 CHAPTER 23 OF THE AGUIST This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, reading by Lars Rolander. THE AGUIST, A COMEDY IN NARRATIVE by George Meredith CHAPTER 23 TREATS OF THE JUNIOR OF TEMPER AND POLICY Sir Willoughby, meanwhile, was on a line of conducts, shooting his appreciation of his duty to himself. He had eluded himself with the simple notion that good fruit would come of the union of temper and policy. No delusion is older, none apparently so promising, both parties being eager for the alliance, yet the theorists upon human nature will say they are obviously of adverse disposition. And this is true, inasmuch as neither of them will submit to the joke of an established union. As soon as they have done their mischief, they set to work tugging for a divorce, but they have attractions, the one for the other, which precipitate them to embrace whenever they meet in a breast. Each is earnest with the owner of it to get him to officiate forthwith as wedding priest. And here is the reason, temper, to warrant its appearance, desires to be thought as deliberately as policy, and policy, the sooner to prove its shrewdness, is impatient for the quick blood of temper. It will be well for men to resolve at the first approaches of the amorous but fickle pair upon interdicting even an accidental temporary junction. For the astonishing sweetness of the couple, when no more than the ghosts of them have come together, in a projecting mind is an intoxication beyond fermented grape juice, or a witch's bruise. And under the guise of active wits, they will lead us to the parental meditation of antics compared with which Appagian Saturnalia were less impious in the sight of sanity. This is full-mouthed language, but on our studious way through any human career we are subject to fits of moral elevation. The theme inspires it, and the sage reciting in every civilized bosom approves it. Decide at the outset that temper is fatal to policy. Hold them with both hands in division. One might add, be doubtful of your policy and repress your temper. It would be to suppose you wise. You can, however, by incorporating two or three captains of the great army of truisms bequeathed to us by ancient wisdom, fix in your service those veteran old standfasts to check you. They will not be serviceless in their admonitions to your understanding, and they will so contrive to reconcile with it the natural caperings of the wayward young sprig conduct, that the latter, who commonly learns to walk upright and straight from nothing softer than wraps of a bludgeon on his crown, shall food soberly, appearing at least wary of dangerous corners. Now Willoughby had not to be taught that temper is fatal to policy. He was beginning to see, in addition, that the temper he encouraged was particularly obnoxious to the policy he adopted. And although his purpose in mounting horse after yesterday, frowning on his pride was definite, and might be deemed sagacious, he bemoaned already the fatality pushing him even farther from her in chase of a satisfaction impossible to grasp. But the bare fact that her behavior demanded a line of policy crossed the grain of his temper, it was very offensive. Considering that she wounded him severely, her reversal of their proper parts, by taking the part belonging to him, and requiring his watchfulness, and the careful dealings he was accustomed to expect from others, and had a right to exact of her, was injuriously unjust. The feelings of a man hereditarily sensitive to property accused her of a trespassing imprudence, and knowing himself, by testimony of his household, his tenants, and the neighborhood, and the world as well, amable when he received his dues, he contemplated her with an air of stiff-backed ill treatment, not devoid of a certain sanctification of martyrdom. His bitterest enemy would hardly declare that it was he who was in the wrong. Claire herself had never been audacious enough to say that. This taste of his person was inconceivable to the favorite of society. The capricious creature probably wanted a whipping to bring her to the understanding of the principle called mastery, which is in man. But was he administering it? If he retained a hold on her, he could undoubtedly apply the scorch at Lesher. Any kind of scorch. He could shun her, look on her frigidly, unbend to her to find a warmer place for sarcasm, pittingly smile, ridicule, pay court elsewhere. He could do these things if he retained a hold on her, and he could do them well because of the faith he had in his renowned amiability. For in doing them, he could feel that he was other than he seemed. And his own cordial nature was there to comfort him while he bestowed punishment. Cordial indeed! The chills he endured were flung from the world. His heart was in that fiction. Half the hearts now beating have a mild form of it to keep them merry, and the chastisement he decided in flick was really no more than righteous vengeance for an offended goodness of heart. Clara figuratively, absolutely perhaps, on her knees, he would raise her and forgive her. He yearned for the situation to let her understand how little she had known him. It would be worth the pain she had dealt to pour forth the stream of re-established confidences, to paint himself to her as he was, as he was in the spirit, not as he was to the world. Though the world had reason to do him honor. First, however, she would have to be humbled. Something whispered that his hold on her was lost. In such case, every blow he struck would set her flying farther, till the breach between them would be past bridging. Determination not to let her go was the best finish to this perpetually revolving round which went like the same old wheel planks of a water mill in his head at a review of the injury he sustained. He had come to it before, and he came to it again. There was his vengeance. It melted him. She was so sweet. She shone for him like the sunny breeze on water. Thinking of her caused a catch of his breath. The dreadful young woman had a keener edge for the senses of men than sovereign beauty. It would be madness to let her go. She affected him like an outlook on the great patern estate after an absence when his welcoming flag wept for pride above patern hall. It would be treason to let her go. It would be cruelty to her. He was bound to reflect that she was of tender age, and the foolishness of the wretch was excusable to extreme youth. We toss away a flower that we are tired of smelling and do not wish to carry, but the rose, young woman, is not cast off with impunity. A fiend in shape of man is always behind us to appropriate her. He that touches that rejected thing is larcenous. Willoughby had been sensible of it in the person of Letitia. And by all the more that Clara's charm succeeded the faded creatures, he felt it now. Ten thousand furies thickened about him at a thought of her lying by the roadside without his having crushed all bloom and odor out of her, which might tempt even the curiosity of the fiend, man. On the other hand, supposing her to be there untouched, universally declined by the sniffling, Sir Jasho's dogfing, a miserable spinster for years, he could conceive notions of his remorse. A soft remorse may be adopted as an agreeable sensation within view of the wasted penitent whom we have struck a trifle too hard. Seeing her penitent, he certainly would be willing to surround her with little offices of compromising kindness. It would depend on her age. Supposing her still youngish, there might be captivating passages between them as thus in a style not unfamiliar. And was it my fault, my poor girl? Am I to blame that you have passed a lonely, unloved youth? No, Willoughby. The irreparable errors was mine. The blame is mine, mine only. I live to repent it. I do not seek, for I have not deserved your pardon. Had I it, I should need my own self-esteem to presume, to clasp it to a bosom ever unworthy of you. I may have been impatient, Clara. We are human. Never be it mine to accuse one of whom I laid so heavy a weight of forbearance. Still, my old love, for I'm merely quoting history, naming you so. I cannot have been perfectly blameless. To me you were, and are. Clara. Willoughby. Must I recognize the bitter truth that we two, once nearly one, so nearly one, are eternally separated? I have envisaged it. My friend, I may call you friend. You have ever been my friend, my best friend. Oh, that eyes had been mine to know the friend I had. Willoughby, in the darkness of night, and during days that were a snite to my soul, I have seen the inexorable finger pointing my solitary way through the wilderness from a paradise, forfeited by my most willful, my wanton sin. We have met. It is more than I have merited. We part in mercy. Let it be forever. Oh, terrible word, coined by the passions of our youth, it comes to us for our soul riches when we are bankrupt of earthly treasures, and is the passport given by abdication unto woe that praise to quit this probationary swear. Willoughby, we part. It is better so. Clara, one. One only. One last. One holy kiss. If these poor lips at once were sweet to you. The kiss to continue the language of the imaginative composition of this time. Favourite readings in which had inspired Sir Willoughby with a colloquy so pathetic was imprinted. Aye, she had the kiss, and no mean one. It was intended to swallow every vestige of dwindling attractiveness out of her, and there was a bit of scandal springing of it in the background that satisfactorily settled her business, and left her enshrined in memory, a divine recollection to him, as his popular romances would say, and have said for years. Unhappily, the fancied salute of her lips encircled him with a breathing, Clara. She rust up from vacancy like a wind summoned to wreck a stately vessel. His reverie had thrown him into severe commotion. The slave of a passion thinks in a