The Egoist

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Colonel De Craye concluded with an asseveration of the truth of
the story.

"A most provident, far-sighted old sea-captain!" exclaimed Mrs.
Mountstuart, laughing at Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer. These
ladies chimed in with her gingerly.

"And have you many more clever stories, Colonel De Craye?" said
Lady Busshe.

"Ah! my lady, when the tree begins to count its gold 'tis nigh
upon bankruptcy."

"Poetic!" ejaculated Lady Culmer, spying at Miss Middleton's
rippled countenance, and noting that she and Sir Willoughby had
not interchanged word or look.

"But that in the case of your Patterne Port a bottle of it would
outvalue the catalogue of nuptial presents, Willoughby, I would
recommend your stationing some such constabulary to keep watch and
ward." said Dr. Middleton, as he filled his glass, taking Bordeaux
in the middle of the day, under a consciousness of virtue and its
reward to come at half-past seven in the evening.

"The rascals would require a dozen of that, sir," said De Craye.

"Then it is not to be thought of. Indeed one!" Dr. Middleton
negatived the idea.

"We are no further advanced than when we began," observed Lady
Busshe.

"If we are marked to go by stages," Mrs. Mountstuart assented.

"Why, then, we shall be called old coaches," remarked the colonel.

"You," said Lady Culmer, "have the advantage of us in a closer
acquaintance with Miss Middleton. You know her tastes, and how far
they have been consulted in the little souvenirs already grouped
somewhere, although not yet for inspection. I am at sea. And here
is Lady Busshe in deadly alarm. There is plenty of time to effect
a change--though we are drawing on rapidly to the fatal day, Miss
Middleton. We are, we are very near it. Oh! yes. I am one who
thinks that these little affairs should be spoken of openly,
without that ridiculous bourgeois affectation, so that we may be
sure of giving satisfaction. It is a transaction like everything
else in life. I, for my part, wish to be remembered favourably. I
put it as a test of breeding to speak of these things as plain
matter-of-fact. You marry; I wish you to have something by you to
remind you of me. What shall it be?--useful or ornamental. For an
ordinary household the choice is not difficult. But where wealth
abounds we are in a dilemma."

"And with persons of decided tastes," added Lady Busshe.

"I am really very unhappy," she protested to Clara.

Sir Willoughby dropped Laetitia; Clara's look of a sedate
resolution to preserve silence on the topic of the nuptial gifts
made a diversion imperative.

"Your porcelain was exquisitely chosen, and I profess to be a
connoisseur," he said. "I am poor in Old Saxony, as you know; I
can match the country in Savres, and my inheritance of China will
not easily be matched in the country."

"You may consider your Dragon vases a present from young
Crossjay," said De Craye.

"How?"

"Hasn't he abstained from breaking them? the capital boy!
Porcelain and a boy in the house together is a case of prospective
disaster fully equal to Flitch and a fly."

"You should understand that my friend Horace--whose wit is in
this instance founded on another tale of a boy--brought us a
magnificent piece of porcelain, destroyed by the capsizing of his
conveyance from the station," said Sir Willoughby to Lady Busshe.

She and Lady Culmer gave out lamentable Ohs, while Miss Eleanor
and Miss Isabel Patterne sketched the incident. Then the lady
visitors fixed their eyes in united sympathy upon Clara:
recovering from which, after a contemplation of marble, Lady
Busshe emphasized, "No, you do not love porcelain, it is evident,
Miss Middleton."

"I am glad to be assured of it," said Lady Culmer.

"Oh, I know that face: I know that look," Lady Busshe affected to
remark rallyingly: "it is not the first time I have seen it."

Sir Willoughby smarted to his marrow. "We will rout these fancies
of an overscrupulous generosity, my dear Lady Busshe."

Her unwonted breach of delicacy in speaking publicly of her
present, and the vulgar persistency of her sticking to the theme,
very much perplexed him. And if he mistook her not, she had just
alluded to the demoniacal Constantia Durham.

It might be that he had mistaken her: he was on guard against his
terrible sensitiveness. Nevertheless it was hard to account for
this behaviour of a lady greatly his friend and admirer, a lady of
birth. And Lady Culmer as well!--likewise a lady of birth. Were
they in collusion? had they a suspicion? He turned to Laetitia's
face for the antidote to his pain.

"Oh, but you are not one yet, and I shall require two voices to
convince me," Lady Busshe rejoined, after another stare at the
marble.

"Lady Busshe, I beg you not to think me ungrateful," said Clara.

"Fiddle!--gratitude! it is to please your taste, to satisfy you.
I care for gratitude as little as for flattery."

