The Egoist

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Well, but if there was danger of the marriage-tie effecting the
slightest alteration of her character or habit of mind, wherefore
press it upon a tolerably hardened spinster!

Besides, though he did once put her hand in Vernon's for the
dance, he remembered acutely that the injury then done by his
generosity to his tender sensitiveness had sickened and tarnished
the effulgence of two or three successive anniversaries of his
coming of age. Nor had he altogether yet got over the passion of
greed for the whole group of the well-favoured of the fair sex,
which in his early youth had made it bitter for him to submit to
the fickleness, not to say the modest fickleness, of any handsome
one of them in yielding her hand to a man and suffering herself
to be led away. Ladies whom he had only heard of as ladies of some
beauty incurred his wrath for having lovers or taking husbands. He
was of a vast embrace; and do not exclaim, in covetousness;--for
well he knew that even under Moslem law he could not have them all
--but as the enamoured custodian of the sex's purity, that blushes
at such big spots as lovers and husbands; and it was unbearable to
see it sacrificed for others. Without their purity what are they!
--what are fruiterer's plums?--unsaleable. O for the bloom on
them!

"As I said, I lose my right hand in Vernon," he resumed, "and I
am, it seems, inevitably to lose him, unless we contrive to fasten
him down here. I think, my dear Miss Dale, you have my character.
At least, I should recommend my future biographer to you--with a
caution, of course. You would have to write selfishness with a
dash under it. I cannot endure to lose a member of my household--
not under any circumstances; and a change of feeling toward me on
the part of any of my friends because of marriage, I think hard. I
would ask you, how can it be for Vernon's good to quit an easy
pleasant home for the wretched profession of Literature?--
wretchedly paying, I mean," he bowed to the authoress. "Let him
leave the house, if he imagines he will not harmonize with its
young mistress. He is queer, though a good fellow. But he ought,
in that event, to have an establishment. And my scheme for Vernon
--men, Miss Dale, do not change to their old friends when they
marry--my scheme, which would cause the alteration in his system
of life to be barely perceptible, is to build him a poetical
little cottage, large enough for a couple, on the borders of my
park. I have the spot in my eye. The point is, can he live alone
there? Men, I say, do not change. How is it that we cannot say the
same of women?"

Laetitia remarked: "The generic woman appears to have an
extraordinary faculty for swallowing the individual."

"As to the individual, as to a particular person, I may be wrong.
Precisely because it is her case I think of, my strong friendship
inspires the fear: unworthy of both, no doubt, but trace it to the
source. Even pure friendship, such is the taint in us, knows a
kind of jealousy; though I would gladly see her established, and
near me, happy and contributing to my happiness with her
incomparable social charm. Her I do not estimate generically, be
sure."

If you do me the honour to allude to me, Sir Willoughby," said
Laetitia, "I am my father's housemate."

"What wooer would take that for a refusal? He would beg to be a
third in the house and sharer of your affectionate burden.
Honestly, why not? And I may be arguing against my own happiness;
it may be the end of me!"

"The end?"

"Old friends are captious, exacting. No, not the end. Yet if my
friend is not the same to me, it is the end to that form of
friendship: not to the degree possibly. But when one is used to
the form! And do you, in its application to friendship, scorn the
word 'use'? We are creatures of custom. I am, I confess, a
poltroon in my affections; I dread changes. The shadow of the
tenth of an inch in the customary elevation of an eyelid!--to
give you an idea of my susceptibility. And, my dear Miss Dale, I
throw myself on your charity, with all my weakness bare, let me
add, as I could do to none but you. Consider, then, if I lose you!
The fear is due to my pusillanimity entirely. High-souled women
may be wives, mothers, and still reserve that home for their
friend. They can and will conquer the viler conditions of human
life. Our states, I have always contended, our various phases have
to be passed through, and there is no disgrace in it so long as
they do not levy toll on the quintessential, the spiritual
element. You understand me? I am no adept in these abstract
elucidations."

"You explain yourself clearly," said Laetitia.

"I have never pretended that psychology was my forte," said he,
feeling overshadowed by her cold commendation: he was not less
acutely sensitive to the fractional divisions of tones than of
eyelids, being, as it were, a melody with which everything was
out of tune that did not modestly or mutely accord; and to bear
about a melody in your person is incomparably more searching than
the best of touchstones and talismans ever invented. "Your
father's health has improved latterly?"

