The Egoist

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"She will listen." Mrs. Mountstuart said: "She likes him, respects
him, thinks he is a very sincere friend, clever, a scholar, and a
good mountaineer; and thinks you mean very kindly. So much I have
impressed on her, but I have not done much for Mr. Whitford."

"She consents to listen," said Willoughby, snatching at that as the
death-blow to his friend Horace.

"She consents to listen, because you have arranged it so that if
she declined she would be rather a savage."

"You think it will have no result?"

"None at all."

"Her listening will do."

"And you must be satisfied with it."

"We shall see."

"'Anything for peace', she says: and I don't say that a gentleman
with a tongue would not have a chance. She wishes to please you."

"Old Vernon has no tongue for women, poor fellow! You will have us
be spider or fly, and if a man can't spin a web all he can hope is
not to be caught in one. She knows his history, too, and that
won't be in his favour. How did she look when you left them?"

"Not so bright: like a bit of china that wants dusting. She looked
a trifle gauche, it struck me; more like a country girl with the
hoyden taming in her than the well-bred creature she is. I did not
suspect her to have feeling. You must remember, Sir Willoughby,
that she has obeyed your wishes, done her utmost: I do think we
may say she has made some amends; and if she is to blame she
repents, and you will not insist too far."

"I do insist," said he.

"Beneficent, but a tyrant!"

"Well, well." He did not dislike the character.

They perceived Dr. Middleton wandering over the lawn, and
Willoughby went to him to put him on the wrong track: Mrs.
Mountstuart swept into the drawing-room. Willoughby quitted the
Rev. Doctor, and hung about the bower where he supposed his pair
of dupes had by this time ceased to stutter mutually:--or what if
they had found the word of harmony? He could bear that, just bear
it. He rounded the shrubs, and, behold, both had vanished. The
trellis decorated emptiness. His idea was, that they had soon
discovered their inability to be turtles: and desiring not to lose
a moment while Clara was fretted by the scene, he rushed to the
drawing-room with the hope of lighting on her there, getting her
to himself, and finally, urgently, passionately offering her the
sole alternative of what she had immediately rejected. Why had he
not used passion before, instead of limping crippled between
temper and policy? He was capable of it: as soon as imagination in
him conceived his personal feelings unwounded and unimperiled, the
might of it inspired him with heroical confidence, and Clara
grateful, Clara softly moved, led him to think of Clara melted.
Thus anticipating her he burst into the room.

One step there warned him that he was in the jaws of the world. We
have the phrase, that a man is himself under certain trying
circumstances. There is no need to say it of Sir Willoughby: he
was thrice himself when danger menaced, himself inspired him. He
could read at a single glance the Polyphemus eye in the general
head of a company. Lady Busshe, Lady Culmer, Mrs. Mountstuart, Mr.
Dale, had a similarity in the variety of their expressions that
made up one giant eye for him perfectly, if awfully, legible. He
discerned the fact that his demon secret was abroad, universal. He
ascribed it to fate. He was in the jaws of the world, on the
world's teeth. This time he thought Laetitia must have betrayed
him, and bowing to Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer, gallantly pressing
their fingers and responding to their becks and archnesses, he
ruminated on his defences before he should accost her father. He
did not want to be alone with the man, and he considered how his
presence might be made useful.

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Dale. Pray, be seated. Is it nature
asserting her strength? or the efficacy of medicine? I fancy it
can't be both. You have brought us back your daughter?"

Mr. Dale sank into a chair, unable to resist the hand forcing him.

"No, Sir Willoughby, no. I have not; I have not seen her since she
came home this morning from Patterne."

"Indeed? She is unwell?"

"I cannot say. She secludes herself."

"Has locked herself in," said Lady Busshe.

Willoughby threw her a smile. It made them intimate.

This was an advantage against the world, but an exposure of
himself to the abominable woman.

Dr. Middleton came up to Mr. Dale to apologize for not presenting
his daughter Clara, whom he could find neither in nor out of the
house.

