The Egoist

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The anticipation of that was the cause of her extreme
discouragement. He had not spoken to her since he became aware of
her attempted flight: but the scene was coming; and besides the
wish not to inflict it on him, as well as to escape it herself,
the girl's peculiar unhappiness lay in her knowledge that they
were alienated and stood opposed, owing to one among the more
perplexing masculine weaknesses, which she could not hint at,
dared barely think of, and would not name in her meditations.
Diverting to other subjects, she allowed herself to exclaim,
"Wine, wine!" in renewed wonder of what there could be in wine to
entrap venerable men and obscure their judgements. She was too
young to consider that her being very much in the wrong gave all
the importance to the cordial glass in a venerable gentleman's
appreciation of his dues. Why should he fly from a priceless wine
to gratify the caprices of a fantastical child guilty of seeking
to commit a breach of faith? He harped on those words. Her fault
was grave. No doubt the wine coloured it to him, as a drop or two
will do in any cup: still her fault was grave.

She was too young for such considerations. She was ready to
expatiate on the gravity of her fault, so long as the humiliation
assisted to her disentanglement: her snared nature in the toils
would not permit her to reflect on it further. She had never
accurately perceived it: for the reason perhaps that Willoughby
had not been moving in his appeals: but, admitting the charge of
waywardness, she had come to terms with conscience, upon the
understanding that she was to perceive it and regret it and do
penance for it by-and-by:--by renouncing marriage altogether? How
light a penance!

In the morning, she went to Laetitia's room, knocked, and had no
answer.

She was informed at the breakfast-table of Miss Dale's departure.
The ladies Eleanor and Isabel feared it to be a case of urgency at
the cottage. No one had seen Vernon, and Clara requested Colonel
De Craye to walk over to the cottage for news of Crossjay. He
accepted the commission, simply to obey and be in her service:
assuring her, however, that there was no need to be disturbed
about the boy. He would have told her more. had not Dr. Middleton
led her out.

Sir Willoughby marked a lapse of ten minutes by his watch. His
excellent aunts had ventured a comment on his appearance that
frightened him lest he himself should be the person to betray his
astounding discomfiture. He regarded his conduct as an act of
madness, and Laetitia's as no less that of a madwoman--happily
mad! Very happily mad indeed! Her rejection of his ridiculously
generous proposal seemed to show an intervening hand in his
favour, that sent her distraught at the right moment. He entirely
trusted her to be discreet; but she was a miserable creature, who
had lost the one last chance offered her by Providence, and
furnished him with a signal instance of the mediocrity of woman's
love.

Time was flying. In a little while Mrs. Mountstuart would arrive.
He could not fence her without a design in his head; he was
destitute of an armoury if he had no scheme: he racked the brain
only to succeed in rousing phantasmal vapours. Her infernal
"Twice!" would cease now to apply to Laetitia; it would be an echo
of Lady Busshe. Nay, were all in the secret, Thrice jilted! might
become the universal roar. And this, he reflected bitterly, of a
man whom nothing but duty to his line had arrested from being the
most mischievous of his class with women! Such is our reward for
uprightness!

At the expiration of fifteen minutes by his watch, he struck a
knuckle on the library door. Dr. Middleton held it open to him.

"You are disengaged, sir?"

"The sermon is upon the paragraph which is toned to awaken the
clerk," replied the Rev. Doctor.

Clara was weeping.

Sir Willoughby drew near her solicitously.

Dr Middleton's mane of silvery hair was in a state bearing witness
to the vehemence of the sermon, and Willoughby said: "I hope, sir,
you have not made too much of a trifle."

"I believe, sir, that I have produced an effect, and that was the
point in contemplation."

"Clara! my dear Clara!" Willoughby touched her.

"She sincerely repents her conduct, I may inform you," said Dr.
Middleton.

"My love!" Willoughby whispered. "We have had a misunderstanding.
I am at a loss to discover where I have been guilty, but I take
the blame, all the blame. I implore you not to weep. Do me the
favour to look at me. I would not have had you subjected to any
interrogation whatever."

"You are not to blame," Clara said on a sob.

"Undoubtedly Willoughby is not to blame. It was not he who was
bound on a runaway errand in flagrant breach of duty and decorum,
nor he who inflicted a catarrh on a brother of my craft and
cloth," said her father.

"The clerk, sir, has pronounced Amen," observed Willoughby.

