The Egoist

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"We'll leave it to the fellow's instinct; he has our blood in him.
I could convince you, though, if I might cite circumstances. Yes!
But yes! And yes again! The entire truth cannot invariably be
told. I venture to say it should not."

"You would pardon it for the 'fair lady'?"

"Applaud, my love."

He squeezed the hand within his arm, contemplating her.

She was arrayed in a voluminous robe of pale blue silk vapourous
with trimmings of light gauze of the same hue, gaze de Chambery,
matching her fair hair and dear skin for the complete overthrow of
less inflammable men than Willoughby.

"Clara!" sighed be.

"If so, it would really be generous," she said, "though the
teaching h bad."

"I fancy I can be generous."

"Do we ever know?"

He turned his head to Vernon, issuing brief succinct instructions
for letters to be written, and drew her into the hall, saying:
"Know? There are people who do not know themselves and as they are
the majority they manufacture the axioms. And it is assumed that
we have to swallow them. I may observe that I think I know. I
decline to be engulphed in those majorities. 'Among them, but not
of them.' I know this, that my aim in life is to be generous."

"Is it not an impulse or disposition rather than an aim?"

"So much I know," pursued Willoughby, refusing to be tripped. But
she rang discordantly in his ear. His "fancy that he could be
generous" and his "aim at being generous" had met with no
response. "I have given proofs," he said, briefly, to drop a
subject upon which he was not permitted to dilate; and he
murmured, "People acquainted with me ... !" She was asked if she
expected him to boast of generous deeds. "From childhood!" she
heard him mutter; and she said to herself, "Release me, and you
shall be everything!"

The unhappy gentleman ached as he talked: for with men and with
hosts of women to whom he was indifferent, never did he converse
in this shambling, third-rate, sheepish manner, devoid of all
highness of tone and the proper precision of an authority. He was
unable to fathom the cause of it, but Clara imposed it on him, and
only in anger could he throw it off. The temptation to an outburst
that would flatter him with the sound of his authoritative voice
had to be resisted on a night when he must be composed if he
intended to shine, so he merely mentioned Lady Busshe's present,
to gratify spleen by preparing the ground for dissension, and
prudently acquiesced in her anticipated slipperiness. She would
rather not look at it now, she said.

"Not now; very well," said he.

His immediate deference made her regretful. "There is hardly
time, Willoughby."

"My dear, we shall have to express our thanks to her."

"I cannot."

His arm contracted sharply. He was obliged to be silent.

Dr Middleton, Laetitia, and the ladies Eleanor and Isabel joining
them in the hall, found two figures linked together in a shadowy
indication of halves that have fallen apart and hang on the last
thread of junction. Willoughby retained her hand on his arm; he
held to it as the symbol of their alliance, and oppressed the
girl's nerves by contact, with a frame labouring for breath. De
Craye looked on them from overhead. The carriages were at the
door, and Willoughby said, "Where's Horace? I suppose he's taking
a final shot at his Book of Anecdotes and neat collection of
Irishisms."

"No," replied the colonel, descending. "That's a spring works of
itself and has discovered the secret of continuous motion, more's
the pity!--unless you'll be pleased to make it of use to
Science."

He gave a laugh of good-humour.

"Your laughter, Horace, is a capital comment on your wit."

Willoughby said it with the air of one who has flicked a whip.

"'Tis a genial advertisement of a vacancy," said De Craye.

Precisely: three parts auctioneer to one for the property."

"Oh, if you have a musical quack, score it a point in his favour,
Willoughby, though you don't swallow his drug."

"If he means to be musical, let him keep time."

"Am I late?" said De Craye to the ladies, proving himself an adept
in the art of being gracefully vanquished, and so winning tender
hearts.

Willoughby had refreshed himself. At the back of his mind there was
a suspicion that his adversary would not have yielded so flatly
without an assurance of practically triumphing, secretly getting
the better of him; and it filled him with venom for a further bout
at the next opportunity: but as he had been sarcastic and mordant,
he had shown Clara what he could do in a way of speaking different
from the lamentable cooing stuff, gasps and feeble protestations
to which, he knew not how, she reduced him. Sharing the opinion of
his race, that blunt personalities, or the pugilistic form,
administered directly on the salient features, are exhibitions of
mastery in such encounters, he felt strong and solid, eager for
the successes of the evening. De Craye was in the first carriage
as escort to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. Willoughby, with
Clara, Laetitia, and Dr. Middleton, followed, all silent, for the
Rev. Doctor was ostensibly pondering; and Willoughby was damped a
little when he unlocked his mouth to say:

"And yet I have not observed that Colonel de Craye is anything of
a Celtiberian Egnatius meriting fustigation for an untimely
display of well-whitened teeth, sir: 'quicquid est, ubicunque est,
quodcunque agit, renidet:':--ha? a morbus neither charming nor
urbane to the general eye, however consolatory to the actor. But
this gentleman does not offend so, or I am so strangely
prepossessed in his favour as to be an incompetent witness."