ring as hers run. He will cease where he began. Her sweetness had set him off, and he whirled back to her sweetness, and that being incalculable and he insatiable. You have the picture of his torments when you consider that her behaviour made her as a cloud to him. Riding slack, horse and man, in the likeness of those two adjoined homeward from the Myrie Hunt, the horse pricked his ears, and Willoughby looked down from his road along the bills on the race headed by John Cross Jay with a short start over Aspenwell Common to the Fort. There was no mistaking who they were, though they were well nigh a mile distant below. He noticed that they did not overtake the boy. They drew rain at the fort, talking not simply face to face, but face in face. Willoughby's novel feeling of he knew not what drew them up to him, enabling him to fancy them bathing in one another's eyes. Then she sprang through the fort, Decray following, but not close after. And why not close? She had flicked him with one of her preemptorily saucy speeches, when she was bowled with a gallop. They were not unknown to Willoughby. They signified intimacy. Last night he had proposed to Decray to take Miss Middleton for a ride the next afternoon. It never came to his mind then that he and his friend had formerly been rivals. He wished Clara to be amused. Policy dictated that every thread should be used to attach her to a residence at the hall, until he could command his temper to talk to her calmly and overwhelm her. As any man in earnest, with command of temper and a point of vantage, may be sure to wellm a young woman. Policy, adulterated by temper, yet policy it was, that had sent him on his errand in the early morning to beat about for a house and garden suitable to Dr. Middleton within a circuit of five, six, or seven miles of pattern hall. If the Reverend Doctor liked the house and took it, and Willoughby had seen the place to suit him, the neighborhood would be a chain upon Clara. And if the house did not please a gentleman rather hard to please, except in a venerable wine, an excuse would have been started for his visiting other houses, and he had that response to his importunate daughter, that he believed an excellent house was on view. Dr. Middleton had been prepared by numerous hints to meet Clara's black misreading of a lover's quarrel, so that everything looked full of promise as far as Willoughby's exercise of policy went. But the strange pang traversing him now convicted him of a large adulteration of profitless temper with it. The loyalty of Decray to a friend, where a woman walked in the drama, was notorious. It was there, and the most flexible thing it was, and it soon resembled reason manipulated by the Sophists. Not to have reckoned on his peculiar loyalty was proof of the blindness cast on us by temper. And Decray had an Irish tongue, and he had it under control, so that he could talk good sense and airy nonsense at discretion. The strongest overboiling of English Puritan contempt of a gabbler would not stop women from liking it. Evidently Clara did like it, and Willoughby thundered on her sex. Unto such brainless things as these do we, under the irony of circumstances, confide our honor. For he was no gabbler. He remembered having rattled in earlier days. He had rattled with an object to gain, desiring to be taken for an easy, careless, vivacious, charming fellow. As any young gentleman may be, who gaily wears the golden dish of fifty thousand pounds per annum, nailed to the back of his very saintly, young pet. The growth of the critical spirit in him, however, had informed him that slang had been a principal component of his rattling. And as he justly supposed it, a betraying art for his race, and for him. He passed through the prim and the joining faces of effected indifference to the pine puritanism of a leading contempt of gabblers. They snare women, you see, girls. How despicable! The host of girls, at least that girl below there. Married women understood him. Widows did. He placed an exceedingly handsome and flattering young widow of his acquaintance, Lady Mary Lewison, beside Clara, for a comparison. Involuntarily, and at once, in a flash, in despite of him, he would rather it had been otherwise. And, in despite of Lady Mary's high birth and connections as well, the silver luster of the maid sickled the poor widow. The effect of the luckless comparison was to produce an image of surpassingness in the features of Clara that gave him the final or mace blow. Jealousy invaded him. He had hitherto been free of it, regarding jealousy as a foreign devil, the accursed familiar of the vulgar. Luckless fellows might be victims of the disease. He was not. And neither Captain Oxford, nor Vernon, nor Decray, nor any of his compares had given him one shrewd pinch. The woman had not the man, and she in quite a different fashion from his present wallowing anguish. She had never pulled him to earth's level, where jealousy ignores the grasses. He had boasted himself above the humiliating visitation. If that had been the case, we should not have needed to trouble ourselves much about him. A run or two with a pack of imps would have satisfied us. But he desired Clara Middleton, manfully enough, at an intimation of revelry to be jealous. In a minute the foreign devil had him. He was flame, flaming verdigree. One might almost dare to say, for an exact illustration, such was actually the colour, but accept it as unsaid. Remember the poets upon jealousy. It is to be haunted in the heaven of two by a third, preceded or succeeded, therefore surrounded, embraced, bugged by this infernal third. It is Slav's bed of burning marl to see and taste the withering third in the bosom of sweetness, to be dragged through the past and find the fair Eden of its sulphurus, to be dragged to the gates of the future and glory to behold them blunt, to adore the bitter creature trebly, and with treble power to clutch her by the windpipe. It is to be cheated, derided, shamed and abject and supplicating, and consciously demonical in treacherousness, and victoriously self-justified in revenge. And still there is no change in what men feel, though in what they do the modern may be judicious. You know, the many paintings of man transformed to raging beasts by the curse, and this the fierest trial of our eggwisp worked in the eggwisp to produce division of himself from himself. A concentration of his thoughts upon another object, still himself, but in another breast, which had to be looked at and into for the discovery of him. By the gaping jaw-chasm of his greed, we may gather comprehension of his insatiate force of jealousy. Let her go? Not, though he were to become a mark of public scorn in strangling her with a joke. His concentration was marvellous, unused to the exercise of imaginative powers. He nevertheless conjured her before him visually till his eyeballs ached. He saw none but Clara, hated none, loved none, save the intolerable woman. What logic was in him deduced her to be individual and most distinctive from the circumstance that only she had ever wrought these pangs. She had made him ready for them, as we know. An idea of Decray being no stranger to her when he arrived at the hall dashed him at Decray for a second. It might be or might not be that they had a secret. Clara was the spell. So prodigiously did he love and hate that he had no permanent sense except for her. The soul of him writh under her eyes at one moment, and the next it closed on her without mercy. She was his possession escaping, his own gliding away to the third. There would be pangs for him too, that third. Standing at the altar to see her fast bound, soul and body to another would be good roasting fire. It would be good roasting fire for her too, should she be averse. To conceive her aversion was to burn her and devour her. She would then be his, what say you, burned and devoured. Rivals would vanish then. Her reluctance to espouse the man she was plighted to would cease to be uttered, cease to be felt. At last he believed in her reluctance. All that had been wanted to bring him to the belief was the scene on the common. Such a mere spark, or an imagined spark, but the presence of the third was necessary. Otherwise he would have had to suppose himself personally distasteful. Women have us back to the conditions of primitive man, or they shoot us higher than the topmost star. But it is as we please. Let them tell us what we are to them. For us they are our back and front of life. The poet's lesbia, the poet's Beatrice, ours is the choice, and were it proved that some of the bright things are in the pay of darkness, with the stamp of his coin on their palms, and that some are the very angels we hear sung of, not the less might we say that they find us out. They have us by our leanings. They are to us what we hold of best or worst within. By their state is our civilization judged. And if it is hugely animal still, that is because primitive men abound and will have their pasture. Since the lead is ours, the leaders must bow their heads to the sentence. Jealousy of a woman is the primitive egoism seeking to refine in a blood gone to savagery under apprehension of an invasion of rights. It is in action the tiger threatened by a rifle when his paw is rigid on quick flesh. He tears the flesh for rage at the intruder. The eggwist, who is our original male in giant form, had no bleeding victim beneath his paw. But there was the sex to mangle. Much as he prefers the well-behaved among women, who can worship and fawn, and in whom terror can be inspired, in his wrath he would make of Beatrice a lesbia quadrantaria. Let women tell us of their side of the battle. We are not so much the test of the eggwist in them as they to us. Movements of similarity shown in crowned and un-deademed ladies of intrepid independence suggest the vocational capacity to be like men when it is given