The Egoist

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Willoughby walked the thoroughfares of the house to meet Clara and
make certain of her either for himself, or, if it must be, for
Vernon, before he took another step with Laetitia Dale. Clara
could reunite him, turn him once more into a whole and an animated
man; and she might be willing. Her willingness to listen to Vernon
promised it. "A gentleman with a tongue would have a chance", Mrs.
Mountstuart had said. How much greater the chance of a lover! For
he had not yet supplicated her: he had shown pride and temper. He
could woo, he was a torrential wooer. And it would be glorious to
swing round on Lady Busshe and the world, with Clara nestling
under an arm, and protest astonishment at the erroneous and
utterly unfounded anticipations of any other development. And it
would righteously punish Laetitia.

Clara came downstairs, bearing her letter to Miss Darleton.

"Must it be posted?" Willoughby said, meeting her in the hall.

"They expect us any day, but it will be more comfortable for
papa," was her answer. She looked kindly in her new shyness.

She did not seem to think he had treated her contemptuously in
flinging her to his cousin, which was odd.

"You have seen Vernon?"

"It was your wish."

"You had a talk?"

"We conversed."

"A long one?"

"We walked some distance."

"Clara, I tried to make the best arrangement I could."

"Your intention was generous."

"He took no advantage of it?"

"It could not be treated seriously."

"It was meant seriously."

"There I see the generosity."

Willoughby thought this encomium, and her consent to speak on the
subject, and her scarcely embarrassed air and richness of tone in
speaking, very strange: and strange was her taking him quite in
earnest. Apparently she had no feminine sensation of the
unwontedness and the absurdity of the matter!

"But, Clara, am I to understand that he did not speak out?"

"We are excellent friends."

"To miss it, though his chance were the smallest!"

"You forget that it may not wear that appearance to him."

"He spoke not one word of himself?"

"No."

"Ah! the poor old fellow was taught to see it was hopeless--
chilled. May I plead? Will you step into the laboratory for a
minute? We are two sensible persons . . ."

"Pardon me, I must go to papa."

"Vernon's personal history, perhaps ..."

"I think it honourable to him."

"Honourable!--'hem!"

"By comparison."

"Comparison with what?"

"With others."

He drew up to relieve himself of a critical and condemnatory
expiration of a certain length. This young lady knew too much.
But how physically exquisite she was!

"Could you, Clara, could you promise me--I hold to it. I must
have it, I know his shy tricks--promise me to give him
ultimately another chance? Is the idea repulsive to you?"

"It is one not to be thought of."

"It is not repulsive?"

"Nothing could be repulsive in Mr. Whitford."

"I have no wish to annoy you, Clara."

"I feel bound to listen to you, Willoughby. Whatever I can do to
please you, I will. It is my life-long duty."

"Could you, Clara, could you conceive it, could you simply
conceive it--give him your hand?"

"As a friend. Oh, yes."

"In marriage."

She paused. She, so penetrative of him when he opposed her, was
hoodwinked when he softened her feelings: for the heart, though
the clearest, is not the most constant instructor of the head; the
heart, unlike the often obtuser head, works for itself and not for
the commonwealth.

"You are so kind ... I would do much . . ." she said.

"Would you accept him--marry him? He is poor."

"I am not ambitious of wealth."

"Would you marry him?"

"Marriage is not in my thoughts."

"But could you marry him?"

Willoughby expected no. In his expectation of it he hung inflated.

She said these words: "I could engage to marry no one else." His
amazement breathed without a syllable.

He flapped his arms, resembling for the moment those birds of
enormous body which attempt a rise upon their wings and achieve a
hop.

"Would you engage it?" he said, content to see himself stepped on
as an insect if he could but feel the agony of his false friend
Horace--their common pretensions to win her were now of that
comparative size.

"Oh! there can be no necessity. And an oath--no!" said Clara,
inwardly shivering at a recollection.

"But you could?"

"My wish is to please you."

"You could?"

"I said so."

It has been known to the patriotic mountaineer of a hoary pile of
winters, with little life remaining in him, but that little on
fire for his country, that by the brink of the precipice he has
flung himself on a young and lusty invader, dedicating himself
exultingly to death if only he may score a point for his country
by extinguishing in his country's enemy the stronger man. So
likewise did Willoughby, in the blow that deprived him of hope,
exult in the toppling over of Horace De Craye. They perished
together, but which one sublimely relished the headlong descent?
And Vernon taken by Clara would be Vernon simply tolerated. And
Clara taken by Vernon would be Clara previously touched, smirched.
Altogether he could enjoy his fall.

It was at least upon a comfortable bed, where his pride would be
dressed daily and would never be disagreeably treated.

