 5 Clara Middleton The great meeting of Sir Willoughby Patton and Miss Middleton had taken place at Chariton Grange, the seat of a county grandee, where this young lady of 18 was first seen rising above the horizon. She had money and health and beauty, the triune of perfect stariness which makes all men astronomers. He looked on her, expecting her to look at him. But as soon as he looked, he found that he must be in motion to win a look in return. He was one of a pack. Many were ahead of him. The whole of them were eager. He had to debate within himself how best to communicate to her that he was Willoughby Patton. Before her gloves were too much soiled to flatter his niceness. For here and there, all around, she was yielding her hand to partners. Obscurant males whose touch leaves a stain. Far too generally gracious was her stariness to please him. The effect of it, nevertheless, was to hurry him with all his might into the heat of the chase, while yet he knew no more of her than that he was competing for a prize. And Willoughby Patton was only one of dozens to the young lady. A deeper student of science than his rivals, he appreciated nature's compliment in the fair one's choice of you. We now scientifically know that in this department of the universal struggle, success is awarded to the bettermost. You spread a handsomer tale than your fellows. You dress a finer topknot. You pipe a newer note. Have a longer stride. She reviews you in competition and selects you. The superlative is magnetic to her. She may be looking elsewhere, and you will see the superlative will simply have to beckon away she glides. She cannot help herself. It is her nature, and her nature is the guarantee for the noblest races of men to come of her. In complimenting you, she is a promise of superior offspring. Science, thus, or it is better to say an acquaintance with science, facilitates the cultivation of aristocracy. Consequently, a successful pursuit and arresting of her from a body of competitors tells you that you are the best man. What is more, it tells the world so. Willoughby aired his amiable superlatives in the eye of Miss Middleton. He had a leg. He was the heir of successful competitors. He had a style, a tone, an artist tailor, an authority of manner. He had in the hopeful ardour of the chase, among a multitude, a freshness that gave him advantage. And together with his undeviating energy when there was a prize to be won and possessed, these were scarce, resistible. He spared no pains, for he was a dust and a thirst for the winning post. He courted her father, aware that men likewise and parents preeminently have their preference for the larger offer, the deeper pocket, the broader lands, the respectful consideration. Men after their fashion as well as women distinguish the better most and aid him to succeed, as Dr. Middleton certainly did in the crisis of the memorable question proposed to his daughter within a month of Willoughby's reception at Upton Park. The young lady was astonished at his whirlwind wooing of her and bent to it like a sapling. She begged for time. Willoughby could barely wait. She unhesitatingly owned that she liked no one better, and he consented. A calm examination of his position told him that it was unfair so long as he stood engaged, and she did not. She pleaded a desire to see a little of the world before she plighted herself. She alarmed him. He assumed the amazing God of Love under the subtlest guise of the Divinity. Suddenly would he obey her behests, resignedly languish, where it not for his mother's desire to see the future lady of pattern established there before she died. Love shone cunningly through the mask of filial duty, but the plea of urgency was reasonable. Dr. Middleton thought it reasonable, supposing his daughter to have an inclination. She had no disinclination, though she had a maidenly desire to see a little of the world, grace for one year, she said. Willoughby reduced the year to six months, and granted that term for which in gratitude she submitted to stand engaged. And that was no light whispering of a word. She was implored to enter the state of captivity by the pronunciation of vows, a private but a binding ceremonial. She had health and beauty, and money to guild these gifts. Not that he stipulated for money with his bride, but it adds a luster to dazzle the world. And moreover, the pack of rival pursuers hung close behind, yelping and raising their dolorous throats to the moon. Captive, she must be. He made her engagement no light whispering matter. It was a solemn plighting of a truth. Why not? Having said, I am yours, she could say, I am wholly yours, I am yours for ever, I swear it, I will never swerve from it, I am your wife in heart, yours utterly. Our engagement is written above. To this she considerably appended, as far as I am concerned. A piece of somewhat chilling generosity, and he forced her to pass him through love's catechism in turn, and came out with fervent answers that bound him to her, too indissolubly to let her doubt of her being loved. And I am loved, she exclaimed to her heart's echoes in simple faith and wonderment. Hardly had she begun to think of love ere the apparition rose in her path. She had not thought of love with any warmth, and here it was. She had only dreamed of love as one of the distant blessings of the mighty world, lying somewhere in the world's forests, across wild seas, veiled, encompassed with beautiful perils, a throbbing secrecy, but too remote to quicken her bosom's throbs. Her chief idea of it was the enrichment of the world by love. Thus did Miss Middleton acquiesce in the principle of selection, and then did the best man of a host blow his triumphant horn, and loudly. He looked the fittest, he justified the dictum of science. The survival of the patterns was assured. I would, he said to his admirer, Mrs. Mount Stewart Jenkinson, have bargained for health above everything, but she has everything besides lineage, beauty, breeding, is what they call an heiress, and is the most accomplished of her sex. With a delicate art he conveyed to the lady's understanding that Miss Middleton had been snatched from a crowd, without a breath of the crowd having offended his niceness. He did it through sarcasm at your modern young women, who run about the world nibbling and nibbled at, until they know one sex as well as the other, and are not a wit less cognizant of the market than men. Pure possibly, it is not so easy to say innocent, decidedly not our feminine ideal. Miss Middleton was different. She was the true ideal fresh gathered morning fruit in a basket warranted by her bloom. Women do not defend their younger sisters for doing what they perhaps have done, lifting a veil to be seen and peeping at a world where innocence is as poor a guarantee as a babe's call against shipwreck. Women of the world never think of attacking the sensual stipulation for perfect bloom, silver purity, which is redolent of the oriental origin of the love-passion of their lords. Mrs. Mount Stewart congratulated Sir Willoughby on the prize he had won in the fair western eastern. Let me see her, she said, and Miss Middleton was introduced and critically observed. She had the mouth that smiles in repose. The lips met full on the centre of the bow and thinned along to a lifting dimple. The eyelids also lifted slightly at the outer corners and seemed like the lip into the limpid cheek, quickening up the temples as with a run of light, or the ascension indicated off a shoot of colour. Her features were play-fellows of one another, none of them pretending to rigid correctness, nor the nose to the ordinary dignity of governess among merry girls, despite which the nose was of a fair design, not acutely interrogative or inviting to gambles. Aspen's imaged in water waiting for the breeze would offer a susceptible lover some suggestion of her face. A pure smooth white face tenderly flushed in the cheeks, where the gentle dints were faintly intermelting even during quietness. Her eyes were brown, set well between mild lids, often shadowed, not unwakeful. Her hair of lighter brown, swelling above her temples on the sweep to the knot, imposed the triangle of the fabulous wild woodland visage from brow to mouth and chin, evidently in agreement with her taste, and the triangle suited her, but her face was not significant of a tameless wildness or of weakness. Her equitable shut mouth threw its long curve to guard the small round chin from that effect. Her eyes wavered only in humour. They were steady when thoughtfulness was awakened, and at such seasons the build of her winter beech wood hair lost the touch of nymph-like and whimsical, and strangely, by mere outline, added to her appearance of studious concentration. Observe the hawk on stretched wings over the prey he spies, for an idea of this change in the look of a young lady whom Vernon Whitford could liken to the mountain echo, and Mrs. Mount Stuart Jenkinson pronounced to be a dainty rogue in porcelain. Jenkinson's fancy of her must have sprung from her prompt and most musical responsiveness. He preferred the society of her learned father to that of a girl under twenty engaged to his cousin, but the charm of her ready tongue and her voice was to his intelligent understanding wit, natural wit, crystal wit, as opposed to the paced sparkle of the wit of the town. In his encomiums he did not quote Miss Middleton's wit. Nevertheless, he ventured to speak of it to Mrs. Mount Stuart, causing that lady to say, Ah, well, I have not noticed the wit. You may have the art of drawing it out. No one had noticed the wit. The corrupted hearing of people