"And no man is happier to hear an ejaculation that he has laboured
for with so much sweat of his brow than the parson, I can assure
you," Dr. Middleton mildly groaned. "I have notions of the trouble
of Abraham. A sermon of that description is an immolation of the
parent, however it may go with the child."

Willoughby soothed his Clara.

"I wish I had been here to share it. I might have saved you some
tears. I may have been hasty in our little dissensions. I will
acknowledge that I have been. My temper is often irascible."

"And so is mine!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "And yet I am not aware
that I made the worse husband for it. Nor do I rightly comprehend
how a probably justly excitable temper can stand for a plea in
mitigation of an attempt at an outrageous breach of faith."

"The sermon is over, sir."

"Reverberations!" the Rev. Doctor waved his arm placably.
"Take it for thunder heard remote."

"Your hand, my love," Willoughby murmured.

The hand was not put forth.

Dr. Middleton remarked the fact. He walked to the window. and
perceiving the pair in the same position when he faced about, he
delivered a cough of admonition.

"It is cruel!" said Clara.

"That the owner of your hand should petition you for it?" inquired
her father.

She sought refuge in a fit of tears.

Willoughby bent above her, mute.

"Is a scene that is hardly conceivable as a parent's obligation
once in a lustrum, to be repeated within the half hour?" shouted
her father.

She drew up her shoulders and shook; let them fall and dropped her
head.

"My dearest! your hand!" fluted Willoughby.

The hand surrendered; it was much like the icicle of a sudden
thaw.

Willoughby squeezed it to his ribs.

Dr. Middleton marched up and down the room with his arms locked
behind him. The silence between the young people seemed to
denounce his presence.

He said, cordially: "Old Hiems has but to withdraw for buds to
burst. 'Jam ver egelidos refert tepores." The equinoctial fury
departs. I will leave you for a term."

Clara and Willoughby simultaneously raised their faces with
opposing expressions.

"My girl!" Her father stood by her, laying gentle hand on her.

"Yes, papa, I will come out to you," she replied to his apology
for the rather heavy weight of his vocabulary, and smiled.

"No, sir, I beg you will remain," said Willoughby.

"I keep you frost-bound."

Clara did not deny it.

Willoughby emphatically did.

Then which of them was the more lover-like? Dr. Middleton would for
the moment have supposed his daughter.

Clara said: "Shall you be on the lawn, papa?"

Willoughby interposed. "Stay, sir; give us your blessing."

"That you have." Dr. Middleton hastily motioned the paternal
ceremony in outline.

"A few minutes, papa," said Clara.

"Will she name the day?" came eagerly from Willoughby.

"I cannot!" Clara cried in extremity.

"The day is important on its arrival," said her father; "but I
apprehend the decision to be of the chief importance at present.
First prime your piece of artillery, my friend."

"The decision is taken, sir."

"Then I will be out of the way of the firing. Hit what day you
please."

Clara checked herself on an impetuous exclamation. It was done
that her father might not be detained.

Her astute self-compression sharpened Willoughby as much as it
mortified and terrified him. He understood how he would stand in
an instant were Dr. Middleton absent. Her father was the tribunal
she dreaded, and affairs must be settled and made irrevocable
while he was with them. To sting the blood of the girl, he called
her his darling, and half enwound her, shadowing forth a salute.

She strung her body to submit, seeing her father take it as a
signal for his immediate retirement.

Willoughby was upon him before he reached the door.

"Hear us out, sir. Do not go. Stay, at my entreaty. I fear we have
not come to a perfect reconcilement."

"If that is your opinion," said Clara, "it is good reason for not
distressing my father."

"Dr Middleton, I love your daughter. I wooed her and won her; I
had your consent to our union, and I was the happiest of mankind.
In some way, since her coming to my house, I know not how--she
will not tell me, or cannot--I offended. One may be innocent and
offend. I have never pretended to impeccability, which is an
admission that I may very naturally offend. My appeal to her is
for an explanation or for pardon. I obtain neither. Had our
positions been reversed, oh, not for any real offence--not for
the worst that can be imagined--I think not--I hope not--could
I have been tempted to propose the dissolution of our engagement.
To love is to love, with me; an engagement a solemn bond. With all
my errors I have that merit of utter fidelity--to the world
laughable! I confess to a multitude of errors; I have that single
merit, and am not the more estimable in your daughter's eyes on
account of it, I fear. In plain words, I am, I do not doubt, one
of the fools among men; of the description of human dog commonly
known as faithful--whose destiny is that of a tribe. A man who
cries out when he is hurt is absurd, and I am not asking for
sympathy. Call me luckless. But I abhor a breach of faith. A
broken pledge is hateful to me. I should regard it myself as a
form of suicide. There are principles which civilized men must
contend for. Our social fabric is based on them. As my word stands
for me, I hold others to theirs. If that is not done, the world is
more or less a carnival of counterfeits. In this instance--Ah!
Clara, my love! and you have principles: you have inherited, you
have been indoctrinated with them: have I, then, in my ignorance,
offended past penitence, that you, of all women? ... And without
being able to name my sin!--Not only for what I lose by it, but
in the abstract, judicially--apart from the sentiment of personal
interest, grief, pain, and the possibility of my having to endure
that which no temptation would induce me to commit:--judicially;--
I fear, sir, I am a poor forensic orator . . ."

