The Egoist

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"Not only has he not the lady's tongue, which I hold to be a man's
proper accomplishment," continued Sir Willoughby, "he cannot turn
his advantages to account. Here has Miss Dale been with him now
four days in the house. They are exactly on the same footing as
when she entered it. You ask? I will tell you. It is this: it is
want of warmth. Old Vernon is a scholar--and a fish. Well,
perhaps he has cause to be shy of matrimony; but he is a fish."

"You are reconciled to his leaving you?"

"False alarm! The resolution to do anything unaccustomed is quite
beyond old Vernon."

"But if Mr. Oxford--Whitford ... your swans coming sailing up the
lake, how beautiful they look when they are indignant! I was going
to ask you, surely men witnessing a marked admiration for some one
else will naturally be discouraged?"

Sir Willoughby stiffened with sudden enlightenment.

Though the word jealousy had not been spoken, the drift of her
observations was clear. Smiling inwardly, he said, and the
sentences were not enigmas to her: "Surely, too, young ladies ...
a little?--Too far? But an old friendship! About the same as the
fitting of an old glove to a hand. Hand and glove have only to
meet. Where there is natural harmony you would not have discord.
Ay, but you have it if you check the harmony. My dear girl! You
child!"

He had actually, in this parabolic, and commendable, obscureness,
for which she thanked him in her soul, struck the very point she
had not named and did not wish to hear named, but wished him to
strike; he was anything but obtuse. His exultation, of the
compressed sort, was extreme, on hearing her cry out:

"Young ladies may be. Oh! not I, not I. I can convince you. Not
that. Believe me, Willoughby. I do not know what it is to feel
that, or anything like it. I cannot conceive a claim on any one's
life--as a claim: or the continuation of an engagement not
founded on perfect, perfect sympathy. How should I feel it, then?
It is, as you say of Mr. Ox--Whitford, beyond me."

Sir Willoughby caught up the Ox--Whitford.

Bursting with laughter in his joyful pride, he called it a
portrait of old Vernon in society. For she thought a trifle too
highly of Vernon, as here and there a raw young lady does think of
the friends of her plighted man. which is waste of substance
properly belonging to him, as it were, in the loftier sense, an
expenditure in genuflexions to wayside idols of the reverence
she should bring intact to the temple. Derision instructs her.

Of the other subject--her jealousy--he had no desire to hear
more. She had winced: the woman had been touched to smarting in
the girl: enough. She attempted the subject once, but faintly, and
his careless parrying threw her out. Clara could have bitten her
tongue for that reiterated stupid slip on the name of Whitford;
and because she was innocent at heart she persisted in asking
herself how she could be guilty of it.

"You both know the botanic titles of these wild flowers," she
said.

"Who?" he inquired.

"You and Miss Dale."

Sir Willoughby shrugged. He was amused.

"No woman on earth will grace a barouche so exquisitely as my
Clara."

"Where?" said she.

"During our annual two months in London. I drive a barouche there,
and venture to prophesy that my equipage will create the greatest
excitement of any in London. I see old Horace De Craye gazing!"

She sighed. She could not drag him to the word, or a hint of it
necessary to her subject.

But there it was; she saw it. She had nearly let it go, and
blushed at being obliged to name it.

"Jealousy, do you mean. Willoughby? the people in London would be
jealous?--Colonel De Craye? How strange! That is a sentiment I
cannot understand."

Sir Willoughby gesticulated the "Of course not" of an established
assurance to the contrary.

"Indeed, Willoughby, I do not."

"Certainly not."

He was now in her trap. And he was imagining himself to he
anatomizing her feminine nature.

"Can I give you a proof, Willoughby? I am so utterly incapable of
it that--listen to me--were you to come to me to tell me, as you
might, how much better suited to you Miss Dale has appeared than I
am--and I fear I am not; it should be spoken plainly; unsuited
altogether, perhaps--I would, I beseech you to believe--you must
believe me--give you ... give you your freedom instantly; most
truly; and engage to speak of you as I should think of you.
Willoughby, you would have no one to praise you in public and in
private as I should, for you would be to me the most honest,
truthful, chivalrous gentleman alive. And in that case I would
undertake to declare that she would not admire you more than I;
Miss Dale would not; she would not admire you more than I; not
even Miss Dale."

This, her first direct leap for liberty, set Clara panting, and so
much had she to say that the nervous and the intellectual halves
of her dashed like cymbals, dazing and stunning her with the
appositeness of things to be said, and dividing her in indecision
as to the cunningest to move him of the many pressing.