required a collision of sounds, Vernon supposed. For his part, to prove their excellence, he recollected a great many of Miss Middleton's remarks. They came flying to him, and so long as he forbore to speak them aloud, they had a curious wealth of meaning. It could not be all her manner, however much his own manner might spoil them. It might be, to a certain degree, her quickness at catching the hue and shade of evanescent conversation. Possibly by remembering the whole of a conversation wherein she had her place, the wit was to be tested. Only how could anyone retain the heavy portion? As there was no use in being argumentative on a subject affording him personally and apparently solidarily refreshment and enjoyment, Vernon resolved to keep it to himself. The eulogies of her beauty, a possession in which he did not consider her so very conspicuous, irritated him in consequence. To flatter Sir Willoughby it was the fashion to exalt her as one of the types of beauty, the one providentially selected to set off his masculine type. She was compared to those delicate flowers, the ladies of the Court of China, on rice paper. A little French dressing would make her at home on the sword by the fountain among the loots and whispers of the bewitching silken shepherdesses, who live though they never were. Lady Bush was reminded of the favourite lineaments of the women of Leonardo, the angels of Luini. Lady Culmar had seen crayon sketches of de Moiselle of the French aristocracy resembling her. Someone mentioned an antique statue of a figure breathing into a flute, and the mouth at the flute-stop might have a distant semblance of the bend of her mouth, but this comparison was repelled as grotesque. For once Mrs. Mount Stewart Jenkinson was unsuccessful. Her dainty rogue in porcelain displeased Sir Willoughby. Why rogue, he said, the ladies' fame for hitting the mark fretted him, and the grace of his bride's fine bearing stood to support him in his objection. Clara was young, healthy, handsome. She was therefore fitted to be his wife, the mother of his children, his companion picture. Certainly they looked well side by side. In walking with her, in drooping to her, the whole man was made conscious of the female image of himself by her exquisite unlikeness. She completed him, added the softer lines wanting to his portrait before the world. He had wooed her ragingly. He courted her becomingly, with the manly self-possession enlivened by watchful tact which is pleasing to girls. He never seemed to undervalue himself in valuing her, a secret priceless in the courtship of young women that have heads. The lover doubles their sense of personal worth through not forfeiting his own. Those were proud and happy days when he rode Black Norman over to Upton Park, and his lady looked forth for him and knew him coming by the faster beating of her heart. Her mind, too, was receptive. She took impressions of his characteristics and supplied him a feast. She remembered his chance phrases, noted his ways, his peculiarities, as no one of her sex had done. He thanked his cousin Vernon for saying she had wit. She had it, and of so high a flavour that the more he thought of the epigram launched at her, the more he grew displeased. With the wit to understand him and the heart to worship, she had a dignity rarely seen in young ladies. Why rogue! he insisted with Mrs. Mount Stewart. I said in porcelain, she replied. Rogue perplexes me. Porcelain explains it. She has the keenest sense of honour. I am sure she is a paragon of rectitude. She has a beautiful bearing, the carriage of a young princess. I find her perfect. And still she may be a dainty rogue in porcelain. Are you judging by the mind or the person, ma'am? Both. And which is which? Is no distinction. Rogue and mistress of pattern do not go together. Why not? She will be a novelty to our neighbourhood and an animation of the hall. To be frank, rogue does not rightly match with me. Take her for a supplement. You like her? In love with her, I can imagine life-long amusement in her company. Attend to my advice, prize the porcelain, and play with the rogue. So will her be nodded, unilluminated. There was nothing of rogue in himself, so there could be nothing of it in his bride. Elfishness, tricksy-ness, freakishness were antipathetic to his nature, and he argued that it was impossible he should have chosen for his complement a person deserving the title. It would not have been sanctioned by his guardian genius. His closer acquaintance with Miss Middleton squared with his first impressions. You know that this is convincing. The common jury justifies the presentation of the case to them by the grand jury. And his original conclusion that she was essentially feminine, in other words, a parasite and a chalice, Klara's conduct confirmed from day to day. He began to instruct her in the knowledge of himself without reserve, and she, as she grew less timid with him, became more reflective. I judge by character, he said to Mrs. Mount Stewart. If you have caught the character of a girl, said she, I think I am not far off it. So it was sought by the man who dived for the moon in a well. How women despise their sex! Not a bit. She has no character yet. You are forming it, and pray be advised and be merry. The solid is your safest guide. Physionomy and manners will give you more of a girl's character than all the divings you can do. She is a charming young woman, only she is one of that sort. Of what sort? said Willoughby asked impatiently. Rogues in porcelain. I am persuaded I shall never comprehend it. I cannot help you one bit further. The word rogue. It was dainty rogue. Brittle, would you say. I am quite unable to say. An innocent naughtiness. Prettily moulded in a delicate substance. You are thinking of some piece of Dresden you suppose her to resemble. I dare say. Artificial. You would not have her natural. I am heartily satisfied with her from head to foot, my dear Mrs. Mount Stewart. Nothing could be better, and sometimes she will lead, and generally you will lead, and everything will go well, my dear Sir Willoughby. Like all rapid phrasers, Mrs. Mount Stewart detested the analysis of her sentence. It had an outline in vagueness, and was flung out to be apprehended, not dissected. Her directions for the reading of Miss Middleton's character were the same that she practised in reading Sir Willoughby's, whose physiognomy and manners bespoke him what she presumed him to be, a splendidly proud gentleman, with good reason. Mrs. Mount Stewart's advice was wiser than her procedure, for she stopped short where he declined to begin. He dived below the surface, without studying that index page. He had won Miss Middleton's hand. He believed he had captured her heart, but he was not so certain of his possession of her soul, and he went after it. Our enamoured gentleman had therefore no tally of nature's writing above to set beside his discoveries in the deeps. Now it is a dangerous accompaniment of this habit of driving, that where we do not light on the discoveries we anticipate, we fall to work sowing and planting, which becomes a disturbance to the gentle bosom. Miss Middleton's features were legible as to the mainspring of her character. He could have seen that she had a spirit with a natural love of liberty, and required the next thing to liberty, spaciousness, if she was to own allegiance. Those features, unhappily, instead of serving for an introduction to the within, were treated as the mirror of himself. They were indeed of an amiable sweetness to tempt and accepted lover, to angle for the first person in the second. But he had made the discovery that their minds differed on one or two points, and a difference of view in his bride was obnoxious to his repose. He struck at it recurringly to show her error under various aspects. He desired to shape her character to the feminine of his own, and betrayed the surprise of a slight disappointment at her advocacy of her ideas. She said immediately, It is not too late, Willoughby, and wounded him, for he wanted her simply to be material in his hands for him to mould her. He had no other thought. He lectured her on the theme of the infinity of love. How was it not too late? They were plighted. They were one eternally. They could not be parted. She listened gravely, conceiving the infinity, as a narrow dwelling where a voice droned and ceased not. However, she listened. She became an attentive listener. End of chapter 5 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey Chapter 6 of The Egoist This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Martin Giesen The Egoist by George Meredith Chapter 6 His Courtship The world was the principal topic of dissension between these lovers. His opinion of the world affected her like a creature threatened with a deprivation of air. He explained to his darling that lovers of necessity do loathe the world. They live in the world. They accept its benefits and assist it as well as they can. In their hearts they must despise it, shut it out, that their love for one another may pour in a clear channel, and with all the force they have. They cannot enjoy the sense of security for their love unless they fence away the world. It is, you will allow, growth. It is a beast. Formerly we thank it for the good we get of it. Only we too have an inner temple where the worship we conduct is actually, if you would but see it, an excommunication of the world. We abhor that beast to adore that divinity. This gives us our oneness, our isolation, our happiness. This is to love with the soul. Do you see, darling? She shook her head. She could not see it. She would