"We have in Mr. Dale, as I suspected," he said to Willoughby, "a
stout ally."

"If I may beg two minutes with you, Sir Willoughby," said Mr.
Dale.

"Your visits are too rare for me to allow of your numbering the
minutes," Willoughby replied. "We cannot let Mr. Dale escape us
now that we have him, I think, Dr. Middleton."

"Not without ransom," said the Rev. Doctor.

Mr. Dale shook his head. "My strength, Sir Willoughby, will not
sustain me long."

"You are at home, Mr. Dale."

"Not far from home, in truth, but too far for an invalid beginning
to grow sensible of weakness."

"You will regard Patterne as your home, Mr. Dale," Willoughby
repeated for the world to hear.

"Unconditionally?" Dr. Middleton inquired, with a humourous air of
dissenting.

Willoughby gave him a look that was coldly courteous, and then he
looked at Lady Busshe. She nodded imperceptibly. Her eyebrows
rose, and Willoughby returned a similar nod.

Translated, the signs ran thus:

"--Pestered by the Rev. gentleman:--I see you are. Is the story I
have heard correct?--Possibly it may err in a few details."

This was fettering himself in loose manacles.

But Lady Busshe would not be satisfied with the compliment of the
intimate looks and nods. She thought she might still be behind
Mrs. Mountstuart; and she was a bold woman, and anxious about him,
half-crazed by the riddle of the pot she was boiling in, and
having very few minutes to spare. Not extremely reticent by
nature, privileged by station, and made intimate with him by his
covert looks, she stood up to him. "One word to an old friend.
Which is the father of the fortunate creature? I don't know how to
behave to them." No time was afforded him to be disgusted with her
vulgarity and audacity.

He replied, feeling her rivet his gyves: "The house will be empty
to-morrow."

"I see. A decent withdrawal, and very well cloaked. We had a tale
here of her running off to decline the honour, afraid, or on her
dignity or something."

How was it that the woman was ready to accept the altered posture
of affairs in his house--if she had received a hint of them? He
forgot that he had prepared her in self-defence.

"From whom did you have that?" he asked.

"Her father. And the lady aunts declare it was the cousin she
refused!" Willoughby's brain turned over. He righted it for
action, and crossed the room to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. His
ears tingled. He and his whole story discussed in public! Himself
unroofed! And the marvel that he of all men should be in such a
tangle, naked and blown on, condemned to use his cunningest arts
to unwind and cover himself, struck him as though the lord of his
kind were running the gauntlet of a legion of imps. He felt their
lashes.

The ladies were talking to Mrs. Mountstuart and Lady Culmer of
Vernon and the suitableness of Laetitia to a scholar. He made sign
to them, and both rose.

"It is the hour for your drive. To the cottage! Mr. Dale is in.
She must come. Her sick father! No delay, going or returning.
Bring her here at once."

"Poor man!" they sighed; and "Willoughby," said one, and the other
said: "There is a strange misconception you will do well to
correct."

They were about to murmur what it was. He swept his hand round,
and excusing themselves to their guests, obediently they retired.

Lady Busshe at his entreaty remained, and took a seat beside Lady
Culmer and Mrs. Mountstuart.

She said to the latter: "You have tried scholars. What do you
think?"

"Excellent, but hard to mix," was the reply.

"I never make experiments," said Lady Culmer.

"Some one must!" Mrs. Mountstuart groaned over her dull dinner-party.

Lady Busshe consoled her. "At any rate, the loss of a scholar is
no loss to the county."

"They are well enough in towns," Lady Culmer said.

"And then I am sure you must have them by themselves."

"We have nothing to regret."

"My opinion."

The voice of Dr. Middleton in colloquy with Mr. Dale swelled on a
melodious thunder: "For whom else should I plead as the passionate
advocate I proclaimed myself to you, sir? There is but one man
known to me who would move me to back him upon such an adventure.
Willoughby, join me. I am informing Mr. Dale . . ."

