The Egoist

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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.