"The situation, sir, does not demand a Cicero: proceed," said Dr.
Middleton, balked in his approving nods at the right true things
delivered.

"Judicially, I am bold to say, though it may appear a presumption
in one suffering acutely, I abhor a breach of faith."

Dr. Middleton brought his nod down low upon the phrase he had
anticipated. "And I," said he, "personally, and presently, abhor a
breach of faith. Judicially? Judicially to examine, judicially to
condemn: but does the judicial mind detest? I think, sir, we are
not on the bench when we say that we abhor: we have unseated
ourselves. Yet our abhorrence of bad conduct is very certain. You
would signify, impersonally: which suffices for this exposition of
your feelings."

He peered at the gentleman under his brows, and resumed:

"She has had it, Willoughby; she has had it in plain Saxon and in
uncompromising Olympian. There is, I conceive, no necessity to
revert to it."

"Pardon me, sir, but I am still unforgiven."

"You must babble out the rest between you. I am about as much at
home as a turkey with a pair of pigeons."

"Leave us, father," said Clara.

"First join our hands, and let me give you that title, sir."

"Reach the good man your hand, my girl; forthright, from the
shoulder, like a brave boxer. Humour a lover. He asks for his
own."

"It is more than I can do, father."

"How, it is more than you can do? You are engaged to him, a
plighted woman."

"I do not wish to marry."

"The apology is inadequate."

"I am unworthy..."

"Chatter! chatter!"

"I beg him to release me."

"Lunacy!"

"I have no love to give him."

"Have you gone back to your cradle, Clara Middleton?"

"Oh, leave us, dear father!"

"My offence, Clara, my offence! What is it? Will you only name
it?"

"Father, will you leave us? We can better speak together . .

"We have spoken, Clara, how often!" Willoughby resumed,
"with what result?--that you loved me, that you have ceased to
love me: that your heart was mine, that you have withdrawn it,
plucked it from me: that you request me to consent to a sacrifice
involving my reputation, my life. And what have I done? I am the
same, unchangeable. I loved and love you: my heart was yours, and
is, and will be yours forever. You are my affianced--that is, my
wife. What have I done?"

"It is indeed useless," Clara sighed.

"Not useless, my girl, that you should inform this gentleman, your
affianced husband, of the ground of the objection you conceived
against him."

"I cannot say."

"Do you know?"

"If I could name it, I could hope to overcome it."

Dr. Middleton addressed Sir Willoughby.

"I verily believe we are directing the girl to dissect a caprice.
Such things are seen large by these young people, but as they have
neither organs, nor arteries, nor brains, nor membranes,
dissection and inspection will he alike profitlessly practised.
Your inquiry is natural for a lover, whose passion to enter into
relations with the sex is ordinarily in proportion to his ignorance
of the stuff composing them. At a particular age they traffic in
whims: which are, I presume, the spiritual of hysterics; and are
indubitably preferable, so long as they are not pushed too far.
Examples are not wanting to prove that a flighty initiative on the
part of the male is a handsome corrective. In that case, we should
probably have had the roof off the house, and the girl now at your
feet. Ha!"

"Despise me, father. I am punished for ever thinking myself the
superior of any woman," said Clara.

"Your hand out to him, my dear, since he is for a formal
reconciliation; and I can't wonder."

"Father! I have said I do not ... I have said I cannot ...

"By the most merciful! what? what? the name for it, words for it!"

"Do not frown on me, father. I wish him happiness. I cannot marry
him. I do not love him."

"You will remember that you informed me aforetime that you did
love him."

"I was ignorant ... I did not know myself. I wish him to be
happy."

"You deny him the happiness you wish him!"

"It would not be for his happiness were I to wed him."