Willoughby stretched his hands out to Mr. Dale to support him on
his legs, though he had shown no sign of a wish to rise.

"You are feeling unwell, Mr. Dale."

"Do I look very ill, Sir Willoughby?"

"It will pass. Laetitia will be with us in twenty minutes." Mr.
Dale struck his hands in a clasp. He looked alarmingly ill, and
satisfactorily revealed to his host how he could be made to look
so.

"I was informing Mr. Dale that the petitioner enjoys our
concurrent good wishes: and mine in no degree less than yours,
Willoughby," observed Dr. Middleton, whose billows grew the bigger
for a check. He supposed himself speaking confidentially. "Ladies
have the trick, they have, I may say, the natural disposition for
playing enigma now and again. Pressure is often a sovereign
specific. Let it be tried upon her all round from every radiating
line of the circle. You she refuses. Then I venture to propose
myself to appeal to her. My daughter has assuredly an esteem for
the applicant that will animate a woman's tongue in such a case.
The ladies of the house will not be backward. Lastly, if
necessary, we trust the lady's father to add his instances. My
prescription is, to fatigue her negatives; and where no rooted
objection exists, I maintain it to be the unfailing receipt for
the conduct of the siege. No woman can say No forever. The
defence has not such resources against even a single assailant,
and we shall have solved the problem of continuous motion before
she will have learned to deny in perpetuity. That I stand on."

Willoughby glanced at Mrs. Mountstuart.

"What is that?" she said. "Treason to our sex, Dr. Middleton?"

"I think I heard that no woman can say No forever!" remarked Lady
Busshe.

"To a loyal gentleman, ma'am: assuming the field of the recurring
request to be not unholy ground; consecrated to affirmatives
rather."

Dr Middleton was attacked by three angry bees. They made him say
yes and no alternately so many times that he had to admit in men a
shiftier yieldingness than women were charged with.

Willoughby gesticulated as mute chorus on the side of the ladies;
and a little show of party spirit like that, coming upon their
excitement under the topic, inclined them to him genially. He
drew Mr. Dale away while the conflict subsided in sharp snaps of
rifles and an interval rejoinder of a cannon. Mr. Dale had shown
by signs that he was growing fretfully restive under his burden
of doubt.

"Sir Willoughby, I have a question. I beg you to lead me where I
may ask it. I know my head is weak."

"Mr. Dale, it is answered when I say that my house is your home,
and that Laetitia will soon be with us."

"Then this report is true?"

"I know nothing of reports. You are answered."

"Can my daughter be accused of any shadow of falseness,
dishonourable dealing?"

"As little as I."

Mr. Dale scanned his face. He saw no shadow.

"For I should go to my grave bankrupt if that could be said of
her; and I have never yet felt poor, though you know the extent of
a pensioner's income. Then this tale of a refusal ... ?"

"Is nonsense."

"She has accepted?"

"There are situations, Mr. Dale, too delicate to be clothed in
positive definitions."

"Ah, Sir Willoughby, but it becomes a father to see that his
daughter is not forced into delicate situations. I hope all is
well. I am confused. It may be my head. She puzzles me. You are
not ... Can I ask it here? You are quite ... ? Will you moderate
my anxiety? My infirmities must excuse me."

Sir Willoughby conveyed by a shake of the head and a pressure of
Mr. Dale's hand, that he was not, and that he was quite.

"Dr Middleton?" said Mr. Dale.

"He leaves us to-morrow."

"Really!" The invalid wore a look as if wine had been poured into
him. He routed his host's calculations by calling to the Rev.
Doctor. "We are to lose you, sir?"

Willoughby attempted an interposition, but Dr. Middleton crashed
through it like the lordly organ swallowing a flute.

"Not before I score my victory, Mr. Dale, and establish my friend
upon his rightful throne."

"You do not leave to-morrow, sir?"

"Have you heard, sir, that I leave to-morrow?"

Mr. Dale turned to Sir Willoughby.

The latter said: "Clara named to-day. To-morrow I thought
preferable."

