The Egoist

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"The laugh told me that," said Colonel De Craye.

Laetitia and Vernon paced up and down the lawn. Colonel De Craye
was talking with English sedateness to the ladies Eleanor and
Isabel. Clara and young Crossjay strayed.

"If I might advise, I would say, do not leave the Hall
immediately, not yet," Laetitia said to Vernon.

"You know, then?"

"I cannot understand why it was that I was taken into her
confidence."

"I counselled it."

"But it was done without an object that I can see."

"The speaking did her good."

"But how capricious! how changeful!"

"Better now than later."

"Surely she has only to ask to be released?--to ask earnestly:
if it is her wish."

"You are mistaken."

"Why does she not make a confidant of her father?"

"That she will have to do. She wished to spare him."

"He cannot be spared if she is to break the engagement."

She thought of sparing him the annoyance. "Now there's to be a
tussle, he must share in it."

"Or she thought he might not side with her?"

"She has not a single instinct of cunning. You judge her
harshly."

"She moved me on the walk out. Coming home I felt differently."

Vernon glanced at Colonel De Craye.

"She wants good guidance," continued Laetitia.

"She has not an idea of treachery."

"You think so? It may be true. But she seems one born devoid of
patience, easily made reckless. There is a wildness ... I judge
by her way of speaking; that at least appeared sincere. She does
not practise concealment. He will naturally find it almost
incredible. The change in her, so sudden, so wayward, is
unintelligible to me. To me it is the conduct of a creature
untamed. He may hold her to her word and be justified."

"Let him look out if he does!"

Is not that harsher than anything I have said of her?"

"I'm not appointed to praise her. I fancy I read the case; and it's
a case of opposition of temperaments. We never can tell the person
quite suited to us; it strikes us in a flash."

"That they are not suited to us? Oh, no; that comes by degrees."

"Yes, but the accumulation of evidence, or sentience, if you like,
is combustible; we don't command the spark; it may be late in
falling. And you argue in her favour. Consider her as a generous
and impulsive girl, outwearied at last."

"By what?"

By anything; by his loftiness, if you like. He flies too high for
her, we will say."

"Sir Willoughby an eagle?"

"She may be tired of his eyrie."

The sound of the word in Vernon's mouth smote on a consciousness
she had of his full grasp of Sir Willoughby and her own timid
knowledge, though he was not a man who played on words.

If he had eased his heart in stressing the first syllable, it was
only temporary relief. He was heavy-browed enough.

"But I cannot conceive what she expects me to do by confiding her
sense of her position to me," said Laetitia.

"We none of us know what will be done. We hang on Willoughby, who
hangs on whatever it is that supports him: and there we are in a
swarm."

"You see the wisdom of staying, Mr. Whitford."

"It must be over in a day or two. Yes, I stay."

"She inclines to obey you."

"I should be sorry to stake my authority on her obedience. We
must decide something about Crossjay, and get the money for his
crammer, if it is to be got. If not, I may get a man to trust me.
I mean to drag the boy away. Willoughby has been at him with the
tune of gentleman, and has laid hold of him by one ear. When I say
'her obedience,' she is not in a situation, nor in a condition to
be led blindly by anybody. She must rely on herself, do everything
herself. It's a knot that won't bear touching by any hand save
hers."

"I fear . . ." said Laetitia.

"Have no such fear."

"If it should come to his positively refusing."

"He faces the consequences."

"You do not think of her."

Vernon looked at his companion.

CHAPTER XIX

Colonel De Craye and Clara Middleton

MISS MIDDLETON finished her stroll with Crossjay by winding her
trailer of ivy in a wreath round his hat and sticking her bunch of
grasses in the wreath. She then commanded him to sit on the ground
beside a big rhododendron, there to await her return. Crossjay had
informed her of a design he entertained to be off with a horde of
boys nesting in high trees, and marking spots where wasps and
hornets were to be attacked in Autumn: she thought it a dangerous
business, and as the boy's dinner-bell had very little restraint
over him when he was in the flush of a scheme of this description,
she wished to make tolerably sure of him through the charm she not
unreadily believed she could fling on lads of his age. "Promise me
you will not move from here until I come back, and when I come I
will give you a kiss." Crossjay promised. She left him and forgot
him.