"Oh!" burst from Willoughby.

"You hear him. He rejects your prediction, Clara Middleton." She
caught her clasped hands up to her throat. "Wretched, wretched,
both!"

"And you have not a word against him, miserable girl."

"Miserable! I am."

"It is the cry of an animal!"

"Yes, father."

"You feel like one? Your behaviour is of that shape. You have not
a word?"

"Against myself, not against him."

"And I, when you speak so generously, am to yield you? give you
up?" cried Willoughby. "Ah! my love, my Clara, impose what you
will on me; not that. It is too much for man. It is, I swear it,
beyond my strength."

"Pursue, continue the strain; 'tis in the right key," said Dr.
Middleton, departing.

Willoughby wheeled and waylaid him with a bound.

"Plead for me, sir; you are all-powerful. Let her be mine, she
shall be happy, or I will perish for it. I will call it on my
head.--Impossible! I cannot lose her. Lose you, my love? it would
be to strip myself of every blessing of body and soul. It would
be to deny myself possession of grace, beauty, wit, all the
incomparable charms of loveliness of mind and person in woman, and
plant myself in a desert. You are my mate, the sum of everything I
call mine. Clara, I should be less than man to submit to such a
loss. Consent to it? But I love you! I worship you! How can I
consent to lose you ... ?"

He saw the eyes of the desperately wily young woman slink
sideways. Dr. Middleton was pacing at ever shorter lengths closer
by the door.

"You hate me?" Willoughby sunk his voice.

"If it should turn to hate!" she murmured.

"Hatred of your husband?"

"I could not promise," she murmured, more softly in her wiliness.

"Hatred?" he cried aloud, and Dr. Middleton stopped in his walk and
flung up his head: "Hatred of your husband? of the man you have
vowed to love and honour? Oh, no! Once mine, it is not to he
feared. I trust to my knowledge of your nature; I trust in your
blood, I trust in your education. Had I nothing else to inspire
confidence, I could trust in your eyes. And, Clara, take the
confession: I would rather be hated than lose you. For if I lose
you, you are in another world, out of this one holding me in its
death-like cold; but if you hate me we are together, we are still
together. Any alliance, any, in preference to separation!"

Clara listened with critical ear. His language and tone were new;
and comprehending that they were in part addressed to her father,
whose phrase: "A breach of faith": he had so cunningly used,
disdain of the actor prompted the extreme blunder of her saying--
frigidly though she said it:

"You have not talked to me in this way before."

"Finally," remarked her father, summing up the situation to settle
it from that little speech, "he talks to you in this way now; and
you are under my injunction to stretch your hand out to him for a
symbol of union, or to state your objection to that course. He, by
your admission, is at the terminus, and there, failing the why
not, must you join him."

Her head whirled. She had been severely flagellated and weakened
previous to Willoughby's entrance. Language to express her
peculiar repulsion eluded her. She formed the words, and perceived
that they would not stand to bear a breath from her father. She
perceived too that Willoughby was as ready with his agony of
supplication as she with hers. If she had tears for a resource, he
had gestures quite as eloquent; and a cry of her loathing of the
union would fetch a countervailing torrent of the man's love.--
What could she say? he is an Egoist? The epithet has no meaning in
such a scene. Invent! shrieked the hundred-voiced instinct of
dislike within her, and alone with her father, alone with
Willoughby, she could have invented some equivalent, to do her
heart justice for the injury it sustained in her being unable to
name the true and immense objection: but the pair in presence
paralyzed her. She dramatized them each springing forward by
turns, with crushing rejoinders. The activity of her mind revelled
in giving them a tongue, but would not do it for herself. Then
ensued the inevitable consequence of an incapacity to speak at the
heart's urgent dictate: heart and mind became divided. One
throbbed hotly, the other hung aloof, and mentally, while the sick
inarticulate heart kept clamouring, she answered it with all that
she imagined for those two men to say. And she dropped poison on
it to still its reproaches: bidding herself remember her fatal
postponements in order to preserve the seeming of consistency
before her father; calling it hypocrite; asking herself, what was
she! who loved her! And thus beating down her heart, she completed
the mischief with a piercing view of the foundation of her
father's advocacy of Willoughby, and more lamentably asked herself
what her value was, if she stood bereft of respect for her father.