Dr Middleton's persistent ha? eh? upon an honest frown of inquiry
plucked an answer out of Willoughby that was meant to be
humourously scornful, and soon became apologetic under the Doctor's
interrogatively grasping gaze.

"These Irishmen," Willoughby said, "will play the professional
jester as if it were an office they were born to. We must play
critic now and then, otherwise we should have them deluging us
with their Joe Millerisms."

"With their O'Millerisms you would say, perhaps?"

Willoughby did his duty to the joke, but the Rev. Doctor, though
he wore the paternal smile of a man that has begotten hilarity,
was not perfectly propitiated, and pursued: "Nor to my
apprehension is 'the man's laugh the comment on his wit'
unchallengeably new: instances of cousinship germane to the phrase
will recur to you. But it has to be noted that it was a phrase of
assault; it was ostentatiously battery; and I would venture to
remind you, friend, that among the elect, considering that it is
as fatally facile to spring the laugh upon a man as to deprive him
of his life, considering that we have only to condescend to the
weapon, and that the more popular necessarily the more murderous
that weapon is,--among the elect, to which it is your distinction
to aspire to belong, the rule holds to abstain from any employment
of the obvious, the percoct, and likewise, for your own sake, from
the epitonic, the overstrained; for if the former, by readily
assimilating with the understandings of your audience, are
empowered to commit assassination on your victim, the latter come
under the charge of unseemliness, inasmuch as they are a
description of public suicide. Assuming, then, manslaughter to be
your pastime, and hari-kari not to be your bent, the phrase, to
escape criminality, must rise in you as you would have it fall on
him, ex improviso. Am I right?"

"I am in the habit of thinking it impossible, sir, that you can be
in error," said Willoughby.

Dr Middleton left it the more emphatic by saying nothing further.

Both his daughter and Miss Dale, who had disapproved the waspish
snap at Colonel De Craye, were in wonderment of the art of speech
which could so soothingly inform a gentleman that his behaviour
had not been gentlemanly.

Willoughby was damped by what he comprehended of it for a few
minutes. In proportion as he realized an evening with his ancient
admirers he was restored, and he began to marvel greatly at his
folly in not giving banquets and Balls, instead of making a
solitude about himself and his bride. For solitude, thought he, is
good for the man, the man being a creature consumed by passion;
woman's love, on the contrary, will only be nourished by the
reflex light she catches of you in the eyes of others, she having
no passion of her own, but simply an instinct driving her to
attach herself to whatsoever is most largely admired, most
shining. So thinking, he determined to change his course of
conduct, and he was happier. In the first gush of our wisdom drawn
directly from experience there is a mental intoxication that
cancels the old world and establishes a new one, not allowing us
to ask whether it is too late.

CHAPTER XXX

Treating of the Dinner-Party at Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson's

Vernon and young Crossjay had tolerably steady work together for a
couple of hours, varied by the arrival of a plate of meat on a
tray for the master, and some interrogations put to him from time
to time by the boy in reference to Miss Middleton. Crossjay made
the discovery that if he abstained from alluding to Miss
Middleton's beauty he might water his dusty path with her name
nearly as much as he liked. Mention of her beauty incurred a
reprimand. On the first occasion his master was wistful. "Isn't
she glorious!" Crossjay fancied he had started a sovereign receipt
for blessed deviations. He tried it again, but paedagogue-thunder
broke over his head.

"Yes, only I can't understand what she means, Mr. Whitford," he
excused himself "First I was not to tell; I know I wasn't, because
she said so; she quite as good as said so. Her last words were:
'Mind, Crossjay, you know nothing about me', when I stuck to that
beast of a tramp, who's a 'walking moral,' and gets money out of
people by snuffling it."

"Attend to your lesson, or you'll be one," said Vernon.

"Yes, but, Mr. Whitford, now I am to tell. I'm to answer straight
out to every question."

"Miss Middleton is anxious that you should be truthful."

"Yes; but in the morning she told me not to tell."

