The Egoist

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"Poetry, sir," said Willoughby, "I never have been hypocrite
enough to pretend to understand or care for."

Dr. Middleton laughed. Vernon too seemed to admire his cousin for a
reply that rung in Clara's ears as the dullest ever spoken. Her
arm grew cold on her father's. She began to fear Willoughby again.

He depended entirely on his agility to elude the thrusts that
assailed him. Had he been able to believe in the treachery of the
Powers above, he would at once have seen design in these deadly
strokes, for his feelings had rarely been more acute than at the
present crisis; and he would then have led away Clara, to wrangle
it out with her, relying on Vernon's friendliness not to betray
him to her father: but a wrangle with Clara promised no immediate
fruits, nothing agreeable; and the lifelong trust he had reposed in
his protecting genii obscured his intelligence to evidence he
would otherwise have accepted on the spot, on the faith of his
delicate susceptibility to the mildest impressions which wounded
him. Clara might have stooped to listen at the door: she might
have heard sufficient to create a suspicion. But Vernon was not in
the house last night; she could not have communicated it to him,
and he had not seen Laetitia, who was, besides trustworthy, an
admirable if a foolish and ill-fated woman.

Preferring to consider Vernon a pragmatical moralist played upon
by a sententious drone, he thought it politic to detach them, and
vanquish Clara while she was in the beaten mood, as she had
appeared before Vernon's vexatious arrival.

"I'm afraid, my dear fellow, you are rather too dainty and fussy
for a very successful wooer," he said. "It's beautiful on paper,
and absurd in life. We have a bit of private business to discuss.
We will go inside, sir, I think. I will soon release you." Clara
pressed her father's arm.

"More?" said he.

"Five minutes. There's a slight delusion to clear, sir. My dear
Clara, you will see with different eyes."

"Papa wishes to work with Mr. Whitford."

Her heart sunk to hear her father say: "No, 'tis a lost morning. I
must consent to pay tax of it for giving another young woman to
the world. I have a daughter! You will, I hope, compensate me, Mr.
Whitford, in the afternoon. Be not downcast. I have observed you
meditative of late. You will have no clear brain so long as that
stuff is on the mind. I could venture to propose to do some
pleading for you, should it be needed for the prompter expedition
of the affair."

Vernon briefly thanked him, and said:

"Willoughby has exerted all his eloquence, and you see the result:
you have lost Miss Dale and I have not won her. He did everything
that one man can do for another in so delicate a case: even to the
repeating of her famous birthday verses to him, to flatter the
poetess. His best efforts were foiled by the lady's indisposition
for me."

"Behold," said Dr. Middleton, as Willoughby, electrified by the
mention of the verses, took a sharp stride or two, "you have in
him an advocate who will not be rebuffed by one refusal, and I
can affirm that he is tenacious, pertinacious as are few. Justly
so. Not to believe in a lady's No is the approved method of
carrying that fortress built to yield. Although unquestionably to
have a young man pleading in our interests with a lady, counts its
objections. Yet Willoughby being notoriously engaged, may be held
to enjoy the privileges of his elders."

"As an engaged man, sir, he was on a level with his elders in
pleading on my behalf with Miss Dale," said Vernon. Willoughby
strode and muttered. Providence had grown mythical in his
thoughts, if not malicious: and it is the peril of this worship
that the object will wear such an alternative aspect when it
appears no longer subservient.

"Are we coming, sir?" he said, and was unheeded. The Rev. Doctor
would not be defrauded of rolling his billow.

"As an honourable gentleman faithful to his own engagement and
desirous of establishing his relatives, he deserves, in my
judgement, the lady's esteem as well as your cordial thanks; nor
should a temporary failure dishearten either of you,
notwithstanding the precipitate retreat of the lady from Patterne,
and her seclusion in her sanctum on the occasion of your recent
visit."

"Supposing he had succeeded," said Vernon, driving Willoughby to
frenzy, "should I have been bound to marry?" Matter for cogitation
was offered to Dr. Middleton.

"The proposal was without your sanction?"

"Entirely."

"You admire the lady?"

"Respectfully."

"You do not incline to the state?"

"An inch of an angle would exaggerate my inclination."

"How long are we to stand and hear this insufferable nonsense you
talk?" cried Willoughby.

"But if Mr. Whitford was not consulted. . ." Dr. Middleton said,
and was overborne by Willoughby's hurried, "Oblige me, sir.--
Oblige me, my good fellow!" He swept his arm to Vernon, and
gestured a conducting hand to Clara.

"Here is Mrs. Mountstuart!" she exclaimed.

