 CHAPTER 31 Sir Willoughby attempts and achieves pathos. Apparently he would have preferred to watch her dark, downcast eyelashes in silence, under sanction of his air of abstract meditation, and the melancholy super-inducing it. Blood colour was in her cheeks. The party had inspired her features. Might it be that lively company, an absence of economical solicitudes, and a flourishing home were all she required to make her bloom again? The supposition was not hazardous in presence of her heightened complexion. She raised her eyes. He could not meet her look without speaking. Can you forgive, deceit? It would be to boast of more charity than I know myself to possess. Were I to say that I can, Sir Willoughby? I hope I am able to forgive. I cannot tell. I should like to say yes. Could you live with the deceiver? No? I could have given that answer for you. No semblance of union should be maintained between the deceiver and ourselves. Letitia. So, Willoughby, have I no right to your name? If it pleases you two, I speak as my thoughts run, and they did not know amiss Dale so well as a dear Letitia, my truest friend. You have talked with Claire Middleton. We had a conversation. Her brevity affrighted him. He flew off in a cloud. Reverting to that question of deceivers, is it not your opinion that to pardon, to condone, is to corrupt society by passing off as pure what is false? Do we not? He wore the smile of haggard playfulness of a convalescent child the first day back to its toys. Letitia, do we not impose a counterfeit on the currency? Apart from my loathing of deception, of falseness in any shape, upon any grounds, I hold it an imperious duty to expose, punish, off with it. I take it to be one of the forms of noxiousness which a good citizen is bound to extirpate. I am not myself good citizen enough, I confess, for much more than passive abhorrence. I do not forgive. I am at heart serious, and I cannot forgive. There is no possible reconciliation. There can be only in ostensible truce between the two hostile powers dividing this world. She glanced at him quickly. Good and evil, he said. Her face expressed a surprise relapsing on the heart. He spelt the puckers of her forehead to mean that she feared he might be speaking un-Christianly. You will find it so in all religions, my dear Letitia, the Hindu, the Persian, ours. It is universal, an experience of our humanity. Deceit and sincerity cannot live together. Truth must kill the lie, or the lie will kill truth. I do not forgive. All I say to the person is, go." But that is right! That is generous!" exclaimed Letitia, glad to approve him for the sake of escaping her critical soul, and relieved by the idea of Clara's difficulty solved. All of generosity, perhaps. He mused aloud. She wounded him by not supplying the expected enthusiastic asseparation of her belief in his general tendency to magnanimity. He said, after a pause, but the world is not likely to be impressed by anything not immediately gratifying it. People change, I find. As we increase in years we cease to be the heroes we were. I myself am insensible to change. I do not admit the charge. But in this we will say, personal ambition. I have it no more. And what is it when we have it? Decidedly a confession of inferiority. That is, the desire to be distinguished as an acknowledgment of insufficiency. But I have still the craving for my dearest friends to think well of me. A weakness? Call it so. Not a dishonorable weakness. Letitia racked her brain for the connection of his present speech with the preceding dialogue. She was baffled from not knowing the heat of the centre in him as Vernon opaically phrased it in charity to the object of her worship. Well, said he, unappeased, and besides the passion to excel, I have changed somewhat in the heartiness of my thirst for the amusement's incident to my station. I do not care to keep a stud. I was once tempted, nor hounds, and I can remember the day when I determined to have the best kennels and the best breed of horses in the kingdom. What is distinction of that sort, or of any acquisition and accomplishment? We ask, one self is not the greater. To seek it owns to our smallness in real fact, and when it is attained what then? My horses are good, they are admired, I challenge the county to surpass them. Well, these are but my horses, the praises of the animals, not of me. I declined to share in it, yet I know men content to swallow the praise of their beasts and be semi-equine. The littleness of one's fellows in the mob of life is a very strange experience. One may regret to have lost the simplicity of one's forefathers, which could accept those and other distinctions with a cordial pleasure, not to say pride. As for instance, I am, as it is called, a dead shot. Give your acclamations, gentlemen, to my ancestors, from whom I inherited a steady hand and quick sight. They do not touch me. Where I do not find myself, that I am essentially I, no applause can move me. To speak to you as I would speak to none, admiration—you know that in my early youth I swam in flattery, I had to swim to avoid drowning—admiration of my personal gifts has grown tasteless. Change therefore, inasmuch as there has been a growth of spirituality. We are all in submission to mortal laws, and so far have indeed changed. I may add that it is unusual for country gentlemen to apply themselves to scientific researches. These are, however, in the spirit of the time. I apprehended that instinctively when at college. I forsook the classics for science, and thereby escaped the vice of domineering self-sufficiency peculiar to classical men, of which you had an amusing example in the carriage, on the way to Mrs. Mount Stewart's this evening. Science is modest—slow, if you like. It deals with facts, and, having mastered them, it masters men, of necessity, not with a stupid, loud-mouthed arrogance, words big and oddly garbed as the pope's bodyguard. Of course, one bows to the infallible, we must, when his giant mercenaries level bayonets. Sir Willoughby offered Miss Dale half a minute that she might in gentle feminine fashion acquiesce in the implied reproof of Dr. Middleton's behaviour to him during the drive to Mrs. Mount Stewart's. She did not. Her heart was accusing Clara of having done it a wrong and a hurt, for while he talked he seemed to her to justify Clara's feelings and her conduct, and her own reawakened sensations of injury came to the service a moment to look at him, affirming that they pardoned him and pitied, but hardly wondered. The heat of the centre in him had administered the comfort he wanted, though the conclusive accordant notes he loved on woman's lips, that subservient harmony of another instrument desired of musicians when they have done their solo playing, came not to wind up the performance, not a single bar. She did not speak. Probably his letitia was overcome, as he had long known her to be when they conversed. Nerve subdued, unable to deploy her mental resources or her musical. Yet ordinarily she had command of the latter. Was she too condoling? Did a reason exist for it? Had the impulsive and desperate girl spoken out to letitia to the fullest, shameless daughter of a domineering sire that she was, ghastly her inquiry, it struck the centre of him with a sounding ring, was letitia pitting him over much for worse than the pain of a little difference between lovers, for treason on the part of his bride? Did she know of a rival? No more than he? When the centre of him was violently struck he was a genius in penetration. He guessed that she did know, and by this was he presently helped to achieve pathos. So my election was for science, he continued, and if it makes me, as I fear, a rara avis among country gentlemen, it unites me, puts me in the main, I may say, in the only current of progress—a word sufficiently despicable in their political jargon. You enjoyed your evening at Mrs. Mount Stewart's? Very greatly. She brings her professor to dine here the day after to-morrow. Does it astonish you? You started. I did not hear the invitation. It was arranged at the table. You and I were separated. Cruely, I told her. She declared that we see enough of one another, and that it was good for me that we should be separated, neither of which is true. I may not have known what is the best for me. I do know what is good. If in my younger days I egregiously erred, that taken of itself alone is assuming me to have sense and feeling, the sure proof of present wisdom. I can testify in person that wisdom is pain. If pain is to add to wisdom, let me suffer. Do you approve of that, Letitia? It is well said. It is felt. Those who themselves have suffered should know the benefit of the resolution. One may have suffered so much as to wish only for peace. True. But you, have you? It would be for peace if I prayed for any earthly gift. Sir Willoughby dropped a smile on her. I mentioned the Pope's party-coloured bodyguard just now. In my youth their singular attire impressed me. People tell me they have been re-uniformed. I am sorry. They remain one of my liveliest recollections of the eternal city. They affected my sense of humour. Always alerted me, as you are aware. We English have humour. It is the first thing struck in us when we land on the continent. Our risable faculties are generally active all through the tour. Humour or the clash of sense with novel examples of the absurd is our characteristic. I do not condescend to boisterous displays of it. I observe and note the people's comicalities for my correspondence. But you have read my letters—most of them, if not all. Many of them? I was with you then. I was about to say that Swiss guard reminded me, you have not been in Italy. I have constantly regretted it. You are the very woman, you have the soul for Italy. I know no other of whom I could say it, with whom I should not feel that she was out of place, discordant with me. Italy and Laetitia, often have I joined you together. We shall see, I begin to have hopes. Here you have literally stagnated. Why a dinner-party refreshes you? What