 20 An aged and a great wine. The leisurely promenade up and down the lawn, with ladies and deferential gentlemen in anticipation of the dinner-bell, was Dr Middleton's evening pleasure. He walked as one who had formally danced, in Apollo's time and the young god Cupid's, elastic on the muscles of the calf and foot, bearing his broad iron-grey head in grand elevation. The hard labour of the day approved the cooling exercise and the crowning refreshments of French cookery and wines of known vintages. He was happy at that hour in dispensing wisdom or new-guy to his hearers, like the western son, whose habit it is when he is fairly treated, to break out in quiet splendours, which by no means exhaust his treasury. Blessed indeed above his fellows, by the height of the bow-winged bird in a fair-weather sunset sky above the pecking sparrow, is he that ever in the recurrent evening of his day sees the best of it ahead, and soon to come. He has the rich reward of a youth and manhood of virtuous living. Dr Middleton misdoubted the future as well as the past of the man who did not in becoming gravity exalt to dine, that man he deemed unfit for this world and the next. An example of the good fruit of temperance, he had a comfortable pride in his digestion, and his political sentiments were attuned by his veneration of the power's rewarding virtue. We must have a stable world where this is to be done. The reverent doctor was a fine old picture, a specimen of art peculiarly English, combining in himself piety and epicurism, learning and gentleness, with good room for each and a seat at one another's table. For the rest a strong man, an athlete in his youth, a keen reader of facts and no reader of persons, genial, a giant at a task, a steady worker besides, but easily discomposed. He loved his daughter, and he feared her. However much he liked her character, the dread of her sex and age was constantly present to warn him that he was not tied to perfect sanity while the damsel Clara remained unmarried. Her mother had been an amiable woman of the poetical temperament nevertheless, too enthusiastic, imaginative, impulsive for the repose of a sober scholar. An admirable woman, still, as you see, a woman, a firework. The girl resembled her. Why should she wish to run away from Patton Hall for a single hour? Simply because she was of the sex, born mutable and explosive. A husband was her proper custodian, justly relieving a father. With demagogues abroad and daughters at home, philosophy is needed for us to keep erect. Let the girl beat Cicero's tullia. Well, she dies. The choicest of them will furnish us examples of a strange perversity. Miss Dale was beside Dr. Middleton. Clara came to them and took the other side. I was telling Miss Dale that the signal for your subjection is my enfranchisement, he said to her sighing and smiling. We know the date. The date of an event to come certifies to it as a fact to be counted on. Are you anxious to lose me? Clara faltered. My dear, you have planted me on a field where I am to expect the trumpet, and when it blows I shall be quit of my nerves no more. Clara found nothing to seize on for a reply in these words. She thought upon the silence of Letitia. Sir Willoughby advanced, peering in a cordial mood. I need not ask you whether you are better, he said to Clara, sparkled to Letitia, and raised a key to the level of Dr. Middleton's breast, remarking, I am going down to my inner cellar. An inner cellar, exclaimed the doctor. Sacred from the butler, it is interdicted to Stoneman. Shall I offer myself as guide to you? My cellars are worth a visit. Cellars are not catacombs. They are, if rightly constructed, rightly considered, cloisters, where the bottle meditates on joys to bestow, not on dust misused. Have you anything great? A wine aged ninety. Is it associated with your pedigree that you pronounce the age with such assurance? My grandfather inherited it. Your grandfather, Sir Willoughby, had meritorious offspring, not to speak of generous progenitors. What would have happened had it fallen into the female line? I shall be glad to accompany you. Ah, we are in England. There will just be time, said Sir Willoughby inducing Dr. Middleton to step out. A chirrup was in the reverend doctor's tone. Hawks, too, have compassed age. I have tasted senior hawks. Their flavours are as a brook of many voices. They have depth also. Senatorial port, we say. We cannot say that of any other wine. Port is deep sea deep. It is in its flavour deep. Mark the difference. It is like a classic tragedy, organic in conception. An ancient ermitage as the light