Where is our redoubtable
+antagonist?"
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart wheeled Professor Crooklyn round to accompany Vernon.
+
+"We," she said, "are for modern English scholarship, opposed to the
+champion of German."
+
+"The contrary," observed Professor Crooklyn.
+
+"Oh! We," she corrected the error serenely, "are for German scholarship
+opposed to English."
+
+"Certain editions."
+
+"We defend certain editions."
+
+"Defend is a term of imperfect application to my position, ma'am."
+
+"My dear Professor, you have in Dr. Middleton a match for you in
+conscientious pugnacity, and you will not waste it upon me. There,
+there they are; there he is. Mr. Whitford will conduct you. I stand
+away from the first shock."
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart fell back to Laetitia, saying: "He pores over a little
+inexactitude in phrases, and pecks at it like a domestic fowl."
+
+Professor Crooklyn's attitude and air were so well described that
+Laetitia could have laughed.
+
+"These mighty scholars have their flavour," the great lady hastened to
+add, lest her younger companion should be misled to suppose that they
+were not valuable to a governing hostess: "their shadow-fights are
+ridiculous, but they have their flavour at a table. Last night, no: I
+discard all mention of last night. We failed: as none else in this
+neighbourhood could fail, but we failed. If we have among us a
+cormorant devouring young lady who drinks up all the--ha!--brandy and
+water--of our inns and occupies all our flys, why, our condition is
+abnormal, and we must expect to fail: we are deprived of accommodation
+for accidental circumstances. How Mr. Whitford could have missed seeing
+Professor Crooklyn! And what was he doing at the station, Miss Dale?"
+
+"Your portrait of Professor Crooklyn was too striking, Mrs Mountstuart,
+and deceived him by its excellence. He appears to have seen only the
+blank side of the slate."
+
+"Ah! He is a faithful friend of his cousin, do you not think?"
+
+"He is the truest of friends."
+
+"As for Dr. Middleton," Mrs. Mountstuart diverged from her inquiry, "he
+will swell the letters of my vocabulary to gigantic proportions if I
+see much of him: he is contagious."
+
+"I believe it is a form of his humour."
+
+"I caught it of him yesterday at my dinner-table in my distress, and
+must pass it off as a form of mine, while it lasts. I talked Dr.
+Middleton half the dreary night through to my pillow. Your candid
+opinion, my dear, come! As for me, I don't hesitate. We seemed to have
+sat down to a solitary performance on the bass-viol. We were positively
+an assembly of insects during thunder. My very soul thanked Colonel De
+Craye for his diversions, but I heard nothing but Dr. Middleton. It
+struck me that my table was petrified, and every one sat listening to
+bowls played overhead."
+
+"I was amused."
+
+"Really? You delight me. Who knows but that my guests were sincere in
+their congratulations on a thoroughly successful evening? I have fallen
+to this, you see! And I know, wretched people! that as often as not it
+is their way of condoling with one. I do it myself: but only where
+there have been amiable efforts. But imagine my being congratulated for
+that!--Good-morning, Sir Willoughby.--The worst offender! and I am in
+no pleasant mood with him," Mrs. Mountstuart said aside to Laetitia,
+who drew back, retiring.
+
+Sir Willoughby came on a step or two. He stopped to watch Laetitia's
+figure swimming to the house.
+
+So, as, for instance, beside a stream, when a flower on the surface
+extends its petals drowning to subside in the clear still water, we
+exercise our privilege to be absent in the charmed contemplation of a
+beautiful natural incident.
+
+A smile of pleased abstraction melted on his features.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+MRS. MOUNTSTUART AND SIR WILLOUGHBY
+
+"Good morning, my dear Mrs. Mountstuart," Sir Willoughby wakened
+himself to address the great lady. "Why has she fled?"
+
+"Has any one fled?"
+
+"Laetitia Dale."
+
+"Letty Dale? Oh, if you call that flying. Possibly to renew a close
+conversation with Vernon Whitford, that I cut short. You frightened me
+with your 'Shepherds-tell-me' air and tone. Lead me to one of your
+garden-seats: out of hearing to Dr. Middleton, I beg. He mesmerizes me,
+he makes me talk Latin. I was curiously susceptible last night. I know
+I shall everlastingly associate him with an abortive entertainment and
+solos on big instruments. We were flat."
+
+"Horace was in good vein."
+
+"You were not."
+
+"And Laetitia--Miss Dale talked well, I thought."
+
+"She talked with you, and no doubt she talked well. We did not mix. The
+yeast was bad. You shot darts at Colonel De Craye: you tried to sting.
+You brought Dr. Middleton down on you. Dear me, that man is a
+reverberation in my head. Where is your lady and love?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Am I to name her?"
+
+"Clara? I have not seen her for the last hour. Wandering, I suppose."
+
+"A very pretty summer bower," said Mrs. Mountstuart, seating herself
+"Well, my dear Sir Willoughby, preferences, preferences are not to be
+accounted for, and one never knows whether to pity or congratulate,
+whatever may occur. I want to see Miss Middleton."
+
+"Your 'dainty rogue in porcelain' will be at your beck--you lunch with
+us?--before you leave."
+
+"So now you have taken to quoting me, have you?"
+
+"But 'a romantic tale on her eyelashes' is hardly descriptive any
+longer."
+
+"Descriptive of whom? Now you are upon Laetitia Dale!"
+
+"I quote you generally. She has now a graver look."
+
+"And well may have!"
+
+"Not that the romance has entirely disappeared."
+
+"No; it looks as if it were in print."
+
+"You have hit it perfectly, as usual, ma'am."
+
+Sir Willoughby mused.
+
+Like one resuming his instrument to take up the melody in a concerted
+piece, he said: "I thought Laetitia Dale had a singularly animated air
+last night."
+
+"Why!--" Mrs. Mountstuart mildly gaped.
+
+"I want a new description of her. You know, I collect your mottoes and
+sentences."
+
+"It seems to me she is coming three parts out of her shell, and wearing
+it as a hood for convenience."
+
+"Ready to issue forth at an invitation? Admirable! exact!"
+
+"Ay, my good Sir Willoughby, but are we so very admirable and exact?
+Are we never to know our own minds?"
+
+He produced a polysyllabic sigh, like those many-jointed compounds of
+poets in happy languages, which are copious in a single expression:
+"Mine is known to me. It always has been. Cleverness in women is not
+uncommon. Intellect is the pearl. A woman of intellect is as good as a
+Greek statue; she is divinely wrought, and she is divinely rare."
+
+"Proceed," said the lady, confiding a cough to the air.
+
+"The rarity of it: and it is not mere intellect, it is a sympathetic
+intellect; or else it is an intellect in perfect accord with an
+intensely sympathetic disposition;--the rarity of it makes it too
+precious to be parted with when once we have met it. I prize it the
+more the older I grow."
+
+"Are we on the feminine or the neuter?"
+
+"I beg pardon?"
+
+"The universal or the individual?"
+
+He shrugged. "For the rest, psychological affinities may exist
+coincident with and entirely independent of material or moral
+prepossessions, relations, engagements, ties."
+
+"Well, that is not the raving of passion, certainly," said Mrs
+Mountstuart, "and it sounds as if it were a comfortable doctrine for
+men. On that plea, you might all of you be having Aspasia and a wife.
+We saw your fair Middleton and Colonel de Craye at a distance as we
+entered the park. Professor Crooklyn is under some hallucination."
+
+"What more likely?"
+
+The readiness and the double-bearing of the reply struck her comic
+sense with awe.
+
+"The Professor must hear that. He insists on the fly, and the inn, and
+the wet boots, and the warming mixture, and the testimony of the
+landlady and the railway porter."
+
+"I say, what more likely?"
+
+"Than that he should insist?"
+
+"If he is under the hallucination!"
+
+"He may convince others."
+
+"I have only to repeat. . ."
+
+"'What more likely?' It's extremely philosophical. Coincident with a
+pursuit of the psychological affinities."
+
+"Professor Crooklyn will hardly descend, I suppose, from his classical
+altitudes to lay his hallucinations before Dr. Middleton?"
+
+"Sir Willoughby, you are the pink of chivalry!"
+
+By harping on Laetitia, he had emboldened Mrs. Mountstuart to lift the
+curtain upon Clara. It was offensive to him, but the injury done to his
+pride had to be endured for the sake of his general plan of
+self-protection.
+
+"Simply desirous to save my guests from annoyance of any kind", he
+said. "Dr Middleton can look 'Olympus and thunder', as Vernon calls
+it."
+
+"Don't. I see him. That look! It is Dictionary-bitten! Angry, homed
+Dictionary!--an apparition of Dictionary in the night--to a dunce!"
+
+"One would undergo a good deal to avoid the sight."
+
+"What the man must be in a storm! Speak as you please of yourself: you
+are a true and chivalrous knight to dread it for her. But now,
+candidly, how is it you cannot condescend to a little management?
+Listen to an old friend. You are too lordly. No lover can afford to be
+incomprehensible for half an hour. Stoop a little. Sermonizings are
+not to be thought of. You can govern unseen. You are to know that I am
+one who disbelieves in philosophy in love. I admire the look of it, I
+give no credit to the assumption. I rather like lovers to be out at
+times: it makes them picturesque, and it enlivens their monotony. I
+perceived she had a spot of wildness. It's proper that she should wear
+it off before marriage."
+
+"Clara? The wildness of an infant!" said Willoughby, paternally, musing
+over an inward shiver. "You saw her at a distance just now, or you
+might have heard her laughing. Horace diverts her excessively."
+
+"I owe him my eternal gratitude for his behaviour last night. She was
+one of my bright faces. Her laughter was delicious; rain in the desert!
+It will tell you what the load on me was, when I assure you those two
+were merely a spectacle to me--points I scored in a lost game. And I
+know they were witty."
+
+"They both have wit; a kind of wit," Willoughby assented.
+
+"They struck together like a pair of cymbals."
+
+"Not the highest description of instrument. However, they amuse me. I
+like to hear them when I am in the vein."
+
+"That vein should be more at command with you, my friend. You can be
+perfect, if you like."
+
+"Under your tuition."
+
+Willoughby leaned to her, bowing languidly. He was easier in his pain
+for having hoodwinked the lady. She was the outer world to him; she
+could tune the world's voice; prescribe which of the two was to be
+pitied, himself or Clara; and he did not intend it to be himself, if it
+came to the worst. They were far away from that at present, and he
+continued:
+
+"Probably a man's power of putting on a face is not equal to a girl's.
+I detest petty dissensions. Probably I show it when all is not quite
+smooth. Little fits of suspicion vex me. It is a weakness, not to play
+them off, I know. Men have to learn the arts which come to women by
+nature. I don't sympathize with suspicion, from having none myself."
+
+His eyebrows shot up. That ill-omened man Flitch had sidled round by
+the bushes to within a few feet of him. Flitch primarily defended
+himself against the accusation of drunkenness, which was hurled at him
+to account for his audacity in trespassing against the interdict; but
+he admitted that he had taken "something short" for a fortification in
+visiting scenes where he had once been happy--at Christmastide, when
+all the servants, and the butler at head, grey old Mr. Chessington, sat
+in rows, toasting the young heir of the old Hall in the old port wine!
+Happy had he been then, before ambition for a shop, to be his own
+master and an independent gentleman, had led him into his quagmire:--to
+look back envying a dog on the old estate, and sigh for the smell of
+Patterne stables: sweeter than Arabia, his drooping nose appeared to
+say.
+
+He held up close against it something that imposed silence on Sir
+Willoughby as effectively as a cunning exordium in oratory will enchain
+mobs to swallow what is not complimenting them; and this he displayed
+secure in its being his licence to drivel his abominable pathos. Sir
+Willoughby recognized Clara's purse. He understood at once how the must
+have come by it: he was not so quick in devising a means of stopping
+the tale. Flitch foiled him. "Intact," he replied to the question:
+"What have you there?" He repeated this grand word. And then he turned
+to Mrs. Mountstuart to speak of Paradise and Adam, in whom he saw the
+prototype of himself: also the Hebrew people in the bondage of Egypt,
+discoursed of by the clergymen, not without a likeness to him.
+
+"Sorrows have done me one good, to send me attentive to church, my
+lady," said Flitch, "when I might have gone to London, the coachman's
+home, and been driving some honourable family, with no great advantage
+to my morals, according to what I hear of. And a purse found under the
+seat of a fly in London would have a poor chance of returning intact to
+the young lady losing it."
+
+"Put it down on that chair; inquiries will be made, and you will see
+Sir Willoughby," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "Intact, no doubt; it is not
+disputed."
+
+With one motion of a finger she set the man rounding.
+
+Flitch halted; he was very regretful of the termination of his feast of
+pathos, and he wished to relate the finding of the purse, but he could
+not encounter Mrs. Mountstuart's look; he slouched away in very close
+resemblance to the ejected Adam of illustrated books.
+
+"It's my belief that naturalness among the common people has died out
+of the kingdom," she said.
+
+Willoughby charitably apologized for him. "He has been fuddling
+himself."
+
+Her vigilant considerateness had dealt the sensitive gentleman a shock,
+plainly telling him she had her ideas of his actual posture. Nor was he
+unhurt by her superior acuteness and her display of authority on his
+grounds.
+
+He said, boldly, as he weighed the purse, half tossing it: "It's not
+unlike Clara's."
+
+He feared that his lips and cheeks were twitching, and as he grew aware
+of a glassiness of aspect that would reflect any suspicion of a
+keen-eyed woman, he became bolder still!
+
+"Laetitia's, I know it is not. Hers is an ancient purse."
+
+"A present from you!"
+
+"How do you hit on that, my dear lady?"
+
+"Deductively."
+
+"Well, the purse looks as good as new in quality, like the owner."
+
+"The poor dear has not much occasion for using it."
+
+"You are mistaken: she uses it daily."
+
+"If it were better filled, Sir Willoughby, your old scheme might be
+arranged. The parties do not appear so unwilling. Professor Crooklyn
+and I came on them just now rather by surprise, and I assure you their
+heads were close, faces meeting, eyes musing."
+
+"Impossible."
+
+"Because when they approach the point, you won't allow it! Selfish!"
+
+"Now," said Willoughby, very animatedly, "question Clara. Now, do, my
+dear Mrs. Mountstuart, do speak to Clara on that head; she will
+convince you I have striven quite recently against myself, if you like.
+I have instructed her to aid me, given her the fullest instructions,
+carte blanche. She cannot possibly have a doubt. I may look to her to
+remove any you may entertain from your mind on the subject. I have
+proposed, seconded, and chorussed it, and it will not be arranged. If
+you expect me to deplore that fact, I can only answer that my actions
+are under my control, my feelings are not. I will do everything
+consistent with the duties of a man of honour perpetually running into
+fatal errors because he did not properly consult the dictates of those
+feelings at the right season. I can violate them: but I can no more
+command them than I can my destiny. They were crushed of old, and so
+let them be now. Sentiments we won't discuss; though you know that
+sentiments have a bearing on social life: are factors, as they say in
+their later jargon. I never speak of mine. To you I could. It is not
+necessary. If old Vernon, instead of flattening his chest at a desk,
+had any manly ambition to take part in public affairs, she would be the
+woman for him. I have called her my Egeria. She would be his Cornelia.
+One could swear of her that she would have noble offspring!--But old
+Vernon has had his disappointment, and will moan over it up to the end.
+And she? So it appears. I have tried; yes, personally: without effect.
+In other matters I may have influence with her: not in that one. She
+declines. She will live and die Laetitia Dale. We are alone: I confess
+to you, I love the name. It's an old song in my ears. Do not be too
+ready with a name for me. Believe me--I speak from my experience
+hitherto--there is a fatality in these things. I cannot conceal from my
+poor girl that this fatality exists . . ."
+
+"Which is the poor girl at present?" said Mrs. Mountstuart, cool in a
+mystification.
+
+"And though she will tell you that I have authorized and Clara
+Middleton--done as much as man can to institute the union you suggest,
+she will own that she is conscious of the presence of this--fatality, I
+call it for want of a better title between us. It drives her in one
+direction, me in another--or would, if I submitted to the pressure. She
+is not the first who has been conscious of it."
+
+"Are we laying hold of a third poor girl?" said Mrs. Mountstuart. "Ah!
+I remember. And I remember we used to call it playing fast and loose in
+those days, not fatality. It is very strange. It may be that you were
+unblushingly courted in those days, and excusable; and we all supposed
+. . . but away you went for your tour."
+
+"My mother's medical receipt for me. Partially it succeeded. She was
+for grand marriages: not I. I could make, I could not be, a sacrifice.
+And then I went in due time to Dr. Cupid on my own account. She has the
+kind of attraction. . . But one changes! On revient toujours. First we
+begin with a liking; then we give ourselves up to the passion of
+beauty: then comes the serious question of suitableness of the mate to
+match us; and perhaps we discover that we were wiser in early youth
+than somewhat later. However, she has beauty. Now, Mrs Mountstuart,
+you do admire her. Chase the idea of the 'dainty rogue' out of your
+view of her: you admire her: she is captivating; she has a particular
+charm of her own, nay, she has real beauty."
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart fronted him to say: "Upon my word, my dear Sir
+Willoughby, I think she has it to such a degree that I don't know the
+man who could hold out against her if she took the field. She is one of
+the women who are dead shots with men. Whether it's in their tongues or
+their eyes, or it's an effusion and an atmosphere--whatever it is,
+it's a spell, another fatality for you!"
+
+"Animal; not spiritual!"
+
+"Oh, she hasn't the head of Letty Dale."
+
+Sir Willoughby allowed Mrs. Mountstuart to pause and follow her
+thoughts.
+
+"Dear me!" she exclaimed. "I noticed a change in Letty Dale last night;
+and to-day. She looked fresher and younger; extremely well: which is
+not what I can say for you, my friend. Fatalizing is not good for the
+complexion."
+
+"Don't take away my health, pray," cried Willoughby, with a snapping
+laugh.
+
+"Be careful," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "You have got a sentimental tone.
+You talk of 'feelings crushed of old'. It is to a woman, not to a man
+that you speak, but that sort of talk is a way of making the ground
+slippery. I listen in vain for a natural tongue; and when I don't hear
+it, I suspect plotting in men. You show your under-teeth too at times
+when you draw in a breath, like a condemned high-caste Hindoo my
+husband took me to see in a jail in Calcutta, to give me some
+excitement when I was pining for England. The creature did it regularly
+as he breathed; you did it last night, and you have been doing it
+to-day, as if the air cut you to the quick. You have been spoilt. You
+have been too much anointed. What I've just mentioned is a sign with me
+of a settled something on the brain of a man."
+
+"The brain?" said Sir Willoughby, frowning.
+
+"Yes, you laugh sourly, to look at," said she. "Mountstuart told me
+that the muscles of the mouth betray men sooner than the eyes, when
+they have cause to be uneasy in their minds."
+
+"But, ma'am, I shall not break my word; I shall not, not; I intend, I
+have resolved to keep it. I do not fatalize, let my complexion be black
+or white. Despite my resemblance to a high-caste malefactor of the
+Calcutta prison-wards . . ."
+
+"Friend! friend! you know how I chatter."
+
+He saluted her finger-ends. "Despite the extraordinary display of
+teeth, you will find me go to execution with perfect calmness; with a
+resignation as good as happiness."
+
+"Like a Jacobite lord under the Georges."
+
+"You have told me that you wept to read of one: like him, then. My
+principles have not changed, if I have. When I was younger, I had an
+idea of a wife who would be with me in my thoughts as well as aims: a
+woman with a spirit of romance, and a brain of solid sense. I shall
+sooner or later dedicate myself to a public life; and shall, I suppose,
+want the counsellor or comforter who ought always to be found at home.
+It may be unfortunate that I have the ideal in my head. But I would
+never make rigorous demands for specific qualities. The cruellest thing
+in the world is to set up a living model before a wife, and compel her
+to copy it. In any case, here we are upon the road: the die is cast. I
+shall not reprieve myself. I cannot release her. Marriage represents
+facts, courtship fancies. She will be cured by-and-by of that coveting
+of everything that I do, feel, think, dream, imagine . . . ta-ta-ta-ta
+ad infinitum. Laetitia was invited here to show her the example of a
+fixed character--solid as any concrete substance you would choose to
+build on, and not a whit the less feminine."
+
+"Ta-ta-ta-ta ad infinitum. You need not tell me you have a design in
+all that you do, Willoughby Patterne."
+
+"You smell the autocrat? Yes, he can mould and govern the creatures
+about him. His toughest rebel is himself! If you see Clara . . . You
+wish to see her, I think you said?"
+
+"Her behaviour to Lady Busshe last night was queer."
+
+"If you will. She makes a mouth at porcelain. Toujours la porcelaine!
+For me, her pettishness is one of her charms, I confess it. Ten years
+younger, I could not have compared them."
+
+"Whom?"
+
+"Laetitia and Clara."
+
+"Sir Willoughby, in any case, to quote you, here we are all upon the
+road, and we must act as if events were going to happen; and I must ask
+her to help me on the subject of my wedding-present, for I don't want
+to have her making mouths at mine, however pretty--and she does it
+prettily."
+
+"'Another dedicatory offering to the rogue in me!' she says of
+porcelain."
+
+"Then porcelain it shall not be. I mean to consult her; I have come
+determined upon a chat with her. I think I understand. But she produces
+false impressions on those who don't know you both. 'I shall have that
+porcelain back,' says Lady Busshe to me, when we were shaking hands
+last night: 'I think,' says she, 'it should have been the Willow
+Pattern.' And she really said: 'He's in for being jilted a second
+time!'"
+
+Sir Willoughby restrained a bound of his body that would have sent him
+up some feet into the air. He felt his skull thundered at within.
+
+"Rather than that it should fan upon her!" ejaculated he, correcting
+his resemblance to the high-caste culprit as soon as it recurred to
+him.
+
+"But you know Lady Busshe," said Mrs. Mountstuart, genuinely solicitous
+to ease the proud man of his pain. She could see through him to the
+depth of the skin, which his fencing sensitiveness vainly attempted to
+cover as it did the heart of him. "Lady Busshe is nothing without her
+flights, fads, and fancies. She has always insisted that you have an
+unfortunate nose. I remember her saying on the day of your majority, it
+was the nose of a monarch destined to lose a throne."
+
+"Have I ever offended Lady Busshe?"
+
+"She trumpets you. She carries Lady Culmer with her too, and you may
+expect a visit of nods and hints and pots of alabaster. They worship
+you: you are the hope of England in their eyes, and no woman is worthy
+of you: but they are a pair of fatalists, and if you begin upon Letty
+Dale with them, you might as well forbid your banns. They will be all
+over the country exclaiming on predestination and marriages made in
+heaven."
+
+"Clara and her father!" cried Sir Willoughby.
+
+Dr Middleton and his daughter appeared in the circle of shrubs and
+flowers.
+
+"Bring her to me, and save me from the polyglot," said Mrs Mountstuart,
+in afright at Dr. Middleton's manner of pouring forth into the ears of
+the downcast girl.
+
+The leisure he loved that he might debate with his genius upon any next
+step was denied to Willoughby: he had to place his trust in the skill
+with which he had sown and prepared Mrs Mountstuart's understanding to
+meet the girl--beautiful abhorred that she was! detested darling!
+thing to squeeze to death and throw to the dust, and mourn over!
+
+He had to risk it; and at an hour when Lady Busshe's prognostic
+grievously impressed his intense apprehensiveness of nature.
+
+As it happened that Dr. Middleton's notion of a disagreeable duty in
+colloquy was to deliver all that he contained, and escape the listening
+to a syllable of reply, Willoughby withdrew his daughter from him
+opportunely.
+
+"Mrs. Mountstuart wants you, Clara."
+
+"I shall be very happy," Clara replied, and put on a new face. An
+imperceptible nervous shrinking was met by another force in her bosom,
+that pushed her to advance without a sign of reluctance. She seemed to
+glitter.
+
+She was handed to Mrs. Mountstuart.
+
+Dr Middleton laid his hand over Willoughby's shoulder, retiring on a
+bow before the great lady of the district. He blew and said: "An
+opposition of female instincts to masculine intellect necessarily
+creates a corresponding antagonism of intellect to instinct."
+
+"Her answer, sir? Her reasons? Has she named any?"
+
+"The cat," said Dr. Middleton, taking breath for a sentence, "that
+humps her back in the figure of the letter H, or a Chinese bridge has
+given the dog her answer and her reasons, we may presume: but he that
+undertakes to translate them into human speech might likewise venture
+to propose an addition to the alphabet and a continuation of Homer. The
+one performance would be not more wonderful than the other. Daughters,
+Willoughby, daughters! Above most human peccancies, I do abhor a breach
+of faith. She will not be guilty of that. I demand a cheerful
+fulfilment of a pledge: and I sigh to think that I cannot count on it
+without administering a lecture."
+
+"She will soon be my care, sir."
+
+"She shall be. Why, she is as good as married. She is at the altar. She
+is in her house. She is--why, where is she not? She has entered the
+sanctuary. She is out of the market. This maenad shriek for freedom
+would happily entitle her to the Republican cap--the Phrygian--in a
+revolutionary Parisian procession. To me it has no meaning; and but
+that I cannot credit child of mine with mania, I should be in
+trepidation of her wits."
+
+Sir Willoughby's livelier fears were pacified by the information that
+Clara had simply emitted a cry. Clara had once or twice given him cause
+for starting and considering whether to think of her sex differently or
+condemningly of her, yet he could not deem her capable of fully
+unbosoming herself even to him, and under excitement. His idea of the
+cowardice of girls combined with his ideal of a waxwork sex to persuade
+him that though they are often (he had experienced it) wantonly
+desperate in their acts, their tongues are curbed by rosy prudency. And
+this was in his favour. For if she proved speechless and stupid with
+Mrs. Mountstuart, the lady would turn her over, and beat her flat, beat
+her angular, in fine, turn her to any shape, despising her, and
+cordially believe him to be the model gentleman of Christendom. She
+would fill in the outlines he had sketched to her of a picture that he
+had small pride in by comparison with his early vision of a
+fortune-favoured, triumphing squire, whose career is like the sun's,
+intelligibly lordly to all comprehensions. Not like your model
+gentleman, that has to be expounded--a thing for abstract esteem!
+However, it was the choice left to him. And an alternative was enfolded
+in that. Mrs. Mountstuart's model gentleman could marry either one of
+two women, throwing the other overboard. He was bound to marry: he was
+bound to take to himself one of them: and whichever one he selected
+would cast a lustre on his reputation. At least she would rescue him
+from the claws of Lady Busshe, and her owl's hoot of "Willow Pattern",
+and her hag's shriek of "twice jilted". That flying infant
+Willoughby--his unprotected little incorporeal omnipresent Self (not
+thought of so much as passionately felt for)--would not be scoffed at
+as the luckless with women. A fall indeed from his original conception
+of his name of fame abroad! But Willoughby had the high consolation of
+knowing that others have fallen lower. There is the fate of the devils
+to comfort us, if we are driven hard. "For one of your pangs another
+bosom is racked by ten", we read in the solacing Book.
+
+With all these nice calculations at work, Willoughby stood above
+himself, contemplating his active machinery, which he could partly
+criticize but could not stop, in a singular wonderment at the aims and
+schemes and tremours of one who was handsome, manly, acceptable in the
+world's eyes: and had he not loved himself most heartily he would have
+been divided to the extent of repudiating that urgent and excited half
+of his being, whose motions appeared as those of a body of insects
+perpetually erecting and repairing a structure of extraordinary
+pettiness. He loved himself too seriously to dwell on the division for
+more than a minute or so. But having seen it, and for the first time,
+as he believed, his passion for the woman causing it became surcharged
+with bitterness, atrabiliar.
+
+A glance behind him, as he walked away with Dr. Middleton, showed
+Clara, cunning creature that she was, airily executing her malicious
+graces in the preliminary courtesies with Mrs. Mountstuart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+MISS MIDDLETON AND MRS. MOUNTSTUART
+
+"Sit beside me, fair Middleton," said the great lady.
+
+"Gladly," said Clara, bowing to her title.
+
+"I want to sound you, my dear."
+
+Clara presented an open countenance with a dim interrogation on the
+forehead. "Yes?" she said, submissively.
+
+"You were one of my bright faces last night. I was in love with you.
+Delicate vessels ring sweetly to a finger-nail, and if the wit is true,
+you answer to it; that I can see, and that is what I like. Most of the
+people one has at a table are drums. A ruba-dub-dub on them is the only
+way to get a sound. When they can be persuaded to do it upon one
+another, they call it conversation."
+
+"Colonel De Craye was very funny."
+
+"Funny, and witty too."
+
+"But never spiteful."
+
+"These Irish or half Irishmen are my taste. If they're not politicians,
+mind; I mean Irish gentlemen. I will never have another dinner-party
+without one. Our men's tempers are uncertain. You can't get them to
+forget themselves. And when the wine is in them the nature comes out,
+and they must be buffetting, and up start politics, and good-bye to
+harmony! My husband, I am sorry to say, was one of those who have a
+long account of ruined dinners against them. I have seen him and his
+friends red as the roast and white as the boiled with wrath on a
+popular topic they had excited themselves over, intrinsically not worth
+a snap of the fingers. In London!" exclaimed Mrs. Mountstuart, to
+aggravate the charge against her lord in the Shades. "But town or
+country, the table should be sacred. I have heard women say it is a
+plot on the side of the men to teach us our littleness. I don't believe
+they have a plot. It would be to compliment them on a talent. I believe
+they fall upon one another blindly, simply because they are full; which
+is, we are told, the preparation for the fighting Englishman. They
+cannot eat and keep a truce. Did you notice that dreadful Mr. Capes?"
+
+"The gentleman who frequently contradicted papa? But Colonel De Craye
+was good enough to relieve us."
+
+"How, my dear?"
+
+"You did not hear him? He took advantage of an interval when Mr. Capes
+was breathing after a paean to his friend, the Governor--I think--of
+one of the presidencies, to say to the lady beside him: 'He was a
+wonderful administrator and great logician; he married an Anglo-Indian
+widow, and soon after published a pamphlet in favour of Suttee.'"
+
+"And what did the lady say?"
+
+"She said: 'Oh.'"
+
+"Hark at her! And was it heard?"
+
+"Mr. Capes granted the widow, but declared he had never seen the
+pamphlet in favour of Suttee, and disbelieved in it. He insisted that
+it was to be named Sati. He was vehement."
+
+"Now I do remember:--which must have delighted the colonel. And Mr.
+Capes retired from the front upon a repetition of 'in toto, in toto'.
+As if 'in toto' were the language of a dinner-table! But what will ever
+teach these men? Must we import Frenchmen to give them an example in
+the art of conversation, as their grandfathers brought over marquises
+to instruct them in salads? And our young men too! Women have to take
+to the hunting-field to be able to talk with them, and be on a par with
+their grooms. Now, there was Willoughby Patterne, a prince among them
+formerly. Now, did you observe him last night? did you notice how,
+instead of conversing, instead of assisting me--as he was bound to do
+doubly owing to the defection of Vernon Whitford: a thing I don't yet
+comprehend--there he sat sharpening his lower lip for cutting remarks.
+And at my best man! at Colonel De Craye! If he had attacked Mr. Capes,
+with his Governor of Bomby, as the man pronounces it, or Colonel
+Wildjohn and his Protestant Church in Danger, or Sir Wilson Pettifer
+harping on his Monarchical Republic, or any other! No, he preferred to
+be sarcastic upon friend Horace, and he had the worst of it. Sarcasm is
+so silly! What is the gain if he has been smart? People forget the
+epigram and remember the other's good temper. On that field, my dear,
+you must make up your mind to be beaten by 'friend Horace'. I have my
+prejudices and I have my prepossessions, but I love good temper, and I
+love wit, and when I see a man possessed of both, I set my cap at him,
+and there's my flat confession, and highly unfeminine it is."
+
+"Not at all!" cried Clara.
+
+"We are one, then."
+
+Clara put up a mouth empty of words: she was quite one with her. Mrs.
+Mountstuart pressed her hand. "When one does get intimate with a dainty
+rogue!" she said. "You forgive me all that, for I could vow that
+Willoughby has betrayed me."
+
+Clara looked soft, kind, bright, in turns, and clouded instantly when
+the lady resumed: "A friend of my own sex, and young, and a close
+neighbour, is just what I would have prayed for. And I'll excuse you,
+my dear, for not being so anxious about the friendship of an old woman.
+But I shall be of use to you, you will find. In the first place, I
+never tap for secrets. In the second, I keep them. Thirdly, I have some
+power. And fourth, every young married woman has need of a friend like
+me. Yes, and Lady Patterne heading all the county will be the stronger
+for my backing. You don't look so mighty well pleased, my dear. Speak
+out."
+
+"Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!"
+
+"I tell you, I am very fond of Willoughby, but I saw the faults of the
+boy and see the man's. He has the pride of a king, and it's a pity if
+you offend it. He is prodigal in generosity, but he can't forgive. As
+to his own errors, you must be blind to them as a Saint. The secret of
+him is, that he is one of those excessively civilized creatures who aim
+at perfection: and I think he ought to be supported in his conceit of
+having attained it; for the more men of that class, the greater our
+influence. He excels in manly sports, because he won't be excelled in
+anything, but as men don't comprehend his fineness, he comes to us; and
+his wife must manage him by that key. You look down at the idea of
+managing. It has to be done. One thing you may be assured of, he will
+be proud of you. His wife won't be very much enamoured of herself if
+she is not the happiest woman in the world. You will have the best
+horses, the best dresses, the finest jewels in England; and an
+incomparable cook. The house will be changed the moment you enter it as
+Lady Patterne. And, my dear, just where he is, with all his graces,
+deficient of attraction, yours will tell. The sort of Othello he would
+make, or Leontes, I don't know, and none of us ever needs to know. My
+impression is, that if even a shadow of a suspicion flitted across him,
+he is a sort of man to double-dye himself in guilt by way of vengeance
+in anticipation of an imagined offence. Not uncommon with men. I have
+heard strange stories of them: and so will you in your time to come,
+but not from me. No young woman shall ever be the sourer for having
+been my friend. One word of advice now we are on the topic: never play
+at counter-strokes with him. He will be certain to out-stroke you, and
+you will be driven further than you meant to go. They say we beat men
+at that game; and so we do, at the cost of beating ourselves. And if
+once we are started, it is a race-course ending on a precipice--over
+goes the winner. We must be moderately slavish to keep our place; which
+is given us in appearance; but appearances make up a remarkably large
+part of life, and far the most comfortable, so long as we are discreet
+at the right moment. He is a man whose pride, when hurt, would run his
+wife to perdition to solace it. If he married a troublesome widow, his
+pamphlet on Suttee would be out within the year. Vernon Whitford would
+receive instructions about it the first frosty moon. You like Miss
+Dale?"
+
+"I think I like her better than she likes me," said Clara.
+
+"Have you never warmed together?"
+
+"I have tried it. She is not one bit to blame. I can see how it is that
+she misunderstands me: or justly condemns me, perhaps I should say."
+
+"The hero of two women must die and be wept over in common before they
+can appreciate one another. You are not cold?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You shuddered, my dear."
+
+"Did I?"
+
+"I do sometimes. Feet will be walking over ones grave, wherever it
+lies. Be sure of this: Willoughby Patterne is a man of unimpeachable
+honour."
+
+"I do not doubt it."
+
+"He means to be devoted to you. He has been accustomed to have women
+hanging around him like votive offerings."
+
+"I . . .!"
+
+"You cannot: of course not: any one could see that at a glance. You
+are all the sweeter to me for not being tame. Marriage cures a
+multitude of indispositions."
+
+"Oh! Mrs. Mountstuart, will you listen to me?"
+
+"Presently. Don't threaten me with confidences. Eloquence is a terrible
+thing in woman. I suspect, my dear, that we both know as much as could
+be spoken."
+
+"You hardly suspect the truth, I fear."
+
+"Let me tell you one thing about jealous men--when they are not
+blackamoors married to disobedient daughters. I speak of our civil
+creature of the drawing-rooms: and lovers, mind, not husbands: two
+distinct species, married or not:--they're rarely given to jealousy
+unless they are flighty themselves. The jealousy fixes them. They have
+only to imagine that we are for some fun likewise and they grow as
+deferential as my footman, as harmless as the sportsman whose gun has
+burst. Ah! my fair Middleton, am I pretending to teach you? You have
+read him his lesson, and my table suffered for it last night, but I
+bear no rancour."
+
+"You bewilder me, Mrs. Mountstuart."
+
+"Not if I tell you that you have driven the poor man to try whether it
+would be possible for him to give you up."
+
+"I have?"
+
+"Well, and you are successful."
+
+"I am?"
+
+"Jump, my dear!"
+
+"He will?"
+
+"When men love stale instead of fresh, withered better than blooming,
+excellence in the abstract rather than the palpable. With their idle
+prate of feminine intellect, and a grotto nymph, and a mother of
+Gracchi! Why, he must think me dazed with admiration of him to talk to
+me! One listens, you know. And he is one of the men who cast a kind of
+physical spell on you while he has you by the ear, until you begin to
+think of it by talking to somebody else. I suppose there are clever
+people who do see deep into the breast while dialogue is in progress.
+One reads of them. No, my dear, you have very cleverly managed to show
+him that it isn't at all possible: he can't. And the real cause for
+alarm, in my humble opinion, is lest your amiable foil should have been
+a trifle, as he would say, deceived, too much in earnest, led too far.
+One may reprove him for not being wiser, but men won't learn without
+groaning that they are simply weapons taken up to be put down when done
+with. Leave it to me to compose him.--Willoughby can't give you up. I'm
+certain he has tried; his pride has been horridly wounded. You were
+shrewd, and he has had his lesson. If these little rufflings don't come
+before marriage they come after; so it's not time lost; and it's good
+to be able to look back on them. You are very white, my child."
+
+"Can you, Mrs. Mountstuart, can you think I would be so heartlessly
+treacherous?"
+
+"Be honest, fair Middleton, and answer me: Can you say you had not a
+corner of an idea of producing an effect on Willoughby?"
+
+Clara checked the instinct of her tongue to defend her reddening
+cheeks, with a sense that she was disintegrating and crumbling, but she
+wanted this lady for a friend, and she had to submit to the conditions,
+and be red and silent.
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart examined her leisurely.
+
+"That will do. Conscience blushes. One knows it by the conflagration.
+Don't be hard on yourself . . . there you are in the other extreme.
+That blush of yours would count with me against any quantity of
+evidence--all the Crooklyns in the kingdom. You lost your purse."
+
+"I discovered that it was lost this morning."
+
+"Flitch has been here with it. Willoughby has it. You will ask him for
+it; he will demand payment: you will be a couple of yards' length or so
+of cramoisy: and there ends the episode, nobody killed, only a poor man
+melancholy-wounded, and I must offer him my hand to mend him, vowing to
+prove to him that Suttee was properly abolished. Well, and now to
+business. I said I wanted to sound you. You have been overdone with
+porcelain. Poor Lady Busshe is in despair at your disappointment. Now,
+I mean my wedding-present to be to your taste."
+
+"Madam!"
+
+"Who is the madam you are imploring?"
+
+"Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I shall fall in your esteem. Perhaps you will help me. No one else
+can. I am a prisoner: I am compelled to continue this imposture. Oh, I
+shun speaking much: you object to it and I dislike it: but I must
+endeavour to explain to you that I am unworthy of the position you
+think a proud one."
+
+"Tut-tut; we are all unworthy, cross our arms, bow our heads; and
+accept the honours. Are you playing humble handmaid? What an old
+organ-tune that is! Well? Give me reasons."
+
+"I do not wish to marry."
+
+"He's the great match of the county!"
+
+"I cannot marry him."
+
+"Why, you are at the church door with him! Cannot marry him?"
+
+"It does not bind me."
+
+"The church door is as binding as the altar to an honourable girl.
+What have you been about? Since I am in for confidences, half ones
+won't do. We must have honourable young women as well as men of honour.
+You can't imagine he is to be thrown over now, at this hour? What have
+you against him? come!"
+
+"I have found that I do not . . ."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Love him."
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart grimaced transiently. "That is no answer. The cause!"
+she said. "What has he done?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"And when did you discover this nothing?"
+
+"By degrees: unknown to myself; suddenly."
+
+"Suddenly and by degrees? I suppose it's useless to ask for a head. But
+if all this is true, you ought not to be here."
+
+"I wish to go; I am unable."
+
+"Have you had a scene together?"
+
+"I have expressed my wish."
+
+"In roundabout?--girl's English?"
+
+"Quite clearly; oh, very clearly."
+
+"Have you spoken to your father?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"And what does Dr. Middleton say?"
+
+"It is incredible to him."
+
+"To me too! I can understand little differences, little whims,
+caprices: we don't settle into harness for a tap on the shoulder as a
+man becomes a knight: but to break and bounce away from an unhappy
+gentleman at the church door is either madness or it's one of the
+things without a name. You think you are quite sure of yourself?"
+
+"I am so sure, that I look back with regret on the time when I was
+not."
+
+"But you were in love with him."
+
+"I was mistaken."
+
+"No love?"
+
+"I have none to give."
+
+"Dear me!--Yes, yes, but that tone of sorrowful conviction is often a
+trick, it's not new: and I know that assumption of plain sense to pass
+off a monstrosity." Mrs. Mountstuart struck her lap. "Soh! but I've
+had to rack my brain for it: feminine disgust? You have been hearing
+imputations of his past life? moral character? No? Circumstances might
+make him behave unkindly, not unhandsomely: and we have no claim over a
+man's past, or it's too late to assert it. What is the case?"
+
+"We are quite divided."
+
+"Nothing in the way of . . . nothing green-eyed?"
+
+"Far from that!"
+
+"Then name it."
+
+"We disagree."
+
+"Many a very good agreement is founded on disagreeing. It's to be
+regretted that you are not portionless. If you had been, you would have
+made very little of disagreeing. You are just as much bound in honour
+as if you had the ring on your finger."
+
+"In honour! But I appeal to his, I am no wife for him."
+
+"But if he insists, you consent?"
+
+"I appeal to reason. Is it, madam . . ."
+
+"But, I say, if he insists, you consent?"
+
+"He will insist upon his own misery as well as mine."