Seeing by her watch fifteen minutes to the ringing of the bell, a
sudden resolve that she would speak to her father without another
minute's delay had prompted her like a superstitious impulse to
abandon her aimless course and be direct. She knew what was good
for her; she knew it now more clearly than in the morning. To be
taken away instantly! was her cry. There could be no further
doubt. Had there been any before? But she would not in the morning
have suspected herself of a capacity for evil, and of a pressing
need to be saved from herself. She was not pure of nature: it may
be that we breed saintly souls which are: she was pure of will:
fire rather than ice. And in beginning to see the elements she
was made of she did not shuffle them to a heap with her sweet
looks to front her. She put to her account some strength, much
weakness; she almost dared to gaze unblinking at a perilous evil
tendency. The glimpse of it drove her to her father.

"He must take me away at once; to-morrow!"

She wished to spare her father. So unsparing of herself was she,
that, in her hesitation to speak to him of her change of feeling
for Sir Willoughby, she would not suffer it to be attributed in
her own mind to a daughter's anxious consideration about her
father's loneliness; an idea she had indulged formerly.
Acknowledging that it was imperative she should speak, she
understood that she had refrained, even to the inflicting upon
herself of such humiliation as to run dilating on her woes to
others. because of the silliest of human desires to preserve her
reputation for consistency. She had heard women abused for
shallowness and flightiness: she had heard her father denounce
them as veering weather-vanes, and his oft-repeated quid femina
possit: for her sex's sake, and also to appear an exception to
her sex, this reasoning creature desired to be thought consistent.

Just on the instant of her addressing him, saying: "Father," a note
of seriousness in his ear. it struck her that the occasion for
saying all had not yet arrived, and she quickly interposed:
"Papa"; and helped him to look lighter. The petition to be taken
away was uttered.

"To London?" said Dr. Middleton. "I don't know who'll take us in."

"To France, papa?"

"That means hotel-life."

"Only for two or three weeks."

"Weeks! I am under an engagement to dine with Mrs
Mountstuart Jenkinson five days hence: that is, on Thursday."

"Could we not find an excuse?"

"Break an engagement? No, my dear, not even to escape drinking a
widow's wine."

"Does a word bind us?"

"Why, what else should?"

"I think I am not very well."

"We'll call in that man we met at dinner here: Corney: a capital
doctor; an old-fashioned anecdotal doctor. How is it you are not
well, my love? You look well. I cannot conceive your not being
well."

"It is only that I want change of air, papa."

"There we are--a change! semper eadem! Women will be wanting a
change of air in Paradise; a change of angels too, I might surmise.
A change from quarters like these to a French hotel would be a
descent!--'this the seat, this mournful gloom for that celestial
light.?' I am perfectly at home in the library here. That
excellent fellow Whitford and I have real days: and I like him for
showing fight to his elder and better."

"He is going to leave."

"I know nothing of it, and I shall append no credit to the tale
until I do know. He is headstrong, but he answers to a rap."

Clara's bosom heaved. The speechless insurrection threatened her
eyes.

A South-west shower lashed the window-panes and suggested to Dr.
Middleton shuddering visions of the Channel passage on board a
steamer.

"Corney shall see you: he is a sparkling draught in person;
probably illiterate, if I may judge from one interruption of my
discourse when he sat opposite me, but lettered enough to respect
Learning and write out his prescription: I do not ask more of men
or of physicians." Dr. Middleton said this rising, glancing at the
clock and at the back of his hands. "'Quod autem secundum litteras
difficillimum esse artificium?' But what after letters is the more
difficult practice? 'Ego puto medicum.' The medicus next to the
scholar: though I have not to my recollection required him next
me, nor ever expected child of mine to be crying for that milk.
Daughter she is--of the unexplained sex: we will send a messenger
for Corney. Change, my dear, you will speedily have, to satisfy
the most craving of women, if Willoughby, as I suppose, is in the
neoteric fashion of spending a honeymoon on a railway: apt image,
exposition and perpetuation of the state of mania conducting to
the institution! In my time we lay by to brood on happiness; we
had no thought of chasing it over a continent, mistaking
hurly-burly clothed in dust for the divinity we sought. A smaller
generation sacrifices to excitement. Dust and hurly-burly must
perforce be the issue. And that is your modern world. Now, my
dear, let us go and wash our hands. Midday-bells expect immediate
attention. They know of no anteroom of assembly."

Clara stood gathered up, despairing at opportunity lost. He had
noticed her contracted shape and her eyes, and had talked
magisterially to smother and overbear the something disagreeable
prefigured in her appearance.

"You do not despise your girl, father?"

I do not; I could not; I love her; I love my girl. But you need
not sing to me like a gnat to propound that question, my dear."

