 26. Vernon in Pursuit The lodgekeeper had a son, who was a charm of master Cross Jays, and errant fellow with him upon many adventures, for this boy's passion was to become a gamekeeper, and accompanied by one of the head gamekeepers youngsters, he and Cross Jays were in the habit of ranging over the country, preparing for a profession delightful to the tastes of all three. Cross Jays' prospective connection with the mysterious Ocean bestowed the title of captain on him by common consent. He led them, and when missing for lessons, he was generally in the Society of Jacob Kroom or Jonathan Fernoway. Vernon made sure of Cross Jays when he perceived Jacob Kroom sitting on a stool in the little lodge parlour. Jacob's appearance of a diligent perusal of a book he had presented to the lad, he took for a decent piece of trickery. It was with amazement that he heard from the mother and daughter, as well as Jacob, of Miss Middleton's going through the gate before ten o'clock with Cross Jays beside her, the latter too hurried to spare a nod to Jacob, that she, of all on earth, should be encouraging Cross Jays to truancy, was incredible. Vernon had to fall back upon Greek and Latin aphoristic shots at the sex, to believe it. Rain was universal, a thick robe of it swept from hill to hill, thunder rumbled remote, and between the ruffled roars the downpour pressed on the land with a great noise of eager gobbling, much like that of the swine's trough, fresh field, as though a vast assembly of the hungered had seated themselves clamorously and fallen too on meats and drinks in a silence save of the chaps. A rapid walker poetically and humorously minded gathers multitudes of images on his way, and rain, the heaviest you can meet, is a lively companion when the resolute pacer scorns discomfort of wet clothes and squealing boots. Southwestern rain clouds too are never long sullen, they enfold and will have the earth in a good strong glut of the kissing overflow, then, as a hawk with feathers on his beak of the bird in his claw, lifts head, they rise and take veiled feature in long climbing watery lines. At any moment they may break the veil, and show soft upper cloud, show sun on it, show sky, green near the verge they spring from, of the green of grass in early dew, or along a travelling sweep that rolls asunder overhead, heaven's laughter of purest blue among titanic white shoulders. It may mean fair smiling for a while, or be the lightest interlude, but the watery lines and the drifting, the chasing, the upsoring, all in a shadowy fingering of form, and the animation of the leaves of the trees pointing them on, the bending of the treetops, the snapping of branches, and the hurrings of the stubborn hedge at wrestle with the floors, yielding but a leaf at most, and that on a fling, make a glory of contest and wildness, without aid of colour, to inflame the man who is at home in them from old association on road, heath and mountain. Let him be drenched, his heart will sing, and thou, trim cockney, that jurist, consider thyself to whom it may occur to be out in such a scene, and with what steps of a nervous dancing master it would be thine to play the hunted rat of the elements, for the preservation of the one imagined dry spot about thee, somewhere on thy luckless person. The taking of rain and sun alike befits men of our climate, and he who would have the secret of a strengthening intoxication must caught the clouds of the south-west, with a lover's blood. Vernon's happy recklessness was dashed by fears for Miss Middleton. Apart from those fears, he had the pleasure of a gull wheeling among the foamed streets of the wave. He supposed the Swiss and Tyrol Alps to have hidden their heads from him for many a day to come, and the springing and chiming south-west was the next best thing. A milder rain descended, the country expanded darkly defined underneath the moving curtain. The clouds were as he liked to see them, scaling, but their skirts dragged. Torrents were in store for they coarsed, streamingly still, and had not the higher lift or eagle ascent, which he knew for one of the signs of fairness, nor had the hills any belt of mist-like vapor. On a step of the style leading to the short cut to Rendon, young Crossjay was his spied. A man-tramp sat on the top bar. There you are. What are you doing there? Where's Miss Middleton? said Vernon. Now take care before you open your mouth. Crossjay shut the mouth he had opened. The lady has gone away over to a station, sir, said the tramp. You fool, roared Crossjay, ready to fly at him. But ain't it now, young gentleman? Can you say it ain't? I gave you a shilling, you ass. You give me that sum, young gentleman, to stop here and take care of you, and here I stopped. Mr. Whitford, Crossjay appealed to his master, and broke off in disgust. Take care of me, as if anybody who knows me would think I wanted taking care of. Why, what a beast you must be, you fellow. Just as you like, young gentleman, I jaunted you all I know to keep up your downcast spirits. You did want comfort in, you wanted it rarely, you cried like an infant. I let you taunt, as you call it, to keep you from swearing. And why did I swear, young gentleman? Because I've got nitchie coat in the wet and no shirt for aligning, and no breakfast to give me a stomach for this kind of weather. That's what I've come to in this world. I'm a walk-in moral. No wonder I swears when I don't strike up a jaunt. But why are you sitting here wet through, Crossjay? Be off home at once and change, and get ready for me. Mr. Whitford, I promised, and I tossed this fellow a shilling, not to go bothering Miss Middleton. The lady wouldn't have none of the young gentleman, sir, and I offered to go pioneer for her to the station, behind her, at a respectful distance. As if, you treacherous cur, Crossjay ground his teeth at the betrayer. Well, Mr. Whitford, and I didn't trust him, and I stuck to him, or he'd have been after her whining about his coat and stomach and talking of his being a moral. He repeats that to everybody. She has gone to the station, said Vernon. Not a word on that subject was to be one from Crossjay. How long since? Vernon partly addressed Mr. Tramp. The latter became seized with shivers, as he supplied the information that it might be a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. But what's time to me, sir? If I had regular meals, I should carry a clock in my inside. I got the rheumatics instead. Why there, Vernon cried, and took the stile at a vault. That's what gentlemen can do, who sleeps in their beds warm, moaned the Tramp. They've no joints. Vernon handed him a half-crowned piece, for he had been of use for once. Mr. Whitford, let me come. If you tell me to come, I may. Do let me come, Crossjay begged with great entreaty. I shan't see her for— Be off quick! Vernon cut him short and pushed on. The Tramp and Crossjay were audible to him, Crossjay spurning the consolations of the professional sad man. Vernon spun across the fields, timing himself by his watch, to reach Rendon Station ten minutes before eleven, though without clearly questioning the nature of the resolution which precipitated him. Dropping to the road, he had better foothold than on the slippery field path, and he ran. His principal hope was that Clara would have missed her way. Another pelting of rain agitated him on her behalf. Might she not as well be suffered to go, and sit three hours and more in a railway carriage with wet feet? He clasped the visionary little feet to warm them on his breast. But Willoughby's obstinate fortuity deserved the blow. But neither she nor her father deserved the scandal. But she was desperate. Could reasoning touch her? If not, what would? He knew of nothing. Yesterday he had spoken strongly to Willoughby to plead with him to favour her departure, and give her leisure to sound her mind. And he had left his cousin convinced that Clara's best measure was flight. A man so cunning in a pretended obtuseness backed by senseless pride, and in petty tricks that sprang of a grovelling tyranny, could only be taught by facts. Her recent treatment of him, however, was very strange, so strange, that he might have known himself better if he had reflected on the bound with which it shot him to a hard suspicion. Decray had prepared the world to hear that he was leaving the hall. Were they in concert? The idea struck at his heart colder than if her damp little feet had been there. Vernon's full exoneration of her for making a confidante of himself did not extend its leniency to the young lady's character when there was question of her doing the same with the second gentleman. He could suspect much. He could even expect to find Decray at the station. That idea drew him up in his run to meditate on the part he should play, and by drove little Dr. Corny on the way to Rendon and hailed him, and gave his cheerless figure the nearest approach to an Irish hug in the form of a dry seat under an umbrella and waterproof covering. Though it is the worst I can do for you if you decline to supplement it with a dose of hot brandy and water at the dolphin, said he, and I'll see you take it, if you please. I'm bound to ease a Rendon patient out of the world. Medicine's one of their superstitions, which they cling to the harder, the more useless it gets. Peerland priests launch him happy between them. And what's on your conscience, Pat? It's whether your blessing, your reverence, would disagree with another drop. Then put the horse before the cart, my son, and you shall have the two in harmony. And God speed ye. Rendon's station, did you say, Vernon? You shall have my prescription at the railway arms. If you're hurried, you have the look. What is it? Can I help? No, and don't ask. You're like the Irish grenadier who had a bullet in a humiliating situation. Here's Rendon, and through it we go with a spanking clatter. Here's Dr. Carney's dog cart, post-haste again. For there's no dying without him now, and repentance is on the deathbed for not calling him in before. Half a charge of humbug hurts no son of a gun, friend Vernon, if he'd have his firing take effect. Be tender to it in man or woman, particularly woman. So by goes the meteoric doctor, and I'll bring noses to windowpains, your see, which reminds me of the sweetest young lady I ever saw, and the luckiest man. When is she off for her bridal trousseau? And when are they spliced? I'll not call her perfection, for that's a post afraid to move. But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next it. Poetries wanted to speak of her. I'm Irish, and inflammable, I suppose, but I never looked on a girl to make a man comprehend the entire holy meaning of the word rapturous, like that one. And away she goes. We'll not say another word. But you're a Grecian friend, Vernon. Now, couldn't you think her just a whiff of an idea of a daughter of a peccadillo goddess? Juice, take you, Carney. Drop me here. I shall be late for the train, said Vernon, laying hand on the doctor's arm to check him on the way to the station in view. Dr. Carney had a Celtic intelligence for a meaning behind an illogical tongue. He drew up observing. Two minutes run won't hurt you. He's slightly fancied. He might have given offence, though he was well acquainted with Vernon and had a cordial grasp at the parting. The truth must be told that Vernon could not at the moment bear any more talk from an Irishman. Dr. Carney had succeeded in persuading him not to wonder at Clara Middleton's liking for Colonel de Grey and of Chapter 26, Chapter 27 of The Egoist. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Egoist by George Meredith, Chapter 27 at the railway station. Clara stood in the waiting room contemplating the white rails of the rain-swept line. Her lips parted at the sight of Vernon. You have your ticket, said he. She nodded and breathed more freely. The matter-of-fact question was reassuring. You are wet, he resumed, and it could not be denied. A little. I do not feel it. I must beg you to come to the inn hard by, half a dozen steps. We shall see your train signalled. Come. She thought him startlingly authoritative, but he had good sense to back him, and depressed as she was by the dampness. She was disposed to yield to reason if he continued to respect her independence, so she submitted outwardly, resisted inwardly, on the watch to stop him from taking any decisive lead. Shall we be sure to see the signal, Mr. Whitford? I'll provide for that. He spoke to the station clerk and conducted her across the road. You're quite alone, Miss Middleton. I am. I have not brought my maid. You must take off boots and stockings at once and have them dried. I'll put you in the hands of the landlady. Put my train. You have full fifteen minutes, besides fair chances of delay. He seemed reasonable, the reverse of hostile, in spite of his commanding air, and that was not unpleasant in one friendly to her adventure. She controlled her alert distrustfulness, and passed from him to the landlady, for her feet were wet and cold, the skirts of her dress were soiled. Generally inspecting herself, she was an object to be shuddered at, and she was grateful to Vernon for his inattention to her appearance. Vernon ordered Dr. Corny's dose, and was ushered upstairs to a room of portraits, where the publican's ancestors and family sat against the walls, flat on their canvas, as weeds of the botanist's portfolio. Although corpulency was pretty generally insisted on, there were formidable battalions of bust among the females. All of them had the aspect of the national energy, which has vanquished obstacles to subside on its ideal. They all gazed straight at the guest. Drink and come to this, they might have been labelled to say to him. He was in the private Valhalla of a large class of his countrymen. The existing host had taken forethought to be of the party in his prime, and in the central place, looking fresh-flattened there, and sanguine from the performance. By and by a son would shove him aside, meanwhile he shelved his parent, according to the manners of energy. One should not be a critic of our works of art in uncomfortable garments. Vernon turned from the portraits to a stuffed pike in a glass case, and plunged into sympathy with the fish for a refuge. Clara soon rejoined him, saying, But you, you must be very wet. You were without an umbrella. You must be wet through, Mr. Whitford. We're all wet through today, said Vernon. Cross J's wet through, and a tramp he met. The horrid man. But Cross J should have turned back when I told him. Cannot the landlord assist you? You are not tied to time. I begged Cross J to turn back when it began to rain. When it became heavy, I compelled him. So you met my poor Cross J. You have not to blame him for betraying you. The tramp did that. I was thrown on your track quite by accident. Now, pardon me for using authority, and don't be alarmed, Miss Middleton. You are perfectly free for me, but you must not run a risk to your health. I met Dr. Corney coming along, and he prescribed hot brandy and water for a wet skin, especially for sitting in it. There's the stuff on the table. I see you have been aware of a singular odour. You must consent to sip some, as medicine, merely to give you warmth. Impossible, Mr. Whitford. I could not taste it. But pray obey Dr. Corney if he ordered it for you. I can't unless you do. I will, then. I will try. She held the glass, attempted, and was baffled by the reek of it. Try. You can do anything, said Vernon. Now that you find me here, Mr. Whitford, anything for myself it would seem, and nothing to save a friend. But I will really try. It must be a good mouthful. I will try, and you will finish the glass? With your permission, if you do not leave too much. They were to drink out of the same glass, and she was to drink some of this infamous mixture, and she was in a kind of hotel alone with him, and he was drenched in running after her. All this came of breaking loose for an hour. Oh, what a misfortune that it should be such a day, Mr. Whitford. Did you not choose the day? Not the weather. And the worst of it is that Willoughby will come upon Cross Jay wet to the bone, and pump him, and get nothing but shufflings, blank lies, and then find him out and chase him from the house. Clara drank immediately, and more than she intended. She held the glass as an enemy to be delivered from, gasping, uncertain of her breath. Never let me be asked to endure such a thing again. You are unlikely to be running away from father and friends again. She panted still with the fiery liquid she had gulped, and she wondered that it should belie its reputation in not fortifying her, but rendering her painfully susceptible to his remarks. Mr. Whitford, I need not seek to know what you think of me. What I think, I don't think at all. I wish to serve you, if I can. Am I right in supposing you a little afraid of me? You should not be. I have deceived no one. I have opened my heart to you, and am not ashamed of having done so. It is an excellent habit, they say. It is not a habit with me. He was touched, for that reason, in his dissatisfaction with himself, not unwilling to hurt. We take our turn, Miss Middleton. I am no hero, and a bad conspirator, so I am not of much avail. You have been reserved, but I am going, and I leave my character behind. You condemned me to the poison-bowl. You have not touched it yourself. In vino veritas, if I do, I shall be speaking my mind. Then do, for the sake of mind and body. It won't be complementary. You can be harsh. Only say everything. Have we time? They looked at their watches. Six minutes, Clara said. Vernon had stopped, penetrated by his total drenching. She reproached herself. He laughed to quiet her. My da's to lemnays are sure to give me duckings. I am used to them. As for the watch, it will remind me that it stopped when you went. She raised the glass to him. She was happier, and hoped for some little harshness and kindness mixed that she might carry away to travel with and think over. He turned the glass as she had given it, turned it round in putting it to his lips. A scarce perceptible manoeuvre, but that she had given it expressly on one side. It may be hoped that it was not done by design, done even accidentally without a taint of contrivance. It was an affliction to see, and coiled through her, causing her to shrink and redden. Fugitives are subject to strange incidents. They are not vessels lying safe in harbour. She shut her lips tight, as if they had stung. The realising sensitiveness of her quick nature accused them of a loss of bloom. And the man who had made her smart like this was formal as a railway official on a platform. Now we are both pledged in the poison bowl, said he, and it has the taste of rank poison, I confess. But the doctor prescribed it, and at sea we must be sailors. Now, Miss Middleton, time presses. Will you return with me? No, no. Where do you propose to go? To London, to a friend, Miss Dalton. What message is there for your father? Say I have left a letter for him in a letter to be delivered to you. To me? And what message for Willoughby? My maid Barkley will hand him a letter at noon. You have sealed Cross Jay's fate. How? He is probably at this instant undergoing an interrogation. You may guess at his replies. The letter will expose him, and Willoughby does not pardon. I regret it. I cannot avoid it. Poor boy. My dear Cross Jay. I did not think of how Willoughby might punish him. I was very thoughtless. Mr. Whitford, my pin money shall go for his education. Later, when I am a little older, I shall be able to support him. That's an encumbrance. You should not tie yourself to drag it about. You are unalterable, of course, but circumstances are not. And, as it happens, women are more subject to them than we are. But I will not be. Your command of them is shown at the present moment. Because I determine to be free? No, because you do the contrary. You don't determine. You run away from the difficulty and leave it to your father and friends to bear. As for Cross Jay, you see you destroy one of his chances. I should have carried him off before this, if I had not thought it prudent, to keep him on terms with Willoughby. We'll let Cross Jay stand aside. He'll behave like a man of honour, imitating others who have had to do the same for ladies. You have spoken falsely to shelter cowards, you mean, Mr Whitford? Oh, I know. I have but two minutes. The day is cast. I cannot go back. I must get ready. Will you see me to the station? I would rather you should hurry home. I will see the last of you. I will wait for you here. An express runs ahead of your train, and I have arranged with the clerk for a signal. I have an eye on the window. You are still my best friend, Mr Whitford. Though—well, though you do not perfectly understand what torments have driven me to this. Carried on tides and blown by winds—ah, you do not understand. Mysteries? Sufferings are not mysteries. They are very simple facts. Well, then, I don't understand. But decide at once. I wish you to have your free will. She left the room. Dry stockings and boots are better for travelling in than wet ones, but in spite of her direct resolve, she felt when drawing them on, like one that has been tripped. The goal was desirable. The ardour was damped. Vernon's wish that she should have her free will compelled her to sound it, and it was, of course, to go, to be liberated, to cast off incubus, and hurt her father, injure Cross J, distress her friends, know, and ten times know. She returned to Vernon in haste to shun the reflex of her mind. He was looking at a closed carriage drawn up at the station door. Shall we run over now, Mr Whitford? There's no signal. Here it's not so chilly. I ventured to enclose my letter to Papa in yours, trusting you would attend to my request to you to break the news to him gently and plead for me. We will all do the utmost we can. I am doomed to vex those who care for me. I tried to follow your counsel. First you spoke to me, and then you spoke to Miss Dale, and at least you have a clear conscience. No. What burdens it? I have done nothing to burden it. Then it's a clear conscience. No. Vernon's shoulders jerked. Our patience with an innocent duplicity in women is measured by the place it assigns to us and another. If he had liked, he could have thought, you have not done, but meditated something to trouble conscience. That was evident, and her speaking of it was proof, too, of the willingness to be clear. He would not help her. Man's blood, which is the link with women and responsive to them on the instant for or against, obscured him. He shrugged anew when she said, My character would have been degraded utterly by my staying there. Could you advise it? Certainly not the degradation of your character, he said. Black on the subject of Decray, and not lightened by feelings which made him sharply sensible of the beggarly dependent that he was, or poor adventuring scribbler that he was to become. Why did you pursue me and wish to stop me, Mr. Whitford, said Clara, on the spur of a wound from his tone? He replied, I suppose I'm a busy body. I was never aware of it till now. You are my friend, only you speak in irony so much. That was irony about my clear conscience. I spoke to you and to Miss Dale, and then I rested and drifted. Can you not feel for me that to mention it is like a scorching furnace? Willoughby has entangled Papa. He schemes incessantly to keep me entangled. I fly from his cunning as much as from anything. I dread it. I have told you that I am more to blame than he, but I must accuse him. And wedding presents and congratulations, and to be his guest. All that makes up a plea in mitigation, said Vernon. Is it not sufficient for you? She asked him timidly. You have a masculine good sense that tells you you won't be respected if you run. Three more days there might cover a retreat with your father. He will not listen to me. He confuses me. Willoughby has bewitched him. Commission me. I will see that he listens. And go back, oh no, to London. Besides, there is the dining with Mrs. Mount Stewart this evening, and I like her very well, but I must avoid her. She has a kind of idolatry. And what answers can I give? I supplicate her with looks. She observes them, my efforts to divert them from being painful, produce a comic expression to her, and I am a charming rogue, and I am entertained on the topic she assumes to be principally interesting to me. I must avoid her. The thought of her leaves me no choice. She is clever. She could tattoo me with epigrams. Stay. There you can hold your own. She has told me you give me credit for a spice of wit. I have not discovered my possession. We have spoken of it. We call it your delusion. She grants me some beauty. That must be hers. There is no delusion in one case or the other, Miss Middleton. You