to them to hunt. At present they fly, and there is the difference. Our manner of the chase informs them of the creature we are. Dimly as young women are informed, they have a youthful ardour of detestation that renders them less tolerant of the eggwist than their perceptive elder sisters. What they do perceive, however, they have a redoubtable grasp of, and Clara's behaviour would be indefensible if her detective feminine vision might not sanction her acting on its direction. Seeing him as she did, she turned from him and shunned his house as the entree of an auger. She had posted her letter to Lucy Dalton. Otherwise, if it had been open to her to dismiss Colonel Decray, she might, with a warm kiss to Verna's pupil, have seriously thought of the next shrill steam whistle across Yonder Hills for a travelling companion on the way to her friend Lucy. So abhorrent was to her the pudding of her horse's head toward the hall. Oh! the breaking of bread there! It had to be gone through for another day or more. That is to say forty hours. It might be six and forty hours, and no prospect of sleep to speed any of them on wings. Such were Clara's inward interjections while poor Willoughby burned himself out with very degree flame, having the savour of bad metal, till the hollow of his breast was not unlike to a corroded old caress. Found, we will assume, by criminal lantern beams in a digging beside green mantle pools of the sullen soil lumped with a strange adhesive concrete. How else picture the sad man? The cavity felt empty to him, and heavy, sick of an ancient and mortal combat, and burning, deeply dinty too. With the starry hole, whence fled the soul, very sore, important for old safe sluggish agony, a specimen, and the issue of strife. Measurously to Loth was not sufficient to save him from pain. He tried it. Nor to despise, he went to depth there also. The fact that she was a healthy young woman returned to the surface of his thoughts, like the murdered body pitched into the river, which will not drown, and calls upon the elements of dissolution to float it. His grand hereditary desire to transmit his estate's wealth and name to a solid posterity, while it prompted him in his loathing and contempt of a nature mean and ephemeral compared with his, attached him desperately to her splendid healthiness. The council of elders, whose descendant he was, pointed to this young woman for his mate. He had wooed her with the idea that they consented. Oh, she was healthy, and he likewise. But, as if it had been a jewel between two clearly designated by quality of blood to bid a house endure, she was the first to taught him what it was to have sensations of his mortality. He could not forgive her. It seemed to him consequently politic to continue frigid and let her have a further taste of his shadow. When it was his burning wish to strain her in his arms to a flatness provoking his compassion. You have had your ride? He addressed her politely in the general assembly on the lawn. I have had my ride, yes, Clara replied. Agreeable I trust? Very agreeable. So it appeared. Oh, blushless. The next instant he was in conversation with Letizia, questioning her upon a detected droop of her eyelashes. I am, I think, said she, constitutionally melancholy. He murmured to her, I believe in the existence of specifics and not far to seek for all our ailments except those we bear at the hands of others. She did not dissent. Decray, whose humor for being convinced that Willoughby cared about as little for Miss Middleton as she for him, was nourished by his immediate observation of them, delated on the beauty of the ride and his fair companion's equestrian skill. You should start a traveling circus, Willoughby rejoined. What the ideas of worthy one? There's another alternative to the expedition I proposed, Miss Middleton. Said Decray. And I be clown? I haven't a scruple of objection. I must read up books of jokes. Don't, said Willoughby. I'd spoil my part. But a natural clown won't keep up an artificial performance for an entire month, you see. Which is the length of time we propose? He'll exhaust his nature in a day and be bowled over by the dullest regular donkey, engine with paint on his cheeks and a nodding topknot. What is this expedition we propose? May he was advised in his heart to spare Miss Middleton any allusion to honeymoons. Merely a game to cure dullness. Ah, Willoughby acquiesced. A month you fed? One like it to last for years. Ah, you're driving one of Mr. Merriman's witticisms at me, Horace. I'm dense. Willoughby bowed to Dr. Middleton and drew him from Vernon, filially taking his turn to talk with him closely. The craze saw Clara's look as her father and Willoughby went aside, bustling. It lifted him over anxieties and casuistries concerning loyalty. Powder was in the look to make a warhorse breathe high and shiver for the signal. End of Chapter 23. Read by Losch Rolander. Chapter 24 of The Egoist. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Martin Giesen. The Egoist by George Meredith. Chapter 24. Contains an instance of the generosity of Willoughby. Observers of a gathering complication and a character in action commonly resemble gleaners who are intent only on picking up the ears of grain and huddling their store. Disinterestedly or interestingly they wax over eager for the little trifles and make too much of them. Observers should begin upon the precept that not all we see is worth hoarding, and that the things we see are to be weighed in the scale with what we know of the situation before we commit ourselves to a measurement. And they may be accurate observers without being good judges. They do not think so, and their bent is to glean hurriedly and form conclusions as hasty when their business should be sift at each step and question. Miss Dale seconded Vernon Whitford in the occupation of counting looks and tones and noting scraps of dialogue. She was quite disinterested. He quite believed that he was. To this degree they were competent for their post, and neither of them imagined they could be personally involved in the dubious result of the scenes they witnessed. They were but anxious observers, diligently collecting. She fancied Clara susceptible to his advice. He had fancied it and was considering it one of his vanities. Each mentally compared Clara's abruptness in taking them into her confidence with her abstention from any secret word since the arrival of Colonel Decre. Sir Willoughby requested Letitia to give Miss Middleton as much of her company as she could, showing that he was on the alert. Another Constantia Durham seemed beating her wings for flight. The suddenness of the evident intimacy between Clara and Colonel Decre shocked Letitia. Their acquaintance could be computed by ours, yet at their first interview she had suspected the possibility of worse than she now supposed to be, and she had begged Vernon not immediately to quit the haul in consequence of that faint suspicion. She had been led to it by meeting Clara and Decre at her cottage gate and finding them as fluent and laughed at breathing in conversation as friends. Unable to realise the rapid advance to a familiarity more ostensible than actual of two lively natures after such an introduction as they had undergone, and one of the two pining in a drought of liveliness, Letitia listened to their wager of nothing at all and no against a yes in the case of poor Flitch, and Clara's Willoughby will not forgive and Decre's Oh, he's human! and the silence of Clara and Decre's hearty cry, Flitch shall be a gentleman's coachman in his old seat, or I haven't a tongue, to which there was a negative of Clara's head. And it then struck Letitia that this young betrothed lady whose alienated heart acknowledged no lord an hour earlier had met her match, and as the observer would have said, her destiny. She judged of the alarming possibility by the recent revelation to herself of Miss Middleton's character and by Clara's having spoken to a man as well, to Vernon, and previously. That a young lady should speak on the subject of the inner holies to a man, though he were Vernon Whitford, was incredible to Letitia. But it had to be accepted as one of the dread facts of our inexplicable life which drag our bodies at their wheels and leave our minds exclaiming. Then if Clara could speak to Vernon, which Letitia would not have done for a mighty bribe, she could speak to Decre, Letitia thought deductively. This being the logic of untrained heads opposed to the proceeding whereby their condemnatory deduction hangs, Clara must have spoken to Decre. Letitia remembered how winning and prevailing Miss Middleton could be in her confidences. A gentleman hearing her might forget his duty to his friend, she thought, for she had been strangely swayed by Clara. Ideas of Sir Willoughby that she had never before imagined herself to entertain had been sewn in her, she thought, not asking herself whether the searchingness of the young lady had struck them and bidden them rise from where they lay embedded. Very gentle women take in that manner impressions of persons, especially of the worshipped person, wounding them. Like the new fortifications with embankments of soft earth, where explosive missiles bury themselves harmlessly until they are plucked out. And it may be a reason why those injured ladies outlive Clara Middleton similarly battered. Vernon less than Letitia took into account that Clara was in a state of fever, scarcely reasonable. Her confidences to him he had excused as a piece of conduct in sympathy with her position. He had not been greatly astonished by the circumstances confided and on the whole as she was excited and unhappy he excused her thoroughly. He could have extolled her. It was natural that she should come to him, brave in her to speak so frankly, a compliment that she should condescend to treat him as a friend. Her position excused