The Egoist

G >> George Meredith >> The Egoist

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42

"He would."

"I suppose he is hardly peculiar in liking to play Pole-star."

"He may not be."

"For the rest, your influence should be all-powerful."

"it is not."

De Craye looked with a wandering eye at the heavens.

"We are having a spell of weather perfectly superb. And the odd
thing is, that whenever we have splendid weather at home we're all
for rushing abroad. I'm booked for a Mediterranean cruise--
postponed to give place to your ceremony."

"That?" she could not control her accent.

"What worthier?"

She was guilty of a pause.

De Craye saved it from an awkward length. "I have written half an
essay on Honeymoons, Miss Middleton."

"Is that the same as a half-written essay, Colonel De Craye?"

"Just the same, with the difference that it's a whole essay written
all on one side."

"On which side?"

"The bachelor's."

"Why does he trouble himself with such topics?"

"To warm himself for being left out in the cold."

"Does he feel envy?"

"He has to confess it."

"He has liberty."

"A commodity he can't tell the value of if there's no one to buy."

"Why should he wish to sell?"

"He's bent on completing his essay."

"To make the reading dull."

"There we touch the key of the subject. For what is to rescue the
pair from a monotony multiplied by two? And so a bachelor's
recommendation, when each has discovered the right sort of person
to be dull with, pushes them from the churchdoor on a round of
adventures containing a spice of peril, if 'tis to be had. Let
them be in danger of their lives the first or second day. A
bachelor's loneliness is a private affair of his own; he hasn't to
look into a face to be ashamed of feeling it and inflicting it at
the same time; 'tis his pillow; he can punch it an he pleases, and
turn it over t'other side, if he's for a mighty variation; there's
a dream in it. But our poor couple are staring wide awake. All
their dreaming's done. They've emptied their bottle of elixir, or
broken it; and she has a thirst for the use of the tongue, and he
to yawn with a crony; and they may converse, they're not aware of
it, more than the desert that has drunk a shower. So as soon as
possible she's away to the ladies, and he puts on his Club. That's
what your bachelor sees and would like to spare them; and if he
didn't see something of the sort he'd be off with a noose round
his neck, on his knees in the dew to the morning milkmaid."

"The bachelor is happily warned and on his guard," said Clara,
diverted, as he wished her to be. "Sketch me a few of the
adventures you propose."

"I have a friend who rowed his bride from the Houses of Parliament
up the Thames to the Severn on into North Wales. They shot some
pretty weirs and rapids."

"That was nice."

"They had an infinity of adventures, and the best proof of the
benefit they derived is, that they forgot everything about them
except that the adventures occurred."

"Those two must have returned bright enough to please you.

"They returned, and shone like a wrecker's beacon to the mariner.
You see, Miss Middleton, there was the landscape, and the
exercise, and the occasional bit of danger. I think it's to be
recommended. The scene is always changing, and not too fast; and
'tis not too sublime, like big mountains, to tire them of their
everlasting big Ohs. There's the difference between going into a
howling wind and launching among zephyrs. They have fresh air and
movement, and not in a railway carriage; they can take in what
they look on. And she has the steering ropes, and that's a wise
commencement. And my lord is all day making an exhibition of his
manly strength, bowing before her some sixty to the minute; and
she, to help him, just inclines when she's in the mood. And
they're face to face in the nature of things, and are not under
the obligation of looking the unutterable, because, you see,
there's business in hand; and the boat's just the right sort of
third party, who never interferes, but must be attended to. And
they feel they re labouring together to get along, all in the
proper proportion; and whether he has to labour in life or not, he
proves his ability. What do you think of it, Miss Middleton?"

"I think you have only to propose it, Colonel De Craye."

"And if they capsize, why, 'tis a natural ducking!"

"You forgot the lady's dressing-bag."

"The stain on the metal for a constant reminder of his prowess in
saving it! Well, and there's an alternative to that scheme, and a
finer:--This, then: they read dramatic pieces during courtship,
to stop the saying of things over again till the drum of the car
becomes nothing but a drum to the poor head, and a little before
they affix their signatures to the fatal Registry-book of the
vestry, they enter into an engagement with a body of provincial
actors to join the troop on the day of their nuptials, and away
they go in their coach and four, and she is Lady Kitty Caper for a
month, and he Sir Harry Highflyer. See the honeymoon spinning!
The marvel to me is that none of the young couples do it. They
could enjoy the world, see life, amuse the company, and come back
fresh to their own characters, instead of giving themselves a dose
of Africa without a savage to diversify it: an impression they
never get over, I'm told. Many a character of the happiest
auspices has irreparable mischief done it by the ordinary
honeymoon. For my part, I rather lean to the second plan of
campaign."