"She was in a hurry. She has it on her conscience that you may
have misunderstood her, and she wishes you never to be guilty of
an untruth, least of all on her account."

Crossjay committed an unspoken resolution to the air in a violent
sigh: "Ah!" and said: "If I were sure!"

"Do as she bids you, my boy."

"But I don't know what it is she wants."

"Hold to her last words to you."

"So I do. If she told me to run till I dropped, on I'd go."

"She told you to study your lessons; do that."

Crossjay buckled to his book, invigorated by an imagination of his
liege lady on the page.

After a studious interval, until the impression of his lady had
subsided. he resumed: "She's so funny. She's just like a girl, and
then she's a lady, too. She's my idea of a princess. And Colonel
De Craye! Wasn't he taught dancing! When he says something funny
he ducks and seems to be setting to his partner. I should like to
be as clever as her father. That is a clever man. I dare say
Colonel De Craye will dance with her tonight. I wish I was there."

"It's a dinner-party, not a dance," Vernon forced himself to say,
to dispel that ugly vision.

"Isn't it, sir? I thought they danced after dinner-parties, Mr.
Whitford, have you ever seen her run?"

Vernon pointed him to his task.

They were silent for a lengthened period.

"But does Miss Middleton mean me to speak out if Sir Willoughby
asks me?" said Crossjay.

"Certainly. You needn't make much of it. All's plain and simple."

"But I'm positive, Mr. Whitford, he wasn't to hear of her going to
the post-office with me before breakfast. And how did Colonel De
Craye find her and bring her back, with that old Flitch? He's a
man and can go where he pleases, and I'd have found her, too. give
me the chance. You know. I'm fond of Miss Dale, but she--I'm very
fond of her--but you can't think she's a girl as well. And about
Miss Dale, when she says a thing, there it is, clear. But Miss
Middleton has a lot of meanings. Never mind; I go by what's
inside, and I'm pretty sure to please her."

"Take your chin off your hand and your elbow off the book, and fix
yourself," said Vernon, wrestling with the seduction of Crossjay's
idolatry, for Miss Middleton's appearance had been preternaturally
sweet on her departure, and the next pleasure to seeing her was
hearing of her from the lips of this passionate young poet.

"Remember that you please her by speaking truth," Vernon added,
and laid himself open to questions upon the truth, by which he
learnt, with a perplexed sense of envy and sympathy, that the
boy's idea of truth strongly approximated to his conception of
what should be agreeable to Miss Middleton.

He was lonely, bereft of the bard, when he had tucked Crossjay up
in his bed and left him. Books he could not read; thoughts were
disturbing. A seat in the library and a stupid stare helped to
pass the hours, and but for the spot of sadness moving meditation
in spite of his effort to stun himself, he would have borne a
happy resemblance to an idiot in the sun. He had verily no
command of his reason. She was too beautiful! Whatever she did was
best. That was the refrain of the fountain-song in him; the burden
being her whims, variations, inconsistencies, wiles; her
tremblings between good and naughty, that might be stamped to
noble or to terrible; her sincereness, her duplicity, her courage,
cowardice, possibilities for heroism and for treachery. By dint of
dwelling on the theme, he magnified the young lady to
extraordinary stature. And he had sense enough to own that her
character was yet liquid in the mould, and that she was a creature
of only naturally youthful wildness provoked to freakishness by
the ordeal of a situation shrewd as any that can happen to her sex
in civilized life. But he was compelled to think of her
extravagantly, and he leaned a little to the discrediting of her,
because her actual image ummanned him and was unbearable; and to
say at the end of it: "She is too beautiful! whatever she does is
best," smoothed away the wrong he did her. Had it been in his
power he would have thought of her in the abstract--the stage
contiguous to that which he adopted: but the attempt was luckless;
the Stagyrite would have faded in it. What philosopher could
have set down that face of sun and breeze and nymph in shadow as a
point in a problem?

The library door was opened at midnight by Miss Dale. She dosed it
quietly. "You are not working, Mr. Whitford? I fancied you would
wish to hear of the evening. Professor Crooklyn arrived after all!
Mrs. Mountstuart is bewildered: she says she expected you, and
that you did not excuse yourself to her, and she cannot
comprehend, et caetera. That is to say, she chooses bewilderment
to indulge in the exclamatory. She must be very much annoyed. The
professor did come by the train she drove to meet!"

"I thought it probable," said Vernon.