"Ah!" Dr. Middleton towered on the swelling exclamation, but with
no dark light. He radiated splendidly. "Yes, then, to-morrow. That
is, if we subdue the lady."

He advanced to Willoughby, seized his hand, squeezed it, thanked
him, praised him. He spoke under his breath, for a wonder; but:
"We are in your debt lastingly, my friend", was heard, and he was
impressive, he seemed subdued, and saying aloud: "Though I should
wish to aid in the reduction of that fortress", he let it be seen
that his mind was rid of a load.

Dr. Middleton partly stupefied Willoughby by his way of taking it,
but his conduct was too serviceable to allow of speculation on his
readiness to break the match. It was the turning-point of the
engagement.

Lady Busshe made a stir.

"I cannot keep my horses waiting any longer," she said, and
beckoned. Sir Willoughby was beside her immediately.

"You are admirable! perfect! Don't ask me to hold my tongue. I
retract, I recant. It is a fatality. I have resolved upon that
view. You could stand the shot of beauty, not of brains. That is
our report. There! And it's delicious to feel that the county wins
you. No tea. I cannot possibly wait. And, oh! here she is. I must
have a look at her. My dear Laetitia Dale!"

Willoughby hurried to Mr. Dale.

"You are not to be excited, sir: compose yourself. You will
recover and be strong to-morrow: you are at home; you are in your
own house; you are in Laetitia's drawing-room. All will be clear
to-morrow. Till to-morrow we talk riddles by consent. Sit, I beg.
You stay with us."

He met Laetitia and rescued her from Lady Busshe, murmuring, with
the air of a lover who says, "my love! my sweet!" that she had
done rightly to come and come at once. Her father had been thrown
into the proper condition of clammy nervousness to create the
impression. Laetitia's anxiety sat prettily on her long eyelashes
as she bent over him in his chair.

Hereupon Dr. Corney appeared; and his name had a bracing effect on
Mr. Dale. "Corney has come to drive me to the cottage," he said.
"I am ashamed of this public exhibition of myself, my dear. Let
us go. My head is a poor one."

Dr. Corney had been intercepted. He broke from Sir Willoughby with
a dozen little nods of accurate understanding of him, even to
beyond the mark of the communications. He touched his patient's
pulse lightly, briefly sighed with professional composure, and
pronounced: "Rest. Must not be moved. No, no, nothing serious," he
quieted Laetitia's fears, "but rest, rest. A change of residence
for a night will tone him. I will bring him a draught in the
course of the evening. Yes, yes, I'll fetch everything wanted from
the cottage for you and for him. Repose on Corney's forethought."

"You are sure, Dr. Corney?" said Laetitia, frightened on her
father's account and on her own.

"Which aspect will be the best for Mr. Dale's bedroom?"
the hospitable ladies Eleanor and Isabel inquired.

"Southeast, decidedly: let him have the morning sun: a warm air,
a vigorous air, and a bright air, and the patient wakes and sings
in his bed."

Still doubtful whether she was in a trap, Laetitia whispered to
her father of the privacy and comforts of his home. He replied to
her that he thought he would rather be in his own home.

Dr Corney positively pronounced No to it.

Laetitia breathed again of home, but with the sigh of one
overborne.

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel took the word from Willoughby, and
said: "But you are at home, my dear. This is your home. Your
father will be at least as well attended here as at the cottage."

She raised her eyelids on them mournfully, and by chance diverted
her look to Dr. Middleton, quite by chance.

It spoke eloquently to the assembly of all that Willoughby desired
to be imagined.

"But there is Crossjay," she cried. "My cousin has gone, and the
boy is left alone. I cannot have him left alone. If we, if, Dr.
Corney, you are sure it is unsafe for papa to be moved to-day,
Crossjay must ... he cannot be left."

"Bring him with you, Corney," said Sir Willoughby; and the little
doctor heartily promised that he would, in the event of his
finding Crossjay at the cottage, which he thought a distant
probability.

"He gave me his word he would not go out till my return," said
Laetitia.