He was henceforth Laetitia's own. The bell telling of Dr. Corney's
return was a welcome sound to Willoughby, and he said
good-humouredly: "Wait, Clara, you will see your hero Crossjay."

Crossjay and Dr. Corney tumbled into the hall. Willoughby caught
Crossjay under the arms to give him a lift in the old fashion
pleasing to Clara to see. The boy was heavy as lead.

"I had work to hook him and worse to net him," said Dr. Corney. "I
had to make him believe he was to nurse every soul in the house,
you among them, Miss Middleton."

Willoughby pulled the boy aside.

Crossjay came back to Clara heavier in looks than his limbs had
been. She dropped her letter in the hall-box, and took his hand to
have a private hug of him. When they were alone, she said:
"Crossjay, my dear, my dear! you look unhappy."

"Yes, and who wouldn't be, and you're not to marry Sir
Willoughby!" his voice threatened a cry. "I know you're not, for
Dr. Corney says you are going to leave."

"Did you so very much wish it, Crossjay?"

"I should have seen a lot of you, and I sha'n't see you at all,
and I'm sure if I'd known I wouldn't have--And he has been and
tipped me this."

Crossjay opened his fist in which lay three gold pieces.

"That was very kind of him," said Clara.

"Yes, but how can I keep it?"

"By handing it to Mr. Whitford to keep for you."

"Yes, but, Miss Middleton, oughtn't I to tell him? I mean Sir
Willoughby."

"What?"

"Why, that I"--Crossjay got close to her--"why, that I, that I--
you know what you used to say. I wouldn't tell a lie, but oughtn't
I, without his asking ... and this money! I don't mind being
turned out again."

"Consult Mr. Whitford," said Clara.

"I know what you think, though."

"Perhaps you had better not say anything at present, dear boy."

"But what am I to do with this money?"

Crossjay held the gold pieces out as things that had not yet
mingled with his ideas of possession.

"I listened, and I told of him," he said. "I couldn't help
listening, but I went and told; and I don't like being here, and
his money, and he not knowing what I did. Haven't you heard? I'm
certain I know what you think, and so do I, and I must take my
luck. I'm always in mischief, getting into a mess or getting out
of it. I don't mind, I really don't, Miss Middleton, I can sleep
in a tree quite comfortably. If you're not going to be here, I'd
just as soon be anywhere. I must try to earn my living some day.
And why not a cabin-boy? Sir Cloudesley Shovel was no better. And
I don't mind his being wrecked at last, if you're drowned an
admiral. So I shall go and ask him to take his money back, and if
he asks me I shall tell him, and there. You know what it is: I
guessed that from what Dr. Corney said. I'm sure I know you're
thinking what's manly. Fancy me keeping his money, and you not
marrying him! I wouldn't mind driving a plough. I shouldn't make a
bad gamekeeper. Of course I love boats best, but you can't have
everything."

"Speak to Mr. Whitford first," said Clara, too proud of the boy
for growing as she had trained him, to advise a course of conduct
opposed to his notions of manliness, though now that her battle
was over she would gladly have acquiesced in little casuistic
compromises for the sake of the general peace.

Some time later Vernon and Dr. Corney were arguing upon the
question. Corney was dead against the sentimental view of the
morality of the case propounded by Vernon as coming from Miss
Middleton and partly shared by him. "If it's on the boy's mind,"
Vernon said, "I can't prohibit his going to Willoughby and making
a clean breast of it, especially as it involves me, and sooner or
later I should have to tell him myself."

Dr. Corney said no at all points. "Now hear me," he said, finally.
"This is between ourselves, and no breach of confidence, which I'd
not be guilty of for forty friends, though I'd give my hand from
the wrist-joint for one--my left, that's to say. Sir Willoughby
puts me one or two searching interrogations on a point of interest
to him, his house and name. Very well, and good night to that, and
I wish Miss Dale had been ten years younger, or had passed the
ten with no heartrisings and sinkings wearing to the tissues of
the frame and the moral fibre to boot. She'll have a fairish
health, with a little occasional doctoring; taking her rank and
wealth in right earnest, and shying her pen back to Mother Goose.
She'll do. And, by the way, I think it's to the credit of my
sagacity that I fetched Mr. Dale here fully primed, and roused the
neighbourhood, which I did, and so fixed our gentleman, neat as a
prodded eel on a pair of prongs--namely, the positive fact and the
general knowledge of it. But, mark me, my friend. We understand
one another at a nod. This boy, young Squire Crossjay, is a good
stiff hearty kind of a Saxon boy, out of whom you may cut as
gallant a fellow as ever wore epaulettes. I like him, you like
him, Miss Dale and Miss Middleton like him; and Sir Willoughby
Patterne, of Patterne Hall and other places, won't be indisposed
to like him mightily in the event of the sun being seen to shine
upon him with a particular determination to make him appear a
prominent object, because a solitary, and a Patterne." Dr. Corney
lifted his chest and his finger: "Now mark me, and verbum sap:
Crossjay must not offend Sir Willoughby. I say no more. Look
ahead. Miracles happen, but it's best to reckon that they won't.
Well, now, and Miss Dale. She'll not be cruel."