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart rocked herself "My poor Sir Willoughby! What a
+fate!--And I took you for a clever girl! Why, I have been admiring
+your management of him! And here am I bound to take a lesson from Lady
+Busshe. My dear good Middleton, don't let it be said that Lady Busshe
+saw deeper than I! I put some little vanity in it, I own: I won't
+conceal it. She declares that when she sent her present--I don't
+believe her--she had a premonition that it would come back. Surely you
+won't justify the extravagances of a woman without common
+reverence:--for anatomize him as we please to ourselves, he is a
+splendid man (and I did it chiefly to encourage and come at you). We
+don't often behold such a lordly-looking man: so conversable too when
+he feels at home; a picture of an English gentleman! The very man we
+want married for our neighbourhood! A woman who can openly talk of
+expecting him to be twice jilted! You shrink. It is repulsive. It would
+be incomprehensible: except, of course, to Lady Busshe, who rushed to
+one of her violent conclusions, and became a prophetess. Conceive a
+woman's imagining it could happen twice to the same man! I am not sure
+she did not send the identical present that arrived and returned once
+before: you know, the Durham engagement. She told me last night she
+had it back. I watched her listening very suspiciously to Professor
+Crooklyn. My dear, it is her passion to foretell disasters--her
+passion! And when they are confirmed, she triumphs, of course. We shall
+have her domineering over us with sapient nods at every trifle
+occurring. The county will be unendurable. Unsay it, my Middleton! And
+don't answer like an oracle because I do all the talking. Pour out to
+me. You'll soon come to a stop and find the want of reason in the want
+of words. I assure you that's true. Let me have a good gaze at you.
+No," said Mrs. Mountstuart, after posturing herself to peruse Clara's
+features, "brains you have; one can see it by the nose and the mouth. I
+could vow you are the girl I thought you; you have your wits on tiptoe.
+How of the heart?"
+
+"None," Clara sighed.
+
+The sigh was partly voluntary, though unforced; as one may with ready
+sincerity act a character that is our own only through sympathy.
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart felt the extra weight in the young lady's falling
+breath. There was no necessity for a deep sigh over an absence of heart
+or confession of it. If Clara did not love the man to whom she was
+betrothed, sighing about it signified what? some pretence; and a
+pretence is the cloak of a secret. Girls do not sigh in that way with
+compassion for the man they have no heart for, unless at the same time
+they should be oppressed by the knowledge or dread of having a heart
+for some one else. As a rule, they have no compassion to bestow on him:
+you might as reasonably expect a soldier to bewail the enemy he strikes
+in action: they must be very disengaged to have it. And supposing a
+show of the thing to be exhibited, when it has not been worried out of
+them, there is a reserve in the background: they are pitying themselves
+under a mask of decent pity of their wretch.
+
+So ran Mrs. Mountstuart's calculations, which were like her suspicion,
+coarse and broad, not absolutely incorrect, but not of an exact measure
+with the truth. That pin's head of the truth is rarely hit by design.
+The search after it of the professionally penetrative in the dark of a
+bosom may bring it forth by the heavy knocking all about the
+neighbourhood that we call good guessing, but it does not come out
+clean; other matter adheres to it; and being more it is less than
+truth. The unadulterate is to be had only by faith in it or by waiting
+for it.
+
+A lover! thought the sagacious dame. There was no lover: some love
+there was: or, rather, there was a preparation of the chamber, with no
+lamp yet lighted.
+
+"Do you positively tell me you have no heart for the position of first
+lady of the county?" said Mrs. Mountstuart.
+
+Clara's reply was firm: "None whatever."
+
+"My dear, I will believe you on one condition. Look at me. You have
+eyes. If you are for mischief, you are armed for it. But how much
+better, when you have won a prize, to settle down and wear it! Lady
+Patterne will have entire occupation for her flights and whimsies in
+leading the county. And the man, surely the man--he behaved badly last
+night: but a beauty like this," she pushed a finger at Clara's cheek,
+and doated a half instant, "you have the very beauty to break in an
+ogre's temper. And the man is as governable as he is presentable. You
+have the beauty the French call--no, it's the beauty of a queen of
+elves: one sees them lurking about you, one here, one there.
+Smile--they dance: be doleful--they hang themselves. No, there's not a
+trace of satanic; at least, not yet. And come, come, my Middleton, the
+man is a man to be proud of. You can send him into Parliament to wear
+off his humours. To my thinking, he has a fine style: conscious? I
+never thought so before last night. I can't guess what has happened to
+him recently. He was once a young Grand Monarque. He was really a
+superb young English gentleman. Have you been wounding him?"
+
+"It is my misfortune to be obliged to wound him," said Clara.
+
+"Quite needlessly, my child, for marry him you must."
+
+Clara's bosom rose: her shoulders rose too, narrowing, and her head
+fell slight back.
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart exclaimed: "But the scandal! You would never, never
+think of following the example of that Durham girl?--whether she was
+provoked to it by jealousy or not. It seems to have gone so
+astonishingly far with you in a very short time, that one is alarmed as
+to where you will stop. Your look just now was downright revulsion."
+
+"I fear it is. It is. I am past my own control. Dear madam, you have my
+assurance that I will not behave scandalously or dishonourably. What I
+would entreat of you is to help me. I know this of myself . . . I am not
+the best of women. I am impatient, wickedly. I should be no good wife.
+Feelings like mine teach me unhappy things of myself."
+
+"Rich, handsome, lordly, influential, brilliant health, fine estates,"
+Mrs. Mountstuart enumerated in petulant accents as there started across
+her mind some of Sir Willoughby's attributes for the attraction of the
+soul of woman. "I suppose you wish me to take you in earnest?"
+
+"I appeal to you for help."
+
+"What help?"
+
+"Persuade him of the folly of pressing me to keep my word."
+
+"I will believe you, my dear Middleton, on one condition: your talk of
+no heart is nonsense. A change like this, if one is to believe in the
+change, occurs through the heart, not because there is none. Don't you
+see that? But if you want me for a friend, you must not sham stupid.
+It's bad enough in itself: the imitation's horrid. You have to be
+honest with me, and answer me right out. You came here on this visit
+intending to marry Willoughby Patterne."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And gradually you suddenly discovered, since you came here, that you
+did not intend it, if you could find a means of avoiding it."
+
+"Oh, madam, yes, it is true."
+
+"Now comes the test. And, my lovely Middleton, your flaming cheeks
+won't suffice for me this time. The old serpent can blush like an
+innocent maid on occasion. You are to speak, and you are to tell me in
+six words why that was: and don't waste one on 'madam', or 'Oh! Mrs.
+Mountstuart' Why did you change?"
+
+"I came--When I came I was in some doubt. Indeed I speak the truth. I
+found I could not give him the admiration he has, I dare say, a right
+to expect. I turned--it surprised me; it surprises me now. But so
+completely! So that to think of marrying him is . . ."
+
+"Defer the simile," Mrs. Mountstuart interposed. "If you hit on a
+clever one, you will never get the better of it. Now, by just as much
+as you have outstripped my limitation of words to you, you show me you
+are dishonest."
+
+"I could make a vow."
+
+"You would forswear yourself."
+
+"Will you help me?"
+
+"If you are perfectly ingenuous, I may try."
+
+"Dear lady, what more can I say?"
+
+"It may be difficult. You can reply to a catechism."
+
+"I shall have your help?"
+
+"Well, yes; though I don't like stipulations between friends. There is
+no man living to whom you could willingly give your hand? That is my
+question. I cannot possibly take a step unless I know. Reply briefly:
+there is or there is not." Clara sat back with bated breath, mentally
+taking the leap into the abyss, realizing it, and the cold prudence of
+abstention, and the delirium of the confession. Was there such a man?
+It resembled freedom to think there was: to avow it promised freedom.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Mountstuart!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You will help me?"
+
+"Upon my word, I shall begin to doubt your desire for it."
+
+"Willingly give my hand, madam?"
+
+"For shame! And with wits like yours, can't you perceive where
+hesitation in answering such a question lands you?"
+
+"Dearest lady, will you give me your hand? may I whisper?"
+
+"You need not whisper; I won't look."
+
+Clara's voice trembled on a tense chord.
+
+"There is one . . . compared with him I feel my insignificance. If I
+could aid him."
+
+"What necessity have you to tell me more than that there is one?"
+
+"Ah, madam, it is different: not as you imagine. You bid me be
+scrupulously truthful: I am: I wish you to know the different kind of
+feeling it is from what might be suspected from . . . a confession. To
+give my hand, is beyond any thought I have ever encouraged. If you had
+asked me whether there is one whom I admire--yes, I do. I cannot help
+admiring a beautiful and brave self-denying nature. It is one whom you
+must pity, and to pity casts you beneath him: for you pity him because
+it is his nobleness that has been the enemy of his fortunes. He lives
+for others."
+
+Her voice was musically thrilling in that low muted tone of the very
+heart, impossible to deride or disbelieve.
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart set her head nodding on springs.
+
+"Is he clever?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"He talks well?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Handsome?"
+
+"He might be thought so."
+
+"Witty?"
+
+"I think he is."
+
+"Gay, cheerful?"
+
+"In his manner."
+
+"Why, the man would be a mountebank if he adopted any other. And poor?"
+
+"He is not wealthy."
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart preserved a lengthened silence, but nipped Clara's
+fingers once or twice to reassure her without approving. "Of course
+he's poor," she said at last; "directly the reverse of what you could
+have, it must be. Well, my fair Middleton, I can't say you have been
+dishonest. I'll help you as far as I'm able. How, it is quite
+impossible to tell. We're in the mire. The best way seems to me to get
+this pitiable angel to cut some ridiculous capers and present you
+another view of him. I don't believe in his innocence. He knew you to
+be a plighted woman."
+
+"He has not once by word or sign hinted a disloyalty."
+
+"Then how do you know."
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"He is not the cause of your wish to break your engagement?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then you have succeeded in just telling me nothing. What is?"
+
+"Ah! madam!"
+
+"You would break your engagement purely because the admirable creature
+is in existence?"
+
+Clara shook her head: she could not say she was dizzy. She had spoken
+out more than she had ever spoken to herself, and in doing so she had
+cast herself a step beyond the line she dared to contemplate.
+
+"I won't detain you any longer," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "The more we
+learn, the more we are taught that we are not so wise as we thought we
+were. I have to go to school to Lady Busshe! I really took you for a
+very clever girl. If you change again, you will notify the important
+circumstance to me, I trust."
+
+"I will," said Clara, and no violent declaration of the impossibility
+of her changing again would have had such an effect on her hearer.
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart scanned her face for a new reading of it to match with
+her later impressions.
+
+"I am to do as I please with the knowledge I have gained?"
+
+"I am utterly in your hands, madam."
+
+"I have not meant to be unkind."
+
+"You have not been unkind; I could embrace you."
+
+"I am rather too shattered, and kissing won't put me together. I
+laughed at Lady Busshe! No wonder you went off like a rocket with a
+disappointing bouquet when I told you you had been successful with poor
+Sir Willoughby and he could not give you up. I noticed that. A woman
+like Lady Busshe, always prying for the lamentable, would have required
+no further enlightenment. Has he a temper?"
+
+Clara did not ask her to signalize the person thus abruptly obtruded.
+
+"He has faults," she said.
+
+"There's an end to Sir Willoughby, then! Though I don't say he will
+give you up even when he hears the worst, if he must hear it, as for
+his own sake he should. And I won't say he ought to give you up. He'll
+be the pitiable angel if he does. For you--but you don't deserve
+compliments; they would be immoral. You have behaved badly, badly,
+badly. I have never had such a right-about-face in my life. You will
+deserve the stigma: you will be notorious: you will be called Number
+Two. Think of that! Not even original! We will break the conference, or
+I shall twaddle to extinction. I think I heard the luncheon bell."
+
+"It rang."
+
+"You don't look fit for company, but you had better come."
+
+"Oh, yes; every day it's the same."
+
+"Whether you're in my hands or I'm in yours, we're a couple of
+arch-conspirators against the peace of the family whose table we're
+sitting at, and the more we rattle the viler we are, but we must do it
+to ease our minds."
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart spread the skirts of her voluminous dress, remarking
+further: "At a certain age our teachers are young people: we learn by
+looking backward. It speaks highly for me that I have not called you
+mad.--Full of faults, goodish-looking, not a bad talker, cheerful,
+poorish;--and she prefers that to this!" the great lady exclaimed in
+her reverie while emerging from the circle of shrubs upon a view of the
+Hall. Colonel De Craye advanced to her; certainly good-looking,
+certainly cheerful, by no means a bad talker, nothing of a Croesus, and
+variegated with faults.
+
+His laughing smile attacked the irresolute hostility of her mien,
+confident as the sparkle of sunlight in a breeze. The effect of it on
+herself angered her on behalf of Sir Willoughby's bride.
+
+"Good-morning, Mrs. Mountstuart; I believe I am the last to greet you."
+
+"And how long do you remain here, Colonel De Craye?"
+
+"I kissed earth when I arrived, like the Norman William, and
+consequently I've an attachment to the soil, ma'am."
+
+"You're not going to take possession of it, I suppose?"
+
+"A handful would satisfy me."
+
+"You play the Conqueror pretty much, I have heard. But property is held
+more sacred than in the times of the Norman William."
+
+"And speaking of property, Miss Middleton, your purse is found." he
+said.
+
+"I know it is," she replied as unaffectedly as Mrs. Mountstuart could
+have desired, though the ingenuous air of the girl incensed her
+somewhat.
+
+Clara passed on.
+
+"You restore purses," observed Mrs. Mountstuart.
+
+Her stress on the word and her look thrilled De Craye; for there had
+been a long conversation between the young lady and the dame.
+
+"It was an article that dropped and was not stolen," said he.
+
+"Barely sweet enough to keep, then!"
+
+"I think I could have felt to it like poor Flitch, the flyman, who was
+the finder."
+
+"If you are conscious of these temptations to appropriate what is not
+your own, you should quit the neighbourhood."
+
+"And do it elsewhere? But that's not virtuous counsel."
+
+"And I'm not counselling in the interests of your virtue, Colonel De
+Craye."
+
+"And I dared for a moment to hope that you were, ma'am," he said,
+ruefully drooping.
+
+They were close to the dining-room window, and Mrs Mountstuart
+preferred the terminating of a dialogue that did not promise to leave
+her features the austerely iron cast with which she had commenced it.
+She was under the spell of gratitude for his behaviour yesterday
+evening at her dinner-table; she could not be very severe.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+ANIMATED CONVERSATION AT A LUNCHEON-TABLE
+
+Vernon was crossing the hall to the dining-room as Mrs Mountstuart
+stepped in. She called to him: "Are the champions reconciled?"
+
+He replied: "Hardly that, but they have consented to meet at an altar
+to offer up a victim to the gods in the shape of modern poetic
+imitations of the classical."
+
+"That seems innocent enough. The Professor has not been anxious about
+his chest?"
+
+"He recollects his cough now and then."
+
+"You must help him to forget it."
+
+"Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer are here," said Vernon, not supposing it
+to be a grave announcement until the effect of it on Mrs. Mountstuart
+admonished him.
+
+She dropped her voice: "Engage my fair friend for one of your walks the
+moment we rise from table. You may have to rescue her; but do. I mean
+it."
+
+"She's a capital walker." Vernon remarked in simpleton style.
+
+"There's no necessity for any of your pedestrian feats," Mrs
+Mountstuart said, and let him go, turning to Colonel De Craye to
+pronounce an encomium on him: "The most open-minded man I know!
+Warranted to do perpetual service, and no mischief. If you were all
+. . . instead of catching at every prize you covet! Yes, you would
+have your reward for unselfishness, I assure you. Yes, and where you
+seek it! That is what none of you men will believe."
+
+"When you behold me in your own livery!" cried the colonel.
+
+"Do I?" said she, dallying with a half-formed design to be
+confidential. "How is it one is always tempted to address you in
+the language of innuendo? I can't guess."
+
+"Except that as a dog doesn't comprehend good English we naturally talk
+bad to him."
+
+The great lady was tickled. Who could help being amused by this man?
+And after all, if her fair Middleton chose to be a fool there could be
+no gainsaying her, sorry though poor Sir Willoughby's friends must feel
+for him.
+
+She tried not to smile.
+
+"You are too absurd. Or a baby, you might have added."
+
+"I hadn't the daring."
+
+"I'll tell you what, Colonel De Craye, I shall end by falling in love
+with you; and without esteeming you, I fear."
+
+"The second follows as surely as the flavour upon a draught of Bacchus,
+if you'll but toss off the glass, ma'am."
+
+"We women, sir, think it should be first."
+
+"'Tis to transpose the seasons, and give October the blossom and April
+the apple, and no sweet one! Esteem's a mellow thing that comes after
+bloom and fire, like an evening at home; because if it went before it
+would have no father and couldn't hope for progeny; for there'd be no
+nature in the business. So please, ma'am, keep to the original order,
+and you'll be nature's child, and I the most blessed of mankind."
+
+"Really, were I fifteen years younger. I am not so certain . . . I
+might try and make you harmless."
+
+"Draw the teeth of the lamb so long as you pet him!"
+
+"I challenged you, colonel, and I won't complain of your pitch. But
+now lay your wit down beside your candour, and descend to an every-day
+level with me for a minute."
+
+"Is it innuendo?"
+
+"No; though I daresay it would be easier for you to respond to if it
+were."
+
+"I'm the straightforwardest of men at a word of command."
+
+"This is a whisper. Be alert, as you were last night. Shuffle the table
+well. A little liveliness will do it. I don't imagine malice, but
+there's curiosity, which is often as bad, and not so lightly foiled. We
+have Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer here."
+
+"To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky!"
+
+"Well, then, can you fence with broomsticks?"
+
+"I have had a bout with them in my time."
+
+"They are terribly direct."
+
+"They 'give point', as Napoleon commanded his cavalry to do."
+
+"You must help me to ward it."
+
+"They will require variety in the conversation."
+
+"Constant. You are an angel of intelligence, and if I have the judgeing
+of you, I'm afraid you'll be allowed to pass, in spite of the scandal
+above. Open the door; I don't unbonnet."
+
+De Craye threw the door open.
+
+Lady Busshe was at that moment saying, "And are we indeed to have you
+for a neighbour, Dr. Middleton?"
+
+The Rev. Doctor's reply was drowned by the new arrivals.
+
+"I thought you had forsaken us," observed Sir Willoughby to Mrs.
+Mountstuart.
+
+"And run away with Colonel De Craye? I'm too weighty, my dear friend.
+Besides, I have not looked at the wedding-presents yet."
+
+"The very object of our call!" exclaimed Lady Culmer.
+
+"I have to confess I am in dire alarm about mine," Lady Busshe nodded
+across the table at Clara. "Oh! you may shake your head, but I would
+rather hear a rough truth than the most complimentary evasion."
+
+"How would you define a rough truth, Dr. Middleton?" said Mrs.
+Mountstuart.
+
+Like the trained warrior who is ready at all hours for the trumpet to
+arms, Dr. Middleton waked up for judicial allocution in a trice.
+
+"A rough truth, madam, I should define to be that description of truth
+which is not imparted to mankind without a powerful impregnation of the
+roughness of the teller."
+
+"It is a rough truth, ma'am, that the world is composed of fools, and
+that the exceptions are knaves," Professor Crooklyn furnished that
+example avoided by the Rev. Doctor.
+
+"Not to precipitate myself into the jaws of the foregone definition,
+which strikes me as being as happy as Jonah's whale, that could carry
+probably the most learned man of his time inside without the necessity
+of digesting him," said De Craye, "a rough truth is a rather strong
+charge of universal nature for the firing off of a modicum of personal
+fact."
+
+"It is a rough truth that Plato is Moses atticizing," said Vernon to
+Dr. Middleton, to keep the diversion alive.
+
+"And that Aristotle had the globe under his cranium," rejoined the Rev.
+Doctor.
+
+"And that the Moderns live on the Ancients."
+
+"And that not one in ten thousand can refer to the particular treasury
+he filches."
+
+"The Art of our days is a revel of rough truth," remarked Professor
+Crooklyn.
+
+"And the literature has laboriously mastered the adjective, wherever it
+may be in relation to the noun," Dr. Middleton added.
+
+"Orson's first appearance at court was in the figure of a rough truth,
+causing the Maids of Honour, accustomed to Tapestry Adams, astonishment
+and terror," said De Craye. That he might not be left out of the
+sprightly play, Sir Willoughby levelled a lance at the quintain,
+smiling on Laetitia: "In fine, caricature is rough truth."
+
+She said, "Is one end of it, and realistic directness is the other."
+
+He bowed. "The palm is yours."
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart admired herself as each one trotted forth in turn
+characteristically, with one exception unaware of the aid which was
+being rendered to a distressed damsel wretchedly incapable of decent
+hypocrisy. Her intrepid lead had shown her hand to the colonel and
+drawn the enemy at a blow.
+
+Sir Willoughby's "in fine", however, did not please her: still less did
+his lackadaisical Lothario-like bowing and smiling to Miss Dale: and he
+perceived it and was hurt. For how, carrying his tremendous load, was
+he to compete with these unhandicapped men in the game of nonsense she
+had such a fondness for starting at a table? He was further annoyed to
+hear Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel Patterne agree together that
+"caricature" was the final word of the definition. Relatives should
+know better than to deliver these awards to us in public.
+
+"Well?" quoth Lady Busshe, expressive of stupefaction at the strange
+dust she had raised.
+
+"Are they on view, Miss Middleton?" inquired Lady Culmer.
+
+"There's a regiment of us on view and ready for inspection." Colonel De
+Craye bowed to her, but she would not be foiled.
+
+"Miss Middleton's admirers are always on view." said he.
+
+"Are they to be seen?" said Lady Busshe.
+
+Clara made her face a question, with a laudable smoothness.
+
+"The wedding-presents," Lady Culmer explained.
+
+"No."
+
+"Otherwise, my dear, we are in danger of duplicating and triplicating
+and quadruplicating, not at all to the satisfaction of the bride."
+
+"But there's a worse danger to encounter in the 'on view', my lady,"
+said De Craye; "and that's the magnetic attraction a display of
+wedding-presents is sure to have for the ineffable burglar, who must
+have a nuptial soul in him, for wherever there's that collection on
+view, he's never a league off. And 'tis said he knows a lady's
+dressing-case presented to her on the occasion fifteen years after the
+event."
+
+"As many as fifteen?" said Mrs. Mountstuart.
+
+"By computation of the police. And if the presents are on view, dogs
+are of no use, nor bolts, nor bars:--he's worse than Cupid. The only
+protection to be found, singular as it may be thought, is in a couple
+of bottles of the oldest Jamaica rum in the British isles."
+
+"Rum?" cried Lady Busshe.
+
+"The liquor of the Royal Navy, my lady. And with your permission, I'll
+relate the tale in proof of it. I had a friend engaged to a young lady,
+niece of an old sea-captain of the old school, the Benbow school, the
+wooden leg and pigtail school; a perfectly salt old gentleman with a
+pickled tongue, and a dash of brine in every deed he committed. He
+looked rolled over to you by the last wave on the shore, sparkling: he
+was Neptune's own for humour. And when his present to the bride was
+opened, sure enough there lay a couple of bottles of the oldest Jamaica
+rum in the British Isles, born before himself, and his father to boot.
+'Tis a fabulous spirit I beg you to believe in, my lady, the sole merit
+of the story being its portentous veracity. The bottles were tied to
+make them appear twins, as they both had the same claim to seniority.
+And there was a label on them, telling their great age, to maintain
+their identity. They were in truth a pair of patriarchal bottles
+rivalling many of the biggest houses in the kingdom for antiquity. They
+would have made the donkey that stood between the two bundles of hay
+look at them with obliquity: supposing him to have, for an animal, a
+rum taste, and a turn for hilarity. Wonderful old bottles! So, on the
+label, just over the date, was written large: UNCLE BENJAMIN'S WEDDING
+PRESENT TO HIS NIECE BESSY. Poor Bessy shed tears of disappointment and
+indignation enough to float the old gentleman on his native element,
+ship and all. She vowed it was done curmudgeonly to vex her, because
+her uncle hated wedding-presents and had grunted at the exhibition of
+cups and saucers, and this and that beautiful service, and epergnes and
+inkstands, mirrors, knives and forks, dressing-cases, and the whole
+mighty category. She protested, she flung herself about, she declared
+those two ugly bottles should not join the exhibition in the
+dining-room, where it was laid out for days, and the family ate their
+meals where they could, on the walls, like flies. But there was also
+Uncle Benjamin's legacy on view, in the distance, so it was ruled
+against her that the bottles should have their place. And one fine
+morning down came the family after a fearful row of the domestics;
+shouting, screaming, cries for the police, and murder topping all. What
+did they see? They saw two prodigious burglars extended along the
+floor, each with one of the twin bottles in his hand, and a remainder
+of the horror of the midnight hanging about his person like a blown
+fog, sufficient to frighten them whilst they kicked the rascals
+entirely intoxicated. Never was wilder disorder of wedding-presents,
+and not one lost!--owing, you'll own, to Uncle Benjy's two bottles of
+ancient Jamaica rum."
+
+Colonel De Craye concluded with an asseveration of the truth of the
+story.
+
+"A most provident, far-sighted old sea-captain!" exclaimed Mrs.
+Mountstuart, laughing at Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer. These ladies
+chimed in with her gingerly.
+
+"And have you many more clever stories, Colonel De Craye?" said Lady
+Busshe.
+
+"Ah! my lady, when the tree begins to count its gold 'tis nigh upon
+bankruptcy."
+
+"Poetic!" ejaculated Lady Culmer, spying at Miss Middleton's rippled
+countenance, and noting that she and Sir Willoughby had not
+interchanged word or look.
+
+"But that in the case of your Patterne Port a bottle of it would
+outvalue the catalogue of nuptial presents, Willoughby, I would
+recommend your stationing some such constabulary to keep watch and
+ward." said Dr. Middleton, as he filled his glass, taking Bordeaux in
+the middle of the day, under a consciousness of virtue and its reward
+to come at half-past seven in the evening.
+
+"The rascals would require a dozen of that, sir," said De Craye.
+
+"Then it is not to be thought of. Indeed one!" Dr. Middleton negatived
+the idea.
+
+"We are no further advanced than when we began," observed Lady Busshe.
+
+"If we are marked to go by stages," Mrs. Mountstuart assented.
+
+"Why, then, we shall be called old coaches," remarked the colonel.
+
+"You," said Lady Culmer, "have the advantage of us in a closer
+acquaintance with Miss Middleton. You know her tastes, and how far they
+have been consulted in the little souvenirs already grouped somewhere,
+although not yet for inspection. I am at sea. And here is Lady Busshe
+in deadly alarm. There is plenty of time to effect a change--though we
+are drawing on rapidly to the fatal day, Miss Middleton. We are, we are
+very near it. Oh! yes. I am one who thinks that these little affairs
+should be spoken of openly, without that ridiculous bourgeois
+affectation, so that we may be sure of giving satisfaction. It is a
+transaction like everything else in life. I, for my part, wish to be
+remembered favourably. I put it as a test of breeding to speak of these
+things as plain matter-of-fact. You marry; I wish you to have something
+by you to remind you of me. What shall it be?--useful or ornamental.
+For an ordinary household the choice is not difficult. But where wealth
+abounds we are in a dilemma."
+
+"And with persons of decided tastes," added Lady Busshe.
+
+"I am really very unhappy," she protested to Clara.
+
+Sir Willoughby dropped Laetitia; Clara's look of a sedate resolution to
+preserve silence on the topic of the nuptial gifts made a diversion
+imperative.
+
+"Your porcelain was exquisitely chosen, and I profess to be a
+connoisseur," he said. "I am poor in Old Saxony, as you know; I can
+match the country in Savres, and my inheritance of China will not
+easily be matched in the country."
+
+"You may consider your Dragon vases a present from young Crossjay,"
+said De Craye.
+
+"How?"
+
+"Hasn't he abstained from breaking them? the capital boy! Porcelain
+and a boy in the house together is a case of prospective disaster fully
+equal to Flitch and a fly."
+
+"You should understand that my friend Horace--whose wit is in this
+instance founded on another tale of a boy--brought us a magnificent
+piece of porcelain, destroyed by the capsizing of his conveyance from
+the station," said Sir Willoughby to Lady Busshe.
+
+She and Lady Culmer gave out lamentable Ohs, while Miss Eleanor and
+Miss Isabel Patterne sketched the incident. Then the lady visitors
+fixed their eyes in united sympathy upon Clara: recovering from which,
+after a contemplation of marble, Lady Busshe emphasized, "No, you do
+not love porcelain, it is evident, Miss Middleton."
+
+"I am glad to be assured of it," said Lady Culmer.
+
+"Oh, I know that face: I know that look," Lady Busshe affected to
+remark rallyingly: "it is not the first time I have seen it."
+
+Sir Willoughby smarted to his marrow. "We will rout these fancies of an
+overscrupulous generosity, my dear Lady Busshe."
+
+Her unwonted breach of delicacy in speaking publicly of her present,
+and the vulgar persistency of her sticking to the theme, very much
+perplexed him. And if he mistook her not, she had just alluded to the
+demoniacal Constantia Durham.
+
+It might be that he had mistaken her: he was on guard against his
+terrible sensitiveness. Nevertheless it was hard to account for this
+behaviour of a lady greatly his friend and admirer, a lady of birth.
+And Lady Culmer as well!--likewise a lady of birth. Were they in
+collusion? had they a suspicion? He turned to Laetitia's face for the
+antidote to his pain.
+
+"Oh, but you are not one yet, and I shall require two voices to
+convince me," Lady Busshe rejoined, after another stare at the marble.
+
+"Lady Busshe, I beg you not to think me ungrateful," said Clara.
+
+"Fiddle!--gratitude! it is to please your taste, to satisfy you. I
+care for gratitude as little as for flattery."
+
+"But gratitude is flattering," said Vernon.
+
+"Now, no metaphysics, Mr. Whitford."
+
+"But do care a bit for flattery, my lady," said De Craye. "'Tis the
+finest of the Arts; we might call it moral sculpture. Adepts in it can
+cut their friends to any shape they like by practising it with the
+requisite skill. I myself, poor hand as I am, have made a man act
+Solomon by constantly praising his wisdom. He took a sagacious turn at
+an early period of the dose. He weighed the smallest question of his
+daily occasions with a deliberation truly oriental. Had I pushed it,
+he'd have hired a baby and a couple of mothers to squabble over the
+undivided morsel."
+
+"I shall hope for a day in London with you," said Lady Culmer to Clara.
+
+"You did not forget the Queen of Sheba?" said Mrs. Mountstuart to De
+Craye.
+
+"With her appearance, the game has to be resigned to her entirely," he
+rejoined.
+
+"That is," Lady Culmer continued, "if you do not despise an old woman
+for your comrade on a shopping excursion."
+
+"Despise whom we fleece!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "Oh, no, Lady
+Culmer, the sheep is sacred."
+
+"I am not so sure," said Vernon.
+
+"In what way, and to what extent, are you not so sure?" said Dr.
+Middleton.
+
+"The natural tendency is to scorn the fleeced."
+
+"I stand for the contrary. Pity, if you like: particularly when they
+bleat."
+
+"This is to assume that makers of gifts are a fleeced people: I demur,"
+said Mrs. Mountstuart.
+
+"Madam, we are expected to give; we are incited to give; you have
+dubbed it the fashion to give; and the person refusing to give, or
+incapable of giving, may anticipate that he will be regarded as
+benignly as a sheep of a drooping and flaccid wool by the farmer, who
+is reminded by the poor beast's appearance of a strange dog that
+worried the flock. Even Captain Benjamin, as you have seen, was unable
+to withstand the demand on him. The hymeneal pair are licensed
+freebooters levying blackmail on us; survivors of an uncivilized
+period. But in taking without mercy, I venture to trust that the
+manners of a happier era instruct them not to scorn us. I apprehend
+that Mr. Whitford has a lower order of latrons in his mind."
+
+"Permit me to say, sir, that you have not considered the ignoble aspect
+of the fleeced," said Vernon. "I appeal to the ladies: would they not,
+if they beheld an ostrich walking down a Queen's Drawing Room,
+clean-plucked, despise him though they were wearing his plumes?"
+
+"An extreme supposition, indeed," said Dr. Middleton, frowning over it;
+"scarcely legitimately to be suggested."
+
+"I think it fair, sir, as an instance."
+
+"Has the circumstance occurred, I would ask?"
+
+"In life? a thousand times."
+
+"I fear so," said Mrs. Mountstuart.
+
+Lady Busshe showed symptoms of a desire to leave a profitless table.
+
+Vernon started up, glancing at the window.
+
+"Did you see Crossjay?" he said to Clara.
+
+"No; I must, if he is there," said she.
+
+She made her way out, Vernon after her. They both had the excuse.
+
+"Which way did the poor boy go?" she asked him.
+
+"I have not the slightest idea," he replied. "But put on your bonnet,
+if you would escape that pair of inquisitors."
+
+"Mr. Whitford, what humiliation!"
+
+"I suspect you do not feel it the most, and the end of it can't be
+remote," said he.
+
+Thus it happened that when Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer quitted the
+dining-room, Miss Middleton had spirited herself away from summoning
+voice and messenger.
+
+Sir Willoughby apologized for her absence. "If I could be jealous, it
+would be of that boy Crossjay."
+
+"You are an excellent man, and the best of cousins," was Lady Busshe's
+enigmatical answer.
+
+The exceedingly lively conversation at his table was lauded by Lady
+Culmer.
+
+"Though," said she, "what it all meant, and what was the drift of it, I
+couldn't tell to save my life. Is it every day the same with you here?"
+
+"Very much."
+
+"How you must enjoy a spell of dulness!"
+
+"If you said simplicity and not talking for effect! I generally cast
+anchor by Laetitia Dale."
+
+"Ah!" Lady Busshe coughed. "But the fact is, Mrs. Mountstuart is made
+for cleverness!"
+
+"I think, my lady, Laetitia Dale is to the full as clever as any of the
+stars Mrs. Mountstuart assembles, or I."
+
+"Talkative cleverness, I mean."
+
+"In conversation as well. Perhaps you have not yet given her a chance."
+
+"Yes, yes, she is clever, of course, poor dear. She is looking better
+too."
+
+"Handsome, I thought," said Lady Culmer.
+
+"She varies," observed Sir Willoughby.
+
+The ladies took seat in their carriage and fell at once into a
+close-bonnet colloquy. Not a single allusion had they made to the
+wedding-presents after leaving the luncheon-table. The cause of their
+visit was obvious.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+CONTAINS CLEVER FENCING AND INTIMATIONS OF THE NEED FOR IT
+
+That woman, Lady Busshe, had predicted, after the event, Constantia
+Durham's defection. She had also, subsequent to Willoughby's departure
+on his travels, uttered sceptical things concerning his rooted
+attachment to Laetitia Dale. In her bitter vulgarity, that beaten rival
+of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson for the leadership of the county had
+taken his nose for a melancholy prognostic of his fortunes; she had
+recently played on his name: she had spoken the hideous English of his
+fate. Little as she knew, she was alive to the worst interpretation of
+appearances. No other eulogy occurred to her now than to call him the
+best of cousins, because Vernon Whitford was housed and clothed and fed
+by him. She had nothing else to say for a man she thought luckless!
+She was a woman barren of wit, stripped of style, but she was wealthy
+and a gossip--a forge of showering sparks--and she carried Lady Culmer
+with her. The two had driven from his house to spread the malignant
+rumour abroad; already they blew the biting world on his raw wound.
+Neither of them was like Mrs. Mountstuart, a witty woman, who could be
+hoodwinked; they were dull women, who steadily kept on their own scent
+of the fact, and the only way to confound such inveterate forces was to
+be ahead of them, and seize and transform the expected fact, and
+astonish them, when they came up to him, with a totally unanticipated
+fact.
+
+"You see, you were in error, ladies."
+
+"And so we were, Sir Willoughby, and we acknowledge it. We never could
+have guessed that!"
+
+Thus the phantom couple in the future delivered themselves, as well
+they might at the revelation. He could run far ahead.
+
+Ay, but to combat these dolts, facts had to be encountered, deeds done,
+in groaning earnest. These representatives of the pig-sconces of the
+population judged by circumstances: airy shows and seems had no effect
+on them. Dexterity of fence was thrown away.
+
+A flying peep at the remorseless might of dulness in compelling us to a
+concrete performance counter to our inclinations, if we would deceive
+its terrible instinct, gave Willoughby for a moment the survey of a
+sage. His intensity of personal feeling struck so vivid an illumination
+of mankind at intervals that he would have been individually wise, had
+he not been moved by the source of his accurate perceptions to a
+personal feeling of opposition to his own sagacity. He loathed and he
+despised the vision, so his mind had no benefit of it, though he
+himself was whipped along. He chose rather (and the choice is open to
+us all) to be flattered by the distinction it revealed between himself
+and mankind.
+
+But if he was not as others were, why was he discomfited, solicitous,
+miserable? To think that it should be so, ran dead against his
+conqueror's theories wherein he had been trained, which, so long as he
+gained success awarded success to native merit, grandeur to the grand
+in soul, as light kindles light: nature presents the example. His
+early training, his bright beginning of life, had taught him to look to
+earth's principal fruits as his natural portion, and it was owing to a
+girl that he stood a mark for tongues, naked, wincing at the possible
+malignity of a pair of harridans. Why not whistle the girl away?
+
+Why, then he would be free to enjoy, careless, younger than his youth
+in the rebound to happiness!
+
+And then would his nostrils begin to lift and sniff at the creeping up
+of a thick pestiferous vapour. Then in that volume of stench would he
+discern the sullen yellow eye of malice. A malarious earth would hunt
+him all over it. The breath of the world, the world's view of him, was
+partly his vital breath, his view of himself. The ancestry of the
+tortured man had bequeathed him this condition of high civilization
+among their other bequests. Your withered contracted Egoists of the hut
+and the grot reck not of public opinion; they crave but for liberty and
+leisure to scratch themselves and soothe an excessive scratch.
+Willoughby was expansive, a blooming one, born to look down upon a
+tributary world, and to exult in being looked to. Do we wonder at his
+consternation in the prospect of that world's blowing foul on him?
+Princes have their obligations to teach them they are mortal, and the
+brilliant heir of a tributary world is equally enchained by the homage
+it brings him;--more, inasmuch as it is immaterial, elusive, not
+gathered by the tax, and he cannot capitally punish the treasonable
+recusants. Still must he be brilliant; he must court his people. He
+must ever, both in his reputation and his person, aching though he be,
+show them a face and a leg.
+
+The wounded gentleman shut himself up in his laboratory, where he could
+stride to and fro, and stretch out his arms for physical relief, secure
+from observation of his fantastical shapes, under the idea that he was
+meditating. There was perhaps enough to make him fancy it in the heavy
+fire of shots exchanged between his nerves and the situation; there
+were notable flashes. He would not avow that he was in an agony: it was
+merely a desire for exercise.
+
+Quintessence of worldliness, Mrs. Mountstuart appeared through his
+farthest window, swinging her skirts on a turn at the end of the lawn,
+with Horace De Craye smirking beside her. And the woman's vaunted
+penetration was unable to detect the histrionic Irishism of the fellow.
+Or she liked him for his acting and nonsense; nor she only. The voluble
+beast was created to snare women. Willoughby became smitten with an
+adoration of stedfastness in women. The incarnation of that divine
+quality crossed his eyes. She was clad in beauty. A horrible
+nondescript convulsion composed of yawn and groan drove him to his
+instruments, to avert a renewal of the shock; and while arranging and
+fixing them for their unwonted task, he compared himself advantageously
+with men like Vernon and De Craye, and others of the county, his
+fellows in the hunting-field and on the Magistrate's bench, who neither
+understood nor cared for solid work, beneficial practical work, the
+work of Science.
+
+He was obliged to relinquish it: his hand shook.
+
+"Experiments will not advance much at this rate," he said, casting the
+noxious retardation on his enemies.
+
+It was not to be contested that he must speak with Mrs Mountstuart,
+however he might shrink from the trial of his facial muscles. Her not
+coming to him seemed ominous: nor was her behaviour at the
+luncheon-table quite obscure. She had evidently instigated the
+gentlemen to cross and counterchatter Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer. For
+what purpose?
+
+Clara's features gave the answer.
+
+They were implacable. And he could be the same.
+
+In the solitude of his room he cried right out: "I swear it, I will
+never yield her to Horace De Craye! She shall feel some of my torments,
+and try to get the better of them by knowing she deserves them." He had
+spoken it, and it was an oath upon the record.
+
+Desire to do her intolerable hurt became an ecstasy in his veins, and
+produced another stretching fit that terminated in a violent shake of
+the body and limbs; during which he was a spectacle for Mrs.
+Mountstuart at one of the windows. He laughed as he went to her,
+saying: "No, no work to-day; it won't be done, positively refuses."
+
+"I am taking the Professor away," said she; "he is fidgety about the
+cold he caught."
+
+Sir Willoughby stepped out to her. "I was trying at a bit of work for
+an hour, not to be idle all day."
+
+"You work in that den of yours every day?"
+
+"Never less than an hour, if I can snatch it."
+
+"It is a wonderful resource!"
+
+The remark set him throbbing and thinking that a prolongation of his
+crisis exposed him to the approaches of some organic malady, possibly
+heart-disease.
+
+"A habit," he said. "In there I throw off the world."
+
+"We shall see some results in due time."
+
+"I promise none: I like to be abreast of the real knowledge of my day,
+that is all."
+
+"And a pearl among country gentlemen!"
+
+"In your gracious consideration, my dear lady. Generally speaking, it
+would be more advisable to become a chatterer and keep an anecdotal
+note-book. I could not do it, simply because I could not live with my
+own emptiness for the sake of making an occasional display of
+fireworks. I aim at solidity. It is a narrow aim, no doubt; not much
+appreciated."
+
+"Laetitia Dale appreciates it."
+
+A smile of enforced ruefulness, like a leaf curling in heat, wrinkled
+his mouth.
+
+Why did she not speak of her conversation with Clara?
+
+"Have they caught Crossjay?" he said.
+
+"Apparently they are giving chase to him."
+
+The likelihood was, that Clara had been overcome by timidity.
+
+"Must you leave us?"
+
+"I think it prudent to take Professor Crooklyn away."
+
+"He still . . . ?"
+
+"The extraordinary resemblance!"