would not travel do in that heavenly climate? You are a reader of history and poetry. Well, poetry. I never yet saw the poetry that expressed the tenth part of what I feel in the presence of beauty and magnificence, and when I really meditate profoundly, call me a positive mind. I feel, only I feel too intensely for poetry. By the nature of it, poetry cannot be sincere. I will have sincerity. Whatever touches our emotions should be spontaneous, not a craft. I know you are in favour of poetry. You would win me if any one could. But history, there I am with you, walking over ruins at night, the arches of the solemn black amphitheater pouring moonlight on us, the moonlight of Italy. You would not laugh there, Sir Willoughby," said Laetitia, rousing herself from a stupor of apprehensive amazement to what or something and realize actual circumstances. Besides, you, I think, or I am mistaken in you," he deviated from his projected speech, you are not a victim of the sense of association and the ludicrous. I can understand the influence of it. I have at least a conception of the humorous, but ridicule would not strike me in the Colosseum of Rome. I could not bear it. No, Sir Willoughby." She appeared to be taking him in very strong earnest, by thus petitioning him not to laugh in the Colosseum, and now he said, Besides, you are one who could accommodate yourself to the society of the ladies, my aunts. Good women, Laetitia, I cannot imagine them day-trop in Italy or in a household. I have, of course, reason to be partial in my judgment. They are excellent and most amiable ladies, I love them," said Laetitia fervently. The more strongly excited to fervour by her enlightenment as to his drift. She read it that he designed to take her to Italy with the ladies. After giving Miss Middleton her liberty, that was necessarily implied. And that was truly generous. In his boyhood he had been famous for his bountfulness in scattering silver and gold. Might he not have caused himself to be misperused in later life? Clara had spoken to her of the visit and mission of the ladies to the library, and Laetitia daringly conceived herself to be on the certain track of his meaning. She being able to enjoy their society, as she supposed him to consider that Miss Middleton did not, and would not, either abroad or at home. Sir Willoughby asked her, You could travel with them. Indeed I could. Honestly? As affirmatively as one may protest, delightedly. Agreed, it is an undertaking. He put his hand out. Whether I be of the party or not, to Italy, Laetitia, it would give me pleasure to be with you, and it will if I must be excluded to think of you in Italy. His hand was out. She had to feign inattention or yield her own. She had not the effrontery to pretend not to see, and she yielded it. He pressed it, and whenever it shrunk a quarter-inch to withdraw, he shook it up and down, as an instrument that had been lent him for due emphasis to his remarks. And very emphatic an amorous orator can make it upon a captive lady. I am unable to speak decisively on that or any subject. I am, I think you once quoted, tossed like a weed on the ocean. Of myself I can speak. I cannot speak for a second person. I am infinitely harassed. If I could cry to Italy to-morrow—ah, do not set me down for complaining. I know the lot of man, but Laetitia, deceit, deceit! It is like a bad taste in the mouth. It sickenes us of humanity. I compare it to an earthquake. We lose all our reliance on the solidity of the world. It is a betrayal not simply of the person. It is a betrayal of humankind. My friend, constant friend, no, I will not despair. Yes, I have faults, I will remember them. Only forgiveness is another question. Yes, the injury I can forgive, the falseness never. In the interests of humanity, no. So young and such deceit. Laetitia's bosom rose. Her hand was detained. A lady who has yielded it cannot wrestle to have it back. Those outworks which protect her treacherously shelter the enemy aiming at the citadel when he has taken them. In return for the silk and armour bestowed on her by our civilization, it is exacted that she be soft and civil nigh up to perishing point. She breathed tremulously high, saying on her top breath, If it—it may not be so, it can scarcely— A deep sigh intervened. It saddened her that she knew so much. For when I love, I love, said Sir Willoughby. My friends and my servants know that. There can be no medium, not with me. I give all, I claim all. As I am absorbed, so must I absorb. We both cancel and create. We extinguish and we illumine one another. The error may be in the choice of an object. It is not in the passion. Perfect confidence, perfect abandonment. I repeat, I claim it, because I give it. The selfishness of love may be denounced. It is a part of us. My answer would be, it is an element only of the noblest of us. Love, Letitia, I speak of love. But one who breaks faith to drag us through the mire, who betrays, betrays, and hands us over to the world, whose prey we become identically, because of virtues we were educated to think at a blessing to possess, tell me the name for that. Again, it has ever been a principle with me to respect the sex. But if we see women false, treacherous, why indulge in these abstract views, you would ask? The world presses them on us, full as it is of the vilest specimens. They seek to pluck up every rooted principle. They sneer at our worship. They rob us of our religion. This bitter experience of the world drives us back to the antidote of what we knew before we plunged into it, of one, of something we esteemed and still esteemed. Is that antidote strong enough to expel the poison? I hope so. I believe so. To lose faith in woman-kind is terrible. He studied her. She looked distressed. She was not moved. She was thinking that, with the exception of a strain of haughtiness, he talked excellently to men, at least in the tone of the things he meant to say, but that his manner of talking to women went to an excess in the artificial tongue, the tutored tongue of sentimental deference of the towering male. He fluted exceedingly, and she wondered whether it was this which had wrecked him with Miss Middleton. His intuitive sagacity counseled him to strive for pathos to move her. It was a task, for while he perceived her to be not ignorant of his plight, he doubted her knowing the extent of it, and as his desire was merely to move her without an exposure of himself, he had to compass being pathetic as it were under the impediments of a mailed and gauntleted knight, who cannot easily heave the bosom or show it heaving. Moreover, pathos is a tide. Often it carries the awakener of it off his feet, and whirls him over and over armor and all in ignominious attitudes of helpless prostration, whereof he may well be ashamed in the retrospect. We cannot quite preserve our dignity when we stoop to the work of calling forth tears. Moses had probably to take a nimble jump away from the rock after that venerable lawgiver had knocked the water out of it. However, it was imperative in his mind that he should be sure he had the power to move her. He began, clumsily at first, as yonder gauntleted knight attempting the briny handkerchief. What are we? We last but a very short time. Why not live to gratify our appetites? I might really ask myself why. All the means of satiating them are at my disposal. But no, I must aim at the highest, at that which in my blindness I took for the highest. You know the sportsman's instinct, Letitia. He is not tempted by the stationary object. Such are we in youth, toying with happiness, leaving it to aim at the dazzling and attractive. We gain knowledge, said Letitia. At what a cost! The exclamation summoned self-pity to his aid, and pathos was handy. By paying half our lives for it and all our hopes. Yes, we gain knowledge, we are the wiser. Very probably my value surpasses now what it was when I was happier. But the loss—that youthful bloom of the soul is like health to the body. Once gone it leaves cripples behind. Nay, my friend, and precious friend, these four fingers I must retain. They seem to me the residue of a wreck. You shall be released shortly. Absolutely, Letitia, I have nothing else remaining. We have spoken of deception, what of being undeceived. When one whom we adored is laid bare, and the wretched consolation of a worthy object is denied to us, no misfortune can be like that. Were it death we could worship still, death would be preferable. But may you be spared to know a situation in which the comparison with your inferior is forced on you to your disadvantage and your loss, because of your generously giving up your whole heart to the custody of some shallow, light-minded self. We will not deal in epithets. If I were to find as many bad names for the serpent as there are spots on his body, it would be serpent-still, neither better or worse—the loneliness, and the darkness. Our luminary is extinguished. Self-respect refuses to continue worshiping, but the affection will not be turned aside. We are literally in the dust. We grovel. We would fling away self-respect, if we could. We would adopt for a model the creature preferred to us. We would humiliate, degrade ourselves. We cry for justice as if it were for pardon. For pardon? When we are straining to grant it? Letitia murmured, and it was as much as she could do. She remembered how, on her old misery, her efforts after charity had twisted her round, to feel herself the sinner, and beg forgiveness in prayer—a noble sentiment, that filled her with pity of the bosom in which it had sprung. There was no similarity between his idea and hers, but her idea had certainly been roused by his word, pardon, and he had the benefit of it in the moisture of her eyes. Her lips trembled, tears fell. He had heard something, he had not caught the words, but they were manifestly favourable. Her sign of emotion assured him of it and of the success he had sought. There was one woman who bowed to him to all eternity. He had inspired one woman with the mysterious, man-desired passion of