The condition of feminine jealousy stood revealed.

He had driven her farther than he intended.

"Come, let me allay these . . ." he soothed her with hand and
voice, while seeking for his phrase; "these magnified pinpoints.
Now, my Clara! on my honour! and when I put it forward in
attestation, my honour has the most serious meaning speech can
have; ordinarily my word has to suffice for bonds, promises, or
asseverations; on my honour! not merely is there, my poor child!
no ground of suspicion, I assure you, I declare to you, the fact
of the case is the very reverse. Now, mark me; of her sentiments I
cannot pretend to speak; I did not, to my knowledge, originate, I
am not responsible for them, and I am, before the law, as we will
say, ignorant of them; that is, I have never heard a declaration
of them, and I, am, therefore, under pain of the stigma of
excessive fatuity, bound to be non-cognizant. But as to myself I
can speak for myself and, on my honour! Clara--to be as direct as
possible. even to baldness, and you know I loathe it--I could
not, I repeat, I could not marry Laetitia Dale! Let me impress it
on you. No flatteries--we are all susceptible more or less--no
conceivable condition could bring it about; no amount of
admiration. She and I are excellent friends; we cannot be more.
When you see us together, the natural concord of our minds is of
course misleading. She is a woman of genius. I do not conceal, I
profess my admiration of her. There are times when, I confess, I
require a Laetitia Dale to bring me out, give and take. I am
indebted to her for the enjoyment of the duet few know, few can
accord with, fewer still are allowed the privilege of playing with
a human being. I am indebted, I own. and I feel deep gratitude; I
own to a lively friendship for Miss Dale, but if she is
displeasing in the sight of my bride by ... by the breadth of an
eyelash, then . . ."

Sir Willoughby's arm waved Miss Dale off away into outer darkness
in the wilderness.

Clara shut her eyes and rolled her eyeballs in a frenzy of
unuttered revolt from the Egoist.

But she was not engaged in the colloquy to be an advocate of Miss
Dale or of common humanity.

"Ah!" she said, simply determining that the subject should not
drop.

"And, ah!" he mocked her tenderly. "True, though! And who knows
better than my Clara that I require youth, health, beauty, and the
other undefinable attributes fitting with mine and beseeming the
station of the lady called to preside over my household and
represent me? What says my other self? my fairer? But you are! my
love, you are! Understand my nature rightly, and you . . "

"I do! I do!" interposed Clara; "if I did not by this time I
should be idiotic. Let me assure you, I understand it. Oh! listen
to me: one moment. Miss Dale regards me as the happiest woman on
earth. Willoughby, if I possessed her good qualities, her heart
and mind, no doubt I should be. It is my wish--you must hear me,
hear me out--my wish, my earnest wish, my burning prayer, my wish
to make way for her. She appreciates you: I do not--to my shame,
I do not. She worships you: I do not, I cannot. You are the rising
sun to her. It has been so for years. No one can account for love;
I daresay not for the impossibility of loving ... loving where we
should; all love bewilders me. I was not created to understand it.
But she loves you, she has pined. I believe it has destroyed the
health you demand as one item in your list. But you, Willoughby,
can restore that. Travelling, and ... and your society, the
pleasure of your society would certainly restore it. You look so
handsome together! She has unbounded devotion! as for me, I cannot
idolize. I see faults: I see them daily. They astonish and wound
me. Your pride would not bear to hear them spoken of, least of all
by your wife. You warned me to beware--that is, you said, you
said something."

Her busy brain missed the subterfuge to cover her slip of the
tongue.

Sir Willoughby struck in: "And when I say that the entire
concatenation is based on an erroneous observation of facts, and
an erroneous deduction from that erroneous observation!--? No,
no. Have confidence in me. I propose it to you in this instance,
purely to save you from deception. You are cold, my love? you
shivered."

"I am not cold," said Clara. "Some one, I suppose, was walking
over my grave."

The gulf of a caress hove in view like an enormous billow
hollowing under the curled ridge.

She stooped to a buttercup; the monster swept by.

"Your grave!" he exclaimed over her head; "my own girl!"

"Is not the orchid naturally a stranger in ground so far away from
the chalk, Willoughby?"

"I am incompetent to pronounce an opinion on such important
matters. My mother had a passion for every description of flower.
I fancy I have some recollection of her scattering the flower you
mention over the park."