+
+"A word aside to Dr. Middleton will dispel that."
+
+"You are thoroughly good."
+
+This hateful encomium of commiseration transfixed him. Then she knew of
+his calamity!
+
+"Philosophical," he said, "would be the proper term, I think."
+
+"Colonel De Craye, by the way, promises me a visit when he leaves you."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"The earlier the better. He is too captivating; he is delightful. He
+won me in five minutes. I don't accuse him. Nature gifted him to cast
+the spell. We are weak women, Sir Willoughby."
+
+She knew!
+
+"Like to like: the witty to the witty, ma'am."
+
+"You won't compliment me with a little bit of jealousy?"
+
+"I forbear from complimenting him."
+
+"Be philosophical, of course, if you have the philosophy."
+
+"I pretend to it. Probably I suppose myself to succeed because I have
+no great requirement of it; I cannot say. We are riddles to ourselves."
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart pricked the turf with the point of her parasol. She
+looked down and she looked up.
+
+"Well?" said he to her eyes.
+
+"Well, and where is Laetitia Dale?"
+
+He turned about to show his face elsewhere.
+
+When he fronted her again, she looked very fixedly, and set her head
+shaking.
+
+"It will not do, my dear Sir Willoughby!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I never could solve enigmas."
+
+"Playing ta-ta-ta-ta ad infinitum, then. Things have gone far. All
+parties would be happier for an excursion. Send her home."
+
+"Laetitia? I can't part with her."
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart put a tooth on her under lip as her head renewed its
+brushing negative.
+
+"In what way can it be hurtful that she should be here, ma'am?" he
+ventured to persist.
+
+"Think."
+
+"She is proof."
+
+"Twice!"
+
+The word was big artillery. He tried the affectation of a staring
+stupidity. She might have seen his heart thump, and he quitted the mask
+for an agreeable grimace.
+
+"She is inaccessible. She is my friend. I guarantee her, on my honour.
+Have no fear for her. I beg you to have confidence in me. I would
+perish rather. No soul on earth is to be compared with her."
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart repeated "Twice!"
+
+The low monosyllable, musically spoken in the same tone of warning of a
+gentle ghost, rolled a thunder that maddened him, but he dared not take
+it up to fight against it on plain terms.
+
+"Is it for my sake?" he said.
+
+"It will not do, Sir Willoughby."
+
+She spurred him to a frenzy.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Mountstuart, you have been listening to tales. I am not a
+tyrant. I am one of the most easy-going of men. Let us preserve the
+forms due to society: I say no more. As for poor old Vernon, people
+call me a good sort of cousin; I should like to see him comfortably
+married; decently married this time. I have proposed to contribute to
+his establishment. I mention it to show that the case has been
+practically considered. He has had a tolerably souring experience of
+the state; he might be inclined if, say, you took him in hand, for
+another venture. It's a demoralizing lottery. However, Government
+sanctions it."
+
+"But, Sir Willoughby, what is the use of my taking him in hand when, as
+you tell me, Laetitia Dale holds back?"
+
+"She certainly does."
+
+"Then we are talking to no purpose, unless you undertake to melt her."
+
+He suffered a lurking smile to kindle to some strength of meaning.
+
+"You are not over-considerate in committing me to such an office."
+
+"You are afraid of the danger?" she all but sneered.
+
+Sharpened by her tone, he said, "I have such a love of stedfastness of
+character, that I should be a poor advocate in the endeavour to break
+it. And frankly, I know the danger. I saved my honour when I made the
+attempt: that is all I can say."
+
+"Upon my word," Mrs. Mountstuart threw back her head to let her eyes
+behold him summarily over their fine aquiline bridge, "you have the art
+of mystification, my good friend."
+
+"Abandon the idea of Laetitia Dale."
+
+"And marry your cousin Vernon to whom? Where are we?"
+
+"As I said, ma'am, I am an easy-going man. I really have not a spice of
+the tyrant in me. An intemperate creature held by the collar may have
+that notion of me, while pulling to be released as promptly as it
+entered the noose. But I do strictly and sternly object to the scandal
+of violent separations, open breaches of solemn engagements, a public
+rupture. Put it that I am the cause, I will not consent to a violation
+of decorum. Is that clear? It is just possible for things to be
+arranged so that all parties may be happy in their way without much
+hubbub. Mind, it is not I who have willed it so. I am, and I am forced
+to be, passive. But I will not be obstructive."
+
+He paused, waving his hand to signify the vanity of the more that might
+be said.
+
+Some conception of him, dashed by incredulity, excited the lady's
+intelligence.
+
+"Well!" she exclaimed, "you have planted me in the land of conjecture.
+As my husband used to say, I don't see light, but I think I see the
+lynx that does. We won't discuss it at present. I certainly must be a
+younger woman than I supposed, for I am learning hard.--Here comes the
+Professor, buttoned up to the ears, and Dr. Middleton flapping in the
+breeze. There will be a cough, and a footnote referring to the young
+lady at the station, if we stand together, so please order my
+carriage."
+
+"You found Clara complacent? roguish?"
+
+"I will call to-morrow. You have simplified my task, Sir Willoughby,
+very much; that is, assuming that I have not entirely mistaken you. I
+am so far in the dark that I have to help myself by recollecting how
+Lady Busshe opposed my view of a certain matter formerly. Scepticism is
+her forte. It will be the very oddest thing if after all . . . ! No, I
+shall own, romance has not departed. Are you fond of dupes?"
+
+"I detest the race."
+
+"An excellent answer. I could pardon you for it." She refrained from
+adding, "If you are making one of me."
+
+Sir Willoughby went to ring for her carriage.
+
+She knew. That was palpable: Clara had betrayed him.
+
+"The earlier Colonel De Craye leaves Patterne Hall the better:" she had
+said that: and, "all parties would be happier for an excursion." She
+knew the position of things and she guessed the remainder. But what she
+did not know, and could not divine, was the man who fenced her. He
+speculated further on the witty and the dull. These latter are the
+redoubtable body. They will have facts to convince them: they had, he
+confessed it to himself, precipitated him into the novel sphere of his
+dark hints to Mrs. Mountstuart; from which the utter darkness might
+allow him to escape, yet it embraced him singularly, and even
+pleasantly, with the sense of a fact established.
+
+It embraced him even very pleasantly. There was an end to his tortures.
+He sailed on a tranquil sea, the husband of a stedfast woman--no rogue.
+The exceeding beauty of stedfastness in women clothed Laetitia in
+graces Clara could not match. A tried stedfast woman is the one jewel
+of the sex. She points to her husband like the sunflower; her love
+illuminates him; she lives in him, for him; she testifies to his worth;
+she drags the world to his feet; she leads the chorus of his praises;
+she justifies him in his own esteem. Surely there is not on earth such
+beauty!
+
+If we have to pass through anguish to discover it and cherish the peace
+it gives to clasp it, calling it ours, is a full reward. Deep in his
+reverie, he said his adieus to Mrs. Mountstuart, and strolled up the
+avenue behind the carriage-wheels, unwilling to meet Laetitia till he
+had exhausted the fresh savour of the cud of fancy.
+
+Supposing it done!--
+
+It would be generous on his part. It would redound to his credit.
+
+His home would be a fortress, impregnable to tongues. He would have
+divine security in his home.
+
+One who read and knew and worshipped him would be sitting there
+star-like: sitting there, awaiting him, his fixed star.
+
+It would be marriage with a mirror, with an echo; marriage with a
+shining mirror, a choric echo.
+
+It would be marriage with an intellect, with a fine understanding; to
+make his home a fountain of repeatable wit: to make his dear old
+Patterne Hall the luminary of the county.
+
+He revolved it as a chant: with anon and anon involuntarily a
+discordant animadversion on Lady Busshe. Its attendant imps heard the
+angry inward cry.
+
+Forthwith he set about painting Laetitia in delectable human colours,
+like a miniature of the past century, reserving her ideal figure for
+his private satisfaction. The world was to bow to her visible beauty,
+and he gave her enamel and glow, a taller stature, a swimming air, a
+transcendency that exorcized the image of the old witch who had driven
+him to this.
+
+The result in him was, that Laetitia became humanly and avowedly
+beautiful. Her dark eyelashes on the pallor of her cheeks lent their
+aid to the transformation, which was a necessity to him, so it was
+performed. He received the waxen impression.
+
+His retinue of imps had a revel. We hear wonders of men, and we see a
+lifting up of hands in the world. The wonders would be explained, and
+never a hand need to interject, if the mystifying man were but
+accompanied by that monkey-eyed confraternity. They spy the heart and
+its twists.
+
+The heart is the magical gentleman. None of them would follow where
+there was no heart. The twists of the heart are the comedy.
+
+"The secret of the heart is its pressing love of self ", says the Book.
+
+By that secret the mystery of the organ is legible: and a comparison of
+the heart to the mountain rillet is taken up to show us the unbaffled
+force of the little channel in seeking to swell its volume,
+strenuously, sinuously, ever in pursuit of self; the busiest as it is
+the most single-aiming of forces on our earth. And we are directed to
+the sinuosities for posts of observation chiefly instructive.
+
+Few maintain a stand there. People see, and they rush away to
+interchange liftings of hands at the sight, instead of patiently
+studying the phenomenon of energy.
+
+Consequently a man in love with one woman, and in all but absolute
+consciousness, behind the thinnest of veils, preparing his mind to love
+another, will be barely credible. The particular hunger of the forceful
+but adaptable heart is the key of him. Behold the mountain rillet,
+become a brook, become a torrent, how it inarms a handsome boulder: yet
+if the stone will not go with it, on it hurries, pursuing self in
+extension, down to where perchance a dam has been raised of a
+sufficient depth to enfold and keep it from inordinate restlessness.
+Laetitia represented this peaceful restraining space in prospect.
+
+But she was a faded young woman. He was aware of it; and
+systematically looking at himself with her upturned orbs, he accepted
+her benevolently as a God grateful for worship, and used the divinity
+she imparted to paint and renovate her. His heart required her so. The
+heart works the springs of imagination; imagination received its
+commission from the heart, and was a cunning artist.
+
+Cunning to such a degree of seductive genius that the masterpiece it
+offered to his contemplation enabled him simultaneously to gaze on
+Clara and think of Laetitia. Clara came through the park-gates with
+Vernon, a brilliant girl indeed, and a shallow one: a healthy creature,
+and an animal; attractive, but capricious, impatient, treacherous,
+foul; a woman to drag men through the mud. She approached.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+IN WHICH WE TAKE A STEP TO THE CENTRE OF EGOISM
+
+They met; Vernon soon left them.
+
+"You have not seen Crossjay?" Willoughby inquired.
+
+"No," said Clara. "Once more I beg you to pardon him. He spoke falsely,
+owing to his poor boy's idea of chivalry."
+
+"The chivalry to the sex which commences in lies ends by creating the
+woman's hero, whom we see about the world and in certain courts of
+law."
+
+His ability to silence her was great: she could not reply to speech
+like that.
+
+"You have," said he, "made a confidante of Mrs. Mountstuart."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"This is your purse."
+
+"I thank you."
+
+"Professor Crooklyn has managed to make your father acquainted with
+your project. That, I suppose, is the railway ticket in the fold of the
+purse. He was assured at the station that you had taken a ticket to
+London, and would not want the fly."
+
+"It is true. I was foolish."
+
+"You have had a pleasant walk with Vernon--turning me in and out?"
+
+"We did not speak of you. You allude to what he would never consent
+to."
+
+"He's an honest fellow, in his old-fashioned way. He's a secret old
+fellow. Does he ever talk about his wife to you?"
+
+Clara dropped her purse, and stooped and picked it up.
+
+"I know nothing of Mr. Whitford's affairs," she said, and she opened
+the purse and tore to pieces the railway ticket.
+
+"The story's a proof that romantic spirits do not furnish the most
+romantic history. You have the word 'chivalry' frequently on your lips.
+He chivalrously married the daughter of the lodging-house where he
+resided before I took him. We obtained information of the auspicious
+union in a newspaper report of Mrs. Whitford's drunkenness and rioting
+at a London railway terminus--probably the one whither your ticket
+would have taken you yesterday, for I heard the lady was on her way to
+us for supplies, the connubial larder being empty."
+
+"I am sorry; I am ignorant; I have heard nothing; I know nothing," said
+Clara.
+
+"You are disgusted. But half the students and authors you hear of marry
+in that way. And very few have Vernon's luck."
+
+"She had good qualities?" asked Clara.
+
+Her under lip hung.
+
+It looked like disgust; he begged her not indulge the feeling.
+
+"Literary men, it is notorious, even with the entry to society, have no
+taste in women. The housewife is their object. Ladies frighten and
+would, no doubt, be an annoyance and hindrance to them at home."
+
+"You said he was fortunate."
+
+"You have a kindness for him."
+
+"I respect him."
+
+"He is a friendly old fellow in his awkward fashion; honourable, and so
+forth. But a disreputable alliance of that sort sticks to a man. The
+world will talk. Yes, he was fortunate so far; he fell into the mire
+and got out of it. Were he to marry again . . ."
+
+"She . . ."
+
+"Died. Do not be startled; it was a natural death. She responded to the
+sole wishes left to his family. He buried the woman, and I received
+him. I took him on my tour. A second marriage might cover the first:
+there would be a buzz about the old business: the woman's relatives
+write to him still, try to bleed him, I dare say. However, now you
+understand his gloominess. I don't imagine he regrets his loss. He
+probably sentimentalizes, like most men when they are well rid of a
+burden. You must not think the worse of him."
+
+"I do not," said Clara.
+
+"I defend him whenever the matter's discussed."
+
+"I hope you do."
+
+"Without approving his folly. I can't wash him clean."
+
+They were at the Hall-doors. She waited for any personal communications
+he might be pleased to make, and as there was none, she ran upstairs to
+her room.
+
+He had tossed her to Vernon in his mind, not only painlessly, but with
+a keen acid of satisfaction. The heart is the wizard.
+
+Next he bent his deliberate steps to Laetitia.
+
+The mind was guilty of some hesitation; the feet went forward.
+
+She was working at an embroidery by an open window. Colonel De Craye
+leaned outside, and Willoughby pardoned her air of demure amusement, on
+hearing him say: "No, I have had one of the pleasantest half-hours of
+my life, and would rather idle here, if idle you will have it, than
+employ my faculties on horse-back,"
+
+"Time is not lost in conversing with Miss Dale," said Willoughby.
+
+The light was tender to her complexion where she sat in partial shadow.
+
+De Craye asked whether Crossjay had been caught.
+
+Laetitia murmured a kind word for the boy. Willoughby examined her
+embroidery.
+
+The ladies Eleanor and Isabel appeared.
+
+They invited her to take carriage exercise with them.
+
+Laetitia did not immediately answer, and Willoughby remarked: "Miss
+Dale has been reproving Horace for idleness and I recommend you to
+enlist him to do duty, while I relieve him here."
+
+The ladies had but to look at the colonel. He was at their disposal, if
+they would have him. He was marched to the carriage.
+
+Laetitia plied her threads.
+
+"Colonel De Craye spoke of Crossjay," she said. "May I hope you have
+forgiven the poor boy, Sir Willoughby?"
+
+He replied: "Plead for him."
+
+"I wish I had eloquence."
+
+"In my opinion you have it."
+
+"If he offends, it is never from meanness. At school, among comrades,
+he would shine. He is in too strong a light; his feelings and his moral
+nature are over-excited."
+
+"That was not the case when he was at home with you."
+
+"I am severe; I am stern."
+
+"A Spartan mother!"
+
+"My system of managing a boy would be after that model: except in this:
+he should always feet that he could obtain forgiveness."
+
+"Not at the expense of justice?"
+
+"Ah! young creatures are not to be arraigned before the higher Courts.
+It seems to me perilous to terrify their imaginations. If we do so,
+are we not likely to produce the very evil we are combating? The
+alternations for the young should be school and home: and it should be
+in their hearts to have confidence that forgiveness alternates with
+discipline. They are of too tender an age for the rigours of the world;
+we are in danger of hardening them. I prove to you that I am not
+possessed of eloquence. You encouraged me to speak, Sir Willoughby."
+
+"You speak wisely, Laetitia."
+
+"I think it true. Will not you reflect on it? You have only to do so to
+forgive him. I am growing bold indeed, and shall have to beg
+forgiveness for myself."
+
+"You still write? you continue to work with your pen?" said Willoughby.
+
+"A little; a very little."
+
+"I do not like you to squander yourself, waste yourself, on the public.
+You are too precious to feed the beast. Giving out incessantly must end
+by attenuating. Reserve yourself for your friends. Why should they be
+robbed of so much of you? Is it not reasonable to assume that by lying
+fallow you would be more enriched for domestic life? Candidly, had I
+authority I would confiscate your pen: I would 'away with that bauble'.
+You will not often find me quoting Cromwell, but his words apply in
+this instance. I would say rather, that lancet. Perhaps it is the more
+correct term. It bleeds you, it wastes you. For what? For a breath of
+fame!"
+
+"I write for money."
+
+"And there--I would say of another--you subject yourself to the risk of
+mental degradation. Who knows?--moral! Trafficking the brains for money
+must bring them to the level of the purchasers in time. I confiscate
+your pen, Laetitia."
+
+"It will be to confiscate your own gift, Sir Willoughby."
+
+"Then that proves--will you tell me the date?"
+
+"You sent me a gold pen-holder on my sixteenth birthday."
+
+"It proves my utter thoughtlessness then, and later. And later!"
+
+He rested an elbow on his knee, and covered his eyes, murmuring in that
+profound hollow which is haunted by the voice of a contrite past: "And
+later!"
+
+The deed could be done. He had come to the conclusion that it could be
+done, though the effort to harmonize the figure sitting near him, with
+the artistic figure of his purest pigments, had cost him labour and a
+blinking of the eyelids. That also could be done. Her pleasant tone,
+sensible talk, and the light favouring her complexion, helped him in
+his effort. She was a sober cup; sober and wholesome. Deliriousness is
+for adolescence. The men who seek intoxicating cups are men who invite
+their fates.
+
+Curiously, yet as positively as things can be affirmed, the husband of
+this woman would be able to boast of her virtues and treasures abroad,
+as he could not--impossible to say why not--boast of a beautiful wife
+or a blue-stocking wife. One of her merits as a wife would be this
+extraordinary neutral merit of a character that demanded colour from
+the marital hand, and would take it.
+
+Laetitia had not to learn that he had much to distress him. Her wonder
+at his exposure of his grief counteracted a fluttering of vague alarm.
+She was nervous; she sat in expectation of some burst of regrets or of
+passion.
+
+"I may hope that you have pardoned Crossjay?" she said.
+
+"My friend," said he, uncovering his face, "I am governed by
+principles. Convince me of an error, I shall not obstinately pursue a
+premeditated course. But you know me. Men who have not principles to
+rule their conduct are--well, they are unworthy of a half hour of
+companionship with you. I will speak to you to-night. I have letters to
+dispatch. To-night: at twelve: in the room where we spoke last. Or
+await me in the drawing-room. I have to attend to my guests till late."
+
+He bowed; he was in a hurry to go.
+
+The deed could be done. It must be done; it was his destiny.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+IN THE HEART OF THE EGOIST
+
+But already he had begun to regard the deed as his executioner. He
+dreaded meeting Clara. The folly of having retained her stood before
+him. How now to look on her and keep a sane resolution unwavering? She
+tempted to the insane. Had she been away, he could have walked through
+the performance composed by the sense of doing a duty to himself;
+perhaps faintly hating the poor wretch he made happy at last, kind to
+her in a manner, polite. Clara's presence in the house previous to the
+deed, and, oh, heaven! after it, threatened his wits. Pride? He had
+none; he cast it down for her to trample it; he caught it back ere it
+was trodden on. Yes; he had pride: he had it as a dagger in his breast:
+his pride was his misery. But he was too proud to submit to misery.
+"What I do is right." He said the words, and rectitude smoothed his
+path, till the question clamoured for answer: Would the world
+countenance and endorse his pride in Laetitia? At one time, yes. And
+now? Clara's beauty ascended, laid a beam on him. We are on board the
+labouring vessel of humanity in a storm, when cries and countercries
+ring out, disorderliness mixes the crew, and the fury of
+self-preservation divides: this one is for the ship, that one for his
+life. Clara was the former to him, Laetitia the latter. But what if
+there might not be greater safety in holding tenaciously to Clara than
+in casting her off for Laetitia? No, she had done things to set his
+pride throbbing in the quick. She had gone bleeding about first to one,
+then to another; she had betrayed him to Vernon, and to Mrs.
+Mountstuart; a look in the eyes of Horace De Craye said, to him as
+well: to whom not? He might hold to her for vengeance; but that
+appetite was short-lived in him if it ministered nothing to his
+purposes. "I discard all idea of vengeance," he said, and thrilled
+burningly to a smart in his admiration of the man who could be so
+magnanimous under mortal injury; for the more admirable he, the more
+pitiable. He drank a drop or two of self-pity like a poison, repelling
+the assaults of public pity. Clara must be given up. It must be seen by
+the world that, as he felt, the thing he did was right. Laocoon of his
+own serpents, he struggled to a certain magnificence of attitude in the
+muscular net of constrictions he flung around himself. Clara must be
+given up. Oh, bright Abominable! She must be given up: but not to one
+whose touch of her would be darts in the blood of the yielder, snakes
+in his bed: she must be given up to an extinguisher; to be the second
+wife of an old-fashioned semi-recluse, disgraced in his first. And were
+it publicly known that she had been cast off, and had fallen on old
+Vernon for a refuge, and part in spite, part in shame, part in
+desperation, part in a fit of good sense under the circumstances,
+espoused him, her beauty would not influence the world in its
+judgement. The world would know what to think. As the instinct of
+self-preservation whispered to Willoughby, the world, were it
+requisite, might be taught to think what it assuredly would not think
+if she should be seen tripping to the altar with Horace De Craye.
+Self-preservation, not vengeance, breathed that whisper. He glanced at
+her iniquity for a justification of it, without any desire to do her a
+permanent hurt: he was highly civilized: but with a strong intention to
+give her all the benefit of a scandal, supposing a scandal, or ordinary
+tattle.
+
+"And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, who
+opened his mouth and shut his eyes."
+
+You hear the world? How are we to stop it from chattering? Enough that
+he had no desire to harm her. Some gentle anticipations of her being
+tarnished were imperative; they came spontaneously to him; otherwise
+the radiance of that bright Abominable in loss would have been
+insufferable; he could not have borne it; he could never have
+surrendered her. Moreover, a happy present effect was the result. He
+conjured up the anticipated chatter and shrug of the world so vividly
+that her beauty grew hectic with the stain, bereft of its formidable
+magnetism. He could meet her calmly; he had steeled himself. Purity in
+women was his principal stipulation, and a woman puffed at, was not
+the person to cause him tremours.
+
+Consider him indulgently: the Egoist is the Son of Himself. He is
+likewise the Father. And the son loves the father, the father the son;
+they reciprocate affection through the closest of ties; and shall they
+view behaviour unkindly wounding either of them, not for each other's
+dear sake abhorring the criminal? They would not injure you, but they
+cannot consent to see one another suffer or crave in vain. The two rub
+together in sympathy besides relationship to an intenser one. Are you,
+without much offending, sacrificed by them, it is on the altar of their
+mutual love, to filial piety or paternal tenderness: the younger has
+offered a dainty morsel to the elder, or the elder to the younger.
+Absorbed in their great example of devotion do they not think of you.
+They are beautiful.
+
+Yet is it most true that the younger has the passions of youth:
+whereof will come division between them; and this is a tragic state.
+They are then pathetic. This was the state of Sir Willoughby lending
+ear to his elder, until he submitted to bite at the fruit proposed to
+him--with how wry a mouth the venerable senior chose not to mark. At
+least, as we perceive, a half of him was ripe of wisdom in his own
+interests. The cruder half had but to be obedient to the leadership of
+sagacity for his interests to be secured, and a filial disposition
+assisted him; painfully indeed; but the same rare quality directed the
+good gentleman to swallow his pain. That the son should bewail his fate
+were a dishonour to the sire. He reverenced, and submitted. Thus, to
+say, consider him indulgently, is too much an appeal for charity on
+behalf of one requiring but initial anatomy--a slicing in halves--to
+exonerate, perchance exalt him. The Egoist is our fountain-head,
+primeval man: the primitive is born again, the elemental reconstituted.
+Born again, into new conditions, the primitive may be highly polished
+of men, and forfeit nothing save the roughness of his original nature.
+He is not only his own father, he is ours; and he is also our son. We
+have produced him, he us. Such were we, to such are we returning: not
+other, sings the poet, than one who toilfully works his shallop against
+the tide, "si brachia forte remisit":--let him haply relax the labour
+of his arms, however high up the stream, and back he goes, "in pejus",
+to the early principle of our being, with seeds and plants, that are as
+carelessly weighed in the hand and as indiscriminately husbanded as our
+humanity.
+
+Poets on the other side may be cited for an assurance that the
+primitive is not the degenerate: rather is he a sign of the
+indestructibility of the race, of the ancient energy in removing
+obstacles to individual growth; a sample of what we would be, had we
+his concentrated power. He is the original innocent, the pure simple.
+It is we who have fallen; we have melted into Society, diluted our
+essence, dissolved. He stands in the midst monumentally, a land-mark of
+the tough and honest old Ages, with the symbolic alphabet of striking
+arms and running legs, our early language, scrawled over his person,
+and the glorious first flint and arrow-head for his crest: at once the
+spectre of the Kitchen-midden and our ripest issue.
+
+But Society is about him. The occasional spectacle of the primitive
+dangling on a rope has impressed his mind with the strength of his
+natural enemy: from which uncongenial sight he has turned shuddering
+hardly less to behold the blast that is blown upon a reputation where
+one has been disrespectful of the many. By these means, through
+meditation on the contrast of circumstances in life, a pulse of
+imagination has begun to stir, and he has entered the upper sphere or
+circle of spiritual Egoism: he has become the civilized Egoist;
+primitive still, as sure as man has teeth, but developed in his manner
+of using them.
+
+Degenerate or not (and there is no just reason to suppose it) Sir
+Willoughby was a social Egoist, fiercely imaginative in whatsoever
+concerned him. He had discovered a greater realm than that of the
+sensual appetites, and he rushed across and around it in his conquering
+period with an Alexander's pride. On these wind-like journeys he had
+carried Constantia, subsequently Clara; and however it may have been in
+the case of Miss Durham, in that of Miss Middleton it is almost certain
+she caught a glimpse of his interior from sheer fatigue in hearing him
+discourse of it. What he revealed was not the cause of her sickness:
+women can bear revelations--they are exciting: but the monotonousness.
+He slew imagination. There is no direr disaster in love than the death
+of imagination. He dragged her through the labyrinths of his
+penetralia, in his hungry coveting to be loved more and still more,
+more still, until imagination gave up the ghost, and he talked to her
+plain hearing like a monster. It must have been that; for the spell of
+the primitive upon women is masterful up to the time of contact.
+
+"And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, who
+opened his mouth and shut his eyes."
+
+The urgent question was, how it was to be accomplished. Willoughby
+worked at the subject with all his power of concentration: a power that
+had often led him to feel and say, that as a barrister, a diplomatist,
+or a general, he would have won his grades: and granting him a personal
+interest in the business, he might have achieved eminence: he schemed
+and fenced remarkably well.
+
+He projected a scene, following expressions of anxiety on account of
+old Vernon and his future settlement: and then Clara maintaining her
+doggedness, to which he was now so accustomed that he could not
+conceive a change in it--says he: "If you determine on breaking I give
+you back your word on one condition." Whereupon she starts: he insists
+on her promise: she declines: affairs resume their former footing; she
+frets: she begs for the disclosure: he flatters her by telling her his
+desire to keep her in the family: she is unilluminated, but strongly
+moved by curiosity: he philosophizes on marriage "What are we? poor
+creatures! we must get through life as we can, doing as much good as we
+can to those we love; and think as you please, I love old Vernon. Am I
+not giving you the greatest possible proof of it?" She will not see.
+Then flatly out comes the one condition. That and no other. "Take
+Vernon and I release you." She refuses. Now ensues the debate, all the
+oratory being with him. "Is it because of his unfortunate first
+marriage? You assured me you thought no worse of him," etc. She
+declares the proposal revolting. He can distinguish nothing that should
+offend her in a proposal to make his cousin happy if she will not him.
+Irony and sarcasm relieve his emotions, but he convinces her he is
+dealing plainly and intends generosity. She is confused; she speaks in
+maiden fashion. He touches again on Vernon's early escapade. She does
+not enjoy it. The scene closes with his bidding her reflect on it, and
+remember the one condition of her release. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson,
+now reduced to believe that he burns to be free, is then called in for
+an interview with Clara. His aunts Eleanor and Isabel besiege her.
+Laetitia in passionate earnest besieges her. Her father is wrought on
+to besiege her. Finally Vernon is attacked by Willoughby and Mrs.
+Mountstuart:--and here, Willoughby chose to think, was the main
+difficulty. But the girl has money; she is agreeable; Vernon likes her;
+she is fond of his "Alps", they have tastes in common, he likes her
+father, and in the end he besieges her. Will she yield? De Craye is
+absent. There is no other way of shunning a marriage she is
+incomprehensibly but frantically averse to. She is in the toils. Her
+father will stay at Patterne Hall as long as his host desires it. She
+hesitates, she is overcome; in spite of a certain nausea due to
+Vernon's preceding alliance, she yields.
+
+Willoughby revolved the entire drama in Clara's presence. It helped him
+to look on her coolly. Conducting her to the dinner-table, he spoke of
+Crossjay, not unkindly; and at table, he revolved the set of scenes
+with a heated animation that took fire from the wine and the face of
+his friend Horace, while he encouraged Horace to be flowingly Irish. He
+nipped the fellow good-humouredly once or twice, having never felt so
+friendly to him since the day of his arrival; but the position of
+critic is instinctively taken by men who do not flow: and Patterne Port
+kept Dr Middleton in a benevolent reserve when Willoughby decided that
+something said by De Craye was not new, and laughingly accused him of
+failing to consult his anecdotal notebook for the double-cross to his
+last sprightly sally. "Your sallies are excellent, Horace, but spare us
+your Aunt Sallies!" De Craye had no repartee, nor did Dr. Middleton
+challenge a pun. We have only to sharpen our wits to trip your
+seductive rattler whenever we may choose to think proper; and
+evidently, if we condescended to it, we could do better than he. The
+critic who has hatched a witticism is impelled to this opinion. Judging
+by the smiles of the ladies, they thought so, too.
+
+Shortly before eleven o'clock Dr. Middleton made a Spartan stand
+against the offer of another bottle of Port. The regulation couple of
+bottles had been consumed in equal partnership, and the Rev. Doctor
+and his host were free to pay a ceremonial visit to the drawing-room,
+where they were not expected. A piece of work of the elder ladies, a
+silken boudoir sofa-rug, was being examined, with high approval of the
+two younger. Vernon and Colonel De Craye had gone out in search of
+Crossjay, one to Mr. Dale's cottage, the other to call at the head and
+under-gamekeeper's. They were said to be strolling and smoking, for the
+night was fine. Willoughby left the room and came back with the key of
+Crossjay's door in his pocket. He foresaw that the delinquent might be
+of service to him.
+
+Laetitia and Clara sang together. Laetitia was flushed, Clara pale. At
+eleven they saluted the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. Willoughby said
+"Good-night" to each of them, contrasting as he did so the downcast
+look of Laetitia with Clara's frigid directness. He divined that they
+were off to talk over their one object of common interest, Crossjay.
+Saluting his aunts, he took up the rug, to celebrate their diligence
+and taste; and that he might make Dr. Middleton impatient for bed, he
+provoked him to admire it, held it out and laid it out, and caused the
+courteous old gentleman some confusion in hitting on fresh terms of
+commendation.
+
+Before midnight the room was empty. Ten minutes later Willoughby paid
+it a visit, and found it untenanted by the person he had engaged to be
+there. Vexed by his disappointment, he paced up and down, and chanced
+abstractedly to catch the rug in his hand; for what purpose, he might
+well ask himself; admiration of ladies' work, in their absence, was
+unlikely to occur to him. Nevertheless, the touch of the warm, soft
+silk was meltingly feminine. A glance at the mantel-piece clock told
+him Laetitia was twenty minutes behind the hour. Her remissness might
+endanger all his plans, alter the whole course of his life. The colours
+in which he painted her were too lively to last; the madness in his
+head threatened to subside. Certain it was that he could not be ready a
+second night for the sacrifice he had been about to perform.
+
+The clock was at the half hour after twelve. He flung the silken thing
+on the central ottoman, extinguished the lamps, and walked out of the
+room, charging the absent Laetitia to bear her misfortune with a
+consciousness of deserving it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+MIDNIGHT: SIR WILLOUGHBY AND LAETITIA: WITH YOUNG CROSSJAY UNDER A
+COVERLET
+
+Young Crossjay was a glutton at holidays and never thought of home till
+it was dark. The close of the day saw him several miles away from the
+Hall, dubious whether he would not round his numerous adventures by
+sleeping at an inn; for he had lots of money, and the idea of jumping
+up in the morning in a strange place was thrilling. Besides, when he
+was shaken out of sleep by Sir Willoughby, he had been told that he was
+to go, and not to show his face at Patterne again. On the other hand,
+Miss Middleton had bidden him come back. There was little question with
+him which person he should obey: he followed his heart.
+
+Supper at an inn, where he found a company to listen to his adventures,
+delayed him, and a short cut, intended to make up for it, lost him his
+road. He reached the Hall very late, ready to be in love with the
+horrible pleasure of a night's rest under the stars, if necessary. But
+a candle burned at one of the back windows. He knocked, and a
+kitchen-maid let him in. She had a bowl of hot soup prepared for him.
+Crossjay tried a mouthful to please her. His head dropped over it. She
+roused him to his feet, and he pitched against her shoulder. The dry
+air of the kitchen department had proved too much for the tired
+youngster. Mary, the maid, got him to step as firmly as he was able,
+and led him by the back-way to the hall, bidding him creep noiselessly
+to bed. He understood his position in the house, and though he could
+have gone fast to sleep on the stairs, he took a steady aim at his room
+and gained the door cat-like. The door resisted. He was appalled and
+unstrung in a minute. The door was locked. Crossjay felt as if he were
+in the presence of Sir Willoughby. He fled on ricketty legs, and had a
+fall and bumps down half a dozen stairs. A door opened above. He rushed
+across the hall to the drawing-room, invitingly open, and there
+staggered in darkness to the ottoman and rolled himself in something
+sleek and warm, soft as hands of ladies, and redolent of them; so
+delicious that he hugged the folds about his head and heels. While he
+was endeavouring to think where he was, his legs curled, his eyelids
+shut, and he was in the thick of the day's adventures, doing yet more
+wonderful things.
+
+He heard his own name: that was quite certain. He knew that he heard it
+with his ears, as he pursued the fleetest dreams ever accorded to
+mortal. It did not mix: it was outside him, and like the danger-pole in
+the ice, which the skater shooting hither and yonder comes on again, it
+recurred; and now it marked a point in his career, how it caused him to
+relax his pace; he began to circle, and whirled closer round it, until,
+as at a blow, his heart knocked, he tightened himself, thought of
+bolting, and lay dead-still to throb and hearken.
+
+"Oh! Sir Willoughby," a voice had said.
+
+The accents were sharp with alarm.
+
+"My friend! my dearest!" was the answer.
+
+"I came to speak of Crossjay."
+
+"Will you sit here on the ottoman?"
+
+"No, I cannot wait. I hoped I had heard Crossjay return. I would rather
+not sit down. May I entreat you to pardon him when he comes home?"
+
+"You, and you only, may do so. I permit none else. Of Crossjay
+to-morrow."
+
+"He may be lying in the fields. We are anxious."
+
+"The rascal can take pretty good care of himself."
+
+"Crossjay is perpetually meeting accidents."
+
+"He shall be indemnified if he has had excess of punishment."
+
+"I think I will say good-night, Sir Willoughby."
+
+"When freely and unreservedly you have given me your hand."
+
+There was hesitation.
+
+"To say good-night?"
+
+"I ask you for your hand."
+
+"Good-night, Sir Willoughby."
+
+"You do not give it. You are in doubt? Still? What language must I use
+to convince you? And yet you know me. Who knows me but you? You have
+always known me. You are my home and my temple. Have you forgotten your
+verses of the day of my majority?
+
+       'The dawn-star has arisen
+         In plenitude of light . . .'"
+
+"Do not repeat them, pray!" cried Laetitia, with a gasp.
+
+"I have repeated them to myself a thousand times: in India, America,
+Japan: they were like our English skylark, carolling to me.
+
+       'My heart, now burst thy prison
+         With proud aerial flight!'"
+
+"Oh, I beg you will not force me to listen to nonsense that I wrote
+when I was a child. No more of those most foolish lines! If you knew
+what it is to write and despise one's writing, you would not distress
+me. And since you will not speak of Crossjay to-night, allow me to
+retire."
+
+"You know me, and therefore you know my contempt for verses, as a rule,
+Laetitia. But not for yours to me. Why should you call them foolish?
+They expressed your feelings--hold them sacred. They are something
+religious to me, not mere poetry. Perhaps the third verse is my
+favourite . . ."
+
+"It will be more than I can bear!"
+
+"You were in earnest when you wrote them?"
+
+"I was very young, very enthusiastic, very silly."
+
+"You were and are my image of constancy!"
+
+"It is an error, Sir Willoughby; I am far from being the same."
+
+"We are all older, I trust wiser. I am, I will own; much wiser. Wise
+at last! I offer you my hand."
+
+She did not reply. "I offer you my hand and name, Laetitia."
+
+No response.
+
+"You think me bound in honour to another?"
+
+She was mute.
+
+"I am free. Thank Heaven! I am free to choose my mate--the woman I have
+always loved! Freely and unreservedly, as I ask you to give your hand,
+I offer mine. You are the mistress of Patterne Hall; my wife."
+
+She had not a word.
+
+"My dearest! do you not rightly understand? The hand I am offering you
+is disengaged. It is offered to the lady I respect above all others. I
+have made the discovery that I cannot love without respecting; and as I
+will not marry without loving, it ensues that I am free--I am yours. At
+last?--your lips move: tell me the words. Have always loved, I said.
+You carry in your bosom the magnet of constancy, and I, in spite of
+apparent deviations, declare to you that I have never ceased to be
+sensible of the attraction. And now there is not an impediment. We two
+against the world! we are one. Let me confess to an old
+foible--perfectly youthful, and you will ascribe it to youth: once I
+desired to absorb. I mistrusted; that was the reason: I perceive it.
+You teach me the difference of an alliance with a lady of intellect.
+The pride I have in you, Laetitia, definitely cures me of that insane
+passion--call it an insatiable hunger. I recognize it as a folly of
+youth. I have, as it were, gone the tour, to come home to you--at
+last?--and live our manly life of comparative equals. At last, then!
+But remember that in the younger man you would have had a
+despot--perhaps a jealous despot. Young men, I assure you, are
+orientally inclined in their ideas of love. Love gets a bad name from
+them. We, my Laetitia, do not regard love as a selfishness. If it is,
+it is the essence of life. At least it is our selfishness rendered
+beautiful. I talk to you like a man who has found a compatriot in a
+foreign land. It seems to me that I have not opened my mouth for an
+age. I certainly have not unlocked my heart. Those who sing for joy are
+not unintelligible to me. If I had not something in me worth saying I
+think I should sing. In every sense you reconcile me to men and the
+world, Laetitia. Why press you to speak? I will be the speaker. As
+surely as you know me, I know you: and . . ."
+
+Laetitia burst forth with: "No!"
+
+"I do not know you?" said he, searchingly mellifluous.
+
+"Hardly."
+
+"How not?"
+
+"I am changed."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Deeply."
+
+"Sedater?"
+
+"Materially."
+
+"Colour will come back: have no fear; I promise it. If you imagine you
+want renewing, I have the specific, I, my love, I!"
+
+"Forgive me--will you tell me, Sir Willoughby, whether you have broken
+with Miss Middleton?"
+
+"Rest satisfied, my dear Laetitia. She is as free as I am. I can do no
+more than a man of honour should do. She releases me. To-morrow or
+next day she departs. We, Laetitia, you and I, my love, are home birds.
+It does not do for the home bird to couple with the migratory. The
+little imperceptible change you allude to, is nothing. Italy will
+restore you. I am ready to stake my own health--never yet shaken by a
+doctor of medicine:--I say medicine advisedly, for there are doctors of
+divinity who would shake giants:--that an Italian trip will send you
+back--that I shall bring you home from Italy a blooming bride. You
+shake your head--despondently? My love, I guarantee it. Cannot I give
+you colour? Behold! Come to the light, look in the glass."
+
+"I may redden," said Laetitia. "I suppose that is due to the action of
+the heart. I am changed. Heart, for any other purpose, I have not. I am
+like you, Sir Willoughby, in this: I could not marry without loving,
+and I do not know what love is, except that it is an empty dream."
+
+"Marriage, my dearest. . ."
+
+"You are mistaken."
+
+"I will cure you, my Laetitia. Look to me, I am the tonic. It is not
+common confidence, but conviction. I, my love, I!"
+
+"There is no cure for what I feel, Sir Willoughby."
+
+"Spare me the formal prefix, I beg. You place your hand in mine,
+relying on me. I am pledge for the remainder. We end as we began: my
+request is for your hand--your hand in marriage."
+
+"I cannot give it."
+
+"To be my wife!"
+
+"It is an honour; I must decline it."
+
+"Are you quite well, Laetitia? I propose in the plainest terms I can
+employ, to make you Lady Patterne--mine."
+
+"I am compelled to refuse."
+
+"Why? Refuse? Your reason!"
+
+"The reason has been named."
+
+He took a stride to inspirit his wits.
+
+"There's a madness comes over women at times, I know. Answer me,
+Laetitia:--by all the evidence a man can have, I could swear it:--but
+answer me; you loved me once?"
+
+"I was an exceedingly foolish, romantic girl."
+
+"You evade my question: I am serious. Oh!" he walked away from her
+booming a sound of utter repudiation of her present imbecility, and
+hurrying to her side, said: "But it was manifest to the whole world! It
+was a legend. To love like Laetitia Dale, was a current phrase. You
+were an example, a light to women: no one was your match for devotion.