admit none of the notorious errors of the world. It's backbiting selfishness, coarseness, intrusiveness, infectiousness. She was young. She might, will it be thought, have let herself be led. She was not docile. She must be up in arms as a champion of the world. And one saw she was hugging her dream of a romantic world, nothing else. She spoiled the secret bower song he delighted to tell over to her. And how powers of love is love making to be pursued if we may not kick the world out of our bower and wash our hands of it. Love that does not spurn the world when lovers curtain themselves is a love, is it not so, that seems to the unwipped scoffing world to go slinking into basiations obscurity, instead of on a glorious march behind the screen. Our hero had a strong sentiment as to the policy of scorning the world for the sake of defending his personal pride. And to his honour, be it said, his lady's delicacy. The act of scorning put them both above the world, said retro Satanas. So much as a piece of tactics he was highly civilised. In the second instance he knew it to be the world which must furnish the dry sticks for the bonfire of a woman's worship. He knew too that he was prescribing poetry to his betrothed, practicable poetry. She had a liking for poetry, and sometimes quoted the stuff in defiance of his pursed mouth and pained murmur. I am no poet. But his poetry of the enclosed and fortified bower, without nonsensical rhymes to catch the ears of women, appeared incomprehensible to her, if not adverse. She would not burn the world for him. She would not, though a purer poetry as little imaginable, reduce herself to ashes, or incense, or essence, in honour of him. And so by love's transmutation, literally be the man she was to marry. She preferred to be herself, with the egoism of women. She said it. She said, I must be myself to be of any value to you, Willoughby. He was indefatigable in his lectures on the aesthetics of love, frequently for an indemnification to her. He had no desire that she should be a loser by ceasing to admire the world. He dwelt on his own youthful ideas, and his original fancies about the world were presented to her as a substitute for the theme. Miss Middleton bore it well, for she was sure that he meant well. Bearing so well what was distasteful to her, she became less well able to bear what she had merely noted in observation before—his view of scholarship, his manner towards Mr. Vernon Whitford, of whom her father spoke warmly, the rumour concerning his treatment of a Miss Dale. And the country tale of Constantia Durham sang itself to her in a new key. He had no contempt for the world's praises. Mr. Whitford wrote the letters to the county paper, which gained him applause at various great houses, and he accepted it, and betrayed a tingling fright, lest he should be the victim of a sneer of the world he contempt. Recollecting his remarks, her mind was afflicted by the something illogical in him that we readily discover when our natures are no longer running free, and then at once we yearn for a disputation. She resolved that she would, one day, one distant day, provoke it. Upon what? The special point eluded her. The world is too huge a client and too pervious, too spotty, for a girl to defend against a man. That something illogical had stirred her feelings more than her intellect to revolt, she could not constitute herself the advocate of Mr. Whitford. Still, she marked the disputation for an event to come. Meditating on it, she fell to picturing Sir Willoughby's face at the first accents of his bride's decided disagreement with him. The picture, once conjured up, would not be laid. He was handsome, so correctly handsome, that a slight unfriendly touch precipitated him into caricature. His habitual air of happy pride, of indignant contentment, rather, could easily be overdone. Surprise, when he threw emphasis on it, stretched him with the tall eyebrows of a mask, limitless under the spell of caricature, and in time, whenever she was not pleased by her thoughts, she had that and not his likeness for the vision of him. And it was unjust contrary to her deeper feelings. She rebuked herself, and as much as her naughty spirit permitted, she tried to look on him as the world did. An effort inducing reflections upon the blessings of ignorance. She seemed to herself beset by a circle of imps, hardly responsible for her thoughts. He outshone Mr. Whitford in his behaviour to young Cross J. She had seen him with the boy, and he was amused, indulgent, almost frolicsome, in contra-distinction to Mr. Whitford's tutorly sharpness. He had the English father's tone of a liberal allowance for boy's tastes and pranks, and he ministered to the partiality of the genus for pocket-money. He did not play the schoolmaster, like bookworms who get poor little lads in their grasp. Mr. Whitford avoided her very much. He came to Upton Park on a visit to her father, and she was not particularly sorry that she saw him only at table. He treated her by fits to a level scrutiny of deep-set eyes, unpleasantly penetrating. She had liked his eyes. They became unbearable. They dwelt in the memory as if they had left a phosphorescent line. She had been taken by playmate boys in her infancy to peep into hedge-leaves where the mother-bird brooded on the nest, and the eyes of the bird in that marvellous dark, thick-set home had sent her away with worlds of fancy. Mr. Whitford's gaze revived her susceptibility, but not the old happy wondering. She was glad of his absence, after a certain hour that she passed with Willoughby, a wretched hour to remember. Mr. Whitford had left, and Willoughby came, bringing bad news of his mother's health. Lady Patton was fast failing. Her son spoke of the loss she would be to him. He spoke of the dreadfulness of death. He alluded to his own death to come carelessly with a philosophical air. All of us must go. Our time is short. Very, she assented. It sounded like want of feeling. If you lose me, Clara, but you are strong, Willoughby. I may be cut off to-morrow. Do not talk in such a manner. It is as well that it should be faced. I cannot see what purpose it serves. Should you lose me, my love? Willoughby! Oh, the bitter pang of leaving you! Dear Willoughby, you are distressed. Your mother may recover. Let us hope she will. I will help to nurse her. I have offered, you know. I am ready, most anxious. I believe I am a good nurse. It is this belief that one does not die with death. That is our comfort. When we love, does it not promise that we meet again? To walk the world and see you, perhaps, with another. See me? Where? Here? Wedded to another. You, my bride, whom I call mine, and you are. You would be still, in that horror. But all things are possible. Women are women. They swim in infidelity, from wave to wave. I know them. Willoughby, do not torment yourself and me. I beg you. He meditated profoundly, and asked her, Could you be such a saint among women? I think I am a more than usually childish girl. Not to forget me. Oh, no! Still to be mine. I am yours. To plight yourself. It is done. Be mine beyond death. Married is married, I think. Clara, to dedicate your life to our love. Never one touch, not one whisper, not a thought, not a dream. Could you? It agonises me to imagine. Be inviolate. Mine above. Mine before all men, though I am gone. True to my dust. Tell me. Give me that assurance. True to my name. Oh! I hear them. His relict. Buzzings about Lady Patten. The widow. If you knew their talk of widows, shut your ears, my angel. But if she holds them off and keeps her path, they are forced to respect her. The dead husband is not the dishonoured wretch they fancied him, because he was out of their way. He lives in the heart of his wife. Clara, my Clara, as I live in yours, whether here or away, whether you are a wife or widow, there is no distinction for love. I am your husband, say it, eternally. I must have peace. I cannot endure the pain. Depressed, yes, I have cause to be. But it has haunted me ever since we joined hands. To have you. To lose you. Is it not possible that I may be the first to die? Said Miss Middleton. And lose you with the thought that you, lovely as you are, and the dogs of the world barking round you, might— Is it any wonder that I have my feeling for the world? This hand, the thought is horrible. You would be surrounded. Men are brutes. The scent of unfaithfulness excites them, overjoys them. And I, helpless, the thought is maddening. I see a ring of monkeys grinning. There is your beauty and man's delight in desecrating. You would be worried night and day to quit my name. To—I feel the blow now. You would have no rest for them. Nothing to cling to without your oath. An oath, said Miss Middleton. It is no delusion, my love, when I tell you that with this thought upon me I see a ring of monkey faces grinning at me. They haunt me. But you do swear it, once, and I will never trouble you on the subject again. My weakness, if you like. You will learn that it is love, a man's love, stronger than death. An oath, she said, and moved her lips to recall what she might have said and forgotten. To what? What oath? That you will be true to me dead as well as living. Whisper it. Will it be? I shall be true to my vows at the altar. To me. Me. It will be to you. To my soul. No heaven can be for me. I see none, only torture, unless I have your word, Clara. I trust it. I will trust it implicitly. My confidence in you is absolute. Then you need not be troubled. It is for you, my love, that you may be armed and strong when I am not by to protect you. Our views of the world are opposed, Willowby. Consent, gratify