The Egoist

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What would he think? They might never meet, for her to know. Or
one day in the Alps they might meet, a middleaged couple, he
famous, she regretful only to have fallen below his lofty
standard. "For, Mr. Whitford," says she, very earnestly, "I did
wish at that time, believe me or not, to merit your approbation."
The brows of the phantom Vernon whom she conjured up were stern,
as she had seen them yesterday in the library.

She gave herself a chiding for thinking of him when her mind
should be intent on that which he was opposed to.

It was a livelier relaxation to think of young Crossjay's
shame-faced confession presently, that he had been a laggard in
bed while she swept the dews. She laughed at him, and immediately
Crossjay popped out on her from behind a tree, causing her to clap
hand to heart and stand fast. A conspirator is not of the stuff to
bear surprises. He feared he had hurt her, and was manly in his
efforts to soothe: he had been up "hours", he said, and had watched
her coming along the avenue, and did not mean to startle her: it
was the kind of fun he played with fellows, and if he had hurt
her, she might do anything to him she liked, and she would see if
he could not stand to be punished. He was urgent with her to
inflict corporal punishment on him.

"I shall leave it to the boatswain to do that when you're in the
navy," said Clara.

"The boatswain daren't strike an officer! so now you see what you
know of the navy," said Crossjay.

"But you could not have been out before me, you naughty boy, for I
found all the locks and bolts when I went to the door."

"But you didn't go to the back door, and Sir Willoughby's private
door: you came out by the hall door; and I know what you want,
Miss Middleton, you want not to pay what you've lost."

"What have I lost, Crossjay?"

"Your wager."

"What was that?"

"You know."

"Speak."

"A kiss."

"Nothing of the sort. But, dear boy, I don't love you less for not
kissing you. All that is nonsense: you have to think only of
learning, and to be truthful. Never tell a story: suffer anything
rather than be dishonest." She was particularly impressive upon
the silliness and wickedness of falsehood, and added: "Do you
hear?"

"Yes: but you kissed me when I had been out in the rain that day."

"Because I promised."

"And, Miss Middleton, you betted a kiss yesterday."

"I am sure, Crossjay--no, I will not say I am sure: but can you
say you are sure you were out first this morning? Well, will you
say you are sure that when you left the house you did not see me
in the avenue? You can't: ah!"

"Miss Middleton, I do really believe I was dressed first."

"Always be truthful, my dear boy, and then you may feel that Clara
Middleton will always love you."

"But, Miss Middleton, when you're married you won't be Clara
Middleton."

"I certainly shall, Crossjay."

"No, you won't, because I'm so fond of your name!"

She considered, and said: "You have warned me, Crossjay, and I
shall not marry. I shall wait," she was going to say, "for you,"
but turned the hesitation to a period. "Is the village where I
posted my letter the day before yesterday too far for you?"

Crossjay howled in contempt. "Next to Clara, my favourite's Lucy,"
he said.

"I thought Clara came next to Nelson," said she; "and a long way
off too, if you're not going to be a landlubber."

"I'm not going to be a landlubber. Miss Middleton, you may be
absolutely positive on your solemn word."

"You're getting to talk like one a little now and then, Crossjay."

"Then I won't talk at all."

He stuck to his resolution for one whole minute.

Clara hoped that on this morning of a doubtful though imperative
venture she had done some good.

They walked fast to cover the distance to the village post-office,
and back before the breakfast hour: and they had plenty of time,
arriving too early for the opening of the door, so that Crossjay
began to dance with an appetite, and was despatched to besiege a
bakery. Clara felt lonely without him: apprehensively timid in
the shuttered, unmoving village street. She was glad of his
return. When at last her letter was handed to her, on the
testimony of the postman that she was the lawful applicant,
Crossjay and she put out on a sharp trot to be back at the Hall in
good time. She took a swallowing glance of the first page of
Lucy's writing:

"Telegraph, and I will meet you. I will supply you with everything
you can want for the two nights, if you cannot stop longer."

That was the gist of the letter. A second. less voracious, glance
at it along the road brought sweetness:--Lucy wrote:

"Do I love you as I did? my best friend, you must fall into
unhappiness to have the answer to that."

Clara broke a silence.

"Yes, dear Crossjay, and if you like you shall have another walk
with me after breakfast. But, remember, you must not say where you
have gone with me. I shall give you twenty shillings to go and buy
those bird's eggs and the butterflies you want for your
collection; and mind, promise me, to-day is your last day of
truancy. Tell Mr. Whitford how ungrateful you know you have been,
that he may have some hope of you. You know the way across the
fields to the railway station?"