+You were a precious cameo, still gazing! And I was the object. You
+loved me. You loved me, you belonged to me, you were mine, my
+possession, my jewel; I was prouder of your constancy than of anything
+else that I had on earth. It was a part of the order of the universe to
+me. A doubt of it would have disturbed my creed. Why, good heaven!
+where are we? Is nothing solid on earth? You loved me!"
+
+"I was childish, indeed."
+
+"You loved me passionately!"
+
+"Do you insist on shaming me through and through, Sir Willoughby? I
+have been exposed enough."
+
+"You cannot blot out the past: it is written, it is recorded. You loved
+me devotedly, silence is no escape. You loved me."
+
+"I did."
+
+"You never loved me, you shallow woman! 'I did!' As if there could be a
+cessation of a love! What are we to reckon on as ours? We prize a
+woman's love; we guard it jealously, we trust to it, dream of it; there
+is our wealth; there is our talisman! And when we open the casket it
+has flown!--barren vacuity!--we are poorer than dogs. As well think of
+keeping a costly wine in potter's clay as love in the heart of a woman!
+There are women--women! Oh, they are all of a stamp coin! Coin for any
+hand! It's a fiction, an imposture--they cannot love. They are the
+shadows of men. Compared with men, they have as much heart in them as
+the shadow beside the body. Laetitia!"
+
+"Sir Willoughby."
+
+"You refuse my offer?"
+
+"I must."
+
+"You refuse to take me for your husband?"
+
+"I cannot be your wife."
+
+"You have changed? . . . you have set your heart? . . . you could
+marry? . . . there is a man? . . . you could marry one! I will have an
+answer, I am sick of evasions. What was in the mind of Heaven when
+women were created, will be the riddle to the end of the world! Every
+good man in turn has made the inquiry. I have a right to know who robs
+me--We may try as we like to solve it.--Satan is painted laughing!--I
+say I have a right to know who robs me. Answer me."
+
+"I shall not marry."
+
+"That is not an answer."
+
+"I love no one."
+
+"You loved me.--You are silent?--but you confessed it. Then you confess
+it was a love that could die! Are you unable to perceive how that
+redounds to my discredit? You loved me, you have ceased to love me. In
+other words you charge me with incapacity to sustain a woman's love.
+You accuse me of inspiring a miserable passion that cannot last a
+lifetime! You let the world see that I am a man to be aimed at for a
+temporary mark! And simply because I happen to be in your neighbourhood
+at an age when a young woman is impressionable! You make a public
+example of me as a for whom women may have a caprice, but that is all;
+he cannot enchain them; he fascinates passingly; they fall off. Is it
+just, for me to be taken up and cast down at your will? Reflect on that
+scandal! Shadows? Why, a man's shadow is faithful to him at least.
+What are women? There is not a comparison in nature that does not tower
+above them! not one that does not hoot at them! I, throughout my life,
+guided by absolute deference to their weakness--paying them politeness,
+courtesy--whatever I touch I am happy in, except when I touch women!
+How is it? What is the mystery? Some monstrous explanation must exist.
+What can it be? I am favoured by fortune from my birth until I enter
+into relations with women. But will you be so good as to account for it
+in your defence of them? Oh! were the relations dishonourable, it
+would be quite another matter. Then they . . . I could recount . . . I
+disdain to chronicle such victories. Quite another matter. But they are
+flies, and I am something more stable. They are flies. I look beyond
+the day; I owe a duty to my line. They are flies. I foresee it, I shall
+be crossed in my fate so long as I fail to shun them--flies! Not merely
+born for the day, I maintain that they are spiritually ephemeral--Well,
+my opinion of your sex is directly traceable to you. You may alter it,
+or fling another of us men out on the world with the old bitter
+experience. Consider this, that it is on your head if my ideal of women
+is wrecked. It rests with you to restore it. I love you. I discover
+that you are the one woman I have always loved. I come to you, I sue
+you, and suddenly--you have changed! 'I have changed: I am not the
+same.' What can it mean? 'I cannot marry: I love no one.' And you say
+you do not know what love is--avowing in the same breath that you did
+love me! Am I the empty dream? My hand, heart, fortune, name, are
+yours, at your feet; you kick them hence. I am here--you reject me. But
+why, for what mortal reason am I here other than my faith in your love?
+You drew me to you, to repel me, and have a wretched revenge."
+
+"You know it is not that, Sir Willoughby."
+
+"Have you any possible suspicion that I am still entangled, not, as I
+assure you I am, perfectly free in fact and in honour?"
+
+"It is not that."
+
+"Name it; for you see your power. Would you have me kneel to you,
+madam?"
+
+"Oh, no; it would complete my grief."
+
+"You feel grief? Then you believe in my affection, and you hurl it
+away. I have no doubt that as a poetess you would say, love is eternal.
+And you have loved me. And you tell me you love me no more. You are not
+very logical, Laetitia Dale."
+
+"Poetesses rarely are: if I am one, which I little pretend to be for
+writing silly verses. I have passed out of that delusion, with the
+rest."
+
+"You shall not wrong those dear old days, Laetitia. I see them now;
+when I rode by your cottage and you were at your window, pen in hand,
+your hair straying over your forehead. Romantic, yes; not foolish. Why
+were you foolish in thinking of me? Some day I will commission an
+artist to paint me that portrait of you from my description. And I
+remember when we first whispered . . . I remember your trembling. You
+have forgotten--I remember. I remember our meeting in the park on the
+path to church. I remember the heavenly morning of my return from my
+travels, and the same Laetitia meeting me, stedfast and unchangeable.
+Could I ever forget? Those are ineradicable scenes; pictures of my
+youth, interwound with me. I may say, that as I recede from them, I
+dwell on them the more. Tell me, Laetitia, was there not a certain
+prophecy of your father's concerning us two? I fancy I heard of one.
+There was one."
+
+"He was an invalid. Elderly people nurse illusions."
+
+"Ask yourself Laetitia, who is the obstacle to the fulfilment of his
+prediction?--truth, if ever a truth was foreseen on earth. You have
+not changed so far that you would feel no pleasure in gratifying him? I
+go to him to-morrow morning with the first light."
+
+"You will compel me to follow, and undeceive him."
+
+"Do so, and I denounce an unworthy affection you are ashamed to avow."
+
+"That would be idle, though it would be base."
+
+"Proof of love, then! For no one but you should it be done, and no one
+but you dare accuse me of a baseness."
+
+"Sir Willoughby, you will let my father die in peace."
+
+"He and I together will contrive to persuade you."
+
+"You tempt me to imagine that you want a wife at any cost."
+
+"You, Laetitia, you."
+
+"I am tired," she said. "It is late, I would rather not hear more. I
+am sorry if I have caused you pain. I suppose you to have spoken with
+candour. I defend neither my sex nor myself. I can only say I am a
+woman as good as dead: happy to be made happy in my way, but so little
+alive that I cannot realize any other way. As for love, I am thankful
+to have broken a spell. You have a younger woman in your mind; I am an
+old one: I have no ambition and no warmth. My utmost prayer is to float
+on the stream--a purely physical desire of life: I have no strength to
+swim. Such a woman is not the wife for you, Sir Willoughby. Good night."
+
+"One final word. Weigh it. Express no conventional regrets. Resolutely
+you refuse?"
+
+"Resolutely I do."
+
+"You refuse?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have sacrificed my pride for nothing! You refuse?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Humbled myself! And this is the answer! You do refuse?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Good night, Laetitia Dale."
+
+He gave her passage.
+
+"Good night, Sir Willoughby."
+
+"I am in your power," he said, in a voice between supplication and
+menace that laid a claw on her, and she turned and replied:
+
+"You will not be betrayed."
+
+"I can trust you . . . ?"
+
+"I go home to-morrow before breakfast."
+
+"Permit me to escort you upstairs."
+
+"If you please: but I see no one here either to-night or tomorrow."
+
+"It is for the privilege of seeing the last of you."
+
+They withdrew.
+
+Young Crossjay listened to the drumming of his head. Somewhere in or
+over the cavity a drummer rattled tremendously.
+
+Sir Willoughby's laboratory door shut with a slam.
+
+Crossjay tumbled himself off the ottoman. He stole up to the unclosed
+drawing-room door, and peeped. Never was a boy more thoroughly
+awakened. His object was to get out of the house and go through the
+night avoiding everything human, for he was big with information of a
+character that he knew to be of the nature of gunpowder, and he feared
+to explode. He crossed the hall. In the passage to the scullery he ran
+against Colonel De Craye.
+
+"So there you are," said the colonel, "I've been hunting you."
+
+Crossjay related that his bedroom door was locked and the key gone, and
+Sir Willoughby sitting up in the laboratory.
+
+Colonel De Craye took the boy to his own room, where Crossjay lay on a
+sofa, comfortably covered over and snug in a swelling pillow; but he
+was restless; he wanted to speak, to bellow, to cry; and he bounced
+round to his left side, and bounced to his right, not knowing what to
+think, except that there was treason to his adored Miss Middleton.
+
+"Why, my lad, you're not half a campaigner," the colonel called out to
+him; attributing his uneasiness to the material discomfort of the sofa:
+and Crossjay had to swallow the taunt, bitter though it was. A dim
+sentiment of impropriety in unburdening his overcharged mind on the
+subject of Miss Middleton to Colonel De Craye restrained him from
+defending himself; and so he heaved and tossed about till daybreak. At
+an early hour, while his hospitable friend, who looked very handsome in
+profile half breast and head above the sheets, continued to slumber,
+Crossjay was on his legs and away. "He says I'm not half a campaigner,
+and a couple of hours of bed are enough for me," the boy thought
+proudly, and snuffed the springing air of the young sun on the fields.
+A glance back at Patterne Hall dismayed him, for he knew not how to
+act, and he was immoderately combustible, too full of knowledge for
+self-containment; much too zealously excited on behalf of his dear Miss
+Middleton to keep silent for many hours of the day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+THE REV. DR. MIDDLETON, CLARA, AND SIR WILLOUGHBY
+
+When Master Crossjay tumbled down the stairs, Laetitia was in Clara's
+room, speculating on the various mishaps which might have befallen that
+battered youngster; and Clara listened anxiously after Laetitia had run
+out, until she heard Sir Willoughby's voice; which in some way
+satisfied her that the boy was not in the house.
+
+She waited, expecting Miss Dale to return; then undressed, went to bed,
+tried to sleep. She was tired of strife. Strange thoughts for a young
+head shot through her: as, that it is possible for the sense of duty to
+counteract distaste; and that one may live a life apart from one's
+admirations and dislikes: she owned the singular strength of Sir
+Willoughby in outwearying: she asked herself how much she had gained by
+struggling:--every effort seemed to expend her spirit's force, and
+rendered her less able to get the clear vision of her prospects, as
+though it had sunk her deeper: the contrary of her intention to make
+each further step confirm her liberty. Looking back, she marvelled at
+the things she had done. Looking round, how ineffectual they appeared!
+She had still the great scene of positive rebellion to go through with
+her father.
+
+The anticipation of that was the cause of her extreme discouragement.
+He had not spoken to her since he became aware of her attempted flight:
+but the scene was coming; and besides the wish not to inflict it on
+him, as well as to escape it herself, the girl's peculiar unhappiness
+lay in her knowledge that they were alienated and stood opposed, owing
+to one among the more perplexing masculine weaknesses, which she could
+not hint at, dared barely think of, and would not name in her
+meditations. Diverting to other subjects, she allowed herself to
+exclaim, "Wine, wine!" in renewed wonder of what there could be in wine
+to entrap venerable men and obscure their judgements. She was too young
+to consider that her being very much in the wrong gave all the
+importance to the cordial glass in a venerable gentleman's appreciation
+of his dues. Why should he fly from a priceless wine to gratify the
+caprices of a fantastical child guilty of seeking to commit a breach of
+faith? He harped on those words. Her fault was grave. No doubt the wine
+coloured it to him, as a drop or two will do in any cup: still her
+fault was grave.
+
+She was too young for such considerations. She was ready to expatiate
+on the gravity of her fault, so long as the humiliation assisted to her
+disentanglement: her snared nature in the toils would not permit her to
+reflect on it further. She had never accurately perceived it: for the
+reason perhaps that Willoughby had not been moving in his appeals: but,
+admitting the charge of waywardness, she had come to terms with
+conscience, upon the understanding that she was to perceive it and
+regret it and do penance for it by-and-by:--by renouncing marriage
+altogether? How light a penance!
+
+In the morning, she went to Laetitia's room, knocked, and had no
+answer.
+
+She was informed at the breakfast-table of Miss Dale's departure. The
+ladies Eleanor and Isabel feared it to be a case of urgency at the
+cottage. No one had seen Vernon, and Clara requested Colonel De Craye
+to walk over to the cottage for news of Crossjay. He accepted the
+commission, simply to obey and be in her service: assuring her,
+however, that there was no need to be disturbed about the boy. He would
+have told her more, had not Dr. Middleton led her out.
+
+Sir Willoughby marked a lapse of ten minutes by his watch. His
+excellent aunts had ventured a comment on his appearance that
+frightened him lest he himself should be the person to betray his
+astounding discomfiture. He regarded his conduct as an act of madness,
+and Laetitia's as no less that of a madwoman--happily mad! Very happily
+mad indeed! Her rejection of his ridiculously generous proposal seemed
+to show an intervening hand in his favour, that sent her distraught at
+the right moment. He entirely trusted her to be discreet; but she was a
+miserable creature, who had lost the one last chance offered her by
+Providence, and furnished him with a signal instance of the mediocrity
+of woman's love.
+
+Time was flying. In a little while Mrs. Mountstuart would arrive. He
+could not fence her without a design in his head; he was destitute of
+an armoury if he had no scheme: he racked the brain only to succeed in
+rousing phantasmal vapours. Her infernal "Twice!" would cease now to
+apply to Laetitia; it would be an echo of Lady Busshe. Nay, were all in
+the secret, Thrice jilted! might become the universal roar. And this,
+he reflected bitterly, of a man whom nothing but duty to his line had
+arrested from being the most mischievous of his class with women! Such
+is our reward for uprightness!
+
+At the expiration of fifteen minutes by his watch, he struck a knuckle
+on the library door. Dr. Middleton held it open to him.
+
+"You are disengaged, sir?"
+
+"The sermon is upon the paragraph which is toned to awaken the clerk,"
+replied the Rev. Doctor.
+
+Clara was weeping.
+
+Sir Willoughby drew near her solicitously.
+
+Dr Middleton's mane of silvery hair was in a state bearing witness to
+the vehemence of the sermon, and Willoughby said: "I hope, sir, you
+have not made too much of a trifle."
+
+"I believe, sir, that I have produced an effect, and that was the point
+in contemplation."
+
+"Clara! my dear Clara!" Willoughby touched her.
+
+"She sincerely repents her conduct, I may inform you," said Dr.
+Middleton.
+
+"My love!" Willoughby whispered. "We have had a misunderstanding. I am
+at a loss to discover where I have been guilty, but I take the blame,
+all the blame. I implore you not to weep. Do me the favour to look at
+me. I would not have had you subjected to any interrogation whatever."
+
+"You are not to blame," Clara said on a sob.
+
+"Undoubtedly Willoughby is not to blame. It was not he who was bound on
+a runaway errand in flagrant breach of duty and decorum, nor he who
+inflicted a catarrh on a brother of my craft and cloth," said her
+father.
+
+"The clerk, sir, has pronounced Amen," observed Willoughby.
+
+"And no man is happier to hear an ejaculation that he has laboured for
+with so much sweat of his brow than the parson, I can assure you," Dr.
+Middleton mildly groaned. "I have notions of the trouble of Abraham. A
+sermon of that description is an immolation of the parent, however it
+may go with the child."
+
+Willoughby soothed his Clara.
+
+"I wish I had been here to share it. I might have saved you some tears.
+I may have been hasty in our little dissensions. I will acknowledge
+that I have been. My temper is often irascible."
+
+"And so is mine!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "And yet I am not aware that
+I made the worse husband for it. Nor do I rightly comprehend how a
+probably justly excitable temper can stand for a plea in mitigation of
+an attempt at an outrageous breach of faith."
+
+"The sermon is over, sir."
+
+"Reverberations!" the Rev. Doctor waved his arm placably. "Take it for
+thunder heard remote."
+
+"Your hand, my love," Willoughby murmured.
+
+The hand was not put forth.
+
+Dr. Middleton remarked the fact. He walked to the window, and
+perceiving the pair in the same position when he faced about, he
+delivered a cough of admonition.
+
+"It is cruel!" said Clara.
+
+"That the owner of your hand should petition you for it?" inquired her
+father.
+
+She sought refuge in a fit of tears.
+
+Willoughby bent above her, mute.
+
+"Is a scene that is hardly conceivable as a parent's obligation once in
+a lustrum, to be repeated within the half hour?" shouted her father.
+
+She drew up her shoulders and shook; let them fall and dropped her
+head.
+
+"My dearest! your hand!" fluted Willoughby.
+
+The hand surrendered; it was much like the icicle of a sudden thaw.
+
+Willoughby squeezed it to his ribs.
+
+Dr. Middleton marched up and down the room with his arms locked behind
+him. The silence between the young people seemed to denounce his
+presence.
+
+He said, cordially: "Old Hiems has but to withdraw for buds to burst.
+'Jam ver egelidos refert tepores.' The equinoctial fury departs. I
+will leave you for a term."
+
+Clara and Willoughby simultaneously raised their faces with opposing
+expressions.
+
+"My girl!" Her father stood by her, laying gentle hand on her.
+
+"Yes, papa, I will come out to you," she replied to his apology for the
+rather heavy weight of his vocabulary, and smiled.
+
+"No, sir, I beg you will remain," said Willoughby.
+
+"I keep you frost-bound."
+
+Clara did not deny it.
+
+Willoughby emphatically did.
+
+Then which of them was the more lover-like? Dr. Middleton would for the
+moment have supposed his daughter.
+
+Clara said: "Shall you be on the lawn, papa?"
+
+Willoughby interposed. "Stay, sir; give us your blessing."
+
+"That you have." Dr. Middleton hastily motioned the paternal ceremony
+in outline.
+
+"A few minutes, papa," said Clara.
+
+"Will she name the day?" came eagerly from Willoughby.
+
+"I cannot!" Clara cried in extremity.
+
+"The day is important on its arrival," said her father; "but I
+apprehend the decision to be of the chief importance at present. First
+prime your piece of artillery, my friend."
+
+"The decision is taken, sir."
+
+"Then I will be out of the way of the firing. Hit what day you please."
+
+Clara checked herself on an impetuous exclamation. It was done that her
+father might not be detained.
+
+Her astute self-compression sharpened Willoughby as much as it
+mortified and terrified him. He understood how he would stand in an
+instant were Dr. Middleton absent. Her father was the tribunal she
+dreaded, and affairs must be settled and made irrevocable while he was
+with them. To sting the blood of the girl, he called her his darling,
+and half enwound her, shadowing forth a salute.
+
+She strung her body to submit, seeing her father take it as a signal
+for his immediate retirement.
+
+Willoughby was upon him before he reached the door.
+
+"Hear us out, sir. Do not go. Stay, at my entreaty. I fear we have not
+come to a perfect reconcilement."
+
+"If that is your opinion," said Clara, "it is good reason for not
+distressing my father."
+
+"Dr Middleton, I love your daughter. I wooed her and won her; I had
+your consent to our union, and I was the happiest of mankind. In some
+way, since her coming to my house, I know not how--she will not tell
+me, or cannot--I offended. One may be innocent and offend. I have never
+pretended to impeccability, which is an admission that I may very
+naturally offend. My appeal to her is for an explanation or for pardon.
+I obtain neither. Had our positions been reversed, oh, not for any real
+offence--not for the worst that can be imagined--I think not--I hope
+not--could I have been tempted to propose the dissolution of our
+engagement. To love is to love, with me; an engagement a solemn bond.
+With all my errors I have that merit of utter fidelity--to the world
+laughable! I confess to a multitude of errors; I have that single
+merit, and am not the more estimable in your daughter's eyes on account
+of it, I fear. In plain words, I am, I do not doubt, one of the fools
+among men; of the description of human dog commonly known as
+faithful--whose destiny is that of a tribe. A man who cries out when he
+is hurt is absurd, and I am not asking for sympathy. Call me luckless.
+But I abhor a breach of faith. A broken pledge is hateful to me. I
+should regard it myself as a form of suicide. There are principles
+which civilized men must contend for. Our social fabric is based on
+them. As my word stands for me, I hold others to theirs. If that is not
+done, the world is more or less a carnival of counterfeits. In this
+instance--Ah! Clara, my love! and you have principles: you have
+inherited, you have been indoctrinated with them: have I, then, in my
+ignorance, offended past penitence, that you, of all women? . . . And
+without being able to name my sin!--Not only for what I lose by it, but
+in the abstract, judicially--apart from the sentiment of personal
+interest, grief, pain, and the possibility of my having to endure that
+which no temptation would induce me to commit:--judicially;--I fear,
+sir, I am a poor forensic orator . . ."
+
+"The situation, sir, does not demand a Cicero: proceed," said Dr.
+Middleton, balked in his approving nods at the right true things
+delivered.
+
+"Judicially, I am bold to say, though it may appear a presumption in
+one suffering acutely, I abhor a breach of faith."
+
+Dr. Middleton brought his nod down low upon the phrase he had
+anticipated. "And I," said he, "personally, and presently, abhor a
+breach of faith. Judicially? Judicially to examine, judicially to
+condemn: but does the judicial mind detest? I think, sir, we are not on
+the bench when we say that we abhor: we have unseated ourselves. Yet
+our abhorrence of bad conduct is very certain. You would signify,
+impersonally: which suffices for this exposition of your feelings."
+
+He peered at the gentleman under his brows, and resumed:
+
+"She has had it, Willoughby; she has had it in plain Saxon and in
+uncompromising Olympian. There is, I conceive, no necessity to revert
+to it."
+
+"Pardon me, sir, but I am still unforgiven."
+
+"You must babble out the rest between you. I am about as much at home
+as a turkey with a pair of pigeons."
+
+"Leave us, father," said Clara.
+
+"First join our hands, and let me give you that title, sir."
+
+"Reach the good man your hand, my girl; forthright, from the shoulder,
+like a brave boxer. Humour a lover. He asks for his own."
+
+"It is more than I can do, father."
+
+"How, it is more than you can do? You are engaged to him, a plighted
+woman."
+
+"I do not wish to marry."
+
+"The apology is inadequate."
+
+"I am unworthy. . ."
+
+"Chatter! chatter!"
+
+"I beg him to release me."
+
+"Lunacy!"
+
+"I have no love to give him."
+
+"Have you gone back to your cradle, Clara Middleton?"
+
+"Oh, leave us, dear father!"
+
+"My offence, Clara, my offence! What is it? Will you only name it?"
+
+"Father, will you leave us? We can better speak together . . ."
+
+"We have spoken, Clara, how often!" Willoughby resumed, "with what
+result?--that you loved me, that you have ceased to love me: that your
+heart was mine, that you have withdrawn it, plucked it from me: that
+you request me to consent to a sacrifice involving my reputation, my
+life. And what have I done? I am the same, unchangeable. I loved and
+love you: my heart was yours, and is, and will be yours forever. You
+are my affianced--that is, my wife. What have I done?"
+
+"It is indeed useless," Clara sighed.
+
+"Not useless, my girl, that you should inform this gentleman, your
+affianced husband, of the ground of the objection you conceived against
+him."
+
+"I cannot say."
+
+"Do you know?"
+
+"If I could name it, I could hope to overcome it."
+
+Dr. Middleton addressed Sir Willoughby.
+
+"I verily believe we are directing the girl to dissect a caprice. Such
+things are seen large by these young people, but as they have neither
+organs, nor arteries, nor brains, nor membranes, dissection and
+inspection will be alike profitlessly practised. Your inquiry is
+natural for a lover, whose passion to enter into relations with the sex
+is ordinarily in proportion to his ignorance of the stuff composing
+them. At a particular age they traffic in whims: which are, I presume,
+the spiritual of hysterics; and are indubitably preferable, so long as
+they are not pushed too far. Examples are not wanting to prove that a
+flighty initiative on the part of the male is a handsome corrective. In
+that case, we should probably have had the roof off the house, and the
+girl now at your feet. Ha!"
+
+"Despise me, father. I am punished for ever thinking myself the
+superior of any woman," said Clara.
+
+"Your hand out to him, my dear, since he is for a formal
+reconciliation; and I can't wonder."
+
+"Father! I have said I do not . . . I have said I cannot . . ."
+
+"By the most merciful! what? what? the name for it, words for it!"
+
+"Do not frown on me, father. I wish him happiness. I cannot marry him.
+I do not love him."
+
+"You will remember that you informed me aforetime that you did love
+him."
+
+"I was ignorant . . . I did not know myself. I wish him to be happy."
+
+"You deny him the happiness you wish him!"
+
+"It would not be for his happiness were I to wed him."
+
+"Oh!" burst from Willoughby.
+
+"You hear him. He rejects your prediction, Clara Middleton." She caught
+her clasped hands up to her throat. "Wretched, wretched, both!"
+
+"And you have not a word against him, miserable girl."
+
+"Miserable! I am."
+
+"It is the cry of an animal!"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"You feel like one? Your behaviour is of that shape. You have not a
+word?"
+
+"Against myself, not against him."
+
+"And I, when you speak so generously, am to yield you? give you up?"
+cried Willoughby. "Ah! my love, my Clara, impose what you will on me;
+not that. It is too much for man. It is, I swear it, beyond my
+strength."
+
+"Pursue, continue the strain; 'tis in the right key," said Dr.
+Middleton, departing.
+
+Willoughby wheeled and waylaid him with a bound.
+
+"Plead for me, sir; you are all-powerful. Let her be mine, she shall be
+happy, or I will perish for it. I will call it on my head.--Impossible!
+I cannot lose her. Lose you, my love? it would be to strip myself of
+every blessing of body and soul. It would be to deny myself possession
+of grace, beauty, wit, all the incomparable charms of loveliness of
+mind and person in woman, and plant myself in a desert. You are my
+mate, the sum of everything I call mine. Clara, I should be less than
+man to submit to such a loss. Consent to it? But I love you! I worship
+you! How can I consent to lose you . . . ?"
+
+He saw the eyes of the desperately wily young woman slink sideways. Dr.
+Middleton was pacing at ever shorter lengths closer by the door.
+
+"You hate me?" Willoughby sunk his voice.
+
+"If it should turn to hate!" she murmured.
+
+"Hatred of your husband?"
+
+"I could not promise," she murmured, more softly in her wiliness.
+
+"Hatred?" he cried aloud, and Dr. Middleton stopped in his walk and
+flung up his head: "Hatred of your husband? of the man you have vowed
+to love and honour? Oh, no! Once mine, it is not to be feared. I trust
+to my knowledge of your nature; I trust in your blood, I trust in your
+education. Had I nothing else to inspire confidence, I could trust in
+your eyes. And, Clara, take the confession: I would rather be hated
+than lose you. For if I lose you, you are in another world, out of this
+one holding me in its death-like cold; but if you hate me we are
+together, we are still together. Any alliance, any, in preference to
+separation!"
+
+Clara listened with critical ear. His language and tone were new; and
+comprehending that they were in part addressed to her father, whose
+phrase: "A breach of faith": he had so cunningly used, disdain of the
+actor prompted the extreme blunder of her saying--frigidly though she
+said it:
+
+"You have not talked to me in this way before."
+
+"Finally," remarked her father, summing up the situation to settle it
+from that little speech, "he talks to you in this way now; and you are
+under my injunction to stretch your hand out to him for a symbol of
+union, or to state your objection to that course. He, by your
+admission, is at the terminus, and there, failing the why not, must you
+join him."
+
+Her head whirled. She had been severely flagellated and weakened
+previous to Willoughby's entrance. Language to express her peculiar
+repulsion eluded her. She formed the words, and perceived that they
+would not stand to bear a breath from her father. She perceived too
+that Willoughby was as ready with his agony of supplication as she with
+hers. If she had tears for a resource, he had gestures quite as
+eloquent; and a cry of her loathing of the union would fetch a
+countervailing torrent of the man's love.--What could she say? he is
+an Egoist? The epithet has no meaning in such a scene. Invent! shrieked
+the hundred-voiced instinct of dislike within her, and alone with her
+father, alone with Willoughby, she could have invented some equivalent,
+to do her heart justice for the injury it sustained in her being unable
+to name the true and immense objection: but the pair in presence
+paralyzed her. She dramatized them each springing forward by turns,
+with crushing rejoinders. The activity of her mind revelled in giving
+them a tongue, but would not do it for herself. Then ensued the
+inevitable consequence of an incapacity to speak at the heart's urgent
+dictate: heart and mind became divided. One throbbed hotly, the other
+hung aloof, and mentally, while the sick inarticulate heart kept
+clamouring, she answered it with all that she imagined for those two
+men to say. And she dropped poison on it to still its reproaches:
+bidding herself remember her fatal postponements in order to preserve
+the seeming of consistency before her father; calling it hypocrite;
+asking herself, what was she! who loved her! And thus beating down her
+heart, she completed the mischief with a piercing view of the
+foundation of her father's advocacy of Willoughby, and more lamentably
+asked herself what her value was, if she stood bereft of respect for
+her father.
+
+Reason, on the other hand, was animated by her better nature to plead
+his case against her: she clung to her respect for him, and felt
+herself drowning with it: and she echoed Willoughby consciously,
+doubling her horror with the consciousness, in crying out on a world
+where the most sacred feelings are subject to such lapses. It doubled
+her horror, that she should echo the man: but it proved that she was no
+better than be: only some years younger. Those years would soon be
+outlived: after which, he and she would be of a pattern. She was
+unloved: she did no harm to any one by keeping her word to this man;
+she had pledged it, and it would be a breach of faith not to keep it.
+No one loved her. Behold the quality of her father's love! To give him
+happiness was now the principal aim for her, her own happiness being
+decently buried; and here he was happy: why should she be the cause of
+his going and losing the poor pleasure he so much enjoyed?
+
+The idea of her devotedness flattered her feebleness. She betrayed
+signs of hesitation; and in hesitating, she looked away from a look at
+Willoughby, thinking (so much against her nature was it to resign
+herself to him) that it would not have been so difficult with an
+ill-favoured man. With one horribly ugly, it would have been a horrible
+exultation to cast off her youth and take the fiendish leap.
+
+Unfortunately for Sir Willoughby, he had his reasons for pressing
+impatience; and seeing her deliberate, seeing her hasty look at his
+fine figure, his opinion of himself combined with his recollection of a
+particular maxim of the Great Book to assure him that her resistance
+was over: chiefly owing, as he supposed, to his physical perfections.
+
+Frequently indeed, in the contest between gentlemen and ladies, have
+the maxims of the Book stimulated the assailant to victory. They are
+rosy with blood of victims. To bear them is to hear a horn that blows
+the mort: has blown it a thousand times. It is good to remember how
+often they have succeeded, when, for the benefit of some future Lady
+Vauban, who may bestir her wits to gather maxims for the inspiriting of
+the Defence, the circumstance of a failure has to be recorded.
+
+Willoughby could not wait for the melting of the snows. He saw full
+surely the dissolving process; and sincerely admiring and coveting her
+as he did, rashly this ill-fated gentleman attempted to precipitate it,
+and so doing arrested.
+
+Whence might we draw a note upon yonder maxim, in words akin to these:
+Make certain ere a breath come from thee that thou be not a frost.
+
+"Mine! She is mine!" he cried: "mine once more! mine utterly! mine
+eternally!" and he followed up his devouring exclamations in person as
+she, less decidedly, retreated. She retreated as young ladies should
+ever do, two or three steps, and he would not notice that she had
+become an angry Dian, all arrows: her maidenliness in surrendering
+pleased him. Grasping one fair hand, he just allowed her to edge on the
+outer circle of his embrace, crying: "Not a syllable of what I have
+gone through! You shall not have to explain it, my Clara. I will study
+you more diligently, to be guided by you, my darling. If I offend
+again, my wife will not find it hard to speak what my bride withheld--I
+do not ask why: perhaps not able to weigh the effect of her reticence:
+not at that time, when she was younger and less experienced, estimating
+the sacredness of a plighted engagement. It is past, we are one, my
+dear sir and father. You may leave us now."
+
+"I profoundly rejoice to hear that I may," said Dr. Middleton. Clara
+writhed her captured hand.
+
+"No, papa, stay. It is an error, an error. You must not leave me. Do
+not think me utterly, eternally, belonging to any one but you. No one
+shall say I am his but you."
+
+"Are you quicksands, Clara Middleton, that nothing can be built on you?
+Whither is a flighty head and a shifty will carrying the girl?"
+
+"Clara and I, sir," said Willoughby.
+
+"And so you shall," said the Doctor, turning about.
+
+"Not yet, papa:" Clara sprang to him.
+
+"Why, you, you, you, it was you who craved to be alone with
+Willoughby!" her father shouted; "and here we are rounded to our
+starting-point, with the solitary difference that now you do not want
+to be alone with Willoughby. First I am bidden go; next I am pulled
+back; and judging by collar and coat-tag, I suspect you to be a young
+woman to wear an angel's temper threadbare before you determine upon
+which one of the tides driving him to and fro you intend to launch on
+yourself, Where is your mind?"
+
+Clara smoothed her forehead.
+
+"I wish to please you, papa."
+
+"I request you to please the gentleman who is your appointed husband."
+
+"I am anxious to perform my duty."
+
+"That should be a satisfactory basis for you, Willoughby; as girls go!"
+
+"Let me, sir, simply entreat to have her hand in mine before you."
+
+"Why not, Clara?"
+
+"Why an empty ceremony, papa?"
+
+"The implication is, that she is prepared for the important one, friend
+Willoughby."
+
+"Her hand, sir; the reassurance of her hand in mine under your
+eyes:--after all that I have suffered, I claim it, I think I claim it
+reasonably, to restore me to confidence."
+
+"Quite reasonably; which is not to say, necessarily; but, I will add,
+justifiably; and it may be, sagaciously, when dealing with the
+volatile."
+
+"And here," said Willoughby, "is my hand."
+
+Clara recoiled.
+
+He stepped on. Her father frowned. She lifted both her hands from the
+shrinking elbows, darted a look of repulsion at her pursuer, and ran to
+her father, crying: "Call it my mood! I am volatile, capricious,
+flighty, very foolish. But you see that I attach a real meaning to it,
+and feel it to be binding: I cannot think it an empty ceremony, if it
+is before you. Yes, only be a little considerate to your moody girl.
+She will be in a fitter state in a few hours. Spare me this moment; I
+must collect myself. I thought I was free; I thought he would not press
+me. If I give my hand hurriedly now, I shall, I know, immediately
+repent it. There is the picture of me! But, papa, I mean to try to be
+above that, and if I go and walk by myself, I shall grow calm to
+perceive where my duty lies . . ."
+
+"In which direction shall you walk?" said Willoughby.
+
+"Wisdom is not upon a particular road," said Dr. Middleton.
+
+"I have a dread, sir, of that one which leads to the railway-station."
+
+"With some justice!" Dr. Middleton sighed over his daughter.
+
+Clara coloured to deep crimson: but she was beyond anger, and was
+rather gratified by an offence coming from Willoughby.
+
+"I will promise not to leave his grounds, papa."
+
+"My child, you have threatened to be a breaker of promises."
+
+"Oh!" she wailed. "But I will make it a vow to you."
+
+"Why not make it a vow to me this moment, for this gentleman's
+contentment, that he shall be your husband within a given period?"
+
+"I will come to you voluntarily. I burn to be alone."
+
+"I shall lose her," exclaimed Willoughby, in heartfelt earnest.
+
+"How so?" said Dr. Middleton. "I have her, sir, if you will favour me
+by continuing in abeyance.--You will come within an hour voluntarily,
+Clara; and you will either at once yield your hand to him or you will
+furnish reasons, and they must be good ones, for withholding it."
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+"You will?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"Mind, I say reasons."
+
+"Reasons, papa. If I have none . . ."
+
+"If you have none that are to my satisfaction, you implicitly and
+instantly, and cordially obey my command."
+
+"I will obey."
+
+"What more would you require?" Dr. Middleton bowed to Sir Willoughby in
+triumph.
+
+"Will she. . ."
+
+"Sir! Sir!"
+
+"She is your daughter, sir. I am satisfied."
+
+"She has perchance wrestled with her engagement, as the aboriginals of
+a land newly discovered by a crew of adventurous colonists do battle
+with the garments imposed on them by our considerate
+civilization;--ultimately to rejoice with excessive dignity in the
+wearing of a battered cocked-hat and trowsers not extending to the
+shanks: but she did not break her engagement, sir; and we will
+anticipate that, moderating a young woman's native wildness, she may,
+after the manner of my comparison, take a similar pride in her fortune
+in good season."
+
+Willoughby had not leisure to sound the depth of Dr. Middleton's
+compliment. He had seen Clara gliding out of the room during the
+delivery; and his fear returned on him that, not being won, she was
+lost.
+
+"She has gone." Her father noticed her absence. "She does not waste
+time in her mission to procure that astonishing product of a shallow
+soil, her reasons; if such be the object of her search. But no: it
+signifies that she deems herself to have need of composure--nothing
+more. No one likes to be turned about; we like to turn ourselves about;
+and in the question of an act to be committed, we stipulate that it
+shall be our act--girls and others. After the lapse of an hour, it
+will appear to her as her act. Happily, Willoughby, we do not dine
+away from Patterne to-night."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"It may be attributable to a sense of deserving, but I could plead
+guilty to a weakness for old Port to-day."
+
+"There shall be an extra bottle, sir."
+
+"All going favourably with you, as I have no cause to doubt," said Dr
+Middleton, with the motion of wafting his host out of the library.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+SHOWS THE DIVINING ARTS OF A PERCEPTIVE MIND
+
+Starting from the Hall a few minutes before Dr. Middleton and Sir
+Willoughby had entered the drawing-room overnight, Vernon parted
+company with Colonel De Craye at the park-gates, and betook himself to
+the cottage of the Dales, where nothing had been heard of his wanderer;
+and he received the same disappointing reply from Dr. Corney, out of
+the bedroom window of the genial physician, whose astonishment at his
+covering so long a stretch of road at night for news of a boy like
+Crossjay--gifted with the lives of a cat--became violent and rapped
+Punch-like blows on the window-sill at Vernon's refusal to take shelter
+and rest. Vernon's excuse was that he had "no one but that fellow to
+care for", and he strode off, naming a farm five miles distant. Dr.
+Corney howled an invitation to early breakfast to him, in the event of
+his passing on his way back, and retired to bed to think of him. The
+result of a variety of conjectures caused him to set Vernon down as
+Miss Middleton's knight, and he felt a strong compassion for his poor
+friend. "Though," thought he, "a hopeless attachment is as pretty an
+accompaniment to the tune of life as a gentleman might wish to have,
+for it's one of those big doses of discord which make all the minor
+ones fit in like an agreeable harmony, and so he shuffles along as
+pleasantly as the fortune-favoured, when they come to compute!"
+
+Sir Willoughby was the fortune-favoured in the little doctor's mind;
+that high-stepping gentleman having wealth, and public consideration,
+and the most ravishing young lady in the world for a bride. Still,
+though he reckoned all these advantages enjoyed by Sir Willoughby at
+their full value, he could imagine the ultimate balance of good fortune
+to be in favour of Vernon. But to do so, he had to reduce the whole
+calculation to the extreme abstract, and feed his lean friend, as it
+were, on dew and roots; and the happy effect for Vernon lay in a
+distant future, on the borders of old age, where he was to be blessed
+with his lady's regretful preference, and rejoice in the fruits of good
+constitutional habits. The reviewing mind was Irish. Sir Willoughby was
+a character of man profoundly opposed to Dr. Corney's nature; the
+latter's instincts bristled with antagonism--not to his race, for
+Vernon was of the same race, partly of the same blood, and Corney loved
+him: the type of person was the annoyance. And the circumstance of its
+prevailing successfulness in the country where he was placed, while it
+held him silent as if under a law, heaped stores of insurgency in the
+Celtic bosom. Corney contemplating Sir Willoughby, and a trotting kern
+governed by Strongbow, have a point of likeness between them; with the
+point of difference, that Corney was enlightened to know of a friend
+better adapted for eminent station, and especially better adapted to
+please a lovely lady--could these high-bred Englishwomen but be taught
+to conceive another idea of manliness than the formal carved-in-wood
+idol of their national worship!
+
+Dr Corney breakfasted very early, without seeing Vernon. He was off to
+a patient while the first lark of the morning carolled above, and the
+business of the day, not yet fallen upon men in the shape of cloud, was
+happily intermixed with nature's hues and pipings. Turning off the
+high-road tip a green lane, an hour later, he beheld a youngster prying
+into a hedge head and arms, by the peculiar strenuous twist of whose
+hinder parts, indicative of a frame plunged on the pursuit in hand, he
+clearly distinguished young Crossjay. Out came eggs. The doctor pulled
+up.
+
+"What bird?" he bellowed.
+
+"Yellowhammer," Crossjay yelled back.
+
+"Now, sir, you'll drop a couple of those eggs in the nest."
+
+"Don't order me," Crossjay was retorting. "Oh, it's you, Doctor Corney.
+Good morning. I said that, because I always do drop a couple back. I
+promised Mr. Whitford I would, and Miss Middleton too."
+
+"Had breakfast?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Not hungry?"
+
+"I should be if I thought about it."
+
+"Jump up."
+
+"I think I'd rather not, Doctor Corney."
+
+"And you'll just do what Doctor Corney tells you; and set your mind on
+rashers of curly fat bacon and sweetly smoking coffee, toast, hot
+cakes, marmalade, and damson-jam. Wide go the fellow's nostrils, and
+there's water at the dimples of his mouth! Up, my man."
+
+Crossjay jumped up beside the doctor, who remarked, as he touched his
+horse: "I don't want a man this morning, though I'll enlist you in my
+service if I do. You're fond of Miss Middleton?"
+
+Instead of answering, Crossjay heaved the sigh of love that bears a
+burden.
+
+"And so am I," pursued the doctor: "You'll have to put up with a rival.
+It's worse than fond: I'm in love with her. How do you like that?"
+
+"I don't mind how many love her," said Crossjay.
