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

Willoughby revolved the entire drama in Clara's presence. It
helped him to look on her coolly. Conducting her to the
dinner-table, he spoke of Crossjay, not unkindly; and at table, he
revolved the set of scenes with a heated animation that took fire
from the wine and the face of his friend Horace, while he
encouraged Horace to be flowingly Irish. He nipped the fellow
good-humouredly once or twice, having never felt so friendly to
him since the day of his arrival; but the position of critic is
instinctively taken by men who do not flow: and Patterne Port kept
Dr Middleton in a benevolent reserve when Willoughby decided that
something said by De Craye was not new, and laughingly accused him
of failing to consult his anecdotal notebook for the double-cross
to his last sprightly sally. "Your sallies are excellent, Horace,
but spare us your Aunt Sallies!" De Craye had no repartee, nor did
Dr. Middleton challenge a pun. We have only to sharpen our wits
to trip your seductive rattler whenever we may choose to think
proper; and evidently, if we condescended to it, we could do
better than he. The critic who has hatched a witticism is
impelled to this opinion. Judging by the smiles of the ladies,
they thought so, too.

Shortly before eleven o'clock Dr. Middleton made a Spartan stand
against the offer of another bottle of Port. The regulation couple
of bottles had been consumed in equal partnership, and the Rev.
Doctor and his host were free to pay a ceremonial visit to the
drawing-room, where they were not expected. A piece of work of the
elder ladies, a silken boudoir sofa-rug, was being examined, with
high approval of the two younger. Vernon and Colonel De Craye had
gone out in search of Crossjay, one to Mr. Dale's cottage, the
other to call at the head and under-gamekeeper's. They were said
to be strolling and smoking, for the night was fine. Willoughby
left the room and came back with the key of Crossjay's door in his
pocket. He foresaw that the delinquent might be of service to
him.

Laetitia and Clara sang together. Laetitia was flushed, Clara
pale. At eleven they saluted the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.
Willoughby said "Good-night" to each of them, contrasting as he
did so the downcast look of Laetitia with Clara's frigid
directness. He divined that they were off to talk over their one
object of common interest, Crossjay. Saluting his aunts, he took
up the rug, to celebrate their diligence and taste; and that he
might make Dr. Middleton impatient for bed, he provoked him to
admire it, held it out and laid it out, and caused the courteous
old gentleman some confusion in hitting on fresh terms of
commendation.

Before midnight the room was empty. Ten minutes later Willoughby
paid it a visit, and found it untenanted by the person he had
engaged to be there. Vexed by his disappointment, he paced up and
down, and chanced abstractedly to catch the rug in his hand; for
what purpose, he might well ask himself; admiration of ladies"
work, in their absence, was unlikely to occur to him.
Nevertheless. the touch of the warm, soft silk was meltingly
feminine. A glance at the mantel-piece clock told him Laetitia was
twenty minutes behind the hour. Her remissness might endanger all
his plans, alter the whole course of his life. The colours in
which he painted her were too lively to last; the madness in his
head threatened to subside. Certain it was that he could not be
ready a second night for the sacrifice he had been about to
perform.

The clock was at the half hour after twelve. He flung the silken
thing on the central ottoman, extinguished the lamps, and walked
out of the room, charging the absent Laetitia to bear her
misfortune with a consciousness of deserving it.

CHAPTER XL

Midnight: Sir Willoughby and Laetitia: with Young Crossjay under a
Coverlet

Young Crossjay was a glutton at holidays and never thought of home
till it was dark. The close of the day saw him several miles away
from the Hall, dubious whether he would not round his numerous
adventures by sleeping at an inn; for he had lots of money, and
the idea of jumping up in the morning in a strange place was
thrilling. Besides, when he was shaken out of sleep by Sir
Willoughby, he had been told that he was to go, and not to show
his face at Patterne again. On the other hand, Miss Middleton had
bidden him come back. There was little question with him which
person he should obey: he followed his heart.