her widely, but she was not excused for making a confidential friend of Decray. There was a difference. Well, the difference was that Decray had not the smarting sense of honour with women which our meditator had, an impartial judiciary it will be seen, and he discriminated between himself and the other justly. But sensations surging to his brain at the same instant, he reproached Miss Middleton for not perceiving that difference as clearly before she betrayed her position to Decray, which Vernon assumed that she had done. Of course he did. She had been guilty of it once. Why then, in the mind of an offended friend, she would be guilty of it twice. There was evidence. Ladies fatally predestined to appeal to that from which they have to be guarded must expect severity when they run off their railed high-road. Justice is out of the question. Man's brains might, his blood, cannot administer it to them. By chilling him to the bone they may get what they cry for, but that is a method deadening to their point of appeal. In the evening Miss Middleton and the Colonel sang a duet. She had, of late, declined to sing. Her voice was noticeably firm. Sir Willoughby said to her, You have recovered your richness of tone, Clara. She smiled and appeared happy in pleasing him. He named a French ballad. She went to the music rack and gave the song unasked. He should have been satisfied, for she said to him at the finish, Is that as you like it? He broke from a murmur to Miss Dale, admirable. Someone mentioned a Tuscan popular canzone. She waited for Willoughby's approval and took his nod for a mandate. Traitorous! he could have bellowed. He had read of this characteristic of caressing obedience of the women about to deceive. He had in his time profited by it. Is it intuitively, or by their experience, that our neighbours across the channel surpass us in the knowledge of your sex, he said to Miss Dale, and talked through Clara's apostrophe to the Santissima Virgine Maria, still treating temper as a part of policy, without any effect on Clara, and that was a matter for sickly green reflections. The lover who cannot wound has indeed lost anchorage. He is woefully adrift. He stabs air, which is to stab himself. Her complacent proof-armour bids him know himself supplanted. During the short conversational period before the ladies retired for the night, Miss Eleanor alluded to the wedding by chance. Miss Isabelle replied to her and addressed an interrogation to Clara. Decray foiled it adroitly. Clara did not utter a syllable. Her bosom lifted to a wavering height, and sank. Subsequently she looked at Decray vacantly, like a person awakened, but she looked. She was astonished by his readiness and thankful for the sucker. Her look was cold, wide, unfixed, with nothing of gratitude or of personal in it. The look, however, stood too long for Willoughby's endurance. Ejaculating porcelain, he uncrossed his legs, a signal for the ladies Eleanor and Isabelle to retire. Vernon bowed to Clara as she was rising. He had not been once in her eyes, and he expected a partial recognition at the good night. She said it, turning her head to Miss Isabelle, who was condoling once more with Colonel Decray over the ruins of his wedding present, the porcelain vase, which she supposed to have been in Willoughby's mind when he displayed the signal. Vernon walked after his room, dark as one smitten blind, Billy Tometyekov. Her stroke of neglect hit him there, and the blow sends thick obscuration upon eyeballs and brain alike. Clara saw that she was paining him and regretted it when they were separated. That was her real friend, but he prescribed too hard a task. Besides, she had done everything he demanded of her, except the consenting to stay where she was and wear out Willoughby, whose dexterity wearied her small stock of patience. She had vainly tried remonstrance and supplication with her father hoodwinked by his host. She refused to consider how, through wine, the thought was repulsive. Nevertheless, she was drawn to the edge of it by the contemplation of her scheme of release. If Lucy Dalton was at home, if Lucy invited her to come, if she flew to Lucy, oh, then her father would have cause for anger. He would not remember that but for hateful wine. What was there in this wine of great age which expelled reasonableness, fatherliness? He was her dear father. She was his beloved child. Yet something divided them. Something closed her father's ears to her. And could it be that incomprehensible seduction of the wine? Her dutifulness cried violently, no. She bowed, stupefied to his arguments for remaining a while, and rose clear-headed and rebellious with the reminiscence of the many strong reasons she had urged against them. The strangeness of men, young and old, the little things she regarded a grand wine as a little thing, twisting and changing them amazed her. And these are they by whom women are abused for variability. Only the most imperious reasons never mean trifles move women, thought she. Would women do an injury to one they loved for oceans of that up? And women must respect men. They necessarily respect a father. My dear, dear father!" Clara said in the solitude of her chamber, musing on all his goodness. And she endeavoured to reconcile the desperate sentiments of the position he forced her to sustain with those of a venerating daughter. The blow which was to fall on him beat on her heavily in advance. I have not one excuse, she said, glancing at numbers and a mighty one. But the idea of her father suffering at her hands cast her down lower than self-justification. She sought to imagine herself sparing him. It was too fictitious. The sanctuary of her chamber, the pure white room so homely to her maidenly feelings, whispered peace, only to follow the whisper with another that went through her swelling to a roar and leaving her as a string of music unkindly smitten. If she stayed in this house her chamber would no longer be a sanctuary. Dolorous bondage! Insolent death is not worse. Death's worm we cannot keep away, but when he has us we are numb to dishonour, happily senseless. Youth weighed her eyelids to sleep, though she was quivering, and quivering she awoke to the sound of her name beneath her window. I can love still, for I love him," she said as she luxuriated in young Cross Jay's boy's voice, again envying him his bath in the lake-waters, which seemed to her to have the power to wash away grief and chains. Then it was that she resolved to let Cross Jay see the last of her in this place. He should be made gleeful by doing her a piece of service. He should escort her on her walk to the railway station next morning, thence be sent flying for a long day's truancy with a little note of apology on his behalf that she would write for him to deliver to Vernon at night. Cross Jay came running to her after his breakfast with Mrs. Montague, the housekeeper, to tell her he had called her up. You won't tomorrow. I shall be up far ahead of you," said she, and musing on her father, while Cross Jay vowed to be up the first, she thought it her duty to plunge into another expostulation. Willoughby had need of Vernon on private affairs. Dr. Middleton betook himself as usual to the library, after answering, I will ruin you yet, to Willoughby's liberal offer to dispatch an order to London for any books he might want. His fine unruffled air, as of a mountain in still-morning beams, made Clara not indisposed to a preliminary scene with Willoughby that might save her from distressing him. But she could not stop Willoughby. As little could she look an invitation. He stood in the hall, holding Vernon by the arm. She passed him, he did not speak, and she entered the library. What now, my dear? What is it? said Dr. Middleton, seeing that the door was shut on them. Nothing, Papa," she replied, calmly. You've not locked the door, my child. You turned something there. Try the handle. I assure you, Papa, the door is not locked. Mr. Whitford will be here instantly. We are engaged on tough matter. Women have not, and opinion is universal, that they never will have a conception of the value of time. We are vain and shallow, my dear Papa. No, no, not you, Clara, but I suspect you require to learn by having work in progress how important is a quiet commencement of the day's task. There is not a scholar who will not tell you so. We must have a retreat. These invasions! So you intend to have another ride today. They do you good. Tomorrow we dine with Mrs. Mount Stuart Jenkinson, an estimable person indeed, though I do not perfectly understand our accepting. You have not to accuse me of sitting over wine last night, my Clara. I never do it unless I am appealed to for my judgment upon a wine. I have come to entreat you to take me away, Papa. In the midst of the storm aroused by this renewal of perplexity, Dr. Middleton replaced a book his elbow had knocked over in his haste to dash the hair off his forehead, crying, whither to what spot? That reading of guidebooks and idle people's notes of travel, and picturesque correspondence in the newspapers, unsettles man and maid. My objection to the living in hotels is known. I do not hesitate to say that I do cordially abhor it. I have had penitentially to submit to it in your dear mother's time, Caetris Cacodemon, up to the full ten thousand times. But will you not comprehend that to the older man his miseries are multiplied by his years? But is it utterly useless to solicit your sympathy with an old man, Clara? General Dalton will take us in, Papa. His table is detestable. I say nothing of that, but his wine is poison. Let that pass. I should rather say let it not pass. But our political views are not in accord. True, we are not under the obligation to propound them in presence, but we are destitute of an opinion in common. We have no discourse. Military men have produced or diverged in noteworthy epicures. They