of the antique. The merit that it can grow to an extreme old age. A merit. Neither of ermitage nor of hawk can you say that it is the blood of these long years, retaining the strength of youth with the wisdom of age. To port for that. Port is our noblest legacy. Observe, I do not compare the wines. I distinguish the qualities. Let them live together for our enrichment. They are not rivals like the Idean Three. Where they rivals, a fourth would challenge them. Burgundy has great genius. It does wonders within its period. It does all except to keep up in the race. It is short lived. An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless port. I cherish the fancy that port speaks the sentences of wisdom. Burgundy sings the inspired ode. Or put it that port is the Homeric hexameter. Burgundy, the Pindaric ditheram. What do you say? The comparison is excellent, sir. The distinction, you would remark, Pindar astounds. But his elder brings us the more sustaining cup. One is a fountain of prodigious ascent. One is the unsounded purple sea of marching billows. A very fine distinction. I conceive you to be now commending the similes. They pertain to the time of the first critics of those poets. Touch the Greeks, and you can touch nothing new. All has been said. Genius dedicated to fame is immortal. We, sir, dedicate genius to the cloaca-line floods. We do not address the unforgetting gods but the popular stomach. Sir Willoughby was patient. He was about as accordingly coupled with Dr. Middleton in discourse as a drum duetting with a bass vile. And when he struck in, he received correction from the pedagogue instrument. If he thumped affirmative or negative, he was wrong. However, he knew scholars to be an unmannered species, and the doctor's learnedness would be a subject to die late on. In the cellar it was the turn for the drum. Dr. Middleton was tongue-tied there. Sir Willoughby gave the history of his wine in heads of chapters, whence it came to the family originally, and how it had come down to him in the quantity to be seen. Curiously, my grandfather, who inherited it, was a water-drinker. My father died early. Indeed, dear me! the doctor ejaculated in astonishment and condolence. The former glanced at the contrariety of man. The latter embraced his melancholy destiny. He was impressed with respect for the family. This cool, vaulted cellar, and the central square block, or enceinte, where the thick darkness was not penetrated by the intruding lamp, but rather took it as an eye, bore witness to forethoughtful practical solidity in the man who had built the house on such foundations. A house having a great wine stored below lives in our imaginations as a joyful house, fast and splendidly rooted in the soil. And imagination has a place for the air of the house. His grandfather, a water-drinker, his father, dying early, present circumstances to us, arguing predestination to an illustrious airship and career. Dr. Middleton's musings were coloured by the friendly vision of glasses of the great wine. His mind was festive. It pleased him, and he chose to indulge in his whimsical, robustious, grandiose, airy style of thinking, from which the festive mind will sometimes take a certain print that we cannot obliterate immediately. Expectation is grateful, you know, in the mood of gratitude we are waxen. And he was a self-humouring gentleman. He liked Sir Willoughby's tone in ordering the servant at his heels to take up those two bottles. It prescribed, without overdoing it, a proper amount of caution, and it named an agreeable number. Watching the man's hand keenly, he said, But here is the misfortune of a thing super-excellent. Not more than one in twenty will do it justice. Sir Willoughby replied, Very true, sir, and I think we may pass over the nineteen. Women, for example, and most men. This wine would be a sealed book to them. I believe it would. It would be a grievous waste. Vernon is a claret man, and so is Horace de Cray. They are both below the mark of this wine. They will join the ladies. Perhaps you and I, sir, might remain together. With the utmost good will on my part. I am anxious for your verdict, sir. You shall have it, sir, and not out of harmony with the chorus preceding me I can predict. Cool, not frigid. Dr. Middleton summed the attributes of the cellar on quitting it. Northside and south. No musty damp, a pure air. Everything requisite. One might lie down oneself and keep sweet here. Of all our venerable British of the two aisles professing a suckling attachment to an ancient port wine, lawyer, doctor, squire, rosy admiral, city merchant, the