"He did not complain of his health when I saw him this morning. My
cousin Amelia is with him, and she is an excellent nurse.

"He has a liking for Vernon."

"He has a great respect for Mr. Whitford."

"You have?"

"Oh, yes; I have it equally."

"For a foundation, that is the surest. I would have the friends
dearest to me begin on that. The headlong match is--how can we
describe it? By its finale I am afraid. Vernon's abilities are
really to be respected. His shyness is his malady. I suppose he
reflected that he was not a capitalist. He might, one would think,
have addressed himself to me; my purse is not locked."

"No, Sir Willoughby!" Laetitia said, warmly, for his donations in
charity were famous.

Her eyes gave him the food he enjoyed, and basking in them, he
continued:

"Vernon's income would at once have been regulated commensurately
with a new position requiring an increase. This money, money,
money! But the world will have it so. Happily I have inherited
habits of business and personal economy. Vernon is a man who
would do fifty times more with a companion appreciating his
abilities and making light of his little deficiencies. They are
palpable, small enough. He has always been aware of my wishes:--
when perhaps the fulfilment might have sent me off on another tour
of the world, homebird though I am. When was it that our
friendship commenced? In my boyhood, I know. Very many years
back."

"I am in my thirtieth year," said Laetitia.

Surprised and pained by a baldness resembling the deeds of ladies
(they have been known, either through absence of mind, or mania,
to displace a wig) in the deadly intimacy which slaughters poetic
admiration, Sir Willoughby punished her by deliberately reckoning
that she did not look less.

"Genius," he observed, "is unacquainted with wrinkles"; hardly one
of his prettiest speeches; but he had been wounded, and he never
could recover immediately. Coming on him in a mood of sentiment,
the wound was sharp. He could very well have calculated the lady's
age. It was the jarring clash of her brazen declaration of it upon
his low rich flute-notes that shocked him.

He glanced at the gold cathedral-clock on the mantel-piece, and
proposed a stroll on the lawn before dinner. Laetitia gathered up
her embroidery work.

"As a rule," he said, "authoresses are not needle-women."

"I shall resign the needle or the pen if it stamps me an
exception," she replied.

He attempted a compliment on her truly exceptional character. As
when the player's finger rests in distraction on the organ, it was
without measure and disgusted his own hearing. Nevertheless, she
had been so good as to diminish his apprehension that the marriage
of a lady in her thirtieth year with his cousin Vernon would be so
much of a loss to him; hence, while parading the lawn, now and
then casting an eye at the window of the room where his Clara and
Vernon were in council, the schemes he indulged for his prospective
comfort and his feelings of the moment were in such striving
harmony as that to which we hear orchestral musicians bringing
their instruments under the process called tuning. It is not
perfect, but it promises to be so soon. We are not angels, which
have their dulcimers ever on the choral pitch. We are mortals
attaining the celestial accord with effort, through a stage of
pain. Some degree of pain was necessary to Sir Willoughby,
otherwise he would not have seen his generosity confronting him.
He grew, therefore, tenderly inclined to Laetitia once more, so
far as to say within himself. "For conversation she would be a
valuable wife". And this valuable wife he was presenting to his
cousin.

Apparently, considering the duration of the conference of his
Clara and Vernon, his cousin required strong persuasion to accept
the present.

CHAPTER XV

The Petition for a Release

Neither Clara nor Vernon appeared at the mid-day table. Dr.
Middleton talked with Miss Dale on classical matters, like a
good-natured giant giving a child the jump from stone to stone
across a brawling mountain ford, so that an unedified audience
might really suppose, upon seeing her over the difficulty, she had
done something for herself. Sir Willoughby was proud of her, and
therefore anxious to settle her business while he was in the
humour to lose her. He hoped to finish it by shooting a word or
two at Vernon before dinner. Clara's petition to be set free,
released from him, had vaguely frightened even more than it
offended his pride.

Miss Isabel quitted the room.

She came back, saying: "They decline to lunch."

"Then we may rise," remarked Sir Willoughby.

"She was weeping," Miss Isabel murmured to him.

"Girlish enough," he said.

The two elderly ladies went away together. Miss Dale, pursuing her
theme with the Rev. Doctor, was invited by him to a course in the
library. Sir Willoughby walked up and down the lawn, taking a
glance at the West-room as he swung round on the turn of his leg.
Growing impatient, he looked in at the window and found the room
vacant.