"You save a mile; you drop on the road by Combline's mill, and
then there's another five-minutes" cut, and the rest's road."

"Then, Crossjay, immediately after breakfast run round behind the
pheasantry, and there I'll find you. And if any one comes to you
before I come, say you are admiring the plumage of the Himalaya--
the beautiful Indian bird; and if we're found together, we run a
race, and of course you can catch me, but you mustn't until we're
out of sight. Tell Mr. Vernon at night--tell Mr. Whitford at
night you had the money from me as part of my allowance to you for
pocket-money. I used to like to have pocket-money, Crossjay. And
you may tell him I gave you the holiday, and I may write to him
for his excuse, if he is not too harsh to grant it. He can be
very harsh."

"You look right into his eyes next time, Miss Middleton. I used
to think him awful till he made me look at him. He says men ought
to look straight at one another, just as we do when he gives me my
boxing-lesson, and then we won't have quarrelling half so much. I
can't recollect everything he says."

"You are not bound to, Crossjay."

"No, but you like to hear."

"Really, dear boy. I can't accuse myself of having told you that."

"No, but, Miss Middleton, you do. And he's fond of your singing
and playing on the piano, and watches you."

"We shall be late if we don't mind," said Clara, starting to a
pace close on a run.

"They were in time for a circuit in the park to the wild double
cherry-blossom, no longer all white. Clara gazed up from under it,
where she had imagined a fairer visible heavenliness than any other
sight of earth had ever given her. That was when Vernon lay
beneath. But she had certainly looked above, not at him. The tree
seemed sorrowful in its withering flowers of the colour of trodden
snow.

Crossjay resumed the conversation.

"He says ladies don't like him much."

"Who says that?"

"Mr. Whitford."

"Were those his words?"

"I forget the words: but he said they wouldn't be taught by him,
like me, ever since you came; and since you came I've liked him
ten times more."

"The more you like him the more I shall like you, Crossjay."

The boy raised a shout and scampered away to Sir Willoughby, at
the appearance of whom Clara felt herself nipped and curling
inward. Crossjay ran up to him with every sign of pleasure. Yet he
had not mentioned him during the walk; and Clara took it for a
sign that the boy understood the entire satisfaction Willoughby
had in mere shows of affection, and acted up to it. Hardly blaming
Crossjay, she was a critic of the scene, for the reason that
youthful creatures who have ceased to love a person, hunger for
evidence against him to confirm their hard animus, which will seem
to them sometimes, when he is not immediately irritating them,
brutish, because they can not analyze it and reduce it to the
multitude of just antagonisms whereof it came. It has passed by
large accumulation into a sombre and speechless load upon the
senses, and fresh evidence, the smallest item, is a champion to
speak for it. Being about to do wrong, she grasped at this
eagerly, and brooded on the little of vital and truthful that
there was in the man and how he corrupted the boy. Nevertheless,
she instinctively imitated Crossjay in an almost sparkling salute
to him.

"Good-morning, Willoughby; it was not a morning to lose: have you
been out long?"

He retained her hand. "My dear Clara! and you, have you not
overfatigued yourself? Where have you been?"

"Round--everywhere! And I am certainly not tired."

"Only you and Crossjay? You should have loosened the dogs."

"Their barking would have annoyed the house."

"Less than I am annoyed to think of you without protection."

He kissed her fingers: it was a loving speech.

"The household . . ." said Clara, but would not insist to convict
him of what he could not have perceived.

"If you outstrip me another morning, Clara, promise me to take the
dogs; will you?"

"Yes."

"To-day I am altogether yours."

"Are you?"

"From the first to the last hour of it!--So you fall in with
Horace's humour pleasantly?"

"He is very amusing."

"As good as though one had hired him."

"Here comes Colonel De Craye."

"He must think we have hired him!"

She noticed the bitterness of Willoughby's tone. He sang out a
good-morning to De Craye, and remarked that he must go to the
stables.

"Darleton? Darleton, Miss Middleton?" said the colonel, rising
from his bow to her: "a daughter of General Darleton? If so, I
have had the honour to dance with her. And have not you?--
practised with her, I mean; or gone off in a triumph to dance it
out as young ladies do? So you know what a delightful partner she
is."

"She is!" cried Clara, enthusiastic for her succouring friend,
whose letter was the treasure in her bosom.

"Oddly, the name did not strike me yesterday, Miss Middleton. In
the middle of the night it rang a little silver bell in my ear,
and I remembered the lady I was half in love with, if only for her
dancing. She is dark, of your height, as light on her feet; a
sister in another colour. Now that I know her to be your friend
... !"