"But gratitude is flattering," said Vernon.

" Now, no metaphysics, Mr. Whitford."

"But do care a bit for flattery, my lady," said De Craye. "'Tis
the finest of the Arts; we might call it moral sculpture. Adepts
in it can cut their friends to any shape they like by practising
it with the requisite skill. I myself, poor hand as I am, have
made a man act Solomon by constantly praising his wisdom. He took
a sagacious turn at an early period of the dose. He weighed the
smallest question of his daily occasions with a deliberation truly
oriental. Had I pushed it, he'd have hired a baby and a couple of
mothers to squabble over the undivided morsel."

"I shall hope for a day in London with you," said Lady Culmer to
Clara.

"You did not forget the Queen of Sheba?" said Mrs. Mountstuart to
De Craye.

"With her appearance, the game has to be resigned to her
entirely," he rejoined.

"That is," Lady Culmer continued, "if you do not despise an old
woman for your comrade on a shopping excursion."

"Despise whom we fleece!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "Oh, no, Lady
Culmer, the sheep is sacred."

"I am not so sure," said Vernon.

"In what way, and to what extent, are you not so sure?" said Dr.
Middleton.

"The natural tendency is to scorn the fleeced."

"I stand for the contrary. Pity, if you like: particularly when
they bleat."

"This is to assume that makers of gifts are a fleeced people: I
demur," said Mrs. Mountstuart.

"Madam, we are expected to give; we are incited to give; you have
dubbed it the fashion to give; and the person refusing to give, or
incapable of giving, may anticipate that he will be regarded as
benignly as a sheep of a drooping and flaccid wool by the farmer,
who is reminded by the poor beast's appearance of a strange dog
that worried the flock. Even Captain Benjamin, as you have seen,
was unable to withstand the demand on him. The hymeneal pair are
licensed freebooters levying blackmail on us; survivors of an
uncivilized period. But in taking without mercy, I venture to
trust that the manners of a happier era instruct them not to scorn
us. I apprehend that Mr. Whitford has a lower order of latrons in
his mind."

"Permit me to say, sir, that you have not considered the ignoble
aspect of the fleeced," said Vernon. "I appeal to the ladies:
would they not, if they beheld an ostrich walking down a Queen's
Drawing Room, clean-plucked, despise him though they were wearing
his plumes?"

"An extreme supposition, indeed," said Dr. Middleton, frowning over
it; "scarcely legitimately to be suggested."

"I think it fair, sir, as an instance."

"Has the circumstance occurred, I would ask?"

"In life? a thousand times."

"I fear so," said Mrs. Mountstuart.

Lady Busshe showed symptoms of a desire to leave a profitless
table.

Vernon started up, glancing at the window.

"Did you see Crossjay?" he said to Clara.

"No; I must, if he is there," said she.

She made her way out, Vernon after her. They both had the excuse.

"Which way did the poor boy go?" she asked him.

"I have not the slightest idea," he replied. "But put on your
bonnet, if you would escape that pair of inquisitors."

"Mr. Whitford, what humiliation!"

"I suspect you do not feel it the most, and the end of it can't be
remote, said he.

Thus it happened that when Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer quitted the
dining-room, Miss Middleton had spirited herself away from
summoning voice and messenger.

Sir Willoughby apologized for her absence. "If I could be jealous,
it would be of that boy Crossjay."

"You are an excellent man, and the best of cousins," was Lady
Busshe's enigmatical answer.

The exceedingly lively conversation at his table was lauded by
Lady Culmer.

"Though," said she, "what it all meant, and what was the drift of
it, I couldn't tell to save my life. Is it every day the same with
you here?"

"Very much."

"How you must enjoy a spell of dulness!"

"If you said simplicity and not talking for effect! I generally
cast anchor by Laetitia Dale."

"Ah!" Lady Busshe coughed. "But the fact is, Mrs. Mountstuart is
made for cleverness!"

"I think, my lady, Laetitia Dale is to the full as clever as any
of the stars Mrs. Mountstuart assembles, or I."

"Talkative cleverness, I mean."

"In conversation as well. Perhaps you have not yet given her a
chance."

"Yes, yes, she is clever, of course, poor dear. She is looking
better too."

"Handsome, I thought," said Lady Culmer.

"She varies," observed Sir Willoughby.