are often devout. They have blossomed in lettered men. They are gentlemen. The country rightly holds them in honour. But in fine I reject the proposal to go to General Dalton. Tears. No, Papa. I do hope not. Here we have everything man can desire, without contest an excellent host. You have your transitory teacup tempests, which you magnify to hurricanes in the approved historic manner of the Book of Cupid, and all the better. I repeat, it is the better that you should have them over in the infancy of the alliance. Come in! Dr. Middleton shouted cheerily in response to a knock at the door. He feared the door was locked. He had a fear that his daughter intended to keep it locked. Clara! he cried. She reluctantly turned the handle, and the ladies Eleanor and Isabelle came in, apologising with as much coherence as Dr. Middleton ever expected from their sex. They wished to speak to Clara, but they declined to take her away. In vain the reverent doctor assured them she was at their service. They protested that they had very few words to say, and would not intrude one moment further than to speak them. Like a shy deputation of young scholars before the master, these very words to come were preceded by none at all. A dismal and trying cause, refreshing however to Dr. Middleton, who joyfully anticipated that the ladies could be induced to take away Clara when they had finished. We may appear to you a little formal, Miss Isabelle began, and turned to her sister. We have no intention to lay undue weight on our mission, if mission it can be called, said Miss Eleanor. Is it entrusted to you by Willoughby? said Clara. Dear child, that you may know it all the more earnest with us, and our personal desire to contribute to your happiness. Therefore does Willoughby entrust the speaking of it to us. Hereupon the sisters alternated in addressing Clara, and she gazed from one to the other, piecing fragments of empty signification to get the full meaning when she might. And in saying your happiness, dear Clara, we have our Willoughby's in view, which is dependent on yours, and we never could sanction that our own inclination should stand in the way. No, we love the old place, and if it were only our punishment for loving it too idolatrously, we should deem it ground enough for our departure. Without really an idea of unkindness, none, not any. Young wives naturally prefer to be undisputed queens of their own establishment. Youth and age. But I, said Clara, have never mentioned, never had a thought. You have, dear child, a lover who in his solicitude for your happiness both sees what you desire and what is due to you. And for us, Clara, to recognize what is due to you is to act on it. Besides, dear, a seaside cottage has always been one of our dreams. We have not to learn that we are a couple of old maids in congruence associates for a young wife in the government of a great house. With our antiquated notions, questions of domestic management might arise, and with the best will in the world to be harmonious. So, dear Clara, consider it settled. From time to time gladly shall we be your guests. Your guests, dear, not sensory as critics. And you think me such an egoist. Dear ladies, the suggestion of so cruel a piece of selfishness wounds me. I would not have had you leave the hall. I like your society. I respect you. My complaint, if I had one, would be that you do not sufficiently assert yourselves. I could have wished you to be here for an example to me. I would not have allowed you to go. What can he think of me? Did Willoughby speak of it this morning? It was hard to distinguish which was the complete dupe of these two echoes of one another in worship of a family idol. Willoughby. Miss Eleanor presented herself to be stamped with the title hanging ready for the first that should open her lips. Our Willoughby is observant. He is ever generous, and he is not less forethoughtful. His arrangement is for our good on all sides. An index is enough, said Miss Isabel, appearing in her turn the monster dupe. You will not have to leave, dear ladies, where I mistress here I should oppose it. Willoughby blames himself for not reassuring you before. Indeed we blame ourselves for not undertaking to go. Did he speak of it first this morning? said Clara, but she could draw no reply to that from them. They resumed the duet, and she resigned herself to have her ears boxed with nonsense. So it is understood, said Miss Eleanor, I see your kindness, ladies, and I am to be Aunt Eleanor again, and I Aunt Isabel. Clara could have wrung her hands at the impediment which prohibited her delicacy from telling them why she could not name them so, as she had done in the earlier days of Willoughby's courtship. She kissed them warmly, ashamed of kissing, though the warmth was real. They retired with a flow of excuses to Dr Middleton for disturbing him. He stood at the door to bow them out, and holding the door for Clara to wind up the procession, discovered her at a far corner of the room. He was debating upon the advisability of leaving her there, when Vernon Whitford crossed the hall from the laboratory door, a mirror of himself in his companion air of discomposure. That was not important, so long as Vernon was a check on Clara. But the moment Clara thus baffled, moved to quit the library, Dr Middleton felt the horror of having an uncomfortable face opposite. No botheration, I hope. It's the worst thing possible to work on. Where have you been? I suspect your weak point is not to arm yourself in triple brass against bother and worry, and no good work can you do unless you do. You have come out of that laboratory. I have, sir. Can I get you any book?" Vernon said to Clara. She thanked him, promising to depart immediately. Now you are at the section of Italian literature, my love, said Dr Middleton. Well, Mr Whitford, the laboratory, where the amount of labour done within the space of a year would not stretch an electric current between this hall and the railway station, say, four miles, which I presume the distance to be. Well, sir, and a dilettantism costly in time and machinery is as ornamental as Fox's tails and Dears' horns to an independent gentleman whose fellows are contented with the latter decorations for their civic wreath. Willoughby, let me remark, has recently shown himself most considerate for my girl. As far as I could gather, I have been listening to a dialogue of ladies. He is as generous as he is discreet. There are certain combats in which to be the one to succumb is to claim the honours, and that is what women will not learn. I doubt they're seeing the glory of it. I have heard of it. I have been with Willoughby," Vernon said hastily, to shield Clara from her father's elusive attacks. He wished to convey to her that his interview with Willoughby had not been profitable in her interests, and that she had better at once, having him present to support her, pour out her whole heart to her father. But how was it to be conveyed? She would not meet his eyes. And he was too poor and intrigue to be ready on the instant to deal out the verbal obscurities which are transparencies to one. I shall regret it if Willoughby has annoyed you, for he stands high in my favour," said Dr Middleton. Clara dropped a book. Her father started, higher than the nervous impulse warranted, in his chair. Vernon tried to win a glance, and she was conscious of his effort, but her angry and guilty feelings, prompting her resolution to follow her own counsel, kept her eyelids on the defensive. I don't say he annoys me, sir. I am here to give him my advice, and if he does not accept it I have no right to be annoyed. Willoughby seems annoyed that Colonel Decray should talk of going to-morrow or next day. He likes his friends about him. Upon my word a man of more genial heart you might march a day without finding, but you have it on the forehead, Mr Whitford. Oh, no, sir. There! Dr Middleton drew his finger along his brows. Vernon felt along his own, and coined an excuse for their blackness. Not aware that the direction of his mind towards Clara pushed him to a kind of clumsy double meaning, while he satisfied an inward and craving wroth, as he said. By the way, I have been racking my head. I must apply to you, sir. I have a line, and am uncertain of the run of the line. Will this pass, do you think? In assenation's tongue he assenates, signifying that he excels any man of us at donkey dialect. After a decent interval for the genius of criticism to seem to have been sitting under his frown, Dr Middleton rejoined with sober jocularity. No, sir, it will not pass, and your uncertainty in regard to the run of the line would only be extended where the line sentipiddle. Our recommendation is that you erase it before the arrival of the ferial. This might do. In assenation's name he assenates, signifying that he preeminently flourishes hypothetical promises to pay by appointment. That might pass, but you will forbear to cite me for your authority. The line would be acceptable if I could get it to apply, said Vernon. Or this. Dr Middleton was offering a second suggestion, but Clara fled, astonished at men as she never yet had been. Why, in a burning world they would be exercising their minds in absurdities, and those two were scholars, learned men, and both knew they were in the presence of a soul in a tragic fever. A minute after she had closed the door they were deep in their work. Dr Middleton forgot his alternative line. Nothing serious, he said in reproof of the want of honourable clearness on Vernon's brows. I trust not, sir, it's a case for common sense. And you call that not serious? I take Hermann's praise of the Versus Tochmiarchus to be not only serious, but unexaggerated, said Vernon. Dr Middleton assented, and entered on the voiceful ground of Greek meters, shoving your dry, dusty world from his elbow. End of chapter 24. Recording by Martin