self-abandonment, self-immolation. The evidence was before him. At any instant he could, if he pleased, fly to her and command her enthusiasm. He had, in fact, perhaps by sympathetic action, succeeded in striking the same springs of pathos in her which animated his lively endeavour to produce it in himself. He kissed her hand, then released it, quitting his chair to bend above her soothingly. Do not weep, Letitia. You see that I do not. I can smile. Help me to bear it. You must not unman me." She tried to stop her crying, but self-pity threatened to reign all her long years of grief on her head, and she said, I must go. I am unfit. Good night, Sir Willoughby." Fearing seriously that he had sunk his pride too low in her consideration, and had been carried farther than he intended on the tide of pathos, he remarked, We will speak about Cross Jay to-morrow. His deceitfulness has been gross. As I said, I am grievously offended by deception. But you are tired. Good night, my dear friend. Good night, Sir Willoughby." She was allowed to go forth. Colonel Decray, coming up from the smoking-room, met her and noticed the state of her eyelids, as he wished her good night. He saw Willoughby in the room she had quitted, but considerably passed without speaking, and without reflecting why he was considerate. Our hero's review of the scene made him, on the whole, satisfied with his part in it. Of his power upon one woman he was now perfectly sure. Clara had agonized him with the doubt of his personal mastery of any. One was a poor feast, but the pangs of his flesh during the last few days and the latest hours caused him to snatch at it, hungrily, if contemptuously. A poor feast! She was yet a fortress, a point of sucker, both shield and lance, a cover and an impetus. He could now encounter Clara boldly. Should she resist and defy him, he would not be naked and alone. He foresaw that he might win honour in the world's eye from his position, a matter to be thought of only in most urgent need. The effect on him of his recent exercise in pathos was to compose him to slumber. He was, for the period, well satisfied. His attendant imps were well satisfied likewise, and danced around about his bed after the vigilant gentleman had ceased to debate on the question of his unveiling of himself, passed forgiveness of her to Letitia, and had surrendered to sleep the present direction of his affairs. CHAPTER 32 Letitia Dale discovers a spiritual change and Dr. Middleton, a physical. Clara tripped over the lawn in the early morning to Letitia to greet her. She broke away from a colloquy with Colonel Decray under Sir Willoughby's windows. The Colonel had been one of the bathers, and he stood like a circus-driver flicking a wet towel at Cross Jay capering. My dear, I am very unhappy, said Clara. My dear, I bring you news," Letitia replied. Tell me! But the poor boy is to be expelled. He burst into Cross Jay's bedroom last night and dragged the sleeping boy out of bed to question him, and he had the truth. That is one comfort. Only Cross Jay is to be driven from the hall because he was untruthful previously. For me, to serve me—really, I feel it was at my command—Cross Jay will be out of the way today, and is promised to come back at night to try to be forgiven. You must help me, Letitia. You are free, Clara. If you desire it, you have but to ask for your freedom. You mean. He will release you. You are sure? We had a long conversation last night. I owe it to you. Nothing is owing to me. He volunteered it. Clara made as if to lift her eyes in apostrophe. Professor Crooklyn—Professor Crooklyn—I see. I did not guess that. Give credit for some generosity, Clara. You are unjust. By and by, I will be more than just, by and by. I will practice on the trumpet. I will lecture on the greatness of the souls of men when we know them thoroughly. At present we do but half know them, and we are unjust. You are not deceived, Letitia. There is to be no speaking to Papa, no delusions. You have agitated me. I feel myself a very small person indeed. I feel I can understand those who admire him. He gives me back my words simply, clearly, without—oh, that long wrangle and scenes and letters—and it will be arranged for Papa and me to go not later than to-morrow. Never shall I be able to explain to any one how I fell into this. I am frightened at myself when I think of it. I take the whole blame. I have been scandalous. And dear Letitia, you came out so early in order to tell me. I wished you to hear it. Take my heart. Present me with a part, but for good. Fie! But you have a right to say it. I mean no unkindness, but it's not the heart you allude to and alarmingly searching one. Selfish it is, for I have been forgetting Cross J. If we are going to be generous, it's not Cross J to be forgiven. If it were only that the boy's father is away fighting for his country, endangering his life day by day, and for a stipend not enough to support his family, we are bound to think of the boy. Poor, dear, silly lad! With his—I say, Miss Middleton, why wouldn't some one see my father when he came here to call on him and had to walk back ten miles in the rain? I could almost fancy that did me mischief. But we have a splendid morning after yesterday's rain, and we will be generous. Down, Letitia, that it is possible to gild the most glorious day of creation. Doubtless the spirit may do it and make its hues permanent," said Letitia. You to me, I to you, he to us—well, then, if he does, it shall be one of my heavenly days, which is for the probation of experience. We are not yet at sunset. Have you seen Mr. Whitford this morning? He passed me. Do not imagine him ever ill-tempered. I had a governess, a learned lady, who taught me in person the picturesqueness of grumpiness. Her temper was ever perfect, because she was never in the wrong. But I, being so, she was grumpy. She carried my iniquity under her brows, and looked out on me through it. I was a trying child. Letitia said, laughing, I can believe it. Yet I liked her, and she liked me. We were a kind of foreground and background. She threw me into relief, and I was an apology for her existence. You picture her to me. She says of me now that I am the only creature she has loved. Who knows that I may not come to say the same of her? You would plague her and puzzle her still. Have I plagued and puzzled Mr. Whitford? He reminds you of her. You said you had her picture. Ah, do not laugh at him. He is a true friend. The man who can be a friend is the man who will presume to be a censor. A mild one. As to the sentence he pronounces, I am unable to speak, but his forehead is Radamanthi in condemnation. Dr. Middleton! Claire looked round. Who? I. Did you ever hear an echo of Papa? He would never put Radamanthus over European souls, because it appears that Radamanthus judged only the Asiatic. So you are wrong, Miss Dale. My father is infatuated with Mr. Whitford. What can it be? We women cannot sound the depths of scholars, probably because their pearls have no value in our market, except when they deign to chasten an impertinent, and Mr. Whitford stands aloof from any notice of small fry. He is deep, studious, excellent, and does it not strike you that if he descends among us he would be like a triton ashore? Letitia's habit of wholly subservient sweetness, which was her ideal of the feminine, not yet conciliated with her acuter character, owing to the absence of full pleasure from her life, the unhealed wound she had sustained in the cramp of a bondage of such old date has to seem iron-induced her to say, as if consenting. You think he is not quite at home in society? But she wished to defend him strenuously, and as a consequence she had to quit the self-imposed ideal of her daily acting, whereby, the case being unwonted, very novel to her, the lady's intelligence became confused through the process that quickened it. So sovereign a method of hoodwinking our bright selves is the acting of a part, however naturally it may come to us. According to this will each honest autobiographical member of the animated world bear witness. She added, You have not found him sympathetic. He is. You fancy him brooding, gloomy. He is the reverse. He is cheerful. He is indifferent to personal misfortune. Dr. Corny says there is no laugh like Vernon Whitford's, and no humor like his. Laterally he certainly—but it has not been your cruel word grumpiness. The truth is he is anxious about Cross Jay and about other things, and he wants to leave. He is at a disadvantage beside very lively and careless gentlemen at present, but your trite and ashore is unfair, it is ugly. He is, I can say, the truest man I know. I did not question his goodness, Letitia. You threw an accent on it. Did I? I must be like Cross Jay, who declares he likes fun best. Cross Jay ought to know him, if anybody should. Mr. Whitford has defended you against me, Clara, even since I took to calling you, Clara. Perhaps when you supposed him so like your ancient governess, he was meditating how he could aid you. Last night he gave me reasons for thinking you would do wisely to confide in Mrs. Mount Steward. It is no longer necessary. I merely mention it. He is a devoted friend. He is an untiring pedestrian. Oh! Colonel Decray, after hovering near the ladies in the hope of seeing them divide, now adopted the system of making three that two may come of it. As he joined them with his glittering chatter, Letitia looked at Clara to consult her, and saw the face rosy as a brides. The suspicion she had nursed sprung out of her arms a muscular fact on the spot. Where is my dear boy? Clara said. Out for a holiday! the Colonel answered in her tone. With Mr. Whitford not to waste his time in searching for Cross J. Letitia, Cross J is better out of the way to-day. At least I thought so just now. Has he pocket money, Colonel Decray? My lord can command his in. How thoughtful you are! Letitia's bosom swelled upon a mute exclamation equivalent to—woman, woman, snared ever by the sparkling and frivolous, undiscerning of the faithful, the modest and beneficent. In