The ladies took seat in their carriage and fell at once into a
close-bonnet colloquy. Not a single allusion had they made to the
wedding-presents after leaving the luncheon-table. The cause of
their visit was obvious.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Contains Clever Fencing and Intimations of the Need for It

That woman, Lady Busshe, had predicted, after the event,
Constantia Durham's defection. She had also, subsequent to
Willoughby's departure on his travels, uttered sceptical things
concerning his rooted attachment to Laetitia Dale. In her bitter
vulgarity, that beaten rival of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson for the
leadership of the county had taken his nose for a melancholy
prognostic of his fortunes; she had recently played on his name:
she had spoken the hideous English of his fate. Little as she
knew, she was alive to the worst interpretation of appearances. No
other eulogy occurred to her now than to call him the best of
cousins, because Vernon Whitford was housed and clothed and fed by
him. She had nothing else to say for a man she thought luckless!
She was a woman barren of wit, stripped of style, but she was
wealthy and a gossip--a forge of showering sparks--and she
carried Lady Culmer with her. The two had driven from his house to
spread the malignant rumour abroad; already they blew the biting
world on his raw wound. Neither of them was like Mrs. Mountstuart,
a witty woman, who could be hoodwinked; they were dull women, who
steadily kept on their own scent of the fact, and the only way to
confound such inveterate forces was to be ahead of them, and seize
and transform the expected fact, and astonish them, when they came
up to him, with a totally unanticipated fact.

"You see, you were in error, ladies."

"And so we were, Sir Willoughby, and we acknowledge it. We never
could have guessed that!"

Thus the phantom couple in the future delivered themselves, as
well they might at the revelation. He could run far ahead.

Ay, but to combat these dolts, facts had to be encountered, deeds
done, in groaning earnest. These representatives of the
pig-sconces of the population judged by circumstances: airy shows
and seems had no effect on them. Dexterity of fence was thrown
away.

A flying peep at the remorseless might of dulness in compelling us
to a concrete performance counter to our inclinations, if we would
deceive its terrible instinct, gave Willoughby for a moment the
survey of a sage. His intensity of personal feeling struck so
vivid an illumination of mankind at intervals that he would have
been individually wise, had he not been moved by the source of his
accurate perceptions to a personal feeling of opposition to his
own sagacity. He loathed and he despised the vision, so his mind
had no benefit of it, though he himself was whipped along. He
chose rather (and the choice is open to us all) to be flattered by
the distinction it revealed between himself and mankind.

But if he was not as others were, why was he discomfited,
solicitous, miserable? To think that it should be so, ran dead
against his conqueror's theories wherein he had been trained,
which, so long as he gained success awarded success to native
merit, grandeur to the grand in soul, as light kindles light:
nature presents the example. His early training, his bright
beginning of life, had taught him to look to earth's principal
fruits as his natural portion, and it was owing to a girl that he
stood a mark for tongues, naked, wincing at the possible malignity
of a pair of harridans. Why not whistle the girl away?

Why, then he would he free to enjoy, careless, younger than his
youth in the rebound to happiness!

And then would his nostrils begin to lift and sniff at the
creeping up of a thick pestiferous vapour. Then in that volume of
stench would he discern the sullen yellow eye of malice. A
malarious earth would hunt him all over it. The breath of the
world, the world's view of him, was partly his vital breath, his
view of himself. The ancestry of the tortured man had bequeathed
him this condition of high civilization among their other
bequests. Your withered contracted Egoists of the hut and the grot
reck not of public opinion; they crave but for liberty and leisure
to scratch themselves and soothe an excessive scratch. Willoughby
was expansive, a blooming one, born to look down upon a tributary
world, and to exult in being looked to. Do we wonder at his
consternation in the prospect of that world's blowing foul on
him? Princes have their obligations to teach them they are mortal,
and the brilliant heir of a tributary world is equally enchained
by the homage it brings him;--more, inasmuch as it is immaterial,
elusive, not gathered by the tax, and he cannot capitally punish
the treasonable recusants. Still must he be brilliant; he must
court his people. He must ever, both in his reputation and his
person, aching though he be, show them a face and a leg.

The wounded gentleman shut himself up in his laboratory, where he
could stride to and fro, and stretch out his arms for physical
relief, secure from observation of his fantastical shapes, under
the idea that he was meditating. There was perhaps enough to make
him fancy it in the heavy fire of shots exchanged between his
nerves and the situation; there were notable flashes. He would not
avow that he was in an agony: it was merely a desire for
exercise.

Quintessence of worldliness, Mrs. Mountstuart appeared through his
farthest window, swinging her skirts on a turn at the end of the
lawn, with Horace De Craye smirking beside her. And the woman's
vaunted penetration was unable to detect the histrionic Irishism
of the fellow. Or she liked him for his acting and nonsense; nor
she only. The voluble beast was created to snare women. Willoughby
became smitten with an adoration of stedfastness in women. The
incarnation of that divine quality crossed his eyes. She was clad
in beauty. A horrible nondescript convulsion composed of yawn and
groan drove him to his instruments, to avert a renewal of the
shock; and while arranging and fixing them for their unwonted
task, he compared himself advantageously with men like Vernon and
De Craye, and others of the county, his fellows in the
hunting-field and on the Magistrate's bench, who neither
understood nor cared for solid work, beneficial practical work,
the work of Science.