Geeson in Hazelmayer Surrey. Chapter 25 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 25. The Flight in Wild Weather The morning of Lucy Dalton's letter of reply to her friend Clara was fair before sunrise with luminous colours that are an omen to the husbandmen. Clara had no weather eye for the rich eastern crimson, nor a quiet space within her for the beauty. She looked on it as her gate of promise, and it set her throbbing with a revived belief in radiant things, which she had once dreamt of to surround her life, but her accelerated pulses narrowed her thoughts upon the machinery of her project. She herself was metal, pointing all to her one aim when in motion. Nothing came amiss of it. Everything was fuel, fibs, evasions, the serene battalions of white lies, parallel on the march with dainty rogue falsehoods. She had delivered herself of many yesterday in her engagements for today. Pressure was put on her to engage herself, and she did so liberally, throwing the burden of deceitfulness on the extraordinary pressure. I want the early part of the morning. The rest of the day I shall be at liberty." She said it to Willoughby, Miss Dale, Colonel to Cray, and only the third time was she aware of the delicious double meaning. Hence, she associated it with the Colonel. Your loudest outcry against the wretch who breaks your rules is in asking how a tolerably conscientious person could have done this and the other besides the main offence, which you vow you could overlook but for the minor objections pertaining to conscience, the incomprehensible and abominable lies, for example, or the brazen coolness of the lying. Yet you know that we live in an undisciplined world, where in our seasons of activity we are servants of our design, and that this comes of our passions and those of our position. Our design shapes us for the work in hand, the passions man the ship, the position is their apology, and now should conscience be a passenger on board, a merely seeming swiftness of our vessel will keep him dumb as the unwilling guest of a pirate captain scudding from the cruiser half in cloven brine through rocks and shoals to save his black flag. Beware the false position. That is easy to say. Sometimes the tangle descends on us like a net of blight on a rose bush. There is then an instant choice for us between courage to cut loose and desperation if we do not. But not many men are trained to courage. Young women are trained to cowardice. For them to front an evil with plain speech is to be guilty of effrontery and forfeit the wax and polish of purity, and therewith their commanding place in the market. They are trained to please man's taste, for which purpose they soon learn to live out of themselves and look on themselves as he looks, almost as little disturbed as he by the undiscovered. Without courage conscience is a sorry guest, and if all goes well with the pirate captain conscience will be made to walk the plank for being of no service to either party. Clara's fibs and divisions disturbed her not in the least that morning. She had chosen desperation, and she thought herself very brave because she was just brave enough to fly from her abhorrence. She was light hearted, or more truly drunken hearted. Her quick nature realised the out of prison as vividly and suddenly as it had sunk suddenly and leadenly under the sense of imprisonment. Vernon crossed her mind, that was a friend. Yes, and there was a guide, but he would disapprove, and even he, thwarting her way to sacred liberty, must be thrust aside. What would he think? They might never meet for her to know, or one day in the Alps they might meet, a middle-aged couple. He famous, she regretful only to have fallen below his lofty standard. Four, Mr Whitford says she, very earnestly, I did wish at that time, believe me or not, to merit your approbation. The brows of the phantom Vernon whom she conjured up were stern, as she had seen them yesterday in the library. She gave herself a chiding for thinking of him when her mind should be intent on that which he was opposed to. It was a livelier relaxation to think of young Cross Jay's shame-faced confession presently, but he had been a laggard in bed, while she swept the Jews. She laughed at him, and immediately Cross Jay popped out on her from behind a tree, causing her to clap hand to heart and stand fast. A conspirator is not of the stuff to bear surprises. He feared he had hurt her, and was manly in his efforts to soothe. He had been up hours, he said, and had watched her coming along the avenue, and did not mean to startle her. It was the kind of fun he played with fellows, and if he had hurt her she might do anything to him she liked, and she would see if he could not stand to be punished. He was urgent with her to inflict corporal punishment on him. I shall leave it to the Boson to do that when you're in the Navy, said Clara. The Boson dance-strike an officer, so now you see what you know of the Navy, said Cross Jay. But you could not have been out before me, you naughty boy, for I found all the locks and bolts when I went to the door. But you didn't go to the back door, and so Willoughby's private door you came out by the hall door, and I know what you want, Miss Middleton. You want not to pay what you've lost. What have I lost, Cross Jay? You're wager. What was that? You know. Speak. A kiss. Nothing of the sort, but dear boy, I don't love you less for not kissing you. All that is nonsense. You have to think only of learning, and to be truthful. Never tell a story. Suffer anything rather than be dishonest. She was particularly impressive upon the silliness and wickedness of falsehood, and added, Do you hear? Yes, but you kissed me when I had been out in the rain that day, because I promised. And Miss Middleton, you betted a kiss yesterday. I'm sure, Cross Jay. No, I will not say I am sure. But can you say you are sure you were out first this morning? Well, will you say you are sure that when you left the house you did not see me in the avenue? You can't. Ah. Miss Middleton, I do really believe I was dressed first. Always be truthful, my dear boy, and then you may feel that Clara Middleton will always love you. But Miss Middleton, when you're married you won't be Clara Middleton. I certainly shall, Cross Jay. No, you won't, because I'm so fond of your name. She considered and said, You have warned me, Cross Jay, and I shall not marry. I shall wait, she was going to say, for you, but turned the hesitation to a period. It's the village where I posted my letter the day before yesterday, too far for you. Cross Jay howled in contempt. Next to Clara, my favourites Lucy, he said. I thought Clara came next to Nelson, said she, and a long way off, too, if you're not going to be a landlubber. I'm not going to be a landlubber. Miss Middleton, you may be absolutely positive on your solemn word. You're getting to talk like one a little now and then, Cross Jay. Then I won't talk at all. He stuck to his resolution for one whole minute. Clara hoped that on this morning of a doubtful though imperative venture, she had done some good. They walked fast to cover the distance to the village post office and back before the breakfast hour, and they had plenty of time arriving too early for the opening of the door so that Cross Jay began to dance with an appetite and was dispatched to besiege a bakery. Clara felt lonely without him, apprehensively timid in the shuttered, unmoving village street. She was glad of his return. When at last her letter was handed to her on the testimony of the postman that she was the lawful applicant, Cross Jay and she put out on a sharp trot to be back at the hall in good time. She took a swallowing glance of the first page of Lucy's writing. Telegraph and I will meet you. I will supply you with everything you can want for the two nights if you cannot stop longer. That was the gist of the letter. A second, less voracious glance at it along the road brought sweetness. Lucy wrote, Do I love you as I did? My best friend, you must fall into an unhappiness to have the answer to that. Clara broke a silence. Yes, dear Cross Jay, and if you like, you shall have another walk with me after breakfast. But remember you must not say where you have gone with me. I shall give you twenty shillings to go and buy those bird's eggs and the butterflies you want for your collection. And mind, promise me, today is your last day of truancy. Tell Mr Whitford how ungrateful you know you have been, but he may have some hope of you. You know the way across the fields to the railway station. You save a mile, you drop on the road by Cumblin's Mill, and then there's another five minutes cut, and the rest's road. Then Cross Jay, immediately after breakfast, run round behind the pheasantry, and there I'll find you. And if anyone comes to you before I come, say you are admiring the plumage of the Himalayas, the beautiful Indian bird, and if we're found together, we run a race, and of course you can catch me, but you mustn't until we're out of sight. Tell Mr Vernon at night. Tell Mr Whitford at night you had the money from me as part of my allowance to you for pocket money. I used to like to have pocket money, Cross Jay, and you may tell him I gave you the holiday, and I may write to him for his excuse if he is not too harsh to grant it. He can be very harsh. You look right into his eyes next time, Miss Middleton. I used to think him awful till he made me look at him. He says men ought to look straight at one another, just as we do when he gives me my boxing lesson, and then we won't have quarrelling half so much. I can't recollect everything he says. You're not bound to, Cross Jay. No, but you like to hear. Really, dear boy, I can't accuse myself of having told you that. No, but Miss Middleton, you do, and he's fond of your singing and playing on the piano, and watches you. We shall be late if we don't