have beauty and wit. Public opinion will say wildness, and difference to your reputation will be charged on you, and your friends will have to admit it. But you will be out of this difficulty. Ah, to weaver second. Impossible to judge until we see how you escape the first. And I have no more to say. I love your father. His humor of sententiousness and doctoral stilts is a mask he delights in, but you ought to know him and not be frightened by it. If you sat with him an hour at a Latin task, and if you took his hand and told him you could not leave him, and no tears, he would answer you at once. It would involve a day or two further. Disagreeable to you, no doubt. Preferable to the present mode of escape, as I think. But I have no power, whatever, to persuade. I have not the lady's tongue. My appeal is always to reason. It is a compliment. I loathe the lady's tongue. It is a distinctly good gift, and I wish I had it. I might have succeeded instead of failing and appearing to pay a compliment. Surely the express train is very late, Mr. Whitford. The express has gone by. Then we will cross over. You would rather not be seen by Mrs. Mount Stewart. That is her carriage drawn up at the station, and she is in it. Clara looked, and with the sinking of her heart said, I must brave her. In that case, I will take leave of you here, Miss Middleton. She gave him her hand. Why is Mrs. Mount Stewart at the station today? I suppose she is driven to meet one of the guests for her dinner party. Professor Crooklyn was promised your father, and he may be coming by the down train. Go back to the hall, exclaimed Clara. How can I? I have no more endurance left in me. If I had some support, if it were the sense of secretly doing wrong, it might help me through. I am in a web. I cannot do right whatever I do. There is only the thought of saving Cross Jay. Yes, and sparing papa. Goodbye, Mr. Whitford. I shall remember your kindness gratefully. I cannot go back. You will not, said he, tempting her to hesitate. No. But if you are seen by Mrs. Mount Stewart, you must go back. I'll do my best to take her away. Should she see you, you must patch up a story and apply to her for a lift. That, I think, is imperative. Not to my mind, said Clara. He bowed hurriedly and withdrew. After her confession, peculiar to her, of possibly finding sustainment in secretly doing wrong, her flying or remaining seemed to him a choice of evils. And whilst she stood in bewildered speculation on his reason for pursuing her, which was not evident, he remembered the special fear inciting him, and so far did her justice as to havert himself on that subject. He had done something perhaps to save her from a cold. Such was his only consolatory thought. He had also behaved like a man of honour, taking no personal advantage of her situation. But to reflect on it recalled his astonishing dryness. The strict man of honour plays a part that he should not reflect on till about the fall of the curtain. Otherwise, he will be likely sometimes to feel the shiver of foolishness at his good conduct. And of Chapter 27, Chapter 28 of The Aguist This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Aguist by George Meredith Chapter 28 The Return Posted in observation at a corner of the window, Clarissa Vernon crossed the road to Mrs. Mount Stewart Jenkinson's carriage, transformed to the leanest pattern of himself by narrowed shoulders and raised coat collar. He had such an air of saying, Tom's a cold that her skin crept in sympathy. Presently he left the carriage and went into the station. A bell had rung. Was it her train? He approved her going, for he was employed in assisting her to go, a proceeding at variance with many things he had said, but he was as full of contradiction today as women are accused of being. The train came up, she trembled. No signal had appeared, and Vernon must have deceived her. He returned. He entered the carriage, and the wheels were soon in motion. Immediately thereupon, Fletch's fly drove past, containing Colonel Decray. Vernon could not but have perceived him. But what was it that had brought the Colonel to this place? The pressure of Vernon's mind was on her, and foiled her efforts to assert her perfect innocence, though she knew she had done nothing to allure the Colonel hither. Excepting Willoughby, Colonel Decray was the last person she would have wished to encounter. She had now a dread of hearing the bell, which would tell her that Vernon had not deceived her, and that she was out of his hands, in the hands of someone else. She bit at her glove. She glanced at the concentrated eyes of the publican's family portraits, all looking as one. She noticed the empty tumbler, and went round to it, and touched it, and the silly spoon in it. A little yielding to desperation shoots us to strange distances. Vernon had asked her whether she was alone. Connecting that inquiry, singular in itself, and singular in his manner of putting it, with the glass of burning liquid, she repeated, He must have seen Colonel Decray. And she stared at the empty glass, as at something that witnessed to something, for Vernon was not your supple cavalier assiduously on the smirk to pin a gallantry to common places. But all the doors are not open in a young lady's consciousness, quick of nature, though she may be. Some are locked and keyless, some will not open to the key, some are defended by ghosts inside. She could not have said what the something witnessed to. If we by chance no more, we have still no right to make it more prominent than it was with her. And the smell of the glass was odious. It disgraced her. She had an impulse to pocket the spoon for a memento, to show it to grandchildren for a warning. Even the prelude to the morality to be uttered on the occasion sprang to her lips. Here, my dears, is a spoon you would be ashamed to use in your teacups, yet it was of more value to me at one period of my life than silver and gold in pointing out, etc. The conclusion was hazy, like the conception. She had her idea. And in this mood she ran downstairs and met Colonel Decray on the station steps. The bright illumination of his face was that of the confident man confirmed in a risky guess in the crisis of doubt and dispute. Miss Middleton, his joyful surprise predominated, the pride of an accurate forecast adding, I'm not too late to be of service. She thanked him for the offer. Have you dismissed the fly, Colonel Decray? I have just been getting changed to pay Mr. Flich. He passed me on the road. He is interwound with our fates to a certainty. I had only to jump in. I knew it, and rolled along like a magician commanding a genie. Have I been? Not seriously. Nobody doubts you being under shelter. You will allow me to protect you. My time is yours. I was thinking of a running visit to my friend Miss Dalton. My adventure. I had the fancy that you wish to see Miss Dalton today. You cannot make the journey unescorted. Please retain the fly. Where is Willoughby? He is in jackboots, but may I not, Miss Middleton? I shall never be forgiven if you refuse me. There has been searching for me. Some hallowing. But why am I rejected? Besides, I don't require the fly. I shall walk if I am banished. Flich is a wonderful conjurer, but the virtue is out of him for the next four and twenty hours. And it will be an opportunity to me to make my bow to Miss Dalton. She is rigorous on the conventionalities, Colonel Decray. I'll appear before her as an ignoramus or a rebel, whichever she likes best to take in leading strings. I remember her. I was greatly struck by her. Upon recollection, memory didn't happen to be handy at the first mention of the lady's name. As the general said of his ammunition and transport, there's the army. But it was leagues in the rear. Like the footman who went to sleep after smelling fire in the house, I was thinking of other things. It will serve me right to be forgotten, if I am. I have a curiosity to know, a remainder of my cox-comery. Not that exactly. A wish to see the impression I made on your friend. None at all, but any pebble casts a ripple. That is hardly an impression, said Clara, pacifying her irresolute-ness with this light talk. The utmost to be hoped for by men like me. I have your permission. One minute, I will get my ticket. Do not, said Clara. Your manservant intrigues you. She signified a decided negative with the head, but her eyes were dreamy. She breathed deep. This thing done would cut the cord. Her sensation of languor swept over her. Decray took a stride. He was accosted by one of the railway porters. Fletcher's fly was in request for a gentleman. A portly old gentleman, bothered about luggage, appeared on the landing. The gentleman can have it, said Decray, handing Fletcher's money. Open the door, Clara said to Fletcher. He tugged at the handle with enthusiasm. The door was open. She stepped in. Then mount the box, and I'll jump up beside you, Decray called out. After the passion of regretful astonishment had melted from his features. Clara directed him to the seat, fronting her. He protested indifference to the wet. She kept the door unshot. His temper would have preferred to buffet the angry weather. The invitation was too sweet. She heard now the bell of her own train. Driving beside the railway embankment, she met the train. It was eighteen minutes late by her watch. And why, when it flung up its wail spouts of steam, she was not journeying in it, she could not tell. She had acted of her free will. That, she could say. Vernon had not induced her to remain. Assuredly, her present companion had not, and her whole heart was for flight. Yet she was driving back to the hall, not devoid of calmness. She speculated on the circumstance enough to think herself incomprehensible, and there left it, intent on the scene to come with Willoughby. I must choose a better day for London, she remarked. Decray bowed, but did not remove his eyes from her. Miss Middleton, you do not trust me. She answered, Say in what way, it seems to me that I do. I may speak, if it depends on my authority. Fully, whatever you have to say. Let me stipulate, be not very grave. I want cheering in wet weather. Miss Middleton, flitch is a charioteer once more. Think of it, there is a tide that carries him perpetually to the place where he was cast forth, and a thread that ties us to him in continuity. I have not the honour to be a friend of longstanding. One ventures on one's devotion. It dates from the first moment of my seeing you. Flitch is to blame, if anyone. Perhaps the spell would be broken, were he reinstated in his ancient office. Perhaps it would, said Clara, not with her best of smiles. Willoughby's pride of relentlessness appeared to her to be receiving a blow by rebound, and that seemed high justice. I am afraid you were right. The poor fellow has no chance. Decray pursued. He paused, as for decorum, in the presence of misfortune, and laughed sparklingly. Unless I engage him or pretend to, I verily believe that Flitch's melancholy person on the skirts of the hall completes the picture of the Eden within. Why will you not put some trust in me, Miss Middleton? But why should you not pretend to engage him then, Colonel Decray? We'll plot it if you like. Can you trust me for that? For any act of disinterested kindness, I am sure. You mean it? Without reserve. You could talk publicly of taking him to London. Miss Middleton, just now you were going. My arrival changed your mind. You distrust me, and ought I to wonder? The wonder would be all the other way. You have not had the sort of report of me which would persuade you to confide, even in a case of extremity. I guessed you were going. Do you ask me how? I cannot say. Through what they call sympathy, and that's inexplicable. There's natural sympathy, natural antipathy. People have to live together to discover how deep it is. Clara breathed her dumb admission of his truth. The fly jolted and threatened to lurch. Fletch, my dear man! The Colonel gave a murmuring remonstrance. Fort, said he to Clara, whom his apostrophe to Fletch had set smiling. We're not safe with him, however we may believe, and he'll be jerking the heart out of me before he has done. But if two of us have not the misfortune to be united when they come to the discovery, there's hope. That is, if one has courage, and the other has wisdom. Otherwise, they may go to the yoke in spite of themselves. The great enemy is Pride, who has them