+
+"You're worthy of a gratuitous breakfast in the front parlour of the
+best hotel of the place they call Arcadia. And how about your bed last
+night?"
+
+"Pretty middling."
+
+"Hard, was it, where the bones haven't cushion?"
+
+"I don't care for bed. A couple of hours, and that's enough for me."
+
+"But you're fond of Miss Middleton anyhow, and that's a virtue."
+
+To his great surprise, Dr. Corney beheld two big round tears force
+their way out of this tough youngster's eyes, and all the while the
+boy's face was proud.
+
+Crossjay said, when he could trust himself to disjoin his lips:
+
+"I want to see Mr. Whitford."
+
+"Have you got news for him?"
+
+"I've something to ask him. It's about what I ought to do."
+
+"Then, my boy, you have the right name addressed in the wrong
+direction: for I found you turning your shoulders on Mr. Whitford. And
+he has been out of his bed hunting you all the unholy night you've made
+it for him. That's melancholy. What do you say to asking my advice?"
+
+Crossjay sighed. "I can't speak to anybody but Mr. Whitford."
+
+"And you're hot to speak to him?"
+
+"I want to."
+
+"And I found you running away from him. You're a curiosity, Mr.
+Crossjay Patterne."
+
+"Ah! so'd anybody be who knew as much as I do," said Crossjay, with a
+sober sadness that caused the doctor to treat him seriously.
+
+"The fact is," he said, "Mr. Whitford is beating the country for you.
+My best plan will be to drive you to the Hall."
+
+"I'd rather not go to the Hall," Crossjay spoke resolutely.
+
+"You won't see Miss Middleton anywhere but at the Hall."
+
+"I don't want to see Miss Middleton, if I can't be a bit of use to
+her."
+
+"No danger threatening the lady, is there?"
+
+Crossjay treated the question as if it had not been put.
+
+"Now, tell me," said Dr. Corney, "would there be a chance for me,
+supposing Miss Middleton were disengaged?"
+
+The answer was easy. "I'm sure she wouldn't."
+
+"And why, sir, are you so cock sure?"
+
+There was no saying; but the doctor pressed for it, and at last
+Crossjay gave his opinion that she would take Mr. Whitford.
+
+The doctor asked why; and Crossjay said it was because Mr. Whitford
+was the best man in the world. To which, with a lusty "Amen to that,"
+Dr. Corney remarked: "I should have fancied Colonel De Craye would have
+had the first chance: he's more of a lady's man."
+
+Crossjay surprised him again by petulantly saying: "Don't."
+
+The boy added: "I don't want to talk, except about birds and things.
+What a jolly morning it is! I saw the sun rise. No rain to-day. You're
+right about hungry, Doctor Corney!"
+
+The kindly little man swung his whip. Crossjay informed him of his
+disgrace at the Hall, and of every incident connected with it, from the
+tramp to the baronet, save Miss Middleton's adventure and the night
+scene in the drawing-room. A strong smell of something left out struck
+Dr. Corney, and he said: "You'll not let Miss Middleton know of my
+affection. After all, it's only a little bit of love. But, as Patrick
+said to Kathleen, when she owned to such a little bit, 'that's the best
+bit of all!' and he was as right as I am about hungry."
+
+Crossjay scorned to talk of loving, he declared. "I never tell Miss
+Middleton what I feel. Why, there's Miss Dale's cottage!"
+
+"It's nearer to your empty inside than my mansion," said the doctor,
+"and we'll stop just to inquire whether a bed's to be had for you there
+to-night, and if not, I'll have you with me, and bottle you, and
+exhibit you, for you're a rare specimen. Breakfast you may count on
+from Mr. Dale. I spy a gentleman."
+
+"It's Colonel De Craye."
+
+"Come after news of you."
+
+"I wonder!"
+
+"Miss Middleton sends him; of course she does."
+
+Crossjay turned his full face to the doctor. "I haven't seen her for
+such a long time! But he saw me last night, and he might have told her
+that, if she's anxious.--Good-morning, colonel. I've had a good walk,
+and a capital drive, and I'm as hungry as the boat's crew of Captain
+Bligh."
+
+He jumped down.
+
+The colonel and the doctor saluted, smiling.
+
+"I've rung the bell," said De Craye.
+
+A maid came to the gate, and upon her steps appeared Miss Dale, who
+flung herself at Crossjay, mingling kisses and reproaches. She scarcely
+raised her face to the colonel more than to reply to his greeting, and
+excuse the hungry boy for hurrying indoors to breakfast.
+
+"I'll wait," said De Craye. He had seen that she was paler than usual.
+So had Dr. Corney; and the doctor called to her concerning her father's
+health. She reported that he had not yet risen, and took Crossjay to
+herself.
+
+"That's well," said the doctor, "if the invalid sleeps long. The lady
+is not looking so well, though. But ladies vary; they show the mind on
+the countenance, for want of the punching we meet with to conceal it;
+they're like military flags for a funeral or a gala; one day furled,
+and next day streaming. Men are ships' figure-heads, about the same for
+a storm or a calm, and not too handsome, thanks to the ocean. It's an
+age since we encountered last, colonel: on board the Dublin boat, I
+recollect, and a night it was."
+
+"I recollect that you set me on my legs, doctor."
+
+"Ah! and you'll please to notify that Corney's no quack at sea, by
+favour of the monks of the Chartreuse, whose elixir has power to still
+the waves. And we hear that miracles are done with!"
+
+"Roll a physician and a monk together, doctor!"
+
+"True: it'll be a miracle if they combine. Though the cure of the soul
+is often the entire and total cure of the body: and it's maliciously
+said that the body given over to our treatment is a signal to set the
+soul flying. By the way, colonel, that boy has a trifle on his mind."
+
+"I suppose he has been worrying a farmer or a gamekeeper."
+
+"Try him. You'll find him tight. He's got Miss Middleton on the brain.
+There's a bit of a secret; and he's not so cheerful about it."
+
+"We'll see," said the colonel.
+
+Dr Corney nodded. "I have to visit my patient here presently. I'm too
+early for him: so I'll make a call or two on the lame birds that are
+up," he remarked, and drove away.
+
+De Craye strolled through the garden. He was a gentleman of those
+actively perceptive wits which, if ever they reflect, do so by hops and
+jumps: upon some dancing mirror within, we may fancy. He penetrated a
+plot in a flash; and in a flash he formed one; but in both cases, it
+was after long hovering and not over-eager deliberation, by the patient
+exercise of his quick perceptives. The fact that Crossjay was
+considered to have Miss Middleton on the brain, threw a series of
+images of everything relating to Crossjay for the last forty hours into
+relief before him: and as he did not in the slightest degree speculate
+on any one of them, but merely shifted and surveyed them, the falcon
+that he was in spirit as well as in his handsome face leisurely allowed
+his instinct to direct him where to strike. A reflective disposition
+has this danger in action, that it commonly precipitates conjecture for
+the purpose of working upon probabilities with the methods and in the
+tracks to which it is accustomed: and to conjecture rashly is to play
+into the puzzles of the maze. He who can watch circling above it
+awhile, quietly viewing, and collecting in his eye, gathers matter that
+makes the secret thing discourse to the brain by weight and balance; he
+will get either the right clue or none; more frequently none; but he
+will escape the entanglement of his own cleverness, he will always be
+nearer to the enigma than the guesser or the calculator, and he will
+retain a breadth of vision forfeited by them. He must, however, to have
+his chance of success, be acutely besides calmly perceptive, a reader
+of features, audacious at the proper moment.
+
+De Craye wished to look at Miss Dale. She had returned home very
+suddenly, not, as it appeared, owing to her father's illness; and he
+remembered a redness of her eyelids when he passed her on the corridor
+one night. She sent Crossjay out to him as soon as the boy was well
+filled. He sent Crossjay back with a request. She did not yield to it
+immediately. She stepped to the front door reluctantly, and seemed
+disconcerted. De Craye begged for a message to Miss Middleton. There
+was none to give. He persisted. But there was really none at present,
+she said.
+
+"You won't entrust me with the smallest word?" said he, and set her
+visibly thinking whether she could dispatch a word. She could not; she
+had no heart for messages.
+
+"I shall see her in a day or two, Colonel De Craye."
+
+"She will miss you severely."
+
+"We shall soon meet."
+
+"And poor Willoughby!"
+
+Laetitia coloured and stood silent.
+
+A butterfly of some rarity allured Crossjay.
+
+"I fear he has been doing mischief," she said. "I cannot get him to
+look at me."
+
+"His appetite is good?"
+
+"Very good indeed."
+
+De Craye nodded. A boy with a noble appetite is never a hopeless lock.
+
+The colonel and Crossjay lounged over the garden.
+
+"And now," said the colonel, "we'll see if we can't arrange a meeting
+between you and Miss Middleton. You're a lucky fellow, for she's always
+thinking of you."
+
+"I know I'm always thinking of her," said Crossjay.
+
+"If ever you're in a scrape, she's the person you must go to."
+
+"Yes, if I know where she is!"
+
+"Why, generally she'll be at the Hall."
+
+There was no reply: Crossjay's dreadful secret jumped to his throat. He
+certainly was a weaker lock for being full of breakfast.
+
+"I want to see Mr. Whitford so much," he said.
+
+"Something to tell him?"
+
+"I don't know what to do: I don't understand it!" The secret wriggled
+to his mouth. He swallowed it down. "Yes, I want to talk to Mr.
+Whitford."
+
+"He's another of Miss Middleton's friends."
+
+"I know he is. He's true steel."
+
+"We're all her friends, Crossjay. I flatter myself I'm a Toledo when
+I'm wanted. How long had you been in the house last night before you
+ran into me?"
+
+"I don't know, sir; I fell asleep for some time, and then I woke!
+. . ."
+
+"Where did you find yourself?"
+
+"I was in the drawing-room."
+
+"Come, Crossjay, you're not a fellow to be scared by ghosts? You looked
+it when you made a dash at my midriff."
+
+"I don't believe there are such things. Do you, colonel? You can't!"
+
+"There's no saying. We'll hope not; for it wouldn't be fair fighting. A
+man with a ghost to back him'd beat any ten. We couldn't box him or
+play cards, or stand a chance with him as a rival in love. Did you,
+now, catch a sight of a ghost?"
+
+"They weren't ghosts!" Crossjay said what he was sure of, and his voice
+pronounced his conviction.
+
+"I doubt whether Miss Middleton is particularly happy," remarked the
+colonel. "Why? Why, you upset her, you know, now and then."
+
+The boy swelled. "I'd do . . . I'd go . . . I wouldn't have her unhappy
+. . . It's that! that's it! And I don't know what I ought to do. I wish
+I could see Mr. Whitford."
+
+"You get into such headlong scrapes, my lad."
+
+"I wasn't in any scrape yesterday."
+
+"So you made yourself up a comfortable bed in the drawing-room? Luckily
+Sir Willoughby didn't see you."
+
+"He didn't, though!"
+
+"A close shave, was it?"
+
+"I was under a covering of something silk."
+
+"He woke you?"
+
+"I suppose he did. I heard him."
+
+"Talking?"
+
+"He was talking."
+
+"What! talking to himself?"
+
+"No."
+
+The secret threatened Crossjay to be out or suffocate him. De Craye
+gave him a respite.
+
+"You like Sir Willoughby, don't you?"
+
+Crossjay produced a still-born affirmative.
+
+"He's kind to you," said the colonel; "he'll set you up and look after
+your interests."
+
+"Yes, I like him," said Crossjay, with his customary rapidity in
+touching the subject; "I like him; he's kind and all that, and tips and
+plays with you, and all that; but I never can make out why he wouldn't
+see my father when my father came here to see him ten miles, and had to
+walk back ten miles in the rain, to go by rail a long way, down home,
+as far as Devonport, because Sir Willoughby wouldn't see him, though he
+was at home, my father saw. We all thought it so odd: and my father
+wouldn't let us talk much about it. My father's a very brave man."
+
+"Captain Patterne is as brave a man as ever lived," said De Craye.
+
+"I'm positive you'd like him, colonel."
+
+"I know of his deeds, and I admire him, and that's a good step to
+liking."
+
+He warmed the boy's thoughts of his father.
+
+"Because, what they say at home is, a little bread and cheese, and a
+glass of ale, and a rest, to a poor man--lots of great houses will give
+you that, and we wouldn't have asked for more than that. My sisters
+say they think Sir Willoughby must be selfish. He's awfully proud; and
+perhaps it was because my father wasn't dressed well enough. But what
+can we do? We're very poor at home, and lots of us, and all hungry. My
+father says he isn't paid very well for his services to the Government.
+He's only a marine."
+
+"He's a hero!" said De Craye.
+
+"He came home very tired, with a cold, and had a doctor. But Sir
+Willoughby did send him money, and mother wished to send it back, and
+my father said she was not like a woman--with our big family. He said
+he thought Sir Willoughby an extraordinary man."
+
+"Not at all; very common; indigenous," said De Craye. "The art of
+cutting is one of the branches of a polite education in this country,
+and you'll have to learn it, if you expect to be looked on as a
+gentleman and a Patterne, my boy. I begin to see how it is Miss
+Middleton takes to you so. Follow her directions. But I hope you did
+not listen to a private conversation. Miss Middleton would not approve
+of that."
+
+"Colonel De Craye, how could I help myself? I heard a lot before I knew
+what it was. There was poetry!"
+
+"Still, Crossjay, if it was important--was it?"
+
+The boy swelled again, and the colonel asked him, "Does Miss Dale know
+of your having played listener?"
+
+"She!" said Crossjay. "Oh, I couldn't tell her."
+
+He breathed thick; then came a threat of tears. "She wouldn't do
+anything to hurt Miss Middleton. I'm sure of that. It wasn't her fault.
+She--There goes Mr. Whitford!" Crossjay bounded away.
+
+The colonel had no inclination to wait for his return. He walked fast
+up the road, not perspicuously conscious that his motive was to be well
+in advance of Vernon Whitford: to whom, after all, the knowledge
+imparted by Crossjay would be of small advantage. That fellow would
+probably trot of to Willoughby to row him for breaking his word to Miss
+Middleton! There are men, thought De Craye, who see nothing, feel
+nothing.
+
+He crossed a stile into the wood above the lake, where, as he was in
+the humour to think himself signally lucky, espying her, he took it as
+a matter of course that the lady who taught his heart to leap should be
+posted by the Fates. And he wondered little at her power, for rarely
+had the world seen such union of princess and sylph as in that lady's
+figure. She stood holding by a beech-branch, gazing down on the water.
+
+She had not heard him. When she looked she flushed at the spectacle of
+one of her thousand thoughts, but she was not startled; the colour
+overflowed a grave face.
+
+"And 'tis not quite the first time that Willoughby has played this
+trick!" De Craye said to her, keenly smiling with a parted mouth.
+
+Clara moved her lips to recall remarks introductory to so abrupt and
+strange a plunge.
+
+He smiled in that peculiar manner of an illuminated comic perception:
+for the moment he was all falcon; and he surprised himself more than
+Clara, who was not in the mood to take surprises. It was the sight of
+her which had animated him to strike his game; he was down on it.
+
+Another instinct at work (they spring up in twenties oftener than in
+twos when the heart is the hunter) prompted him to directness and
+quickness, to carry her on the flood of the discovery.
+
+She regained something of her mental self-possession as soon as she was
+on a level with a meaning she had not yet inspected; but she had to
+submit to his lead, distinctly perceiving where its drift divided to
+the forked currents of what might be in his mind and what was in hers.
+
+"Miss Middleton, I bear a bit of a likeness to the messenger to the
+glorious despot--my head is off if I speak not true! Everything I have
+is on the die. Did I guess wrong your wish?--I read it in the dark, by
+the heart. But here's a certainty: Willoughby sets you free."
+
+"You have come from him?" she could imagine nothing else, and she was
+unable to preserve a disguise; she trembled.
+
+"From Miss Dale."
+
+"Ah!" Clara drooped. "She told me that once."
+
+"'Tis the fact that tells it now."
+
+"You have not seen him since you left the house?"
+
+"Darkly: clear enough: not unlike the hand of destiny--through a veil.
+He offered himself to Miss Dale last night, about between the witching
+hours of twelve and one."
+
+"Miss Dale . . ."
+
+"Would she other? Could she? The poor lady has languished beyond a
+decade. She's love in the feminine person."
+
+"Are you speaking seriously, Colonel De Craye?"
+
+"Would I dare to trifle with you, Miss Middleton?"
+
+"I have reason to know it cannot be."
+
+"If I have a head, it is a fresh and blooming truth. And more--I stake
+my vanity on it!"
+
+"Let me go to her." She stepped.
+
+"Consider," said he.
+
+"Miss Dale and I are excellent friends. It would not seem indelicate to
+her. She has a kind of regard for me, through Crossjay.--Oh, can it be?
+There must be some delusion. You have seen--you wish to be of service
+to me; you may too easily be deceived. Last night?--he last night . . .?
+And this morning!"
+
+"'Tis not the first time our friend has played the trick, Miss
+Middleton."
+
+"But this is incredible, that last night . . . and this morning, in my
+father's presence, he presses! . . . You have seen Miss Dale?
+Everything is possible of him: they were together, I know. Colonel De
+Craye, I have not the slightest chance of concealment with you. I think
+I felt that when I first saw you. Will you let me hear why you are so
+certain?"
+
+"Miss Middleton, when I first had the honour of looking on you, it was
+in a posture that necessitated my looking up, and morally so it has
+been since. I conceived that Willoughby had won the greatest prize of
+earth. And next I was led to the conclusion that he had won it to lose
+it. Whether he much cares, is the mystery I haven't leisure to fathom.
+Himself is the principal consideration with himself, and ever was."
+
+"You discovered it!" said Clara.
+
+"He uncovered it," said De Craye. "The miracle was, that the world
+wouldn't see. But the world is a piggy-wiggy world for the wealthy
+fellow who fills a trough for it, and that he has always very
+sagaciously done. Only women besides myself have detected him. I have
+never exposed him; I have been an observer pure and simple; and because
+I apprehended another catastrophe--making something like the fourth, to
+my knowledge, one being public . . ."
+
+"You knew Miss Durham?"
+
+"And Harry Oxford too. And they're a pair as happy as blackbirds in a
+cherry-tree, in a summer sunrise, with the owner of the garden asleep.
+Because of that apprehension of mine, I refused the office of best man
+till Willoughby had sent me a third letter. He insisted on my coming. I
+came, saw, and was conquered. I trust with all my soul I did not betray
+myself, I owed that duty to my position of concealing it. As for
+entirely hiding that I had used my eyes, I can't say: they must answer
+for it."
+
+The colonel was using his eyes with an increasing suavity that
+threatened more than sweetness.
+
+"I believe you have been sincerely kind," said Clara. "We will descend
+to the path round the lake."
+
+She did not refuse her hand on the descent, and he let it escape the
+moment the service was done. As he was performing the admirable
+character of the man of honour, he had to attend to the observance of
+details; and sure of her though he was beginning to feel, there was a
+touch of the unknown in Clara Middleton which made him fear to stamp
+assurance; despite a barely resistible impulse, coming of his emotions
+and approved by his maxims. He looked at the hand, now a free lady's
+hand. Willoughby settled, his chance was great. Who else was in the
+way? No one. He counselled himself to wait for her; she might have
+ideas of delicacy. Her face was troubled, speculative; the brows
+clouded, the lips compressed.
+
+"You have not heard this from Miss Dale?" she said.
+
+"Last night they were together: this morning she fled. I saw her this
+morning distressed. She is unwilling to send you a message: she talks
+vaguely of meeting you some days hence. And it is not the first time he
+has gone to her for his consolation."
+
+"That is not a proposal," Clara reflected. "He is too prudent. He did
+not propose to her at the time you mention. Have you not been hasty,
+Colonel De Craye?"
+
+Shadows crossed her forehead. She glanced in the direction of the house
+and stopped her walk.
+
+"Last night, Miss Middleton, there was a listener."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Crossjay was under that pretty silk coverlet worked by the Miss
+Patternes. He came home late, found his door locked, and dashed
+downstairs into the drawing-room, where he snuggled up and dropped
+asleep. The two speakers woke him; they frightened the poor dear lad in
+his love for you, and after they had gone, he wanted to run out of the
+house, and I met him just after I had come back from my search,
+bursting, and took him to my room, and laid him on the sofa, and abused
+him for not lying quiet. He was restless as a fish on a bank. When I
+woke in the morning he was off. Doctor Corney came across him somewhere
+on the road and drove him to the cottage. I was ringing the bell.
+Corney told me the boy had you on his brain, and was miserable, so
+Crossjay and I had a talk."
+
+"Crossjay did not repeat to you the conversation he had heard?" said
+Clara.
+
+"No."
+
+She smiled rejoicingly, proud of the boy, as she walked on.
+
+"But you'll pardon me, Miss Middleton--and I'm for him as much as you
+are--if I was guilty of a little angling."
+
+"My sympathies are with the fish."
+
+"The poor fellow had a secret that hurt him. It rose to the surface
+crying to be hooked, and I spared him twice or thrice, because he had a
+sort of holy sentiment I respected, that none but Mr. Whitford ought to
+be his father confessor."
+
+"Crossjay!" she cried, hugging her love of the boy.
+
+"The secret was one not to be communicated to Miss Dale of all people."
+
+"He said that?"
+
+"As good as the very words. She informed me, too, that she couldn't
+induce him to face her straight."
+
+"Oh, that looks like it. And Crossjay was unhappy? Very unhappy?"
+
+"He was just where tears are on the brim, and would have been over, if
+he were not such a manly youngster."
+
+"It looks. . ." She reverted in thought to Willoughby, and doubted, and
+blindly stretched hands to her recollection of the strange old monster
+she had discovered in him. Such a man could do anything.
+
+That conclusion fortified her to pursue her walk to the house and give
+battle for freedom. Willoughby appeared to her scarce human,
+unreadable, save by the key that she could supply. She determined to
+put faith in Colonel De Craye's marvellous divination of circumstances
+in the dark. Marvels are solid weapons when we are attacked by real
+prodigies of nature. Her countenance cleared. She conversed with De
+Craye of the polite and the political world, throwing off her personal
+burden completely, and charming him.
+
+At the edge of the garden, on the bridge that crossed the haha from the
+park, he had a second impulse, almost a warning within, to seize his
+heavenly opportunity to ask for thanks and move her tender lowered
+eyelids to hint at his reward. He repressed it, doubtful of the wisdom.
+
+Something like "heaven forgive me" was in Clara's mind, though she
+would have declared herself innocent before the scrutator.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+IN WHICH SIR WILLOUGHBY IS LED TO THINK THAT THE ELEMENTS HAVE
+CONSPIRED AGAINST HIM
+
+Clara had not taken many steps in the garden before she learned how
+great was her debt of gratitude to Colonel De Craye. Willoughby and
+her father were awaiting her. De Craye, with his ready comprehension of
+circumstances, turned aside unseen among the shrubs. She advanced
+slowly.
+
+"The vapours, we may trust, have dispersed?" her father hailed her.
+
+"One word, and these discussions are over, we dislike them equally,"
+said Willoughby.
+
+"No scenes," Dr. Middleton added. "Speak your decision, my girl, pro
+forma, seeing that he who has the right demands it, and pray release
+me."
+
+Clara looked at Willoughby.
+
+"I have decided to go to Miss Dale for her advice."
+
+There was no appearance in him of a man that has been shot.
+
+"To Miss Dale?--for advice?"
+
+Dr Middleton invoked the Furies. "What is the signification of this new
+freak?"
+
+"Miss Dale must be consulted, papa."
+
+"Consulted with reference to the disposal of your hand in marriage?"
+
+"She must be."
+
+"Miss Dale, do you say?"
+
+"I do, Papa."
+
+Dr Middleton regained his natural elevation from the bend of body
+habitual with men of an established sanity, paedagogues and others, who
+are called on at odd intervals to inspect the magnitude of the
+infinitesimally absurd in human nature: small, that is, under the light
+of reason, immense in the realms of madness.
+
+His daughter profoundly confused him. He swelled out his chest,
+remarking to Willoughby: "I do not wonder at your scared expression of
+countenance, my friend. To discover yourself engaged to a girl mad as
+Cassandra, without a boast of the distinction of her being sun-struck,
+can be no specially comfortable enlightenment. I am opposed to delays,
+and I will not have a breach of faith committed by daughter of mine."
+
+"Do not repeat those words," Clara said to Willoughby. He started. She
+had evidently come armed. But how, within so short a space? What could
+have instructed her? And in his bewilderment he gazed hurriedly above,
+gulped air, and cried: "Scared, sir? I am not aware that my countenance
+can show a scare. I am not accustomed to sue for long: I am unable to
+sustain the part of humble supplicant. She puts me out of harmony with
+creation--We are plighted, Clara. It is pure waste of time to speak of
+soliciting advice on the subject."
+
+"Would it be a breach of faith for me to break my engagement?" she
+said.
+
+"You ask?"
+
+"It is a breach of sanity to propound the interrogation," said her
+father.
+
+She looked at Willoughby. "Now?"
+
+He shrugged haughtily.
+
+"Since last night?" she said.
+
+"Last night?"
+
+"Am I not released?"
+
+"Not by me."
+
+"By your act."
+
+"My dear Clara!"
+
+"Have you not virtually disengaged me?"
+
+"I who claim you as mine?"
+
+"Can you?"
+
+"I do and must."
+
+"After last night?"
+
+"Tricks! shufflings! jabber of a barbarian woman upon the evolutions of
+a serpent!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "You were to capitulate, or to
+furnish reasons for your refusal. You have none. Give him your hand,
+girl, according to the compact. I praised you to him for returning
+within the allotted term, and now forbear to disgrace yourself and me."
+
+"Is he perfectly free to offer his? Ask him, papa."
+
+"Perform your duty. Do let us have peace!"
+
+"Perfectly free! as on the day when I offered it first." Willoughby
+frankly waved his honourable hand.
+
+His face was blanched: enemies in the air seemed to have whispered
+things to her: he doubted the fidelity of the Powers above.
+
+"Since last night?" said she.
+
+"Oh! if you insist, I reply, since last night."
+
+"You know what I mean, Sir Willoughby."
+
+"Oh! certainly."
+
+"You speak the truth?"
+
+"'Sir Willoughby!'" her father ejaculated in wrath. "But will you
+explain what you mean, epitome that you are of all the contradictions
+and mutabilities ascribed to women from the beginning! 'Certainly', he
+says, and knows no more than I. She begs grace for an hour, and returns
+with a fresh store of evasions, to insult the man she has injured. It
+is my humiliation to confess that our share in this contract is rescued
+from public ignominy by his generosity. Nor can I congratulate him on
+his fortune, should he condescend to bear with you to the utmost; for
+instead of the young woman I supposed myself to be bestowing on him, I
+see a fantastical planguncula enlivened by the wanton tempers of a
+nursery chit. If one may conceive a meaning in her, in miserable
+apology for such behaviour, some spirit of jealousy informs the girl."
+
+"I can only remark that there is no foundation for it," said
+Willoughby. "I am willing to satisfy you, Clara. Name the person who
+discomposes you. I can scarcely imagine one to exist: but who can
+tell?"
+
+She could name no person. The detestable imputation of jealousy would
+be confirmed if she mentioned a name: and indeed Laetitia was not to be
+named.
+
+He pursued his advantage: "Jealousy is one of the fits I am a stranger
+to,--I fancy, sir, that gentlemen have dismissed it. I speak for
+myself.--But I can make allowances. In some cases, it is considered a
+compliment; and often a word will soothe it. The whole affair is so
+senseless! However, I will enter the witness-box, or stand at the
+prisoner's bar! Anything to quiet a distempered mind."
+
+"Of you, sir," said Dr. Middleton, "might a parent be justly proud."
+
+"It is not jealousy; I could not be jealous!" Clara cried, stung by the
+very passion; and she ran through her brain for a suggestion to win a
+sign of meltingness if not esteem from her father. She was not an iron
+maiden, but one among the nervous natures which live largely in the
+moment, though she was then sacrificing it to her nature's deep
+dislike. "You may be proud of me again, papa."
+
+She could hardly have uttered anything more impolitic.
+
+"Optume; but deliver yourself ad rem," he rejoined, alarmingly
+pacified. "Firmavit fidem. Do you likewise, and double on us no more
+like puss in the field."
+
+"I wish to see Miss Dale," she said.
+
+Up flew the Rev. Doctor's arms in wrathful despair resembling an
+imprecation.
+
+"She is at the cottage. You could have seen her," said Willoughby.
+
+Evidently she had not.
+
+"Is it untrue that last night, between twelve o'clock and one, in the
+drawing-room, you proposed marriage to Miss Dale?" He became convinced
+that she must have stolen down-stairs during his colloquy with
+Laetitia, and listened at the door.
+
+"On behalf of old Vernon?" he said, lightly laughing. "The idea is not
+novel, as you know. They are suited, if they could see it.--Laetitia
+Dale and my cousin Vernon Whitford, sir."
+
+"Fairly schemed, my friend, and I will say for you, you have the
+patience, Willoughby, of a husband!"
+
+Willoughby bowed to the encomium, and allowed some fatigue to be
+visible. He half yawned: "I claim no happier title, sir," and made
+light of the weariful discussion.
+
+Clara was shaken: she feared that Crossjay had heard incorrectly, or
+that Colonel De Craye had guessed erroneously. It was too likely that
+Willoughby should have proposed Vernon to Laetitia.
+
+There was nothing to reassure her save the vision of the panic
+amazement of his face at her persistency in speaking of Miss Dale. She
+could have declared on oath that she was right, while admitting all the
+suppositions to be against her. And unhappily all the Delicacies (a
+doughty battalion for the defence of ladies until they enter into
+difficulties and are shorn of them at a blow, bare as dairymaids), all
+the body-guard of a young gentlewoman, the drawing-room sylphides,
+which bear her train, which wreathe her hair, which modulate her voice
+and tone her complexion, which are arrows and shield to awe the
+creature man, forbade her utterance of what she felt, on pain of
+instant fulfilment of their oft-repeated threat of late to leave her to
+the last remnant of a protecting sprite. She could not, as in a dear
+melodrama, from the aim of a pointed finger denounce him, on the
+testimony of her instincts, false of speech, false in deed. She could
+not even declare that she doubted his truthfulness. The refuge of a
+sullen fit, the refuge of tears, the pretext of a mood, were denied her
+now by the rigour of those laws of decency which are a garment to
+ladies of pure breeding.
+
+"One more respite, papa," she implored him, bitterly conscious of the
+closer tangle her petition involved, and, if it must be betrayed of
+her, perceiving in an illumination how the knot might become so
+woefully Gordian that haply in a cloud of wild events the intervention
+of a gallant gentleman out of heaven, albeit in the likeness of one of
+earth, would have to cut it: her cry within, as she succumbed to
+weakness, being fervider, "Anything but marry this one!" She was faint
+with strife and dejected, a condition in the young when their
+imaginative energies hold revel uncontrolled and are projectively
+desperate.
+
+"No respite!" said Willoughby, genially.
+
+"And I say, no respite!" observed her father. "You have assumed a
+position that has not been granted you, Clara Middleton."
+
+"I cannot bear to offend you, father."
+
+"Him! Your duty is not to offend him. Address your excuses to him. I
+refuse to be dragged over the same ground, to reiterate the same
+command perpetually."
+
+"If authority is deputed to me, I claim you," said Willoughby.
+
+"You have not broken faith with me?"
+
+"Assuredly not, or would it be possible for me to press my claim?"
+
+"And join the right hand to the right," said Dr. Middleton; "no, it
+would not be possible. What insane root she has been nibbling, I know
+not, but she must consign herself to the guidance of those whom the
+gods have not abandoned, until her intellect is liberated. She was once
+. . . there: I look not back--if she it was, and no simulacrum of a
+reasonable daughter. I welcome the appearance of my friend Mr.
+Whitford. He is my sea-bath and supper on the beach of Troy, after the
+day's battle and dust."
+
+Vernon walked straight up to them: an act unusual with him, for he was
+shy of committing an intrusion.
+
+Clara guessed by that, and more by the dancing frown of speculative
+humour he turned on Willoughby, that he had come charged in support of
+her. His forehead was curiously lively, as of one who has got a
+surprise well under, to feed on its amusing contents.
+
+"Have you seen Crossjay, Mr. Whitford?" she said.
+
+"I've pounced on Crossjay; his bones are sound."
+
+"Where did he sleep?"
+
+"On a sofa, it seems."
+
+She smiled, with good hope--Vernon had the story.
+
+Willoughby thought it just to himself that he should defend his measure
+of severity.
+
+"The boy lied; he played a double game."
+
+"For which he should have been reasoned with at the Grecian portico of
+a boy," said the Rev. Doctor.
+
+"My system is different, sir. I could not inflict what I would not
+endure myself"
+
+"So is Greek excluded from the later generations; and you leave a
+field, the most fertile in the moralities in youth, unplowed and
+unsown. Ah! well. This growing too fine is our way of relapsing upon
+barbarism. Beware of over-sensitiveness, where nature has plainly
+indicated her alternative gateway of knowledge. And now, I presume, I
+am at liberty."
+
+"Vernon will excuse us for a minute or two."
+
+"I hold by Mr. Whitford now I have him."
+
+"I'll join you in the laboratory, Vernon," Willoughby nodded bluntly.
+
+"We will leave them, Mr. Whitford. They are at the time-honoured
+dissension upon a particular day, that, for the sake of dignity,
+blushes to be named."
+
+"What day?" said Vernon, like a rustic.
+
+"THE day, these people call it."
+
+Vernon sent one of his vivid eyeshots from one to the other. His eyes
+fixed on Willoughby's with a quivering glow, beyond amazement, as if
+his humour stood at furnace-heat, and absorbed all that came.
+
+Willoughby motioned to him to go.
+
+"Have you seen Miss Dale, Mr. Whitford?" said Clara.
+
+He answered, "No. Something has shocked her."
+
+"Is it her feeling for Crossjay?"
+
+"Ah!" Vernon said to Willoughby, "your pocketing of the key of
+Crossjay's bedroom door was a master-stroke!"
+
+The celestial irony suffused her, and she bathed and swam in it, on
+hearing its dupe reply: "My methods of discipline are short. I was not
+aware that she had been to his door."
+
+"But I may hope that Miss Dale will see me," said Clara. "We are in
+sympathy about the boy."
+
+"Mr. Dale might be seen. He seems to be of a divided mind with his
+daughter," Vernon rejoined. "She has locked herself up in her room."
+
+"He is not the only father in that unwholesome predicament," said Dr
+Middleton.
+
+"He talks of coming to you, Willoughby."
+
+"Why to me?" Willoughby chastened his irritation: "He will be welcome,
+of course. It would be better that the boy should come."
+
+"If there is a chance of your forgiving him," said Clara. "Let the
+Dales know I am prepared to listen to the boy, Vernon. There can be no
+necessity for Mr. Dale to drag himself here."
+
+"How are Mr. Dale and his daughter of a divided mind, Mr. Whitford?"
+said Clara.
+
+Vernon simulated an uneasiness. With a vacant gaze that enlarged around
+Willoughby and was more discomforting than intentness, he replied:
+"Perhaps she is unwilling to give him her entire confidence, Miss
+Middleton."
+
+"In which respect, then, our situations present their solitary point of
+unlikeness in resemblance, for I have it in excess," observed Dr.
+Middleton.
+
+Clara dropped her eyelids for the wave to pass over. "It struck me that
+Miss Dale was a person of the extremest candour."
+
+"Why should we be prying into the domestic affairs of the Dales?"
+Willoughby interjected, and drew out his watch, merely for a diversion;
+he was on tiptoe to learn whether Vernon was as well instructed as
+Clara, and hung to the view that he could not be, while drenching in
+the sensation that he was:--and if so, what were the Powers above but a
+body of conspirators? He paid Laetitia that compliment. He could not
+conceive the human betrayal of the secret. Clara's discovery of it had
+set his common sense adrift.
+
+"The domestic affairs of the Dales do not concern me," said Vernon.
+
+"And yet, my friend," Dr. Middleton balanced himself, and with an air
+of benevolent slyness the import of which did not awaken Willoughby,
+until too late, remarked: "They might concern you. I will even add,
+that there is a probability of your being not less than the fount and
+origin of this division of father and daughter, though Willoughby in
+the drawingroom last night stands accusably the agent."
+
+"Favour me, sir, with an explanation," said Vernon, seeking to gather
+it from Clara.
+
+Dr Middleton threw the explanation upon Willoughby.
+
+Clara, communicated as much as she was able in one of those looks of
+still depth which say, Think! and without causing a thought to stir,
+takes us into the pellucid mind.
+
+Vernon was enlightened before Willoughby had spoken. His mouth shut
+rigidly, and there was a springing increase of the luminous wavering of
+his eyes. Some star that Clara had watched at night was like them in
+the vivid wink and overflow of its light. Yet, as he was perfectly
+sedate, none could have suspected his blood to be chasing wild with
+laughter, and his frame strung to the utmost to keep it from volleying.
+So happy was she in his aspect, that her chief anxiety was to recover
+the name of the star whose shining beckons and speaks, and is in the
+quick of spirit-fire. It is the sole star which on a night of frost and
+strong moonlight preserves an indomitable fervency: that she
+remembered, and the picture of a hoar earth and a lean Orion in flooded
+heavens, and the star beneath Eastward of him: but the name! the
+name!--She heard Willoughby indistinctly.
+
+"Oh, the old story; another effort; you know my wish; a failure, of
+course, and no thanks on either side, I suppose I must ask your
+excuse.--They neither of them see what's good for them, sir."
+
+"Manifestly, however," said Dr. Middleton, "if one may opine from the
+division we have heard of, the father is disposed to back your
+nominee."
+
+"I can't say; as far as I am concerned, I made a mess of it." Vernon
+withstood the incitement to acquiesce, but he sparkled with his
+recognition of the fact.
+
+"You meant well, Willoughby."
+
+"I hope so, Vernon."
+
+"Only you have driven her away."
+
+"We must resign ourselves."
+
+"It won't affect me, for I'm off to-morrow."
+
+"You see, sir, the thanks I get."
+
+"Mr. Whitford," said Dr. Middleton, "You have a tower of strength in
+the lady's father."
+
+"Would you have me bring it to bear upon the lady, sir?"
+
+"Wherefore not?"
+
+"To make her marriage a matter of obedience to her father?"
+
+"Ay, my friend, a lusty lover would have her gladly on those terms,
+well knowing it to be for the lady's good. What do you say,
+Willoughby?"
+
+"Sir! Say? What can I say? Miss Dale has not plighted her faith. Had
+she done so, she is a lady who would never dishonour it."
+
+"She is an ideal of constancy, who would keep to it though it had been
+broken on the other side," said Vernon, and Clara thrilled.
+
+"I take that, sir, to be a statue of constancy, modelled upon which a
+lady of our flesh may be proclaimed as graduating for the condition of
+idiocy," said Dr. Middleton.
+
+"But faith is faith, sir."
+
+"But the broken is the broken, sir, whether in porcelain or in human
+engagements; and all that one of the two continuing faithful, I should
+rather say, regretful, can do, is to devote the remainder of life to
+the picking up of the fragments; an occupation properly to be pursued,
+for the comfort of mankind, within the enclosure of an appointed
+asylum."
+
+"You destroy the poetry of sentiment, Dr. Middleton."
+
+"To invigorate the poetry of nature, Mr. Whitford."
+
+"Then you maintain, sir, that when faith is broken by one, the
+engagement ceases, and the other is absolutely free?"
+
+"I do; I am the champion of that platitude, and sound that knell to the
+sentimental world; and since you have chosen to defend it, I will
+appeal to Willoughby, and ask him if he would not side with the world
+of good sense in applauding the nuptials of man or maid married within
+a month of a jilting?" Clara slipped her arm under her father's.
+
+"Poetry, sir," said Willoughby, "I never have been hypocrite enough to
+pretend to understand or care for."
+
+Dr. Middleton laughed. Vernon too seemed to admire his cousin for a
+reply that rung in Clara's ears as the dullest ever spoken. Her arm
+grew cold on her father's. She began to fear Willoughby again.
+
+He depended entirely on his agility to elude the thrusts that assailed
+him. Had he been able to believe in the treachery of the Powers above,
+he would at once have seen design in these deadly strokes, for his
+feelings had rarely been more acute than at the present crisis; and he
+would then have led away Clara, to wrangle it out with her, relying on
+Vernon's friendliness not to betray him to her father: but a wrangle
+with Clara promised no immediate fruits, nothing agreeable; and the
+lifelong trust he had reposed in his protecting genii obscured his
+intelligence to evidence he would otherwise have accepted on the spot,
+on the faith of his delicate susceptibility to the mildest impressions
+which wounded him. Clara might have stooped to listen at the door: she
+might have heard sufficient to create a suspicion. But Vernon was not
+in the house last night; she could not have communicated it to him, and
+he had not seen Laetitia, who was, besides trustworthy, an admirable if
+a foolish and ill-fated woman.
+
+Preferring to consider Vernon a pragmatical moralist played upon by a
+sententious drone, he thought it politic to detach them, and vanquish
+Clara while she was in the beaten mood, as she had appeared before
+Vernon's vexatious arrival.
+
+"I'm afraid, my dear fellow, you are rather too dainty and fussy for a
+very successful wooer," he said. "It's beautiful on paper, and absurd
+in life. We have a bit of private business to discuss. We will go
+inside, sir, I think. I will soon release you." Clara pressed her
+father's arm.
+
+"More?" said he.
+
+"Five minutes. There's a slight delusion to clear, sir. My dear Clara,
+you will see with different eyes."
+
+"Papa wishes to work with Mr. Whitford."
+
+Her heart sunk to hear her father say: "No, 'tis a lost morning. I must
+consent to pay tax of it for giving another young woman to the world. I
+have a daughter! You will, I hope, compensate me, Mr. Whitford, in the
+afternoon. Be not downcast. I have observed you meditative of late. You
+will have no clear brain so long as that stuff is on the mind. I could
+venture to propose to do some pleading for you, should it be needed for
+the prompter expedition of the affair."
+
+Vernon briefly thanked him, and said:
+
+"Willoughby has exerted all his eloquence, and you see the result: you
+have lost Miss Dale and I have not won her. He did everything that one
+man can do for another in so delicate a case: even to the repeating of
+her famous birthday verses to him, to flatter the poetess. His best
+efforts were foiled by the lady's indisposition for me."