me, swear it. Say beyond death. Whisper it. I ask for nothing more. Women think the husband's grave breaks the bond, cuts the tie, sets them loose. They wed the flesh. What I call on you for is nobility, the transcendent nobility of faithfulness beyond death. His widow, let them say, a saint in widowhood. My vows at the altar must suffice. You will not, Clara. I am plighted to you. Not a word, a simple promise. But you love me. I have given you the best proof of it that I can. Consider how utterly I place confidence in you. I hope it is well placed. I could kneel to you to worship you, if you would, Clara. Kneel to heaven, not to me, Willowby. I am. I wish I were able to tell what I am. I may be in constant. I do not know myself. Think. Question yourself whether I am really the person you should marry. Your wife should have great qualities of mind and soul. I will consent to hear that I do not possess them, and abide by the verdict. You do. You do possess them, Willowby cried. When you know better what the world is, you will understand my anxiety. Alive, I am strong to shield you from it. Dead, helpless, that is all. You would be clad in mail, steel-proof, inviolable, if you would. But try to enter into my mind. Think with me. Feel with me. When you have once comprehended the intensity of the love of a man like me, you will not require asking. It is the difference of the elect and the vulgar, of the ideal of love from the coupling of the herds. We will let it drop. At least I have your hand. As long as I live, I have your hand. Or I not to be satisfied? I am. Only I see further than most men, and feel more deeply. And now I must write to my mother's bedside. She dies lady-pattern. It might have been that she— But she is a woman of women. With a father-in-law. Just heaven! Could I have stood by her then with the same feelings of reverence? A very little, my love, and everything gained for us by civilization crumbles. We fall back to the first mortar-bowl we were bruised and stirred in. My thoughts, when I take my stand to watch by her, come to this conclusion, that especially in women, distinction is the thing to be aimed at. Otherwise we are a weltering human mass. Women must teach us to venerate them. Or we may as well be bleating and barking and bellowing. So, now enough. You have but to think a little. I must be off. It may have happened during my absence. I will write. I shall hear from you. Come and see me mount Black Norman. My respects to your father. I have no time to pay them in person. One. He took the one, love's mystical number, from which commonly spring multitudes, but on the present occasion it was a single one, and cold. She watched him riding away on his gallant horse, as handsome a cabalier as the world could show, and the contrast of his recent language and his fine figure was a riddle that froze her blood. Speech so foreign to her ears, unnatural in tone, unmanlike even for a lover, who is allowed a softer dialect, set her vainly sounding for the source and drift of it. She was glad of not having to encounter eyes like Mr. Vernon Whitfords. On behalf of Sir Willoughby, it is to be said that his mother, without infringing on the degree of respect for his decisions and sentiments exacted by him, had talked to him of Miss Middleton, suggesting a volatility of temperament in the young lady that struck him as conscientious with Mrs. Mount Stewart's rogue in porcelain, and alarmed him as the independent observations of two world-wise women. Nor was it incumbent upon him personally to credit the volatility in order, as far as he could, to effect the sole insurance of his bride, that he might hold the security of the policy. The desire for it was in him. His mother had merely told a warning bell that he had put in motion before. Clara was not a Constantia, but she was a woman, and he had been deceived by women, as a man fostering his high ideal of them will surely be. The strain he adopted was quite natural to his passion and his theme. The language of the primitive sentiments of men is of the same expression at all times, minus the primitive colours when a modern gentleman addresses his lady. Lady Patten died in the winter season of the new year. In April Dr. Middleton had to quit Upton Park, and he had not yet found a place of residence, nor did he quite know what to do with himself in the prospect of his daughter's marriage and desertion of him. So will it be proposed to find him a house within a circuit of the neighbourhood of Patten? Moreover he invited the Reverend Doctor and his daughter to come to Patten from Upton for a month, and make acquaintance with his aunts, the ladies Eleanor and Isabelle Patten, so that it might not be so strange to Clara to have them as her housemates after her marriage. Dr. Middleton omitted to consult his daughter before accepting the invitation, and it appeared when he did speak to her that it should have been done. But she said mildly, very well, papa. So will it be had to visit the metropolis and an estate in another county, whence he wrote to his betrothed daily. He returned to Patten in time to arrange for the welcome of his guests. Too late, however, to ride over to them. And meanwhile, during his absence, Miss Middleton had bethought herself that she ought to have given her last days of freedom to her friends. After the weeks to be past at Patten, very few weeks were left to her, and she had a wish to run to Switzerland or Tirol, and see the Alps. A quaint idea her father thought. She repeated it seriously, and Dr. Middleton perceived a feminine shuttle of indecision at work in her head, frightful to him, considering that they signified hesitation between the excellent library and capital wine cellar of Patten Hall, together with the society of that promising young scholar, Mr. Vernon Whitford, on the one side, and a career of hotels, equivalent to being rammed into monster artillery with a crowd every night, and shot off on a day's journey through space every morning, on the other. You will have your travelling and your Alps after the ceremony," he said. I think I would rather stay at home, said she. Dr. Middleton rejoined. I would. But I'm not married yet, papa, as good, my dear. A little change of scene, I thought. We have accepted Willoughby's invitation, and he helps me to a house near you. You wish to be near me, papa? Proximate, at a remove, communicable. Why should we separate? For the reason, my dear, that you exchange a father for a husband. If I do not want to exchange, to purchase you must pay, my child. Husbands are not given for nothing. No, but I should have you, papa. Should? They have not yet parted us, dear papa. What does that mean? he asked fussily. He was in a gentle stew already, apprehensive of a disturbance of the serenity precious to scholars, by postponements of the ceremony, and a prolongation of a father's worries. Oh! the common meaning, papa! she said, seeing how it was with him. Ah! said he, nodding and blinking gradually back to a state of composure, glad to be appeased on any terms, for mutability has but another name for the sex, and it is the enemy of the scholar. She suggested that two weeks of pattern would offer plenty of time to inspect the empty houses of the district, and should be sufficient, considering the claims of friends, and the necessity of going the round of London shops. Two or three weeks, he agreed hurriedly, by way of compromise with that fearful prospect. End of Chapter 6 Recording by Martin Geeson in Hazelmere Surrey Chapter 7 of The Egoist This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Martin Geeson The Egoist by George Meredith Chapter 7 The Betrothed During the drive from Upton to Patton, Ms. Middleton hoped, she partly believed, that there was to be a change in Sir Willoughby's manner of courtship. He had been so different a wooer. She remembered with some half-conscious desperation of fervour, what she had thought of him at his first approaches, and in accepting him. Had she seen him with the eyes of the world, thinking they were her own? That look of his, the look of indignant contentment, had then been a most noble, conquering look, splendid as a general's plume at the gallop. It could not have altered. Was it that her eyes had altered? The spirit of those days rose up within her to reproach her, and whisper of their renewal. She remembered her rosy dreams, and the image she had of him, her throbbing pride in him, her choking richness of happiness, and also her vain attempting to be very humble, usually ending in a carol, quaint to think of, not without charm, but quaint puzzling. Now men whose incomes have been restricted to the extent that they must live on their capital, soon grow relieved of the forethoughtful anguish wasting them, by the hilarious comforts of the lap upon which they have sunk back, in so much as they are apt to solace themselves for their intolerable anticipations of famine in the household, by giving loose to one fit or more of reckless lavishness. Lovers in like manner live on their capital from failure of income. They too, for the sake of stifling apprehension and piping to the present hour, are lavish of their stock, so as rapidly to attenuate it. They have their fits of intoxication in view of coming famine. They force memory into play, love retrospectively, enter the old house of the past, and ravage the larder, and would gladly even resolutely continue in illusion if it were possible for the broadest honey-store of reminiscences to hold out for a length of time against a mortal appetite. Which in good sooth stands on the alternative of a consumption of the hive or of the