Willoughby stared. Was it an irruption of a friend or a foe? He
doubted, and stood petrified between the double question. Clara
had seen Mrs. Mountstuart and Colonel De Craye separating: and now
the great lady sailed along the sward like a royal barge in
festival trim.

She looked friendly, but friendly to everybody, which was always a
frost on Willoughby, and terribly friendly to Clara.

Coming up to her she whispered: "News, indeed! Wonderful! I could
not credit his hint of it yesterday. Are you satisfied?"

"Pray, Mrs. Mountstuart, take an opportunity to speak to papa,"
Clara whispered in return.

Mrs. Mountstuart bowed to Dr. Middleton, nodded to Vernon, and swam
upon Willoughby, with, "Is it? But is it? Am I really to believe?
You have? My dear Sir Willoughby? Really? The confounded
gentleman heaved on a bare plank of wreck in mid sea.

He could oppose only a paralyzed smile to the assault.

His intuitive discretion taught him to fall back a step while she
said, "So!" the plummet word of our mysterious deep fathoms; and
he fell back further saying, "Madam?" in a tone advising her to
speak low.

She recovered her volubility, followed his partial retreat, and
dropped her voice,--

"Impossible to have imagined it as an actual fact! You were always
full of surprises, but this! this! Nothing manlier, nothing more
gentlemanly has ever been done: nothing: nothing that so
completely changes an untenable situation into a comfortable and
proper footing for everybody. It is what I like: it is what I
love:--sound sense! Men are so selfish: one cannot persuade them
to be reasonable in such positions. But you, Sir Willoughby, have
shown wisdom and sentiment: the rarest of all combinations in
men."

"Where have you? . . ." Willoughby contrived to say.

"Heard? The hedges, the housetops, everywhere. All the
neighbourhood will have it before nightfall. Lady Busshe and Lady
Culmer will soon be rushing here, and declaring they never
expected anything else, I do not doubt. I am not so pretentious. I
beg your excuse for that 'twice' of mine yesterday. Even if it
hurt my vanity, I should be happy to confess my error: I was
utterly out. But then I did not reckon on a fatal attachment, I
thought men were incapable of it. I thought we women were the only
poor creatures persecuted by a fatality. It is a fatality! You
tried hard to escape, indeed you did. And she will do honour to
your final surrender, my dear friend. She is gentle, and very
clever, very: she is devoted to you: she will entertain
excellently. I see her like a flower in sunshine. She will expand
to a perfect hostess. Patterne will shine under her reign; you
have my warrant for that. And so will you. Yes, you flourish best
when adored. It must be adoration. You have been under a cloud of
late. Years ago I said it was a match, when no one supposed you
could stoop. Lady Busshe would have it was a screen, and she was
deemed high wisdom. The world will be with you. All the women
will be: excepting, of course, Lady Busshe, whose pride is in
prophecy; and she will soon be too glad to swell the host. There,
my friend, your sincerest and oldest admirer congratulates you. I
could not contain myself; I was compelled to pour forth. And now
I must go and be talked to by Dr. Middleton. How does he take it?
They leave?"

"He is perfectly well," said Willoughby, aloud, quite distraught.

She acknowledged his just correction of her for running on to an
extreme in low-toned converse, though they stood sufficiently
isolated from the others. These had by this time been joined by
Colonel De Craye, and were all chatting in a group--of himself,
Willoughby horribly suspected.

Clara was gone from him! Gone! but he remembered his oath and
vowed it again: not to Horace de Craye! She was gone, lost, sunk
into the world of waters of rival men, and he determined that his
whole force should be used to keep her from that man, the false
friend who had supplanted him in her shallow heart, and might, if
he succeeded, boast of having done it by simply appearing on the
scene.

Willoughby intercepted Mrs. Mountstuart as she was passing over to
Dr Middleton. "My dear lady! spare me a minute."

De Craye sauntered up, with a face of the friendliest humour:

"Never was man like you, Willoughby, for shaking new patterns in a
kaleidoscope."

"Have you turned punster, Horace?" Willoughby replied, smarting to
find yet another in the demon secret, and he draw Dr. Middleton two
or three steps aside, and hurriedly begged him to abstain from
prosecuting the subject with Clara.

"We must try to make her happy as we best can, sir. She may have
her reasons--a young lady's reasons!" He laughed, and left the
Rev. Doctor considering within himself under the arch of his lofty
frown of stupefaction.

De Craye smiled slyly and winningly as he shadowed a deep droop on
the bend of his head before Clara, signifying his absolute
devotion to her service, and this present good fruit for witness
of his merits.

She smiled sweetly though vaguely. There was no concealment of
their intimacy.