"And if Crossjay gave you his word," the accents of a new voice
vibrated close by, "be certain that he will not come back with Dr.
Corney unless he has authority in your handwriting."

Clara Middleton stepped gently to Laetitia, and with a manner
that was an embrace, as much as kissed her for what she was doing
on behalf of Crossjay. She put her lips in a pouting form to
simulate saying: "Press it."

"He is to come," said Laetitia.

"Then write him his permit."

There was a chatter about Crossjay and the sentinel true to his
post that he could be, during which Laetitia distressfully
scribbled a line for Dr. Corney to deliver to him. Clara stood
near. She had rebuked herself for want of reserve in the presence
of Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer, and she was guilty of a slightly
excessive containment when she next addressed Laetitia. It was,
like Laetitia's look at Dr. Middleton, opportune: enough to make a
man who watched as Willoughby did a fatalist for life: the shadow
of a difference in her bearing toward Laetitia sufficed to impute
acting either to her present coolness or her previous warmth.
Better still, when Dr. Middleton said: "So we leave to-morrow, my
dear, and I hope you have written to the Darletons," Clara flushed
and beamed, and repressed her animation on a sudden, with one
grave look, that might be thought regretful, to where Willoughby
stood.

Chance works for us when we are good captains.

Willoughby's pride was high, though he knew himself to be keeping
it up like a fearfully dexterous juggler, and for an empty reward:
but he was in the toils of the world.

"Have you written? The post-bag leaves in half an hour," he
addressed her.

"We are expected, but I will write," she replied: and her not
having yet written counted in his favour.

She went to write the letter. Dr. Corney had departed on his
mission to fetch Crossjay and medicine. Lady Busshe was impatient
to be gone. "Corney," she said to Lady Culmer, "is a deadly
gossip."

"Inveterate," was the answer.

"My poor horses!"

"Not the young pair of bays?"

"Luckily they are, my dear. And don't let me hear of dining
to-night!"

Sir Willoughby was leading out Mr. Dale to a quiet room,
contiguous to the invalid gentleman's bedchamber. He resigned
him to Laetitia in the hall, that he might have the pleasure
of conducting the ladies to their carriage.

"As little agitation as possible. Corney will soon be back," he
said, bitterly admiring the graceful subservience of Laetitia's
figure to her father's weight on her arm.

He had won a desperate battle, but what had he won?

What had the world given him in return for his efforts to gain it?
Just a shirt, it might be said: simple scanty clothing, no warmth.
Lady Busshe was unbearable; she gabbled; she was ill-bred,
permitted herself to speak of Dr. Middleton as ineligible, no loss
to the county. And Mrs. Mountstuart was hardly much above her, with
her inevitable stroke of caricature:--"You see Doctor
Middleton's pulpit scampering after him with legs!" Perhaps the
Rev. Doctor did punish the world for his having forsaken his
pulpit, and might be conceived as haunted by it at his heels, but
Willoughby was in the mood to abhor comic images; he hated the
perpetrators of them and the grinners. Contempt of this laughing
empty world, for which he had performed a monstrous immolation,
led him to associate Dr. Middleton in his mind, and Clara too, with
the desireable things he had sacrificed--a shape of youth and
health; a sparkling companion; a face of innumerable charms; and
his own veracity; his inner sense of his dignity; and his temper,
and the limpid frankness of his air of scorn, that was to him a
visage of candid happiness in the dim retrospect. Haply also he
had sacrificed more: he looked scientifically into the future: he
might have sacrificed a nameless more. And for what? he asked
again. For the favourable looks and tongues of these women whose
looks and tongues he detested!

"Dr Middleton says he is indebted to me: I am deeply in his
debt," he remarked.

"It is we who are in your debt for a lovely romance, my dear Sir
Willoughby," said Lady Busshe, incapable of taking a correction,
so thoroughly had he imbued her with his fiction, or with the
belief that she had a good story to circulate. Away she drove,
rattling her tongue to Lady Culmer.