Clara was expected to reply, and she said: "Probably because you
are fond of acting. It would require capacity on both sides."

"Miss Middleton, I would undertake to breathe the enthusiasm for
the stage and the adventure."

"You are recommending it generally."

"Let my gentleman only have a fund of enthusiasm. The lady will
kindle. She always does at a spark."

"If he has not any?"

"Then I'm afraid they must be mortally dull."

She allowed her silence to speak; she knew that it did so too
eloquently, and could not control the personal adumbration she
gave to the one point of light revealed in, "if he has not any".
Her figure seemed immediately to wear a cap and cloak of dulness.

She was full of revolt and anger, she was burning with her
situation; if sensible of shame now at anything that she did, it
turned to wrath and threw the burden on the author of her
desperate distress. The hour for blaming herself had gone by, to
be renewed ultimately perhaps in a season of freedom. She was
bereft of her insight within at present, so blind to herself that,
while conscious of an accurate reading of Willoughby's friend, she
thanked him in her heart for seeking simply to amuse her and
slightly succeeding. The afternoon's ride with him and Crossjay
was an agreeable beguilement to her in prospect.

Laetitia came to divide her from Colonel De Craye. Dr. Middleton
was not seen before his appearance at the breakfast-table, where a
certain air of anxiety in his daughter's presence produced the
semblance of a raised map at intervals on his forehead. Few sights
on earth are more deserving of our sympathy than a good man who
has a troubled conscience thrust on him.

The Rev. Doctor's perturbation was observed. The ladies Eleanor
and Isabel, seeing his daughter to be the cause of it, blamed her,
and would have assisted him to escape, but Miss Dale, whom he
courted with that object, was of the opposite faction. She made
way for Clara to lead her father out. He called to Vernon, who
merely nodded while leaving the room by the window with Crossjay.

Half an eye on Dr. Middleton's pathetic exit in captivity sufficed
to tell Colonel De Craye that parties divided the house. At first
he thought how deplorable it would be to lose Miss Middleton for
two days or three: and it struck him that Vernon Whitford and
Laetitia Dale were acting oddly in seconding her, their aim not
being discernible. For he was of the order of gentlemen of the
obscurely-clear in mind who have a predetermined acuteness in
their watch upon the human play, and mark men and women as pieces
of a bad game of chess, each pursuing an interested course. His
experience of a section of the world had educated him--as gallant,
frank, and manly a comrade as one could wish for--up to this
point. But he soon abandoned speculations, which may be compared
to a shaking anemometer that will not let the troubled indicator
take station. Reposing on his perceptions and his instincts, he
fixed his attention on the chief persons, only glancing at the
others to establish a postulate, that where there are parties in a
house the most bewitching person present is the origin of them. It
is ever Helen's achievement. Miss Middleton appeared to him
bewitching beyond mortal; sunny in her laughter, shadowy in her
smiling; a young lady shaped for perfect music with a lover.

She was that, and no less, to every man's eye on earth. High
breeding did not freeze her lovely girlishness.--But Willoughby
did. This reflection intervened to blot luxurious picturings of
her, and made itself acceptable by leading him back to several
instances of an evident want of harmony of the pair.

And now (for purely undirected impulse all within us is not,
though we may be eye-bandaged agents under direction) it became
necessary for an honourable gentleman to cast vehement rebukes at
the fellow who did not comprehend the jewel he had won. How could
Willoughby behave like so complete a donkey! De Craye knew him to
be in his interior stiff, strange, exacting: women had talked of
him; he had been too much for one woman--the dashing Constantia:
he had worn one woman, sacrificing far more for him than
Constantia, to death. Still, with such a prize as Clara
Middleton, Willoughby's behaviour was past calculating in its
contemptible absurdity. And during courtship! And courtship of
that girl! It was the way of a man ten years after marriage.

The idea drew him to picture her doatingly in her young matronly
bloom ten years after marriage: without a touch of age, matronly
wise, womanly sweet: perhaps with a couple of little ones to love,
never having known the love of a man.