mind, said Clara, starting to pace close on a run. They were in time for a circuit in the park to the wild double cherry blossom, no longer all white. Clara gazed up from under it, where she had imagined a fairer visible heavenliness than any other sight of earth had ever given her. That was when Vernon lay beneath, but she had certainly looked above, not at him. The tree seemed sorrowful in its withering flowers of the colour of trodden snow. Cross Jay resumed the conversation. He says ladies don't like him much. Who says that? Mr Whitford. Were those his words? I forget the words, but he said they wouldn't be taught by him, like me, ever since you came. And since you came, I've liked him ten times more. The more you like him, the more I shall like you, Cross Jay. The boy raised a shout and scampered away to Sir Willoughby, at the appearance of whom Clara felt herself nipped and curling inward. He ran up to him with every sign of pleasure, yet he had not mentioned him during the walk, and Clara took it for a sign that the boy understood the entire satisfaction Willoughby had in mere shows of affection and acted up to it. Hardly blaming Cross Jay, she was a critic of the scene for the reason that youthful creatures who have ceased to love a person hunger for evidence against him to confirm their hard animus, which will seem to them sometimes, when he is not immediately irritating them, brutish, because they cannot analyse it and reduce it to the multitude of just antagonisms whereof it came. It has passed by large accumulation into a somber and speechless load upon the senses, and fresh evidence, the smallest item, is a champion to speak for it. Being about to do wrong, she grasped at this eagerly, and brooded on the little of vital and truthful that there was in the man, and how he corrupted the boy. Nevertheless, she instinctively imitated Cross Jay in an almost sparkling salute to him. Good morning, Willoughby. It was not a morning to lose. Have you been out long? He retained her hand. My dear Clara, and you, have you not over-fatigued yourself? Where have you been? Round everywhere, and I am certainly not tired. Only you and Cross Jay, you should have loosened the dogs. Their barking would have annoyed the house. Less than I am annoyed to think of you without protection. He kissed her fingers. It was a loving speech. The household, said Clara, but would not insist to convict him of what he could not have perceived. If you outstrip me another morning, Clara, promise me to take the dogs, will you? Yes. Today I am altogether yours. Are you? From the first to the last hour of it, so you fall in with Horace's humour pleasantly. He is very amusing. As good as though one had hired him. Here comes Colonel Decray. He must think we have hired him. She noticed the bitterness of Willoughby's tone. He sang out a good morning to Decray, and remarked that he must go to the stables. Dalton. Dalton, Miss Middleton, said the Colonel, rising from his bow to her. A daughter of General Dalton. If so, I have had the honour to dance with her. And have not you practiced with her, I mean? Or gone off in a triumph to dance it out, as young ladies do? So you know what a delightful partner she is. She is, cried Clara, enthusiastic for her suckering friend, whose letter was the treasure in her bosom. Oddly, the name did not strike me yesterday, Miss Middleton. In the middle of the night it rang a little silver bell in my ear. And I remembered the lady I was half in love with, if only for her dancing. She is dark of your height, as light on her feet, a sister in another colour. Now that I know her to be your friend, why you may meet her, Colonel Decray? It'll be to offer her a castaway, and one only meets a charming girl to hear that she's engaged. It is not a line of a ballad, Miss Middleton, but out of the heart. Lucy Dalton, you are leading me to talk seriously to you, Colonel Decray. Will you one day, and not think me a perpetual tumbler, you have heard of melancholy clowns, you will find the face not so laughable behind my paint. When I was thirteen years younger, I was loved, and my dearest sank to the grave. Since then I have not been quite at home in life, probably because of finding no one so charitable as she. It is easy to win smiles and hands, but not so easy to win a woman whose faith you would trust as your own heart before the enemy. I was poor then, she said, the day after my twenty-first birthday. And that day I went for her, and I wondered they did not refuse me at the door. I was shown upstairs, and I saw her, and saw death. She wished to marry me, to leave me her fortune. Then never marry, said Clara, in an underbreath. She glanced behind, so Willoughby was close, walking on turf. I must be cunning to escape him after breakfast, she thought. He had discarded his foolishness of the previous days, and the thought in him could have replied, I am a dolt if I let you out of my sight. Vernon appeared, formal as usual of late. Clara begged his excuse for withdrawing Cross Jay from his morning swim. He nodded. Decray called to Willoughby for a book of the trains. There's a card in the smoking-room. Eleven, one, and four are the hours, if you must go, said Willoughby. You leave the hall, Colonel Decray? In two or three days, Miss Middleton. She did not request him to stay. His announcement produced no effect on her. Consequently thought he, well, what? Nothing. Well, then, that she might not be minded to stay herself. Otherwise she would have regretted the loss of an amusing companion. That is the modest way of putting it. There is a modest and a vain for the same sentiment, and both may be simultaneously in the same breast. And each one as honest as the other. So shy is man's vanity in the presence of here and there a lady. She liked him. She did not care a pin for him. How could she? Yet she liked him. Oh, to be able to do her some kindling bit of service. These were his consecutive fancies, resolving naturally to the exclamation, and built on the conviction that she did not love Willoughby, and waited for a spirited lift from circumstances. His call for a book of the trains had been a sheer piece of impromptu in the mind as well as on the mouth. It sprang, unknown to him, of conjectures he had indulged yesterday and the day before. This morning she would have an answer to her letter to her friend, Miss Lucy Dalton, the pretty dark girl whom Decray was astonished not to have noticed more when he danced with her. She, pretty as she was, had come to his recollection through the name and rank of her father, a famous general of cavalry, and tactician in that arm. The colonel despised himself for not having been devoted to Clara Middleton's friend. The morning letters were on the bronze plate in the hall. Clara passed on her way to her room without inspecting them. Decray opened an envelope and went upstairs to scribble a line. So Willoughby observed their absence at the solemn reading to the domestic servants in advance of breakfast. Three chairs were unoccupied. Vernon had his own notions of a mechanical service and a precious profit he derived from them. But the other two seats returned the stair Willoughby cast at their backs with an impudence that reminded him of his friend Horace's calling for a book of the trains. When a minute afterward he admitted he was going to stay at the hall another two days or three. The man possessed by jealousy is never in need of matter for it. He magnifies, grasses jungle, hillocks are mountains, Willoughby's legs crossing and uncrossing audibly and his tight-folded arms and clearing of the throat were faint indications of his condition. Are you in fair health this morning, Willoughby? Dr Middleton said to him after he had closed his volumes. The thing is not much questioned by those who know me intimately, he replied. Willoughby unwell and he is health incarnate, exclaimed the ladies Eleanor and Isabelle. Leticia grieved for him. Sun rays on a pest-stricken city she thought were like the smile of his face. She believed that he deeply loved Clara and had learnt more of her alienation. He went into the hall to look into the well for the pair of malefactors on fire with what he could not reveal to a soul. Decray was in the housekeeper's room talking to young Cross J and Mrs Montague just come up to breakfast. He had heard the boy chattering and as the door was ajar he peeped in and was invited to enter. Mrs Montague was very fond of hearing him talk. He paid her the familiar respect which a lady of fallen fortunes at a certain period after the fall enjoys as a befittingly sad souvenir and the respectfulness of the Lord of the house was more chilling. She bewailed the boys trying his constitution with long walks before he had anything in him to walk on. Where did you go this morning, my lad? said Decray. Ah, you know the ground, Colonel? said Cross J. I'm hungry. I shall eat three eggs and some bacon and buttered cakes and jam. Then begin again on my second cup of coffee. It's not braggadocho, remarked Mrs Montague. He waits empty from five in the morning till nine and then he comes famished to my table and eats too much. Oh, Mrs Montague, that is what the country people call romancing. For, Colonel Decray, I had a bun at seven o'clock. Miss Middleton forced me to go and buy it. A stale bun, my boy? Yesterday's, there wasn't much of a stopper to you in it like a new bun. And where did you leave Miss Middleton when you went to buy the bun? You should never leave a lady and the street of a country town is lonely at that early hour. Cross J, you surprise me. She forced me to go, Colonel. Indeed she did. What do I care for a bun? And she was quite safe. We could hear the people stirring in the post office and I met our postman going for his latter bag. I didn't want to go, bother the bun but you can't disobey Miss Middleton. I never want to and wouldn't. There we're of the