"It appears as if she would," said Vernon, meditating on the
cloudy sketch Dr. Corney had drawn.

"She can't, my friend. Her position's precarious; her father has
little besides a pension. And her writing damages her health. She
can't. And she likes the baronet. Oh, it's only a little fit of
proud blood. She's the woman for him. She'll manage him--give him
an idea he's got a lot of ideas. It'd kill her father if she were
obstinate. He talked to me, when I told him of the business, about
his dream fulfilled, and if the dream turns to vapour, he'll be
another example that we hang more upon dreams than realities for
nourishment, and medicine too. Last week I couldn't have got him
out of his house with all my art and science. Oh, she'll come round.
Her father prophesied this, and I'll prophesy that. She's fond of
him."

"She was."

"She sees through him?"

"Without quite doing justice to him now," said Vernon. "He can
be generous--in his way."

"How?" Corney inquired, and was informed that he should hear in
time to come.

Meanwhile Colonel De Craye, after hovering over the park and about
the cottage for the opportunity of pouncing on Miss Middleton
alone, had returned crest-fallen for once, and plumped into
Willoughby's hands.

"My dear Horace," Willoughby said, "I've been looking for you all
the afternoon. The fact is--I fancy you'll think yourself lured
down here on false pretences: but the truth is, I am not so much
to blame as the world will suppose. In point of fact, to be brief,
Miss Dale and I ... I never consult other men how they would have
acted. The fact of the matter is, Miss Middleton ... I fancy you
have partly guessed it."

"Partly," said De Craye.

"Well, she has a liking that way, and if it should turn out strong
enough, it's the best arrangement I can think of," The lively play
of the colonel's features fixed in a blank inquiry.

"One can back a good friend for making a good husband," said
Willoughby. "I could not break with her in the present stage of
affairs without seeing to that. And I can speak of her highly,
though she and I have seen in time that we do not suit one
another. My wife must have brains."

"I have always thought it," said Colonel De Craye, glistening, and
looking hungry as a wolf through his wonderment.

"There will not be a word against her, you understand. You know my
dislike of tattle and gossip. However, let it fall on me; my
shoulders are broad. I have done my utmost to persuade her, and
there seems a likelihood of her consenting. She tells me her wish
is to please me, and this will please me."

"Certainly. Who's the gentleman?"

"My best friend, I tell you. I could hardly have proposed another.
Allow this business to go on smoothly just now." There was an
uproar within the colonel to blind his wits, and Willoughby looked
so friendly that it was possible to suppose the man of projects
had mentioned his best friend to Miss Middleton.

And who was the best friend?

Not having accused himself of treachery, the quick-eyed colonel
was duped.

"Have you his name handy, Willoughby?"

"That would be unfair to him at present, Horace--ask yourself--
and to her. Things are in a ticklish posture at present. Don't be
hasty."

"Certainly. I don't ask. Initials'll do."

"You have a remarkable aptitude for guessing, Horace, and this
case offers you no tough problem--if ever you acknowledged
toughness. I have a regard for her and for him--for both pretty
equally; you know I have, and I should be thoroughly thankful to
bring the matter about."

"Lordly!" said De Craye.

"I don't see it. I call it sensible."

"Oh, undoubtedly. The style, I mean. Tolerably antique?"

"Novel, I should say, and not the worse for that. We want plain
practical dealings between men and women. Usually we go the wrong
way to work. And I loathe sentimental rubbish."

De Craye hummed an air. "But the lady?" said he.

"I told you, there seems a likelihood of her consenting."

Willoughby's fish gave a perceptible little leap now that he had
been taught to exercise his aptitude for guessing.

"Without any of the customary preliminaries on the side of the
gentleman?" he said.

"We must put him through his paces, friend Horace. He's a
notorious blunderer with women; hasn't a word for them, never
marked a conquest."

De Craye crested his plumes under the agreeable banter. He
presented a face humourously sceptical.

"The lady is positively not indisposed to give the poor fellow a
hearing?"

"I have cause to think she is not," said Willoughby, glad of
acting the indifference to her which could talk of her
inclinations.