the secret musings of moralists this dramatic rhetoric survives. The comparison was all of her own making, and she was indignant at the contrast, though to what end she was indignant she could not have said, for she had no idea of Vernon as a rival of Decray in the favour of a plighted lady, but she was jealous on behalf of her sex. Her sex's reputation seemed at stake, and the purity of it was menaced by Clara's idle preference of the shallower man. When the young lady spoke so carelessly of being like Cross J, she did not perhaps know that a likeness, based on a similarity of their enthousiasms, loves, and appetites, had been established between women and boys. Letitia had formerly chafed at it, rejecting it utterly, save when now and then in a season of bitterness she handed here and there a volatile young lady, none but the young, to be stamped with the degrading brand. Vernon might be as philosophical as he pleased. To her the gaiety of these two, Colonel Decray and Clara Middleton, was distressingly musical. They harmonized painfully. The representative of her sex was hurt by it. She had to stay beside them. Clara held her arm. The Colonel's voice dropped at times to something very like a whisper. He was answered audibly and smoothly. The quick-witted gentleman accepted the correction, but in immediately paying assiduous attentions to Miss Dale, in the approved intrigue's fashion, he showed himself in need of another amounting to a reproof. Clara said, We have been consulting Letitia what is to be done to cure Professor Crooklyn of his cold. Decray perceived that he had taken a wrong step, and he was mightily surprised that a lesson in intrigue should be read to him of all men. Miss Middleton's audacity was not so astonishing. He recognized grand capabilities in the young lady. Fearing lest she should proceed further and cut away from him his vantage ground of secrecy with her, he turned the subject and was adroitly submissive. The generous manner of meeting Sir Willoughby expressed a timid disposition to friendliness upon availed inquiry, understood by none, saved Letitia, whose brain was wracked to convey assurances to herself of her not having misinterpreted him. Could there be any doubt? She resolved that there could not be, and it was upon this basis of reason that she fancied she had led him to it. Legitimate or not, the fancy sprang from a solid foundation. Yesterday morning she could not have conceived it. Now she was in doubt to feel that she had power to influence him. As now, since the midnight, she felt some emancipation from the spell of his physical mastery. He did not appear to her as a different man, but she had grown sensible of being a stronger woman. He was no more the cloud over her, nor the magnet. The cloud once heavens effused, the magnet fatally compelling her to sway round to him. She admired him still, his handsome air, his fine proportions, the courtesy of his bending to Clara and touching of her hand, excused a fanatical excess of admiration on the part of a woman in her youth, who is never the anatomist of the hero's lordly graces. But now she admired him piecemeal. When it came to the pudding of him together, she did it coldly. To compassionate him was her utmost warmth. Without conceiving in him any of the strange old monster of earth which had struck the awakened girl's mind of Miss Middleton, Letitia clasped him with other men. He was one of them. And she did not bring her disenchantment as a charge against him. She accused herself, acknowledged the secret of the change to be, and her youthfulness was dead. Otherwise could she have given him the compassion and not herself have been carried on the flood of it. The compassion was fervent and pure too. She supposed he would supplicate. She saw that Clara Middleton was pleasant with him only for what she expected of his generosity. She grieved. Sir Willoughby was fortified by her sorrowful gaze as he and Clara passed out together to the laboratory arm in arm. Letitia had to tell Vernon of the uselessness of his beating the house and grounds for Cross Jay. Dr. Middleton held him fast in discussion upon an overnight's classical wrangle with Professor Crooklyn, which was to be renewed that day. The Professor had appointed to call expressly to renew it. A fine scholar, said the Reverend Doctor, but crotchety, like all men who cannot stand their port. I hear that he had a cold, Vernon remarked. I hope the wine was good, sir. As when the foreman of a sentimental jury is commissioned to inform an awful bench, exact and perspicuous English, of a verdict that must of necessity be pronounced in favour of the hanging of the culprit, yet would feign attenuate to the crime of a palpable villain by a recommendation to mercy, such foreman, standing in the attentive eye of a master of grammatical construction, and feeling the weight of at least three sentences on his brain, together with a prospect of judicial interrogation for the discovery of his precise meaning, is oppressed, himself as put on trial, in turn, and he hesitates, he recapitulates fear of involution leads him to be involved. As far as a man so posted may, he on his own behalf appeals for mercy, in treats that his indistinct statement of preposterous reasons may be taken for understood, and would gladly, were permission to do it credible, throw in an imploring word that he may sink back among the crowd without for the one imperishable moment publicly swinging in his lordship's estimation. Such so, moved by chivalry towards a lady, courtesy to the recollection of a hostess, and particularly by the knowledge that his hear would expect with a certain frigid, rigor charity of him, Dr. Middleton paused, spoke, and paused. He stammered. Ladies, he said, were famous poisoners in the Middle Ages. His opinion was that we had a class of manufacturing wine merchants on the watch for widows in this country, but he was bound to state the fact of his waking at his usual hour to the minute, unassailed by headache. On the other hand, this was a condition of blessedness unanticipated when he went to bed. Mr. Whitford, however, was not to think that he entertained rancor towards the wine. It was no doubt dispensed with the honourable intention of cheering. In point of flavour, execrable, judging by results it was innocuous. The test of it shall be the effect of it upon Professor Crooklyn, and his appearance in the forenoon according to promise. Dr. Middleton came to an end with his perturbed balancings. If I hear more of the eight or twelve winds discharged at once upon a railway platform, and the young lady who drives herself of adrenching by drinking brandy in water with a gentleman at a railway inn, I shall solicit your sanction to my condemnation of the wine as anti-bacchic and a counterfeit presentment. Do not misjudge me. Our hostess is not responsible. But widows should marry. You must contrive to stop the Professor, sir, if he should attack his hostess in that manner," said Vernon. Widows should marry. Dr. Middleton repeated. He murmured of objecting to be at the discretion of a butler. Unless, he was careful to add, the aforesaid functionary could boast of a university education, and even then, said he, it requires a line of ancestry to train a man's taste. The reverend doctor smothered a yawn. The repression of it caused a second one, a real monster, to come, big as our old friend of the sea advancing on the chained-up beauty. Disconserted by this damning evidence of indigestion, his countenance showed that he considered himself to have been too lenient to the wine of an unhusbanded hostess. He frowned terribly. In the interval, Letitia told Vernon of Cross Jay's flight for the day, hastily bidding the master to excuse him. She had no time to hint the grounds of excuse. Vernon mentally made a guess. Dr. Middleton took his arm and discharged a volley at the Quachity Scholarship of Professor Crooklyn, whom, to confute by book, he directed his march to the library. Having persuaded himself that he was dyspeptic, he had grown irascible. He denounced all dining out, eulogized pattern hall as if it were his home, and remembered he had dreamt in the night, a most humiliating sign of physical disturbance. But let me find a house in proximity to pattern, as I am induced to suppose I shall, he said, and here only am I to be met when I stir abroad. Letitia went to her room. She was complacently anxious enough to prefer solitude and to be willing to read. She was more seriously anxious about Cross Jay than about any of the others. For Clara would be certain to speak very definitely, and how then could a gentleman oppose her? He would supplicate, and could she be brought to yield? It was not to be expected of a young lady who had turned from Sir Willoughby. His inferiors would have had a better chance. For his faults he had that element of greatness which excludes the intercession of pity. Supplication would be with him a form of condescension. It would be seen to be such. His was a monumental pride that could not stoop. She had preserved this image of the gentleman for a relic in the shipwreck of her idolatry. So she mused between the lines of her book, and finishing her reading and marking the page, she glanced down on the lawn. Dr. Middleton was there, and alone, his hands behind his back, his head bent. His meditative pace and unwonted perusal of the turf proclaimed that a nonsentimental jury within had delivered an unmitigated verdict upon the widow's wine. Letitia hurried to find Vernon. He was in the hall. As she drew near him, the laboratory door opened and shut. It is being decided, said Letitia. Vernon was paler than the hue of perfect calmness. I want to know whether I ought to take to my heels like Cross Jay and shun the professor," he said. They spoke in undertones, furtively watching the door. I wish what she wishes, I am sure, but it will go badly with the boy," said Letitia. Oh, well, then I'll take him," said Vernon. I would rather. I think I can manage it. Again the laboratory door opened. This time it shut behind