The Egoist

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She held back from his arm. She had scattered his brains; it was
pitiable: but she was in the torrent and could not suffer a pause
or a change of place.

"It must be here; one minute more--I cannot go elsewhere to begin
again. Speak to me here; answer my request. Once; one word. If you
forgive me, it will be superhuman. But, release me."

"Seriously," he rejoined, "tea-cups and coffee-cups, breadcrumbs.
egg-shells, caviare, butter, beef, bacon! Can we? The room reeks."

"Then I will go for my walk with Miss Dale. And you will speak to
me when I return?"

"At all seasons. You shall go with Miss Dale. But, my dear! my
love! Seriously, where are we? One hears of lover's quarrels. Now
I never quarrel. It is a characteristic of mine. And you speak of
me to my cousin Vernon! Seriously, plighted faith signifies
plighted faith, as much as an iron-cable is iron to hold by. Some
little twist of the mind? To Vernon, of all men! Tush! she has
been dreaming of a hero of perfection, and the comparison is
unfavourable to her Willoughby. But, my Clara, when I say to you,
that bride is bride, and you are mine, mine!"

"Willoughby, you mentioned them,--those separations of two
married. You said, if they do not love . . . Oh! say, is it not
better--instead of later?"

He took advantage of her modesty in speaking to exclaim. "Where
are we now? Bride is bride, and wife is wife, and affianced is, in
honour, wedded. You cannot be released. We are united. Recognize
it; united. There is no possibility of releasing a wife!"

"Not if she ran ... ?"

This was too direct to be histrionically misunderstood. He had
driven her to the extremity of more distinctly imagining the
circumstance she had cited, and with that cleared view the
desperate creature gloried in launching such a bolt at the man's
real or assumed insensibility as must, by shivering it, waken him.

But in a moment she stood in burning rose, with dimmed eyesight.
She saw his horror, and, seeing, shared it; shared just then only
by seeing it; which led her to rejoice with the deepest of sighs
that some shame was left in her.

"Ran? ran? ran?" he said as rapidly as he blinked. "How? where?
what idea ... ?"

Close was he upon an explosion that would have sullied his
conception of the purity of the younger members of the sex
hauntingly.

That she, a young lady, maiden, of strictest education, should,
and without his teaching, know that wives ran!--know that by
running they compelled their husbands to abandon pursuit, surrender
possession!--and that she should suggest it of herself as a wife!--
that she should speak of running!

His ideal, the common male Egoist ideal of a waxwork sex, would
have been shocked to fragments had she spoken further to fill in
the outlines of these awful interjections.

She was tempted: for during the last few minutes the fire of her
situation had enlightened her understanding upon a subject far
from her as the ice-fields of the North a short while before; and
the prospect offered to her courage if she would only outstare
shame and seem at home in the doings of wickedness, was his
loathing and dreading so vile a young woman. She restrained
herself; chiefly, after the first bridling of maidenly timidity,
because she could not bear to lower the idea of her sex even in
his esteem.

The door was open. She had thoughts of flying out to breathe in an
interval of truce.

She reflected on her situation hurriedly askance:

"If one must go through this, to be disentangled from an
engagement, what must it be to poor women seeking to be free of a
marriage?"

Had she spoken it, Sir Willoughby might have learned that she was
not so iniquitously wise of the things of this world as her mere
sex's instinct, roused to the intemperateness of a creature
struggling with fetters, had made her appear in her dash to seize
a weapon, indicated moreover by him.

Clara took up the old broken vow of women to vow it afresh: "Never
to any man will I give my hand."

She replied to Sir Willoughby, "I have said all. I cannot explain
what I have said."

She had heard a step in the passage. Vernon entered.

Perceiving them, he stated his mission in apology: "Doctor
Middleton left a book in this room. I see it; it's a Heinsius."

"Ha! by the way, a book; books would not be left here if they
were not brought here, with my compliments to Doctor Middleton,
who may do as he pleases, though, seriously, order is order," said
Sir Willoughby. "Come away to the laboratory, Clara. It's a
comment on human beings that wherever they have been there's a
mess, and you admirers of them," he divided a sickly nod between
Vernon and the stale breakfast-table, "must make what you can of
it. Come, Clara."

Clara protested that she was engaged to walk with Miss Dale.

"Miss Dale is waiting in the hall," said Vernon.

"Miss Dale is waiting?" said Clara.

"Walk with Miss Dale; walk with Miss Dale," Sir Willoughby
remarked, pressingly. "I will beg her to wait another two minutes.
You shall find her in the hall when you come down."

He rang the bell and went out.

"Take Miss Dale into your confidence; she is quite trustworthy,"
Vernon said to Clara.