He was obliged to relinquish it: his hand shook.

"Experiments will not advance much at this rate," he said, casting
the noxious retardation on his enemies.

It was not to be contested that he must speak with Mrs
Mountstuart, however he might shrink from the trial of his facial
muscles. Her not coming to him seemed ominous: nor was her
behaviour at the luncheon-table quite obscure. She had evidently
instigated the gentlemen to cross and counterchatter Lady Busshe
and Lady Culmer. For what purpose?

Clara's features gave the answer.

They were implacable. And he could be the same.

In the solitude of his room he cried right out: "I swear it, I
will never yield her to Horace De Craye! She shall feel some of my
torments, and try to get the better of them by knowing she
deserves them." He had spoken it, and it was an oath upon the
record.

Desire to do her intolerable hurt became an ecstasy in his veins,
and produced another stretching fit that terminated in a violent
shake of the body and limbs; during which he was a spectacle for
Mrs. Mountstuart at one of the windows. He laughed as he went to
her, saying: "No, no work to-day; it won't be done, positively
refuses."

"I am taking the Professor away," said she; "he is fidgety about
the cold he caught."

Sir Willoughby stepped out to her. "I was trying at a bit of work
for an hour, not to be idle all day."

"You work in that den of yours every clay?

"Never less than an hour, if I can snatch it."

"It is a wonderful resource!"

The remark set him throbbing and thinking that a prolongation of
his crisis exposed him to the approaches of some organic malady,
possibly heart-disease.

"A habit," he said. "In there I throw off the world."

"We shall see some results in due time."

"I promise none: I like to be abreast of the real knowledge of my
day, that is all."

"And a pearl among country gentlemen!"

"In your gracious consideration, my dear lady. Generally speaking,
it would be more advisable to become a chatterer and keep an
anecdotal note-book. I could not do it, simply because I could not
live with my own emptiness for the sake of making an occasional
display of fireworks. I aim at solidity. It is a narrow aim, no
doubt; not much appreciated."

"Laetitia Dale appreciates it."

A smile of enforced ruefulness, like a leaf curling in heat,
wrinkled his mouth.

Why did she not speak of her conversation with Clara?

"Have they caught Crossjay?" he said.

"Apparently they are giving chase to him."

The likelihood was, that Clara had been overcome by timidity.

"Must you leave us?"

"I think it prudent to take Professor Crooklyn away."

"He still . . .?"

"The extraordinary resemblance!"

"A word aside to Dr. Middleton will dispel that."

"You are thoroughly good."

This hateful encomium of commiseration transfixed him. Then she
knew of his calamity!

"Philosophical," he said, "would be the proper term, I think."

"Colonel De Craye, by the way, promises me a visit when he leaves
you."

"To-morrow?"

"The earlier the better. He is too captivating; he is delightful.
He won me in five minutes. I don't accuse him. Nature gifted him to
cast the spell. We are weak women, Sir Willoughby."

She knew!

"Like to like: the witty to the witty, ma'am."

"You won't compliment me with a little bit of jealousy?"

"I forbear from complimenting him."

"Be philosophical, of course, if you have the philosophy."

"I pretend to it. Probably I suppose myself to succeed because I
have no great requirement of it; I cannot say. We are riddles to
ourselves."

Mrs. Mountstuart pricked the turf with the point of her parasol.
She looked down and she looked up.

"Well?" said he to her eyes.

"Well, and where is Laetitia Dale?"

He turned about to show his face elsewhere.

When he fronted her again, she looked very fixedly, and set her
head shaking.

"It will not do, my dear Sir Willoughby!"

"What?"

I never could solve enigmas."

"Playing ta-ta-ta-ta ad infinitum, then. Things have gone far. All
parties would be happier for an excursion. Send her home."

"Laetitia? I can't part with her."

Mrs. Mountstuart put a tooth on her under lip as her head renewed
its brushing negative.

"In what way can it be hurtful that she should be here, ma'am?" he
ventured to persist.

"Think."

"She is proof."

"Twice!"

The word was big artillery. He tried the affectation of a staring
stupidity. She might have seen his heart thump, and he quitted
the mask for an agreeable grimace.

