The Egoist

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"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 thern 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.