"Cause?"

"Good cause."

"Bless us!"

"As good as one can have with a woman."

"Ah?"

"I assure you."

"Ah! Does it seem like her, though?"

"Well, she wouldn't engage herself to accept him."

"Well, that seems more like her."

"But she said she could engage to marry no one else."

The colonel sprang up, crying: "Clara Middleton said it?" He
curbed himself "That's a bit of wonderful compliancy."

"She wishes to please me. We separate on those terms. And I wish
her happiness. I've developed a heart lately and taken to think of
others."

"Nothing better. You appear to make cock sure of the other party--
our friend?"

"You know him too well, Horace, to doubt his readiness."

"Do you, Willoughby?"

"She has money and good looks. Yes, I can say I do."

"It wouldn't be much of a man who'd want hard pulling to that
lighted altar!"

"And if he requires persuasion, you and I, Horace, might bring him
to his senses."

"Kicking, "t would be!"

"I like to see everybody happy about me," said Willoughby, naming
the hour as time to dress for dinner.

The sentiment he had delivered was De Craye's excuse for grasping
his hand and complimenting him; but the colonel betrayed himself
by doing it with an extreme fervour almost tremulous.

"When shall we hear more?" he said.

"Oh, probably to-morrow," said Willoughby. "Don't he in such a
hurry."

"I'm an infant asleep!" the colonel replied, departing.

He resembled one, to Willoughby's mind: or a traitor drugged.

"There is a fellow I thought had some brains!"

Who are not fools to beset spinning if we choose to whip them with
their vanity! it is the consolation of the great to watch them
spin. But the pleasure is loftier, and may comfort our unmerited
misfortune for a while, in making a false friend drunk.

Willoughby, among his many preoccupations, had the satisfaction of
seeing the effect of drunkenness on Horace De Craye when the
latter was in Clara's presence. He could have laughed. Cut in keen
epigram were the marginal notes added by him to that chapter of
The Book which treats of friends and a woman; and had he not been
profoundly preoccupied, troubled by recent intelligence
communicated by the ladies, his aunts, he would have played the
two together for the royal amusement afforded him by his friend
Horace.

CHAPTER XLVIII

The Lovers

The hour was close upon eleven at night. Laetitia sat in the room
adjoining her father's bedchamber. Her elbow was on the table
beside her chair, and two fingers pressed her temples. The state
between thinking and feeling, when both are molten and flow by us,
is one of our natures coming after thought has quieted the fiery
nerves, and can do no more. She seemed to be meditating. She was
conscious only of a struggle past.

She answered a tap at the door, and raised her eyes on Clara.
Clara stepped softly. "Mr. Dale is asleep?"

"I hope so."

"Ah! dear friend."

Laetitia let her hand be pressed.

"Have you had a pleasant evening?"

"Mr. Whitford and papa have gone to the library."

"Colonel De Craye has been singing?"

"Yes--with a voice! I thought of you upstairs, but could not ask
him to sing piano."

"He is probably exhilarated."

"One would suppose it: he sang well."

"You are not aware of any reason?"

"It cannot concern me."

Clara was in rosy colour, but could meet a steady gaze.

"And Crossjay has gone to bed?"

"Long since. He was at dessert. He would not touch anything."

"He is a strange boy."

"Not very strange, Laetitia."

"He did not come to me to wish me good-night."

"That is not strange."

"It is his habit at the cottage and here; and he professes to like
me."

"Oh, he does. I may have wakened his enthusiasm, but you he
loves."

"Why do you say it is not strange, Clara?"

"He fears you a little."

"And why should Crossjay fear me?"

"Dear, I will tell you. Last night--You will forgive him, for it
was by accident: his own bed-room door was locked and he ran down
to the drawing-room and curled himself up on the ottoman, and fell
asleep, under that padded silken coverlet of the ladies--boots
and all, I am afraid!"

Laetitia profited by this absurd allusion, thanking Clara in her
heart for the refuge.

"He should have taken off his boots," she said.

"He slept there, and woke up. Dear, he meant no harm. Next day he
repeated what he had heard. You will blame him. He meant well in
his poor boy's head. And now it is over the county. Ah! do not
frown."

"That explains Lady Busshe!" exclaimed Laetitia.

"Dear, dear friend," said Clara. "Why--I presume on your
tenderness for me; but let me: to-morrow I go--why will you
reject your happiness? Those kind good ladies are deeply troubled.
They say your resolution is inflexible; you resist their
entreaties and your father's. Can it be that you have any doubt of
the strength of this attachment? I have none. I have never had a
doubt that it was the strongest of his feelings. If before I go I
could see you ... both happy, I should be relieved, I should
rejoice."