"If she were living now!"

"We should be happy in the blessing of the most estimable of
women, my Clara."

"She would have listened to me. She would have realized what I
mean."

"Indeed, Clara--poor soul!" he murmured to himself, aloud;
"indeed you are absolutely in error. If I have seemed--but I
repeat, you are deceived. The idea of 'fitness' is a total
hallucination. Supposing you--I do it even in play painfully--
entirely out of the way, unthought of. . ."

"Extinct," Clara said low.

"Non-existent for me," he selected a preferable term. "Suppose it;
I should still, in spite of an admiration I have never thought it
incumbent on me to conceal, still be--I speak emphatically--
utterly incapable of the offer of my hand to Miss Dale. It may be
that she is embedded in my mind as a friend, and nothing but a
friend. I received the stamp in early youth. People have noticed
it--we do, it seems, bring one another out, reflecting,
counter-reflecting."

She glanced up at him with a shrewd satisfaction to see that her
wicked shaft had stuck.

"You do; it is a common remark," she said. "The instantaneous
difference when she comes near, any one might notice."

"My love," he opened the iron gate into the garden, "you encourage
the naughty little suspicion."

"But it is a beautiful sight, Willoughby. I like to see you
together. I like it as I like to see colours match."

"Very well. There is no harm then. We shall often be together. I
like my fair friend. But the instant!--you have only to express a
sentiment of disapprobation."

"And you dismiss her."

"I dismiss her. That is, as to the word, I constitute myself your
echo, to clear any vestige of suspicion. She goes."

"That is a case of a person doomed to extinction without
offending."

"Not without: for whoever offends my bride, my wife, my sovereign
lady, offends me: very deeply offends me."

"Then the caprices of your wife . . ." Clara stamped her foot
imperceptibly on the lawn-sward, which was irresponsively soft to
her fretfulness. She broke from the inconsequent meaningless mild
tone of irony, and said: "Willoughby, women have their honour to
swear by equally with men:--girls have: they have to swear an
oath at the altar; may I to you now? Take it for uttered when I
tell you that nothing would make me happier than your union with
Miss Dale. I have spoken as much as I can. Tell me you release
me."

With the well-known screw-smile of duty upholding weariness worn
to inanition, he rejoined: "Allow me once more to reiterate, that
it is repulsive, inconceivable, that I should ever, under any
mortal conditions, bring myself to the point of taking Miss Dale
for my wife. You reduce me to this perfectly childish protestation
--pitiably childish! But, my love, have I to remind you that you
and I are plighted, and that I am an honourable man?"

"I know it, I feel it--release me!" cried Clara.

Sir Willoughby severely reprehended his short-sightedness for
seeing but the one proximate object in the particular attention he
had bestowed on Miss Dale. He could not disavow that they had been
marked, and with an object, and he was distressed by the unwonted
want of wisdom through which he had been drawn to overshoot his
object. His design to excite a touch of the insane emotion in
Clara's bosom was too successful, and, "I was not thinking of
her," he said to himself in his candour, contrite.

She cried again: "Will you not, Willoughby--release me?"

He begged her to take his arm.

To consent to touch him while petitioning for a detachment,
appeared discordant to Clara, but, if she expected him to accede,
it was right that she should do as much as she could, and she
surrendered her hand at arm's length, disdaining the imprisoned
fingers. He pressed them and said: "Dr Middleton is in the
library. I see Vernon is at work with Crossjay in the West-room--
the boy has had sufficient for the day. Now, is it not like old
Vernon to drive his books at a cracked head before it's half
mended?"

He signalled to young Crossjay, who was up and out through the
folding windows in a twinkling.

"And you will go in, and talk to Vernon of the lady in question,"
Sir Willoughby whispered to Clara. "Use your best persuasions in
our joint names. You have my warrant for saying that money is no
consideration; house and income are assured. You can hardly have
taken me seriously when I requested you to undertake Vernon
before. I was quite in earnest then as now. I prepare Miss Dale. I
will not have a wedding on our wedding-day; but either before or
after it, I gladly speed their alliance. I think now I give you
the best proof possible, and though I know that with women a
delusion may be seen to be groundless and still be cherished, I
rely on your good sense."

Vernon was at the window and stood aside for her to enter. Sir
Willoughby used a gentle insistence with her. She bent her head as
if she were stepping into a cave. So frigid was she, that a
ridiculous dread of calling Mr. Whitford Mr. Oxford was her only
present anxiety when Sir Willoughby had closed the window on them.

