The egoist a comedy in n.., p.16
The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative, page 16
Lætitia remarked: "The generic woman appears to have an extraordinary faculty for swallowing the individual."
"As to the individual, as to a particular person, I may be wrong. Precisely because it is her case I think of, my strong friendship inspires the fear: unworthy of both, no doubt, but trace it to the source. Even pure friendship, such is the taint in us, knows a kind of jealousy; though I would gladly see her established, and near me, happy and contributing to my happiness with her incomparable social charm. Her I do not estimate generically, be sure."
"If you do me the honour to allude to me, Sir Willoughby," said Lætitia, "I am my father's housemate."
"What wooer would take that for a refusal? He would beg to be a third in the house and sharer of your affectionate burden. Honestly, why not? And I may be arguing against my own happiness; it may be the end of me!"
"The end?"
"Old friends are captious, exacting. No, not the end. Yet if my friend is not the same to me, it is the end to that form of friendship: not to the degree possibly. But when one is used to the form! And do you, in its application to friendship, scorn the word 'use'? We are creatures of custom. I am, I confess, a poltroon in my affections; I dread changes. The shadow of the tenth of an inch in the customary elevation of an eyelid! — to give you an idea of my susceptibility. And, my dear Miss Dale, I throw myself on your charity, with all my weakness bare, let me add, as I could do to none but you. Consider, then, if I lose you! The fear is due to my pusillanimity entirely. High-souled women may be wives, mothers, and still reserve that home for their friend. They can and will conquer the viler conditions of human life. Our states, I have always contended, our various phases have to be passed through, and there is no disgrace in it so long as they do not levy toll on the quintessential, the spiritual element. You understand me? I am no adept in these abstract elucidations."
"You explain yourself clearly," said Lætitia.
"I have never pretended that psychology was my forte," said he, feeling overshadowed by her cold commendation: he was not less acutely sensitive to the fractional divisions of tones than of eyelids, being, as it were, a melody with which everything was out of tune that did not modestly or mutely accord; and to bear about a melody in your person is incomparably more searching than the best of touchstones and talismans ever invented. "Your father's health has improved latterly?"
"He did not complain of his health when I saw him this morning. My cousin Amelia is with him, and she is an excellent nurse."
"He has a liking for Vernon."
"He has a great respect for Mr. Whitford."
"You have?"
"Oh, yes; I have it equally."
"For a foundation, that is the surest. I would have the friends dearest to me begin on that. The headlong match is — how can we describe it? By its finale I am afraid. Vernon's abilities are really to be respected. His shyness is his malady. I suppose he reflected that he was not a capitalist. He might, one would think, have addressed himself to me; my purse is not locked."
"No, Sir Willoughby!" Lætitia said, warmly, for his donations in charity were famous.
Her eyes gave him the food he enjoyed, and basking in them, he continued:
"Vernon's income would at once have been regulated commensurately with a new position requiring an increase. This money, money, money! But the world will have it so. Happily I have inherited habits of business and personal economy. Vernon is a man who would do fifty times more with a companion appreciating his abilities and making light of his little deficiencies. They are palpable, small enough. He has always been aware of my wishes: — when perhaps the fulfilment might have sent me off on another tour of the world, homebird though I am. When was it that our friendship commenced? In my boyhood, I know. Very many years back."
"I am in my thirtieth year," said Lætitia.
Surprised and pained by a baldness resembling the deeds of ladies (they have been known, either through absence of mind, or mania, to displace a wig) in the deadly intimacy which slaughters poetic admiration, Sir Willoughby punished her by deliberately reckoning that she did not look less.
"Genius," he observed, "is unacquainted with wrinkles"; hardly one of his prettiest speeches; but he had been wounded, and he never could recover immediately. Coming on him in a mood of sentiment, the wound was sharp. He could very well have calculated the lady's age. It was the jarring clash of her brazen declaration of it upon his low rich flute-notes that shocked him.
He glanced at the gold cathedral-clock on the mantel-piece, and proposed a stroll on the lawn before dinner. Lætitia gathered up her embroidery work.