Reason, on the other hand, was animated by her better nature to
plead his case against her: she clung to her respect for him, and
felt herself drowning with it: and she echoed Willoughby
consciously, doubling her horror with the consciousness, in crying
out on a world where the most sacred feelings are subject to such
lapses. It doubled her horror, that she should echo the man: but
it proved that she was no better than be: only some years younger.
Those years would soon be outlived: after which, he and she would
be of a pattern. She was unloved: she did no harm to any one by
keeping her word to this man; she had pledged it, and it would be
a breach of faith not to keep it. No one loved her. Behold the
quality of her father's love! To give him happiness was now the
principal aim for her, her own happiness being decently buried;
and here he was happy: why should she be the cause of his going
and losing the poor pleasure he so much enjoyed?

The idea of her devotedness flattered her feebleness. She betrayed
signs of hesitation; and in hesitating, she looked away from a
look at Willoughby, thinking (so much against her nature was it to
resign herself to him) that it would not have been so difficult
with an ill-favoured man. With one horribly ugly, it would have
been a horrible exultation to cast off her youth and take the
fiendish leap.

Unfortunately for Sir Willoughby, he had his reasons for pressing
impatience; and seeing her deliberate, seeing her hasty look at
his fine figure, his opinion of himself combined with his
recollection of a particular maxim of the Great Book to assure him
that her resistance was over: chiefly owing, as he supposed, to
his physical perfections.

Frequently indeed, in the contest between gentlemen and ladies,
have the maxims of the Book stimulated the assailant to victory.
They are rosy with blood of victims. To bear them is to hear a
horn that blows the mort: has blown it a thousand times. It is
good to remember how often they have succeeded, when, for the
benefit of some future Lady Vauban, who may bestir her wits to
gather maxims for the inspiriting of the Defence, the circumstance
of a failure has to be recorded.

Willoughby could not wait for the melting of the snows. He saw
full surely the dissolving process; and sincerely admiring and
coveting her as he did, rashly this ill-fated gentleman attempted
to precipitate it, and so doing arrested.

Whence might we draw a note upon yonder maxim, in words akin to
these: Make certain ere a breath come from thee that thou be not a
frost.

"Mine! She is mine!" he cried: "mine once more! mine utterly! mine
eternally!" and he followed up his devouring exclamations in
person as she, less decidedly, retreated. She retreated as young
ladies should ever do, two or three steps, and he would not notice
that she had become an angry Dian, all arrows: her maidenliness in
surrendering pleased him. Grasping one fair hand, he just allowed
her to edge on the outer circle of his embrace, crying: "Not a
syllable of what I have gone through! You shall not have to
explain it, my Clara. I will study you more diligently, to be
guided by you, my darling. If I offend again, my wife will not
find it hard to speak what my bride withheld--I do not ask why:
perhaps not able to weigh the effect of her reticence: not at that
time, when she was younger and less experienced, estimating the
sacredness of a plighted engagement. It is past, we are one, my
dear sir and father. You may leave us now."

"I profoundly rejoice to hear that I may," said Dr. Middleton.
Clara writhed her captured hand.

"No, papa, stay. It is an error, an error. You must not leave me.
Do not think me utterly, eternally, belonging to any one but you.
No one shall say I am his but you."

"Are you quicksands, Clara Middleton, that nothing can be built on
you? Whither is a flighty head and a shifty will carrying the
girl?"

"Clara and I, sir," said Willoughby.

"And so you shall," said the Doctor, turning about.

"Not yet, papa:" Clara sprang to him.

"Why, you, you, you, it was you who craved to be alone with
Willoughby!" her father shouted; "and here we are rounded to our
starting-point, with the solitary difference that now you do not
want to be alone with Willoughby. First I am bidden go; next I am
pulled back; and judging by collar and coat-tag, I suspect you to
be a young woman to wear an angel's temper threadbare before you
determine upon which one of the tides driving him to and fro you
intend to launch on yourself, Where is your mind?"

Clara smoothed her forehead.

"I wish to please you, papa."

"I request you to please the gentleman who is your appointed
husband."

"I am anxious to perform my duty."

"That should be a satisfactory basis for you, Willoughby; as
girls go!"

"Let me, sir, simply entreat to have her hand in mine before you."

"Why not, Clara?"

"Why an empty ceremony, papa?"

"The implication is, that she is prepared for the important one,
friend Willoughby."

"Her hand, sir; the reassurance of her hand in mine under your
eyes:--after all that I have suffered, I claim it, I think I
claim it reasonably, to restore me to confidence."

"Quite reasonably; which is not to say, necessarily; but, I will
add, justifiably; and it may be, sagaciously, when dealing with
the volatile."