CHAPTER XIV

Sir Willoughby and Laetitia

"I prepare Miss Dale."

Sir Willoughby thought of his promise to Clara. He trifled awhile
with young Crossjay, and then sent the boy flying, and wrapped
himself in meditation. So shall you see standing many a statue of
statesmen who have died in harness for their country.

In the hundred and fourth chapter of the thirteenth volume of the
Book of Egoism it is written: Possession without obligation to the
object possessed approaches felicity.

It is the rarest condition of ownership. For example: the
possession of land is not without obligation both to the soil and
the tax-collector; the possession of fine clothing is oppressed by
obligation; gold, jewelry, works of art, enviable household
furniture, are positive fetters; the possession of a wife we find
surcharged with obligation. In all these cases possession is a
gentle term for enslavement, bestowing the sort of felicity
attained to by the helot drunk. You can have the joy, the pride,
the intoxication of possession; you can have no free soul.

But there is one instance of possession, and that the most perfect,
which leaves us free, under not a shadow of obligation, receiving
ever, never giving. or if giving, giving only of our waste; as it
were (sauf votre respect), by form of perspiration, radiation, if
you like; unconscious poral bountifulness; and it is a beneficent
process for the system. Our possession of an adoring female's
worship is this instance.

The soft cherishable Parsee is hardly at any season other than
prostrate. She craves nothing save that you continue in being--
her sun: which is your firm constitutional endeavour: and thus
you have a most exact alliance; she supplying spirit to your
matter, while at the same time presenting matter to your
spirit, verily a comfortable apposition. The Gods do bless it.

That they do so indeed is evident in the men they select for such
a felicitous crown and aureole. Weak men would be rendered nervous
by the flattery of a woman's worship; or they would be for
returning it, at least partially, as though it could be bandied to
and fro without emulgence of the poetry; or they would be
pitiful, and quite spoil the thing. Some would be for
transforming the beautiful solitary vestal flame by the first
effort of the multiplication-table into your hearth-fire of
slippered affection. So these men are not they whom the Gods have
ever selected, but rather men of a pattern with themselves, very
high and very solid men, who maintain the crown by holding
divinely independent of the great emotion they have sown.

Even for them a pass of danger is ahead, as we shall see in our
sample of one among the highest of them.

A clear approach to felicity had long been the portion of Sir
Willoughby Patterne in his relations with Laetitia Dale. She
belonged to him; he was quite unshackled by her. She was
everything that is good in a parasite, nothing that is bad. His
dedicated critic she was, reviewing him with a favour equal to
perfect efficiency in her office; and whatever the world might say
of him, to her the happy gentleman could constantly turn for his
refreshing balsamic bath. She flew to the soul in him, pleasingly
arousing sensations of that inhabitant; and he allowed her the
right to fly, in the manner of kings, as we have heard, consenting
to the privileges acted on by cats. These may not address their
Majesties, but they may stare; nor will it be contested that the
attentive circular eyes of the humble domestic creatures are an
embellishment to Royal pomp and grandeur, such truly as should one
day gain for them an inweaving and figurement--in the place of
bees, ermine tufts, and their various present decorations--upon
the august great robes back-flowing and foaming over the gaspy
page-boys.

Further to quote from the same volume of The Book: There is pain
in the surrendering of that we are fain to relinquish.

The idea is too exquisitely attenuate, as are those of the whole
body-guard of the heart of Egoism, and will slip through you
unless you shall have made a study of the gross of volumes of the
first and second sections of The Book, and that will take you up
to senility; or you must make a personal entry into the pages,
perchance; or an escape out of them. There was once a venerable
gentleman for whom a white hair grew on the cop of his nose,
laughing at removals. He resigned himself to it in the end, and
lastingly contemplated the apparition. It does not concern us what
effect was produced on his countenance and his mind; enough that
he saw a fine thing, but not so fine as the idea cited above;
which has been between the two eyes of humanity ever since women
were sought in marriage. With yonder old gentleman it may have
been a ghostly hair or a disease of the optic nerves; but for us
it is a real growth, and humanity might profitably imitate him in
his patient speculation upon it.