Nothing was to be seen of Clara and Vernon during the afternoon.
Near the dinner-hour the ladies were informed by Miss Middleton's
maid that her mistress was lying down on her bed, too unwell with
headache to be present. Young Crossjay brought a message from
Vernon (delayed by birds" eggs in the delivery), to say that he
was off over the hills, and thought of dining with Dr. Corney.

Sir Willoughby despatched condolences to his bride. He was not
well able to employ his mind on its customary topic, being, like
the dome of a bell, a man of so pervading a ring within himself
concerning himself, that the recollection of a doubtful speech or
unpleasant circumstance touching him closely deranged his inward
peace; and as dubious and unpleasant things will often occur, be
had great need of a worshipper, and was often compelled to appeal
to her for signs of antidotal idolatry. In this instance, when
the need of a worshipper was sharply felt, he obtained no signs at
all. The Rev. Doctor had fascinated Miss Dale; so that, both
within and without, Sir Willoughby was uncomforted. His themes in
public were those of an English gentleman; horses, dogs, game,
sport, intrigue, scandal, politics, wines, the manly themes; with
a condescension to ladies" tattle, and approbation of a racy
anecdote. What interest could he possibly take in the Athenian
Theatre and the girl whose flute-playing behind the scenes,
imitating the nightingale, enraptured a Greek audience! He would
have suspected a motive in Miss Dale's eager attentiveness, if the
motive could have been conceived. Besides, the ancients were not
decorous; they did not, as we make our moderns do, write for
ladies. He ventured at the dinner-table to interrupt Dr. Middleton
once:--

"Miss Dale will do wisely, I think, sir, by confining herself to
your present edition of the classics."

"That," replied Dr. Middleton, "is the observation of a student of
the dictionary of classical mythology in the English tongue."

"The Theatre is a matter of climate, sir. You will grant me that."

"If quick wits come of climate, it is as you say, sir."

"With us it seems a matter of painful fostering, or the need of
it," said Miss Dale, with a question to Dr. Middleton, excluding
Sir Willoughby, as though he had been a temporary disturbance of
the flow of their dialogue.

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel, previously excellent listeners to
the learned talk, saw the necessity of coming to his rescue; but
you cannot converse with your aunts, inmates of your house, on
general subjects at table; the attempt increased his discomposure;
he considered that he had ill-chosen his father-in-law; that
scholars are an impolite race; that young or youngish women are
devotees of power in any form, and will be absorbed by a scholar
for a variation of a man; concluding that he must have a round of
dinner-parties to friends, especially ladies, appreciating him,
during the Doctor's visit. Clara's headache above, and Dr.
Middleton's unmannerliness below, affected his instincts in a way
to make him apprehend that a stroke of misfortune was impending;
thunder was in the air. Still he learned something, by which he
was to profit subsequently. The topic of wine withdrew the doctor
from his classics; it was magical on him. A strong fraternity of
taste was discovered in the sentiments of host and guest upon
particular wines and vintages; they kindled one another by naming
great years of the grape, and if Sir Willoughby had to sacrifice
the ladies to the topic, he much regretted a condition of things
that compelled him to sin against his habit, for the sake of being
in the conversation and probing an elderly gentleman's foible.

Late at night he heard the house-bell, and meeting Vernon in the
hall, invited him to enter the laboratory and tell him Dr. Corney's
last. Vernon was brief, Corney had not let fly a single anecdote,
he said, and lighted his candle.

"By the way, Vernon, you had a talk with Miss Middleton?"

"She will speak to you to-morrow at twelve."

"To-morrow at twelve?"

"It gives her four-and-twenty hours."

Sir Willoughby determined that his perplexity should be seen; but
Vernon said good-night to him, and was shooting up the stairs
before the dramatic exhibition of surprise had yielded to speech.

Thunder was in the air and a blow coming. Sir Willoughby's
instincts were awake to the many signs, nor, though silenced, were
they hushed by his harping on the frantic excesses to which women
are driven by the passion of jealousy. He believed in
Clara's jealousy because he really had intended to rouse it; under
the form of emulation, feebly. He could not suppose she had spoken
of it to Vernon. And as for the seriousness of her desire to be
released from her engagement, that was little credible. Still the
fixing of an hour for her to speak to him after an interval of
four-and-twenty hours, left an opening for the incredible to add
its weight to the suspicious mass; and who would have fancied
Clara Middleton so wild a victim of the intemperate passion! He
muttered to himself several assuaging observations to excuse a
young lady half demented, and rejected them in a lump for their
nonsensical inapplicability to Clara. In order to obtain some
sleep, he consented to blame himself slightly, in the style of the
enamoured historian of erring beauties alluding to their
peccadilloes. He had done it to edify her. Sleep, however, failed
him. That an inordinate jealousy argued an overpowering love,
solved his problem until he tried to fit the proposition to
Clara's character. He had discerned nothing southern in her.
Latterly, with the blushing Day in prospect, she had contracted
and frozen. There was no reading either of her or of the mystery.