Laetitia said, quietly: "Do you remember a walk we had one day
together to the cottage?"

Clara put up her hands with the motion of intending to stop her
ears.

"Before I go!" said she. "If I might know this was to be, which
all desire, before I leave, I should not feel as I do now. I long
to see you happy ... him, yes, him too. Is it like asking you to
pay my debt? Then, please! But, no; I am not more than partly
selfish on this occasion. He has won my gratitude. He can be
really generous."

"An Egoist?"

"Who is?"

"You have forgotten our conversation on the day of our walk to the
cottage?"

"Help me to forget it--that day, and those days, and all those
days! I should be glad to think I passed a time beneath the earth,
and have risen again. I was the Egoist. I am sure, if I had been
buried, I should not have stood up seeing myself more vilely
stained, soiled, disfigured--oh! Help me to forget my conduct,
Laetitia. He and I were unsuited--and I remember I blamed myself
then. You and he are not: and now I can perceive the pride that
can be felt in him. The worst that can be said is that he schemes
too much."

"Is there any fresh scheme?" said Laetitia.

The rose came over Clara's face.

"You have not heard? It was impossible, but it was kindly
intended. Judging by my own feeling at this moment, I can
understand his. We love to see our friends established."

Laetitia bowed. "My curiosity is piqued, of course."

"Dear friend, to-morrow we shall be parted. I trust to be thought
of by you as a little better in grain than I have appeared, and my
reason for trusting it is that I know I have been always honest--
a boorish young woman in my stupid mad impatience: but not
insincere. It is no lofty ambition to desire to be remembered in
that character, but such is your Clara, she discovers. I will tell
you. It is his wish ... his wish that I should promise to give my
hand to Mr. Whitford. You see the kindness."

Laetitia's eyes widened and fixed:

"You think it kindness?"

"The intention. He sent Mr. Whitford to me, and I was taught to
expect him."

"Was that quite kind to Mr. Whitford?"

"What an impression I must have made on you during that walk to
the cottage, Laetitia! I do not wonder; I was in a fever."

"You consented to listen?"

"I really did. It astonishes me now, but I thought I could not
refuse."

"My poor friend Vernon Whitford tried a love speech?"

"He? no: Oh! no."

"You discouraged him?"

"I? No."

"Gently, I mean."

"No."

"Surely you did not dream of trifling? He has a deep heart."

"Has he?"

"You ask that: and you know something of him.

"He did not expose it to me, dear; not even the surface of the
mighty deep."

Laetitia knitted her brows.

"No," said Clara, "not a coquette: she is not a coquette, I assure
you.

With a laugh, Laetitia replied: "You have still the 'dreadful
power' you made me feel that day."

"I wish I could use it to good purpose!"

"He did not speak?"

"Of Switzerland, Tyrol, the Iliad, Antigone."

"That was all?"

"No, Political Economy. Our situation, you will own, was
unexampled: or mine was. Are you interested in me?"

"I should be if I knew your sentiments."

"I was grateful to Sir Willoughby: grieved for Mr. Whitford."

"Real grief?"

"Because the task unposed on him of showing me politely that he
did not enter into his cousin's ideas was evidently very great,
extremely burdensome."

"You, so quick-eyed in some things, Clara!"

"He felt for me. I saw that in his avoidance of... And he was, as
he always is, pleasant. We rambled over the park for I know not
how long, though it did not seem long."

"Never touching that subject?"

"Not ever neighbouring it, dear. A gentleman should esteem the girl
he would ask ... certain questions. I fancy he has a liking for me
as a volatile friend."

"If he had offered himself?"

"Despising me?"

"You can be childish, Clara. Probably you delight to tease. He
had his time of it, and it is now my turn."

"But he must despise me a little."

"Are you blind?"

"Perhaps, dear, we both are, a little."

The ladies looked deeper into one another.

"Will you answer me?" said Laetitia.

"Your if? If he had, it would have been an act of condescension."

"You are too slippery."

"Stay, dear Laetitia. He was considerate in forbearing to pain
me."

"That is an answer. You allowed him to perceive that it would have
pained you."

"Dearest, if I may convey to you what I was, in a simile for
comparison: I think I was like a fisherman's float on the water,
perfectly still, and ready to go down at any instant, or up. So
much for my behaviour."

"Similes have the merit of satisfying the finder of them, and
cheating the hearer," said Laetitia. "You admit that your feelings
would have been painful."

"I was a fisherman's float: please admire my simile; any way you
like, this way or that, or so quiet as to tempt the eyes to go to
sleep. And suddenly I might have disappeared in the depths, or
flown in the air. But no fish bit."