creature it is for nourishing. Here do lovers show that they are perishable, more than the poor clay world they need fresh supplies, right wholesome juices, as it were life in the burst of the bud, fruits yet on the tree, rather than potted provender. The latter is excellent for buy and buy, when there will be a vast deal more to remember, and appetite shall have but one tooth remaining. Should their minds but chance have been saturated by their first impressions and have retained them, loving by the accountable light of reason, they may have fair harvests as in the early time, but that case is rare. In other words, love is an affair of two, and is only for two that can be as quick as constant in intercommunication as our sun and earth, through the cloud or face to face. They take their breath of life from one another in signs of affection, proofs of faithfulness, incentives to admiration. Thus it is with men and women in love's good season, but a solitary soul dragging a log must make the log a god to rejoice in the burden. That is not love. Clara was the least fitted of all women to drag a log. Few girls would be so rapid in exhausting capital. She was feminine indeed, but she wanted comradeship, a living and frank exchange of the best in both, with the deeper feelings untroubled. To be fixed at the mouth of a mine, and to have to descend it daily, and not to discover great opulence below. On the contrary, to be chilled in subterranean sunlessness, without any substantial quality that she could grasp, only the mystery of the inefficient tallow-light in those caverns of the complacent talking man. This appeared to her too extreme a probation for two or three weeks. How a lifetime of it! She was compelled by her nature to hope, expect, and believe that Sir Willoughby would again be the man she had known when she accepted him. Very singularly, to show her simple spirit at the time, she was unaware of any physical coldness to him. She knew of nothing but her mind at work, objecting to this and that, desiring changes. She did not dream of being on the giddy ridge of the passive or negative sentiment of love, where one step to the wrong side precipitates us into the state of repulsion. Her eyes were lively at their meeting, so were his. She liked to see him on the steps, with young cross-jay under his arm. Sir Willoughby told her in his pleasantest humour of the boys having got into the laboratory that morning to escape his task-master, and blown out the windows. She administered a chiding to the delinquent in the same spirit, while Sir Willoughby led her on his arm across the threshold, whispering, soon for good. In reply to the whisper, she begged for more of the story of young cross-jay. Come into the laboratory, said he a little less laughingly than softly, and Clara begged her father to come and see young cross-jay's latest pranks. Sir Willoughby whispered to her of the length of their separation, and his joy to welcome her to the house, where she would reign as mistress very soon. He numbered the weeks. He whispered, Come! In the hurry of the moment she did not examine a lightning terror that shot through her. It passed, and was no more than the shadow which bends the summer grasses, leaving a ruffle of her ideas, in wonder of her having feared herself for something. Her father was with them. She and Willoughby were not yet alone. Young Cross-jay had not accomplished so fine a piece of destruction as Sir Willoughby's humour proclaimed of him. He had connected a battery with a train of gunpowder, shattering a window frame and unsettling some bricks. Dr Middleton asked if the youth was excluded from the library, and rejoiced to hear that it was a sealed door to him. Thither they went. Vernon Whitford was away on one of his long walks. There, Papa, you see he is not so very faithful to you, said Clara. Dr Middleton stood frowning over manuscript notes on the table in Vernon's handwriting. He flung up the hair from his forehead and dropped into a seat to inspect them closely. He was now immovable. Clara was obliged to leave him there. She was led to think that Willoughby had drawn them to the library with the design to be rid of her protector, and she began to fear him. She proposed to pay her respect to the ladies Eleanor and Isabelle. They were not seen, and a footman reported in the drawing-room that they were out driving. She grasped Young Cross-jay's hand, so Willoughby dispatched him to Mrs Montague, the housekeeper, for a tea of cakes and jam. Off, he said, and the boy had to run. Clara saw herself without a shield. And the garden, she cried, I love the garden! I must go and see what flowers are up with you. In spring I care most for wild flowers, and if you will show me daffodils and crocuses and anemones. My dearest Clara, my bride, said he. Because they are vulgar flowers, she asked him artlessly to account for his detaining her. Why would he not wait to deserve her? No, not deserve to reconcile her with her real position. Not reconcile, but to repair the image of him in her mind, before he claimed his apparent right. He did not wait. He pressed her to his bosom. You are mine, my Clara, utterly mine. Every thought, every feeling. We are one. The world may do its worst. I have been longing for you, looking forward. You saved me from a thousand vexations. One is perpetually crossed. That is all outside us. We, too. With you I am secure. Soon. I could not tell you whether the world's alive or dead. My dearest. She came out of it with the sensations of the frightened child that had had its dip in seawater, sharpened to think that after all it was not so severe a trial. Such was her idea. And she said to herself immediately, What am I that I should complain? Two minutes earlier she would not have thought it. But humiliated pride falls lower than humbleness. She did not blame him. She fell in her own esteem. Less because she was the betrothed Clara Middleton, which was now palpable as a shot in the breast of a bird, than that she was a captured woman, of whom it is absolutely expected that she must submit, and when she would rather be gazing at flowers. Clara had the shame of her sex. They cannot take a step without becoming bond-women, into what a slavery. For herself her trial was over, she thought. As for herself she merely complained of a prematureness and crudity best unanalyzed. In truth she could hardly be said to complain. She did but criticise him, and wonder that a man was unable to perceive, or was not arrested by perceiving, unwillingness, discordance, dull compliance, the bond-women's due instead of the bride's consent. Oh, sharp distinction has between two spheres. She meted him justice. She admitted that he had spoken in a lover-like tone. Had it not been for the iteration of the world she would not have objected critically to his words, though they were words of downright appropriation. He had the right to use them, since she was to be married to him. But if he had only waited before playing the privileged lover, Sir Willoughby was enraptured with her. Even so purely coldly, statue-like, dion-like, would he have prescribed his bride's reception of his caress. The suffusion of crimson coming over her subsequently, showing her divinely feminine in reflective bashfulness, agreed with his highest definitions of female character. Let me conduct you to the garden, my love," he said. She replied, I think I would rather go to my room. I will send you a wild-flower posy. Flowers, no. I do not like them to be gathered. I will wait for you on the lawn. My head is rather heavy. His deep concern and tenderness brought him close. She assured him sparklingly that she was well. She was ready to accompany him to the garden and stroll over the park. Headache it is not, she added. But she had to pay the fee for inviting a solicitous accepted gentleman's proximity. This time she blamed herself and him, and the world he abused, and destiny into the bargain. And she cared less about the probation, but she craved for liberty. With a frigidity that astonished her, she marveled at the act of kissing, and at the obligation it forced upon an inanimate person to be an accomplice. Why was she not free? By what strange right was it that she was treated as a possession? I will try to walk off the heaviness, she said. My own girl must not fatigue herself. Oh, no, I shall not. Sit with me. You're Willoughby as your devoted attendant. I have a desire for the air. Then we will walk out. She was horrified to think how far she had drawn away from him, and now placed her hand on his arm to appease her self-accusations, and propitiate duty. She spoke as she had wished. His manner was what she had wished. She was his bride, almost his wife. Her conduct was a kind of madness. She could not understand it. Good sense and duty counseled her to control her wayward spirit. He fondled her hand, and to that she grew accustomed. Her hand was at a distance. And what is a hand? Leaving it where it was, she treated it as a link between herself and dutiful goodness. Two months hence she was a bond woman for life. She regretted that she had not gone to her room to strengthen herself with a review of her situation, and meet him thoroughly resigned to her fate. She fancied she would have come down to him amicably. It was his present respectfulness and easy conversation that tricked her burning nerves with the fancy. Five weeks of perfect liberty in the mountains, she thought, would have prepared her for the days of bells. All that she required was a separation offering new scenes, where she might reflect undisturbed, feel clear again. He led her about the flower beds, too much