"A hat and horn, and she would be in the old figure of a post-boy
on a hue-and-cry sheet," said Mrs. Mountstuart.

Willoughby thanked the great lady for her services, and she
complimented the polished gentleman on his noble self-possession.
But she complained at the same time of being defrauded of her
"charmer" Colonel De Craye, since luncheon. An absence of warmth
in her compliment caused Willoughby to shrink and think the
wretched shirt he had got from the world no covering after all: a
breath flapped it.

"He comes to me to-morrow, I believe," she said, reflecting on her
superior knowledge of facts in comparison with Lady Busshe, who
would presently be hearing of something novel, and exclaiming:
"So, that is why you patronized the colonel!" And it was nothing
of the sort, for Mrs. Mountstuart could honestly say she was not
the woman to make a business of her pleasure.

"Horace is an enviable fellow," said Willoughby, wise in The Book,
which bids us ever, for an assuagement to fancy our friend's
condition worse than our own, and recommends the deglutition of
irony as the most balsamic for wounds in the whole moral
pharmacopoeia.

"I don't know," she replied, with a marked accent of deliberation.

"The colonel is to have you to himself to-morrow!"

"I can't be sure of what I shall have in the colonel!"

"Your perpetual sparkler?"

Mrs. Mountstuart set her head in motion. She left the matter
silent.

"I'll come for him in the morning," she said, and her carriage
whirled her off. Either she had guessed it, or Clara had confided
to her the treacherous passion of Horace De Craye.

However, the world was shut away from Patterne for the night.

CHAPTER XLVII

Sir Willoughby and His Friend Horace De Craye

Willoughby shut himself up in his laboratory to brood awhile after
the conflict. Sounding through himself, as it was habitual with
him to do, for the plan most agreeable to his taste, he came on a
strange discovery among the lower circles of that microcosm. He
was no longer guided in his choice by liking and appetite: he had
to put it on the edge of a sharp discrimination, and try it by his
acutest judgement before it was acceptable to his heart: and
knowing well the direction of his desire, he was nevertheless
unable to run two strides on a wish. He had learned to read the
world: his partial capacity for reading persons had fled. The
mysteries of his own bosom were bare to him; but he could
comprehend them only in their immediate relation to the world
outside. This hateful world had caught him and transformed him to
a machine. The discovery he made was, that in the gratification
of the egoistic instinct we may so beset ourselves as to deal a
slaughtering wound upon Self to whatsoever quarter we turn.

Surely there is nothing stranger in mortal experience. The man was
confounded. At the game of Chess it is the dishonour of our
adversary when we are stale-mated: but in life, cornbatting the
world, such a winning of the game questions our sentiments.

Willoughby's interpretation of his discovery was directed by pity:
he had no other strong emotion left in him. He pitied himself, and
he reached the conclusion that he suffered because he was active;
he could not be quiescent. Had it not been for his devotion to his
house and name, never would he have stood twice the victim of
womankind. Had he been selfish, he would have been the happiest of
men! He said it aloud. He schemed benevolently for his unborn
young, and for the persons about him: hence he was in a position
forbidding a step under pain of injury to his feelings. He was
generous: otherwise would he not in scorn of soul, at the outset,
straight off have pitched Clara Middleton to the wanton winds? He
was faithful in his affection: Laetitia Dale was beneath his roof
to prove it. Both these women were examples of his power of
forgiveness, and now a tender word to Clara might fasten shame on
him--such was her gratitude! And if he did not marry Laetitia,
laughter would be devilish all around him--such was the world's!
Probably Vernon would not long be thankful for the chance which
varied the monotony of his days. What of Horace? Willoughby
stripped to enter the ring with Horace: he cast away disguise.
That man had been the first to divide him in the all but equal
slices of his egoistic from his amatory self: murder of his
individuality was the crime of Horace De Craye. And further,
suspicion fixed on Horace (he knew not how, except that The Book
bids us be suspicious of those we hate) as the man who had
betrayed his recent dealings with Laetitia.