The Egoist

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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 he 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."