as if he were giving a convalescent an airing. She chafed at it, and pricked herself with remorse. In contrition she expaciated on the beauty of the garden. All is yours, my Clara. An oppressive load it seemed to her. She passively yielded to the man in his form of attentive courtier. His mansion, his state, and wealth overwhelmed her. They suggested the price to be paid. Yet she recollected that on her last departure through the park she had been proud of the rolling green and spreading trees. Poison of some sort must be operating in her. She had not come to him today with this feeling of sullen antagonism. She had caught it here. You have been well, my Clara? Quite. Not a hint of illness. None. My bride must have her health if all the doctors in the kingdom die for it. My darling. And tell me, the dogs? Dogs and horses are in very good condition. I am glad. Do you know I love those ancient French shadows and farms in one, where salon windows look on poultry-yard and stalls? I like that homeliness with beasts and peasants. He bowed indulgently. I am afraid we can't do it for you in England, my Clara. No. And I like the farm, said he, but I think our drawing-rooms have a better atmosphere off the garden. As to our peasantry, we cannot, I apprehend, modify our class demarcations without risk of disintegrating the social structure. Perhaps I proposed nothing. My love, I would entreat you to propose, if I were convinced that I could obey. You are very good. I find my merit nowhere but in your satisfaction. Although she was not thirsting for dulcet sayings, the peacefulness of other than invitations to the exposition of his mysteries and of their isolation in oneness inspired her with such calm that she beat about in her brain, as if it were in the brain, for the specific injury he had committed. Sweeping from sensation to sensation, the young whose sensations impale and distract can rarely date their disturbance from a particular one, unless it be some great villain injury that has been done, and Clara had not felt an individual shame in his caress. The shame of her sex was but a passing protest that left no stamp, so she conceived that she had been behaving cruelly, and said, Willoughby, because she was aware of the omission of his name in her previous remarks. His whole attention was given to her. She had to invent the sequel. I was going to beg you, Willoughby, do not seek to spoil me. You compliment me. Compliments are not suited to me. You think too highly of me. It is nearly as bad as to be slighted. I am—I am a— But she could not follow his example. Even as far as she had gone, her prim little sketch of herself, set beside her real ugly earnest feelings, rang of a mincing simplicity, and was a step in falseness. How could she display what she was? Do I not know you, he said. The melodious base notes, expressive of conviction on that point, signified as well as the words that no answer was the right answer. She could not dissent without turning his music to discord, his complacency to amazement. She held her tongue, knowing that he did not know her, and speculating on the division made bare by their degrees of the knowledge, a deep cleft. He alluded to friends in her neighborhood and his own. The bridesmaids were mentioned. Miss Dale, you will hear from my Aunt Eleanor, declines on the plea of indifferent health. She is rather a morbid person with all her really estimable qualities. It will do no harm to have none but young ladies of your own age, a bouquet of young buds, though one blowing flower among them. However, she has decided. My principal annoyance has been Vernon's refusal to act as my best man. Mr. Whitford refuses. He half refuses. I do not take no from him. His pretext is a dislike to the ceremony. I share it with him. I sympathize with you, if we might say the words and pass from sight. There is a way of cutting off the world. I have it at times completely. I lose it again, as if it were a cabalistic phrase one had to utter. But with you, you give it me for good. It will be forever, eternally, my Clara. Nothing can harm, nothing touch us. We are one and others. Let the world fight it out. We have nothing to do with it. If Mr. Whitford should persist in refusing. So entirely one that there never can be question of external influences. I am, we will say, riding home from the hunt. I see you awaiting me. I read your heart as though you were beside me. And I know that I am coming to the one who reads mine. You have me. You have me like an open book. You and only you. I am to be always at home," Clara said, unheeded, and relieved by his not hearing. Have you realized it? That we are invulnerable. The world cannot hurt us. It cannot touch us. Felicity is ours. And we are impervious in the enjoyment of it. Something divine. Surely something divine on earth. Clara, being to one another that between which the world can never interpose. What I do is right. What you do is right. Perfect to one another. Each new day we rise to study and delight in new secrets. Away with the crowd. We have not even to say it. We are in an atmosphere where the world cannot breathe. Oh, the world! Clara partly carrelled on a sigh that sunk deep. Hearing him talk as one exulting on the mountaintop, when she knew him to be in the abyss, was very strange, provocative of scorn. My letters, he said incitingly. I read them. Circumstances have imposed a long courtship on us, my Clara, and I, perhaps lamenting the laws of decorum, I have done so, still felt the benefit of the gradual initiation. It is not good for women to be surprised by a sudden revelation of man's character. We also have things to learn. There is matter for learning everywhere. Someday you will tell me the difference of what you think me now, from what you thought when we first. An impulse of double-minded acquiescence caused Clara to stammer as on a sob. I dare say I shall. She added, if it is necessary. Then she cried out, Why do you attack the world? You always make me pity it. He smiled at her youthfulness. I have passed through that stage. It leads to my sentiment, pity it by all means. No, said she, but pity it, side with it, not consider it so bad. The world has faults. Glaciers have crevices, mountains have chasms, but is not the effect of the whole sublime. Not to admire the mountain and the glacier, because they can be cruel, seems to me—and the world is beautiful. The world of nature, yes. The world of men, yes. My love, I suspect you to be thinking of the world of ballrooms. I am thinking of the world that contains real and great generosity, true heroism. We see it round us. We read of it. The world of the romance-writer. No, the living world. I am sure it is our duty to love it. I am sure we weaken ourselves if we do not. If I did not, I should be looking on mist, hearing a perpetual boom instead of music. I remember hearing Mr. Whitford say that cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcom's feathers, and it seems to me that cynics are only happy in making the world as barren to others as they have made it for themselves. Old Vernon, ejaculated Sir Willoughby, with accountants rather uneasy, as if it had been flicked with a glove. He strings his phrases by the dozen. Papa contradicts that, and says he is very clever and very simple. As to cynics, my dear Clara, oh, certainly, certainly, you are right. They are laughable, contemptible. But understand me, I mean, we cannot feel—or if we feel—we cannot so intensely feel—our oneness, except by dividing ourselves from the world. Is it an art? If you like, it is our poetry. But does not love shun the world? Too that love must have their sustenance in isolation. No, they will be eating themselves up. The purer the beauty, the more it will be out of the world. But not opposed. Put it in this way, Willoughby condescended, has experienced the same opinion of the world as ignorance. It should have more charity. Does vertu feel at home in the world, where it should be an example, to my idea? Is the world agreeable to holiness? Then are you in favour of monasteries? He poured a little runlet of half laughter over her head, of the sound assumed by genial compassion. It is irritating to hear that when we imagine we have spoken to the point. Now, in my letters, Clara, I have no memory, Willoughby. You will, however, have observed that I am not completely myself in my letters. In your letters to men you may be. The remark, through a pause across his thoughts, he was of a sensitiveness terribly tender. A single stroke on it reverberated swellingly within the man, and most and infuriately searching at the spots where he had been wounded, especially where he feared the world might have guessed the wound. Did she imply that he had no hand for love letters? Was it her meaning that women would not have much taste for his epistolary correspondence? She had spoken in the plural with an accent on men. Had she heard of Constantia? Had she formed her own judgment about the creature? The supernatural sensitiveness of Sir Willoughby shrieked appeal of affirmatives. He had often meditated on the moral obligation of his unfolding to Clara, the whole truth of his conduct to Constantia. For whom, as for other suicides, there were excuses. He at least was bound to supply them. She had behaved badly, but had he not given her some cause? If so, manliness was bound to confess it. Supposing Clara heard the world's version first, men whose pride is their backbone suffer convulsions where other men are barely aware of a shock, and Sir Willoughby was taken with galvanic jumpings of the spirit within him at the idea of the world whispering to Clara that