both in a coach and drives them to the fatal door, and the only thing to do is to knock him off his box while there's a minute to spare. And as there's no pride like the pride of possession, the deadliest wound to him is to make that doubtful. Pride won't be taught wisdom in any other fashion, but one must have the courage to do it. Decray trifled with the window sash. To give his words, time to sink in solution. Who but Willoughby stood for Pride, and who, swayed by Langer, had dreamt of a method that would be surest and swiftest to teach him the wisdom of surrendering her? You know, Miss Middleton, I study character, said the Colonel. I see that you do, she answered. You intend to return? Oh, decidedly! The day is unfavourable for travelling, I must say. It is. You may count on my discretion in the fullest degree I throw myself on your generosity when I assure you that it was not my design to surprise a secret. I guessed the station, and went there, to put myself at your disposal. Did you, said Clara, reddening slightly, chance to see Mrs. Mount Stuart Jenkinson's carriage pass you when you drove up to the station? Decray had passed a carriage. I did not see the lady, she was in it. Yes, and therefore it is better to put discretion on one side, we may be certain she saw you. But not you, Miss Middleton. I prefer to think that I am seen. I have a description of carriage, Colonel Decray, when it is forced on me. I have not suspected the reverse. Courage wants training, as well as other fine capacities. Mine is often rusty and rheumatic. I cannot hear of concealment or plotting, except pray to advance the cause of poor flitch. He shall be accepted. The Colonel screwed his head round for a glance at his coachman's back. Perfectly guaranteed today, he said, of flitch's look of solidity. The convulsion of the elements appears to sober our friend. He is only dangerous in calms. Five minutes will bring us to the park gates. Clara lent forward to gaze at the hedgeways in the neighbourhood of the hall, strangely renewing their familiarity with her. Both in thought and sensation she was like a flower beaten to earth, and she thanked her feminine mask for not showing how nervous and languid she was. She could have accused Vernon of a treacherous cunning for imposing it on her free will to decide her fate. Involuntarily she sighed. There is a train at three, said Decray, with splendid promptitude. Yes, and one at five. We dine with Mrs. Mount Stewart tonight, and I have a passion for solitude. I think I was never intended for obligations. The moment I am bound, I begin to brood on freedom. Ladies who say that, Miss Middleton, what of them? They're feeling too much alone. She could not combat the remark, by herself assurance that she had the principle of faithfulness. She acknowledged to herself the truth of it. There is no freedom for the weak. Vernon had said that once. She tried to resist the weight of it, and her sheer inability precipitated her into a sense of pitiful dependence. Half an hour earlier it would have been a perilous condition to be traversing in the society of a closely scanning reader of fair faces. Circumstances had changed. They were at the gates of the park. Shall I leave you? said Decray. Why should you? she replied. He bent to her gracefully. The mild subservience flattered Clare's Langer. He had not compelled her to be watchful on her guard, and she was unaware that he passed it when she acquiesced to his observation. An anticipatory story is a trap to the teller. It is, she said. She had been thinking as much. He threw up his head to consult the brain comically with a dozen little blinks. No, you are right, Miss Middleton. Inventing beforehand never prospers. It is a way to trip our own cleverness. Truth and mother wit are the best counsellors, and as you are the former, I'll try to act up to the character you assign me. Some tangle more prospective than present seemed to be about her as she reflected. But her intention being to speak to Willoughby without subterfuge, she was grateful to her companion for not tempting her to swerve. No one could doubt his talent for elegant fibbing, and she was in the humour both to admire and adopt the art. So she was glad to be rescued from herself. How mother wit was to second truth she did not inquire, and as she did not happen to be thinking of cross jay, she was not troubled by having to consider how truth and his tale of the morning would be likely to harmonise. Driving down the park she had full occupation in questioning whether her return would be pleasing to Vernon, who was the virtual cause of it, though he had done so little to promote it, so little that she really doubted his pleasure in seeing her return. And of Chapter 28 Chapter 29 of The Egoist This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Egoist by George Meredith Chapter 29 In which the sensitiveness of Sir Willoughby is explained, and he receives much instruction. The whole clock over the stables was then striking twelve. It was the hour for her flight to be made known, and Clara sat in a turmoil of dim apprehension that prepared her nervous frame for a painful blush on her being asked by Colonel Decray whether she had set her watch correctly. He must, she understood, have seen through her at the breakfast table, and was she not cruelly indebted to him for her evasion of Willoughby? Such perspicacity of vision distressed and frightened her. At the same time she was obliged to acknowledge that he had not presumed on it. Her dignity was in no way the worse for him. But it had been at a man's mercy, and there was the affliction. She jumped from the fly as if she were leaving danger behind. She could at the moment have greeted Willoughby with a conventionally friendly smile. The doors were thrown open, and young Cross J flew out to her. He hung and danced on her hand, pressed the hand to his mouth, hardly believing that he saw and touched her, and in a lingo of dashes and asterisks related how Sir Willoughby had found him under the Boathouse eaves, and pumped him, and had been sent off to Hotner's Farm, where there was a sick child and on along the road to a labourer's cottage. For I said, you're so kind to poor people, Miss Middleton. That's true, now that is true, and I said you wouldn't have me with you for fear of contagion. This was what she had feared. Every crack and bang in a boy's vocabulary, remarked the Colonel, listening to him after he had paid flitch. The latter touched his hat till he had drawn attention to himself, when he exclaimed with rosy melancholy, Ah, my lady, ah, Colonel, if ever I lives to drink some of the old port wine in the old hall at Christmas Tide. Their health would on that occasion be drunk, it was implied. He threw up his eyes at the windows, humped his body, and drove away. Then Mr Whitford has not come back, said Clara to Cross J, No, Miss Middleton, Sir Willoughby has, and he's upstairs in his room dressing. Have you seen Barclay? She has just gone into the laboratory, I told her Sir Willoughby wasn't there. Tell me Cross J, had she a letter? She had something. Run, say I am here, I want the letter, it is mine. Cross J sprang away and plunged into the arms of Sir Willoughby. One has to catch the fellow like a football, exclaimed the injured gentleman, doubled across the boy and holding him fast that he might have an object to trifle with to give himself countenance. He needed it. Clara, you have not been exposed to the weather? Hardly at all. I rejoice, you found shelter? Yes, in one of the cottages. Not in a cottage, but I was perfectly sheltered. Colonel Decray passed a fly before he met me. Flitch again, ejaculated the Colonel. Yes, you have luck, you have luck. Willoughby addressed him, still clutching Cross J, and treating his tugs to get loose as an invitation to caresses. But the foil barely concealed his livid perturbation. Stay by me, Sir, he said at last, sharply to Cross J, and Clara touched the boy's shoulder in admonishment of him. She turned to the Colonel as they stepped into the hall. I have not thanked you, Colonel Decray, she dropped her voice to its lowest, a letter in my handwriting in the laboratory. Cross J cried aloud with pain. I have you, Willoughby rallied him with a laugh, not unlike the squeak of his victim. You squeeze awfully hard, Sir. Why, you milksop. Am I, but I want to get a book. Where is the book in the laboratory? Colonel Decray, sauntering by the laboratory door, sung out, I'll fetch you your book. What is it? Early navigators, infant hymns. I think my cigar case is in here. Barkley speaks of a letter for me, Willoughby said to Clara, marked to be delivered to me at noon. In case of my not being back earlier, it was written to avert anxiety, she replied. You are very good. Oh, good. Call me anything but good. Here are the ladies. Dear ladies, Clara swam to meet them, as they issued from a morning room into the hall, and interjections reigned for a couple of minutes. Willoughby relinquished his grasp of Cross Jay, who darted instantaneously at an angle to the laboratory, wither he followed, and he encountered Decray coming out, but passed him in silence. Cross Jay was ranging and peering all over the room. Willoughby went to his desk and the battery table and the mantelpiece. He found no letter. Barkley had undoubtedly informed him that she had left a letter for him in the laboratory by order of her mistress after breakfast. He hurried out and ran upstairs in time to see Decray and Barkley breaking a conference. He beckoned to her. The maid lengthened her upper lip and beat her dress down smooth, signs of the apprehension of a crisis, and of the getting ready for action. My mistress's bell has just rung, so Willoughby. You had a letter for me? I said, you said when I met you at the foot of the stairs that you had left a letter for me in the laboratory. It is lying on my mistress's toilet table. Get it! Barkley swept round with another of her demure grimaces. It was apparently necessary with her that she should talk to herself in this public manner. Willoughby waited for her, but there was no reappearance of the maid. Struck by the ridicule of his posture of expectation, and of his whole behaviour, he went to his bedroom suite, shut himself in, and paced the chambers, amazed at the creature he had become. Agitated like the commonest of wretches, destitute of self-control, not able to preserve a decent mask, he, accustomed to inflict these emotions and tremors upon others, was at once the puppet and dupe of an intriguing girl. His very stature seemed lessened. The glass did not say so, but the shrunken heart within him did, and wailfully too. Her compunction, call me anything but good, coming after her return to the hall beside Decray, and after the visible passage of a secret between them in his presence, was a confession. It blew at him with the fury of a furnace blast in his face. Egoist Agony wrung the outcry from him that dupery is a more blessed condition. He desired to be deceived. He could desire such a thing only in a temporary transport, for above all, he desired that no one should know of his being deceived, and were he a dupe, the deceiver would know it, and her accomplice would know it, and the world would soon know of it, that world against whose tongue he stood defenseless. Within the shadow of his presence he compressed opinion as a strong frost binds the springs of earth, but beyond it his shivering sensitiveness ran about in dread of a stripping in a wintry atmosphere. This was the ground of his hatred of the world. It was an appalling fear on behalf of his naked Edolan, the tender infant self, swaddled in his name before the world, for which he felt as the most highly civilized of men alone can feel, and which it was impossible for him to stretch out hands to protect. There the poor little lovable creature ran for any mouth to blow on, and frost-nipped and bruised it cried to him, and he was of no avail. Must we not detest a world that so treats us? We loathe it the more by the measure of our contempt for them, when we have made the people within the shadow-circle of our person, slavish. And he had been once a young prince in popularity, the world had been his possession. Clarus' treatment of him was of robbery of land and subjects. His grander dream had been a marriage with a lady of so glowing a fame, for beauty and attachment to her lord, that the world perforce must take her