In the morning, at the breakfast-table, a confession of
sleeplessness was general. Excepting Miss Dale and Dr. Middleton,
none had slept a wink. "I, sir," the Doctor replied to Sir
Willoughby, "slept like a lexicon in your library when Mr.
Whitford and I are out of it."

Vernon incidentally mentioned that he had been writing through the
night.

"You fellows kill yourselves," Sir Willoughby reproved him. "For
my part, I make it a principle to get through my work without
self-slaughter."

Clara watched her father for a symptom of ridicule. He gazed
mildly on the systematic worker. She was unable to guess whether
she would have in him an ally or a judge. The latter, she feared.
Now that she had embraced the strife, she saw the division of the
line where she stood from that one where the world places girls
who are affianced wives; her father could hardly be with her; it
had gone too far. He loved her, but he would certainly take her to
be moved by a maddish whim; he would not try to understand her
case. The scholar's detestation of a disarrangement of human
affairs that had been by miracle contrived to run smoothly, would
of itself rank him against her; and with the world to back his
view of her, he might behave like a despotic father. How could she
defend herself before him? At one thought of Sir Willoughby, her
tongue made ready, and feminine craft was alert to prompt it; but
to her father she could imagine herself opposing only dumbness and
obstinacy.

"It is not exactly the same kind of work," she said.

Dr Middleton rewarded her with a bushy eyebrow's beam of his
revolting humour at the baronet's notion of work.

So little was needed to quicken her that she sunned herself in the
beam, coaxing her father's eyes to stay with hers as long as she
could, and beginning to hope he might be won to her side, if she
confessed she had been more in the wrong than she felt; owned to
him, that is, her error in not earlier disturbing his peace.

"I do not say it is the same," observed Sir Willoughby, bowing to
their alliance of opinion. "My poor work is for the day, and
Vernon's, no doubt, for the day to come. I contend, nevertheless,
for the preservation of health as the chief implement of work."

"Of continued work; there I agree with you," said Dr. Middleton,
cordially.

Clara's heart sunk; so little was needed to deaden her.

Accuse her of an overweening antagonism to her betrothed; yet
remember that though the words had not been uttered to give her
good reason for it, nature reads nature; captives may be stript of
everything save that power to read their tyrant; remember also
that she was not, as she well knew, blameless; her rage at him was
partly against herself

The rising from table left her to Sir Willoughby. She swam away
after Miss Dale, exclaiming: "The laboratory! Will you have me
for a companion on your walk to see your father? One breathes
earth and heaven to-day out of doors. Isn't it Summer with a
Spring Breeze? I will wander about your garden and not hurry your
visit, I promise."

"I shall be very happy indeed. But I am going immediately," said
Laetitia, seeing Sir Willoughby hovering to snap up his bride.

"Yes; and a garden-hat and I am on the march."

"I will wait for you on the terrace."

"You will not have to wait."

"Five minutes at the most," Sir Willoughby said to Laetitia, and
she passed out, leaving them alone together.

"Well, and my love!" he addressed his bride almost huggingly; "and
what is the story? and how did you succeed with old Vernon
yesterday? He will and he won't? He's a very woman in these
affairs. I can't forgive him for giving you a headache. You were
found weeping."

"Yes, I cried," said Clara.

"And now tell me about it. You know, my dear girl, whether he does
or doesn't, our keeping him somewhere in the neighbourhood--
perhaps not in the house--that is the material point. It can
hardly be necessary in these days to urge marriages on. I'm sure
the country is over ... Most marriages ought to be celebrated with
the funeral knell!"

"I think so," said Clara.

"It will come to this, that marriages of consequence, and none but
those, will be hailed with joyful peals."

"Do not say such things in public, Willoughby."

"Only to you, to you! Don't think me likely to expose myself to
the world. Well, and I sounded Miss Dale, and there will be no
violent obstacle. And now about Vernon?"