"I have not advanced one step," she replied.

"Recollect that you are in a position of your own choosing; and
if, after thinking over it, you mean to escape, you must make up
your mind to pitched battles, and not be dejected if you are
beaten in all of them; there is your only chance."

"Not my choosing; do not say choosing, Mr. Whitford. I did not
choose. I was incapable of really choosing. I consented."

"It's the same in fact. But be sure of what you wish."

"Yes," she assented, taking it for her just punishment that she
should be supposed not quite to know her wishes. "Your advice has
helped me to-day."

"Did I advise?"

"Do you regret advising?"

"I should certainly regret a word that intruded between you and
him."

"But you will not leave the Hall yet? You will not leave me
without a friend? If papa and I were to leave to-morrow, I foresee
endless correspondence. I have to stay at least some days, and
wear through it, and then, if I have to speak to my poor father,
you can imagine the effect on him."

Sir Willoughby came striding in, to correct the error of his going
out.

"Miss Dale awaits you, my dear. You have bonnet, hat?--No? Have
you forgotten your appointment to walk with her?"

"I am ready," said Clara, departing.

The two gentlemen behind her separated in the passage. They had
not spoken.

She had read of the reproach upon women, that they divide the
friendships of men. She reproached herself but she was in action,
driven by necessity, between sea and rock. Dreadful to think of!
she was one of the creatures who are written about.

CHAPTER XVI

Clara and Laetitia

In spite of his honourable caution, Vernon had said things to
render Miss Middleton more angrily determined than she had been in
the scene with Sir Willoughby. His counting on pitched battles and
a defeat for her in all of them, made her previous feelings
appear slack in comparison with the energy of combat now animating
her. And she could vehemently declare that she had not chosen; she
was too young, too ignorant to choose. He had wrongly used that
word; it sounded malicious; and to call consenting the same in
fact as choosing was wilfully unjust. Mr. Whitford meant well; he
was conscientious, very conscientious. But he was not the hero
descending from heaven bright-sworded to smite a woman's fetters
of her limbs and deliver her from the yawning mouth-abyss.

His logical coolness of expostulation with her when she cast aside
the silly mission entrusted to her by Sir Willoughby and wept for
herself, was unheroic in proportion to its praiseworthiness. He
had left it to her to do everything she wished done, stipulating
simply that there should be a pause of four-and-twenty hours for
her to consider of it before she proceeded in the attempt to
extricate herself. Of consolation there had not been a word. Said
he, "I am the last man to give advice in such a case". Yet she had
by no means astonished him when her confession came out. It came
out, she knew not how. It was led up to by his declining the idea
of marriage, and her congratulating him on his exemption from the
prospect of the yoke, but memory was too dull to revive the one or
two fiery minutes of broken language when she had been guilty of
her dire misconduct.

This gentleman was no flatterer, scarcely a friend. He could look
on her grief without soothing her. Supposing he had soothed her
warmly? All her sentiments collected in her bosom to dash in
reprobation of him at the thought. She nevertheless condemned him
for his excessive coolness; his transparent anxiety not to be
compromised by a syllable; his air of saying, "I guessed as much,
but why plead your case to me?" And his recommendation to her to
be quite sure she did know what she meant, was a little insulting.
She exonerated him from the intention; he treated her as a girl.
By what he said of Miss Dale, he proposed that lady for imitation.

"I must be myself or I shall be playing hypocrite to dig my own
pitfall," she said to herself, while taking counsel with Laetitia
as to the route for their walk, and admiring a becoming curve in
her companion's hat.

Sir Willoughby, with many protestations of regret that letters of
business debarred him from the pleasure of accompanying them,
remarked upon the path proposed by Miss Dale, "In that case you
must have a footman."

"Then we adopt the other," said Clara, and they set forth.

"Sir Willoughby," Miss Dale said to her, "is always in alarm about
our unprotectedness."

Clara glanced up at the clouds and closed her parasol. She
replied, "It inspires timidity."

There was that in the accent and character of the answer which
warned Laetitia to expect the reverse of a quiet chatter with Miss
Middleton.

"You are fond of walking?" She chose a peaceful topic.

"Walking or riding; yes, of walking," said Clara. "The difficulty
is to find companions."

"We shall lose Mr. Whitford next week."

"He goes?"

"He will be a great loss to me, for I do not ride," Laetitia
replied to the off-hand inquiry.

"Ah!"

Miss Middleton did not fan conversation when she simply breathed
her voice.

Laetitia tried another neutral theme.

"The weather to-day suits our country," she said.

"England, or Patterne Park? I am so devoted to mountains that I
have no enthusiasm for flat land."