he had been jilted. My letters to men, you say, my love. Your letters of business. Completely myself in my letters of business. He stared indeed. She relaxed the tension of his figure by remarking, You are able to express yourself to men as your meaning dictates. In writing to—to us—it is, I suppose, more difficult. True, my love, I will not exactly say difficult. I can acknowledge no difficulty. Language, I should say, is not fitted to express emotion. Passion rejects it. For dumb show and pantomime. No, but the writing of it coldly. Ah, coldly! My letters disappoint you. I have not implied that they do. My feelings, dearest, are too strong for transcription. I feel pen in hand, like the mythological titan at war with Jove, strong enough to hurl mountains, and finding nothing but pebbles. The simile is a good one. You must not judge of me by my letters. I do not. I like them, said Clara. She blushed, eyed him hurriedly, and seeing him complacent resumed. I prefer the pebble to the mountain. But if you read poetry, you would not think human speech incapable of. My love, I detest artifice. Poetry is a profession. Our poets would prove to you, as I have often observed, Clara, I am no poet. I have not accused you, Willoughby. No poet, and with no wish to be a poet. Were I one, my life would supply material I can assure you, my love. My conscience is not entirely at rest. Perhaps the heaviest matter troubling it is that in which I was least willfully guilty. You have heard of a Miss Durham. I have heard, yes, of her. She may be happy. I trust she is. If she is not, I cannot escape some blame. An instance of the difference between myself and the world now. The world charges it upon her. I have interceded to exonerate her. That was generous, Willoughby. Stay, I fear I was the primary offender. But I, Clara, under a sense of honour, acting under a sense of honour, would have carried my engagement through. What had you done? The story is long, dating from an early day in the downy antiquity of my youth, as Vernon says. Mr. Whitford says that, one of old Vernon's odd sayings. It's a story of an early fascination. Papa tells me Mr. Whitford speaks at times with wise humour. Family considerations. The lady's health, among other things, her position in the calculations of relatives, intervened. Still, there was the fascination I have to own it. Grounds for feminine jealousy. Is it at an end? Now, with you, my darling Clara, indeed at an end, or could I have opened my inmost heart to you? Could I have spoken of myself so unreservedly that in part you know me as I know myself? Oh! but would it have been possible to enclose you with myself in that intimate union? So secret, unassailable. You did not speak to her as you speak to me? In no degree. What could have Clara checked the murmured exclamation? So Willoughby's expoundings on his latest of texts would have poured forth, had not a footman stepped across the lawn to inform him that his builder was in the laboratory, and requested permission to consult with him. Clara's plea of a horror of the talk of bricks and joists excused her from accompanying him. He had hardly been satisfied by her manner, he knew not why. He left her convinced that he must do and say more to reach down to her female intelligence. She saw young Cross Jay, springing with pots of jam in him, join his patron at a bound, and taking a lift of arms, fly aloft, clapping heels. Her reflections were confused, so Willoughby was admirable with the lad. Is he two men, she thought, and the thought ensued, am I unjust? She headed a run with young Cross Jay to divert her mind. End of Chapter 7 Recording by Martin Geeson in Hazelmere Surrey. Chapter 8 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dawn Hadley. The Egoist by George Meredith. Chapter 8. A Run with the Truant, a Walk with the Master The sight of Miss Middleton running inflamed young Cross Jay with the passion of the game of hair and hounds. He shouted a view hello, and flung up his legs. She was fleet. She ran as though a hundred little feet were bearing her onward smoothest water over the lawn, and the sweeps of grass of the park so swiftly did the hidden pair multiply one another to speed her. So sweet was she in her flowing pace that the boy, as became his age, translated admiration to a dogged frenzy of pursuit, and continued pounding along when far outstripped determined to run her down or die. Suddenly her flight wound to an end in a dozen twittering steps and she sank. Young Cross Jay attained her with just breath enough to say, You are a runner. I forgot you've been having your tea, my poor boy, said she. And you don't pant a bit, was his incomium. Dear me, no, not more than a bird. You might as well try to catch a bird. Young Cross Jay gave a knowing nod. Wait till I get my second win. Now you must confess that girls run faster than boys. They may at the start, they do everything better. They're flash in the pan. They learn their lessons. You can't make soldiers or sailors of them, though. And that is untrue. Have you never read of Mary Ambry and Mistress Hannah Snell of Pondicherry? And there was the bride of the celebrated William Taylor. And what do you say of Joan of Arc? What do you say to Botticea? I suppose you've never heard of the Amazons. They weren't English. Then it is your own country women you decry, sir. Young Cross Jay betrayed anxiety about his false position and begged for the stories of Mary Ambry and the others who were English. See, you will not read for yourself. You hide and play truant with Mr. Whitford, and the consequences you are ignorant of your country's history. Miss Middleton rebuked him, enjoying his wriggle between perception of her fun and an acknowledgement of his peckency. She commanded him to tell her which was the glorious Valentine's Day of our naval annals, the name of the hero of the day and the name of his ship. To these questions his answers were as ready as the guns of the good ship captain for the Spanish foredecker. And that, you owe to Mr. Whitford, said Miss Middleton. He bought me the books Young Cross Jay growled and plucked at grass blades and bit them, foreseeing dimly but certainly the termination of all this. Miss Middleton lay back on the grass and said, Are you going to be fond of me, Cross Jay? The boy sat blinking. His desire was to prove to her that he was immoderately fond of her already, and he might have flown at her neck had she been sitting up, but her recumbency and eyelids half closed, excited wonder in him and awe. His young heart beat fast. Because my dear boy, she said, leaning on her elbow, you are a very nice boy, but an ungrateful boy, and there is no telling whether you will not punish anyone who cares for you. Come along with me. Fluck me some of these cow slips and the speed wells near them. I think we both love wildflowers. She rose and took his arm. You shall row me on the lake while I talk to you seriously. It was she, however, who took the skulls at the boathouse, for she had been a playfellow with boys and knew that one of them engaged in a manly exercise is not likely to listen to a woman. Now Cross Jay, she said. Dense gloom overcame him like a cowl. She bent across her hands to laugh. As if I were going to lecture you, you silly boy. He began to brighten dubiously. I used to be as fond of birds nesting as you are. I like brave boys and I like you for wanting to enter the Royal Navy. Only how can you do that if you do not learn? You must get the captains to pass you, you know. Somebody spoils you, Miss Dale or Mr. Whitford. Do they sung out young Cross Jay? Sir Willoughby does. I don't know about spoil. I can come round him. I'm sure he's very kind to you. I daresay you think Mr. Whitford rather severe. You should remember he has to teach you so that you may pass for the Navy. You must not dislike him because he makes you work. Supposing you had blown yourself up today, you would have thought it better to have been working with Mr. Whitford. Sir Willoughby says when he's married you won't let me hide. Ah, it is wrong to pet a big boy like you. Does not he what you call a tip you, Cross Jay? Generally half crown pieces. I've had a crown piece. I've had sovereigns. And for that you do as he bids you and he indulges you because you, well, but though Mr. Whitford does not give you money, he gives you his time. He tries to get you into the Navy. He pays for me. What do you say? My keep. And as for liking him, if he were at the bottom of the water here, I'd go down after him. I mean to learn. We're both of us here at six o'clock in the morning when it's light and have a swim. He taught me. Only I never cared for school books. Are you quite certain that Mr. Whitford pays for you? My father told me he did and I must obey him. He heard my father was poor with a family. He went down to see my father. My father came here once and Sir Willoughby wouldn't see him. I know Mr. Whitford does. And Miss Dale told me he did. My mother says she thinks he does it to make up for us, for my father's long walk in the rain and the cold he caught coming here to pattern. So you see you should not vex him, Cross Jay. He is a good friend to your father and to you. You ought to love him. I like him and I like his face. Why his face? It's not like those faces. Miss Dale and I talk about him. She thinks that Sir Willoughby is the best looking man ever born. Were you not speaking of Mr. Whitford? Yes, old Vernon. That's what Sir Willoughby calls him. Young Cross Jay excused himself to her look of surprise. Do you know what he makes me think of, his eyes I mean? He makes me think of Robinson Crusoe's old goat in