for witness to merits which would silence detraction, and almost, not quite, it was undesirable, extinguish envy. But for the nature of women his dream would have been realized. He could not bring himself to denounce fortune. It had cost him a grievous pang to tell Horace Decray he was lucky. He had been educated in the belief that fortune specially prized and cherished little Willoughby. Hence of necessity his maledictions fell upon women, or he would have forfeited the last blanket of a dream warm as poets' reveling. But if Clara deceived him he inspired her with timidity. There was matter in that to make him wish to be deceived. She had not looked him much in the face. She had not crossed his eyes. She had looked deliberately downward, keeping her head up to preserve an exterior pride. The attitude had its bewitchingness. The girl's physical pride of stature, scorning to bend under a load of conscious guilt, had a certain black angel beauty for which he felt a hugging hatred. And according to his policy, when these fits of amorous meditation seized him, he burst from the present one in the mood of his more favorable conception of Clara and sought her out. The quality of the mood of hugging hatred is that if you are disallowed the hug, you do not hate the fiercer. Contrary wise, the prescription of a decorous distance of two feet ten inches, which is by measurement the delimitation exacted of a rightly respectful deportment, has this miraculous effect on the great creature man, or often it has, that his peculiar hatred returns to the reluctant admiration begetting it, and his passion for the hug falls prostrate as one of the faithful before the shrine. He is reduced to worship by fasting. For these mysteries, consult the Sublime Chapter in the Great Book, The Seventy-First on Love, wherein nothing is written, but the reader receives a lantern, a powder cask, and a pickaxe, and therewith pursues his yellow-dusking path across the rubble of preceding excavators in the solitary quarry, a yet more instructive passage than the overscrawled Seventieth, or French section, whence the chapter opens, and where hitherto the polite world has halted. The hurry of the hero is honest. We have no time to spare for mining works. He hurried to catch her alone to wreak his torches on her in a bitter semblance of bodily worship, and satiated then comfortably to spurn. He found her protected by Barkley on the stairs. That letter for me, he said. I think I told you, Willoughby, there was a letter I left with Barkley to reassure you in case of my not returning early, said Clara. It was unnecessary for her to deliver it. Indeed, but any letter, any writing of yours, and from you to me, you have it still. No, I have destroyed it. That was wrong. It could not have given you pleasure. My dear Clara, one line from you. There were but three. Barkley stood, sucking her lips. A maid in the secrets of her mistress is a purchasable maid, for if she will take a bribe with her right hand, she will with her left. All that has to be calculated is the nature and amount of the bribe. Such was the speculation indulged by Sir Willoughby. And he shrank from the thought, and declined to know more than that he was on a volcanic hillside, where a thin crust quaked over lava. This was a new condition with him, representing Clara's gain in their combat. Clara did not fear his questioning so much as he feared her candour. Mutually timid, they were of course formally polite, and no plain speaking could have told one another more distinctly that each was defensive. Clara stood pledged to the fib, packed, scaled and posted, and he had only to ask to have it, supposing that he asked with a voice not exactly peremptory. She said in her heart, It is your fault you are relentless, and you would ruin Cross Jay to punish him for devoting himself to me like the poor, thoughtless boy he is, and so I am bound in honour to do my utmost for him. The reciprocal devotedness, moreover, served two purposes. It preserved her from brooding on the humiliation of her lame flight, and fluttered back, and it quieted her mind in regard to the precipitant intimacy of her relations with Colonel Decray. Willoughby's boast of his implacable character was to blame. She was at war with him, and she was compelled to put the case in that light. Cross Jay must be shielded from one who could not spare an offender, so Colonel Decray, quite naturally, was called on for his help, and the Colonel's dexterous aid appeared to her more admirable than alarming. Nevertheless, she would not have answered a direct question falsely. She was for the fib, but not the lie. At a word, she could be disdainful of subterfuges. Her look said that. Willoughby perceived it. She had written him a letter of three lines. There were but three, and she had destroyed the letter, something perchance was repented by her. Then she had done him an injury. Between his wrath, the suspicion of an injury, and the prudence enjoyed by his abject coveting of her, he consented to be fooled for the sake of vengeance, and something besides. Well, here you are safe. I have you, said he, with courtly exaltation, and that is better than your handwriting. I have been all over the country after you. Why did you? We are not in a barbarous land, said Clare. Cross jay talks of your visiting a sick child, my love. You have changed your dress. You see. The boy declared you were going to that farm of hopners and some cottage. I met at my gates a tramping vagabond who swore to seeing you and the boy in a totally contrary direction. Did you give him money? I fancy so. Then he was paid for having seen me. Willoughby tossed his head. It might be as she suggested. Beggars are liars. But who shouted you, my dear Clare? You had not been heard of at hopners. The people have been indemnified for their pains. To pay them more would be to spoil them. You disbursed money too liberally. There was no fever in the place. Who could have anticipated such a downpour? I want to consult Miss Dale on the important theme of a dress I think of wearing at Mrs. Mount Stewart's tonight. Do. She is unearing. She has excellent taste. She dresses very simply herself. But it becomes her. She is one of the few women whom I feel I could not improve with a touch. She has judgment. He reflected and repeated his incomium. The shadow of a dimple in Clare's cheek awakened him to the idea that she had struck him somewhere, and certainly he would never again be able to put up the fiction of her jealousy of the Tisha. What then could be this girl's motive for praying to be released? The interrogation humbled him. He fled from the answer. Willoughby went in search of Decray. That sprightly intrigue had no intention to let himself be caught solace. He was undiscoverable until the assembly sounded when Clare had dropped a public word or two, and he spoke in perfect harmony with her. After that he gave his company to Willoughby for an hour at Billiards, and was well beaten. The announcement of a visit of Mrs. Mount Stewart Jenkinson took the gentleman to the drawing room, rather suspecting that something stood in the way of her dinner party. As it happened she was lamenting only the loss of one of the jewels of the party to wit the great Professor Crooklyn. Invited to meet Dr. Middleton at her table, and she related how she had driven to the station via appointment, the Professor being notoriously a bother-headed traveller, as was shown by the fact that he had missed his train in town, for he had not arrived. Nothing had been seen of him. She cited Vernon Whitford for her authority that the train had been inspected, and the platform scoured to find the Professor. And so, said she, I drove home your green man to dry him. He was wet through and chattering. The man was exactly like a skeleton wrapped in a sponge, and if he escapes a cold, he must be as invulnerable as he boasts himself. These athletes are terrible boasters. They climbed their Alps to Crow, said Clare, excited by her apprehension that Mrs. Mount Stewart would speak of having seen the Colonel near the station. There was a laugh, and Colonel Decray laughed loudly as it flashed through him that a quick-witted impressionable girl like Miss Middleton must, before his arrival at the hall, have speculated on such obdurate clay as Vernon Whitford was, with humorous despair at his uselessness to her. Glancing round, he saw Vernon standing fixed in a stair at the young lady. You heard that, Whitford, he said, and Clare's face betokening an extremer contrition than he thought was demanded. The Colonel rallied the Alpine climber for striving to be the tallest of them. Signor Excelsior, and described these conquerors of mountains pancaked on the rocks in desperate embraces, bleached here, burnt there, barked all over, all to be able to say they had been up so high, had conquered another mountain. He was extravagantly funny and self-satisfied, a conqueror of the sex, having such different rewards of enterprise. Vernon recovered in time to accept the absurdities heaped on him. Climbing peaks won't compare with hunting a wriggler, said he. His allusion to the incessant pursuit of young Cross Jay to pin him to lessons was appreciated. Clare felt the thread of the look he cast from herself to Colonel Decray. She was helpless if he chose to misjudge her. Colonel Decray did not. Cross Jay had the misfortune to enter the drawing-room, while Mrs. Mount Stewart was compassionating Vernon for his ducking in pursuit of the wriggler, which Decray likened to going through the river after his eel. And immediately there was a cross-questioning of the boy between Decray and Willoughby on the subject of his latest truancy, each gentleman trying to run him down in a palpable fib. They were succeeding brilliantly when Vernon put a stop to it by marching him off to hard labour. Mrs. Mount Stewart was led away to inspect the beautiful porcelain service, the present of Lady Bush. Porcelain again, she said to Willoughby, and would have signalled to the dainty rogue to come with them, had not Clare been leaning over to Leticia, talking to her in an attitude too graceful to be disturbed. She called his attention to it, slightly wondering at his impatience. She departed to meet an afternoon train on the chance that it would land the Professor. But tell Dr. Middleton, said she, I fear I shall have no one worthy of him. And, she added to Willoughby, as she walked out to her carriage, I shall expect you to do the great gunnery talk at table. Miss Dale keeps it up with him best, said Willoughby. She does everything best, but my dinner table is involved, and I cannot count on a young woman to talk across it. I would hire a lion of a menagerie, if one were handy, rather than have a famous scholar at my table, unsupported by another famous scholar. Dr. Middleton would ride down a duke when the wine is in him. He will terrify my poor flock. The truth is, we can't leaven him. I foresee undigested lumps of conversation, unless you devote yourself. I will devote myself, said Willoughby. I can calculate on Colonel Decray and on our porcelain beauty for any quantity of sparkles, if you promise that. They play well together. You are not to be one of the gods tonight, but a kind of Jupiter's cup bearer, due knows if you like, and Lady Bush and Lady Kalma and all your admirers shall know subsequently what you have done. You see, my alarm, I certainly did not rank Professor Crooklyn among the possibly faithless, or I never would have ventured on Dr. Middleton at my table. My dinner parties have hitherto been all successes. Naturally, I felt the greater anxiety about this one, for a single failure is all the more conspicuous. The exception is everlastingly cited. It is not so much what people say, but my own sentiments I hate to fail. However, if you are true, we may do. Whenever the great gun goes off, I will fall on my face, madam. Something of that sort, said the dame, smiling, and leaving him to reflect on the egoism of women. For the sake of her dinner party, he was to be a cipher in attendance on Dr. Middleton, and Clara and Decray were to be encouraged in sparkling together. And it happened that he particularly wished to shine. The admiration of his county made him believe he had a flavour in general society that was not yet distinguished by his bride, and he was to relinquish his opportunity in order to please Mrs. Mount Stewart. Had she been in the pay of