"The battle is over," Vernon said quietly, when Willoughby had
walked some paces beside Mrs. Mountstuart, adding: "You may expect
to see Mr. Dale here. He knows."

Vernon and Clara exchanged one look, hard on his part, in contrast
with her softness, and he proceeded to the house. De Craye waited
for a word or a promising look. He was patient, being
self-assured, and passed on.

Clara linked her arm with her father's once more, and said, on a
sudden brightness: "Sirius, papa!" " He repeated it in the
profoundest manner: "Sirius! And is there," he asked, "a feminine
scintilla of sense in that?"

"It is the name of the star I was thinking of, dear papa."

"It was the star observed by King Agamemnon before the sacrifice in
Aulis. You were thinking of that? But, my love, my Iphigenia, you
have not a father who will insist on sacrificing you."

"Did I hear him tell you to humour me, papa?"

Dr Middleton humphed.

"Verily the dog-star rages in many heads," he responded.

CHAPTER XLIV

Dr Middleton: the Ladies Eleanor and Isabel: and Mr. Dale

Clara looked up at the flying clouds. She travelled with them now,
and tasted freedom, but she prudently forbore to vex her father;
she held herself in reserve.

They were summoned by the midday bell.

Few were speakers at the meal, few were eaters. Clara was
impelled to join it by her desire to study Mrs. Mountstuart's
face. Willoughby was obliged to preside. It was a meal of an
assembly of mutes and plates, that struck the ear like the
well-known sound of a collection of offerings in church after an
impressive exhortation from the pulpit. A sally of Colonel De
Craye's met the reception given to a charity-boy's muffled burst
of animal spirits in the silence of the sacred edifice. Willoughby
tried politics with Dr. Middleton, whose regular appetite preserved
him from uncongenial speculations when the hour for appeasing it
had come; and he alone did honour to the dishes, replying to his
host:

"Times are bad, you say, and we have a Ministry doing with us what
they will. Well, sir, and that being so, and opposition a manner
of kicking them into greater stability, it is the time for wise
men to retire within themselves, with the steady determination of
the seed in the earth to grow. Repose upon nature, sleep in firm
faith, and abide the seasons. That is my counsel to the weaker
party."

The counsel was excellent, but it killed the topic.

Dr. Middleton's appetite was watched for the signal to rise and
breathe freely; and such is the grace accorded to a good man of an
untroubled conscience engaged in doing his duty to himself, that
he perceived nothing of the general restlessness; he went through
the dishes calmly, and as calmly he quoted Milton to the ladies
Eleanor and Isabel, when the company sprung up all at once upon
his closing his repast. Vernon was taken away from him by
Willoughby. Mrs Mountstuart beckoned covertly to Clara. Willoughby
should have had something to say to him, Dr. Middleton thought: the
position was not clear. But the situation was not disagreeable;
and he was in no serious hurry, though he wished to be
enlightened.

"This," Dr. Middleton said to the spinster aunts, as he accompanied
them to the drawing-room, "shall be no lost day for me if I may
devote the remainder of it to you."

"The thunder, we fear, is not remote," murmured one.

"We fear it is imminent," sighed the other.

They took to chanting in alternation.

"--We are accustomed to peruse our Willoughby, and we know him
by a shadow."

"--From his infancy to his glorious youth and his established
manhood."

"--He was ever the soul of chivalry."

"--Duty: duty first. The happiness of his family. The well-being
of his dependants."

"--If proud of his name it was not an overweening pride; it was
founded in the conscious possession of exalted qualities. He could
be humble when occasion called for it."

Dr Middleton bowed to the litany, feeling that occasion called
for humbleness from him.

"Let us hope ... !" he said, with unassumed penitence on behalf of
his inscrutable daughter.

The ladies resumed:--

"--Vernon Whitford, not of his blood, is his brother!"

"--A thousand instances! Laetitia Dale remembers them better than
we."

"--That any blow should strike him!"

"--That another should be in store for him!"

"--It seems impossible he can be quite misunderstood!"

"Let us hope ... !" said Dr. Middleton.

"--One would not deem it too much for the dispenser of goodness to
expect to be a little looked up to!"

"--When he was a child he one day mounted a chair, and there he
stood in danger, would not let us touch him because he was taller
than we, and we were to gaze. Do you remember him, Eleanor? 'I am
the sun of the house!' It was inimitable!"

"--Your feelings; he would have your feelings! He was fourteen
when his cousin Grace Whitford married, and we lost him. They had
been the greatest friends; and it was long before he appeared
among us. He has never cared to see her since."