the cavern. I like him because he's always the same and you're not positive about some people. Miss Middleton, if you look on at Cricket, in comes a safe man for ten runs. He may get more and he never gets less. And you should hear the old farmer's talk of him in the booth. That's just my feeling. Miss Middleton understood that some illustration from the cricketing field was intended to throw light on the boy's feeling for Mr. Whitford. Young Cross Jay was evidently warming to speak from his heart. But the sun was low. She had to dress for the dinner table and she landed him with regret at a holiday over. Before they parted he offered to swim across the lake in his clothes or dive to the bed for anything she pleased to throw, declaring solemnly that it should not be lost. She walked back at a slow pace and sung to herself above darker flowing thoughts, like the reed warbler on the branch beside the night stream, a simple song of a light-hearted sound, independent of the shifting black and gray of the flood underneath. A step was at her heels. I see you have been petting my escape grace. Mr. Whitford, yes, not petting, I hope. I tried to give him a lecture. He's a dear lad, but I fancy trying. She was in fine sunset color, unable to arrest the mounting tide. She had been rowing, she said, and as he directed his eyes according to his want, penetratingly, she defended herself by fixing her mind on Robinson Crusoe's old goat in the recess of the cavern. I must have him away from here very soon, said Vernon. Here he's quite spoiled. Speak of him to Willoughby. I can't guess at his ideas of the boy's future, but the chance of passing for the Navy won't bear trifling with, and if ever there was a lad made for the Navy, it's across Jay. The incident of the explosion in the laboratory was new to Vernon. And Willoughby laughed, he said. There are seaport crammers who stuff young fellows for examination, and we shall have to pack off the boy at once to the best one of the lot we can find. I would rather have had him under me up to the last three months, and have made sure of some roots to what is knocked into his head, but he's ruined here. And I am going, so I shall not trouble him for many weeks longer. Dr. Middleton is well. My father is well, yes. He pounced like a falcon on your notes in the library. Vernon came out with a chuckle. They were left to attract him. I am in for a controversy. Papa will not spare you to judge from his look. I know the look. Have you walked far today? Nine and a half hours. My fliberny jibbit is too much for me at times, and I had to walk off my temper. She cast her eyes on him, thinking of the pleasure of dealing with the temper honestly cultish and manfully open to a specific. All those hours were required? Not quite so long. You are training for your alpine tour. I had doubtful whether I shall get to the Alps this year. I leave the hall and shall probably be in London with a pen to sell. Willoughby knows that you leave him? As much as Mont Blanc knows that he is going to be climbed by a party below, he sees a speck or two in the valley. He has not spoken of it. He would attribute it to changes. Vernon did not conclude the sentence. She became breathless without emotion, but checked by the barrier confronting an impulse to ask, What changes? She stooped to pluck a cow slip. I saw Daffodils lower down the park, she said, one or two. They're nearly over. We are well off for wildflowers here, he answered. Do not leave him, Mr. Whitford. He will not want me. You are devoted to him. I can't pretend that. Then it is the changes you imagine you foresee. If any occur, why should they drive you away? Well, I'm two and thirty and I've never been in the fray. Kind of nondescript, half scholar, and by nature half billman or bowman or musketeer. If I'm worth anything, London's the field for me. That's what I have to try. Papa will not like your serving with your pen in London. He will say you are worth too much for that. Good men are at it. I should not care to be ranked above them. They are wasted, he says. Error. If they have their private ambition, they may suppose they are wasted. But the value to the world of a private ambition I do not clearly understand. You have not an evil opinion of the world, said Miss Middleton, sick at heart, as she spoke, with the sensation of having invited herself to take a drop of poison. He replied, one might as well have an evil opinion of a river. Here it's muddy, there it's clear. One day troubled, another at rest. We have to treat it with common sense. Love it? In the sense of serving it. Not think it's beautiful? Part of it is, part of it the reverse. Papa would quote the Moulier Formosa. Except that fish is too good for the black extremity. Woman is excellent for the upper. How do you say that? Not cynically, I believe. Your view commends itself to my reason. She was grateful to him for not stating it in ideal contrast with Sir Willoughby's view. If he had, so intensely, did her youthful blood desire to be enamored of the world, that she felt he would have lifted her off her feet. For a moment a gulf beneath had been threatening. When she said love it, a little enthusiasm would have wafted her into space firely as wine. But the sober, in the sense of serving it, entered her brain and was matter for reflection upon it and him. She could think of him in pleasant liberty, uncorrected by her woman's instinctive peril. He had neither arts nor graces. Nothing of his cousin's easy social front face. She had once witnessed the military precision of his dancing, and had to learn to like him before she ceased to pray that she might never be the victim of it as his partner. He walked heroically, his pedestrian vigor being famous. But that means one who walks away from the sex, not excelling in the recreations where men and women join hands. He was not much of a horseman either. Sir Willoughby enjoyed seeing him on horseback. And he could scarcely be said to shine in a drawing room unless one seated beside a person ready for real talk. Even more than his merits, his demerits pointed him out as a man to be a friend to a young woman who wanted one. His way of life pictured to her troubled spirit an enviable smoothness, and his having achieved that smooth way, she considered a sign of strength. And she wished to lean in idea upon some friendly strength. His reputation for indifference to the frivolous charms of girls clothed him with a noble coldness and gave him the distinction of a far-seen solitary iceberg in southern waters. The popular notion of hereditary, titled aristocracy, resembles her sentiment for a man that would not flatter and could not be flattered by her sex. He appeared superior almost to awfulness. She was young, but she had received much flattery in her ears and by it she had been snared. And he, disdaining to practice the foulers' arts, or to cast a thought on small fouls, appeared to her to have a pride founded on natural loftiness. They had not spoken for a while when Vernon said abruptly, The boy's future, rather, depends on you, Miss Middleton. I mean to leave as soon as possible and I do not like his being here without me, though you will look after him, I have no doubt. But you may not, at first, see where the spoiling hurts him. He should be packed off at once to the crammer before you are Lady Pattern. Use your influence. Willoughby will support the lad at your request. The cost cannot be great. There are strong grounds against my having him in London, even if I could manage it. May I count on you? I will mention it. I will do my best," said Miss Middleton, strangely dejected. They were now on the lawn where Sir Willoughby was walking with the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, his maiden aunts. You seem to have coursed the hair and captured the heart, he said to his bride. Started the truant and run down the pedagogue, said Vernon. Ah, you won't listen to me about the management of that boy, Sir Willoughby retorted. The ladies embraced Miss Middleton. One offered up an ejaculation in eulogy of her looks, the other of her healthfulness. Then both remarked that with indulgence Young Cross Jay could be induced to do anything. Clara wondered whether inclination or Sir Willoughby had disciplined their individuality out of them, and made them his shadows, his echoes. She gazed from them to him and feared him. But as yet she had not experienced the power in him which could threaten and wrestle to subject the members of his household to the state of satellites. Though she had in fact been giving battle to it for several months, she had held her own too well to pursue definitely the character of the spirit opposing her. She said to the ladies, Ah, no, Mr. Whitford has chosen the only method for teaching a boy like Cross Jay. I propose to make a man of him, said Sir Willoughby. What is to become of him if he learns nothing? If he pleases me he will be provided for. I have never abandoned the dependent. Clara let her eyes rest on his and without turning or dropping shut them. The effect was discomforting to him. He was very sensitive to the intentions of eyes and tones, which was one secret of his rigid grasp of the dwellers in his household. They were taught that they had to render agreement under sharp scrutiny. Studious eyes devoid of warmth, devoid of the shyness of sex that suddenly closed on their look. Signified a want of comprehension of some kind, it might be hostility of understanding. Was it possible he did not possess her utterly? He frowned up. Clara saw the lift of his brows and thought, My mind is my own, married or not. It was the point in dispute.