+
+"Behold," said Dr. Middleton, as Willoughby, electrified by the mention
+of the verses, took a sharp stride or two, "you have in him an advocate
+who will not be rebuffed by one refusal, and I can affirm that he is
+tenacious, pertinacious as are few. Justly so. Not to believe in a
+lady's No is the approved method of carrying that fortress built to
+yield. Although unquestionably to have a young man pleading in our
+interests with a lady, counts its objections. Yet Willoughby being
+notoriously engaged, may be held to enjoy the privileges of his
+elders."
+
+"As an engaged man, sir, he was on a level with his elders in pleading
+on my behalf with Miss Dale," said Vernon. Willoughby strode and
+muttered. Providence had grown mythical in his thoughts, if not
+malicious: and it is the peril of this worship that the object will
+wear such an alternative aspect when it appears no longer subservient.
+
+"Are we coming, sir?" he said, and was unheeded. The Rev. Doctor would
+not be defrauded of rolling his billow.
+
+"As an honourable gentleman faithful to his own engagement and desirous
+of establishing his relatives, he deserves, in my judgement, the lady's
+esteem as well as your cordial thanks; nor should a temporary failure
+dishearten either of you, notwithstanding the precipitate retreat of
+the lady from Patterne, and her seclusion in her sanctum on the
+occasion of your recent visit."
+
+"Supposing he had succeeded," said Vernon, driving Willoughby to
+frenzy, "should I have been bound to marry?" Matter for cogitation was
+offered to Dr. Middleton.
+
+"The proposal was without your sanction?"
+
+"Entirely."
+
+"You admire the lady?"
+
+"Respectfully."
+
+"You do not incline to the state?"
+
+"An inch of an angle would exaggerate my inclination."
+
+"How long are we to stand and hear this insufferable nonsense you
+talk?" cried Willoughby.
+
+"But if Mr. Whitford was not consulted . . ." Dr. Middleton said, and
+was overborne by Willoughby's hurried, "Oblige me, sir.--Oblige me, my
+good fellow!" He swept his arm to Vernon, and gestured a conducting
+hand to Clara.
+
+"Here is Mrs. Mountstuart!" she exclaimed.
+
+Willoughby stared. Was it an irruption of a friend or a foe? He
+doubted, and stood petrified between the double question. Clara had
+seen Mrs. Mountstuart and Colonel De Craye separating: and now the
+great lady sailed along the sward like a royal barge in festival trim.
+
+She looked friendly, but friendly to everybody, which was always a
+frost on Willoughby, and terribly friendly to Clara.
+
+Coming up to her she whispered: "News, indeed! Wonderful! I could not
+credit his hint of it yesterday. Are you satisfied?"
+
+"Pray, Mrs. Mountstuart, take an opportunity to speak to papa," Clara
+whispered in return.
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart bowed to Dr. Middleton, nodded to Vernon, and swam
+upon Willoughby, with, "Is it? But is it? Am I really to believe? You
+have? My dear Sir Willoughby? Really?" The confounded gentleman heaved
+on a bare plank of wreck in mid sea.
+
+He could oppose only a paralyzed smile to the assault.
+
+His intuitive discretion taught him to fall back a step while she said,
+"So!" the plummet word of our mysterious deep fathoms; and he fell back
+further saying, "Madam?" in a tone advising her to speak low.
+
+She recovered her volubility, followed his partial retreat, and dropped
+her voice,--
+
+"Impossible to have imagined it as an actual fact! You were always full
+of surprises, but this! this! Nothing manlier, nothing more gentlemanly
+has ever been done: nothing: nothing that so completely changes an
+untenable situation into a comfortable and proper footing for
+everybody. It is what I like: it is what I love:--sound sense! Men are
+so selfish: one cannot persuade them to be reasonable in such
+positions. But you, Sir Willoughby, have shown wisdom and sentiment:
+the rarest of all combinations in men."
+
+"Where have you? . . ." Willoughby contrived to say.
+
+"Heard? The hedges, the housetops, everywhere. All the neighbourhood
+will have it before nightfall. Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer will soon be
+rushing here, and declaring they never expected anything else, I do not
+doubt. I am not so pretentious. I beg your excuse for that 'twice' of
+mine yesterday. Even if it hurt my vanity, I should be happy to confess
+my error: I was utterly out. But then I did not reckon on a fatal
+attachment, I thought men were incapable of it. I thought we women were
+the only poor creatures persecuted by a fatality. It is a fatality! You
+tried hard to escape, indeed you did. And she will do honour to your
+final surrender, my dear friend. She is gentle, and very clever, very:
+she is devoted to you: she will entertain excellently. I see her like a
+flower in sunshine. She will expand to a perfect hostess. Patterne will
+shine under her reign; you have my warrant for that. And so will you.
+Yes, you flourish best when adored. It must be adoration. You have been
+under a cloud of late. Years ago I said it was a match, when no one
+supposed you could stoop. Lady Busshe would have it was a screen, and
+she was deemed high wisdom. The world will be with you. All the women
+will be: excepting, of course, Lady Busshe, whose pride is in prophecy;
+and she will soon be too glad to swell the host. There, my friend, your
+sincerest and oldest admirer congratulates you. I could not contain
+myself; I was compelled to pour forth. And now I must go and be talked
+to by Dr. Middleton. How does he take it? They leave?"
+
+"He is perfectly well," said Willoughby, aloud, quite distraught.
+
+She acknowledged his just correction of her for running on to an
+extreme in low-toned converse, though they stood sufficiently isolated
+from the others. These had by this time been joined by Colonel De
+Craye, and were all chatting in a group--of himself, Willoughby
+horribly suspected.
+
+Clara was gone from him! Gone! but he remembered his oath and vowed it
+again: not to Horace de Craye! She was gone, lost, sunk into the world
+of waters of rival men, and he determined that his whole force should
+be used to keep her from that man, the false friend who had supplanted
+him in her shallow heart, and might, if he succeeded, boast of having
+done it by simply appearing on the scene.
+
+Willoughby intercepted Mrs. Mountstuart as she was passing over to Dr
+Middleton. "My dear lady! spare me a minute."
+
+De Craye sauntered up, with a face of the friendliest humour:
+
+"Never was man like you, Willoughby, for shaking new patterns in a
+kaleidoscope."
+
+"Have you turned punster, Horace?" Willoughby replied, smarting to find
+yet another in the demon secret, and he draw Dr. Middleton two or three
+steps aside, and hurriedly begged him to abstain from prosecuting the
+subject with Clara.
+
+"We must try to make her happy as we best can, sir. She may have her
+reasons--a young lady's reasons!" He laughed, and left the Rev. Doctor
+considering within himself under the arch of his lofty frown of
+stupefaction.
+
+De Craye smiled slyly and winningly as he shadowed a deep droop on the
+bend of his head before Clara, signifying his absolute devotion to her
+service, and this present good fruit for witness of his merits.
+
+She smiled sweetly though vaguely. There was no concealment of their
+intimacy.
+
+"The battle is over," Vernon said quietly, when Willoughby had walked
+some paces beside Mrs. Mountstuart, adding: "You may expect to see Mr.
+Dale here. He knows."
+
+Vernon and Clara exchanged one look, hard on his part, in contrast with
+her softness, and he proceeded to the house. De Craye waited for a word
+or a promising look. He was patient, being self-assured, and passed on.
+
+Clara linked her arm with her father's once more, and said, on a sudden
+brightness: "Sirius, papa!" He repeated it in the profoundest manner:
+"Sirius! And is there," he asked, "a feminine scintilla of sense in
+that?"
+
+"It is the name of the star I was thinking of, dear papa."
+
+"It was the star observed by King Agamemnon before the sacrifice in
+Aulis. You were thinking of that? But, my love, my Iphigenia, you have
+not a father who will insist on sacrificing you."
+
+"Did I hear him tell you to humour me, papa?"
+
+Dr Middleton humphed.
+
+"Verily the dog-star rages in many heads," he responded.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+DR MIDDLETON: THE LADIES ELEANOR AND ISABEL: AND MR. DALE
+
+Clara looked up at the flying clouds. She travelled with them now, and
+tasted freedom, but she prudently forbore to vex her father; she held
+herself in reserve.
+
+They were summoned by the midday bell.
+
+Few were speakers at the meal, few were eaters. Clara was impelled to
+join it by her desire to study Mrs. Mountstuart's face. Willoughby was
+obliged to preside. It was a meal of an assembly of mutes and plates,
+that struck the ear like the well-known sound of a collection of
+offerings in church after an impressive exhortation from the pulpit. A
+sally of Colonel De Craye's met the reception given to a charity-boy's
+muffled burst of animal spirits in the silence of the sacred edifice.
+Willoughby tried politics with Dr. Middleton, whose regular appetite
+preserved him from uncongenial speculations when the hour for appeasing
+it had come; and he alone did honour to the dishes, replying to his
+host:
+
+"Times are bad, you say, and we have a Ministry doing with us what they
+will. Well, sir, and that being so, and opposition a manner of kicking
+them into greater stability, it is the time for wise men to retire
+within themselves, with the steady determination of the seed in the
+earth to grow. Repose upon nature, sleep in firm faith, and abide the
+seasons. That is my counsel to the weaker party."
+
+The counsel was excellent, but it killed the topic.
+
+Dr. Middleton's appetite was watched for the signal to rise and breathe
+freely; and such is the grace accorded to a good man of an untroubled
+conscience engaged in doing his duty to himself, that he perceived
+nothing of the general restlessness; he went through the dishes calmly,
+and as calmly he quoted Milton to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, when
+the company sprung up all at once upon his closing his repast. Vernon
+was taken away from him by Willoughby. Mrs Mountstuart beckoned
+covertly to Clara. Willoughby should have had something to say to him,
+Dr. Middleton thought: the position was not clear. But the situation
+was not disagreeable; and he was in no serious hurry, though he wished
+to be enlightened.
+
+"This," Dr. Middleton said to the spinster aunts, as he accompanied
+them to the drawing-room, "shall be no lost day for me if I may devote
+the remainder of it to you."
+
+"The thunder, we fear, is not remote," murmured one.
+
+"We fear it is imminent," sighed the other.
+
+They took to chanting in alternation.
+
+"--We are accustomed to peruse our Willoughby, and we know him by a
+shadow."
+
+"--From his infancy to his glorious youth and his established manhood."
+
+"--He was ever the soul of chivalry."
+
+"--Duty: duty first. The happiness of his family. The well-being of his
+dependants."
+
+"--If proud of his name it was not an overweening pride; it was founded
+in the conscious possession of exalted qualities. He could be humble
+when occasion called for it."
+
+Dr Middleton bowed to the litany, feeling that occasion called for
+humbleness from him.
+
+"Let us hope . . . !" he said, with unassumed penitence on behalf of
+his inscrutable daughter.
+
+The ladies resumed:--
+
+"--Vernon Whitford, not of his blood, is his brother!"
+
+"--A thousand instances! Laetitia Dale remembers them better than we."
+
+"--That any blow should strike him!"
+
+"--That another should be in store for him!"
+
+"--It seems impossible he can be quite misunderstood!"
+
+"Let us hope . . . !" said Dr. Middleton.
+
+"--One would not deem it too much for the dispenser of goodness to
+expect to be a little looked up to!"
+
+"--When he was a child he one day mounted a chair, and there he stood
+in danger, would not let us touch him because he was taller than we,
+and we were to gaze. Do you remember him, Eleanor? 'I am the sun of the
+house!' It was inimitable!"
+
+"--Your feelings; he would have your feelings! He was fourteen when his
+cousin Grace Whitford married, and we lost him. They had been the
+greatest friends; and it was long before he appeared among us. He has
+never cared to see her since."
+
+"--But he has befriended her husband. Never has he failed in
+generosity. His only fault is--"
+
+"--His sensitiveness. And that is--"
+
+"--His secret. And that--"
+
+"--You are not to discover! It is the same with him in manhood. No one
+will accuse Willoughby Patterne of a deficiency of manlinesss: but what
+is it?--he suffers, as none suffer, if he is not loved. He himself is
+inalterably constant in affection."
+
+"--What it is no one can say. We have lived with him all his life, and
+we know him ready to make any sacrifice; only, he does demand the whole
+heart in return. And if he doubts, he looks as we have seen him
+to-day."
+
+"--Shattered: as we have never seen him look before."
+
+"We will hope," said Dr. Middleton, this time hastily. He tingled to
+say, "what it was": he had it in him to solve perplexity in their
+inquiry. He did say, adopting familiar speech to suit the theme, "You
+know, ladies, we English come of a rough stock. A dose of rough dealing
+in our youth does us no harm, braces us. Otherwise we are likely to
+feel chilly: we grow too fine where tenuity of stature is necessarily
+buffetted by gales, namely, in our self-esteem. We are barbarians, on a
+forcing soil of wealth, in a conservatory of comfortable security; but
+still barbarians. So, you see, we shine at our best when we are
+plucked out of that, to where hard blows are given, in a state of war.
+In a state of war we are at home, our men are high-minded fellows,
+Scipios and good legionaries. In the state of peace we do not live in
+peace: our native roughness breaks out in unexpected places, under
+extraordinary aspects--tyrannies, extravagances, domestic exactions:
+and if we have not had sharp early training . . . within and without
+. . . the old-fashioned island-instrument to drill into us the
+civilization of our masters, the ancients, we show it by running here
+and there to some excess. Ahem. Yet," added the Rev. Doctor,
+abandoning his effort to deliver a weighty truth obscurely for the
+comprehension of dainty spinster ladies, the superabundance of whom in
+England was in his opinion largely the cause of our decay as a people,
+"Yet I have not observed this ultra-sensitiveness in Willoughby. He has
+borne to hear more than I, certainly no example of the frailty, could
+have endured."
+
+"He concealed it," said the ladies. "It is intense."
+
+"Then is it a disease?"
+
+"It bears no explanation; it is mystic."
+
+"It is a cultus, then, a form of self-worship."
+
+"Self!" they ejaculated. "But is not Self indifferent to others? Is it
+Self that craves for sympathy, love, and devotion?"
+
+"He is an admirable host, ladies."
+
+"He is admirable in all respects."
+
+"Admirable must he be who can impress discerning women, his life-long
+housemates, so favourably. He is, I repeat, a perfect host."
+
+"He will be a perfect husband."
+
+"In all probability."
+
+"It is a certainty. Let him be loved and obeyed, he will be guided.
+That is the secret for her whom he so fatally loves. That, if we had
+dared, we would have hinted to her. She will rule him through her love
+of him, and through him all about her. And it will not be a rule he
+submits to, but a love he accepts. If she could see it!"
+
+"If she were a metaphysician!" sighed Dr. Middleton.
+
+"--But a sensitiveness so keen as his might--"
+
+"--Fretted by an unsympathizing mate--"
+
+"--In the end become, for the best of us is mortal--"
+
+"--Callous!"
+
+"--He would feel perhaps as much--"
+
+"--Or more!--"
+
+"--He would still be tender--"
+
+"--But he might grow outwardly hard!"
+
+Both ladies looked up at Dr. Middleton, as they revealed the dreadful
+prospect.
+
+"It is the story told of corns!" he said, sad as they.
+
+The three stood drooping: the ladies with an attempt to digest his
+remark; the Rev. Doctor in dejection lest his gallantry should no
+longer continue to wrestle with his good sense.
+
+He was rescued.
+
+The door opened and a footman announced:--
+
+"Mr. Dale."
+
+Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel made a sign to one another of raising
+their hands.
+
+They advanced to him, and welcomed him.
+
+"Pray be seated, Mr. Dale. You have not brought us bad news of our
+Laetitia?"
+
+"So rare is the pleasure of welcoming you here, Mr. Dale, that we are
+in some alarm, when, as we trust, it should be matter for unmixed
+congratulation."
+
+"Has Doctor Corney been doing wonders?"
+
+"I am indebted to him for the drive to your house, ladies," said Mr.
+Dale, a spare, close-buttoned gentleman, with an Indian complexion
+deadened in the sick-chamber. "It is unusual for me to stir from my
+precincts."
+
+"The Rev. Dr. Middleton."
+
+Mr. Dale bowed. He seemed surprised.
+
+"You live in a splendid air, sir," observed the Rev. Doctor.
+
+"I can profit little by it, sir," replied Mr. Dale. He asked the
+ladies: "Will Sir Willoughby be disengaged?"
+
+They consulted. "He is with Vernon. We will send to him."
+
+The bell was rung.
+
+"I have had the gratification of making the acquaintance of your
+daughter, Mr. Dale, a most estimable lady," said Dr. Middleton.
+
+Mr. Dale bowed. "She is honoured by your praises, sir. To the best of
+my belief--I speak as a father--she merits them. Hitherto I have had no
+doubts."
+
+"Of Laetitia?" exclaimed the ladies; and spoke of her as gentleness and
+goodness incarnate.
+
+"Hitherto I have devoutly thought so," said Mr. Dale.
+
+"Surely she is the very sweetest nurse, the most devoted of daughters."
+
+"As far as concerns her duty to her father, I can say she is that,
+ladies."
+
+"In all her relations, Mr. Dale!"
+
+"It is my prayer," he said.
+
+The footman appeared. He announced that Sir Willoughby was in the
+laboratory with Mr. Whitford, and the door locked.
+
+"Domestic business," the ladies remarked. "You know Willoughby's
+diligent attention to affairs, Mr. Dale."
+
+"He is well?" Mr. Dale inquired.
+
+"In excellent health."
+
+"Body and mind?"
+
+"But, dear Mr. Dale, he is never ill."
+
+"Ah! for one to hear that who is never well! And Mr. Whitford is quite
+sound?"
+
+"Sound? The question alarms me for myself," said Dr. Middleton. "Sound
+as our Constitution, the Credit of the country, the reputation of our
+Prince of poets. I pray you to have no fears for him."
+
+Mr. Dale gave the mild little sniff of a man thrown deeper into
+perplexity.
+
+He said: "Mr. Whitford works his head; he is a hard student; he may not
+be always, if I may so put it, at home on worldly affairs."
+
+"Dismiss that defamatory legend of the student, Mr. Dale; and take my
+word for it, that he who persistently works his head has the strongest
+for all affairs."
+
+"Ah! Your daughter, sir, is here?"
+
+"My daughter is here, sir, and will be most happy to present her
+respects to the father of her friend, Miss Dale."
+
+"They are friends?"
+
+"Very cordial friends."
+
+Mr. Dale administered another feebly pacifying sniff to himself.
+
+"Laetitia!" he sighed, in apostrophe, and swept his forehead with a
+hand seen to shake.
+
+The ladies asked him anxiously whether he felt the heat of the room;
+and one offered him a smelling-bottle.
+
+He thanked them. "I can hold out until Sir Willoughby comes."
+
+"We fear to disturb him when his door is locked, Mr. Dale; but, if you
+wish it, we will venture on a message. You have really no bad news of
+our Laetitia? She left us hurriedly this morning, without any
+leave-taking, except a word to one of the maids, that your condition
+required her immediate presence."
+
+"My condition! And now her door is locked to me! We have spoken through
+the door, and that is all. I stand sick and stupefied between two
+locked doors, neither of which will open, it appears, to give me the
+enlightenment I need more than medicine."
+
+"Dear me!" cried Dr. Middleton, "I am struck by your description of
+your position, Mr. Dale. It would aptly apply to our humanity of the
+present generation; and were these the days when I sermonized, I could
+propose that it should afford me an illustration for the pulpit. For my
+part, when doors are closed I try not their locks; and I attribute my
+perfect equanimity, health even, to an uninquiring acceptation of the
+fact that they are closed to me. I read my page by the light I have. On
+the contrary, the world of this day, if I may presume to quote you for
+my purpose, is heard knocking at those two locked doors of the secret
+of things on each side of us, and is beheld standing sick and stupefied
+because it has got no response to its knocking. Why, sir, let the world
+compare the diverse fortunes of the beggar and the postman: knock to
+give, and it is opened unto you: knock to crave, and it continues shut.
+I say, carry a letter to your locked door, and you shall have a good
+reception: but there is none that is handed out. For which reason
+. . ."
+
+Mr. Dale swept a perspiring forehead, and extended his hand in
+supplication. "I am an invalid, Dr. Middleton," he said. "I am unable
+to cope with analogies. I have but strength for the slow digestion of
+facts."
+
+"For facts, we are bradypeptics to a man, sir. We know not yet if
+nature be a fact or an effort to master one. The world has not yet
+assimilated the first fact it stepped on. We are still in the endeavour
+to make good blood of the fact of our being." Pressing his hands at his
+temples, Mr. Dale moaned: "My head twirls; I did unwisely to come out.
+I came on an impulse; I trust, honourable. I am unfit--I cannot follow
+you, Dr. Middleton. Pardon me."
+
+"Nay, sir, let me say, from my experience of my countrymen, that if you
+do not follow me and can abstain from abusing me in consequence, you
+are magnanimous," the Rev. Doctor replied, hardly consenting to let go
+the man he had found to indemnify him for his gallant service of
+acquiescing as a mute to the ladies, though he knew his breathing
+robustfulness to be as an East wind to weak nerves, and himself an
+engine of punishment when he had been torn for a day from his books.
+
+Miss Eleanor said: "The enlightenment you need, Mr. Dale? Can we
+enlighten you?"
+
+"I think not," he answered, faintly. "I think I will wait for Sir
+Willoughby . . . or Mr. Whitford. If I can keep my strength. Or could I
+exchange--I fear to break down--two words with the young lady who is,
+was . . ."
+
+"Miss Middleton, my daughter, sir? She shall be at your disposition; I
+will bring her to you." Dr. Middleton stopped at the window. "She, it
+is true, may better know the mind of Miss Dale than I. But I flatter
+myself I know the gentleman better. I think, Mr. Dale, addressing you
+as the lady's father, you will find me a persuasive, I could be an
+impassioned, advocate in his interests."
+
+Mr. Dale was confounded; the weakly sapling caught in a gust falls back
+as he did.
+
+"Advocate?" he said. He had little breath.
+
+"His impassioned advocate, I repeat; for I have the highest opinion of
+him. You see, sir, I am acquainted with the circumstances. I believe,"
+Dr. Middleton half turned to the ladies, "we must, until your potent
+inducements, Mr. Dale, have been joined to my instances, and we
+overcome what feminine scruples there may be, treat the circumstances
+as not generally public. Our Strephon may be chargeable with shyness.
+But if for the present it is incumbent on us, in proper consideration
+for the parties, not to be nominally precise, it is hardly requisite in
+this household that we should be. He is now for protesting indifference
+to the state. I fancy we understand that phase of amatory frigidity.
+Frankly, Mr. Dale, I was once in my life myself refused by a lady, and
+I was not indignant, merely indifferent to the marriage-tie."
+
+"My daughter has refused him, sir?"
+
+"Temporarily it would appear that she has declined the proposal."
+
+"He was at liberty? . . . he could honourably? . . ."
+
+"His best friend and nearest relative is your guarantee."
+
+"I know it; I hear so; I am informed of that: I have heard of the
+proposal, and that he could honourably make it. Still, I am helpless, I
+cannot move, until I am assured that my daughter's reasons are such as
+a father need not underline."
+
+"Does the lady, perchance, equivocate?"
+
+"I have not seen her this morning; I rise late. I hear an astounding
+account of the cause for her departure from Patterne, and I find her
+door locked to me--no answer."
+
+"It is that she had no reasons to give, and she feared the demand for
+them."
+
+"Ladies!" dolorously exclaimed Mr. Dale.
+
+"We guess the secret, we guess it!" they exclaimed in reply; and they
+looked smilingly, as Dr. Middleton looked.
+
+"She had no reasons to give?" Mr. Dale spelled these words to his
+understanding. "Then, sir, she knew you not adverse?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, by my high esteem for the gentleman, she must have known
+me not adverse. But she would not consider me a principal. She could
+hardly have conceived me an obstacle. I am simply the gentleman's
+friend. A zealous friend, let me add."
+
+Mr. Dale put out an imploring hand; it was too much for him.
+
+"Pardon me; I have a poor head. And your daughter the same, sir?"
+
+"We will not measure it too closely, but I may say, my daughter the
+same, sir. And likewise--may I not add--these ladies."
+
+Mr. Dale made sign that he was overfilled. "Where am I! And Laetitia
+refused him?"
+
+"Temporarily, let us assume. Will it not partly depend on you, Mr.
+Dale?"
+
+"But what strange things have been happening during my daughter's
+absence from the cottage!" cried Mr. Dale, betraying an elixir in his
+veins. "I feel that I could laugh if I did not dread to be thought
+insane. She refused his hand, and he was at liberty to offer it? My
+girl! We are all on our heads. The fairy-tales were right and the
+lesson-books were wrong. But it is really, it is really very
+demoralizing. An invalid--and I am one, and no momentary exhilaration
+will be taken for the contrary--clings to the idea of stability, order.
+The slightest disturbance of the wonted course of things unsettles him.
+Why, for years I have been prophesying it! and for years I have had
+everything against me, and now when it is confirmed, I am wondering
+that I must not call myself a fool!"
+
+"And for years, dear Mr. Dale, this union, in spite of counter-currents
+and human arrangements, has been our Willoughby's constant
+preoccupation," said Miss Eleanor.
+
+"His most cherished aim," said Miss Isabel.
+
+"The name was not spoken by me," said Dr. Middleton.
+
+"But it is out, and perhaps better out, if we would avoid the chance of
+mystifications. I do not suppose we are seriously committing a breach
+of confidence, though he might have wished to mention it to you first
+himself. I have it from Willoughby that last night he appealed to your
+daughter, Mr. Dale--not for the first time, if I apprehend him
+correctly; and unsuccessfully. He despairs. I do not: supposing, that
+is, your assistance vouchsafed to us. And I do not despair, because the
+gentleman is a gentleman of worth, of acknowledged worth. You know him
+well enough to grant me that. I will bring you my daughter to help me
+in sounding his praises."
+
+Dr Middleton stepped through the window to the lawn on an elastic foot,
+beaming with the happiness he felt charged to confer on his friend Mr.
+Whitford.
+
+"Ladies! it passes all wonders," Mr. Dale gasped.
+
+"Willoughby's generosity does pass all wonders," they said in chorus.
+
+The door opened; Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer were announced.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+THE PATTERNE LADIES: MR. DALE: LADY BUSSHE AND LADY CULMER: WITH MRS.
+MOUNTSTUART JENKINSON
+
+Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer entered spying to right and left. At the
+sight of Mr. Dale in the room Lady Busshe murmured to her friend:
+"Confirmation!"
+
+Lady Culmer murmured: "Corney is quite reliable."
+
+"The man is his own best tonic."
+
+"He is invaluable for the country."
+
+Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel greeted them.
+
+The amiability of the Patterne ladies combined with their total eclipse
+behind their illustrious nephew invited enterprising women of the world
+to take liberties, and they were not backward.
+
+Lady Busshe said: "Well? the news! we have the outlines. Don't be
+astonished: we know the points: we have heard the gun. I could have
+told you as much yesterday. I saw it. And I guessed it the day before.
+Oh, I do believe in fatalities now. Lady Culmer and I agree to take
+that view: it is the simplest. Well, and are you satisfied, my dears?"
+
+The ladies grimaced interrogatively: "With what?"
+
+"With it? with all! with her! with him!"
+
+"Our Willoughby?"
+
+"Can it be possible that they require a dose of Corney?" Lady Busshe
+remarked to Lady Culmer.
+
+"They play discretion to perfection," said Lady Culmer. "But, my dears,
+we are in the secret."
+
+"How did she behave?" whispered Lady Busshe. "No high flights and
+flutters, I do hope. She was well-connected, they say; though I don't
+comprehend what they mean by a line of scholars--one thinks of a row of
+pinafores: and she was pretty."
+
+"That is well enough at the start. It never will stand against brains.
+He had the two in the house to contrast them, and . . . the result! A
+young woman with brains--in a house--beats all your beauties. Lady
+Culmer and I have determined on that view. He thought her a delightful
+partner for a dance, and found her rather tiresome at the end of the
+gallopade. I saw it yesterday, clear as daylight. She did not
+understand him, and he did understand her. That will be our report."
+
+"She is young: she will learn," said the ladies uneasily, but in total
+ignorance of her meaning.
+
+"And you are charitable, and always were. I remember you had a good
+word for that girl Durham."
+
+Lady Busshe crossed the room to Mr. Dale, who was turning over leaves
+of a grand book of the heraldic devices of our great Families.
+
+"Study it," she said, "study it, my dear Mr. Dale; you are in it, by
+right of possessing a clever and accomplished daughter. At page 300
+you will find the Patterne crest. And mark me, she will drag you into
+the peerage before she has done--relatively, you know. Sir Willoughby
+and wife will not be contented to sit down and manage the estates. Has
+not Laetitia immense ambition? And very creditable, I say."
+
+Mr. Dale tried to protest something. He shut the book, examining the
+binding, flapped the cover with a finger, hoped her ladyship was in
+good health, alluded to his own and the strangeness of the bird out of
+the cage.
+
+"You will probably take up your residence here, in a larger and
+handsomer cage. Mr. Dale."
+
+He shook his head. "Do I apprehend . . ." he said.
+
+"I know," said she.
+
+"Dear me, can it be?"
+
+Mr. Dale gazed upward, with the feelings of one awakened late to see a
+world alive in broad daylight.
+
+Lady Busshe dropped her voice. She took the liberty permitted to her
+with an inferior in station, while treating him to a tone of
+familiarity in acknowledgment of his expected rise; which is high
+breeding, or the exact measurement of social dues.
+
+"Laetitia will be happy, you may be sure. I love to see a long and
+faithful attachment rewarded--love it! Her tale is the triumph of
+patience. Far above Grizzel! No woman will be ashamed of pointing to
+Lady Patterne. You are uncertain? You are in doubt? Let me hear--as low
+as you like. But there is no doubt of the new shifting of the
+scene?--no doubt of the proposal? Dear Mr. Dale! a very little louder.
+You are here because--? of course you wish to see Sir Willoughby. She?
+I did not catch you quite. She? . . . it seems, you say . . . ?"
+
+Lady Culmer said to the Patterne ladies:--
+
+"You must have had a distressing time. These affairs always mount up to
+a climax, unless people are very well bred. We saw it coming.
+Naturally we did not expect such a transformation of brides: who could?
+If I had laid myself down on my back to think, I should have had it. I
+am unerring when I set to speculating on my back. One is cooler: ideas
+come; they have not to be forced. That is why I am brighter on a dull
+winter afternoon, on the sofa, beside my tea-service, than at any other
+season. However, your trouble is over. When did the Middletons leave?"
+
+"The Middletons leave?" said the ladies.
+
+"Dr. Middleton and his daughter."
+
+"They have not left us."
+
+"The Middletons are here?"
+
+"They are here, yes. Why should they have left Patterne?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Yes. They are likely to stay some days longer."
+
+"Goodness!"
+
+"There is no ground for any report to the contrary, Lady Culmer."
+
+"No ground!"
+
+Lady Culmer called out to Lady Busshe.
+
+A cry came back from that startled dame.
+
+"She has refused him!"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"She has."
+
+"She?--Sir Willoughby?"
+
+"Refused!--declines the honour."
+
+"Oh, never! No, that carries the incredible beyond romance. But is he
+perfectly at . . ."
+
+"Quite, it seems. And she was asked in due form and refused."
+
+"No, and no again!"
+
+"My dear, I have it from Mr. Dale."
+
+"Mr. Dale, what can be the signification of her conduct?"
+
+"Indeed, Lady Culmer," said Mr. Dale, not unpleasantly agitated by the
+interest he excited, in spite of his astonishment at a public
+discussion of the matter in this house, "I am in the dark. Her father
+should know, but I do not. Her door is locked to me; I have not seen
+her. I am absolutely in the dark. I am a recluse. I have forgotten the
+ways of the world. I should have supposed her father would first have
+been addressed."
+
+"Tut-tut. Modern gentlemen are not so formal; they are creatures of
+impulse and take a pride in it. He spoke. We settle that. But where did
+you get this tale of a refusal?"
+
+"I have it from Dr. Middleton."
+
+"From Dr. Middleton?" shouted Lady Busshe.
+
+"The Middletons are here," said Lady Culmer.
+
+"What whirl are we in?" Lady Busshe got up, ran two or three steps and
+seated herself in another chair. "Oh! do let us proceed upon system. If
+not we shall presently be rageing; we shall be dangerous. The
+Middletons are here, and Dr. Middleton himself communicates to Mr. Dale
+that Laetitia Dale has refused the hand of Sir Willoughby, who is
+ostensibly engaged to his own daughter! And pray, Mr. Dale, how did
+Dr. Middleton speak of it? Compose yourself; there is no violent hurry,
+though our sympathy with you and our interest in all the parties does
+perhaps agitate us a little. Quite at your leisure--speak!"
+
+"Madam . . . Lady Busshe." Mr. Dale gulped a ball in his throat. "I see
+no reason why I should not speak. I do not see how I can have been
+deluded. The Miss Patternes heard him. Dr. Middleton began upon it, not
+I. I was unaware, when I came, that it was a refusal. I had been
+informed that there was a proposal. My authority for the tale was
+positive. The object of my visit was to assure myself of the integrity
+of my daughter's conduct. She had always the highest sense of honour.
+But passion is known to mislead, and there was this most strange
+report. I feared that our humblest apologies were due to Dr. Middleton
+and his daughter. I know the charm Laetitia can exercise. Madam, in the
+plainest language, without a possibility of my misapprehending him, Dr.
+Middleton spoke of himself as the advocate of the suitor for my
+daughter's hand. I have a poor head. I supposed at once an amicable
+rupture between Sir Willoughby and Miss Middleton, or that the version
+which had reached me of their engagement was not strictly accurate. My
+head is weak. Dr. Middleton's language is trying to a head like mine;
+but I can speak positively on the essential points: he spoke of himself
+as ready to be the impassioned advocate of the suitor for my daughter's
+hand. Those were his words. I understood him to entreat me to intercede
+with her. Nay, the name was mentioned. There was no concealment. I am
+certain there could not be a misapprehension. And my feelings were
+touched by his anxiety for Sir Willoughby's happiness. I attributed it
+to a sentiment upon which I need not dwell. Impassioned advocate, he
+said."
+
+"We are in a perfect maelstrom!" cried Lady Busshe, turning to
+everybody.
+
+"It is a complete hurricane!" cried Lady Culmer.
+
+A light broke over the faces of the Patterne ladies. They exchanged it
+with one another.
+
+They had been so shocked as to be almost offended by Lady Busshe, but
+their natural gentleness and habitual submission rendered them unequal
+to the task of checking her.
+
+"Is it not," said Miss Eleanor, "a misunderstanding that a change of
+names will rectify?"
+
+"This is by no means the first occasion," said Miss Isabel, "that
+Willoughby has pleaded for his cousin Vernon."
+
+"We deplore extremely the painful error into which Mr. Dale has
+fallen."
+
+"It springs, we now perceive, from an entire misapprehension of Dr.
+Middleton."
+
+"Vernon was in his mind. It was clear to us."
+
+"Impossible that it could have been Willoughby!"
+
+"You see the impossibility, the error!"
+
+"And the Middletons here!" said Lady Busshe. "Oh! if we leave
+unilluminated we shall be the laughing-stock of the county. Mr. Dale,
+please, wake up. Do you see? You may have been mistaken."
+
+"Lady Busshe," he woke up; "I may have mistaken Dr. Middleton; he has a
+language that I can compare only to a review-day of the field forces.
+But I have the story on authority that I cannot question: it is
+confirmed by my daughter's unexampled behaviour. And if I live through
+this day I shall look about me as a ghost to-morrow."
+
+"Dear Mr. Dale!" said the Patterne ladies, compassionately. Lady Busshe
+murmured to them: "You know the two did not agree; they did not get on:
+I saw it; I predicted it."
+
+"She will understand him in time," said they.
+
+"Never. And my belief is, they have parted by consent, and Letty Dale
+wins the day at last. Yes, now I do believe it."
+
+The ladies maintained a decided negative, but they knew too much not to
+feel perplexed, and they betrayed it, though they said: "Dear Lady
+Busshe! is it credible, in decency?"
+
+"Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!" Lady Busshe invoked her great rival appearing
+among them: "You come most opportunely; we are in a state of
+inextricable confusion: we are bordering on frenzy. You, and none but
+you, can help us. You know, you always know; we hang on you. Is there
+any truth in it? a particle?"
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart seated herself regally "Ah, Mr. Dale!" she said,
+inclining to him. "Yes, dear Lady Busshe, there is a particle."
+
+"Now, do not roast us. You can; you have the art. I have the whole
+story. That is, I have a part. I mean, I have the outlines, I cannot be
+deceived, but you can fill them in, I know you can. I saw it yesterday.
+Now, tell us, tell us. It must be quite true or utterly false. Which is
+it?"
+
+"Be precise."
+
+"His fatality! you called her. Yes, I was sceptical. But here we have
+it all come round again, and if the tale is true, I shall own you
+infallible. Has he?--and she?"
+
+"Both."
+
+"And the Middletons here? They have not gone; they keep the field. And
+more astounding, she refuses him. And to add to it, Dr. Middleton
+intercedes with Mr. Dale for Sir Willoughby."
+
+"Dr. Middleton intercedes!" This was rather astonishing to Mrs.
+Mountstuart.
+
+"For Vernon," Miss Eleanor emphasized.
+
+"For Vernon Whitford, his cousin." said Miss Isabel, still more
+emphatically.
+
+"Who," said Mrs. Mountstuart, with a sovereign lift and turn of her
+head, "speaks of a refusal?"
+
+"I have it from Mr. Dale," said Lady Busshe.
+
+"I had it, I thought, distinctly from Dr. Middleton," said Mr. Dale.
+
+"That Willoughby proposed to Laetitia for his cousin Vernon, Doctor
+Middleton meant," said Miss Eleanor.
+
+Her sister followed: "Hence this really ridiculous misconception!--sad,
+indeed," she added, for balm to Mr. Dale.
+
+"Willoughby was Vernon's proxy. His cousin, if not his first, is ever
+the second thought with him."
+
+"But can we continue . . . ?"
+
+"Such a discussion!"
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart gave them a judicial hearing. They were regarded in
+the county as the most indulgent of nonentities, and she as little as
+Lady Busshe was restrained from the burning topic in their presence.
+She pronounced:
+
+"Each party is right, and each is wrong."
+
+A dry: "I shall shriek!" came from Lady Busshe.
+
+"Cruel!" groaned Lady Culmer.
+
+"Mixed, you are all wrong. Disentangled, you are each of you right. Sir
+Willoughby does think of his cousin Vernon; he is anxious to establish
+him; he is the author of a proposal to that effect."
+
+"We know it!" the Patterne ladies exclaimed. "And Laetitia rejected
+poor Vernon once more!"
+
+"Who spoke of Miss Dale's rejection of Mr. Whitford?"
+
+"Is he not rejected?" Lady Culmer inquired.
+
+"It is in debate, and at this moment being decided."
+
+"Oh! do he seated, Mr. Dale," Lady Busshe implored him, rising to
+thrust him back to his chair if necessary. "Any dislocation, and we are
+thrown out again! We must hold together if this riddle is ever to be
+read. Then, dear Mrs. Mountstuart, we are to say that there is-no truth
+in the other story?"
+
+"You are to say nothing of the sort, dear Lady Busshe."
+
+"Be merciful! And what of the fatality?"
+
+"As positive as the Pole to the needle."
+
+"She has not refused him?"
+
+"Ask your own sagacity."
+
+"Accepted?"
+
+"Wait."
+
+"And all the world's ahead of me! Now, Mrs. Mountstuart, you are
+oracle. Riddles, if you like, only speak. If we can't have corn, why,
+give us husks."
+
+"Is any one of us able to anticipate events, Lady Busshe?"
+
+"Yes, I believe that you are. I bow to you. I do sincerely. So it's
+another person for Mr. Whitford? You nod. And it is our Laetitia for
+Sir Willoughby? You smile. You would not deceive me? A very little,
+and I run about crazed and howl at your doors. And Dr. Middleton is
+made to play blind man in the midst? And the other person is--now I see
+day! An amicable rupture, and a smooth new arrangement. She has money;
+she was never the match for our hero; never; I saw it yesterday, and
+before, often; and so he hands her over--tuthe-rum-tum-tum,
+tuthe-rum-tum-tum," Lady Busshe struck a quick march on her knee. "Now
+isn't that clever guessing? The shadow of a clue for me. And because I
+know human nature. One peep, and I see the combination in a minute. So
+he keeps the money in the family, becomes a benefactor to his cousin by
+getting rid of the girl, and succumbs to his fatality. Rather a pity he
+let it ebb and flow so long. Time counts the tides, you know. But it
+improves the story. I defy any other county in the kingdom to produce
+one fresh and living to equal it. Let me tell you I suspected Mr.
+Whitford, and I hinted it yesterday."
+
+"Did you indeed!" said Mrs. Mountstuart, humouring her excessive
+acuteness.
+
+"I really did. There is that dear good man on his feet again. And looks
+agitated again."
+
+Mr. Dale had been compelled both by the lady's voice and his interest
+in the subject to listen. He had listened more than enough; he was
+exceedingly nervous. He held on by his chair, afraid to quit his
+moorings, and "Manners!" he said to himself unconsciously aloud, as he
+cogitated on the libertine way with which these chartered great ladies
+of the district discussed his daughter. He was heard and unnoticed. The
+supposition, if any, would have been that he was admonishing himself.
+At this juncture Sir Willoughby entered the drawing-room by the garden
+window, and simultaneously Dr. Middleton by the door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+THE SCENE OF SIR WILLOUGHBY'S GENERALSHIP
+
+History, we may fear, will never know the qualities of leadership
+inherent in Sir Willoughby Patterne to fit him for the post of
+Commander of an army, seeing that he avoided the fatigues of the
+service and preferred the honours bestowed in his country upon the
+quiet administrators of their own estates: but his possession of
+particular gifts, which are military, and especially of the proleptic
+mind, which is the stamp and sign-warrant of the heaven-sent General,
+was displayed on every urgent occasion when, in the midst of
+difficulties likely to have extinguished one less alert than he to the
+threatening aspect of disaster, he had to manoeuvre himself.