"He had to remain a couple of hours at the Railway Inn; no
conveyance was to be found for him. He thinks he has caught a
cold, and cannot stifle his fretfulness about it. He may be as
learned as Doctor Middleton; he has not the same happy
constitution. Nothing more unfortunate could have occurred; he
spoilt the party. Mrs. Mountstuart tried petting him, which drew
attention to him, and put us all in his key for several awkward
minutes, more than once. She lost her head; she was unlike
herself I may be presumptuous in criticizing her, but should not
the president of a dinner-table treat it like a battlefield, and
let the guest that sinks descend, and not allow the voice of a
discordant, however illustrious, to rule it? Of course, it is when
I see failures that I fancy I could manage so well: comparison is
prudently reserved in the other cases. I am a daring critic, no
doubt, because I know I shall never be tried by experiment. I have
no ambition to be tried."

She did not notice a smile of Vernon's, and continued: "Mrs
Mountstuart gave him the lead upon any subject he chose. I thought
the professor never would have ceased talking of a young lady who
had been at the inn before him drinking hot brandy and water with
a gentleman!"

"How did he hear of that?" cried Vernon, roused by the malignity
of the Fates.

"From the landlady, trying to comfort him. And a story of her
lending shoes and stockings while those of the young lady were
drying. He has the dreadful snappish humourous way of recounting
which impresses it; the table took up the subject of this
remarkable young lady, and whether she was a lady of the
neighbourhood, and who she could be that went abroad on foot in
heavy rain. It was painful to me; I knew enough to be sure of who
she was."

"Did she betray it?"

"No."

"Did Willoughby look at her?"

"Without suspicion then."

"Then?"

"Colonel De Craye was diverting us, and he was very amusing.
Mrs. Mountstuart told him afterward that he ought to be paid
salvage for saving the wreck of her party. Sir Willoughby was a
little too cynical; he talked well; what he said was good, but it
was not good-humoured; he has not the reckless indifference of
Colonel De Craye to uttering nonsense that amusement may come of
it. And in the drawing-room he lost such gaiety as he had. I was
close to Mrs. Mountstuart when Professor Crooklyn approached her
and spoke in my hearing of that gentleman and that young lady.
They were, you could see by his nods, Colonel De Craye and Miss
Middleton."

"And she at once mentioned it to Willoughby?"

"Colonel De Craye gave her no chance, if she sought it. He courted
her profusely. Behind his rattle he must have brains. It ran in
all directions to entertain her and her circle."

"Willoughby knows nothing?"

"I cannot judge. He stood with Mrs. Mountstuart a minute as we
were taking leave. She looked strange. I heard her say: 'The
rogue!' He laughed. She lifted her shoulders. He scarcely opened
his mouth on the way home."

"The thing must run its course," Vernon said, with the
philosophical air which is desperation rendered decorous.
"Willoughby deserves it. A man of full growth ought to know that
nothing on earth tempts Providence so much as the binding of a
young woman against her will. Those two are mutually attracted:
they're both ... They meet, and the mischief's done: both are
bright. He can persuade with a word. Another might discourse like
an angel and it would be useless. I said everything I could think
of, to no purpose. And so it is: there are those attractions!
-just as, with her, Willoughby is the reverse, he repels. I'm in
about the same predicament--or should be if she were plighted to
me. That is, for the length of five minutes; about the space of
time I should require for the formality of handing her back her
freedom. How a sane man can imagine a girl like that ... ! But if
she has changed, she has changed! You can't conciliate a withered
affection. This detaining her, and tricking, and not listening,
only increases her aversion; she learns the art in turn. Here she
is, detained by fresh plots to keep Dr. Middleton at the Hall.
That's true, is it not?" He saw that it was. "No, she's not to
blame! She has told him her mind; he won't listen. The question
then is, whether she keeps to her word, or breaks it. It's a
dispute between a conventional idea of obligation and an injury to
her nature. Which is the more dishonourable thing to do? Why, you
and I see in a moment that her feelings guide her best. It's one
of the few cases in which nature may be consulted like an oracle."

"Is she so sure of her nature?" said Miss Dale.

"You may doubt it; I do not. I am surprised at her coming back. De
Craye is a man of the world, and advised it, I suppose. He--well,
I never had the persuasive tongue, and my failing doesn't count
for much."

"But the suddenness of the intimacy!"

"The disaster is rather famous 'at first sight'. He came in a
fortunate hour... for him. A pigmy's a giant if he can manage to
arrive in season. Did you not notice that there was danger, at
their second or third glance? You counselled me to hang on here,
where the amount of good I do in proportion to what I have to
endure is microscopic."