"Then, father, tell Willoughby to-day we have to leave tomorrow.
You shall return in time for Mrs. Mountstuart's dinner. Friends
will take us in, the Darletons, the Erpinghams. We can go to
Oxford, where you are sure of welcome. A little will recover me.
Do not mention doctors. But you see I am nervous. I am quite
ashamed of it; I am well enough to laugh at it, only I cannot
overcome it; and I feel that a day or two will restore me. Say you
will. Say it in First-Lesson-Book language; anything above a
primer splits my foolish head to-day."

Dr Middleton shrugged, spreading out his arms.

"The office of ambassador from you to Willoughby, Clara? You
decree me to the part of ball between two bats. The Play being
assured, the prologue is a bladder of wind. I seem to be
instructed in one of the mysteries of erotic esotery, yet on my
word I am no wiser. If Willoughby is to hear anything from you, he
will hear it from your lips."

"Yes, father, yes. We have differences. I am not fit for contests
at present; my head is giddy. I wish to avoid an illness. He and
I ... I accuse myself."

"There is the bell!" ejaculated Dr. Middleton. "I'll debate on it
with Willoughby."

"This afternoon?"

"Somewhen, before the dinner-bell. I cannot tie myself to the
minute-hand of the clock, my dear child. And let me direct you,
for the next occasion when you shall bring the vowels I and A, in
verbally detached letters, into collision, that you do not fill
the hiatus with so pronounced a Y. It is the vulgarization of our
tongue of which I accuse you. I do not like my girl to be guilty
of it."

He smiled to moderate the severity of the correction, and kissed
her forehead.

She declared her inability to sit and eat; she went to her room,
after begging him very earnestly to send her the assurance that he
had spoken. She had not shed a tear, and she rejoiced in her
self-control; it whispered to her of true courage when she had
given herself such evidence of the reverse.

Shower and sunshine alternated through the half-hours of the
afternoon, like a procession of dark and fair holding hands and
passing. The shadow came, and she was chill; the light yellow in
moisture, and she buried her face not to be caught up by
cheerfulness. Believing that her head ached, she afflicted herself
with all the heavy symptoms, and oppressed her mind so thoroughly
that its occupation was to speculate on Laetitia Dale's modest
enthusiasm for rural pleasures, for this place especially, with
its rich foliage and peeps of scenic peace. The prospect of an
escape from it inspired thoughts of a loveable round of life where
the sun was not a naked ball of fire, but a friend clothed in
woodland; where park and meadow swept to well-known features East
and West; and distantly circling hills, and the hearts of poor
cottagers too--sympathy with whom assured her of goodness--were
familiar, homely to the dweller in the place, morning and night.
And she had the love of wild flowers, the watchful happiness in
the seasons; poets thrilled her, books absorbed. She dwelt
strongly on that sincerity of feeling; it gave her root in our
earth; she needed it as she pressed a hand on her eyeballs,
conscious of acting the invalid, though the reasons she had for
languishing under headache were so convincing that her brain
refused to disbelieve in it and went some way to produce positive
throbs. Otherwise she had no excuse for shutting herself in her
room. Vernon Whitford would be sceptical. Headache or none,
Colonel De Craye must be thinking strangely of her; she had not
shown him any sign of illness. His laughter and his talk sung
about her and dispersed the fiction; he was the very sea-wind for
bracing unstrung nerves. Her ideas reverted to Sir Willoughby, and
at once they had no more cohesion than the foam on a
torrent-water.

But soon she was undergoing a variation of sentiment.
Her maid Barclay brought her this pencilled line from her father:

"Factum est; laetus est; amantium irae, etc."

That it was done, that Willoughby had put on an air of glad
acquiescence, and that her father assumed the existence of a
lovers" quarrel, was wonderful to her at first sight, simple the
succeeding minute. Willoughby indeed must be tired of her, glad of
her going. He would know that it was not to return. She was
grateful to him for perhaps hinting at the amantium irae, though
she rejected the folly of the verse. And she gazed over dear
homely country through her windows now. Happy the lady of the
place, if happy she can be in her choice! Clara Middleton envied
her the double-blossom wild cherry-tree, nothing else. One sprig
of it, if it had not faded and gone to dust-colour like crusty
Alpine snow in the lower hollows, and then she could depart,
bearing away a memory of the best here! Her fiction of the
headache pained her no longer. She changed her muslin dress for
silk; she was contented with the first bonnet Barclay presented.
Amicable toward every one in the house, Willoughby included, she
threw up her window, breathed. blessed mankind; and she thought:
"If Willoughby would open his heart to nature, he would be
relieved of his wretched opinion of the world." Nature was then
sparkling refreshed in the last drops of a sweeping rain-curtain,
favourably disposed for a background to her joyful optimism. A
little nibble of hunger within, real hunger, unknown to her of
late, added to this healthy view, without precipitating her to
appease it; she was more inclined to foster it, for the sake of
the sinewy activity of mind and limb it gave her; and in the style
of young ladies very light of heart, she went downstairs like a
cascade, and like the meteor observed in its vanishing trace she
alighted close to Colonel De Craye and entered one of the rooms
off the hall.