"Why, you may meet her, Colonel De Craye."

"It'll be to offer her a castaway. And one only meets a charming
girl to hear that she's engaged! "'Tis not a line of a ballad, Miss
Middleton, but out of the heart."

"Lucy Darleton . . . You were leading me to talk seriously to you,
Colonel De Craye."

"Will you one day?--and not think me a perpetual tumbler! You
have heard of melancholy clowns. You will find the face not so
laughable behind my paint. When I was thirteen years younger I was
loved, and my dearest sank to the grave. Since then I have not
been quite at home in life; probably because of finding no one so
charitable as she. "'Tis easy to win smiles and hands, but not so
easy to win a woman whose faith you would trust as your own heart
before the enemy. I was poor then. She said. 'The day after my
twenty-first birthday'; and that day I went for her, and I wondered
they did not refuse me at the door. I was shown upstairs, and I
saw her, and saw death. She wished to marry me, to leave me her
fortune!"

"Then, never marry," said Clara, in an underbreath.

She glanced behind.

Sir Willoughby was close, walking on turf.

"I must be cunning to escape him after breakfast," she thought.

He had discarded his foolishness of the previous days, and the
thought in him could have replied: "I am a dolt if I let you out
of my sight."

Vernon appeared, formal as usual of late. Clara begged his excuse
for withdrawing Crossjay from his morning swim. He nodded.

De Craye called to Willoughby for a book of the trains.

"There's a card in the smoking-room; eleven, one, and four are the
hours, if you must go," said Willoughby.

"You leave the Hall, Colonel De Craye?"

"In two or three days, Miss Middleton."

She did not request him to stay: his announcement produced no
effect on her. Consequently, thought he--well, what? nothing:
well, then, that she might not be minded to stay herself.
Otherwise she would have regretted the loss of an amusing
companion: that is the modest way of putting it. There is a modest
and a vain for the same sentiment; and both may be simultaneously
in the same breast; and each one as honest as the other; so shy is
man's vanity in the presence of here and there a lady. She liked
him: she did not care a pin for him--how could she? yet she liked
him: O, to be able to do her some kindling bit of service! These
were his consecutive fancies, resolving naturally to the
exclamation, and built on the conviction that she did not love
Willoughby, and waited for a spirited lift from circumstances. His
call for a book of the trains had been a sheer piece of impromptu,
in the mind as well as on the mouth. It sprang, unknown to him, of
conjectures he had indulged yesterday and the day before. This
morning she would have an answer to her letter to her friend, Miss
Lucy Darleton, the pretty dark girl, whom De Craye was astonished
not to have noticed more when he danced with her. She, pretty as
she was, had come to his recollection through the name and rank of
her father, a famous general of cavalry, and tactician in that
arm. The colonel despised himself for not having been devoted to
Clara Middleton's friend.

The morning's letters were on the bronze plate in the hall.
Clara passed on her way to her room without inspecting them. De
Craye opened an envelope and went upstairs to scribble a line. Sir
Willoughby observed their absence at the solemn reading to the
domestic servants in advance of breakfast. Three chairs were
unoccupied. Vernon had his own notions of a mechanical service--
and a precious profit he derived from them! but the other two
seats returned the stare Willoughby cast at their backs with an
impudence that reminded him of his friend Horace's calling for
a book of the trains, when a minute afterward he admitted he was
going to stay at the Hall another two days, or three. The man
possessed by jealousy is never in need of matter for it: he
magnifies; grass is jungle, hillocks are mountains. Willoughby's
legs crossing and uncrossing audibly, and his tight-folded arms
and clearing of the throat, were faint indications of his condition.

"Are you in fair health this morning, Willoughby?" Dr. Middleton
said to him after he had closed his volumes.

"The thing is not much questioned by those who know me
intimately," he replied.

"Willoughby unwell!" and, "He is health incarnate!" exclaimed the
ladies Eleanor and Isabel.

Laetitia grieved for him. Sun-rays on a pest-stricken city, she
thought, were like the smile of his face. She believed that he
deeply loved Clara, and had learned more of her alienation.

He went into the ball to look into the well for the pair of
malefactors; on fire with what he could not reveal to a soul.