Miss Middleton. She was highly flushed. Seeing them, she shook the storm from her brows with a dead smile. The best piece of serenity she could put on for public wear. She took a breath before she moved. Vernon strode out of the house. Clara swept up to Letitia. You were deceived. The hard sob of anger barred her voice. Letitia begged her to come to her room with her. I want air. I must be by myself," said Clara, catching at her garden-hat. She walked swiftly to the portico-steps and turned to the right to avoid the laboratory windows. CHAPTER 33 In which the comic muse has an eye on two good souls. Clara met Vernon on the bowling green among the laurels. She asked him where her father was. Can't speak to him now, said Vernon. Mr. Whitford, will you? It is not advisable just now. Wait. Wait. Why not now? He is not in the right humour. She choked, there are times when there is no medicine for us and sages. We want slaves. We scorn to temper eyes. We must overbear. On she sped, as if she had made the mistake of exchanging words with a post. The scene between herself and Willoughby was a thick mist in her head, except the burden and result of it, that he held to her fast, would neither assist her to depart nor disengage her. O men! Men! They astounded the girl. She could not define them to her understanding. Their motives, their tastes, their vanity, their tyranny, and the domino on their vanity, the baldness of their tyranny, clinched her in feminine antagonism to brute power. She was not the less disposed to rebellion by a very present sense of the justice of what could be said to reprove her. She had but one answer—anything but marry him. It threw her on her nature, our last and headlong advocate, who was quick as the flood to hurry us from the heights to our level, and lower if there be accidental gaps in the channel. For say we have been guilty of misconduct? Can we redeem it by violating that which we are and live by? The question sinks us back to the luxuriousness of a sunny relinquishment of effort in the direction against tide. Our nature becomes ingenious in devices, penetrative of the enemy, confidently citing its cause for being frankly elvish or worse. Clara saw a particular way of forcing herself to be surrendered. She shut her eyes from it. The sight carried her too violently to her escape, but her heart caught it up and hazard. To press the points of her fingers at her bosom, looking up to the sky as she did and cry, I am not my own, I am his. Was instigation sufficient to make her heart leap up with all her body's blush to urge it to recklessness? A despairing creature then may say she has addressed the heavens, and has had no answer to restrain her. Happily for Miss Middleton she had walked some minutes in her chafing fit before the falcon eye of Colonel Decray spied her away in one of the beach-knots. Then stood a resolute. It was decidedly not a moment for disturbing Dr. Middleton's composure. He meditated upon a conversation, as friendly as possible, with Willoughby. Round on the front lawn he beheld Willoughby and Dr. Middleton together, the latter having halted to lend attentive ear to his excellent host. Unnoticed by them or disregarded, Vernon turned back to Letitia, and sauntered, talking with her of things current for as long as he could endure to listen to praise of his pure self-abnegation. Of how well he had disguised himself, but it smacked unpleasantly to him. His humorous intimacy with men's minds likened the source of this distaste to the gallant all or nothing of the gambler, who hates the little when he cannot have the much, and would rather stalk from the tables clean-picked than suffer ruin to be tickled by driblets of the glorious fortune he has played for and lost. If we are not to be beloved, spare us the small coin of compliments on character, especially when they compliment only our acting. It is partly indurable to win eulogy for our stately fortitude in losing, but Letitia was unaware that he flung away a stake, so she could not praise him for its merits. Willoughby makes the pardoning of cross-jay conditional, he said, and the person pleading for him has to grant the terms. How could you imagine Willoughby would give her up? How could he? Who? He sure it is easily said. I was no witness of the scene between them just now, but I could have foretold the end of it. I could almost recount the passages. The consequence is that everything depends upon the amount of courage she possesses. Dr. Middleton won't leave pattern yet, and it is of no use to speak to him to-day, and she is by nature impatient and is rendered desperate. Why is it of no use to speak to Dr. Middleton to-day? cried Letitia. He drank wine yesterday that did not agree with him. He can't work. Today he is looking forward to patterned port. He is not likely to listen to any proposals to leave to-day. Goodness! I know the depth of that cry. You are excluded, Mr. Whitford. Not a bit of it. I am in with the rest. Say that men are to be exclaimed at. Men have a right to expect you to know your own minds when you close on a bargain. You don't know the world or yourselves very well, it's true. Still the original error is on your side, and upon that you should fix your attention. She brought her father here, and no sooner was he very comfortably established than she wished to dislocate him. I cannot explain it. I cannot comprehend it," said Letitia. You are constancy. No, she colored. I am in with rest. I do not say I should have done the same. But I have the knowledge that I must not sit in judgment on her. I can waver. She colored again. She was anxious that he should know her to be not that stupid statue of constancy in a corner doting on the antique deception. Reminiscences of the interview overnight made it oppressive to her to hear herself praised for always pointing like the needle. Her newly enfranchised individuality pressed to assert its existence. Vernon, however, not seeing this novelty, continued, to her excessive discomfort, to baste her old abandoned image with his praises. They checked hers, and moreover he had suddenly conceived an envy of her life-long, uncomplaining, almost unaspiring constancy of sentiment. If you know lovers when they have not reason to be blissful, you will remember that in this mood of admiring envy they are given to fits of uncontrollable mondering. Praise of constancy, moreover, smote shadowily a certain inconstant, enough to seem to ruffle her smoothness and do no hurt. He found his consolation in it, and poor Letitia writhed. Without designing to retort, she instinctively grasped at a weapon of defense and further exalting his devotedness, which reduced him to cast his head to the heavens, and implored them to partially enlighten her. Nevertheless, maunder he must, and he recurred to it, in a way so utterly unlike himself, that Letitia stared in his face. She wondered whether there could be anything secreted behind this everlasting theme of constancy. He took her awakened gaze for summons to a separation of sincerity, and out they came. She would have fled from him, but to think of flying was to think how little it was that urged her to fly, and yet the thought of remaining and listening to praises undeserved and no longer flattering was a torture. Mr. Whitford, I bear no comparison with you. I do and must set you for my example, Miss Dale. Indeed you do wrongly. You do not know me. I could say that. For years. Pray, Mr. Whitford, will I have admired it. You show us how self can be smothered. An echo would be a retort on you. On me I am never thinking of anything else. I could say that. You are necessarily conscious of not swerving. But I do. I waver dreadfully. I am not the same two days running. You are the same, with ravishing divisions upon the same. And you, without the divisions, I draw such supports I have from you. From some simulacrum of me, then, and that will show you how little you require support. I do not speak my own opinion only. Whose? I am not alone. Again let me say I wish I were like you. Then let me add I would willingly make the exchange. You would be amazed at your bargain. Others would be. Your exchange would give me the qualities I am in want of, Miss Dale. Negative, passive at the best, Mr. Whitford, but I should have—oh, pardon me—but you inflict the sensations of a boy with a dose of honesty in him, called up to receive a prize he has won by the dexterous use of a crib. And how do you suppose she feels was a crown a queen of the may forced on her head when she is verging on November? He rejected her analogy, and she his. They could neither of them bring to light the circumstances which made one another's admiration so unbearable. The more he exalted her for constancy, the more did her mind become bent upon critically examining the object of that imagined virtue, and the more she praised him for possessing the spirit of perfect friendliness, the fiercer grew the passion in him which disdained the imputation, hissing like a heated iron bar that flings the water-drops to steam. He would none of it, would rather have stood exposed in his profound foolishness. Even though they were, and mutually affectionate, they came to a stop in their walk, longing to separate, and not seeing how it was to be done, they had sewn knit themselves together with the pelting of their interlawdation. I think it is time for me to run home to my father for an hour," said Laetitia. I ought to be working," said Vernon. Good progress was made to the disgarlanding of themselves thus far, yet an acutely civilised pair, the abruptness of the transition from floweriness to commonplace effected them both, Laetitia chiefly as she had broken the pause, and she remarked, I am really constancy in my opinions. Another title is customary where stiff opinions are concerned. Perhaps by and by you will learn your mistake, and then you will acknowledge the name for it. How, said she, what shall I learn? If you learn that I am a grisly egoist. You! And it would not be egoism, added Laetitia, revealing to him at the same instant as to