"I will speak to you, Willoughby, when I return from my walk with
Miss Dale, soon after twelve."

"Twelve!" said he

"I name an hour. It seems childish. I can explain it. But it is
named, I cannot deny, because I am a rather childish person
perhaps, and have it prescribed to me to delay my speaking for a
certain length of time. I may tell you at once that Mr. Whitford
is not to be persuaded by me, and the breaking of our engagement
would not induce him to remain."

"Vernon used those words?"

"It was I."

"'The breaking of our engagement!' Come into the laboratory, my
love."

"I shall not have time."

"Time shall stop rather than interfere with our conversation! 'The
breaking ...'! But it's a sort of sacrilege to speak of it."

"That I feel; yet it has to be spoken of"

"Sometimes? Why? I can't conceive the occasion. You know, to me,
Clara, plighted faith, the affiancing of two lovers, is a piece of
religion. I rank it as holy as marriage; nay, to me it is holier;
I really cannot tell you how; I can only appeal to you in your
bosom to understand me. We read of divorces with comparative
indifference. They occur between couples who have rubbed off all
romance."

She could have asked him in her fit of ironic iciness, on hearing
him thus blindly challenge her to speak out, whether the romance
might be his piece of religion.

He propitiated the more unwarlike sentiments in her by
ejaculating, "Poor souls! let them go their several ways. Married
people no longer lovers are in the category of the unnameable. But
the hint of the breaking of an engagement--our engagement!--
between us? Oh!"

"Oh!" Clara came out with a swan's note swelling over mechanical
imitation of him to dolorousness illimitable. "Oh!" she breathed
short, "let it be now. Do not speak till you have heard me. My
head may not be clear by-and-by. And two scenes--twice will be
beyond my endurance. I am penitent for the wrong I have done you.
I grieve for you. All the blame is mine. Willoughby, you must
release me. Do not let me hear a word of that word; jealousy is
unknown to me ... Happy if I could call you friend and see you
with a worthier than I, who might by-and-by call me friend! You
have my plighted troth ... given in ignorance of my feelings.
Reprobate a weak and foolish girl's ignorance. I have thought of
it, and I cannot see wickedness, though the blame is great,
shameful. You have none. You are without any blame. You will not
suffer as I do. You will be generous to me? I have no respect
for myself when I beg you to be generous and release me."

"But was this the . . ." Willoughby preserved his calmness,
"this, then, the subject of your interview with Vernon?"

"I have spoken to him. I did my commission, and I spoke to him."

"Of me?"

"Of myself. I see how I hurt you; I could not avoid it. Yes, of
you, as far as we are related. I said I believed you would release
me. I said I could he true to my plighted word, but that you
would not insist. Could a gentleman insist? But not a step beyond;
not love; I have none. And, Willoughby, treat me as one perfectly
worthless; I am. I should have known it a year back. I was
deceived in myself. There should be love."

"Should be!" Willoughby's tone was a pungent comment on her.

"Love, then, I find I have not. I think I am antagonistic to it.
What people say of it I have not experienced. I find I was
mistaken. It is lightly said, but very painful. You understand me,
that my prayer is for liberty, that I may not be tied. If you can
release and pardon me, or promise ultimately to pardon me, or say
some kind word, I shall know it is because I am beneath you
utterly that I have been unable to give you the love you should
have with a wife. Only say to me, go! It is you who break the
match, discovering my want of a heart. What people think of me
matters little. My anxiety will be to save you annoyance."

She waited for him; he seemed on the verge of speaking.

He perceived her expectation; he had nothing but clownish tumult
within, and his dignity counselled him to disappoint her.

Swaying his head, like the oriental palm whose shade is a blessing
to the perfervid wanderer below, smiling gravely, he was
indirectly asking his dignity what he could say to maintain it and
deal this mad young woman a bitterly compassionate rebuke. What to
think, hung remoter. The thing to do struck him first.

He squeezed both her hands, threw the door wide open, and said,
with countless blinkings: "In the laboratory we are uninterrupted.
I was at a loss to guess where that most unpleasant effect on the
senses came from. They are always 'guessing' through the nose. I
mean, the remainder of breakfast here. Perhaps I satirized them
too smartly--if you know the letters. When they are not
'calculating'. More offensive than debris of a midnight banquet!
An American tour is instructive, though not so romantic. Not so
romantic as Italy, I mean. Let us escape."