"--But he has
befriended her husband. Never has he failed in generosity. His
only fault is--"

"--His sensitiveness. And that is--"

"--His secret. And that--"

"--You are not to discover! It is the same with him in
manhood. No one will accuse Willoughby Patterne of a deficiency of
manlinesss: but what is it?--he suffers, as none suffer, if he is
not loved. He himself is inalterably constant in affection."

"--What it is no one can say. We have lived with him all his life,
and we know him ready to make any sacrifice; only, he does demand
the whole heart in return. And if he doubts, he looks as we have
seen him to-day."

"--Shattered: as we have never seen him look before."

"We will hope," said Dr. Middleton, this time hastily. He tingled
to say, "what it was": he had it in him to solve perplexity in
their inquiry. He did say, adopting familiar speech to suit the
theme, "You know, ladies, we English come of a rough stock. A dose
of rough dealing in our youth does us no harm, braces us.
Otherwise we are likely to feel chilly: we grow too fine where
tenuity of stature is necessarily buffetted by gales, namely, in
our self-esteem. We are barbarians, on a forcing soil of wealth,
in a conservatory of comfortable security; but still barbarians.
So, you see, we shine at our best when we are plucked out of that,
to where hard blows are given, in a state of war. In a state of
war we are at home, our men are high-minded fellows, Scipios and
good legionaries. In the state of peace we do not live in peace:
our native roughness breaks out in unexpected places, under
extraordinary aspects--tyrannies, extravagances, domestic
exactions: and if we have not had sharp early training ... within
and without ... the old-fashioned island-instrument to drill into
us the civilization of our masters, the ancients, we show it by
running here and there to some excess. Ahem. Yet," added the Rev.
Doctor, abandoning his effort to deliver a weighty truth obscurely
for the comprehension of dainty spinster ladies, the
superabundance of whom in England was in his opinion largely the
cause of our decay as a people, "Yet I have not observed this
ultra-sensitiveness in Willoughby. He has borne to hear more than
I, certainly no example of the frailty, could have endured."

"He concealed it," said the ladies. "It is intense."

"Then is it a disease?"

"It bears no explanation; it is mystic."

"It is a cultus, then, a form of self-worship."

"Self!" they ejaculated. "But is not Self indifferent to others?
Is it Self that craves for sympathy, love, and devotion?"

"He is an admirable host, ladies."

"He is admirable in all respects."

"Admirable must he be who can impress discerning women,
his life-long housemates, so favourably. He is, I repeat, a
perfect host."

"He will be a perfect husband."

"In all probability."

"It is a certainty. Let him be loved and obeyed, he will be
guided. That is the secret for her whom he so fatally loves.
That, if we had dared, we would have hinted to her. She will rule
him through her love of him, and through him all about her. And it
will not be a rule he submits to, but a love he accepts. If she
could see it!"

"If she were a metaphysician!" sighed Dr. Middleton.

"--But a sensitiveness so keen as his might--"

"--Fretted by an unsympathizing mate--"

"--In the end become, for the best of us is mortal--"

"--Callous!"

"--He would feel perhaps as much--"

"--Or more!--"

"--He would still be tender--"

"--But he might grow outwardly hard!"

Both ladies looked up at Dr. Middleton, as they revealed the
dreadful prospect.

"It is the story told of corns!" he said, sad as they.

The three stood drooping: the ladies with an attempt to digest his
remark; the Rev. Doctor in dejection lest his gallantry should no
longer continue to wrestle with his good sense.

He was rescued.

The door opened and a footman announced:--

"Mr. Dale."

Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel made a sign to one another of
raising their hands.

They advanced to him, and welcomed him.

"Pray be seated, Mr. Dale. You have not brought us bad news of our
Laetitia?"

"So rare is the pleasure of welcoming you here, Mr. Dale, that we
are in some alarm, when, as we trust, it should be matter for
unmixed congratulation."

"Has Doctor Corney been doing wonders?"

"I am indebted to him for the drive to your house, ladies," said
Mr. Dale, a spare, close-buttoned gentleman, with an Indian
complexion deadened in the sick-chamber. "It is unusual for me to
stir from my precincts."

"The Rev. Dr. Middleton."

Mr. Dale bowed. He seemed surprised.

"You live in a splendid air, sir," observed the Rev. Doctor.

"I can profit little by it, sir," replied Mr. Dale. He asked the
ladies: "Will Sir Willoughby be disengaged?"

They consulted. "He is with Vernon. We will send to him."

The bell was rung.

"I have had the gratification of making the acquaintance of your
daughter, Mr. Dale, a most estimable lady," said Dr. Middleton.

Mr. Dale bowed. "She is honoured by your praises, sir. To the best
of my belief--I speak as a father--she merits them. Hitherto I
have had no doubts."

