The Egoist

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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