"As a rule," he said, "authoresses are not needle-women."
"I shall resign the needle or the pen if it stamps me an exception," she replied.
He attempted a compliment on her truly exceptional character. As when the player's finger rests in distraction on the organ, it was without measure and disgusted his own hearing. Nevertheless, she had been so good as to diminish his apprehension that the marriage of a lady in her thirtieth year with his cousin Vernon would be so much of a loss to him; hence, while parading the lawn, now and then casting an eye at the window of the room where his Clara and Vernon were in council, the schemes he indulged for his prospective comfort and his feelings of the moment were in such striving harmony as that to which we hear orchestral musicians bringing their instruments under the process called tuning. It is not perfect, but it promises to be so soon. We are not angels, which have their dulcimers ever on the choral pitch. We are mortals attaining the celestial accord with effort, through a stage of pain. Some degree of pain was necessary to Sir Willoughby, otherwise he would not have seen his generosity confronting him. He grew, therefore, tenderly inclined to Lætitia once more, so far as to say within himself. "For conversation she would be a valuable wife". And this valuable wife he was presenting to his cousin.
Apparently, considering the duration of the conference of his Clara and Vernon, his cousin required strong persuasion to accept the present.
Chapter XV
The Petition For A Release
Neither Clara nor Vernon appeared at the mid-day table. Dr. Middleton talked with Miss Dale on classical matters, like a good-natured giant giving a child the jump from stone to stone across a brawling mountain ford, so that an unedified audience might really suppose, upon seeing her over the difficulty, she had done something for herself. Sir Willoughby was proud of her, and therefore anxious to settle her business while he was in the humour to lose her. He hoped to finish it by shooting a word or two at Vernon before dinner. Clara's petition to be set free, released from him, had vaguely frightened even more than it offended his pride.
Miss Isabel quitted the room.
She came back, saying: "They decline to lunch."
"Then we may rise," remarked Sir Willoughby.
"She was weeping," Miss Isabel murmured to him.
"Girlish enough," he said.
The two elderly ladies went away together. Miss Dale, pursuing her theme with the Rev. Doctor, was invited by him to a course in the library. Sir Willoughby walked up and down the lawn, taking a glance at the West-room as he swung round on the turn of his leg. Growing impatient, he looked in at the window and found the room vacant.
Nothing was to be seen of Clara and Vernon during the afternoon. Near the dinner-hour the ladies were informed by Miss Middleton's maid that her mistress was lying down on her bed, too unwell with headache to be present. Young Crossjay brought a message from Vernon (delayed by birds' eggs in the delivery), to say that he was off over the hills, and thought of dining with Dr. Corney.
Sir Willoughby despatched condolences to his bride. He was not well able to employ his mind on its customary topic, being, like the dome of a bell, a man of so pervading a ring within himself concerning himself, that the recollection of a doubtful speech or unpleasant circumstance touching him closely deranged his inward peace; and as dubious and unpleasant things will often occur, he had great need of a worshipper, and was often compelled to appeal to her for signs of antidotal idolatry. In this instance, when the need of a worshipper was sharply felt, he obtained no signs at all. The Rev. Doctor had fascinated Miss Dale; so that, both within and without, Sir Willoughby was uncomforted. His themes in public were those of an English gentleman; horses, dogs, game, sport, intrigue, scandal, politics, wines, the manly themes; with a condescension to ladies' tattle, and approbation of a racy anecdote. What interest could he possibly take in the Athenian Theatre and the girl whose flute-playing behind the scenes, imitating the nightingale, enraptured a Greek audience! He would have suspected a motive in Miss Dale's eager attentiveness, if the motive could have been conceived. Besides, the ancients were not decorous; they did not, as we make our moderns do, write for ladies. He ventured at the dinner-table to interrupt Dr. Middleton once: —
"Miss Dale will do wisely, I think, sir, by confining herself to your present edition of the classics."