De Craye was in the housekeeper's room, talking to young Crossjay,
and Mrs. Montague just come up to breakfast. He had heard the boy
chattering, and as the door was ajar he peeped in, and was invited
to enter. Mrs. Montague was very fond of hearing him talk: he paid
her the familiar respect which a lady of fallen fortunes, at a
certain period after the fall, enjoys as a befittingly sad
souvenir, and the respectfulness of the lord of the house was more
chilling.

She bewailed the boy's trying his constitution with long walks
before he had anything in him to walk on.

"And where did you go this morning, my lad?" said De Craye.

"Ah, you know the ground, colonel," said Crossjay. "I am hungry! I
shall eat three eggs and some bacon, and buttered cakes, and jam,
then begin again, on my second cup of coffee."

"It's not braggadocio," remarked Mrs. Montague. "He waits empty
from five in the morning till nine, and then he comes famished to
my table, and cats too much."

"Oh! Mrs. Montague, that is what the country people call
roemancing. For, Colonel De Craye, I had a bun at seven o'clock.
Miss Middleton forced me to go and buy it"

"A stale bun, my boy?"

"Yesterday's: there wasn't much of a stopper to you in it, like a
new bun."

"And where did you leave Miss Middleton when you went to buy the
bun? You should never leave a lady; and the street of a country
town is lonely at that early hour. Crossjay, you surprise me."

"She forced me to go, colonel. Indeed she did. What do I care for
a bun! And she was quite safe. We could hear the people stirring in
the post-office, and I met our postman going for his letter-bag. I
didn't want to go: bother the bun!--but you can't disobey Miss
Middleton. I never want to, and wouldn't."

"There we're of the same mind," said the colonel, and Crossjay
shouted, for the lady whom they exalted was at the door.

"You will be too tired for a ride this morning," De Craye said to
her, descending the stairs.

She swung a bonnet by the ribands. "I don't think of riding
to-day."

"Why did you not depute your mission to me?"

"I like to bear my own burdens, as far as I can."

"Miss Darleton is well?"

"I presume so."

"Will you try her recollection for me?"

"It will probably be quite as lively as yours was."

"Shall you see her soon?"

"I hope so."

Sir Willoughby met her at the foot of the stairs, but refrained
from giving her a hand that shook.

"We shall have the day together," he said.

Clara bowed.

At the breakfast-table she faced a clock.

De Craye took out his watch. "You are five and a half minutes too
slow by that clock, Willoughby."

"The man omitted to come from Rendon to set it last week, Horace.
He will find the hour too late here for him when he does come."

One of the ladies compared the time of her watch with De Craye's,
and Clara looked at hers and gratefully noted that she was four
minutes in arrear.

She left the breakfast-room at a quarter to ten, after kissing her
father. Willoughby was behind her. He had been soothed by thinking
of his personal advantages over De Craye, and he felt assured that
if he could be solitary with his eccentric bride and fold her in
himself, he would, cutting temper adrift, be the man he had been
to her not so many days back. Considering how few days back, his
temper was roused, but he controlled it.

They were slightly dissenting as De Craye stepped into the hall.

"A present worth examining," Willoughby said to her: "and I do not
dwell on the costliness. Come presently, then. I am at your
disposal all day. I will drive you in the afternoon to call on
Lady Busshe to offer your thanks: but you must see it first. It is
laid out in the laboratory."

"There is time before the afternoon," said Clara.

"Wedding presents?" interposed De Craye.

"A porcelain service from Lady Busshe, Horace."

"Not in fragments? Let me have a look at it. I'm haunted by an
idea that porcelain always goes to pieces. I'll have a look and
take a hint. We're in the laboratory, Miss Middleton."

He put his arm under Willoughby's. The resistance to him was
momentary: Willoughby had the satisfaction of the thought that De
Craye being with him was not with Clara; and seeing her giving
orders to her maid Barclay, he deferred his claim on her company
for some short period.

De Craye detained him in the laboratory, first over the China cups
and saucers, and then with the latest of London--tales of
youngest Cupid upon subterranean adventures, having high titles to
light him. Willoughby liked the tale thus illuminated, for without
the title there was no special savour in such affairs, and it
pulled down his betters in rank. He was of a morality to reprobate
the erring dame while he enjoyed the incidents. He could not help
interrupting De Craye to point at Vernon through the window,
striding this way and that, evidently on the hunt for young
Crossjay. "No one here knows how to manage the boy except myself
But go on, Horace," he said, checking his contemptuous laugh; and
Vernon did look ridiculous, out there half-drenched already in a
white rain, again shuffled off by the little rascal. It seemed
that he was determined to have his runaway: he struck up the
avenue at full pedestrian racing pace.