"It was against your wishes, I know," said Laetitia, and when the
words were out she feared that they were tentative. Her delicacy
shrank from even seeming to sound him in relation to a situation
so delicate as Miss Middleton's.

The same sentiment guarded him from betraying himself, and he
said: "Partly against. We both foresaw the possible--because,
like most prophets, we knew a little more of circumstances
enabling us to see the fatal. A pigmy would have served, but De
Craye is a handsome, intelligent, pleasant fellow."

"Sir Willoughby's friend!"

"Well, in these affairs! A great deal must be charged on the
goddess."

"That is really Pagan fatalism!"

"Our modern word for it is Nature. Science condescends to speak of
natural selection. Look at these! They are both graceful and
winning and witty, bright to mind and eye, made for one another,
as country people say. I can't blame him. Besides, we don't know
that he's guilty. We're quite in the dark, except that we're
certain how it must end. If the chance should occur to you of
giving Willoughby a word of counsel--it may--you might, without
irritating him as my knowledge of his plight does, hint at your
eyes being open. His insane dread of a detective world makes him
artificially blind. As soon as he fancies himself seen, he sets to
work spinning a web, and he discerns nothing else. It's generally
a clever kind of web; but if it's a tangle to others it's the same
to him, and a veil as well. He is preparing the catastrophe, he
forces the issue. Tell him of her extreme desire to depart. Treat
her as mad, to soothe him. Otherwise one morning he will wake a
second time ... ! It is perfectly certain. And the second time it
will be entirely his own fault. Inspire him with some philosophy."

"I have none."

"I if I thought so, I would say you have better. There are two
kinds of philosophy, mine and yours. Mine comes of coldness, yours
of devotion."

"He is unlikely to choose me for his confidante."

Vernon meditated. "One can never quite guess what he will do, from
never knowing the heat of the centre in him which precipitates his
actions: he has a great art of concealment. As to me, as you
perceive, my views are too philosophical to let me be of use to
any of them. I blame only the one who holds to the bond. The
sooner I am gone!--in fact, I cannot stay on. So Dr. Middleton and
the Professor did not strike fire together?"

"Doctor Middleton was ready, and pursued him, but Professor
Crooklyn insisted on shivering. His line of blank verse, 'A
Railway platform and a Railway inn!' became pathetic in
repetition. He must have suffered."

"Somebody has to!"

"Why the innocent?"

"He arrives a propos. But remember that Fridolin sometimes
contrives to escape and have the guilty scorched. The Professor
would not have suffered if he had missed his train, as he appears
to be in the habit of doing. Thus his unaccustomed good-fortune
was the cause of his bad."

"You saw him on the platform?"

"I am unacquainted with the professor. I had to get Mrs
Mountstuart out of the way."

"She says she described him to you. 'Complexion of a sweetbread,
consistency of a quenelle, grey, and like a Saint without his
dish behind the head.'"

"Her descriptions are strikingly accurate, but she forgot to
sketch his back, and all that I saw was a narrow sloping back and
a broad hat resting the brim on it. My report to her spoke of an
old gentleman of dark complexion, as the only traveller on the
platform. She has faith in the efficiency of her descriptive
powers, and so she was willing to drive off immediately. The
intention was a start to London. Colonel De Craye came up and
effected in five minutes what I could not compass in thirty."

"But you saw Colonel De Craye pass you?"

"My work was done; I should have been an intruder. Besides I was
acting wet jacket with Mrs. Mountstuart to get her to drive off
fast, or she might have jumped out in search of her Professor
herself."

"She says you were lean as a fork, with the wind whistling through
the prongs."

"You see how easy it is to deceive one who is an artist in
phrases. Avoid them, Miss Dale; they dazzle the penetration of the
composer. That is why people of ability like Mrs Mountstuart see
so little; they are so bent on describing brilliantly. However,
she is kind and charitable at heart. I have been considering
to-night that, to cut this knot as it is now, Miss Middleton
might do worse than speak straight out to Mrs. Mountstuart. No one
else would have such influence with Willoughby. The simple fact of
Mrs. Mountstuart's knowing of it would be almost enough. But
courage would he required for that. Good-night, Miss Dale."

"Good-night, Mr. Whitford. You pardon me for disturbing you?"

Vernon pressed her hand reassuringly. He had but to look at her
and review her history to think his cousin Willoughby punished by
just retribution. Indeed, for any maltreatment of the dear boy
Love by man or by woman, coming under your cognizance, you, if you
be of common soundness, shall behold the retributive blow struck
in your time.