"Do you call our country flat, Miss Middleton? We have
undulations, hills, and we have sufficient diversity, meadows,
rivers, copses, brooks, and good roads, and pretty by-paths."

"The prettiness is overwhelming. It is very pretty to see; but to
live with, I think I prefer ugliness. I can imagine learning to
love ugliness. It's honest. However young you are, you cannot he
deceived by it. These parks of rich people are a part of the
prettiness. I would rather have fields, commons."

"The parks give us delightful green walks, paths through
beautiful woods."

"If there is a right-of-way for the public."

"There should be," said Miss Dale, wondering; and Clara cried: "I
chafe at restraint: hedges and palings everywhere! I should have
to travel ten years to sit down contented among these
fortifications. Of course I can read of this rich kind of English
country with pleasure in poetry. But it seems to me to require
poetry. What would you say of human beings requiring it?"

"That they are not so companionable but that the haze of distance
improves the view."

"Then you do know that you are the wisest?"

Laetitia raised her dark eyelashes; she sought to understand. She
could only fancy she did; and if she did, it meant that Miss
Middleton thought her wise in remaining single.

Clara was full of a sombre preconception that her "jealousy" had
been hinted to Miss Dale.

"You knew Miss Durham?" she said.

"Not intimately."

"As well as you know me?"

"Not so well."

"But you saw more of her?"

"She was more reserved with me."

"Oh! Miss Dale, I would not be reserved with you."

The thrill of the voice caused Laetitia to steal a look. Clara's
eyes were bright, and she had the readiness to run to volubility
of the fever-stricken; otherwise she did not betray excitement.

"You will never allow any of these noble trees to be felled, Miss
Middleton?"

"The axe is better than decay, do you not think?"

"I think your influence will be great and always used to good
purpose.

"My influence, Miss Dale? I have begged a favour this morning and
can not obtain the grant."

It was lightly said, but Clara's face was more significant, and
"What?" leaped from Laetitia's lips.

Before she could excuse herself, Clara had answered: "My liberty."

In another and higher tone Laetitia said, "What?" and she looked
round on her companion; she looked in the doubt that is open to
conviction by a narrow aperture, and slowly and painfully yields
access. Clara saw the vacancy of her expression gradually filling
with woefulness.

"I have begged him to release me from my engagement, Miss Dale."

"Sir Willoughby?"

"It is incredible to you. He refuses. You see I have no
influence."

"Miss Middleton, it is terrible!"

"To be dragged to the marriage service against one's will? Yes."

"Oh! Miss Middleton!"

"Do you not think so?"

"That cannot be your meaning."

"You do not suspect me of trifling? You know I would not. I am as
much in earnest as a mouse in a trap."

"No, you will not misunderstand me! Miss Middleton, such a blow to
Sir Willoughby would be shocking, most cruel! He is devoted to
you."

"He was devoted to Miss Durham."

"Not so deeply: differently."

"Was he not very much courted at that time? He is now; not so
much: he is not so young. But my reason for speaking of Miss
Durham was to exclaim at the strangeness of a girl winning her
freedom to plunge into wedlock. Is it comprehensible to you? She
flies from one dungeon into another. These are the acts which
astonish men at our conduct, and cause them to ridicule and, I
dare say, despise us."

"But, Miss Middleton, for Sir Willoughby to grant such a request,
if it was made . . ."

"It was made, and by me, and will be made again. I throw it all on
my unworthiness, Miss Dale. So the county will think of me, and
quite justly. I would rather defend him than myself. He requires a
different wife from anything I can be. That is my discovery;
unhappily a late one. The blame is all mine. The world cannot be
too hard on me. But I must be free if I am to be kind in
my judgements even of the gentleman I have injured."

"So noble a gentleman!" Laetitia sighed.

"I will subscribe to any eulogy of him," said Clara, with a
penetrating thought as to the possibility of a lady experienced in
him like Laetitia taking him for noble. "He has a noble air. I
say it sincerely, that your appreciation of him proves his
nobility." Her feeling of opposition to Sir Willoughby pushed her
to this extravagance, gravely perplexing Laetitia. "And it is,"
added Clara, as if to support what she had said, "a withering
rebuke to me; I know him less, at least have not had so long an
experience of him."

Laetitia pondered on an obscurity in these words which would have
accused her thick intelligence but for a glimmer it threw on
another most obscure communication. She feared it might be,
strange though it seemed, jealousy, a shade of jealousy affecting
Miss Middleton, as had been vaguely intimated by Sir Willoughby
when they were waiting in the hall. "A little feminine ailment,
a want of comprehension of a perfect friendship;" those were his
words to her: and he suggested vaguely that care must be taken in
the eulogy of her friend.