Supper at an inn, where he found a company to listen to his
adventures, delayed him, and a short cut, intended to make up for
it, lost him his road. He reached the Hall very late, ready to be
in love with the horrible pleasure of a night's rest under the
stars, if necessary. But a candle burned at one of the back
windows. He knocked, and a kitchen-maid let him in. She had a bowl
of hot soup prepared for him. Crossjay tried a mouthful to please
her. His head dropped over it. She roused him to his feet, and he
pitched against her shoulder. The dry air of the kitchen
department had proved too much for the tired youngster. Mary, the
maid, got him to step as firmly as he was able, and led him by the
back-way to the hall, bidding him creep noiselessly to bed. He
understood his position in the house, and though he could have
gone fast to sleep on the stairs, he took a steady aim at his room
and gained the door cat-like. The door resisted. He was appalled
and unstrung in a minute. The door was locked. Crossjay felt as if
he were in the presence of Sir Willoughby. He fled on ricketty
legs, and had a fall and bumps down half a dozen stairs. A door
opened above. He rushed across the hall to the drawing-room,
invitingly open, and there staggered in darkness to the ottoman
and rolled himself in something sleek and warm, soft as hands of
ladies, and redolent of them; so delicious that he hugged the
folds about his head and heels. While he was endeavouring to think
where he was, his legs curled, his eyelids shut, and he was in the
thick of the day's adventures, doing yet more wonderful things.

He heard his own name: that was quite certain. He knew that he
heard it with his ears, as he pursued the fleetest dreams ever
accorded to mortal. It did not mix: it was outside him, and like
the danger-pole in the ice, which the skater shooting hither and
yonder comes on again, it recurred; and now it marked a point in
his career, how it caused him to relax his pace; he began to
circle, and whirled closer round it, until, as at a blow, his
heart knocked, he tightened himself, thought of bolting, and lay
dead-still to throb and hearken.

"Oh! Sir Willoughby," a voice had said.

The accents were sharp with alarm.

"My friend! my dearest!" was the answer.

"I came to speak of Crossjay."

"Will you sit here on the ottoman?"

"No, I cannot wait. I hoped I had heard Crossjay return. I would
rather not sit down. May I entreat you to pardon him when he comes
home?"

"You, and you only, may do so. I permit none else. Of Crossjay
to-morrow."

"He may be lying in the fields. We are anxious."

"The rascal can take pretty good care of himself."

"Crossjay is perpetually meeting accidents."

"He shall be indemnified if he has had excess of punishment."

"I think I will say good-night, Sir Willoughby."

"When freely and unreservedly you have given me your hand."

There was hesitation.

"To say good-night?"

"I ask you for your hand."

"Good-night, Sir Willoughby."

"You do not give it. You are in doubt? Still? What language must I
use to convince you? And yet you know me. Who knows me but you?
You have always known me. You are my home and my temple. Have you
forgotten your verses of the day of my majority?

'The dawn-star has arisen
In plenitude of light.. .'"

"Do not repeat them, pray!" cried Laetitia, with a gasp.

"I have repeated them to myself a thousand times: in India,
America, Japan: they were like our English skylark, carolling to
me.

'My heart, now burst thy prison
With proud aerial flight!'"

"Oh, I beg you will not force me to listen to nonsense that I
wrote when I was a child. No more of those most foolish lines! If
you knew what it is to write and despise one's writing, you would
not distress me. And since you will not speak of Crossjay
to-night, allow me to retire."

"You know me, and therefore you know my contempt for verses, as a
rule, Laetitia. But not for yours to me. Why should you call them
foolish? They expressed your feelings--hold them sacred. They are
something religious to me, not mere poetry. Perhaps the third
verse is my favourite . . ."

"It will be more than I can bear!"

"You were in earnest when you wrote them?"

"I was very young, very enthusiastic, very silly."

"You were and are my image of constancy!"

"It is an error, Sir Willoughby; I am far from being the same."

"We are all older, I trust wiser. I am, I will own; much wiser.
Wise at last! I offer you my hand."

She did not reply. "I offer you my hand and name, Laetitia."

No response.

"You think me bound in honour to another?"

She was mute.

"I am free. Thank Heaven! I am free to choose my mate--the woman I
have always loved! Freely and unreservedly, as I ask you to give
your hand, I offer mine. You are the mistress of Patterne Hall; my
wife."

She had not a word.

"My dearest! do you not rightly understand? The hand I am offering
you is disengaged. It is offered to the lady I respect above all
others. I have made the discovery that I cannot love without
respecting; and as I will not marry without loving, it ensues that
I am free--I am yours. At last?--your lips move: tell me the
words. Have always loved, I said. You carry in your bosom the
magnet of constancy, and I, in spite of apparent deviations,
declare to you that I have never ceased to be sensible of the
attraction. And now there is not an impediment. We two against
the world! we are one. Let me confess to an old foible--perfectly
youthful, and you will ascribe it to youth: once I desired to
absorb. I mistrusted; that was the reason: I perceive it. You
teach me the difference of an alliance with a lady of intellect.
The pride I have in you, Laetitia, definitely cures me of that
insane passion--call it an insatiable hunger. I recognize it as
a folly of youth. I have, as it were, gone the tour, to come home
to you--at last?--and live our manly life of comparative equals.
At last, then! But remember that in the younger man you would have
had a despot--perhaps a jealous despot. Young men, I assure you,
are orientally inclined in their ideas of love. Love gets a bad
name from them. We, my Laetitia, do not regard love as a
selfishness. If it is, it is the essence of life. At least it is
our selfishness rendered beautiful. I talk to you like a man who
has found a compatriot in a foreign land. It seems to me that I
have not opened my mouth for an age. I certainly have not unlocked
my heart. Those who sing for joy are not unintelligible to me. If
I had not something in me worth saying I think I should sing. In
every sense you reconcile me to men and the world, Laetitia. Why
press you to speak? I will be the speaker. As surely as you know
me, I know you: and ..."