To think of a girl like Clara Middleton never having at
nine-and-twenty, and with two fair children! known the love of a
man or the loving of a man, possibly, became torture to the
Colonel.

For a pacification he had to reconsider that she was as yet only
nineteen and unmarried.

But she was engaged, and she was unloved. One might swear to it,
that she was unloved. And she was not a girl to be satisfied with
a big house and a high-nosed husband.

There was a rapid alteration of the sad history of Clara the
unloved matron solaced by two little ones. A childless Clara
tragically loving and beloved flashed across the dark glass of the
future.

Either way her fate was cruel.

Some astonishment moved De Craye in the contemplation of the
distance he had stepped in this morass of fancy. He distinguished
the choice open to him of forward or back, and he selected
forward. But fancy was dead: the poetry hovering about her grew
invisible to him: he stood in the morass; that was all he knew;
and momently he plunged deeper; and he was aware of an intense
desire to see her face, that he might study her features again: he
understood no more.

It was the clouding of the brain by the man's heart, which had
come to the knowledge that it was caught.

A certain measure of astonishment moved him still. It had hitherto
been his portion to do mischief to women and avoid the vengeance
of the sex. What was there in Miss Middleton's face and air to
ensnare a veteran handsome man of society numbering six-and-thirty
years, nearly as many conquests? "Each bullet has got its
commission." He was hit at last. That accident effected by Mr.
Flitch had fired the shot. Clean through the heart. does not tell
us of our misfortune, till the heart is asked to renew its natural
beating. It fell into the condition of the porcelain vase over a
thought of Miss Middleton standing above his prostrate form on the
road, and walking beside him to the Hall. Her words? What have
they been? She had not uttered words, she had shed meanings. He
did not for an instant conceive that he had charmed her: the charm
she had cast on him was too thrilling for coxcombry to lift a
head; still she had enjoyed his prattle. In return for her touch
upon the Irish fountain in him, he had manifestly given her relief
And could not one see that so sprightly a girl would soon be
deadened by a man like Willoughby? Deadened she was: she had not
responded to a compliment on her approaching marriage. An allusion
to it killed her smiling. The case of Mr. Flitch, with the half
wager about his reinstation in the service of the Hall, was
conclusive evidence of her opinion of Willoughby.

It became again necessary that he should abuse Willoughby for his
folly. Why was the man worrying her? In some way he was worrying
her.

What if Willoughby as well as Miss Middleton wished to be quit of
the engagement? ...

For just a second, the handsome, woman-flattered officer proved
his man's heart more whole than he supposed it. That great organ,
instead of leaping at the thought, suffered a check.

Bear in mind that his heart was not merely man's, it was a
conqueror's. He was of the race of amorous heroes who glory in
pursuing, overtaking, subduing: wresting the prize from a rival,
having her ripe from exquisitely feminine inward conflicts,
plucking her out of resistance in good old primitive fashion. You
win the creature in her delicious flutterings. He liked her thus,
in cooler blood, because of society's admiration of the capturer,
and somewhat because of the strife, which always enhances the
value of a prize, and refreshes our vanity in recollection.

Moreover, he had been matched against Willoughby: the circumstance
had occurred two or three times. He could name a lady he had won,
a lady he had lost. Willoughby's large fortune and grandeur of
style had given him advantages at the start. But the start often
means the race--with women, and a bit of luck.

The gentle check upon the galloping heart of Colonel De Craye
endured no longer than a second--a simple side-glance in a
headlong pace. Clara's enchantingness for a temperament like his,
which is to say, for him specially, in part through the testimony
her conquest of himself presented as to her power of sway over the
universal heart known as man's, assured him she was worth winning
even from a hand that dropped her.

He had now a double reason for exclaiming at the folly of
Willoughby. Willoughby's treatment of her showed either temper or
weariness. Vanity and judgement led De Craye to guess the former.
Regarding her sentiments for Willoughby, he had come to his own
conclusion. The certainty of it caused him to assume that he
possessed an absolute knowledge of her character: she was an
angel, born supple; she was a heavenly soul, with half a dozen of
the tricks of earth. Skittish filly was among his phrases; but she
had a bearing and a gaze that forbade the dip in the common gutter
for wherewithal to paint the creature she was.