She resolved to be explicit.

"I have not said that I think him beyond criticism, Miss
Middleton."

"Noble?"

"He has faults. When we have known a person for years the faults
come out, but custom makes light of them; and I suppose we feel
flattered by seeing what it would be difficult to be blind to!
A very little flatters us! Now, do you not admire that view? It is
my favourite."

Clara gazed over rolling richness of foliage, wood and water, and
a church-spire, a town and horizon hills. There sung a sky-lark.

"Not even the bird that does not fly away!" she said; meaning, she
had no heart for the bird satisfied to rise and descend in this
place.

Laetitia travelled to some notion, dim and immense, of Miss
Middleton's fever of distaste. She shrunk from it in a kind of
dread lest it might be contagious and rob her of her one ever-fresh
possession of the homely picturesque; but Clara melted her by
saying, "For your sake I could love it ... in time; or some dear
old English scene. Since ... since this ... this change in me, I
find I cannot separate landscape from associations. Now I learn
how youth goes. I have grown years older in a week.--Miss Dale,
if he were to give me my freedom? if he were to cast me off? if he
stood alone?"

"I should pity him."

"Him--not me! Oh! right! I hoped you would; I knew you would."

Laetitia's attempt to shift with Miss Middleton's shiftiness was
vain; for now she seemed really listening to the language
of Jealousy:--jealous of the ancient Letty Dale--and immediately
before the tone was quite void of it.

"Yes," she said, "but you make me feel myself in the dark, and
when I do I have the habit of throwing myself for guidance upon
such light as I have within. You shall know me, if you will, as
well as I know myself. And do not think me far from the point when
I say I have a feeble health. I am what the doctors call anaemic;
a rather bloodless creature. The blood is life, so I have not much
life. Ten years back--eleven, if I must be precise, I thought of
conquering the world with a pen! The result is that I am glad of a
fireside, and not sure of always having one: and that is my
achievement. My days are monotonous, but if I have a dread, it is
that there will be an alteration in them. My father has very
little money. We subsist on what private income he has, and his
pension: he was an army doctor. I may by-and-by have to live in
a town for pupils. I could be grateful to any one who would save
me from that. I should be astonished at his choosing to have me
burden his household as well.--Have I now explained the nature of
my pity? It would be the pity of common sympathy, pure lymph of
pity, as nearly disembodied as can be. Last year's sheddings from
the tree do not form an attractive garland. Their merit is, that
they have not the ambition. I am like them. Now, Miss Middleton, I
cannot make myself more bare to you. I hope you see my sincerity."

"I do see it," Clara said.

With the second heaving of her heart, she cried: "See it, and envy
you that humility! proud if I could ape it! Oh, how proud if I
could speak so truthfully true!--You would not have spoken so to
me without some good feeling out of which friends are made. That I
am sure of. To be very truthful to a person, one must have a
liking. So I judge by myself. Do I presume too much?"

Kindness was on Laetitia's face.

"But now," said Clara, swimming on the wave in her bosom, "I tax
you with the silliest suspicion ever entertained by one of your
rank. Lady, you have deemed me capable of the meanest of our
vices!--Hold this hand, Laetitia; my friend, will you? Something
is going on in me."

Laetitia took her hand, and saw and felt that something was going
on.

Clara said, "You are a woman."

It was her effort to account for the something.

She swam for a brilliant instant on tears, and yielded to the
overflow.

When they had fallen, she remarked upon her first long breath
quite coolly: "An encouraging picture of a rebel, is it not?"

Her companion murmured to soothe her.

"It's little, it's nothing," said Clara, pained to keep her lips
in line.

They walked forward, holding hands, deep-hearted to one another.

"I like this country better now," the shaken girl resumed. "I
could lie down in it and ask only for sleep. I should like to
think of you here. How nobly self-respecting you must be, to speak
as you did! Our dreams of heroes and heroines are cold glitter
beside the reality. I have been lately thinking of myself as an
outcast of my sex, and to have a good woman liking me a little ...
loving? Oh, Laetitia, my friend, I should have kissed you, and not
made this exhibition of myself--and if you call it hysterics, woe
to you! for I bit my tongue to keep it off when I had hardly
strength to bring my teeth together--if that idea of jealousy had
not been in your head. You had it from him."

"I have not alluded to it in any word that I can recollect."

"He can imagine no other cause for my wish to be released. I have
noticed, it is his instinct to reckon on women as constant by
their nature. They are the needles, and he the magnet. Jealousy
of you, Miss Dale! Laetitia, may I speak?"

"Say everything you please."