herself that she swung suspended on a scarce credible guess. Well, nothing pierce your ears, Mr. Whitford. He heard the intruding voice, but he was bent on rubbing out the cloudy letters Laetitia had begun to spell, and he stammered in a tone of matter of fact—just that, and no better—then turned to Mrs. Mount Steward, Jenkinson. Or are you resolved that she will never see Professor Crooklyn when you look on him? said the great lady. Then bowed to the Professor and apologized to him shufflingly and rapidly, incoherently, and with a red face, which induced Mrs. Mount Steward to scan Laetitias. After lecturing Vernon for his abandonment of her yesterday evening, and flouting his protestations, she returned to the business of the day. We walked from the lodge gates to see the park and prepare ourselves for Dr. Middleton. We parted last night in the middle of a controversy, and are raging to resume it. Where is our redoubtable antagonist? Mrs. Mount Steward wheeled Professor Crooklyn round to accompany Vernon. We, she said, are for modern English scholarship opposed to the champion of German. The contrary, observed Professor Crooklyn. Oh! We, she corrected the air serenely, are for German scholarship opposed to English. Certain additions. We defend certain additions. Defend is a term of imperfect application to my position, mom. My dear Professor, you have in Dr. Middleton a match for you in conscientious pugnacity, and you will not waste it upon me. There, there they are, there he is, Mr. Whitford will conduct you. I stand away from the first shock." Mrs. Mount Steward fell back to Laetitia, saying, He pours over a little inexactitude in phrases, and pecks at it like a domestic fowl. Professor Crooklyn's attitude and air were so well described that Laetitia could have laughed. His mighty scholars have their flavor, the great lady hastened to add, lest her younger companion should be misled to suppose that they were not valuable to a governing hostess. Their shadow fights are ridiculous, but they have their flavor at a table. Last night, no, I discard all mention of last night. We failed, as none else in this neighborhood could fail, but we failed. If we have among us a cormorant devouring young lady who drinks upon the—ha!—brandy in water of our inns and occupies all our flies, why, our condition is abnormal, and we must expect to fail. We are deprived of accommodation for accidental circumstances. How Mr. Whitford could have missed seeing Professor Crooklyn? And what was he doing at the station, Miss Dale? Your portrait of Professor Crooklyn was too striking, Mrs. Mount Steward, and deceived him by its excellence. He appears to have only seen the blank side of the slate. Ah!—he is a faithful friend of his cousin, do you not think? He is the truest of friends. As for Dr. Middleton, Mrs. Mount Steward diverged from her inquiry, he will swell the letters of my vocabulary to gigantic proportions if I see much of him. He is contagious. I believe it is a form of his humor. I caught it of him yesterday at my dinner-table in my distress, and must pass it off as a form of mine while it lasts. I talked Dr. Middleton half the dreary night through to my pillow. Your candid opinion, my dear, come. As for me, I do not hesitate. We seemed to have sat down to a solitary performance on the base vile. We were positively in assembly of insects during thunder. My very soul thanked Colonel Ducray for his diversions, but I heard nothing but Dr. Middleton. It struck me that my table was petrified, and every one sat listening to bowls played overhead. I was amused. Really? You delight me? Who knows but that my guests were sincere in their congratulations on a thoroughly successful evening. I have fallen to this, you see, and I know wretched people. That is often not as their way of condoling with one. I do it myself, but only where there have been amiable efforts. But imagine my being congratulated for that. Good morning, Sir Willoughby! The worst offender, and I am in no pleasant mood with him. Mrs. Mount Stewart set aside to Letitia, who drew back, retiring. Sir Willoughby came on a step or two. He stopped to watch Letitia's figure swimming to the house. So as, for instance, beside a stream, when a flower on the surface extends its petals drowning to a subside in the clear still water, we exercise our privilege to be absent in the charmed contemplation of a beautiful natural incident. A smile of pleased abstraction melted on his features. CHAPTER 34 Mrs. Mount Stewart and Sir Willoughby Good morning, my dear Mrs. Mount Stewart. Sir Willoughby wakened himself to address the great lady. Why has she fled? Has any one fled? Letitia Dale. Letty Dale! Oh! if you call that flying! Possibly to renew a close conversation with Vernon Whitford that I cut short. You frightened me with your shepherds' tell-me, air and tone. Lead me to one of your garden-seats, out of hearing, to Dr. Middleton I beg. He mesmerises me. He makes me talk Latin. I was curiously susceptible last night. I know I shall everlastingly associate him with an abort of entertainment and solos on big instruments. We were flat. Horace was in good vein. You were not. And Letitia, Miss Dale, talked well, I thought. She talked with you, and no doubt she talked well. We did not mix. The yeast was bad. You shot darts at Colonel Decret, you tried to sting. You brought Dr. Middleton down on you. Dear me, that man is a reverberation in my head. Where is your lady and love? Who? Am I to name her? Clara, I have not seen her for the last hour. Wandering, I suppose. A very pretty summer bower, said Mrs. Mount Stewart, seeing herself. Tell my dear Sir Willoughby, preferences—preferences are not to be accounted for, and one never knows whether to pity or congratulate whatever may occur. I want to see Miss Middleton. Your dainty rogue and porcelain will be at your beck. You lunch with us, before you leave. So now you have taken to quoting me, have you? But a romantic tale on her eyelashes is hardly descriptive any longer. What of whom? Now you are upon Letitia Dale. I quote you generally. She now has a graver look. And well may have. Not that the romance has entirely disappeared. No, it looks as if it were in print. You have hit it perfectly as usual, ma'am." Sir Willoughby mused. Like one resuming his instrument to take up the melody in a concerted piece, he said, I thought that Letitia Dale had a singularly animated air last night. Why? Mrs. Mount Stewart mildly gaped. I want a new description of her. You know I collect your motos and sentences. It seems to me she is coming three parts out of her shell, and wearing it as a hood for convenience. Ready to issue forth at an invitation. Admirable. Exact. I, my good Sir Willoughby, but are we so very admirable and exact? Are we never to know our own minds? He produced a polysyllabic sigh, like those many jointed compounds of poets and happy languages, which are copious in a single expression. Mine is known to me. It always has been. Cleverness in women is not uncommon. Intellect is the pearl. A woman of intellect is as good as a Greek statue. She is divinely wrought, and she is divinely rare. Proceed, said the lady, confiding a cough to the air. The rarity of it, and it is not mere intellect, it is a sympathetic intellect, or else it is an intellect in perfect accord with an intensely sympathetic disposition. The rarity of it makes it too precious to be parted with, when once we have met it. I prize it the more the older I grow. Are we on the feminine or the neuter? I beg pardon. The universal or the individual. He shrugged. For the rest psychological affinities may exist coincident with, and entirely independent of, material or moral prepossessions, relations, engagements, ties. Well, that is not the raving of passion, certainly, said Mrs. Mount Stewart, and it sounds as if it were a comfortable doctrine for men. On that plea you might all of you be having asphasia and a wife, and we saw your fair Middleton and Colonel Decret at a distance as we entered the park. Professor Crooklyn is under some hallucination. What more likely? The readiness and the double bearing of the reply struck her comic sense with awe. The professor must hear that. He insists on the fly, and the inn, and the wet boots, and the warming mixture, and the testimony of the landlady on the railway-porter. I say, what more likely, than that he should insist, if he is under the hallucination. He may convince others. I have only to repeat. What more likely? It's extremely philosophical, coincident with the pursuit of the psychological affinities. Professor Crooklyn will hardly descend, I suppose, from his classical altitudes to lay his hallucinations before Dr. Middleton. Sir Willoughby, you are the pink of chivalry. By harping on Letitia he had emboldened Mrs. Mount Stewart to lift the curtain upon Clara. It was offensive to him, but the injury done to his pride had to be endured for the sake of his general plan of self-protection. Simply desire us to save my guests from annoyance of any kind," he said. Dr. Middleton can look olympus and thunder, as Vernon calls it. Don't! I see him. That look! It is dictionary-bitten, angry-homed dictionary, an apparition of dictionary in the night, to a dunce. One would undergo a good deal to avoid the sight. But the man must be in a storm. Speak as you please of yourself, you are a true and chivalrous night to dread it for her. But now, candidly, how is it you cannot condescend to a little management? Listen to an old friend. You are too lordly. No lover can afford to be incomprehensible for half an hour. Stoop a little. Sermonisings are not to be thought of. You can govern unseen. You are to know that I am one who disbelieves in philosophy and love. I admire the look of it. I give no credit to the assumption. I rather like lovers to be out at times. It makes them picturesque, and it enlivens their monotony. I perceive she had a spot of wildness. It's proper that she should wear it off before marriage. Clara, the wildness of an infant, said Willoughby paternally, musing over an inward