+
+He had received no intimation of Mr. Dale's presence in his house, nor
+of the arrival of the dreaded women Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer: his
+locked door was too great a terror to his domestics. Having finished
+with Vernon, after a tedious endeavour to bring the fellow to a sense
+of the policy of the step urged on him, he walked out on the lawn with
+the desire to behold the opening of an interview not promising to lead
+to much, and possibly to profit by its failure. Clara had been
+prepared, according to his directions, by Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson,
+as Vernon had been prepared by him. His wishes, candidly and kindly
+expressed both to Vernon and Mrs Mountstuart, were, that since the girl
+appeared disinclined to make him a happy man, she would make one of his
+cousin. Intimating to Mrs. Mountstuart that he would be happier
+without her, he alluded to the benefit of the girl's money to poor old
+Vernon, the general escape from a scandal if old Vernon could manage to
+catch her as she dropped, the harmonious arrangement it would be for
+all parties. And only on the condition of her taking Vernon would he
+consent to give her up. This he said imperatively, adding that such was
+the meaning of the news she had received relating to Laetitia Dale.
+From what quarter had she received it? he asked. She shuffled in her
+reply, made a gesture to signify that it was in the air, universal, and
+fell upon the proposed arrangement. He would listen to none of Mrs.
+Mountstuart's woman-of-the-world instances of the folly of pressing it
+upon a girl who had shown herself a girl of spirit. She foretold the
+failure. He would not be advised; he said: "It is my scheme"; and
+perhaps the look of mad benevolence about it induced the lady to try
+whether there was a chance that it would hit the madness in our nature,
+and somehow succeed or lead to a pacification. Sir Willoughby
+condescended to arrange things thus for Clara's good; he would then
+proceed to realize his own. Such was the face he put upon it. We can
+wear what appearance we please before the world until we are found out,
+nor is the world's praise knocking upon hollowness always hollow music;
+but Mrs Mountstuart's laudation of his kindness and simplicity
+disturbed him; for though he had recovered from his rebuff enough to
+imagine that Laetitia could not refuse him under reiterated pressure,
+he had let it be supposed that she was a submissive handmaiden
+throbbing for her elevation; and Mrs Mountstuart's belief in it
+afflicted his recent bitter experience; his footing was not perfectly
+secure. Besides, assuming it to be so, he considered the sort of prize
+he had won; and a spasm of downright hatred of a world for which we
+make mighty sacrifices to be repaid in a worn, thin, comparatively
+valueless coin, troubled his counting of his gains. Laetitia, it was
+true, had not passed through other hands in coming to him, as Vernon
+would know it to be Clara's case: time only had worn her: but the
+comfort of the reflection was annoyed by the physical contrast of the
+two. Hence an unusual melancholy in his tone that Mrs. Mountstuart
+thought touching. It had the scenic effect on her which greatly
+contributes to delude the wits. She talked of him to Clara as being a
+man who had revealed an unsuspected depth.
+
+Vernon took the communication curiously. He seemed readier to be in
+love with his benevolent relative than with the lady. He was confused,
+undisguisedly moved, said the plan was impossible, out of the question,
+but thanked Willoughby for the best of intentions, thanked him warmly.
+After saying that the plan was impossible, the comical fellow allowed
+himself to be pushed forth on the lawn to see how Miss Middleton might
+have come out of her interview with Mrs. Mountstuart. Willoughby
+observed Mrs. Mountstuart meet him, usher him to the place she had
+quitted among the shrubs, and return to the open turf-spaces. He sprang
+to her.
+
+"She will listen." Mrs. Mountstuart said: "She likes him, respects him,
+thinks he is a very sincere friend, clever, a scholar, and a good
+mountaineer; and thinks you mean very kindly. So much I have impressed
+on her, but I have not done much for Mr. Whitford."
+
+"She consents to listen," said Willoughby, snatching at that as the
+death-blow to his friend Horace.
+
+"She consents to listen, because you have arranged it so that if she
+declined she would be rather a savage."
+
+"You think it will have no result?"
+
+"None at all."
+
+"Her listening will do."
+
+"And you must be satisfied with it."
+
+"We shall see."
+
+"'Anything for peace', she says: and I don't say that a gentleman with
+a tongue would not have a chance. She wishes to please you."
+
+"Old Vernon has no tongue for women, poor fellow! You will have us be
+spider or fly, and if a man can't spin a web all he can hope is not to
+be caught in one. She knows his history, too, and that won't be in his
+favour. How did she look when you left them?"
+
+"Not so bright: like a bit of china that wants dusting. She looked a
+trifle gauche, it struck me; more like a country girl with the hoyden
+taming in her than the well-bred creature she is. I did not suspect her
+to have feeling. You must remember, Sir Willoughby, that she has obeyed
+your wishes, done her utmost: I do think we may say she has made some
+amends; and if she is to blame she repents, and you will not insist too
+far."
+
+"I do insist," said he.
+
+"Beneficent, but a tyrant!"
+
+"Well, well." He did not dislike the character.
+
+They perceived Dr. Middleton wandering over the lawn, and Willoughby
+went to him to put him on the wrong track: Mrs. Mountstuart swept into
+the drawing-room. Willoughby quitted the Rev. Doctor, and hung about
+the bower where he supposed his pair of dupes had by this time ceased
+to stutter mutually:--or what if they had found the word of harmony? He
+could bear that, just bear it. He rounded the shrubs, and, behold, both
+had vanished. The trellis decorated emptiness. His idea was, that they
+had soon discovered their inability to be turtles: and desiring not to
+lose a moment while Clara was fretted by the scene, he rushed to the
+drawing-room with the hope of lighting on her there, getting her to
+himself, and finally, urgently, passionately offering her the sole
+alternative of what she had immediately rejected. Why had he not used
+passion before, instead of limping crippled between temper and policy?
+He was capable of it: as soon as imagination in him conceived his
+personal feelings unwounded and unimperiled, the might of it inspired
+him with heroical confidence, and Clara grateful, Clara softly moved,
+led him to think of Clara melted. Thus anticipating her he burst into
+the room.
+
+One step there warned him that he was in the jaws of the world. We have
+the phrase, that a man is himself under certain trying circumstances.
+There is no need to say it of Sir Willoughby: he was thrice himself
+when danger menaced, himself inspired him. He could read at a single
+glance the Polyphemus eye in the general head of a company. Lady
+Busshe, Lady Culmer, Mrs. Mountstuart, Mr. Dale, had a similarity in
+the variety of their expressions that made up one giant eye for him
+perfectly, if awfully, legible. He discerned the fact that his demon
+secret was abroad, universal. He ascribed it to fate. He was in the
+jaws of the world, on the world's teeth. This time he thought Laetitia
+must have betrayed him, and bowing to Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer,
+gallantly pressing their fingers and responding to their becks and
+archnesses, he ruminated on his defences before he should accost her
+father. He did not want to be alone with the man, and he considered how
+his presence might be made useful.
+
+"I am glad to see you, Mr. Dale. Pray, be seated. Is it nature
+asserting her strength? or the efficacy of medicine? I fancy it can't
+be both. You have brought us back your daughter?"
+
+Mr. Dale sank into a chair, unable to resist the hand forcing him.
+
+"No, Sir Willoughby, no. I have not; I have not seen her since she came
+home this morning from Patterne."
+
+"Indeed? She is unwell?"
+
+"I cannot say. She secludes herself."
+
+"Has locked herself in," said Lady Busshe.
+
+Willoughby threw her a smile. It made them intimate.
+
+This was an advantage against the world, but an exposure of himself to
+the abominable woman.
+
+Dr. Middleton came up to Mr. Dale to apologize for not presenting his
+daughter Clara, whom he could find neither in nor out of the house.
+
+"We have in Mr. Dale, as I suspected," he said to Willoughby, "a stout
+ally."
+
+"If I may beg two minutes with you, Sir Willoughby," said Mr. Dale.
+
+"Your visits are too rare for me to allow of your numbering the
+minutes," Willoughby replied. "We cannot let Mr. Dale escape us now
+that we have him, I think, Dr. Middleton."
+
+"Not without ransom," said the Rev. Doctor.
+
+Mr. Dale shook his head. "My strength, Sir Willoughby, will not sustain
+me long."
+
+"You are at home, Mr. Dale."
+
+"Not far from home, in truth, but too far for an invalid beginning to
+grow sensible of weakness."
+
+"You will regard Patterne as your home, Mr. Dale," Willoughby repeated
+for the world to hear.
+
+"Unconditionally?" Dr. Middleton inquired, with a humourous air of
+dissenting.
+
+Willoughby gave him a look that was coldly courteous, and then he
+looked at Lady Busshe. She nodded imperceptibly. Her eyebrows rose, and
+Willoughby returned a similar nod.
+
+Translated, the signs ran thus:
+
+"--Pestered by the Rev. gentleman:--I see you are. Is the story I have
+heard correct?--Possibly it may err in a few details."
+
+This was fettering himself in loose manacles.
+
+But Lady Busshe would not be satisfied with the compliment of the
+intimate looks and nods. She thought she might still be behind Mrs.
+Mountstuart; and she was a bold woman, and anxious about him,
+half-crazed by the riddle of the pot she was boiling in, and having
+very few minutes to spare. Not extremely reticent by nature, privileged
+by station, and made intimate with him by his covert looks, she stood
+up to him. "One word to an old friend. Which is the father of the
+fortunate creature? I don't know how to behave to them." No time was
+afforded him to be disgusted with her vulgarity and audacity.
+
+He replied, feeling her rivet his gyves: "The house will be empty
+to-morrow."
+
+"I see. A decent withdrawal, and very well cloaked. We had a tale here
+of her running off to decline the honour, afraid, or on her dignity or
+something."
+
+How was it that the woman was ready to accept the altered posture of
+affairs in his house--if she had received a hint of them? He forgot
+that he had prepared her in self-defence.
+
+"From whom did you have that?" he asked.
+
+"Her father. And the lady aunts declare it was the cousin she refused!"
+Willoughby's brain turned over. He righted it for action, and crossed
+the room to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. His ears tingled. He and his
+whole story discussed in public! Himself unroofed! And the marvel that
+he of all men should be in such a tangle, naked and blown on, condemned
+to use his cunningest arts to unwind and cover himself, struck him as
+though the lord of his kind were running the gauntlet of a legion of
+imps. He felt their lashes.
+
+The ladies were talking to Mrs. Mountstuart and Lady Culmer of Vernon
+and the suitableness of Laetitia to a scholar. He made sign to them,
+and both rose.
+
+"It is the hour for your drive. To the cottage! Mr. Dale is in. She
+must come. Her sick father! No delay, going or returning. Bring her
+here at once."
+
+"Poor man!" they sighed; and "Willoughby," said one, and the other
+said: "There is a strange misconception you will do well to correct."
+
+They were about to murmur what it was. He swept his hand round, and
+excusing themselves to their guests, obediently they retired.
+
+Lady Busshe at his entreaty remained, and took a seat beside Lady
+Culmer and Mrs. Mountstuart.
+
+She said to the latter: "You have tried scholars. What do you think?"
+
+"Excellent, but hard to mix," was the reply.
+
+"I never make experiments," said Lady Culmer.
+
+"Some one must!" Mrs. Mountstuart groaned over her dull dinner-party.
+
+Lady Busshe consoled her. "At any rate, the loss of a scholar is no
+loss to the county."
+
+"They are well enough in towns," Lady Culmer said.
+
+"And then I am sure you must have them by themselves."
+
+"We have nothing to regret."
+
+"My opinion."
+
+The voice of Dr. Middleton in colloquy with Mr. Dale swelled on a
+melodious thunder: "For whom else should I plead as the passionate
+advocate I proclaimed myself to you, sir? There is but one man known to
+me who would move me to back him upon such an adventure. Willoughby,
+join me. I am informing Mr. Dale . . ."
+
+Willoughby stretched his hands out to Mr. Dale to support him on his
+legs, though he had shown no sign of a wish to rise.
+
+"You are feeling unwell, Mr. Dale."
+
+"Do I look very ill, Sir Willoughby?"
+
+"It will pass. Laetitia will be with us in twenty minutes." Mr. Dale
+struck his hands in a clasp. He looked alarmingly ill, and
+satisfactorily revealed to his host how he could be made to look so.
+
+"I was informing Mr. Dale that the petitioner enjoys our concurrent
+good wishes: and mine in no degree less than yours, Willoughby,"
+observed Dr. Middleton, whose billows grew the bigger for a check. He
+supposed himself speaking confidentially. "Ladies have the trick, they
+have, I may say, the natural disposition for playing enigma now and
+again. Pressure is often a sovereign specific. Let it be tried upon her
+all round from every radiating line of the circle. You she refuses.
+Then I venture to propose myself to appeal to her. My daughter has
+assuredly an esteem for the applicant that will animate a woman's
+tongue in such a case. The ladies of the house will not be backward.
+Lastly, if necessary, we trust the lady's father to add his instances.
+My prescription is, to fatigue her negatives; and where no rooted
+objection exists, I maintain it to be the unfailing receipt for the
+conduct of the siege. No woman can say No forever. The defence has not
+such resources against even a single assailant, and we shall have
+solved the problem of continuous motion before she will have learned to
+deny in perpetuity. That I stand on."
+
+Willoughby glanced at Mrs. Mountstuart.
+
+"What is that?" she said. "Treason to our sex, Dr. Middleton?"
+
+"I think I heard that no woman can say No forever!" remarked Lady
+Busshe.
+
+"To a loyal gentleman, ma'am: assuming the field of the recurring
+request to be not unholy ground; consecrated to affirmatives rather."
+
+Dr Middleton was attacked by three angry bees. They made him say yes
+and no alternately so many times that he had to admit in men a shiftier
+yieldingness than women were charged with.
+
+Willoughby gesticulated as mute chorus on the side of the ladies; and a
+little show of party spirit like that, coming upon their excitement
+under the topic, inclined them to him genially. He drew Mr. Dale away
+while the conflict subsided in sharp snaps of rifles and an interval
+rejoinder of a cannon. Mr. Dale had shown by signs that he was growing
+fretfully restive under his burden of doubt.
+
+"Sir Willoughby, I have a question. I beg you to lead me where I may
+ask it. I know my head is weak."
+
+"Mr. Dale, it is answered when I say that my house is your home, and
+that Laetitia will soon be with us."
+
+"Then this report is true?"
+
+"I know nothing of reports. You are answered."
+
+"Can my daughter be accused of any shadow of falseness, dishonourable
+dealing?"
+
+"As little as I."
+
+Mr. Dale scanned his face. He saw no shadow.
+
+"For I should go to my grave bankrupt if that could be said of her; and
+I have never yet felt poor, though you know the extent of a pensioner's
+income. Then this tale of a refusal . . . ?"
+
+"Is nonsense."
+
+"She has accepted?"
+
+"There are situations, Mr. Dale, too delicate to be clothed in positive
+definitions."
+
+"Ah, Sir Willoughby, but it becomes a father to see that his daughter
+is not forced into delicate situations. I hope all is well. I am
+confused. It may be my head. She puzzles me. You are not . . . Can I
+ask it here? You are quite . . . ? Will you moderate my anxiety? My
+infirmities must excuse me."
+
+Sir Willoughby conveyed by a shake of the head and a pressure of Mr.
+Dale's hand, that he was not, and that he was quite.
+
+"Dr Middleton?" said Mr. Dale.
+
+"He leaves us to-morrow."
+
+"Really!" The invalid wore a look as if wine had been poured into him.
+He routed his host's calculations by calling to the Rev. Doctor. "We
+are to lose you, sir?"
+
+Willoughby attempted an interposition, but Dr. Middleton crashed
+through it like the lordly organ swallowing a flute.
+
+"Not before I score my victory, Mr. Dale, and establish my friend upon
+his rightful throne."
+
+"You do not leave to-morrow, sir?"
+
+"Have you heard, sir, that I leave to-morrow?"
+
+Mr. Dale turned to Sir Willoughby.
+
+The latter said: "Clara named to-day. To-morrow I thought preferable."
+
+"Ah!" Dr. Middleton towered on the swelling exclamation, but with no
+dark light. He radiated splendidly. "Yes, then, to-morrow. That is, if
+we subdue the lady."
+
+He advanced to Willoughby, seized his hand, squeezed it, thanked him,
+praised him. He spoke under his breath, for a wonder; but: "We are in
+your debt lastingly, my friend", was heard, and he was impressive, he
+seemed subdued, and saying aloud: "Though I should wish to aid in the
+reduction of that fortress", he let it be seen that his mind was rid of
+a load.
+
+Dr. Middleton partly stupefied Willoughby by his way of taking it, but
+his conduct was too serviceable to allow of speculation on his
+readiness to break the match. It was the turning-point of the
+engagement.
+
+Lady Busshe made a stir.
+
+"I cannot keep my horses waiting any longer," she said, and beckoned.
+Sir Willoughby was beside her immediately.
+
+"You are admirable! perfect! Don't ask me to hold my tongue. I retract,
+I recant. It is a fatality. I have resolved upon that view. You could
+stand the shot of beauty, not of brains. That is our report. There! And
+it's delicious to feel that the county wins you. No tea. I cannot
+possibly wait. And, oh! here she is. I must have a look at her. My dear
+Laetitia Dale!"
+
+Willoughby hurried to Mr. Dale.
+
+"You are not to be excited, sir: compose yourself. You will recover and
+be strong to-morrow: you are at home; you are in your own house; you
+are in Laetitia's drawing-room. All will be clear to-morrow. Till
+to-morrow we talk riddles by consent. Sit, I beg. You stay with us."
+
+He met Laetitia and rescued her from Lady Busshe, murmuring, with the
+air of a lover who says, "my love! my sweet!" that she had done rightly
+to come and come at once. Her father had been thrown into the proper
+condition of clammy nervousness to create the impression. Laetitia's
+anxiety sat prettily on her long eyelashes as she bent over him in his
+chair.
+
+Hereupon Dr. Corney appeared; and his name had a bracing effect on Mr.
+Dale. "Corney has come to drive me to the cottage," he said. "I am
+ashamed of this public exhibition of myself, my dear. Let us go. My
+head is a poor one."
+
+Dr. Corney had been intercepted. He broke from Sir Willoughby with a
+dozen little nods of accurate understanding of him, even to beyond the
+mark of the communications. He touched his patient's pulse lightly,
+briefly sighed with professional composure, and pronounced: "Rest. Must
+not be moved. No, no, nothing serious," he quieted Laetitia's fears,
+"but rest, rest. A change of residence for a night will tone him. I
+will bring him a draught in the course of the evening. Yes, yes, I'll
+fetch everything wanted from the cottage for you and for him. Repose
+on Corney's forethought."
+
+"You are sure, Dr. Corney?" said Laetitia, frightened on her father's
+account and on her own.
+
+"Which aspect will be the best for Mr. Dale's bedroom?" the hospitable
+ladies Eleanor and Isabel inquired.
+
+"Southeast, decidedly: let him have the morning sun: a warm air, a
+vigorous air, and a bright air, and the patient wakes and sings in his
+bed."
+
+Still doubtful whether she was in a trap, Laetitia whispered to her
+father of the privacy and comforts of his home. He replied to her that
+he thought he would rather be in his own home.
+
+Dr Corney positively pronounced No to it.
+
+Laetitia breathed again of home, but with the sigh of one overborne.
+
+The ladies Eleanor and Isabel took the word from Willoughby, and said:
+"But you are at home, my dear. This is your home. Your father will be
+at least as well attended here as at the cottage."
+
+She raised her eyelids on them mournfully, and by chance diverted her
+look to Dr. Middleton, quite by chance.
+
+It spoke eloquently to the assembly of all that Willoughby desired to
+be imagined.
+
+"But there is Crossjay," she cried. "My cousin has gone, and the boy is
+left alone. I cannot have him left alone. If we, if, Dr. Corney, you
+are sure it is unsafe for papa to be moved to-day, Crossjay must . . .
+he cannot be left."
+
+"Bring him with you, Corney," said Sir Willoughby; and the little
+doctor heartily promised that he would, in the event of his finding
+Crossjay at the cottage, which he thought a distant probability.
+
+"He gave me his word he would not go out till my return," said
+Laetitia.
+
+"And if Crossjay gave you his word," the accents of a new voice
+vibrated close by, "be certain that he will not come back with Dr.
+Corney unless he has authority in your handwriting."
+
+Clara Middleton stepped gently to Laetitia, and with a manner that was
+an embrace, as much as kissed her for what she was doing on behalf of
+Crossjay. She put her lips in a pouting form to simulate saying: "Press
+it."
+
+"He is to come," said Laetitia.
+
+"Then write him his permit."
+
+There was a chatter about Crossjay and the sentinel true to his post
+that he could be, during which Laetitia distressfully scribbled a line
+for Dr. Corney to deliver to him. Clara stood near. She had rebuked
+herself for want of reserve in the presence of Lady Busshe and Lady
+Culmer, and she was guilty of a slightly excessive containment when she
+next addressed Laetitia. It was, like Laetitia's look at Dr. Middleton,
+opportune: enough to make a man who watched as Willoughby did a
+fatalist for life: the shadow of a difference in her bearing toward
+Laetitia sufficed to impute acting either to her present coolness or
+her previous warmth. Better still, when Dr. Middleton said: "So we
+leave to-morrow, my dear, and I hope you have written to the
+Darletons," Clara flushed and beamed, and repressed her animation on a
+sudden, with one grave look, that might be thought regretful, to where
+Willoughby stood.
+
+Chance works for us when we are good captains.
+
+Willoughby's pride was high, though he knew himself to be keeping it up
+like a fearfully dexterous juggler, and for an empty reward: but he
+was in the toils of the world.
+
+"Have you written? The post-bag leaves in half an hour," he addressed
+her.
+
+"We are expected, but I will write," she replied: and her not having
+yet written counted in his favour.
+
+She went to write the letter. Dr. Corney had departed on his mission to
+fetch Crossjay and medicine. Lady Busshe was impatient to be gone.
+"Corney," she said to Lady Culmer, "is a deadly gossip."
+
+"Inveterate," was the answer.
+
+"My poor horses!"
+
+"Not the young pair of bays?"
+
+"Luckily they are, my dear. And don't let me hear of dining to-night!"
+
+Sir Willoughby was leading out Mr. Dale to a quiet room, contiguous to
+the invalid gentleman's bedchamber. He resigned him to Laetitia in the
+hall, that he might have the pleasure of conducting the ladies to their
+carriage.
+
+"As little agitation as possible. Corney will soon be back," he said,
+bitterly admiring the graceful subservience of Laetitia's figure to her
+father's weight on her arm.
+
+He had won a desperate battle, but what had he won?
+
+What had the world given him in return for his efforts to gain it?
+Just a shirt, it might be said: simple scanty clothing, no warmth.
+Lady Busshe was unbearable; she gabbled; she was ill-bred, permitted
+herself to speak of Dr. Middleton as ineligible, no loss to the county.
+And Mrs. Mountstuart was hardly much above her, with her inevitable
+stroke of caricature:--"You see Doctor Middleton's pulpit scampering
+after him with legs!" Perhaps the Rev. Doctor did punish the world for
+his having forsaken his pulpit, and might be conceived as haunted by it
+at his heels, but Willoughby was in the mood to abhor comic images; he
+hated the perpetrators of them and the grinners. Contempt of this
+laughing empty world, for which he had performed a monstrous
+immolation, led him to associate Dr. Middleton in his mind, and Clara
+too, with the desireable things he had sacrificed--a shape of youth and
+health; a sparkling companion; a face of innumerable charms; and his
+own veracity; his inner sense of his dignity; and his temper, and the
+limpid frankness of his air of scorn, that was to him a visage of
+candid happiness in the dim retrospect. Haply also he had sacrificed
+more: he looked scientifically into the future: he might have
+sacrificed a nameless more. And for what? he asked again. For the
+favourable looks and tongues of these women whose looks and tongues he
+detested!
+
+"Dr Middleton says he is indebted to me: I am deeply in his debt," he
+remarked.
+
+"It is we who are in your debt for a lovely romance, my dear Sir
+Willoughby," said Lady Busshe, incapable of taking a correction, so
+thoroughly had he imbued her with his fiction, or with the belief that
+she had a good story to circulate. Away she drove, rattling her tongue
+to Lady Culmer.
+
+"A hat and horn, and she would be in the old figure of a post-boy on a
+hue-and-cry sheet," said Mrs. Mountstuart.
+
+Willoughby thanked the great lady for her services, and she
+complimented the polished gentleman on his noble self-possession. But
+she complained at the same time of being defrauded of her "charmer"
+Colonel De Craye, since luncheon. An absence of warmth in her
+compliment caused Willoughby to shrink and think the wretched shirt he
+had got from the world no covering after all: a breath flapped it.
+
+"He comes to me to-morrow, I believe," she said, reflecting on her
+superior knowledge of facts in comparison with Lady Busshe, who would
+presently be hearing of something novel, and exclaiming: "So, that is
+why you patronized the colonel!" And it was nothing of the sort, for
+Mrs. Mountstuart could honestly say she was not the woman to make a
+business of her pleasure.
+
+"Horace is an enviable fellow," said Willoughby, wise in The Book,
+which bids us ever, for an assuagement to fancy our friend's condition
+worse than our own, and recommends the deglutition of irony as the most
+balsamic for wounds in the whole moral pharmacopoeia.
+
+"I don't know," she replied, with a marked accent of deliberation.
+
+"The colonel is to have you to himself to-morrow!"
+
+"I can't be sure of what I shall have in the colonel!"
+
+"Your perpetual sparkler?"
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart set her head in motion. She left the matter silent.
+
+"I'll come for him in the morning," she said, and her carriage whirled
+her off. Either she had guessed it, or Clara had confided to her the
+treacherous passion of Horace De Craye.
+
+However, the world was shut away from Patterne for the night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+SIR WILLOUGHBY AND HIS FRIEND HORACE DE CRAYE
+
+Willoughby shut himself up in his laboratory to brood awhile after the
+conflict. Sounding through himself, as it was habitual with him to do,
+for the plan most agreeable to his taste, he came on a strange
+discovery among the lower circles of that microcosm. He was no longer
+guided in his choice by liking and appetite: he had to put it on the
+edge of a sharp discrimination, and try it by his acutest judgement
+before it was acceptable to his heart: and knowing well the direction
+of his desire, he was nevertheless unable to run two strides on a wish.
+He had learned to read the world: his partial capacity for reading
+persons had fled. The mysteries of his own bosom were bare to him; but
+he could comprehend them only in their immediate relation to the world
+outside. This hateful world had caught him and transformed him to a
+machine. The discovery he made was, that in the gratification of the
+egoistic instinct we may so beset ourselves as to deal a slaughtering
+wound upon Self to whatsoever quarter we turn.
+
+Surely there is nothing stranger in mortal experience. The man was
+confounded. At the game of Chess it is the dishonour of our adversary
+when we are stale-mated: but in life, combatting the world, such a
+winning of the game questions our sentiments.
+
+Willoughby's interpretation of his discovery was directed by pity: he
+had no other strong emotion left in him. He pitied himself, and he
+reached the conclusion that he suffered because he was active; he could
+not be quiescent. Had it not been for his devotion to his house and
+name, never would he have stood twice the victim of womankind. Had he
+been selfish, he would have been the happiest of men! He said it aloud.
+He schemed benevolently for his unborn young, and for the persons about
+him: hence he was in a position forbidding a step under pain of injury
+to his feelings. He was generous: otherwise would he not in scorn of
+soul, at the outset, straight off have pitched Clara Middleton to the
+wanton winds? He was faithful in his affection: Laetitia Dale was
+beneath his roof to prove it. Both these women were examples of his
+power of forgiveness, and now a tender word to Clara might fasten shame
+on him--such was her gratitude! And if he did not marry Laetitia,
+laughter would be devilish all around him--such was the world's!
+Probably Vernon would not long be thankful for the chance which varied
+the monotony of his days. What of Horace? Willoughby stripped to enter
+the ring with Horace: he cast away disguise. That man had been the
+first to divide him in the all but equal slices of his egoistic from
+his amatory self: murder of his individuality was the crime of Horace
+De Craye. And further, suspicion fixed on Horace (he knew not how,
+except that The Book bids us be suspicious of those we hate) as the man
+who had betrayed his recent dealings with Laetitia.
+
+Willoughby walked the thoroughfares of the house to meet Clara and make
+certain of her either for himself, or, if it must be, for Vernon,
+before he took another step with Laetitia Dale. Clara could reunite
+him, turn him once more into a whole and an animated man; and she might
+be willing. Her willingness to listen to Vernon promised it. "A
+gentleman with a tongue would have a chance", Mrs. Mountstuart had
+said. How much greater the chance of a lover! For he had not yet
+supplicated her: he had shown pride and temper. He could woo, he was a
+torrential wooer. And it would be glorious to swing round on Lady
+Busshe and the world, with Clara nestling under an arm, and protest
+astonishment at the erroneous and utterly unfounded anticipations of
+any other development. And it would righteously punish Laetitia.
+
+Clara came downstairs, bearing her letter to Miss Darleton.
+
+"Must it be posted?" Willoughby said, meeting her in the hall.
+
+"They expect us any day, but it will be more comfortable for papa," was
+her answer. She looked kindly in her new shyness.
+
+She did not seem to think he had treated her contemptuously in flinging
+her to his cousin, which was odd.
+
+"You have seen Vernon?"
+
+"It was your wish."
+
+"You had a talk?"
+
+"We conversed."
+
+"A long one?"
+
+"We walked some distance."
+
+"Clara, I tried to make the best arrangement I could."
+
+"Your intention was generous."
+
+"He took no advantage of it?"
+
+"It could not be treated seriously."
+
+"It was meant seriously."
+
+"There I see the generosity."
+
+Willoughby thought this encomium, and her consent to speak on the
+subject, and her scarcely embarrassed air and richness of tone in
+speaking, very strange: and strange was her taking him quite in
+earnest. Apparently she had no feminine sensation of the unwontedness
+and the absurdity of the matter!
+
+"But, Clara, am I to understand that he did not speak out?"
+
+"We are excellent friends."
+
+"To miss it, though his chance were the smallest!"
+
+"You forget that it may not wear that appearance to him."
+
+"He spoke not one word of himself?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah! the poor old fellow was taught to see it was hopeless--chilled.
+May I plead? Will you step into the laboratory for a minute? We are two
+sensible persons . . ."
+
+"Pardon me, I must go to papa."
+
+"Vernon's personal history, perhaps . . ."
+
+"I think it honourable to him."
+
+"Honourable!--'hem!"
+
+"By comparison."
+
+"Comparison with what?"
+
+"With others."
+
+He drew up to relieve himself of a critical and condemnatory expiration
+of a certain length. This young lady knew too much. But how physically
+exquisite she was!
+
+"Could you, Clara, could you promise me--I hold to it. I must have it,
+I know his shy tricks--promise me to give him ultimately another
+chance? Is the idea repulsive to you?"
+
+"It is one not to be thought of."
+
+"It is not repulsive?"
+
+"Nothing could be repulsive in Mr. Whitford."
+
+"I have no wish to annoy you, Clara."
+
+"I feel bound to listen to you, Willoughby. Whatever I can do to please
+you, I will. It is my life-long duty."
+
+"Could you, Clara, could you conceive it, could you simply conceive
+it--give him your hand?"
+
+"As a friend. Oh, yes."
+
+"In marriage."
+
+She paused. She, so penetrative of him when he opposed her, was
+hoodwinked when he softened her feelings: for the heart, though the
+clearest, is not the most constant instructor of the head; the heart,
+unlike the often obtuser head, works for itself and not for the
+commonwealth.
+
+"You are so kind . . . I would do much . . ." she said.
+
+"Would you accept him--marry him? He is poor."
+
+"I am not ambitious of wealth."
+
+"Would you marry him?"
+
+"Marriage is not in my thoughts."
+
+"But could you marry him?"
+
+Willoughby expected no. In his expectation of it he hung inflated.
+
+She said these words: "I could engage to marry no one else." His
+amazement breathed without a syllable.
+
+He flapped his arms, resembling for the moment those birds of enormous
+body which attempt a rise upon their wings and achieve a hop.
+
+"Would you engage it?" he said, content to see himself stepped on as an
+insect if he could but feel the agony of his false friend Horace--their
+common pretensions to win her were now of that comparative size.
+
+"Oh! there can be no necessity. And an oath--no!" said Clara, inwardly
+shivering at a recollection.
+
+"But you could?"
+
+"My wish is to please you."
+
+"You could?"
+
+"I said so."
+
+It has been known to the patriotic mountaineer of a hoary pile of
+winters, with little life remaining in him, but that little on fire for
+his country, that by the brink of the precipice he has flung himself on
+a young and lusty invader, dedicating himself exultingly to death if
+only he may score a point for his country by extinguishing in his
+country's enemy the stronger man. So likewise did Willoughby, in the
+blow that deprived him of hope, exult in the toppling over of Horace De
+Craye. They perished together, but which one sublimely relished the
+headlong descent? And Vernon taken by Clara would be Vernon simply
+tolerated. And Clara taken by Vernon would be Clara previously touched,
+smirched. Altogether he could enjoy his fall.
+
+It was at least upon a comfortable bed, where his pride would be
+dressed daily and would never be disagreeably treated.
+
+He was henceforth Laetitia's own. The bell telling of Dr. Corney's
+return was a welcome sound to Willoughby, and he said good-humouredly:
+"Wait, Clara, you will see your hero Crossjay."
+
+Crossjay and Dr. Corney tumbled into the hall. Willoughby caught
+Crossjay under the arms to give him a lift in the old fashion pleasing
+to Clara to see. The boy was heavy as lead.
+
+"I had work to hook him and worse to net him," said Dr. Corney. "I had
+to make him believe he was to nurse every soul in the house, you among
+them, Miss Middleton."
+
+Willoughby pulled the boy aside.
+
+Crossjay came back to Clara heavier in looks than his limbs had been.
+She dropped her letter in the hall-box, and took his hand to have a
+private hug of him. When they were alone, she said: "Crossjay, my
+dear, my dear! you look unhappy."
+
+"Yes, and who wouldn't be, and you're not to marry Sir Willoughby!" his
+voice threatened a cry. "I know you're not, for Dr. Corney says you are
+going to leave."
+
+"Did you so very much wish it, Crossjay?"
+
+"I should have seen a lot of you, and I sha'n't see you at all, and I'm
+sure if I'd known I wouldn't have--And he has been and tipped me this."
+
+Crossjay opened his fist in which lay three gold pieces.
+
+"That was very kind of him," said Clara.
+
+"Yes, but how can I keep it?"
+
+"By handing it to Mr. Whitford to keep for you."
+
+"Yes, but, Miss Middleton, oughtn't I to tell him? I mean Sir
+Willoughby."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why, that I"--Crossjay got close to her--"why, that I, that I--you
+know what you used to say. I wouldn't tell a lie, but oughtn't I,
+without his asking . . . and this money! I don't mind being turned out
+again."
+
+"Consult Mr. Whitford," said Clara.
+
+"I know what you think, though."
+
+"Perhaps you had better not say anything at present, dear boy."
+
+"But what am I to do with this money?"
+
+Crossjay held the gold pieces out as things that had not yet mingled
+with his ideas of possession.
+
+"I listened, and I told of him," he said. "I couldn't help listening,
+but I went and told; and I don't like being here, and his money, and he
+not knowing what I did. Haven't you heard? I'm certain I know what you
+think, and so do I, and I must take my luck. I'm always in mischief,
+getting into a mess or getting out of it. I don't mind, I really don't,
+Miss Middleton, I can sleep in a tree quite comfortably. If you're not
+going to be here, I'd just as soon be anywhere. I must try to earn my
+living some day. And why not a cabin-boy? Sir Cloudesley Shovel was no
+better. And I don't mind his being wrecked at last, if you're drowned
+an admiral. So I shall go and ask him to take his money back, and if he
+asks me I shall tell him, and there. You know what it is: I guessed
+that from what Dr. Corney said. I'm sure I know you're thinking what's
+manly. Fancy me keeping his money, and you not marrying him! I wouldn't
+mind driving a plough. I shouldn't make a bad gamekeeper. Of course I
+love boats best, but you can't have everything."
+
+"Speak to Mr. Whitford first," said Clara, too proud of the boy for
+growing as she had trained him, to advise a course of conduct opposed
+to his notions of manliness, though now that her battle was over she
+would gladly have acquiesced in little casuistic compromises for the
+sake of the general peace.
+
+Some time later Vernon and Dr. Corney were arguing upon the question.
+Corney was dead against the sentimental view of the morality of the
+case propounded by Vernon as coming from Miss Middleton and partly
+shared by him. "If it's on the boy's mind," Vernon said, "I can't
+prohibit his going to Willoughby and making a clean breast of it,
+especially as it involves me, and sooner or later I should have to tell
+him myself."
+
+Dr. Corney said no at all points. "Now hear me," he said, finally.
+"This is between ourselves, and no breach of confidence, which I'd not
+be guilty of for forty friends, though I'd give my hand from the
+wrist-joint for one--my left, that's to say. Sir Willoughby puts me one
+or two searching interrogations on a point of interest to him, his
+house and name. Very well, and good night to that, and I wish Miss Dale
+had been ten years younger, or had passed the ten with no heartrisings
+and sinkings wearing to the tissues of the frame and the moral fibre to
+boot. She'll have a fairish health, with a little occasional doctoring;
+taking her rank and wealth in right earnest, and shying her pen back to
+Mother Goose. She'll do. And, by the way, I think it's to the credit
+of my sagacity that I fetched Mr. Dale here fully primed, and roused
+the neighbourhood, which I did, and so fixed our gentleman, neat as a
+prodded eel on a pair of prongs--namely, the positive fact and the
+general knowledge of it. But, mark me, my friend. We understand one
+another at a nod. This boy, young Squire Crossjay, is a good stiff
+hearty kind of a Saxon boy, out of whom you may cut as gallant a fellow
+as ever wore epaulettes. I like him, you like him, Miss Dale and Miss
+Middleton like him; and Sir Willoughby Patterne, of Patterne Hall and
+other places, won't be indisposed to like him mightily in the event of
+the sun being seen to shine upon him with a particular determination to
+make him appear a prominent object, because a solitary, and a
+Patterne." Dr. Corney lifted his chest and his finger: "Now mark me,
+and verbum sap: Crossjay must not offend Sir Willoughby. I say no
+more. Look ahead. Miracles happen, but it's best to reckon that they
+won't. Well, now, and Miss Dale. She'll not be cruel."
+
+"It appears as if she would," said Vernon, meditating on the cloudy
+sketch Dr. Corney had drawn.
+
+"She can't, my friend. Her position's precarious; her father has little
+besides a pension. And her writing damages her health. She can't. And
+she likes the baronet. Oh, it's only a little fit of proud blood. She's
+the woman for him. She'll manage him--give him an idea he's got a lot
+of ideas. It'd kill her father if she were obstinate. He talked to me,
+when I told him of the business, about his dream fulfilled, and if the
+dream turns to vapour, he'll be another example that we hang more upon
+dreams than realities for nourishment, and medicine too. Last week I
+couldn't have got him out of his house with all my art and science. Oh,
+she'll come round. Her father prophesied this, and I'll prophesy that.
+She's fond of him."
+
+"She was."
+
+"She sees through him?"
+
+"Without quite doing justice to him now," said Vernon. "He can be
+generous--in his way."
+
+"How?" Corney inquired, and was informed that he should hear in time to
+come.
+
+Meanwhile Colonel De Craye, after hovering over the park and about the
+cottage for the opportunity of pouncing on Miss Middleton alone, had
+returned crest-fallen for once, and plumped into Willoughby's hands.
+
+"My dear Horace," Willoughby said, "I've been looking for you all the
+afternoon. The fact is--I fancy you'll think yourself lured down here
+on false pretences: but the truth is, I am not so much to blame as the
+world will suppose. In point of fact, to be brief, Miss Dale and I
+. . . I never consult other men how they would have acted. The fact of
+the matter is, Miss Middleton . . . I fancy you have partly guessed it."
+
+"Partly," said De Craye.
+
+"Well, she has a liking that way, and if it should turn out strong
+enough, it's the best arrangement I can think of," The lively play of
+the colonel's features fixed in a blank inquiry.
+
+"One can back a good friend for making a good husband," said
+Willoughby. "I could not break with her in the present stage of affairs
+without seeing to that. And I can speak of her highly, though she and I
+have seen in time that we do not suit one another. My wife must have
+brains."
+
+"I have always thought it," said Colonel De Craye, glistening, and
+looking hungry as a wolf through his wonderment.
+
+"There will not be a word against her, you understand. You know my
+dislike of tattle and gossip. However, let it fall on me; my shoulders
+are broad. I have done my utmost to persuade her, and there seems a
+likelihood of her consenting. She tells me her wish is to please me,
+and this will please me."
+
+"Certainly. Who's the gentleman?"
+
+"My best friend, I tell you. I could hardly have proposed another.
+Allow this business to go on smoothly just now." There was an uproar
+within the colonel to blind his wits, and Willoughby looked so friendly
+that it was possible to suppose the man of projects had mentioned his
+best friend to Miss Middleton.
+
+And who was the best friend?
+
+Not having accused himself of treachery, the quick-eyed colonel was
+duped.
+
+"Have you his name handy, Willoughby?"
+
+"That would be unfair to him at present, Horace--ask yourself--and to
+her. Things are in a ticklish posture at present. Don't be hasty."
+
+"Certainly. I don't ask. Initials'll do."
+
+"You have a remarkable aptitude for guessing, Horace, and this case
+offers you no tough problem--if ever you acknowledged toughness. I have
+a regard for her and for him--for both pretty equally; you know I have,
+and I should be thoroughly thankful to bring the matter about."
+
+"Lordly!" said De Craye.
+
+"I don't see it. I call it sensible."
+
+"Oh, undoubtedly. The style, I mean. Tolerably antique?"
+
+"Novel, I should say, and not the worse for that. We want plain
+practical dealings between men and women. Usually we go the wrong way
+to work. And I loathe sentimental rubbish."
+
+De Craye hummed an air. "But the lady?" said he.
+
+"I told you, there seems a likelihood of her consenting."
+
+Willoughby's fish gave a perceptible little leap now that he had been
+taught to exercise his aptitude for guessing.
+
+"Without any of the customary preliminaries on the side of the
+gentleman?" he said.