"She is inaccessible. She is my friend. I guarantee her, on my
honour. Have no fear for her. I beg you to have confidence in me.
I would perish rather. No soul on earth is to be compared with
her."

Mrs. Mountstuart repeated "Twice!"

The low monosyllable, musically spoken in the same tone of warning
of a gentle ghost, rolled a thunder that maddened him, but he
dared not take it up to fight against it on plain terms.

"Is it for my sake?" he said.

"It will not do, Sir Willoughby."

She spurred him to a frenzy.

"My dear Mrs. Mountstuart, you have been listening to tales. I am
not a tyrant. I am one of the most easy-going of men. Let us
preserve the forms due to society: I say no more. As for poor old
Vernon, people call me a good sort of cousin; I should like to see
him comfortably married; decently married this time. I have
proposed to contribute to his establishment. I mention it to show
that the case has been practically considered. He has had a
tolerably souring experience of the state; he might be inclined
if, say, you took him in hand, for another venture. It's a
demoralizing lottery. However, Government sanctions it."

"But, Sir Willoughby, what is the use of my taking him in hand
when, as you tell me, Laetitia Dale holds back?"

"She certainly does."

"Then we are talking to no purpose, unless you undertake to melt
her."

He suffered a lurking smile to kindle to some strength of meaning.

"You are not over-considerate in committing me to such an office."

"You are afraid of the danger?" she all but sneered.

Sharpened by her tone, he said, "I have such a love of stedfastness
of character, that I should be a poor advocate in the endeavour to
break it. And frankly, I know the danger. I saved my honour when
I made the attempt: that is all I can say."

"Upon my word," Mrs. Mountstuart threw back her head to let her
eyes behold him summarily over their fine aquiline bridge, "you
have the art of mystification, my good friend."

"Abandon the idea of Laetitia Dale."

"And marry your cousin Vernon to whom? Where are we?"

"As I said, ma'am, I am an easy-going man. I really have not a
spice of the tyrant in me. An intemperate creature held by the
collar may have that notion of me, while pulling to be released as
promptly as it entered the noose. But I do strictly and sternly
object to the scandal of violent separations, open breaches of
solemn engagements, a public rupture. Put it that I am the cause,
I will not consent to a violation of decorum. Is that clear? It is
just possible for things to be arranged so that all parties may be
happy in their way without much hubbub. Mind, it is not I who
have willed it so. I am, and I am forced to be, passive. But I
will not be obstructive."

He paused, waving his hand to signify the vanity of the more that
might be said.

Some conception of him, dashed by incredulity, excited the lady's
intelligence.

"Well!" she exclaimed, "you have planted me in the land of
conjecture. As my husband used to say, I don't see light, but I
think I see the lynx that does. We won't discuss it at present. I
certainly must be a younger woman than I supposed, for I am
learning hard.--Here comes the Professor, buttoned up to the
ears, and Dr. Middleton flapping in the breeze. There will be a
cough, and a footnote referring to the young lady at the station,
if we stand together, so please order my carriage."

"You found Clara complacent? roguish?"

"I will call to-morrow. You have simplified my task, Sir
Willoughby, very much; that is, assuming that I have not entirely
mistaken you. I am so far in the dark that I have to help myself
by recollecting how Lady Busshe opposed my view of a certain matter
formerly. Scepticism is her forte. It will be the very oddest
thing if after all ...! No, I shall own, romance has not departed.
Are you fond of dupes?"

"I detest the race."

"An excellent answer. I could pardon you for it." She refrained
from adding, "If you are making one of me."

Sir Willoughby went to ring for her carriage.

She knew. That was palpable: Clara had betrayed him.

"The earlier Colonel De Craye leaves Patterne Hall the better:"
she had said that: and, "all parties would be happier for an
excursion." She knew the position of things and she guessed the
remainder. But what she did not know, and could not divine, was
the man who fenced her. He speculated further on the witty and the
dull. These latter are the redoubtable body. They will have facts
to convince them: they had, he confessed it to himself,
precipitated him into the novel sphere of his dark hints to Mrs.
Mountstuart; from which the utter darkness might allow him to
escape, yet it embraced him singularly, and even pleasantly, with
the sense of a fact established.

It embraced him even very pleasantly. There was an end to his
tortures. He sailed on a tranquil sea, the husband of a stedfast
woman--no rogue. The exceeding beauty of stedfastness in women
clothed Laetitia in graces Clara could not match. A tried stedfast
woman is the one jewel of the sex. She points to her husband like
the sunflower; her love illuminates him; she lives in him, for
him; she testifies to his worth; she drags the world to his feet;
she leads the chorus of his praises; she justifies him in his own
esteem. Surely there is not on earth such beauty!