his rival, she could not have stipulated for more. He remembered Young Cross Jay's instant quietude after struggling in his grasp, when Clara laid her hand on the boy, and from that infinitesimal circumstance he deduced the boy's perception of a differing between himself and his bride, and a transfer of Cross Jay's allegiance from him to her. She shone. She had the gift of female beauty. The boy was attracted to it. That boy must be made to feel his treason. But the point of the cogitation was that, similarly, were Clara to see her affianced shining as shiny could when lighted up by admirers, there was the probability that the sensation of her littleness would animate her to take aim at him once more, and then was the time for her chastisement. A visit to Dr. Middleton in the library satisfied him that she had not been renewing her entreaties to leave Patton. No, the miserable coquette had now her pastime and was content to stay. Deceit was in the air. He heard the sound of the shuttle of deceit without seeing it, but on the whole, mindful of what he had dreaded during the hours of her absence, he was rather flattered, witheringly flattered. What was it that he had dreaded? Nothing less than news of her running away, indeed a silly fancy, a lover's fancy. Yet it had led him so far as to suspect, after parting with Decray in the rain, that his friend and his bride were in collusion, and that he should not see them again. He had actually shouted on the rainy road the theatric called Fould, one of the stage cries which are cries of nature, particularly the cry of nature with men who have driven other men to the cry. Constantia Durham had taught him to believe women capable of explosions of treason at half a minute's notice, and strangely to prove that women are all of a pack, she had worn exactly the same placidity of countenance just before she fled, as clearer yesterday and today. No nervousness, no flashes, no twitches of the brows, but smoothness, ease of manner, and elegant cisterliness one might almost say, as if the creature had found a midway and borderline to walk on, between cruelty and kindness, and between repulsion and attraction, so that up to the verge of her breath, she did forcefully attract, repelling at one foot's length with her armour of chill serenity. Not with any disdain, with no passion, such a line as she herself pursued, she indicated to him on a neighbouring parallel. The passion in her was like a place of waves evaporated to a crust of salt. Clara's resemblance to Constantia in this instance was ominous. For him whose tragic privilege it had been to fold each of them in his arms and weigh on their eyelids and see the dissolving mist-deep in their eyes, it was horrible. Once more the comparison overcame him. Constantia he could condemn for revealing too much to his manly sight. She had met him almost half way. Well, that was complementary and sanguine, but her frankness was a baldness, often rendering it doubtful, which of the two, lady or gentleman, was the object of the chase. An extreme perplexity to his manly soul. Now Clara's inner spirit was shy, shy as a doe down those rose-tinged abysses. She allured both the lover and the hunter. Forests of heavenliness were in her flitting eyes. Here the difference of these fair women made his present fate an intolerable anguish. For if Constantia was like certain of the ladies whom he had rendered unhappy, triumphed over, as it is queely called, Clara was not. Her individuality as a woman was a thing he had to bow to. It was impossible to roll her up in the sex and bestow a kick on the travelling bundle. Hence he loved her, though she hurt him. Hence his wretchedness, and but for the hearty sincerity of his faith in the self he loved likewise and more, he would have been hangdog abject. As for Decray, Willoughby recollected his own exploits too proudly to put his trust in a man. That fatal conjunction of temper and policy had utterly thrown him off his guard, or he would not have trusted the fellow even in the first hour of his acquaintance with Clara. But he had wished her to be amused while he wove his plans to retain her at the hall, partly imagining that she would weary of his neglect, vile delusion. In truth he should have given festivities, he should have been the son of a circle, and have revealed himself to her in his more dazzling form. He went near to calling himself foolish after the tremendous reverberation of Fould had ceased to shake him. How behave! It slapped the poor gentleman's pride in the face to ask. A private talk with her would rouse her to renew her supplications. He saw them flickering behind the girl's transparent calmness. That calmness really drew its dead ivory hue from the suppression of them. Something as much he guessed, and he was not sure either of his temper or his policy if he should hear her repeat her profane request. An impulse to address himself to Vernon and discourse with him jocularly on the childish whim of a young lady, moved perhaps by some whiff of jealousy to shun the yoke, was checked. He had always taken so superior a pose with Vernon that he could not abandon it for a moment on such a subject too. Besides Vernon was one of your men who entertained the ideas about women, of fellows that have never conquered one, or only one we will say in his case, knowing his secret history, and that one no flag to boast of. Densely ignorant of the sex, his nink and poopish idealisations at other times preposterous would now be annoying. He would probably presume on Clara's inconceivable lapse of dignity to read his master a lecture. He was quite equal to a Philippic upon women's rights. This man had not been afraid to say that he talked common sense to women. He was an example of the consequence. Another result was that Vernon did not talk sense to men. Willoughby's wrath at Clara's exposure of him to his cousin dismissed the proposal of a colloquy so likely to sting his temper, and so certain to diminish his loftiness. Unwilling to speak to anybody, he was isolated, yet consciously begirt by the mysterious action going on all over the house from Clara and Decray to Laetitia and Young Cross J down to Barclay the maid. His blind sensitiveness felt as we may suppose a spider to feel when plucked from his web and sat in the centre of another's. Laetitia looked her share in the mystery. A burden was on her eyelashes. How she could have come to any suspicion of the circumstances he was unable to imagine. Her intense personal sympathy it might be. He thought so with some gentle pity for her of the paternal pat-back order of pity. She adored him by decree of Venus, and the goddess had not decreed that he should find consolation in adoring her. Nor could the temptings of prudent counsel in his head induce him to run the risk of such a total turnover as the incurring of Laetitia's pity of himself by confiding in her. He checked that impulse also, and more sovereignly. For him to be pitted by Laetitia seemed an upsetting of the scheme of Providence. Providence, otherwise the discriminating dispensation of the good things of life, had made him the beacon, per the bird. She was really the last person to whom he could unbuzz him. The idea of his being in a position that suggested his doing so thrilled him with fits of rage, and it appalled him. There appeared to be another power. The same which had humiliated him once was menacing him anew. For it could not be Providence whose favourite he had ever been. We must have a couple of powers to account for discomfort when egoism is the kernel of our religion. Benevolence had singled him for uncommon benefits. Malignancy was at work to rob him of them. And you think well of the world, do you? Of necessity he associated Clara with the darker power, pointing the knife at the quick of his pride. Still he would have raised her weeping. He would have staunched her wounds, bleeding. He had an infinite thirst for her misery, that he might ease his heart of its charitable love, or let her commit herself and be cast off. Only she must commit herself glaringly, and be cast off by the world as well. Contemplating her in the form of a discarded weed, he had a catch of the breath. She was fair. He implored his power that Horace Decray might not be the man. Why any man, an illness, fever, fire, runaway horses, personal disfigurement, a blaming were sufficient, and then a formal and noble offer on his part to keep to the engagement with the unhappy wreck. Yes, and to lead the limping thing to the altar, if she insisted. His imagination conceived it, and the world's applause besides. Nausea, together with a sense of duty to his line, extinguished that loathsome prospect of a mate, though without obscuring his chivalrous devotion to his gentleman's word of honour, which remained in his mind to compliment him permanently. On the whole he could reasonably hope to subdue her to admiration. He drank a glass of champagne at his dressing, an unaccustomed act, but, as he remarked casually to his man, Pollington, for whom the rest of the bottle was left, he had taken no horse exercise that day. Having to speak to Vernon on business, he went to the schoolroom, where he discovered Clara, beautiful in full evening attire, with her arm on young Cross Jay's shoulder, and heard that the hard taskmaster had abdued Mrs. Mount Stewart's party, and had already excused himself, intending to keep Cross Jay to the grindstone. Willoughby was for the boy, as usual, and more sparklingly than usual. Clara looked at him in some surprise. He rallied Vernon with great zest, quite silencing him when he said, I bear witness that the fellow is here at his regular hour for lessons, and were you? He laid his hand on Cross Jay, touching Clara's. You will remember what I told you, Cross Jay, said she, rising from the seat gracefully, to escape the touch, it is my command. Cross Jay frowned and puffed, but only if I'm questioned, he said. Certainly, she replied, then I question the rascal, said Willoughby, causing a start. What, sir, is your opinion of Miss Middleton in her robe of state this evening? Now the truth, Cross Jay, Clara held up a finger, and the boy could see she was playing at arch-ness, but for Willoughby it was earnest. The truth is not likely to offend you or me, either, he murmured to her. I wish him never, never on any excuse to speak anything else. I always did think her a beauty, Cross Jay growled. He hated the having to say it. There exclaimed Sir Willoughby, and bent, extending an arm to her. You have not suffered from the truth, my Clara? Her answer was, I was thinking how he might suffer if he were taught to tell the reverse. Oh, for a fair lady. That is the worst of teaching, Willoughby. We'll leave it to the fellow's instinct, he has our blood in him. I could convince you, though, if I might cite circumstances, yes, but yes, and yes again. The entire truth cannot invariably be told. I ventured to say, it should not. You would pardon it for the fair lady. Applaud, my love. He squeezed the hand within his arm, contemplating her. She was arrayed in a voluminous robe of pale blue silk, vaporous with trimmings of light gauze of the same hue, gauze de chomberie, matching her fair hair and clear skin for the complete overthrow of less inflammable men than Willoughby. Clara sighed he. If so, it would really be generous, she said, though the teaching be bad. I fancy I can be generous. Do we ever know? He turned his head to Vernon, issuing brief succinct instructions for letters to be written and drew her into the hall, saying, No. There are people who do not know themselves, and as they are the majority, they manufacture the axioms. And it is assumed that we have to swallow them. I may observe that I think I know. I decline to be engulfed in those majorities. Among them, but not of them. I know this, that my aim in life is to be generous. Is it not an impulse or disposition rather than an aim? So much I know, pursued Willoughby, refusing to be tripped, but she rang discordantly in his ear. His fancy that he could be generous, and his aim at being generous, had met with no response. I have given proofs, he said briefly, to drop a subject upon which he was not permitted to dilate. And he murmured, People acquainted with me. She was asked if she expected him to boast of generous deeds. From childhood, she heard him mutter. And she said to herself, Release me, and you shall be everything. The unhappy