"That," replied Dr. Middleton, "is the observation of a student of the dictionary of classical mythology in the English tongue."
"The Theatre is a matter of climate, sir. You will grant me that."
"If quick wits come of climate, it is as you say, sir."
"With us it seems a matter of painful fostering, or the need of it," said Miss Dale, with a question to Dr. Middleton, excluding Sir Willoughby, as though he had been a temporary disturbance of the flow of their dialogue.
The ladies Eleanor and Isabel, previously excellent listeners to the learned talk, saw the necessity of coming to his rescue; but you cannot converse with your aunts, inmates of your house, on general subjects at table; the attempt increased his discomposure; he considered that he had ill-chosen his father-in-law; that scholars are an impolite race; that young or youngish women are devotees of power in any form, and will be absorbed by a scholar for a variation of a man; concluding that he must have a round of dinner-parties to friends, especially ladies, appreciating him, during the Doctor's visit. Clara's headache above, and Dr. Middleton's unmannerliness below, affected his instincts in a way to make him apprehend that a stroke of misfortune was impending; thunder was in the air. Still he learned something, by which he was to profit subsequently. The topic of wine withdrew the doctor from his classics; it was magical on him. A strong fraternity of taste was discovered in the sentiments of host and guest upon particular wines and vintages; they kindled one another by naming great years of the grape, and if Sir Willoughby had to sacrifice the ladies to the topic, he much regretted a condition of things that compelled him to sin against his habit, for the sake of being in the conversation and probing an elderly gentleman's foible.
Late at night he heard the house-bell, and meeting Vernon in the hall, invited him to enter the laboratory and tell him Dr. Corney's last. Vernon was brief, Corney had not let fly a single anecdote, he said, and lighted his candle.
"By the way, Vernon, you had a talk with Miss Middleton?"
"She will speak to you to-morrow at twelve."
"To-morrow at twelve?"
"It gives her four-and-twenty hours."
Sir Willoughby determined that his perplexity should be seen; but Vernon said good-night to him, and was shooting up the stairs before the dramatic exhibition of surprise had yielded to speech.
Thunder was in the air and a blow coming. Sir Willoughby's instincts were awake to the many signs, nor, though silenced, were they hushed by his harping on the frantic excesses to which women are driven by the passion of jealousy. He believed in Clara's jealousy because he really had intended to rouse it; under the form of emulation, feebly. He could not suppose she had spoken of it to Vernon. And as for the seriousness of her desire to be released from her engagement, that was little credible. Still the fixing of an hour for her to speak to him after an interval of four-and-twenty hours, left an opening for the incredible to add its weight to the suspicious mass; and who would have fancied Clara Middleton so wild a victim of the intemperate passion! He muttered to himself several assuaging observations to excuse a young lady half demented, and rejected them in a lump for their nonsensical inapplicability to Clara. In order to obtain some sleep, he consented to blame himself slightly, in the style of the enamoured historian of erring beauties alluding to their peccadilloes. He had done it to edify her. Sleep, however, failed him. That an inordinate jealousy argued an overpowering love, solved his problem until he tried to fit the proposition to Clara's character. He had discerned nothing southern in her. Latterly, with the blushing Day in prospect, she had contracted and frozen. There was no reading either of her or of the mystery.
In the morning, at the breakfast-table, a confession of sleeplessness was general. Excepting Miss Dale and Dr. Middleton, none had slept a wink. "I, sir," the Doctor replied to Sir Willoughby, "slept like a lexicon in your library when Mr. Whitford and I are out of it."
Vernon incidentally mentioned that he had been writing through the night.
"You fellows kill yourselves," Sir Willoughby reproved him. "For my part, I make it a principle to get through my work without self-slaughter."