Laetitia burst forth with: "No!"

"I do not know you?" said he, searchingly mellifluous.

"Hardly."

"How not?"

"I am changed."

"In what way?"

"Deeply."

"Sedater?"

"Materially."

"Colour will come back: have no fear; I promise it. If you imagine
you want renewing, I have the specific, I, my love, I!"

"Forgive me--will you tell me, Sir Willoughby, whether you have
broken with Miss Middleton?"

"Rest satisfied, my dear Laetitia. She is as free as I am. I can
do no more than a man of honour should do. She releases me.
To-morrow or next day she departs. We, Laetitia, you and I, my
love, are home birds. It does not do for the home bird to couple
with the migratory. The little imperceptible change you allude to,
is nothing. Italy will restore you. I am ready to stake my own
health--never yet shaken by a doctor of medicine:--I say
medicine advisedly, for there are doctors of divinity who would
shake giants:--that an Italian trip will send you back--that I
shall bring you home from Italy a blooming bride. You shake your
head--despondently? My love, I guarantee it. Cannot I give you
colour? Behold! Come to the light, look in the glass."

"I may redden," said Laetitia. "I suppose that is due to the
action of the heart. I am changed. Heart, for any other purpose, I
have not. I am like you, Sir Willoughby, in this: I could not
marry without loving, and I do not know what love is, except that
it is an empty dream."

"Marriage, my dearest..."

"You are mistaken."

"I will cure you, my Laetitia. Look to me, I am the tonic. It is
not common confidence, but conviction. I, my love, I!"

"There is no cure for what I feel, Sir Willoughby."

"Spare me the formal prefix, I beg. You place your hand in mine,
relying on me. I am pledge for the remainder. We end as we began:
my request is for your hand--your hand in marriage."

"I cannot give it."

"To be my wife!"

"It is an honour; I must decline it."

"Are you quite well, Laetitia? I propose in the plainest terms I
can employ, to make you Lady Patterne--mine."

"I am compelled to refuse."

"Why? Refuse? Your reason!"

"The reason has been named."

He took a stride to inspirit his wits.

"There's a madness comes over women at times, I know. Answer me,
Laetitia:--by all the evidence a man can have, I could swear it:
--but answer me; you loved me once?"

"I was an exceedingly foolish, romantic girl."

"You evade my question: I am serious. Oh!" he walked away from her
booming a sound of utter repudiation of her present imbecility,
and hurrying to her side, said: "But it was manifest to the whole
world! It was a legend. To love like Laetitia Dale, was a current
phrase. You were an example, a light to women: no one was your
match for devotion. You were a precious cameo, still gazing! And I
was the object. You loved me. You loved me, you belonged to me,
you were mine, my possession, my jewel; I was prouder of your
constancy than of anything else that I had on earth. It was a part
of the order of the universe to me. A doubt of it would have
disturbed my creed. Why, good heaven! where are we? Is nothing
solid on earth? You loved me!"

"I was childish, indeed."

"You loved me passionately!"

"Do you insist on shaming me through and through, Sir Willoughby?
I have been exposed enough."

"You cannot blot out the past: it is written, it is recorded. You
loved me devotedly, silence is no escape. You loved me."

"I did."

"You never loved me, you shallow woman! 'I did!' As if there could
be a cessation of a love! What are we to reckon on as ours? We
prize a woman's love; we guard it jealously, we trust to it, dream
of it; there is our wealth; there is our talisman! And when we
open the casket it has flown!--barren vacuity!--we are poorer
than dogs. As well think of keeping a costly wine in potter's clay
as love in the heart of a woman! There are women--women! Oh,
they are all of a stamp coin! Coin for any hand! It's a fiction,
an imposture--they cannot love. They are the shadows of men.
Compared with men, they have as much heart in them as the shadow
beside the body. Laetitia!"

"Sir Willoughby."

"You refuse my offer?"

"I must."

"You refuse to take me for your husband?"