shiver. You saw her at a distance just now, or you might have heard her laughing. Horus diverts her excessively. I owe him my eternal gratitude for his behaviour last night. She was one of my bright faces. Her laughter was delicious, rain in the desert. It will tell you what the load on me was, when I assure you those two were merely a spectacle to me, points I scored in a lost game, and I know they were witty. They both have wit—a kind of wit. Willoughby assented. They struck together like a pair of cymbals. Not the highest description of instrument, however, they amuse me. I like to hear them when I am in the vein. That vein should be more at command with you, my friend. You can be perfect, if you like. Under your tuition. Willoughby leaned to her, bowing languidly. She was easier in his pain for having hoodwing to the lady. She was the outer world to him. She could tune the world's voice, prescribe which of the two was to be pitied himself or Clara, and he did not intend it to be himself, if it came to the worst. They were far away from that at present, and he continued. Probably a man's power of putting on a face is not equal to a girl's. I detest petty dissensions. Probably I show it when all is not quite smooth. Full fits of suspicion vex me. It is a weakness not to play them off, I know. Men have to learn the arts which come to women by nature. I don't sympathize with suspicion from having none myself." His eyebrow shut up. That ill-omand man, Fletch, had sidled round by the bushes to within a few feet of him. Fletch primarily defended himself against the accusation of drunkenness, which was hurled at him to account for his audacity in trespassing against the interdict. But he admitted that he had taken something short for fortification in visiting scenes where he had once been happy, at Christmas-tide, when all the servants and the butler at head, grey old Mr. Chessington, sat and rose toasting the young heir of the old hall and the old port wine. Happy had he been then, before ambition for a shop, to be his own master and an independent gentleman, had led him into his quagmire. To look back envying a dog on the old estate, and sigh for the smell of pattern stables, sweeter than Arabia, his drooping nose appeared to say. He held up close against it something that imposed silence on Sir Willoughby as effectively as a cunning exhortium and oratory, will enchain mobs to swallow what is not complimenting them. And this he displayed secure in its being his license to drivel his abominable pathos. Sir Willoughby recognized Clara's purse. He understood at once how he must have come by it. He was not so quick in devising a means of stopping the tale. Fletch foiled him. "'Intact,' he replied to the question, what have you there? He repeated this grand word. And then he turned to Mrs. Mount Stewart to speak of Paradise and Adam, in whom he saw the prototype of himself, also the Hebrew people and the bondage of Egypt, discoursed of by the clergymen, not without a likeness to him. "'Sarrows have done me one good to send me attentive to church, my lady,' said Fletch, when I might have gone to London, the coachman's home, and been driving some honourable family with no great advantage to my morals, according to what I hear of, and a purse found under the seat of a fly in London would have a poor chance of returning intact to the young lady losing it. "'Put it down on that chair. Inquiries will be made, and you will see Sir Willoughby,' said Mrs. Mount Stewart. "'Intact, no doubt, it is not disputed.'" With one motion of a finger she sat the man rounding. Fletch halted. He was very regretful of the termination of his feast of pathos, and he wished to relate the finding of the purse. But he could not encounter Mrs. Mount Stewart's look. He slouched away in very close resemblance to the ejected Adam of illustrated books. "'It's my belief that naturalness among the common people has died out of the kingdom,' she said. Willoughby charitably apologized for him. He has been fuddling himself." Her vigilant considerateness had dealt the sensitive gentleman a shock, plainly telling him she had her ideas of his actual posture. Nor was he unhurt by her superior acuteness and her display of authority on his grounds. He said boldly as he weighed the purse, half tossing it. It's not unlike Clara's. He feared that his lips and cheeks were twitching, and as he grew aware of a glassiness of aspect that would reflect any suspicion of a keen-eyed woman, he became bolder still. "'Laticious! I know it is not. Hers is an ancient purse.' "'A present from you?' "'How do you hit on that, my dear lady?' "'Indeductively.' "'Well, the purse looks as good as new in quality, like the owner. The poor dear has not much occasion for using it. You are mistaken. She uses it daily.' "'If it were better filled, Sir Willoughby, your old scheme might be arranged. The parties do not appear so unwilling. Professor Crooklyn and I came on them just now rather by surprise, and I assure you their heads were close, faces meeting, eyes musing. Impossible. "'Because when they approach the point, you won't allow it—selfish.' "'Now,' said Willoughby, very animatedly, question Clara. "'Now do, my dear Mrs. Mount Stewart, do speak to Clara on that head. She will convince you I have striven quite recently against myself, if you like. I have instructed her to aid me, given her the fullest instructions, carte blanche. She cannot possibly have a doubt. I may look to her to remove any you may entertain from your mind on the subject. I have proposed, seconded, and chorused it, and it will not be arranged. If you expect me to deplore that fact, I can only answer that my actions are under my control, my feelings are not. I will do everything consistent with the duties of a man of honour perpetually running into fatal errors, because he did not properly consult the dictates of those feelings at the right season. I can violate them, but I can no more command them than I can my destiny. They were crushed of old, and so let them be now. Sentiments we won't discuss. Though you know that sentiments have a bearing on social life, are factors, as they say in their later jargon. I never speak of mine. To you I could. It is not necessary. If old Vernon, instead of flattening his chest at a desk, had any manly ambition to take part in public affairs, she would be the woman for him. I have called her my Algeria. She would be his Cornelia. One could swear of her that she would have noble offspring. But old Vernon has had his disappointment, and will moan over it up to the end. And she—so it appears. I have tried, yes, personally, without effect. In other matters I may have influenced with her, not in that one. She declines. She will live and die Letitia Dale. We are alone. I confess to you, I love the name. It's an old song in my ears. Do not be too ready with the name for me. Believe me, I speak from my experience hitherto. There is a fatality in these things. I cannot conceal from my poor girl that this fatality exists. Which is the poor girl at present?" said Mrs. Mount Stewart, cool in a mystification. And though she will tell you that I have authorised and Clara Middleton, done as much as man can to institute the union you suggest, she will own that she is conscious of the presence of this—fatality, I call it, for want of a better title between us. It drives her in one direction, me in another, or would, if I submit it to the pressure. She is not the first to have been conscious of it. Are we laying hold of a third poor girl? said Mrs. Mount Stewart. Ah! I remember—and I remember we used to call it playing fast and loose in those days, not fatality. It is very strange. It may be that you were unblushingly courted in those days, and excusable, and we all supposed, but away you went for your tour. My mother's medical receipt for me. Partially it succeeded. She was for grand marriages, not I. I could make, I could not be, a sacrifice. And then I went in due time to Dr. Cupid on my own account. She has the kind of attraction. But one changes. All revient au jour. First we begin with the liking, then we give ourselves up to the passion of beauty. Then comes the serious question of suitableness of the mate to match us, and perhaps we discover that we were wiser in early youth than somewhat later. However, she has beauty. Now Mrs. Mount Stewart, you do admire her. Chase the idea of the dainty rogue out of your view of her. You admire her. She is captivating. She has a particular charm of her own. Nay, she has real beauty. Mrs. Mount Stewart fronted him to say, Upon my word, my dear Sir Willoughby, I think she has it to such a degree, that I don't know the man who could hold out against her if she took the field. She is one of the women who are the dead shots with men. Whether it's in their tongues or their eyes, or it's in a fusion and an atmosphere, whatever it is, it's a spell, another fatality for you. Animal, not spiritual. Oh, she hasn't the head of Letty Dale. Sir Willoughby allowed Mrs. Mount Stewart to pause and follow her thoughts. Dear me, she exclaimed, I noticed a change in Letty Dale last night, and to-day, she looked fresher and younger, extremely well, which is not what I can say for you, my friend. Fatalizing is not good for the complexion. Don't take away my health, pray, cried Willoughby with a snapping laugh. Be careful, said Mrs. Mount Stewart. You have got a sentimental tone. You talk of feelings crushed of old. It is to a woman not to a man that you speak, but that sort of talk is a way of making the ground slippery. I listen in vain for a natural tongue, and when I don't hear it I suspect plotting in men. You show your under-teeth too at times when you draw on a breath, like a condemned high-caste Hindu my husband took me to see in a jail in Calcutta, to give me some excitement when I was pining for England. The creature did it regularly as he breathed. You did it last night, and you have been doing it to-day, as if the air cut you to the quick. You have been spoiled. You have been too much anointed. Would I