gentleman ate as he talked. For with men, and with hosts of women, to whom he was indifferent, never did he converse in this shambling, third-rate, sheepish manner, devoid of all highness of tone, and the proper precision of an authority. He was unable to fathom the cause of it, but Clara imposed it on him, and only in anger could he throw it off. The temptation to an outburst that would flatter him with the sound of his authoritative voice, had to be resisted on a night when he must be composed, if he intended to shine. So he merely mentioned Lady Bush's present to gratify spleen by preparing the ground for dissension, and prudently acquiesced in her anticipated slipperiness. She would rather not look at it now, she said. Not now, very well, said he. His immediate deference made her regretful. There is hardly time, Willoughby. My dear, we shall have to express our thanks to her. I cannot. His arm contracted sharply. He was obliged to be silent. Dr. Middleton, Letitia, and the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, joining them in the hall, found two figures linked together in a shadowy indication of halves that have fallen apart, and hang on the last thread of junction. Willoughby retained her hand on his arm. He held to it as the symbol of their alliance, and oppressed the girl's nerves by contact, with a frame laboring for breath. The craie looked on them from overhead. The carriages were at the door, and Willoughby said, Where's Horace? I suppose he's taking a final shot at his book of anecdotes and neat collection of Irish-isms. No, replied the Colonel, descending. That's a spring, works of itself, and has discovered the secret of continuous motion, moors the pity, unless you'll be pleased to make it of use to science. He gave a laugh of good humour. Your laugh, Horace, is a capital comment on your wit. Willoughby said it with the air of one who has flicked a whip. There's a genial advertisement of a vacancy, said Decray. Precisely, three parts auctioneer to one for the property. Oh, if you have a musical quack, score it a point in his favour, Willoughby, though you don't swallow his drug. If he means to be musical, let him keep time. Am I late? said Decray to the ladies, proving himself an adept in the art of being gracefully vanquished, and so winning tender hearts. Willoughby had refreshed himself. At the back of his mind there was a suspicion that his adversary would not have yielded so flatly, without an assurance of practically triumphing, secretly getting the better of him. And it filled him with venom for a further bout at the next opportunity. But as he had been sarcastic and mordant, he had shown Clara what he could do in a way of speaking different from the lamentable cooing stuff, gasps and feeble protestations, to which he knew not how. She reduced him. Sharing the opinion of his race, that blunt personalities or the pugilistic form administered directly on the salient features are exhibitions of mastery in such encounters, he felt strong and solid, eager for the successes of the evening. Decray was in the first carriage as escort to the ladies Eleanor and Isabelle. Willoughby, with Clara, Leticia and Dr Middleton followed. All silent, for the reverent doctor was ostensibly pondering, and Willoughby was damped a little when he unlocked his mouth to say, And yet I have not observed that Colonel Decray is anything of a Celtiberian Ignatius, meriting fustigation for an untimely display of well-witened teeth, sir. Quiquid est, ubicunque est, quod cunque agit renidet, ta? A morbus neither charming nor a bane to the general eye, however consolatory to the actor. But this gentleman does not offend so, or I am so strangely prepossessed in his favour, as to be an incompetent witness. Dr Middleton's persistent ha, a, upon an honest frown of inquiry, plucked an answer out of Willoughby that was meant to be humorously scornful and soon became apologetic under the doctor's interrogatively grasping gaze. These Irishmen, Willoughby said, will play the professional jester, as if it were an office they were born to. We must play critic now and then, otherwise we should have them deluging us with their Joe Millerisms. With their own Millerisms, you would say perhaps? Willoughby did his duty to the joke, but the reverent doctor, though he wore the paternal smile of a man that has begotten hilarity, was not perfectly propitiated and pursued, nor to my apprehension is the man's laugh, the comment on his wit, unchallengeably new. Instances of cousinship germane to the phrase will recur to you, but it has to be noted that it was a phrase of assault, it was ostentatiously battery, and I would venture to remind you, friend, that among the elect, considering that it is as fatally facile to spring the laugh upon a man as to deprive him of his life, considering that we have only to condescend to the weapon, and that the more popular, necessarily the more murderous that weapon is, among the elect, to which it is your distinction to aspire to belong, the rule holds to abstain from any employment of the obvious, the percop, and likewise, for your own sake, from the epitonic, the overstrained, for if the former, by readily assimilating with the understandings of your audience, are empowered to commit assassination on your victim, the latter come under the charge of unseenliness, in as much as they are a description of public suicide. Assuming then, manslaughter to be your pastime, and harry-carrie not to be your bent, the phrase, to escape criminality, must rise in you as you would have it fall on him, ex improviso. Am I right? I am in the habit of thinking it impossible, sir, that you could be in error, said Willoughby. Dr Middleton left it the more emphatic, by saying nothing further. Both his daughter and Miss Dale, who had disapproved the waspish snap at Colonel Decray, were in wonderment of the art of speech which could so soothingly inform a gentleman that his behaviour had not been gentlemanly. Willoughby was damped by what he comprehended of it for a few minutes. In proportion, as he realised an evening with his ancient admirers, he was restored, and he began to marvel greatly at his folly in not giving banquets and balls, instead of making a solitude about himself and his bride. For solitude, thought he, is good for a man, the man being a creature consumed by passion. Woman's love, on the contrary, will only be nourished by the reflex light she catches of you in the eyes of others, she having no passion of her own, but simply an instinct driving her to attach herself to whatsoever is most largely admired, most shining. So thinking, he determined to change his course of conduct, and he was happier. In the first gush of our wisdom, drawn directly from experience, there is a mental intoxication that cancels the old world, and establishes a new one, not allowing us to ask whether it is too late. And of CHAPTER XXIX. Treating of the Dinner Party at Mrs. Mount Stewart's Jenkinsons Vernon and young Cross Jay had tolerably steady work together for a couple of hours, varied by the arrival of a plate of meat on a tray for the master, and some interrogations put to him from time to time by the boy in reference to Miss Middleton. Cross Jay made the discovery that if he abstained from alluding to Miss Middleton's beauty, he might water his dusty path with her name nearly as much as he liked, mention of her beauty incurred a reprimand. On the first occasion his master was wistful. Isn't she glorious? Cross Jay fancied he had started a sovereign receipt for blessed deviations. He tried it again, but pedagogued thunder broke over his head. Yes, only I can't understand what she means, Mr. Whitford. He excused himself. First, I was not to tell. I know I wasn't, because she said so. She quite as good as said so. Her last words were, mind, Cross Jay, you know nothing about me. When I stuck to that beast of a tramp, who's a walking moral, and gets money out of people by snuffling it. Attend to your lessoner, you'll be one, said Vernon. Yes, but Mr. Whitford, now I am to tell. I'm to answer straight out to every question. Miss Middleton is anxious that you should be truthful. Yes, but in the morning she told me not to tell. She was in a hurry. She hasn't on her conscience that you may have misunderstood her, and she wishes you never to be guilty of an untruth, least of all on her account. Cross Jay committed an unspoken resolution to the air in a violent sigh. Ah, said he, if I were sure. Do as she bids you, my boy. But I don't know what it is she wants. Hold to her last words to you. So I do. If she told me to run till I dropped, on I'd go. She told you to study your lessons. Do that. Cross Jay buckled to his book, invigorated by an imagination of his liege lady on the page. After a studious interval, until the impression of his lady had subsided, he resumed. She's so funny. She's just like a girl. And then she's a lady, too. She's my idea of a princess. And Colonel Decray wasn't he taught dancing. When he says something funny, he ducks and seems to be setting to his partner. I should like to be as clever as her father. That is a clever man. I daresay Colonel Decray will dance with her tonight. I wish I was there. It's a dinner party, not a dance, Vernon forced himself to say, to dispel that ugly vision. Isn't it, sir? I thought they danced after dinner parties, Mr. Whitford. Have you ever seen her run? Vernon pointed him to his task. They were silent for a lengthened period. But does Miss Middleton mean to speak out if Sir Willoughby asks me? Said Cross J. Certainly. You needn't make much of it, all's plain and simple. But I'm positive, Mr. Whitford, that he wasn't to hear of her going to the post office with me before breakfast. And how did Colonel Decray find her and bring her back with that old flitch? He's a man and can go where he pleases, and I'd have found her, too, give me the chance. You know, I'm fine of Miss Dale, but she—I'm very fond of her, but you can't think she's a girl as well, and about Miss Dale when she says a thing, there it is, clear, but Miss Middleton has a lot of meanings. Never mind. I go by what's inside, and I'm pretty sure to please her. Take your chin off your hand, and your elbow off the book, and fix yourself, said Vernon, wrestling with the seduction of Cross J's idolatry, for Miss Middleton's appearance had been preternaturally sweet on her departure, and the next pleasure to seeing her was hearing of her from the lips of this passionate young poet. Remember that you please her by speaking truth, Vernon added, and laid himself open to questions upon the truth, by which he learned, with a perplexed sense of envy and sympathy, that the boy's idea of truth strongly approximated to his conception of what should be agreeable to Miss Middleton. He was lonely, bereft of the bard, when he had tucked Cross J up in his bed and left him. Books he could not read, thoughts were disturbing. A seat in the library and a stupid stare helped to pass the hours, and but for the spot of sadness moving meditation in spite of his effort to stun himself, he would have borne a happy resemblance to an idiot in the sun. He had verily no command of his reason. She was too beautiful, whatever she did was best. That was the refrain of the fountain song in him. The burden being her whims, variations, inconsistencies, wiles, her tremblings between good and naughty, that might be stamped to noble or to terrible, her sincereness, her duplicity, her courage, cowardice, possibilities for heroism and for treachery. By dint of dwelling on the theme, he magnified the young lady to extraordinary stature, and he had sense enough to own that her character was yet liquid in the mould, and that she was a creature of only naturally youthful wildness provoked to freakishness by the ordeal of a situation shrewd as any that can happen to her sex in civilized life. But he was compelled to think of her extravagantly, and he leaned a little to the discrediting of her, because her actual image unmanned him and was unbearable. And to say at the end of it, she is too beautiful, whatever she does is best, smoothed away the wrong he did her. Had it been in his power, he would have thought of her in the abstract, the stage contiguous to that which he adopted. But the attempt was luckless, the Staggerite would have faded in it. What philosopher could have set down that face of sun and breeze and nymph in shadow as a point in a