Clara watched her father for a symptom of ridicule. He gazed mildly on the systematic worker. She was unable to guess whether she would have in him an ally or a judge. The latter, she feared. Now that she had embraced the strife, she saw the division of the line where she stood from that one where the world places girls who are affianced wives; her father could hardly be with her; it had gone too far. He loved her, but he would certainly take her to be moved by a maddish whim; he would not try to understand her case. The scholar's detestation of a disarrangement of human affairs that had been by miracle contrived to run smoothly, would of itself rank him against her; and with the world to back his view of her, he might behave like a despotic father. How could she defend herself before him? At one thought of Sir Willoughby, her tongue made ready, and feminine craft was alert to prompt it; but to her father she could imagine herself opposing only dumbness and obstinacy.
"It is not exactly the same kind of work," she said.
Dr Middleton rewarded her with a bushy eyebrow's beam of his revolting humour at the baronet's notion of work.
So little was needed to quicken her that she sunned herself in the beam, coaxing her father's eyes to stay with hers as long as she could, and beginning to hope he might be won to her side, if she confessed she had been more in the wrong than she felt; owned to him, that is, her error in not earlier disturbing his peace.
"I do not say it is the same," observed Sir Willoughby, bowing to their alliance of opinion. "My poor work is for the day, and Vernon's, no doubt, for the day to come. I contend, nevertheless, for the preservation of health as the chief implement of work."
"Of continued work; there I agree with you," said Dr. Middleton, cordially.
Clara's heart sunk; so little was needed to deaden her.
Accuse her of an overweening antagonism to her betrothed; yet remember that though the words had not been uttered to give her good reason for it, nature reads nature; captives may be stript of everything save that power to read their tyrant; remember also that she was not, as she well knew, blameless; her rage at him was partly against herself.
The rising from table left her to Sir Willoughby. She swam away after Miss Dale, exclaiming: "The laboratory! Will you have me for a companion on your walk to see your father? One breathes earth and heaven to-day out of doors. Isn't it Summer with a Spring Breeze? I will wander about your garden and not hurry your visit, I promise."
"I shall be very happy indeed. But I am going immediately," said Lætitia, seeing Sir Willoughby hovering to snap up his bride.
"Yes; and a garden-hat and I am on the march."
"I will wait for you on the terrace."
"You will not have to wait."
"Five minutes at the most," Sir Willoughby said to Lætitia, and she passed out, leaving them alone together.
"Well, and my love!" he addressed his bride almost huggingly; "and what is the story? and how did you succeed with old Vernon yesterday? He will and he won't? He's a very woman in these affairs. I can't forgive him for giving you a headache. You were found weeping."
"Yes, I cried," said Clara.
"And now tell me about it. You know, my dear girl, whether he does or doesn't, our keeping him somewhere in the neighbourhood — perhaps not in the house — that is the material point. It can hardly be necessary in these days to urge marriages on. I'm sure the country is over… Most marriages ought to be celebrated with the funeral knell!"
"I think so," said Clara.
"It will come to this, that marriages of consequence, and none but those, will be hailed with joyful peals."
"Do not say such things in public, Willoughby."
"Only to you, to you! Don't think me likely to expose myself to the world. Well, and I sounded Miss Dale, and there will be no violent obstacle. And now about Vernon?"
"I will speak to you, Willoughby, when I return from my walk with Miss Dale, soon after twelve."
"Twelve!" said he.
"I name an hour. It seems childish. I can explain it. But it is named, I cannot deny, because I am a rather childish person perhaps, and have it prescribed to me to delay my speaking for a certain length of time. I may tell you at once that Mr. Whitford is not to be persuaded by me, and the breaking of our engagement would not induce him to remain."
"Vernon used those words?"
"It was I."
"'The breaking of our engagement! Come into the laboratory, my love."
"I shall not have time."
"Time shall stop rather than interfere with our conversation! 'The breaking…! But it's a sort of sacrilege to speak of it."
"That I feel; yet it has to be spoken of"
"Sometimes? Why? I can't conceive the occasion. You know, to me, Clara, plighted faith, the affiancing of two lovers, is a piece of religion. I rank it as holy as marriage; nay, to me it is holier; I really cannot tell you how; I can only appeal to you in your bosom to understand me. We read of divorces with comparative indifference. They occur between couples who have rubbed off all romance."