"Of Laetitia?" exclaimed the ladies; and spoke of her as
gentleness and goodness incarnate.

"Hitherto I have devoutly thought so," said Mr. Dale.

"Surely she is the very sweetest nurse, the most devoted of
daughters."

"As far as concerns her duty to her father, I can say she is that,
ladies."

"In all her relations, Mr. Dale!"

"It is my prayer," he said.

The footman appeared. He announced that Sir Willoughby was in the
laboratory with Mr. Whitford, and the door locked.

"Domestic business," the ladies remarked. "You know Willoughby's
diligent attention to affairs, Mr. Dale."

"He is well?" Mr. Dale inquired.

"In excellent health."

"Body and mind?"

"But, dear Mr. Dale, he is never ill."

"Ah! for one to hear that who is never well! And Mr. Whitford is
quite sound?"

"Sound? The question alarms me for myself," said Dr. Middleton.
"Sound as our Constitution, the Credit of the country, the
reputation of our Prince of poets. I pray you to have no fears for
him."

Mr. Dale gave the mild little sniff of a man thrown deeper into
perplexity.

He said: "Mr. Whitford works his head; he is a hard student; he
may not be always, if I may so put it, at home on worldly
affairs."

"Dismiss that defamatory legend of the student, Mr. Dale; and take
my word for it, that he who persistently works his head has the
strongest for all affairs."

"Ah! Your daughter, sir, is here?"

"My daughter is here, sir, and will be most happy to present her
respects to the father of her friend, Miss Dale."

"They are friends?"

"Very cordial friends."

Mr. Dale administered another feebly pacifying sniff to himself.

"Laetitia!" he sighed, in apostrophe, and swept his forehead with
a hand seen to shake.

The ladies asked him anxiously whether he felt the heat of the
room; and one offered him a smelling-bottle.

He thanked them. "I can hold out until Sir Willoughby comes."

"We fear to disturb him when his door is locked, Mr. Dale; but, if
you wish it, we will venture on a message. You have really no bad
news of our Laetitia? She left us hurriedly this morning, without
any leave-taking, except a word to one of the maids, that your
condition required her immediate presence."

"My condition! And now her door is locked to me! We have spoken
through the door, and that is all. I stand sick and stupefied
between two locked doors, neither of which will open, it appears,
to give me the enlightenment I need more than medicine."

"Dear me!" cried Dr. Middleton, "I am struck by your description
of your position, Mr. Dale. It would aptly apply to our humanity
of the present generation; and were these the days when I
sermonized, I could propose that it should afford me an
illustration for the pulpit. For my part, when doors are closed I
try not their locks; and I attribute my perfect equanimity, health
even, to an uninquiring acceptation of the fact that they are
closed to me. I read my page by the light I have. On the contrary,
the world of this day, if I may presume to quote you for my
purpose, is heard knocking at those two locked doors of the secret
of things on each side of us, and is beheld standing sick and
stupefied because it has got no response to its knocking. Why,
sir, let the world compare the diverse fortunes of the beggar and
the postman: knock to give, and it is opened unto you: knock to
crave, and it continues shut. I say, carry a letter to your locked
door, and you shall have a good reception: but there is none that
is handed out. For which reason . . ."

Mr. Dale swept a perspiring forehead, and extended his hand in
supplication. "I am an invalid, Dr. Middleton," he said. "I am
unable to cope with analogies. I have but strength for the slow
digestion of facts."

"For facts, we are bradypeptics to a man, sir. We know not yet if
nature be a fact or an effort to master one. The world has not yet
assimilated the first fact it stepped on. We are still in the
endeavour to make good blood of the fact of our being." Pressing
his hands at his temples, Mr. Dale moaned: "My head twirls; I did
unwisely to come out. I came on an impulse; I trust, honourable. I
am unfit--I cannot follow you, Dr. Middleton. Pardon me."

"Nay, sir, let me say, from my experience of my countrymen, that
if you do not follow me and can abstain from abusing me in
consequence, you are magnanimous," the Rev. Doctor replied,
hardly consenting to let go the man he had found to indemnify him
for his gallant service of acquiescing as a mute to the ladies,
though he knew his breathing robustfulness to be as an East wind
to weak nerves, and himself an engine of punishment when he had
been torn for a day from his books.

Miss Eleanor said: "The enlightenment you need, Mr. Dale? Can we
enlighten you?"

"I think not," he answered, faintly. "I think I will wait for Sir
Willoughby ... or Mr. Whitford. If I can keep my strength. Or
could I exchange--I fear to break down--two words with the young
lady who is, was . . . "