Now, then, to see whether he was wrong for the first time in his
life! If not wrong, he had a chance.

There could be nothing dishonourable in rescuing a girl from an
engagement she detested. An attempt to think it a service to
Willoughby faded midway. De Craye dismissed that chicanery. It
would be a service to Willoughby in the end, without question.
There was that to soothe his manly honour. Meanwhile he had to
face the thought of Willoughby as an antagonist, and the world
looking heavy on his honour as a friend.

Such considerations drew him tenderly close to Miss Middleton. It
must, however, be confessed that the mental ardour of Colonel De
Craye had been a little sobered by his glance at the possibility
of both of the couple being of one mind on the subject of their
betrothal. Desirable as it was that they should be united in
disagreeing, it reduced the romance to platitude, and the third
person in the drama to the appearance of a stick. No man likes to
play that part. Memoirs of the favourites of Goddesses, if we had
them, would confirm it of men's tastes in this respect, though the
divinest be the prize. We behold what part they played.

De Craye chanced to be crossing the hall from the laboratory to
the stables when Clara shut the library-door behind her. He said
something whimsical, and did not stop, nor did he look twice at
the face he had been longing for.

What he had seen made him fear there would be no ride out with her
that day. Their next meeting reassured him; she was dressed in her
riding-habit, and wore a countenance resolutely cheerful. He
gave himself the word of command to take his tone from her.

He was of a nature as quick as Clara's. Experience pushed him
farther than she could go in fancy; but experience laid a sobering
finger on his practical steps, and bade them hang upon her
initiative. She talked little. Young Crossjay cantering ahead was
her favourite subject. She was very much changed since the early
morning: his liveliness, essayed by him at a hazard, was
unsuccessful; grave English pleased her best. The descent from
that was naturally to melancholy. She mentioned a regret she had
that the Veil was interdicted to women in Protestant countries. De
Craye was fortunately silent; he could think of no other veil than
the Moslem, and when her meaning struck his witless head, he
admitted to himself that devout attendance on a young lady's mind
stupefies man's intelligence. Half an hour later, he was as
foolish in supposing it a confidence. He was again saved by
silence.

In Aspenwell village she drew a letter from her bosom and called
to Crossjay to post it. The boy sang out, "Miss Lucy Darleton!
What a nice name!"

Clara did not show that the name betrayed anything.

She said to De Craye. "It proves he should not be here thinking of
nice names. "

Her companion replied, "You may be right." He added, to avoid
feeling too subservient: "Boys will."

"Not if they have stern masters to teach them their daily lessons,
and some of the lessons of existence."

"Vernon Whitford is not stern enough?"

"Mr. Whitford has to contend with other influences here."

"With Willoughby?"

"Not with Willoughby."

He understood her. She touched the delicate indication firmly.
The man's, heart respected her for it; not many girls could be so
thoughtful or dare to be so direct; he saw that she had become
deeply serious, and he felt her love of the boy to be maternal,
past maiden sentiment.

By this light of her seriousness, the posting of her letter in a
distant village, not entrusting it to the Hall post-box, might
have import; not that she would apprehend the violation of her
private correspondence, but we like to see our letter of weighty
meaning pass into the mouth of the public box.

Consequently this letter was important. It was to suppose a
sequency in the conduct of a variable damsel. Coupled with her
remark about the Veil, and with other things, not words, breathing
from her (which were the breath of her condition), it was not
unreasonably to be supposed. She might even be a very consistent
person. If one only had the key of her!

She spoke once of an immediate visit to London, supposing that she
could induce her father to go. De Craye remembered the occurrence
in the Hall at night, and her aspect of distress.

They raced along Aspenwell Common to the ford; shallow, to the
chagrin of young Crossjay, between whom and themselves they left a
fitting space for his rapture in leading his pony to splash up and
down, lord of the stream.

Swiftness of motion so strikes the blood on the brain that our
thoughts are lightnings, the heart is master of them.

De Craye was heated by his gallop to venture on the angling
question: "Am I to hear the names of the bridesmaids?"

The pace had nerved Clara to speak to it sharply: "There is no
need."

"Have I no claim?"

She was mute.

"Miss Lucy Darleton, for instance; whose name I am almost as much
in love with as Crossjay."

"She will not be bridesmaid to me."

"She declines? Add my petition, I beg."

"To all? or to her?"

"Do all the bridesmaids decline?"