"A man looks a fool cutting after a cricket-ball; but, putting on
steam in a storm of rain to catch a young villain out of sight,
beats anything I've witnessed," Willoughby resumed, in his
amusement.

"Aiha!" said De Craye, waving a hand to accompany the melodious
accent, "there are things to beat that for fun."

He had smoked in the laboratory, so Willoughby directed a servant
to transfer the porcelain service to one of the sitting-rooms for
Clara's inspection of it.

"You're a bold man," De Craye remarked. "The luck may be with you,
though. I wouldn't handle the fragile treasure for a trifle."

"I believe in my luck," said Willoughby.

Clara was now sought for. The lord of the house desired her
presence impatiently, and had to wait. She was in none of the
lower rooms. Barclay, her maid, upon interrogation, declared she
was in none of the upper. Willoughby turned sharp on De Craye: he
was there.

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel and Miss Dale were consulted. They
had nothing to say about Clara's movements, more than that they
could not understand her exceeding restlessness. The idea of her
being out of doors grew serious; heaven was black, hard thunder
rolled, and lightning flushed the battering rain. Men bearing
umbrellas, shawls, and cloaks were dispatched on a circuit of the
park. De Craye said: "I'll be one."

"No," cried Willoughby, starting to interrupt him, "I can't allow
it."

"I've the scent of a hound, Willoughby; I'll soon be on the
track."

"My dear Horace, I won't let you go."

"Adieu, dear boy! and if the lady's discoverable, I'm the one to
find her."

He stepped to the umbrella-stand. There was then a general
question whether Clara had taken her umbrella. Barclay said she
had. The fact indicated a wider stroll than round inside the park:
Crossjay was likewise absent. De Craye nodded to himself.

Willoughby struck a rattling blow on the barometer.

"Where's Pollington?" he called, and sent word for his man
Pollington to bring big fishing-boots and waterproof wrappers.

An urgent debate within him was in progress.

Should he go forth alone on his chance of discovering Clara and
forgiving her under his umbrella and cloak? or should he prevent
De Craye from going forth alone on the chance he vaunted so
impudently?

"You will offend me, Horace, if you insist," he said.

"Regard me as an instrument of destiny, Willoughby," replied De
Craye.

"Then we go in company."

"But that's an addition of one that cancels the other by
conjunction, and's worse than simple division: for I can't trust
my wits unless I rely on them alone, you see."

"Upon my word, you talk at times most unintelligible stuff, to be
frank with you, Horace. Give it in English."

"'Tis not suited, perhaps, to the genius of the language, for I
thought I talked English."

"Oh, there's English gibberish as well as Irish, we know!"

"And a deal foolisher when they do go at it; for it won't bear
squeezing, we think, like Irish."

"Where!" exclaimed the ladies, "where can she be! The storm is
terrible."

Laetitia suggested the boathouse.

"For Crossjay hadn't a swim this morning!" said De Craye.

No one reflected on the absurdity that Clara should think of
taking Crossjay for a swim in the lake, and immediately after his
breakfast: it was accepted as a suggestion at least that she and
Crossjay had gone to the lake for a row.

In the hopefulness of the idea, Willoughby suffered De Craye to go
on his chance unaccompanied. He was near chuckling. He projected a
plan for dismissing Crossjay and remaining in the boathouse with
Clara, luxuriating in the prestige which would attach to him for
seeking and finding her. Deadly sentiments intervened. Still he
might expect to be alone with her where she could not slip from
him.

The throwing open of the hall-doors for the gentlemen presented a
framed picture of a deluge. All the young-leaved trees were steely
black, without a gradation of green, drooping and pouring, and the
song of rain had become an inveterate hiss.

The ladies beholding it exclaimed against Clara, even
apostrophized her, so dark are trivial errors when circumstances
frown. She must be mad to tempt such weather: she was very giddy;
she was never at rest. Clara! Clara! how could you be so wild!
Ought we not to tell Dr. Middleton?

Laetitia induced them to spare him.

"Which way do you take?" said Willoughby, rather fearful that his
companion was not to be got rid of now.

"Any way," said De Craye. "I chuck up my head like a halfpenny,
and go by the toss."

This enraging nonsense drove off Willoughby. De Craye saw him
cast a furtive eye at his heels to make sure he was not followed,
and thought, "Jove! he may be fond of her. But he's not on the
track. She's a determined girl, if I'm correct. She's a girl of a
hundred thousand. Girls like that make the right sort of wives for
the right men. They're the girls to make men think of marrying.
To-morrow! only give me a chance. They stick to you fast when they
do stick."