+
+"We must put him through his paces, friend Horace. He's a notorious
+blunderer with women; hasn't a word for them, never marked a conquest."
+
+De Craye crested his plumes under the agreeable banter. He presented a
+face humourously sceptical.
+
+"The lady is positively not indisposed to give the poor fellow a
+hearing?"
+
+"I have cause to think she is not," said Willoughby, glad of acting the
+indifference to her which could talk of her inclinations.
+
+"Cause?"
+
+"Good cause."
+
+"Bless us!"
+
+"As good as one can have with a woman."
+
+"Ah?"
+
+"I assure you."
+
+"Ah! Does it seem like her, though?"
+
+"Well, she wouldn't engage herself to accept him."
+
+"Well, that seems more like her."
+
+"But she said she could engage to marry no one else."
+
+The colonel sprang up, crying: "Clara Middleton said it?" He curbed
+himself "That's a bit of wonderful compliancy."
+
+"She wishes to please me. We separate on those terms. And I wish her
+happiness. I've developed a heart lately and taken to think of others."
+
+"Nothing better. You appear to make cock sure of the other party--our
+friend?"
+
+"You know him too well, Horace, to doubt his readiness."
+
+"Do you, Willoughby?"
+
+"She has money and good looks. Yes, I can say I do."
+
+"It wouldn't be much of a man who'd want hard pulling to that lighted
+altar!"
+
+"And if he requires persuasion, you and I, Horace, might bring him to
+his senses."
+
+"Kicking, 't would be!"
+
+"I like to see everybody happy about me," said Willoughby, naming the
+hour as time to dress for dinner.
+
+The sentiment he had delivered was De Craye's excuse for grasping his
+hand and complimenting him; but the colonel betrayed himself by doing
+it with an extreme fervour almost tremulous.
+
+"When shall we hear more?" he said.
+
+"Oh, probably to-morrow," said Willoughby. "Don't be in such a hurry."
+
+"I'm an infant asleep!" the colonel replied, departing.
+
+He resembled one, to Willoughby's mind: or a traitor drugged.
+
+"There is a fellow I thought had some brains!"
+
+Who are not fools to beset spinning if we choose to whip them with
+their vanity! it is the consolation of the great to watch them spin.
+But the pleasure is loftier, and may comfort our unmerited misfortune
+for a while, in making a false friend drunk.
+
+Willoughby, among his many preoccupations, had the satisfaction of
+seeing the effect of drunkenness on Horace De Craye when the latter was
+in Clara's presence. He could have laughed. Cut in keen epigram were
+the marginal notes added by him to that chapter of The Book which
+treats of friends and a woman; and had he not been profoundly
+preoccupied, troubled by recent intelligence communicated by the
+ladies, his aunts, he would have played the two together for the royal
+amusement afforded him by his friend Horace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+THE LOVERS
+
+The hour was close upon eleven at night. Laetitia sat in the room
+adjoining her father's bedchamber. Her elbow was on the table beside
+her chair, and two fingers pressed her temples. The state between
+thinking and feeling, when both are molten and flow by us, is one of
+our natures coming after thought has quieted the fiery nerves, and can
+do no more. She seemed to be meditating. She was conscious only of a
+struggle past.
+
+She answered a tap at the door, and raised her eyes on Clara. Clara
+stepped softly. "Mr. Dale is asleep?"
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Ah! dear friend."
+
+Laetitia let her hand be pressed.
+
+"Have you had a pleasant evening?"
+
+"Mr. Whitford and papa have gone to the library."
+
+"Colonel De Craye has been singing?"
+
+"Yes--with a voice! I thought of you upstairs, but could not ask him to
+sing piano."
+
+"He is probably exhilarated."
+
+"One would suppose it: he sang well."
+
+"You are not aware of any reason?"
+
+"It cannot concern me."
+
+Clara was in rosy colour, but could meet a steady gaze.
+
+"And Crossjay has gone to bed?"
+
+"Long since. He was at dessert. He would not touch anything."
+
+"He is a strange boy."
+
+"Not very strange, Laetitia."
+
+"He did not come to me to wish me good-night."
+
+"That is not strange."
+
+"It is his habit at the cottage and here; and he professes to like me."
+
+"Oh, he does. I may have wakened his enthusiasm, but you he loves."
+
+"Why do you say it is not strange, Clara?"
+
+"He fears you a little."
+
+"And why should Crossjay fear me?"
+
+"Dear, I will tell you. Last night--You will forgive him, for it was by
+accident: his own bed-room door was locked and he ran down to the
+drawing-room and curled himself up on the ottoman, and fell asleep,
+under that padded silken coverlet of the ladies--boots and all, I am
+afraid!"
+
+Laetitia profited by this absurd allusion, thanking Clara in her heart
+for the refuge.
+
+"He should have taken off his boots," she said.
+
+"He slept there, and woke up. Dear, he meant no harm. Next day he
+repeated what he had heard. You will blame him. He meant well in his
+poor boy's head. And now it is over the county. Ah! do not frown."
+
+"That explains Lady Busshe!" exclaimed Laetitia.
+
+"Dear, dear friend," said Clara. "Why--I presume on your tenderness for
+me; but let me: to-morrow I go--why will you reject your happiness?
+Those kind good ladies are deeply troubled. They say your resolution
+is inflexible; you resist their entreaties and your father's. Can it be
+that you have any doubt of the strength of this attachment? I have
+none. I have never had a doubt that it was the strongest of his
+feelings. If before I go I could see you . . . both happy, I should be
+relieved, I should rejoice."
+
+Laetitia said, quietly: "Do you remember a walk we had one day together
+to the cottage?"
+
+Clara put up her hands with the motion of intending to stop her ears.
+
+"Before I go!" said she. "If I might know this was to be, which all
+desire, before I leave, I should not feel as I do now. I long to see
+you happy . . . him, yes, him too. Is it like asking you to pay my
+debt? Then, please! But, no; I am not more than partly selfish on this
+occasion. He has won my gratitude. He can be really generous."
+
+"An Egoist?"
+
+"Who is?"
+
+"You have forgotten our conversation on the day of our walk to the
+cottage?"
+
+"Help me to forget it--that day, and those days, and all those days! I
+should be glad to think I passed a time beneath the earth, and have
+risen again. I was the Egoist. I am sure, if I had been buried, I
+should not have stood up seeing myself more vilely stained, soiled,
+disfigured--oh! Help me to forget my conduct, Laetitia. He and I were
+unsuited--and I remember I blamed myself then. You and he are not: and
+now I can perceive the pride that can be felt in him. The worst that
+can be said is that he schemes too much."
+
+"Is there any fresh scheme?" said Laetitia.
+
+The rose came over Clara's face.
+
+"You have not heard? It was impossible, but it was kindly intended.
+Judging by my own feeling at this moment, I can understand his. We love
+to see our friends established."
+
+Laetitia bowed. "My curiosity is piqued, of course."
+
+"Dear friend, to-morrow we shall be parted. I trust to be thought of by
+you as a little better in grain than I have appeared, and my reason for
+trusting it is that I know I have been always honest--a boorish young
+woman in my stupid mad impatience: but not insincere. It is no lofty
+ambition to desire to be remembered in that character, but such is your
+Clara, she discovers. I will tell you. It is his wish . . . his wish
+that I should promise to give my hand to Mr. Whitford. You see the
+kindness."
+
+Laetitia's eyes widened and fixed:
+
+"You think it kindness?"
+
+"The intention. He sent Mr. Whitford to me, and I was taught to expect
+him."
+
+"Was that quite kind to Mr. Whitford?"
+
+"What an impression I must have made on you during that walk to the
+cottage, Laetitia! I do not wonder; I was in a fever."
+
+"You consented to listen?"
+
+"I really did. It astonishes me now, but I thought I could not refuse."
+
+"My poor friend Vernon Whitford tried a love speech?"
+
+"He? no: Oh! no."
+
+"You discouraged him?"
+
+"I? No."
+
+"Gently, I mean."
+
+"No."
+
+"Surely you did not dream of trifling? He has a deep heart."
+
+"Has he?"
+
+"You ask that: and you know something of him."
+
+"He did not expose it to me, dear; not even the surface of the mighty
+deep."
+
+Laetitia knitted her brows.
+
+"No," said Clara, "not a coquette: she is not a coquette, I assure
+you."
+
+With a laugh, Laetitia replied: "You have still the 'dreadful power'
+you made me feel that day."
+
+"I wish I could use it to good purpose!"
+
+"He did not speak?"
+
+"Of Switzerland, Tyrol, the Iliad, Antigone."
+
+"That was all?"
+
+"No, Political Economy. Our situation, you will own, was unexampled: or
+mine was. Are you interested in me?"
+
+"I should be if I knew your sentiments."
+
+"I was grateful to Sir Willoughby: grieved for Mr. Whitford."
+
+"Real grief?"
+
+"Because the task unposed on him of showing me politely that he did not
+enter into his cousin's ideas was evidently very great, extremely
+burdensome."
+
+"You, so quick-eyed in some things, Clara!"
+
+"He felt for me. I saw that in his avoidance of. . . And he was, as he
+always is, pleasant. We rambled over the park for I know not how long,
+though it did not seem long."
+
+"Never touching that subject?"
+
+"Not ever neighbouring it, dear. A gentleman should esteem the girl he
+would ask . . . certain questions. I fancy he has a liking for me as a
+volatile friend."
+
+"If he had offered himself?"
+
+"Despising me?"
+
+"You can be childish, Clara. Probably you delight to tease. He had his
+time of it, and it is now my turn."
+
+"But he must despise me a little."
+
+"Are you blind?"
+
+"Perhaps, dear, we both are, a little."
+
+The ladies looked deeper into one another.
+
+"Will you answer me?" said Laetitia.
+
+"Your if? If he had, it would have been an act of condescension."
+
+"You are too slippery."
+
+"Stay, dear Laetitia. He was considerate in forbearing to pain me."
+
+"That is an answer. You allowed him to perceive that it would have
+pained you."
+
+"Dearest, if I may convey to you what I was, in a simile for
+comparison: I think I was like a fisherman's float on the water,
+perfectly still, and ready to go down at any instant, or up. So much
+for my behaviour."
+
+"Similes have the merit of satisfying the finder of them, and cheating
+the hearer," said Laetitia. "You admit that your feelings would have
+been painful."
+
+"I was a fisherman's float: please admire my simile; any way you like,
+this way or that, or so quiet as to tempt the eyes to go to sleep. And
+suddenly I might have disappeared in the depths, or flown in the air.
+But no fish bit."
+
+"Well, then, to follow you, supposing the fish or the fisherman, for I
+don't know which is which . . . Oh! no, no: this is too serious for
+imagery. I am to understand that you thanked him at least for his
+reserve."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Without the slightest encouragement to him to break it?"
+
+"A fisherman's float, Laetitia!"
+
+Baffled and sighing, Laetitia kept silence for a space. The simile
+chafed her wits with a suspicion of a meaning hidden in it.
+
+"If he had spoken?" she said.
+
+"He is too truthful a man."
+
+"And the railings of men at pussy women who wind about and will not be
+brought to a mark, become intelligible to me."
+
+"Then Laetitia, if he had spoken, if, and one could have imagined him
+sincere . . ."
+
+"So truthful a man?"
+
+"I am looking at myself If!--why, then, I should have burnt to death
+with shame. Where have I read?--some story--of an inextinguishable
+spark. That would have been shot into my heart."
+
+"Shame, Clara? You are free."
+
+"As much as remains of me."
+
+"I could imagine a certain shame, in such a position, where there was
+no feeling but pride."
+
+"I could not imagine it where there was no feeling but pride."
+
+Laetitia mused. "And you dwell on the kindness of a proposition so
+extraordinary!" Gaining some light, impatiently she cried: "Vernon
+loves you."
+
+"Do not say it!"
+
+"I have seen it."
+
+"I have never had a sign of it."
+
+"There is the proof."
+
+"When it might have been shown again and again!"
+
+"The greater proof!"
+
+"Why did he not speak when he was privileged?--strangely, but
+privileged."
+
+"He feared."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Feared to wound you--and himself as well, possibly. Men may be
+pardoned for thinking of themselves in these cases."
+
+"But why should he fear?"
+
+"That another was dearer to you?"
+
+"What cause had I given . . . Ah I see! He could fear that; suspect it!
+See his opinion of me! Can he care for such a girl? Abuse me, Laetitia.
+I should like a good round of abuse. I need purification by fire. What
+have I been in this house? I have a sense of whirling through it like a
+madwoman. And to be loved, after it all!--No! we must be hearing a tale
+of an antiquary prizing a battered relic of the battle-field that no
+one else would look at. To be loved, I see, is to feel our littleness,
+hollowness--feel shame. We come out in all our spots. Never to have
+given me one sign, when a lover would have been so tempted! Let me be
+incredulous, my own dear Laetitia. Because he is a man of honour, you
+would say! But are you unconscious of the torture you inflict? For if I
+am--you say it--loved by this gentleman, what an object it is he
+loves--that has gone clamouring about more immodestly than women will
+bear to hear of, and she herself to think of! Oh, I have seen my own
+heart. It is a frightful spectre. I have seen a weakness in me that
+would have carried me anywhere. And truly I shall be charitable to
+women--I have gained that. But loved! by Vernon Whitford! The miserable
+little me to be taken up and loved after tearing myself to pieces! Have
+you been simply speculating? You have no positive knowledge of it! Why
+do you kiss me?"
+
+"Why do you tremble and blush so?"
+
+Clara looked at her as clearly as she could. She bowed her head. "It
+makes my conduct worse!"
+
+She received a tenderer kiss for that. It was her avowal, and it was
+understood: to know that she had loved or had been ready to love him,
+shadowed her in the retrospect.
+
+"Ah! you read me through and through," said Clara, sliding to her for a
+whole embrace.
+
+"Then there never was cause for him to fear?" Laetitia whispered.
+
+Clara slid her head more out of sight. "Not that my heart . . . But I
+said I have seen it; and it is unworthy of him. And if, as I think now,
+I could have been so rash, so weak, wicked, unpardonable--such
+thoughts were in me!--then to hear him speak would make it necessary
+for me to uncover myself and tell him--incredible to you, yes!--that
+while . . . yes, Laetitia, all this is true: and thinking of him as the
+noblest of men, I could have welcomed any help to cut my knot. So
+there," said Clara, issuing from her nest with winking eyelids, "you
+see the pain I mentioned."
+
+"Why did you not explain it to me at once?"
+
+"Dearest, I wanted a century to pass."
+
+"And you feel that it has passed?"
+
+"Yes; in Purgatory--with an angel by me. My report of the place will be
+favourable. Good angel, I have yet to say something."
+
+"Say it, and expiate."
+
+"I think I did fancy once or twice, very dimly, and especially to-day
+. . . properly I ought not to have had any idea: but his coming to me,
+and his not doing as another would have done, seemed . . . A gentleman
+of real nobleness does not carry the common light for us to read him
+by. I wanted his voice; but silence, I think, did tell me more: if a
+nature like mine could only have had faith without bearing the rattle
+of a tongue."
+
+A knock at the door caused the ladies to exchange looks. Laetitia rose
+as Vernon entered.
+
+"I am just going to my father for a few minutes," she said.
+
+"And I have just come from yours." Vernon said to Clara. She observed a
+very threatening expression in him. The sprite of contrariety mounted
+to her brain to indemnify her for her recent self-abasement. Seeing the
+bedroom door shut on Laetitia, she said: "And of course papa has gone
+to bed"; implying, "otherwise . . ."
+
+"Yes, he has gone. He wished me well."
+
+"His formula of good-night would embrace that wish."
+
+"And failing, it will be good-night for good to me!"
+
+Clara's breathing gave a little leap. "We leave early tomorrow."
+
+"I know. I have an appointment at Bregenz for June."
+
+"So soon? With papa?"
+
+"And from there we break into Tyrol, and round away to the right,
+Southward."
+
+"To the Italian Alps! And was it assumed that I should be of this
+expedition?"
+
+"Your father speaks dubiously."
+
+"You have spoken of me, then?"
+
+"I ventured to speak of you. I am not over-bold, as you know."
+
+Her lovely eyes troubled the lids to hide their softness.
+
+"Papa should not think of my presence with him dubiously."
+
+"He leaves it to you to decide."
+
+"Yes, then: many times: all that can be uttered."
+
+"Do you consider what you are saying?"
+
+"Mr. Whitford, I shut my eyes and say Yes."
+
+"Beware. I give you one warning. If you shut your eyes . . ."
+
+"Of course," she flew from him, "big mountains must be satisfied with
+my admiration at their feet."
+
+"That will do for a beginning."
+
+"They speak encouragingly."
+
+"One of them." Vernon's breast heaved high.
+
+"To be at your feet makes a mountain of you?" said she.
+
+"With the heart of a mouse if that satisfies me!"
+
+"You tower too high; you are inaccessible."
+
+"I give you a second warning. You may be seized and lifted."
+
+"Some one would stoop, then."
+
+"To plant you like the flag on the conquered peak!"
+
+"You have indeed been talking to papa, Mr. Whitford."
+
+Vernon changed his tone.
+
+"Shall I tell you what he said?"
+
+"I know his language so well."
+
+"He said--"
+
+"But you have acted on it?"
+
+"Only partly. He said--"
+
+"You will teach me nothing."
+
+"He said . . ."
+
+"Vernon, no! oh! not in this house!"
+
+That supplication coupled with his name confessed the end to which her
+quick vision perceived she was being led, where she would succumb.
+
+She revived the same shrinking in him from a breath of their great word
+yet: not here; somewhere in the shadow of the mountains.
+
+But he was sure of her. And their hands might join. The two hands
+thought so, or did not think, behaved like innocents.
+
+The spirit of Dr. Middleton, as Clara felt, had been blown into Vernon,
+rewarding him for forthright outspeaking. Over their books, Vernon had
+abruptly shut up a volume and related the tale of the house. "Has this
+man a spice of religion in him?" the Rev. Doctor asked midway. Vernon
+made out a fair general case for his cousin in that respect. "The
+complemental dot on his i of a commonly civilized human creature!" said
+Dr. Middleton, looking at his watch and finding it too late to leave
+the house before morning. The risky communication was to come. Vernon
+was proceeding with the narrative of Willoughby's generous plan when
+Dr. Middleton electrified him by calling out: "He whom of all men
+living I should desire my daughter to espouse!" and Willoughby rose in
+the Rev. Doctor's esteem: he praised that sensibly minded gentleman,
+who could acquiesce in the turn of mood of a little maid, albeit
+Fortune had withheld from him a taste of the switch at school. The
+father of the little maid's appreciation of her volatility was
+exhibited in his exhortation to Vernon to be off to her at once with
+his authority to finish her moods and assure him of peace in the
+morning. Vernon hesitated. Dr. Middleton remarked upon being not so
+sure that it was not he who had done the mischief. Thereupon Vernon, to
+prove his honesty, made his own story bare. "Go to her," said Dr.
+Middleton. Vernon proposed a meeting in Switzerland, to which Dr.
+Middleton assented, adding: "Go to her": and as he appeared a total
+stranger to the decorum of the situation, Vernon put his delicacy
+aside, and taking his heart up, obeyed. He too had pondered on Clara's
+consent to meet him after she knew of Willoughby's terms, and her grave
+sweet manner during the ramble over the park. Her father's breath had
+been blown into him; so now, with nothing but the faith lying in
+sensation to convince him of his happy fortune (and how unconvincing
+that may be until the mind has grasped and stamped it, we experience
+even then when we acknowledge that we are most blessed), he held her
+hand. And if it was hard for him, for both, but harder for the man, to
+restrain their particular word from a flight to heaven when the cage
+stood open and nature beckoned, he was practised in self-mastery, and
+she loved him the more.
+
+Laetitia was a witness of their union of hands on her coming back to
+the room.
+
+They promised to visit her very early in the morning, neither of them
+conceiving that they left her to a night of storm and tears.
+
+She sat meditating on Clara's present appreciation of Sir Willoughby's
+generosity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+LAETITIA AND SIR WILLOUGHBY
+
+We cannot be abettors of the tribes of imps whose revelry is in the
+frailties of our poor human constitution. They have their place and
+their service, and so long as we continue to be what we are now, they
+will hang on to us, restlessly plucking at the garments which cover our
+nakedness, nor ever ceasing to twitch them and strain at them until
+they have stripped us for one of their horrible Walpurgis nights: when
+the laughter heard is of a character to render laughter frightful to
+the ears of men throughout the remainder of their days. But if in these
+festival hours under the beam of Hecate they are uncontrollable by the
+Comic Muse, she will not flatter them with her presence during the
+course of their insane and impious hilarities, whereof a description
+would out-Brocken Brockens and make Graymalkin and Paddock too
+intimately our familiars.
+
+It shall suffice to say that from hour to hour of the midnight to the
+grey-eyed morn, assisted at intervals by the ladies Eleanor and Isabel,
+and by Mr. Dale awakened and re-awakened--hearing the vehemence of his
+petitioning outcry to soften her obduracy--Sir Willoughby pursued
+Laetitia with solicitations to espouse him, until the inveteracy of his
+wooing wore the aspect of the life-long love he raved of aroused to a
+state of mania. He appeared, he departed, he returned; and all the
+while his imps were about him and upon him, riding him, prompting,
+driving, inspiring him with outrageous pathos, an eloquence to move any
+one but the dead, which its object seemed to be in her torpid
+attention. He heard them, he talked to them, caressed them; he flung
+them off, and ran from them, and stood vanquished for them to mount him
+again and swarm on him. There are men thus imp-haunted. Men who,
+setting their minds upon an object, must have it, breed imps. They are
+noted for their singularities, as their converse with the invisible and
+amazing distractions are called. Willoughby became aware of them that
+night. He said to himself, upon one of his dashes into solitude: I
+believe I am possessed! And if he did not actually believe it, but only
+suspected it, or framed speech to account for the transformation he had
+undergone into a desperately beseeching creature, having lost
+acquaintance with his habitual personality, the operations of an impish
+host had undoubtedly smitten his consciousness.
+
+He had them in his brain: for while burning with an ardour for
+Laetitia, that incited him to frantic excesses of language and
+comportment, he was aware of shouts of the names of Lady Busshe and
+Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, the which, freezing him as they did, were
+directly the cause of his hurrying to a wilder extravagance and more
+headlong determination to subdue before break of day the woman he
+almost dreaded to behold by daylight, though he had now passionately
+persuaded himself of his love of her. He could not, he felt, stand in
+the daylight without her. She was his morning. She was, he raved, his
+predestinated wife. He cried, "Darling!" both to her and to solitude.
+Every prescription of his ideal of demeanour as an example to his class
+and country, was abandoned by the enamoured gentleman. He had lost
+command of his countenance. He stooped so far as to kneel, and not
+gracefully. Nay, it is in the chronicles of the invisible host around
+him, that in a fit of supplication, upon a cry of "Laetitia!" twice
+repeated, he whimpered.
+
+Let so much suffice. And indeed not without reason do the multitudes of
+the servants of the Muse in this land of social policy avoid scenes of
+an inordinate wantonness, which detract from the dignity of our leaders
+and menace human nature with confusion. Sagacious are they who conduct
+the individual on broad lines, over familiar tracks, under well-known
+characteristics. What men will do, and amorously minded men will do,
+is less the question than what it is politic they should be shown to
+do.
+
+The night wore through. Laetitia was bent, but had not yielded. She
+had been obliged to say--and how many times she could not bear to
+recollect: "I do not love you; I have no love to give"; and issuing
+from such a night to look again upon the face of day, she scarcely felt
+that she was alive.
+
+The contest was renewed by her father with the singing of the birds.
+Mr. Dale then produced the first serious impression she had received.
+He spoke of their circumstances, of his being taken from her and
+leaving her to poverty, in weak health; of the injury done to her
+health by writing for bread; and of the oppressive weight he would be
+relieved of by her consenting.
+
+He no longer implored her; he put the case on common ground.
+
+And he wound up: "Pray do not be ruthless, my girl."
+
+The practical statement, and this adjuration incongruously to conclude
+it, harmonized with her disordered understanding, her loss of all
+sentiment and her desire to be kind. She sighed to herself. "Happily,
+it is over!"
+
+Her father was too weak to rise. He fell asleep. She was bound down to
+the house for hours; and she walked through her suite, here at the
+doors, there at the windows, thinking of Clara's remark "of a century
+passing". She had not wished it, but a light had come on her to show
+her what she would have supposed a century could not have effected: she
+saw the impossible of overnight a possible thing: not desireable, yet
+possible, wearing the features of the possible. Happily, she had
+resisted too firmly to be again besought.
+
+Those features of the possible once beheld allured the mind to
+reconsider them. Wealth gives us the power to do good on earth. Wealth
+enables us to see the world, the beautiful scenes of the earth.
+Laetitia had long thirsted both for a dowering money-bag at her girdle,
+and the wings to fly abroad over lands which had begun to seem fabulous
+in her starved imagination. Then, moreover, if her sentiment for this
+gentleman was gone, it was only a delusion gone; accurate sight and
+knowledge of him would not make a woman the less helpful mate. That was
+the mate he required: and he could be led. A sentimental attachment
+would have been serviceless to him. Not so the woman allied by a purely
+rational bond: and he wanted guiding. Happily, she had told him too
+much of her feeble health and her lovelessness to be reduced to submit
+to another attack.
+
+She busied herself in her room, arranging for her departure, so that no
+minutes might be lost after her father had breakfasted and dressed.
+
+Clara was her earliest visitor, and each asked the other whether she
+had slept, and took the answer from the face presented to her. The
+rings of Laetitia's eyes were very dark. Clara was her mirror, and she
+said: "A singular object to be persecuted through a night for her hand!
+I know these two damp dead leaves I wear on my cheeks to remind me of
+midnight vigils. But you have slept well, Clara."
+
+"I have slept well, and yet I could say I have not slept at all,
+Laetitia. I was with you, dear, part in dream and part in thought:
+hoping to find you sensible before I go."
+
+"Sensible. That is the word for me."
+
+Laetitia briefly sketched the history of the night; and Clara said,
+with a manifest sincerity that testified of her gratitude to Sir
+Willoughby: "Could you resist him, so earnest as he is?" Laetitia saw
+the human nature, without sourness: and replied, "I hope, Clara, you
+will not begin with a large stock of sentiment, for there is nothing
+like it for making you hard, matter-of-fact, worldly, calculating."
+
+The next visitor was Vernon, exceedingly anxious for news of Mr. Dale.
+Laetitia went into her father's room to obtain it for him. Returning,
+she found them both with sad visages, and she ventured, in alarm for
+them, to ask the cause.
+
+"It's this," Vernon said: "Willoughby will everlastingly tease that boy
+to be loved by him. Perhaps, poor fellow, he had an excuse last night.
+Anyhow, he went into Crossjay's room this morning, woke him up and
+talked to him, and set the lad crying, and what with one thing and
+another Crossjay got a berry in his throat, as he calls it, and poured
+out everything he knew and all he had done. I needn't tell you the
+consequence. He has ruined himself here for good, so I must take him."
+
+Vernon glanced at Clara. "You must indeed," said she. "He is my boy as
+well as yours. No chance of pardon?"
+
+"It's not likely."
+
+"Laetitia!"
+
+"What can I do?"
+
+"Oh! what can you not do?"
+
+"I do not know."
+
+"Teach him to forgive!"
+
+Laetitia's brows were heavy and Clara forbore to torment her.
+
+She would not descend to the family breakfast-table. Clara would fain
+have stayed to drink tea with her in her own room, but a last act of
+conformity was demanded of the liberated young lady. She promised to
+run up the moment breakfast was over. Not unnaturally, therefore,
+Laetitia supposed it to be she to whom she gave admission, half an hour
+later, with a glad cry of, "Come in, dear."
+
+The knock had sounded like Clara's.
+
+Sir Willoughby entered.
+
+He stepped forward. He seized her hands. "Dear!" he said.
+
+"You cannot withdraw that. You call me dear. I am, I must be dear to
+you. The word is out, by accident or not, but, by heaven, I have it and
+I give it up to no one. And love me or not--marry me, and my love will
+bring it back to you. You have taught me I am not so strong. I must
+have you by my side. You have powers I did not credit you with."
+
+"You are mistaken in me, Sir Willoughby." Laetitia said feebly, outworn
+as she was.
+
+"A woman who can resist me by declining to be my wife, through a whole
+night of entreaty, has the quality I need for my house, and I will
+batter at her ears for months, with as little rest as I had last night,
+before I surrender my chance of her. But I told you last night I want
+you within the twelve hours. I have staked my pride on it. By noon you
+are mine: you are introduced to Mrs. Mountstuart as mine, as the lady
+of my life and house. And to the world! I shall not let you go."
+
+"You will not detain me here, Sir Willoughby?"
+
+"I will detain you. I will use force and guile. I will spare nothing."
+
+He raved for a term, as he had done overnight.
+
+On his growing rather breathless, Laetitia said: "You do not ask me for
+love?"
+
+"I do not. I pay you the higher compliment of asking for you, love or
+no love. My love shall be enough. Reward me or not. I am not used to be
+denied."
+
+"But do you know what you ask for? Do you remember what I told you of
+myself? I am hard, materialistic; I have lost faith in romance, the
+skeleton is present with me all over life. And my health is not good.
+I crave for money. I should marry to be rich. I should not worship you.
+I should be a burden, barely a living one, irresponsive and cold.
+Conceive such a wife, Sir Willoughby!"
+
+"It will be you!"
+
+She tried to recall how this would have sung in her cars long back. Her
+bosom rose and fell in absolute dejection. Her ammunition of arguments
+against him had been expended overnight.
+
+"You are so unforgiving," she said.
+
+"Is it I who am?"
+
+"You do not know me."
+
+"But you are the woman of all the world who knows me, Laetitia."
+
+"Can you think it better for you to be known?"
+
+He was about to say other words: he checked them. "I believe I do not
+know myself. Anything you will, only give me your hand; give it; trust
+to me; you shall direct me. If I have faults, help me to obliterate
+them."
+
+"Will you not expect me to regard them as the virtues of meaner men?"
+
+"You will be my wife!"
+
+Laetitia broke from him, crying: "Your wife, your critic! Oh, I cannot
+think it possible. Send for the ladies. Let them hear me."
+
+"They are at hand," said Willoughby, opening the door.
+
+They were in one of the upper rooms anxiously on the watch.
+
+"Dear ladies," Laetitia said to them, as they entered. "I am going to
+wound you, and I grieve to do it: but rather now than later, if I am to
+be your housemate. He asks me for a hand that cannot carry a heart,
+because mine is dead. I repeat it. I used to think the heart a woman's
+marriage portion for her husband. I see now that she may consent, and
+he accept her, without one. But it is right that you should know what I
+am when I consent. I was once a foolish, romantic girl; now I am a
+sickly woman, all illusions vanished. Privation has made me what an
+abounding fortune usually makes of others--I am an Egoist. I am not
+deceiving you. That is my real character. My girl's view of him has
+entirely changed; and I am almost indifferent to the change. I can
+endeavour to respect him, I cannot venerate."
+
+"Dear child!" the ladies gently remonstrated.
+
+Willoughby motioned to them.
+
+"If we are to live together, and I could very happily live with you,"
+Laetitia continued to address them, "you must not be ignorant of me.
+And if you, as I imagine, worship him blindly, I do not know how we are
+to live together. And never shall you quit this house to make way for
+me. I have a hard detective eye. I see many faults."
+
+"Have we not all of us faults, dear child?"
+
+"Not such as he has; though the excuses of a gentleman nurtured in
+idolatry may be pleaded. But he should know that they are seen, and
+seen by her he asks to be his wife, that no misunderstanding may exist,
+and while it is yet time he may consult his feelings. He worships
+himself."
+
+"Willoughby?"
+
+"He is vindictive!"
+
+"Our Willoughby?"
+
+"That is not your opinion, ladies. It is firmly mine. Time has taught
+it me. So, if you and I are at such variance, how can we live together?
+It is an impossibility."
+
+They looked at Willoughby. He nodded imperiously.
+
+"We have never affirmed that our dear nephew is devoid of faults, if
+he is offended . . . And supposing he claims to be foremost, is it not
+his rightful claim, made good by much generosity? Reflect, dear
+Laetitia. We are your friends too."
+
+She could not chastise the kind ladies any further.
+
+"You have always been my good friends."
+
+"And you have no other charge against him?"
+
+Laetitia was milder in saying, "He is unpardoning."
+
+"Name one instance, Laetitia."
+
+"He has turned Crossjay out of his house, interdicting the poor boy
+ever to enter it again."
+
+"Crossjay," said Willoughby, "was guilty of a piece of infamous
+treachery."
+
+"Which is the cause of your persecuting me to become your wife!"
+
+There was a cry of "Persecuting!"
+
+"No young fellow behaving so basely can come to good," said Willoughby,
+stained about the face with flecks of redness at the lashings he
+received.
+
+"Honestly," she retorted. "He told of himself: and he must have
+anticipated the punishment he would meet. He should have been studying
+with a master for his profession. He has been kept here in comparative
+idleness to be alternately petted and discarded: no one but Vernon
+Whitford, a poor gentleman doomed to struggle for a livelihood by
+literature--I know something of that struggle--too much for me!--no one
+but Mr. Whitford for his friend."
+
+"Crossjay is forgiven," said Willoughby.
+
+"You promise me that?"
+
+"He shall be packed off to a crammer at once."
+
+"But my home must be Crossjay's home."
+
+"You are mistress of my house, Laetitia."
+
+She hesitated. Her eyelashes grew moist. "You can be generous."
+
+"He is, dear child!" the ladies cried. "He is. Forget his errors, in
+his generosity, as we do."
+
+"There is that wretched man Flitch."
+
+"That sot has gone about the county for years to get me a bad
+character," said Willoughby.
+
+"It would have been generous in you to have offered him another chance.
+He has children."
+
+"Nine. And I am responsible for them?"
+
+"I speak of being generous."
+
+"Dictate." Willoughby spread out his arms.
+
+"Surely now you should be satisfied, Laetitia?" said the ladies.
+
+"Is he?"
+
+Willoughby perceived Mrs. Mountstuart's carriage coming down the
+avenue.
+
+"To the full." He presented his hand.
+
+She raised hers with the fingers catching back before she ceased to
+speak and dropped it:--
+
+"Ladies. You are witnesses that there is no concealment, there has been
+no reserve, on my part. May Heaven grant me kinder eyes than I have
+now. I would not have you change your opinion of him; only that you
+should see how I read him. For the rest, I vow to do my duty by him.
+Whatever is of worth in me is at his service. I am very tired. I feel I
+must yield or break. This is his wish, and I submit."
+
+"And I salute my wife," said Willoughby, making her hand his own, and
+warming to his possession as he performed the act.
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart's indecent hurry to be at the Hall before the
+departure of Dr. Middleton and his daughter, afflicted him with visions
+of the physical contrast which would be sharply perceptible to her this
+morning of his Laetitia beside Clara.
+
+But he had the lady with brains! He had: and he was to learn the nature
+of that possession in the woman who is our wife.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+UPON WHICH THE CURTAIN FALLS
+
+"Plain sense upon the marriage question is my demand upon man and
+woman, for the stopping of many a tragedy."
+
+These were Dr. Middleton's words in reply to Willoughby's brief
+explanation.
+
+He did not say that he had shown it parentally while the tragedy was
+threatening, or at least there was danger of a precipitate descent from
+the levels of comedy. The parents of hymeneal men and women he was
+indisposed to consider as dramatis personae. Nor did he mention certain
+sympathetic regrets he entertained in contemplation of the health of
+Mr. Dale, for whom, poor gentleman, the proffer of a bottle of the
+Patterne Port would be an egregious mockery. He paced about, anxious
+for his departure, and seeming better pleased with the society of
+Colonel De Craye than with that of any of the others. Colonel De Craye
+assiduously courted him, was anecdotal, deferential, charmingly
+vivacious, the very man the Rev. Doctor liked for company when plunged
+in the bustle of the preliminaries to a journey.
+
+"You would be a cheerful travelling comrade, sir," he remarked, and
+spoke of his doom to lead his daughter over the Alps and Alpine lakes
+for the Summer months.
+
+Strange to tell, the Alps, for the Summer months, was a settled project
+of the colonel's.
+
+And thence Dr. Middleton was to be hauled along to the habitable
+quarters of North Italy in high Summer-tide.
+
+That also had been traced for a route on the map of Colonel De Craye.
+
+"We are started in June, I am informed," said Dr. Middleton.
+
+June, by miracle, was the month the colonel had fixed upon.
+
+"I trust we shall meet, sir," said he.
+
+"I would gladly reckon it in my catalogue of pleasures," the Rev.
+Doctor responded; "for in good sooth it is conjecturable that I shall
+be left very much alone."
+
+"Paris, Strasburg, Basle?" the colonel inquired.
+
+"The Lake of Constance, I am told," said Dr. Middleton. Colonel De
+Craye spied eagerly for an opportunity of exchanging a pair of
+syllables with the third and fairest party of this glorious expedition
+to come.
+
+Willoughby met him, and rewarded the colonel's frankness in stating
+that he was on the look-out for Miss Middleton to take his leave of
+her, by furnishing him the occasion. He conducted his friend Horace to
+the Blue Room, where Clara and Laetitia were seated circling a half
+embrace with a brook of chatter, and contrived an excuse for leading
+Laetitia forth. Some minutes later Mrs. Mountstuart called aloud for
+the colonel, to drive him away. Willoughby, whose good offices were
+unabated by the services he performed to each in rotation, ushered her
+into the Blue Room, hearing her say, as she stood at the entrance: "Is
+the man coming to spend a day with me with a face like that?"
+
+She was met and detained by Clara.
+
+De Craye came out.
+
+"What are you thinking of?" said Willoughby.
+
+"I was thinking," said the colonel, "of developing a heart, like you,
+and taking to think of others."
+
+"At last!"
+
+"Ay, you're a true friend, Willoughby, a true friend. And a cousin to
+boot!"
+
+"What! has Clara been communicative?"
+
+"The itinerary of a voyage Miss Middleton is going to make."
+
+"Do you join them?"
+
+"Why, it would be delightful, Willoughby, but it happens I've got a lot
+of powder I want to let off, and so I've an idea of shouldering my gun
+along the sea-coast and shooting gulls: which'll be a harmless form of
+committing patricide and matricide and fratricide--for there's my
+family, and I come of it!--the gull! And I've to talk lively to Mrs.
+Mountstuart for something like a matter of twelve hours, calculating
+that she goes to bed at midnight: and I wouldn't bet on it; such is the
+energy of ladies of that age!"
+
+Willoughby scorned the man who could not conceal a blow, even though he
+joked over his discomfiture.
+
+"Gull!" he muttered.
+
+"A bird that's easy to be had, and better for stuffing than for
+eating," said De Craye. "You'll miss your cousin."
+
+"I have," replied Willoughby, "one fully equal to supplying his place."
+
+There was confusion in the hall for a time, and an assembly of the
+household to witness the departure of Dr. Middleton and his daughter.
+Vernon had been driven off by Dr. Corney, who further recommended rest
+for Mr. Dale, and promised to keep an eye for Crossjay along the road.
+
+"I think you will find him at the station, and if you do, command him
+to come straight back here," Laetitia said to Clara. The answer was an
+affectionate squeeze, and Clara's hand was extended to Willoughby, who
+bowed over it with perfect courtesy, bidding her adieu.
+
+So the knot was cut. And the next carriage to Dr. Middleton's was Mrs.
+Mountstuart's, conveying the great lady and Colonel De Craye.
+
+"I beg you not to wear that face with me," she said to him.
+
+"I have had to dissemble, which I hate, and I have quite enough to
+endure, and I must be amused, or I shall run away from you and enlist
+that little countryman of yours, and him I can count on to be
+professionally restorative. Who can fathom the heart of a girl! Here
+is Lady Busshe right once more! And I was wrong. She must be a gambler
+by nature. I never should have risked such a guess as that. Colonel De
+Craye, you lengthen your face preternaturally, you distort it
+purposely."
+
+"Ma'am," returned De Craye, "the boast of our army is never to know
+when we are beaten, and that tells of a great-hearted soldiery. But
+there's a field where the Briton must own his defeat, whether smiling
+or crying, and I'm not so sure that a short howl doesn't do him
+honour."
+
+"She was, I am certain, in love with Vernon Whitford all along.
+Colonel De Craye!"
+
+"Ah!" the colonel drank it in. "I have learnt that it was not the
+gentleman in whom I am chiefly interested. So it was not so hard for
+the lady to vow to friend Willoughby she would marry no one else?"
+
+"Girls are unfathomable! And Lady Busshe--I know she did not go by
+character--shot one of her random guesses, and she triumphs. We shall
+never hear the last of it. And I had all the opportunities. I'm bound
+to confess I had."
+
+"Did you by chance, ma'am," De Craye said, with a twinkle, "drop a hint
+to Willoughby of her turn for Vernon Whitford?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Mountstuart, "I'm not a mischief-maker; and the policy
+of the county is to keep him in love with himself, or Patterne will be
+likely to be as dull as it was without a lady enthroned. When his pride
+is at ease he is a prince. I can read men. Now, Colonel De Craye, pray,
+be lively."
+
+"I should have been livelier, I'm afraid, if you had dropped a bit of a
+hint to Willoughby. But you're the magnanimous person, ma'am, and
+revenge for a stroke in the game of love shows us unworthy to win."
+
+Mrs. Mountstuart menaced him with her parasol. "I forbid sentiments,
+Colonel De Craye. They are always followed by sighs."
+
+"Grant me five minutes of inward retirement, and I'll come out formed
+for your commands, ma'am," said he.
+
+Before the termination of that space De Craye was enchanting Mrs.
+Mountstuart, and she in consequence was restored to her natural wit.
+
+So, and much so universally, the world of his dread and his unconscious
+worship wagged over Sir Willoughby Patterne and his change of brides,
+until the preparations for the festivities of the marriage flushed him
+in his county's eyes to something of the splendid glow he had worn on
+the great day of his majority. That was upon the season when two lovers
+met between the Swiss and Tyrol Alps over the Lake of Constance.
+Sitting beside them the Comic Muse is grave and sisterly. But taking a
+glance at the others of her late company of actors, she compresses her
+lips.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Egoist, by George Meredith
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