problem? The library door was opened at midnight by Miss Dale. She dosed it quietly. You were not working, Mr. Whitford? I fancied you would wish to hear of the evening. Professor Crooklyn arrived after all. Mrs. Mount Stewart is bewildered. She said she expected you, and that you did not excuse yourself to her, and she cannot comprehend, etc. That is to say, she chooses bewilderment to indulge in the exclamatory. She must be very much annoyed. The professor did come by the train she drove to meet. I thought it probable, said Vernon. He had to remain a couple of hours at the railway in. No conveyance was to be found for him. He thinks he has caught a cold, and cannot stifle his fretfulness about it. He may be as learned as Dr. Middleton. He has not the same happy constitution. Nothing more unfortunate could have occurred. He spoiled the party. Mrs. Mount Stewart tried petting him, which drew attention to him, and put us all in his key for several awkward minutes, more than once. She lost her head. She was unlike herself. I may be presumptuous in criticizing her. But should not the President of a dinner table treat it like a battlefield, and let the guest that sinks descend, and not allow the voice of a discordant, however illustrious, to rule it? Of course. It is when I see failures that I fancy I could manage so well. Comparison is prudently reserved in the other cases. I am a daring critic, no doubt, because I know I shall never be tried by experiment. I have no ambition to be tried. She did not notice a smile of Vernon's, and continued, Mrs. Mount Stewart gave him the lead upon any subject he chose. I thought the Professor never would have ceased talking of a young lady who had been at the inn before him, drinking hot brandy and water with a gentleman. How did he hear of that? cried Vernon, roused by the malignity of the faiths. From the landlady trying to comfort him, and a story of her lending shoes and stockings while those of the young lady were drying. He has the dreadful snappish, humorous way of recounting which impresses it. The table took up the subject of this remarkable young lady, and whether she was a lady of the neighborhood, and who she could be that went broad on foot in heavy rain. It was painful to me. I knew enough to be sure of who she was. Did she betray it? No. Did Willoughby look at her? Without suspicion, then. Then? Colonel Decret was diverting us, and he was very amusing. Mrs. Mount Stewart told him afterward that he ought to be paid salvage for saving the wreck of her party. Sir Willoughby was a little too cynical. He talked well. What he said was good, but it was not good-humored. He has not the reckless indifference of Colonel Decret uttering nonsense that amusement may come of it. And in the drawing-room he lost such gaiety as he had. I was close to Mrs. Mount Stewart when Professor Crooklyn approached her and spoken my hearing of that gentleman and that young lady. They were, you could see by his nods, Colonel Decret and Miss Middleton. And she at once mentioned it to Willoughby? Colonel Decret gave her no chance, if she sought it. He courted her profusely. Behind his rattle he must have brains. It ran in all directions to entertain her in her circle. Willoughby knows nothing? I cannot judge. He stood with Mrs. Mount Stewart a minute as we were taking leave. She looked strange. I heard her say, the rogue. He laughed. She lifted her shoulders. He scarcely opened his mouth on the way home. The thing must run its course, Burnon said, with the philosophical error which his desperation rendered decorous. Willoughby deserves it. A man of full growth ought to know that nothing on earth tempts Providence so much as the binding of a young woman against her will. Those two are mutually attracted. They're both. They meet, and the mischief's done. Both are bright. He can persuade with a word. Another might discourse like an angel, and it would be useless. I said everything I could think of, to no purpose. And so it is. There are those attractions. Just as, with her, Willoughby is the reverse. He repels. I'm in about the same predicament, or should be if she were plaited to me. That is, for the length of five minutes, about the space of time I should require for the formality of handing her back her freedom. How a sane man can imagine a girl like that. But if she has changed, she has changed. You can't conciliate with a withered affection. This detaining her, and tricking, and not listening, only increases her aversion. She learns the art in turn. Here she is, detained by fresh plots to keep Dr. Middleton at the hall. That's true, is it not? He saw that it was. No, she's not to blame. She has told him her mind. He won't listen. The question, then, is whether she keeps to her word, or breaks it. It's a dispute between a conventional idea of obligation and an injury to her nature. Which is the more dishonorable thing to do? Why, you and I see in a moment that her feelings guide her best. It's one of the few cases in which nature may be consulted like an oracle. Is she so sure of her nature? said Miss Dale. You may doubt it. I do not. I am surprised at her coming back. Decray is a man of the world, and advised it, I suppose. He—well, I never had the persuasive tongue, and my failing doesn't count for much. But the suddenness of the intimacy. The disaster is rather famous at first sight. He came in a fortunate hour, for him—a pygmies a giant if he can manage to arrive in season. Did you not notice that there was danger at their second or third glance? You counseled me to hang on here. Where the amount of good I do in proportion to what I have to endure is microscopic. It was against your wishes, I know. Said Letitia, when the words were out she feared that they were tentative. Her delicacies shrank from even seeming to sound him in relation to a situation so delicate as Miss Middleton's. The same sentiment guarded him from betraying himself, and he said, partly against, we both foresaw the possible. Because, like most prophets, we knew a little more of circumstances enabling us to see the fatal. A pygmy would have served, but Decray is a handsome, intelligent, pleasant fellow. Sir Willoughby's friend? Well, in these affairs. A great deal must be charged on the goddess. That is really pagan fatalism. Our modern word for it is nature. Science condescends to speak of natural selection. Look at these. They are both graceful and winning and witty, bright to mind and eye, made for one another, as country people say. I can't blame him. Besides, we don't know that he's guilty. We're quite in the dark, except that we're certain now how it must end. If the chance should occur to you of giving Willoughby a word of counsel, it may, you might, without irritating him as my knowledge of his plight does, hint at your eyes being open. His insane dread of a detective world makes him artificially blind. As soon as he fancies himself seen, he sets to work spinning a web, and he discerns nothing else. It's generally a clever kind of web, but if it's a tangle to others, it's the same to him, and a veil as well. He is preparing the catastrophe. He forces the issue. Tell him of her extreme desire to depart. Treat her as mad to soothe him. Otherwise, one morning, he will wake a second time. It is perfectly certain, and the second time, it will be entirely his own fault. Inspire him with some philosophy. I have none. I, if I thought so, I would say you have better. There are two kinds of philosophy, mine and yours. Mine comes of coldness, yours of devotion. He is unlikely to choose me for his confidant. Vernon meditated. One can never quite guess what he will do, from never knowing the heat of the center in him which precipitates his actions. He has a great art of concealment, as to me, as you perceive. My views are too philosophical to let me be of use to any of them. I blame only the one who holds to the bond. The sooner I am gone, in fact, I cannot stay on. So Dr. Middleton and the Professor did not strike fire together? Dr. Middleton was ready, and pursued him, but Professor Crooklyn insisted on shivering. His line of blank verse, a railway in, became pathetic in repetition. He must have suffered. Somebody has to. Why the innocent? He arrives, I propose. But remember that Fridolin sometimes contrives to escape and have the guilty scorched. The Professor would not have suffered if he had missed his train, as he appears to be in the habit of doing. Thus his unaccustomed good fortune was the cause of his bad. You saw him on the platform? I am unacquainted with the Professor. I had to get Mrs. Mount Steward out of the way. She says she described him to you, complexion of a sweet bread, consistency of a canal, gray and like a saint without his dish behind the head. Her descriptions are strikingly accurate, but she forgot to sketch his back. And all that I saw was a narrow sloping back and a broad hat resting the brim on it. My report to her spoke of an old gentleman of dark complexion as the only traveler on the platform. She has faith in the efficiency of her descriptive powers, and so she was willing to drive off immediately. The intention was a start to London. Colonel de Cray came up and affected in five minutes what I could not compass in thirty. But you saw Colonel de Cray pass you? My work was done. I should have been an intruder. Besides, I was acting wet-jacket with Mrs. Mount Steward to get her to drive off fast. Or she might have jumped out in search of her Professor herself. She says you were lean as a fork with the wind whistling through the prongs. You see how easy it is to deceive one who is an artist in phrases. Avoid them, Miss Dale. They dazzle the penetration of the composer. That is why people of ability, like Mrs. Mount Steward, see so little. They are so bent on describing brilliantly. However, she is kind and charitable at heart. I have been considering tonight that, to cut this knot as it is now, Miss Middleton might do worse than speak straight out to Mrs. Mount Steward. No one else would have such influence with Willoughby. The simple fact of Mrs. Mount Steward's knowing of it would be almost enough. But courage would be required for that. Good night, Miss Dale. Good night, Mr. Whitford. You pardon me for disturbing you? Vernon pressed her hand reassuringly. He had but to look at her and review her history to think his cousin Willoughby punished by it just retribution. Indeed, for any maltreatment of the dear boy love, by man or by woman, coming under your cognizance, you, if you be of common soundness, shall behold the retributive blow struck in your time. Miss Dale retired, thinking how she and Vernon were to one another in the toneless condition they had achieved through sorrow. He succeeded in masking himself from her, owing to her awe of the circumstances. She reproached herself for not having the same devotion to the cold idea of duty as he had, and though it provoked inquiry, she would not stop to ask why he had left Miss Middleton a prey to the sparkling curtainle. It seemed a proof of the philosophy he preached. As she was passing by Young Cross Jays' bedroom door, a face appeared. Sir Willoughby slowly emerged and presented himself in his full length, beseeching her to banish alarm. He said in a hushed voice, with a face qualified to create sentiment. Are you tired? Sleepy? said he. She protested that she was not. She intended to read for an hour. He begged to have the hour dedicated to him. I shall be relieved by conversing with a friend. No subterfuge crossed her mind. She thought his midnight visit to the boy's bedside a pretty feature in him. She was full of pity, too. She yielded to the strange request, feeling that it did not become an old woman to attach importance even to the public discovery of midnight interviews involving herself as one, and feeling also that she was being treated as an old friend in the form of a very old woman. Her mind was bent on arresting any recurrence to the project she had so frequently outlined in the tongue of Innuendo, of which, because of her repeated tremblings under it, she thought him a master. He conducted her along the corridor to the private sitting-room of the ladies Eleonora and Isabelle. Deceit, he said, while lighting the candles on the mantelpiece. She was earnestly compassionate, and a word that could not relate to her personal destinies refreshed her by displacing her apprehensive antagonism and giving pity free play.