"I could wish:--Do you know my baptismal name?"

"Clara."

"At last! I could wish ... that is, if it were your wish. Yes, I
could wish that. Next to independence, my wish would be that. I
risk offending you. Do not let your delicacy take arms against
me. I wish him happy in the only way that he can be made happy.
There is my jealousy."

"Was it what you were going to say just now?"

"No."

"I thought not."

"I was going to say--and I believe the rack would not make me
truthful like you, Laetitia--well, has it ever struck you:
remember, I do see his merits; I speak to his faithfullest friend,
and I acknowledge he is attractive, he has manly tastes and
habits; but has it never struck you ... I have no right to ask; I
know that men must have faults, I do not expect them to be saints;
I am not one; I wish I were."

"Has it never struck me ... ?" Laetitia prompted her.

"That very few women are able to be straightforwardly sincere in
their speech, however much they may desire to be?"

"They are differently educated. Great misfortune brings it to
them."

"I am sure your answer is correct. Have you ever known a woman who
was entirely an Egoist?"

"Personally known one? We are not better than men."

"I do not pretend that we are. I have latterly become an Egoist,
thinking of no one but myself, scheming to make use of every soul
I meet. But then, women are in the position of inferiors. They are
hardly out of the nursery when a lasso is round their necks; and
if they have beauty, no wonder they turn it to a weapon and make
as many captives as they can. I do not wonder! My sense of shame
at my natural weakness and the arrogance of men would urge me to
make hundreds captive, if that is being a coquette. I should not
have compassion for those lofty birds, the hawks. To see them with
their wings clipped would amuse me. Is there any other way of
punishing them?"

"Consider what you lose in punishing them."

"I consider what they gain if we do not."

Laetitia supposed she was listening to discursive observations
upon the inequality in the relations of the sexes. A suspicion of
a drift to a closer meaning had been lulled, and the colour
flooded her swiftly when Clara said: "Here is the difference I
see; I see it; I am certain of it: women who are called coquettes
make their conquests not of the best of men; but men who are
Egoists have good women for their victims; women on whose devoted
constancy they feed; they drink it like blood. I am sure I am not
taking the merely feminine view. They punish themselves too by
passing over the one suitable to them, who could really give them
what they crave to have, and they go where they . . ." Clara
stopped. "I have not your power to express ideas," she said.

"Miss Middleton, you have a dreadful power," said Laetitia.

Clara smiled affectionately. "I am not aware of any. Whose cottage
is this?"

"My father's. Will you not come in? into the garden?"

Clara took note of ivied windows and roses in the porch. She
thanked Laetitia and said: "I will call for you in an hour."

"Are you walking on the road alone?" said Laetitia, incredulously,
with an eye to Sir Willoughby's dismay.

"I put my trust in the high-road," Clara replied, and turned
away, but turned back to Laetitia and offered her face to be
kissed.

The "dreadful power" of this young lady had fervently impressed
Laetitia, and in kissing her she marvelled at her gentleness and
girlishness.

Clara walked on, unconscious of her possession of power of any
kind.

CHAPTER XVII

The Porcelain Vase

During the term of Clara's walk with Laetitia, Sir Willoughby's
shrunken self-esteem, like a garment hung to the fire after
exposure to tempestuous weather, recovered some of the sleekness
of its velvet pile in the society of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson,
who represented to him the world he feared and tried to keep sunny
for himself by all the arts he could exercise. She expected him
to be the gay Sir Willoughby, and her look being as good as an
incantation summons, he produced the accustomed sprite, giving her
sally for sally. Queens govern the polite. Popularity with men,
serviceable as it is for winning favouritism with women, is of
poor value to a sensitive gentleman, anxious even to prognostic
apprehension on behalf of his pride, his comfort and his
prevalence. And men are grossly purchasable; good wines have them,
good cigars, a goodfellow air: they are never quite worth their
salt even then; you can make head against their ill looks. But the
looks of women will at one blow work on you the downright
difference which is between the cock of lordly plume and the
moulting. Happily they may be gained: a clever tongue will gain
them, a leg. They are with you to a certainty if Nature is with
you; if you are elegant and discreet: if the sun is on you, and
they see you shining in it; or if they have seen you well-stationed
and handsome in the sun. And once gained they are your mirrors
for life, and far more constant than the glass. That tale of
their caprice is absurd. Hit their imaginations once, they are
your slaves, only demanding common courtier service of you. They
will deny that you are ageing, they will cover you from scandal,
they will refuse to see you ridiculous. Sir Willoughby's
instinct, or skin, or outfloating feelers, told him of these
mysteries of the influence of the sex; he had as little need to
study them as a lady breathed on.