"I cannot be your wife."

"You have changed? ... you have set your heart? ... you could
marry? ... there is a man? ... you could marry one! I will have
an answer, I am sick of evasions. What was in the mind of Heaven
when women were created, will be the riddle to the end of the
world! Every good man in turn has made the inquiry. I have a right
to know who robs me--We may try as we like to solve it.--Satan
is painted laughing!--I say I have a right to know who robs me.
Answer me."

"I shall not marry."

"That is not an answer."

"I love no one."

"You loved me.--You are silent?--but you confessed it. Then you
confess it was a love that could die! Are you unable to perceive
how that redounds to my discredit? You loved me, you have ceased
to love me. In other words you charge me with incapacity to
sustain a woman's love. You accuse me of inspiring a miserable
passion that cannot last a lifetime! You let the world see that I
am a man to be aimed at for a temporary mark! And simply because I
happen to be in your neighbourhood at an age when a young woman is
impressionable! You make a public example of me as a for whom
women may have a caprice, but that is all; he cannot enchain them;
he fascinates passingly; they fall off. Is it just, for me to be
taken up and cast down at your will? Reflect on that scandal!
Shadows? Why, a man's shadow is faithful to him at least. What are
women? There is not a comparison in nature that does not tower
above them! not one that does not hoot at them! I, throughout my
life, guided by absolute deference to their weakness--paying them
politeness, courtesy--whatever I touch I am happy in, except when
I touch women! How is it? What is the mystery? Some monstrous
explanation must exist. What can it be? I am favoured by fortune
from my birth until I enter into relations with women. But will
you be so good as to account for it in your defence of them? Oh!
were the relations dishonourable, it would be quite another
matter. Then they ... I could recount ... I disdain to chronicle
such victories. Quite another matter. But they are flies, and I am
something more stable. They are flies. I look beyond the day; I
owe a duty to my line. They are flies. I foresee it, I shall be
crossed in my fate so long as I fail to shun them--flies! Not
merely born for the day, I maintain that they are spiritually
ephemeral--Well, my opinion of your sex is directly traceable to
you. You may alter it, or fling another of us men out on the world
with the old bitter experience. Consider this, that it is on your
head if my ideal of women is wrecked. It rests with you to restore
it. I love you. I discover that you are the one woman I have
always loved. I come to you, I sue you, and suddenly--you have
changed! 'I have changed: I am not the same.' What can it mean? 'I
cannot marry: I love no one.' And you say you do not know what
love is--avowing in the same breath that you did love me! Am I
the empty dream? My hand, heart, fortune, name, are yours, at your
feet; you kick them hence. I am here--you reject me. But why, for
what mortal reason am I here other than my faith in your love? You
drew me to you, to repel me, and have a wretched revenge."

"You know it is not that, Sir Willoughby."

"Have you any possible suspicion that I am still entangled, not,
as I assure you I am, perfectly free in fact and in honour?"

"It is not that."

"Name it; for you see your power. Would you have me kneel to you,
madam?"

"Oh, no; it would complete my grief."

"You feel grief? Then you believe in my affection, and you hurl it
away. I have no doubt that as a poetess you would say, love is
eternal. And you have loved me. And you tell me you love me no
more. You are not very logical, Laetitia Dale."

"Poetesses rarely are: if I am one, which I little pretend to be
for writing silly verses. I have passed out of that delusion, with
the rest."

"You shall not wrong those dear old days, Laetitia. I see them
now; when I rode by your cottage and you were at your window, pen
in hand, your hair straying over your forehead. Romantic, yes;
not foolish. Why were you foolish in thinking of me? Some day I
will commission an artist to paint me that portrait of you from my
description. And I remember when we first whispered ... I remember
your trembling. You have forgotten--I remember. I remember our
meeting in the park on the path to church. I remember the heavenly
morning of my return from my travels, and the same Laetitia
meeting me, stedfast and unchangeable. Could I ever forget? Those
are ineradicable scenes; pictures of my youth, interwound with me.
I may say, that as I recede from them, I dwell on them the more.
Tell me, Laetitia, was there not a certain prophecy of your
father's concerning us two? I fancy I heard of one. There was
one."

"He was an invalid. Elderly people nurse illusions."

"Ask yourself Laetitia, who is the obstacle to the fulfilment of
his prediction?--truth, if ever a truth was foreseen on earth.
You have not changed so far that you would feel no pleasure in
gratifying him? I go to him to-morrow morning with the first
light."

"You will compel me to follow, and undeceive him."

"Do so, and I denounce an unworthy affection you are ashamed to
avow."

"That would be idle, though it would be base."