He cocked an eye at the half-shut door.

Now you have only to be reminded that it is the habit of the
sportive gentleman of easy life, bewildered as he would otherwise
be by the tricks, twists, and windings of the hunted sex, to
parcel out fair women into classes; and some are flyers and some
are runners; these birds are wild on the wing, those exposed their
bosoms to the shot. For him there is no individual woman. He
grants her a characteristic only to enroll her in a class. He is
our immortal dunce at learning to distinguish her as a personal
variety, of a separate growth.

Colonel De Craye's cock of the eye at the door said that he had
seen a rageing coquette go behind it. He had his excuse for
forming the judgement. She had spoken strangely of the fall of his
wedding-present, strangely of Willoughby; or there was a sound of
strangeness in an allusion to her appointed husband: and she had
treated Willoughby strangely when they met. Above all, her word
about Flitch was curious. And then that look of hers! And
subsequently she transferred her polite attentions to Willoughby's
friend. After a charming colloquy, the sweetest give and take
rattle he had ever enjoyed with a girl, she developed headache to
avoid him; and next she developed blindness, for the same purpose.

He was feeling hurt, but considered it preferable to feel
challenged.

Miss Middleton came out of another door. She had seen him when
she had passed him and when it was too late to convey her
recognition; and now she addressed him with an air of having bowed
as she went by.

"No one?" she said. "Am I alone in the house?"

"There is a figure naught," said he, "but it's as good as
annihilated, and no figure at all, if you put yourself on the
wrong side of it, and wish to be alone in the house."

"Where is Willoughby?"

"Away on business."

"Riding?"

"Achmet is the horse, and pray don't let him be sold, Miss
Middleton. I am deputed to attend on you."

"I should like a stroll."

"Are you perfectly restored?"

"Perfectly."

"Strong?"

"I was never better."

"It was the answer of the ghost of the wicked old man's wife when
she came to persuade him he had one chance remaining. Then, says
he, I'll believe in heaven if ye'll stop that bottle, and hurls
it; and the bottle broke and he committed suicide, not without
suspicion of her laying a trap for him. These showers curling away
and leaving sweet scents are divine, Miss Middleton. I have the
privilege of the Christian name on the nuptial-day. This park of
Willoughby's is one of the best things in England. There's a
glimpse over the lake that smokes of a corner of Killarney; tempts
the eye to dream, I mean." De Craye wound his finger spirally
upward, like a smoke-wreath. "Are you for Irish scenery?"

"Irish, English, Scottish."

"All's one so long as it's beautiful: yes, you speak for me.
Cosmopolitanism of races is a different affair. I beg leave to
doubt the true union of some; Irish and Saxon, for example, let
Cupid be master of the ceremonies and the dwelling-place of the
happy couple at the mouth of a Cornucopia. Yet I have seen a
flower of Erin worn by a Saxon gentleman proudly; and the Hibernian
courting a Rowena! So we'll undo what I said, and consider it
cancelled."

"Are you of the rebel party, Colonel De Craye?"

"I am Protestant and Conservative, Miss Middleton."

"I have not a head for politics."

"The political heads I have seen would tempt me to that opinion."

"Did Willoughby say when he would be back?"

"He named no particular time. Doctor Middleton and Mr. Whitford
are in the library upon a battle of the books."

"Happy battle!"

"You are accustomed to scholars. They are rather intolerant of us
poor fellows."

"Of ignorance perhaps; not of persons."

"Your father educated you himself, I presume?"

"He gave me as much Latin as I could take. The fault is mine that
it is little."

"Greek?"

"A little Greek."

"Ah! And you carry it like a feather."

"Because it is so light."

"Miss Middleton, I could sit down to be instructed, old as I am.
When women beat us, I verily believe we are the most beaten dogs
in existence. You like the theatre?"

"Ours?"

"Acting, then."

"Good acting, of course."

"May I venture to say you would act admirably?"

"The venture is bold, for I have never tried."