same mind, said the Colonel. And Cross J shouted for the lady whom they exalted was at the door. You will be too tired for a ride this morning, Decray said to her, descending the stairs. She swung upon it by the ribbons. I don't think of riding today. Why did you not depute your mission to me? I like to bear my own burdens as far as I can. Miss Dalton is well. I presume so. Will you try her recollection for me? It will probably be quite as lively as yours was. Shall you see her soon? I hope so. So Willoughby met her at the foot of the stairs but refrained from giving her a hand that shook. We shall have the day together, he said, clear abound. At the breakfast table she faced a clock. Decray took out his watch. You are five and a half minutes too slow by that clock, Willoughby. The man admitted to come from Rendon to set it last week, Horace. He will find the hour too late here for him when he does come. One of the ladies compared the time of her watch with Decray's and Clara looked at hers and gratefully noted that she was four minutes in a rear. She left the breakfast room at a quarter to ten after kissing her father. Willoughby was behind her. He had been soothed by thinking of his personal advantages over Decray and felt assured that if he could be solitary with this eccentric bride and fold her in himself he would, cutting temper adrift, be the man he had been to her not so many days back. Considering how few days back his temper was roused but he controlled it. They were slightly dissenting as Decray stepped into the hall. A present worth examining, Willoughby said to her, and I do not dwell on the costiness. Come presently then. I am at your disposal all day. I will drive you in the afternoon to call on Lady Bush to offer your thanks, but you must see it first. It is laid out in the laboratory. There is time before the afternoon, said Clara. Wedding presents into pose Decray. A porcelain service from Lady Bush, Horace. Not in fragments. Let me have a look at it. I am haunted by an idea that porcelain always goes to pieces. I will have a look and take a hint. We are in the laboratory, Miss Middleton. He put his arm under Willoughby's. The resistance to him was momentary. Willoughby had the satisfaction of the thought that Decray, being with him, was not with Clara, and seeing her giving orders to her maid, Barclay, he deferred his claim on her company for some short period. Decray detained him in the laboratory, first over the China Cups and Sources, and then with the latest of London, tales of youngest Cupid upon subterranean adventures, having high titles to light him. Willoughby liked the tale thus illuminated, for without the title there was no special saver in such affairs, and it pulled down his batters in rank. He was of a morality to reprobate the earring dame while he enjoyed the incidents. He could not help interrupting Decray to point at Vernon through the window, striding this way and that, evidently on the hunt for young Cross J. No one here knows how to manage the boy except myself, but go on, Horace, he said, checking his contemptuous laugh, and Vernon did look ridiculous. Out there, half drenched already in a white rain, again shuffled off by the little rascal. It seemed that he was determined to have his run away. He struck up the avenue at full pedestrian racing pace. A man looks a fool cutting after a cricket ball, but putting on steam in a storm of rain to catch a young villain out of sight beats anything I've witnessed, Willoughby resumed in his amusement. Aha! said Decray, waving a hand to accompany the melodious accent. There are things to beat that for fun. He had smoked in the laboratory, so Willoughby directed a servant to transfer the porcelain service to one of the sitting rooms for Clara's inspection of it. You're a bold man, Decray remarked. The luck may be with you, though. I wouldn't handle the fragile treasure for a trifle. I believe in my luck, said Willoughby. Clara was now sought for. The Lord of the House desired her presence impatiently and had to wait. She was in none of the lower rooms. Barkley, her maid, upon interrogation, declared she was in none of the upper. Willoughby turned sharp on Decray. He was there. The ladies Eleanor and Isabel and Miss Dale were consulted. They had nothing to say about Clara's movements. More than that, they could not understand her exceeding restlessness. The idea of her being outdoors grew serious. Heaven was black, hard thunder rolled, and lightning flushed the battering rain. Men bearing umbrellas, shawls and cloaks were dispatched on a circuit of the park. Decray said, I'll be one. No, cried Willoughby, starting to interrupt him. I can't allow it. I've the scent of a hound, Willoughby. I'll soon be on the track. My dear Horace, I won't let you go. But, dear boy, and if the lady's discoverable, I'm the one to find her. He stepped to the umbrella stand. There was then a general question whether Clara had taken her umbrella. Barkley said she had. The fact indicated a wider stroll than round inside the park. Cross Jay was likewise absent. Decray nodded to himself. Willoughby struck a rattling blow on the barometer. Where's Pollington, he called, and sent word for his man Pollington to bring big fishing boots and waterproof wrappers. An urgent debate within him was in progress. Should he go forth alone on his chance of discovering Clara and forgiving her under his umbrella and cloak, or should he prevent Decray from going forth alone on the chance he vaunted so impudently? You will offend me, Horace, if you insist," he said. Regard me as an instrument of destiny, Willoughby, replied Decray. Then we go in company. But that's an addition of one that cancels the other by conjunction and is worse than simple division, for I can't trust my wits unless I rely on them alone, you see. Upon my word you talk at times most unintelligible stuff to be frank with you, Horace. Give it in English. It is not suited, perhaps, to the genius of the language, for I thought I talked English. Oh, there's English gibberish as well as Irish, we know, and a deal foolisher when they do go at it, for it won't bear squeezing, we think, like Irish. Where, exclaimed the ladies, where can she be? The storm is terrible. Letitia suggested the boathouse. For Cross Jay hadn't her swim this morning, said Decray. No one reflected on the absurdity that Clara should think of taking Cross Jay for a swim in the lake, and immediately after his breakfast. It was accepted as a suggestion at least that she and Cross Jay had gone to the lake for a row. In the hopefulness of the idea, Willoughby suffered Decray to go on his chance unaccompanied. He was near chuckling. He projected a plan for dismissing Cross Jay and remaining in the boathouse with Clara, luxuriating in the prestige which would attach to him for seeking and finding her. Deadly sentiments intervened. Still, he might expect to be alone with her where she could not slip from him. The throwing open of the hall doors for the gentleman presented a framed picture of a deluge. All the young-leaved trees were steely black, without a gradation of green, drooping and pouring, and the song of rain had become an inveterate hiss. The ladies, beholding it, exclaimed against Clara, even apostrophised her so dark at trivial errors when circumstances frown. She must be mad to tempt such weather. She was very giddy. She was never at rest. Clara, Clara, how could you be so wild, ought we not to tell Dr. Middleton? Letitia induced them to spare him. Which way do you take? said Willoughby, rather fearful that his companion was not to be got rid of now. Anyway, said Decray, I chuck up my head like a haitney and go by the toss. This, in raging nonsense, drove off Willoughby. Decray saw him cast a furtive eye at his heels to make sure he was not followed, and thought, Jove, he may be fond of her, but he's not on the track. She's a determined girl, if I'm correct. She's a girl of a hundred thousand. Girls like that make the right sort of wives for the right men. They're the girls to make men think of marrying. Tomorrow only give me a chance. They stick few fast when they do stick. Then a thought of her flower-like drapery and face caused him fervently to hope she had escaped the storm. Calling at the West Park Lodge, he heard that Miss Middleton had been seen passing through the gate with Master Cross Jay, but she had not been seen coming back. Mr Vernon Whitford had passed through half an hour later. After his young man, said the Colonel, the Lodgekeeper's wife and daughter knew of Master Cross Jay's pranks. Mr Whitford, they said, had made inquiries about him and must have caught him and sent him home to change his dripping things. For Master Cross Jay had come back and had declined shelter in the Lodge. He seemed to be crying. He went away soaking over the wet grass, hanging his head. The opinion of the Lodge was that Master Cross Jay was unhappy. He's very properly received a wigging from Mr Whitford, I have no doubt, said Colonel Decray. Mother and daughter supposed it to be the case, and considered Cross Jay very willful for not going straight home to the hall to change his wet clothes. He was drenched. Decray drew out his watch. The time was ten minutes past eleven. If the surmise he had distantly spied was correct, Miss Middleton would have been caught in the storm midway to her destination. By his guess at her character, knowledge of it, he would have said, he judged that no storm would haunt her on a predetermined expedition. He deduced in consequence that she was at the present moment flying to her friend, the charming brunette Lucy Dalton. Still, as there was a possibility of the rain having been too much for her and as he had no other speculation concerning the route she had taken, he decided upon keeping along the road to Rendon, with a keen eye at cottage and farmhouse windows. End of Chapter 25.