classic scholar is he whose blood is most nuptial to the webbed bottle. The reason must be that he is full of the old poets. He has their spirit to sing with, and the best the time has done on earth to feed it. He may also perceive a resemblance in the wine to the studious mind, which is the obverse of our mortality, and throws off acids and crusty particles in the piling of the years, until it is fulgent by clarity. Port hymns to his conservatism. It is magical at one sip he is off swimming in the purple flood of the ever youthful antique. By comparison then the enjoyment of others is brutish. They have not the soul for it, but he is worthy of the wine as our poets of beauty. In truth they should be severally apportioned to them, scholar and poet, as his own good thing. Let it be so. Meanwhile Dr. Middleton sipped. After the departure of the ladies, Sir Willoughby had practised a studied curtness upon Vernon and Horace. You drink claret, he remarked to them, passing it round. Port, I think, Dr. Middleton. The wine before you may serve for a preface. We shall have your wine in five minutes. The claret jug empty, Sir Willoughby offered to send for more. Decray was languid over the question. Vernon rose from the table. We have a bottle of Dr. Middleton's Port coming in, Willoughby said to him. Mine, you call it, cried the doctor. It's a royal wine that won't suffer sharing, said Vernon. We'll be with you if you go into the billiard room, Vernon. I shall hurry my drinking of good wine for no man, said the Reverend Doctor. Horace, I'm beneath it, ephemeral, Willoughby. I'm going to the ladies. Vernon and Decray retired upon the arrival of the wine, and Dr. Middleton sipped. He sipped and looked at the owner of it. Some thirty dozen, he said. Fifty. The doctor nodded humbly. I shall remember, Sir, his host addressed him, whenever I have the honor of entertaining you, I am sellerer of that wine. The Reverend Doctor sat down his glass. You have, Sir, in some sense, an enviable post. It is a responsible one, if that be a blessing. On you it devolves to retard the day of the last dozen. Your opinion of the wine is favorable, Sir. I will say this, shallow souls run to rhapsody. I will say that I am consoled for not having lived ninety years back, or at any period but the present, by this one glass of your ancestral wine. I am careful of it, Sir Willoughby said modestly. Still its natural destination is to those who can appreciate it. You do, Sir. Still, my good friend, still it is a charge. It is a possession, but part in trusteeship. Though we cannot declare it an entailed estate, our consciences are in some sort pledged that it shall be a succession not too considerably diminished. You will not object to drink it, Sir, to the health of your grandchildren, and may you live to toast them in it on their marriage day. You colour the idea of a prolonged existence in seductive hues. Ha! It is a wine for tithonus. This wine would speed him to the rosy morning. Ha! Ha! I will undertake to see you through it up to morning, said Sir Willoughby, innocent of the backic nuptiality of the illusion. Dr. Middleton eyed the decanter. There is a grief in gladness for a premonition of our mortal state. The amount of wine in the decanter did not promise to sustain the starry roof of night and greet the dawn. Old wine, my friend, denies us the full bottle. Another bottle is to follow. No, it is ordered. I protest. It is uncorked. I entreat. It is decanted. I submit. But, Mark, it must be honest partnership. You are my worthy host, Sir, on that stipulation. Note the superiority of wine over Venus. I may say the magnanimity of wine. Our jealousy turns on him that will not share. But the corks, Willoughby, the corks excite my amazement. The corking is examined at regular intervals. I remember the occurrence in my father's time. I have seen to it once. It must be perilous as an operation for tracheotomy, which I should assume it to resemble in surgical skill and firmness of hand, not to mention the imminent gasp of the patient. A fresh decanter was placed before the doctor. He said, I have but a girl to give. He was melted. Sir Willoughby replied, I take her for the highest prize this world affords. I have beaten some small stock of Latin into her head, and a note of Greek. She contains a savor of the classics. I hoped once. But she is a girl. The nymph of the woods is in her. Still she will bring you her flower cup of Hippocrine. She has that aristocracy, the noblest. She is fair. A beauty, some have said, who judge not by lines. Fair to me, Willoughby. She is my sky. There were