"Let me see; there is Miss Dale and Mr. Whitford; you and I;
sufficient for a two-act piece. THE IRISHMAN IN SPAIN would do."
He bent to touch the grass as she stepped on it. "The lawn is
wet."

She signified that she had no dread of wet, and said: "English
women afraid of the weather might as well be shut up."

De Craye proceeded: "Patrick O'Neill passes over from Hibernia to
Iberia, a disinherited son of a father in the claws of the
lawyers, with a letter of introduction to Don Beltran d'Arragon, a
Grandee of the First Class, who has a daughter Dona Seraphina
(Miss Middleton), the proudest beauty of her day, in the custody
of a duenna (Miss Dale), and plighted to Don Fernan, of the Guzman
family (Mr. Whitford). There you have our dramatis personae."

"You are Patrick?"

"Patrick himself. And I lose my letter, and I stand on the Prado of
Madrid with the last portrait of Britannia in the palm of my hand,
and crying in the purest brogue of my native land: 'It's all
through dropping a letter I'm here in Iberia instead of Hibernia,
worse luck to the spelling!'"

"But Patrick will be sure to aspirate the initial letter of
Hibernia."

"That is clever criticism, upon my word, Miss Middleton! So he
would. And there we have two letters dropped. But he'd do it in a
groan, so that it wouldn't count for more than a ghost of one; and
everything goes on the stage, since it's only the laugh we want on
the brink of the action. Besides you are to suppose the
performance before a London audience, who have a native opposite
to the aspirate and wouldn't bear to hear him spoil a joke, as if
he were a lord or a constable. It's an instinct of the English
democracy. So with my bit of coin turning over and over in an
undecided way, whether it shall commit suicide to supply me a
supper, I behold a pair of Spanish eyes like violet lightning in
the black heavens of that favoured clime. Won't you have violet?"

"Violet forbids my impersonation."

"But the lustre on black is dark violet blue."

"You remind me that I have no pretension to black."

Colonel De Craye permitted himself to take a flitting gaze at Miss
Middleton's eyes. "Chestnut," he said. "Well, and Spain is the
land of chestnuts."

"Then it follows that I am a daughter of Spain."

"Clearly."

"Logically?"

"By positive deduction."

"And do I behold Patrick?"

"As one looks upon a beast of burden."

"Oh!"

Miss Middleton's exclamation was louder than the matter of the
dialogue seemed to require. She caught her hands up.

In the line of the outer extremity of the rhododendron, screened
from the house windows, young Crossjay lay at his length, with his
head resting on a doubled arm, and his ivy-wreathed hat on his
cheek, just where she had left him, commanding him to stay.
Half-way toward him up the lawn, she saw the poor boy, and the
spur of that pitiful sight set her gliding swiftly. Colonel De
Craye followed, pulling an end of his moustache.

Crossjay jumped to his feet.

"My dear, dear Crossjay!" she addressed him and reproached him.
"And how hungry you must be! And you must be drenched! This is
really too had."

"You told me to wait here," said Crossjay, in shy self-defence.

"I did, and you should not have done it, foolish boy! I told him
to wait for me here before luncheon, Colonel De Craye, and the
foolish, foolish boy!--he has had nothing to eat, and he must
have been wet through two or three times:--because I did not come
to him!"

"Quite right. And the lava might overflow him and take the mould
of him. like the sentinel at Pompeii, if he's of the true stuff."

"He may have caught cold, he may have a fever."

"He was under your orders to stay."

"I know. and I cannot forgive myself. Run in, Crossjay, and change
your clothes. Oh, run, run to Mrs. Montague, and get her to give
you a warm bath, and tell her from me to prepare some dinner for
you. And change every garment you have. This is unpardonable of
me. I said--'not for politics!'--I begin to think I have not a
head for anything. But could it be imagined that Crossjay would
not move for the dinner-bell! through all that rain! I forgot
you, Crossjay. I am so sorry; so sorry! You shall make me pay any
forfeit you like. Remember, I am deep, deep in your debt. And now
let me see you run fast. You shall come in to dessert this
evening."

Crossjay did not run. He touched her hand.

"You said something?"

"What did I say, Crossjay?"

"You promised."

"What did I promise?"

"Something."

"Name it, my dear boy."

He mumbled, ". . . kiss me."

Clara plumped down on him, enveloped him and kissed him.

The affectionately remorseful impulse was too quick for a
conventional note of admonition to arrest her from paying that
portion of her debt. When she had sped him off to Mrs Montague,
she was in a blush.

"Dear, dear Crossjay!" she said, sighing.