have just mentioned as a sign with me of a settled something on the brain of a man?" "'The brain?' said Sir Willoughby frowning. "'Yes, you laugh sourly to look at,' said she. Mount Stewart told me that the muscles of the mouth betray men sooner than the eyes, when they have caused to be uneasy in their minds. But, ma'am, I shall not break my word. I shall not, not. I intend I have resolved to keep it. I do not fatalize, let my complexion be black or white, despite my resemblance to a high-caste malefactor of the Calcutta prison wards. Friend, friend, you know how I chatter!' He saluted her finger-end. "'Despite the extraordinary display of teeth, you will find me go to execution with perfect calmness, with a resignation as good as happiness. Like a Jacobite lord under the Georges. You have told me that you wept to read of one, like him, then. My principles have not changed, if I have. When I was younger I had an idea of a wife who would be with me in my thoughts, as well as aims, a woman with a spirit of romance and a brain of solid sense. I shall sooner or later dedicate myself to a public life. And shall, I suppose, want the counselor or comforter who ought always to be found at home. It may be unfortunate that I have the ideal in my head, but I would never make rigorous demands for specific qualities. The cruelest thing in the world is to set up a living model before a wife, and compel her to copy it. In any case, here we are upon the road, the dye is cast. I shall not reprieve myself. I cannot release her. Marriage represents facts, courtship, fancies. She will be cured by and by of that coveting of everything that I do, feel, think, dream, imagine. Ta-ta-ta-ta add infinitum. Letitia was invited here to show her the example of a fixed character, solid as any concrete substance you would choose to build on, and not a wit the less feminine. Ta-ta-ta-ta add infinitum. You need not tell me you have a design in all that you do, Willoughby pattern. You smell the autocrat? Yes, he can mould and govern the creatures about him. His toughest rebel is himself. If you see Clara, you wish to see her, I think you said. Her behaviour to Lady Bush last night was queer. If you will, she makes a mouth at Porcelain, to jour la porcelaine. For me her pettishness is one of her charms, I confess it, ten years younger I could not have compared them. Whom? Tata and Clara. Sir Willoughby, in any case, to quote you, here we all are upon the road, and we must act as if events were going to happen, and I must ask her to help me on the subject of my wedding present, for I don't want to have her making mouths at mine, however pretty, and she does it prettily. Another dedicatory offering to the rogue in me, she says of Porcelain. Then Porcelain it shall not be. I mean to consult her. I have come determined upon a chat with her. I think I understand, but she produces false impressions on those who don't know you both. I shall have that Porcelain back, says Lady Bush to me, when we were shaking hands last night. I think, says she, it should have been the Willough pattern. And she really said, he's in for being jilted a second time. Sir Willoughby restrained a bound of his body that would have sent him up some feet into the air. He felt his skull thundered at within. Rather than that, it should fan upon her. Ejaculated he, correcting his resemblance to the high-caste culprit as soon as it recurred to him. But you know Lady Bush! said Mrs. Mount Stewart, genuinely solicitous to ease the proud man of his pain. She could see through him to the depth of the skin, which his fencing sensitiveness vainly attempted to cover as it did the heart of him. Lady Bush has nothing without her flights, fads, and fancies. She had always insisted that you have an unfortunate nose. I remember her saying on the day of your majority, it was the nose of a monarch destined to lose a throne. Have I ever offended Lady Bush? She trumpets you. She carries Lady Coulmer with her, too, and you may expect a visit of nods and hints and pots of alabaster. They worship you. You are the hope of England in their eyes, and no woman is worthy of you. But they are a pair of fatalists, and if you begin upon Letty Dale with them, you might as well forbid your bans. They will be all over the country, exclaiming on predestination and marriages made in heaven. Clara and her father cried Sir Willoughby. Dr. Middleton and his daughter appeared in the circle of shrubs and flowers. Bring her to me, and save me from the polyglot! said Mrs. Mount Stewart, in a fright at Dr. Middleton's manner of pouring forth into the ears of the downcast girl. The leisure he loved that he might debate with his genius upon any next step was denied to Willoughby. He had to place his trust in the skill with which he had sewn and prepared Mrs. Mount Stewart's understanding to meet the girl, beautiful aboard that she was, detested, darling, finged to squeeze to death and throw to the dust and mourn over. He had to risk it, and at an hour when Lady Bush's prognostic grievously impressed his intense apprehensiveness of nature. As it happened that Dr. Middleton's notion of a disagreeable duty in colloquy was to deliver all that he contained, and escape the listening to a syllable of reply, Willoughby withdrew his daughter from him, opportunely. Mrs. Mount Stewart wants you, Clara. I shall be very happy, Clara replied, and put on a new face. An imperceptible nervous shrinking was met by another force in her bosom that pushed her to advance without a sign of reluctance. She seemed to glitter. She was handed to Mrs. Mount Stewart. Dr. Middleton laid his hand over Willoughby's shoulder, retiring on a bow before the great lady of the district. He blew and said, an opposition of female instinct to masculine intellect necessarily creates a corresponding antagonism of intellect to instinct. Her answer, sir. Her reasons. How she named any. The cat, said Dr. Middleton, taking breath for a sentence, that humps her back in the figure of the letter H, or a Chinese bridge has given the dog her answer and her reasons we may presume, but he that undertakes to translate them into human speech might likewise venture to propose an addition to the alphabet in a continuation of Homer. The one performance would be not more wonderful than the other. Daughters, Willoughby. Daughters. Above most human peccancies I do abhor a breach of faith. She will not be guilty of that. I demand a cheerful fulfilment of a pledge, and I sigh to think that I cannot count on it without administering a lecture. And she will soon be my care, sir. And she shall be. Why, she is as good as married. She is at the altar. She is in her house. She is—why, where is she not? She has entered the sanctuary. She is out of the market. This main ad shriek for freedom would happily entitle her to the Republican cap, the Phrygian, in a revolutionary Parisian procession. To me it has no meaning, and but that I cannot credit child of mine with mania, I should be in trepidation of her wits. Sir Willoughby's lively fears were pacified by the information that Clara had simply emitted a cry. Clara had once or twice given him cause for starting, and considering whether to think of her sex differently or condemningly of her, yet he could not deem her capable of fully unbosoming herself even to him, and under excitement. His idea of the cowardice of girls combined with his ideal of a wax-work sex, to persuade him that though they are often, he had experienced it, wantonly desperate in their acts, their tongues are curbed by rosy prudency. And this was in his favour. For if she proved speechless and stupid with Mrs. Mount Stewart, the lady would turn her over and beat her flat, beat her angular, in fine, turn her to any shape, despising her, and cordially believe him to be the model gentleman of Christendom. She would fill in the outlines he had sketched to her of a picture that he had small pride in by comparison, with his early vision of a fortune-favoured, triumphing squire, whose career is like the sun's, intelligibly lordly to all comprehensions. Not like your model gentleman that has to be expounded, a thing for abstract esteem. However, it was the choice left to him, and an alternative was enfolded in that. Mrs. Mount Stewart's model gentleman could marry either one of two women, throwing the other overboard. He was bound to marry, he was bound to take to himself one of them, and whichever one he selected would cast a lustre on his reputation. At least she would rescue him from the claws of Lady Bush, and her owls hoot of willow pattern, and her hag shriek of twice jilted. That flying infant Willoughby, his unprotected little incorporeal omnipresent self, not thought of so much as passionately felt for, would not be scoffed at as the luckless with women. A fall indeed from his original conception of his name of fame abroad. But Willoughby had the high consolation of knowing that others have fallen lower. There is the fate of the devils to comfort us, if we are driven hard. For one of your pangs, another bosom is wracked by ten, we read in the solacing book. With all these nice calculations at work, Willoughby stood above himself, contemplating his active machinery, which he could partly criticize, but could not stop, in a singular wonderment at the aims and schemes and tremors of one who was handsome, manly, acceptable in the world's eyes. And had he not loved himself most heartily, he would have been divided to the extent of repudiating that urgent and excited half of his being, whose motions appeared as those of a body of insects perpetually erecting and repairing a structure of extraordinary pettiness. He loved himself too seriously to dwell on the division for more than a minute or so. He had seen it, and for the first time, as he believed, his passion for the woman causing it became surcharge with bitterness, atribiliar. A glance behind him, as he walked away with Dr. Middleton, showed Clara, cunning creature that she was, eerily executing her malicious graces in the preliminary courtesies with Mrs. Mount Stewart.