Sir Willoughby Patterne, though ready in the pursuit of duty and
policy (an oft-united couple) to cast Miss Dale away, had to
consider that he was not simply, so to speak, casting her over a
hedge, he was casting her for a man to catch her; and this was a
much greater trial than it had been on the previous occasion, when
she went over bump to the ground. In the arms of a husband, there
was no knowing how soon she might forget her soul's fidelity. It
had not hurt him to sketch the project of the conjunction;
benevolence assisted him; but he winced and smarted on seeing it
take shape. It sullied his idea of Laetitia.

Still, if, in spite of so great a change in her fortune, her
spirit could be guaranteed changeless, he, for the sake of
pacifying his bride, and to keep two serviceable persons near him.
at command, might resolve to join them. The vision of his
resolution brought with it a certain pallid contempt of the
physically faithless woman; no wonder he betook himself to The
Book, and opened it on the scorching chapters treating of the sex,
and the execrable wiles of that foremost creature of the chase,
who runs for life. She is not spared in the Biggest of Books. But
close it.

The writing in it having been done chiefly by men, men naturally
receive their fortification from its wisdom, and half a dozen of
the popular sentences for the confusion of women (cut in brass
worn to a polish like sombre gold), refreshed Sir Willoughby for
his undertaking.

An examination of Laetitia's faded complexion braced him very
cordially.

His Clara, jealous of this poor leaf!

He could have desired the transfusion of a quality or two from
Laetitia to his bride; but you cannot, as in cookery, obtain a
mixture of the essences of these creatures; and if, as it is
possible to do, and as he had been doing recently with the pair of
them at the Hall, you stew them in one pot, you are far likelier
to intensify their little birthmarks of individuality. Had they
a tendency to excellence it might be otherwise; they might then
make the exchanges we wish for; or scientifically concocted in a
harem for a sufficient length of time by a sultan anything but
obtuse, they might. It is, however, fruitless to dwell on what was
only a glimpse of a wild regret, like the crossing of two express
trains along the rails in Sir Willoughby's head.

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel were sitting with Miss Dale, all
three at work on embroideries. He had merely to look at Miss
Eleanor. She rose. She looked at Miss Isabel, and rattled her
chatelaine to account for her departure. After a decent interval
Miss Isabel glided out. Such was the perfect discipline of the
household.

Sir Willoughby played an air on the knee of his crossed leg.

Laetitia grew conscious of a meaning in the silence. She said,
"You have not been vexed by affairs to-day?"

"Affairs," he replied, "must be peculiarly vexatious to trouble
me. Concerning the country or my personal affairs?"

"I fancy I was alluding to the country."

"I trust I am as good a patriot as any man living," said he; "but
I am used to the follies of my countrymen, and we are on board a
stout ship. At the worst it's no worse than a rise in rates and
taxes; soup at the Hall gates, perhaps; license to fell timber in
one of the outer copses, or some dozen loads of coal. You hit my
feudalism."

"The knight in armour has gone," said Laetitia, "and the castle
with the draw-bridge. Immunity for our island has gone too since
we took to commerce."

"We bartered independence for commerce. You hit our old
controversy. Ay, but we do not want this overgrown population!
However, we will put politics and sociology and the pack of their
modern barbarous words aside. You read me intuitively. I have
been, I will not say annoyed, but ruffled. I have much to do, and
going into Parliament would make me almost helpless if I lose
Vernon. You know of some absurd notion he has?--literary fame,
and bachelor's chambers, and a chop-house, and the rest of it."

She knew, and thinking differently in the matter of literary fame,
she flushed, and, ashamed of the flush, frowned.

He bent over to her with the perusing earnestness of a gentleman
about to trifle.

"You cannot intend that frown?"

"Did I frown?"

"You do."

"Now?"

"Fiercely."

"Oh!"

"Will you smile to reassure me?"

"Willingly, as well as I can."

A gloom overcame him. With no woman on earth did he shine so as to
recall to himself seigneur and dame of the old French Court as he
did with Laetitia Dale. He did not wish the period revived, but
reserved it as a garden to stray into when he was in the mood for
displaying elegance and brightness in the society of a lady; and
in speech Laetitia helped him to the nice delusion. She was not
devoid of grace of bearing either.

Would she preserve her beautiful responsiveness to his ascendency?
Hitherto she had, and for years, and quite fresh. But how of her
as a married woman? Our souls are hideously subject to the
conditions of our animal nature! A wife, possibly mother, it was
within sober calculation that there would be great changes in her.
And the hint of any change appeared a total change to one of the
lofty order who, when they are called on to relinquish possession
instead of aspiring to it, say, All or nothing!