"The scene is too ghastly."

"A marriage?"

"Girls have grown sick of it."

"Of weddings? We'll overcome the sickness."

"With some."

"Not with Miss Darleton? You tempt my eloquence.

"You wish it?"

"To win her consent? Certainly."

"The scene?"

"Do I wish that?"

"Marriage!" exclaimed Clara. dashing into the ford, fearful of her
ungovernable wildness and of what it might have kindled.--You,
father! you have driven me to unmaidenliness!--She forgot
Willoughby, in her father, who would not quit a comfortable house
for her all but prostrate beseeching; would not bend his mind to
her explanations, answered her with the horrid iteration of such
deaf misunderstanding as may be associated with a tolling bell.

Dc Craye allowed her to catch Crossjay by herself They
entered a narrow lane, mysterious with possible birds" eggs in the
May-green hedges. As there was not room for three abreast, the
colonel made up the rear-guard, and was consoled by having Miss
Middleton's figure to contemplate; but the readiness of her
joining in Crossjay's pastime of the nest-hunt was not so pleasing
to a man that she had wound to a pitch of excitement. Her scornful
accent on "Marriage" rang through him. Apparently she was
beginning to do with him just as she liked, herself entirely
unconcerned.

She kept Crossjay beside her till she dismounted, and the colonel
was left to the procession of elephantine ideas in his head, whose
ponderousness he took for natural weight. We do not with impunity
abandon the initiative. Men who have yielded it are like cavalry
put on the defensive; a very small force with an ictus will
scatter them.

Anxiety to recover lost ground reduced the dimensions of his ideas
to a practical standard.

Two ideas were opposed like duellists bent on the slaughter of one
another. Either she amazed him by confirming the suspicions he had
gathered of her sentiments for Willoughby in the moments of his
introduction to her; or she amazed him as a model for coquettes--
the married and the widow might apply to her for lessons.

These combatants exchanged shots, but remained standing; the
encounter was undecided. Whatever the result, no person so
seductive as Clara Middleton had he ever met. Her cry of loathing,
"Marriage!" coming from a girl, rang faintly clear of an ancient
virginal aspiration of the sex to escape from their coil, and
bespoke a pure, cold, savage pride that transplanted his thirst
for her to higher fields.

CHAPTER XXIII

Treats of the Union of Temper and Policy

Sir Willoughby meanwhile was on a line of conduct suiting his
appreciation of his duty to himself. He had deluded himself with
the simple notion that good fruit would come of the union of
temper and policy.

No delusion is older, none apparently so promising, both parties
being eager for the alliance. Yet, the theorist upon human nature
will say, they are obviously of adverse disposition. And this is
true, inasmuch as neither of them win submit to the yoke of an
established union; as soon as they have done their mischief, they
set to work tugging for a divorce. But they have attractions, the
one for the other, which precipitate them to embrace whenever they
meet in a breast; each is earnest with the owner of it to get him
to officiate forthwith as wedding-priest. And here is the reason:
temper, to warrant its appearance, desires to be thought as
deliberative as policy, and policy, the sooner to prove its
shrewdness, is impatient for the quick blood of temper.

It will be well for men to resolve at the first approaches of the
amorous but fickle pair upon interdicting even an accidental
temporary junction: for the astonishing sweetness of the couple
when no more than the ghosts of them have come together in a
projecting mind is an intoxication beyond fermented grapejuice or
a witch's brewage; and under the guise of active wits they will
lead us to the parental meditation of antics compared with which
a Pagan Saturnalia were less impious in the sight of sanity. This
is full-mouthed language; but on our studious way through any
human career we are subject to fits of moral elevation; the theme
inspires it, and the sage residing in every civilized bosom
approves it.

Decide at the outset, that temper is fatal to policy: hold them
with both hands in division. One might add, be doubtful of your
policy and repress your temper: it would be to suppose you wise.
You can, however, by incorporating two or three captains of the
great army of truisms bequeathed to us by ancient wisdom, fix in
your service those veteran old standfasts to check you. They will
not be serviceless in their admonitions to your understanding, and
they will so contrive to reconcile with it the natural caperings
of the wayward young sprig Conduct, that the latter, who commonly
learns to walk upright and straight from nothing softer than raps
of a bludgeon on his crown, shall foot soberly, appearing at least
wary of dangerous corners.