"Proof of love, then! For no one but you should it be done, and
no one but you dare accuse me of a baseness."

"Sir Willoughby, you will let my father die in peace."

"He and I together will contrive to persuade you."

"You tempt me to imagine that you want a wife at any cost."

"You, Laetitia, you."

"I am tired," she said. "It is late, I would rather not hear more.
I am sorry if I have caused you pain. I suppose you to have spoken
with candour. I defend neither my sex nor myself. I can only say I
am a woman as good as dead: happy to be made happy in my way, but
so little alive that I cannot realize any other way. As for love,
I am thankful to have broken a spell. You have a younger woman in
your mind; I am an old one: I have no ambition and no warmth. My
utmost prayer is to float on the stream--a purely physical desire
of life: I have no strength to swim. Such a woman is not the wife
for you, Sir Willoughby. Good night."

"One final word. Weigh it. Express no conventional regrets.
Resolutely you refuse?"

"Resolutely I do."

"You refuse?"

"Yes."

"I have sacrificed my pride for nothing! You refuse?"

"Yes."

"Humbled myself! And this is the answer! You do refuse?"

"I do."

"Good night, Laetitia Dale."

He gave her passage.

"Good night, Sir Willoughby."

"I am in your power," he said, in a voice between supplication and
menace that laid a claw on her, and she turned and replied:

"You will not be betrayed."

"I can trust you ... ?"

"I go home to-morrow before breakfast."

"Permit me to escort you upstairs."

"If you please: but I see no one here either to-night or
tomorrow."

"It is for the privilege of seeing the last of you."

They withdrew.

Young Crossjay listened to the drumming of his head. Somewhere in
or over the cavity a drummer rattled tremendously.

Sir Willoughby's laboratory door shut with a slam.

Crossjay tumbled himself off the ottoman. He stole up to the
unclosed drawing-room door, and peeped. Never was a boy more
thoroughly awakened. His object was to get out of the house and go
through the night avoiding everything human, for he was big with
information of a character that he knew to be of the nature of
gunpowder, and he feared to explode. He crossed the hall. In the
passage to the scullery he ran against Colonel De Craye.

"So there you are," said the colonel, "I've been hunting you."

Crossjay related that his bedroom door was locked and the key
gone, and Sir Willoughby sitting up in the laboratory.

Colonel De Craye took the boy to his own room, where Crossjay lay
on a sofa, comfortably covered over and snug in a swelling
pillow; but he was restless; he wanted to speak, to bellow, to
cry; and he bounced round to his left side, and bounced to his
right, not knowing what to think, except that there was treason to
his adored Miss Middleton.

"Why, my lad, you're not half a campaigner," the colonel called
out to him; attributing his uneasiness to the material discomfort
of the sofa: and Crossjay had to swallow the taunt, bitter though
it was. A dim sentiment of impropriety in unburdening his
overcharged mind on the subject of Miss Middleton to Colonel De
Craye restrained him from defending himself; and so he heaved and
tossed about till daybreak. At an early hour, while his
hospitable friend, who looked very handsome in profile half breast
and head above the sheets, continued to slumber, Crossjay was on
his legs and away. "He says I'm not half a campaigner, and a
couple of hours of bed are enough for me," the boy thought
proudly, and snuffed the springing air of the young sun on the
fields. A glance back at Patterne Hall dismayed him, for he knew
not how to act, and he was immoderately combustible, too full of
knowledge for self-containment; much too zealously excited on
behalf of his dear Miss Middleton to keep silent for many hours of
the day.

CHAPTER XLI

The Rev. Dr. Middleton, Clara, and Sir Willoughby

When Master Crossjay tumbled down the stairs, Laetitia was in
Clara's room, speculating on the various mishaps which might have
befallen that battered youngster; and Clara listened anxiously
after Laetitia had run out, until she heard Sir Willoughby's
voice; which in some way satisfied her that the boy was not in the
house.

She waited, expecting Miss Dale to return; then undressed, went to
bed, tried to sleep. She was tired of strife. Strange thoughts for
a young head shot through her: as, that it is possible for the
sense of duty to counteract distaste; and that one may live a life
apart from one's admirations and dislikes: she owned the singular
strength of Sir Willoughby in outwearying: she asked herself how
much she had gained by struggling:--every effort seemed to
expend her spirit's force, and rendered her less able to get the
clear vision of her prospects, as though it had sunk her deeper:
the contrary of her intention to make each further step confirm
her liberty. Looking back, she marvelled at the things she had
done. Looking round, how ineffectual they appeared! She had still
the great scene of positive rebellion to go through with her
father.