applicants. In Italy she was besought of me. She has no history. You are the first heading of the chapter. With you she will have her one tale, as it should be. Most fragrant she that smells of nought. She goes to you from me, from me alone, from her father to her husband. He murmured on the lines to, I shall feel the parting. She goes to one who will have my pride in her, and more, I will add, who will be envied. Mr. Whitford must write to a carmen nuctiale. The heart of the unfortunate gentleman listening to Dr. Middleton set in for irregular leaps. His offended temper broke away from the image of Clara, revealing her as he had seen her in the morning, beside Horace Decray, distressingly sweet. Sweet with the breezy radiance of an English soft-breathing day. Sweet with sharpness of young sap. Her eyes, her lips, her fluttering dress that played happy mother across her bosom, giving peeps of the veiled twins, and her laughter, her slim figure, peerless carriage, all her terrible sweetness touched his wound to the smarting quick. Her wish to be free of him was his anguish. In his pain he thought sincerely. When the pain was easier, he muffled himself in the idea of her jealousy of Laetitia Dale, and deemed the wish of fiction. But she had expressed it. That was the wound he sought to comfort, for the double reason that he could love her better after punishing her, and that to meditate on doing so masked the fear of losing her. The dread abyss she had succeeded in forcing his nature to shudder at, as a giddy edge possibly near, in spite of his arts of self-defense. What I shall do to-morrow evening, he exclaimed. I do not care to fling a bottle to Colonel Decray and Vernon. I cannot open one for myself. To sit with the ladies will be sitting in the cold for me. When do you bring me back, my bride, sir? My dear Willoughby, the Reverend Dr. Puffed composed himself and sipped. The expedition is an absurdity. I am unable to see the aim of it. She had a headache, vapours. They are over, and she will show a return of good sense. I have ever maintained that nonsense is not to be encouraged in girls. I can put my foot on it, my arrangements of the staying here a further ten days, in the terms of your hospitable invitation, and I stay. I applaud your resolution, sir. Will you prove firm? I am never false to my engagement, Willoughby. Not under pressure. Under no pressure. Persuasion, I should have said. Certainly not. The weakness is in the yielding, either to persuasion or to pressure. The latter brings weight to bear on us. The former blows at our want of it. You gratify me, Dr. Middleton, and relieve me. I cordially dislike a breach in good habits, Willoughby. But I do remember, was I wrong, informing Clara that you appeared light-hearted in regard to a departure or gap in a visit, that was not, I must confess, to my liking. Simply, my dear doctor, your pleasure was my pleasure, but make my pleasure yours, and you remain to crack many a bottle with your son-in-law. Excellently said, you have a courtly speech, Willoughby. I can imagine you to conduct a lover's quarrel with a politeness to read a lesson to well-bred damsels. Spare me the futility of the quarrel. All's well. Clara, replied Sir Willoughby, in dramatic epigram, is perfection. I rejoice, the Reverend Doctor responded, taught thus to understand that the lover's quarrel between his daughter and his host was at an end. He left the table a little after eleven o'clock. A short dialogue ensued upon the subject of the ladies. They must have gone to bed. Why, yes, of course they must. It is good that they should go to bed early to preserve their complexions for us. Ladies are creation's glory, but they are anti-climax, following a whine of a century old. They are anti-climax, recoil, cross-current. Morally they are repentance, penance. Imagerially the frozen north on the young brown buds bursting to green. What know they of a critic in the palette, and a frame all revelry, and mark you revelry in sobriety, containment in exultation, classic revelry. Can they, dear though they be to us, light up candelabras in the brain, to illuminate all history and solve the secret of the destiny of man? They cannot. They cannot sympathize with them that can. So therefore this division is between us, yet we are not turbant orientals, nor are they inmates of the harem. We are not Muslim. Be assured of it in the contemplation of the tables decanter. Dr. Middleton said, Then I go straight to bed. I will conduct you to your door, sir, said his host. The piano was heard. Dr. Middleton laid his hand on the banisters and remarked, The ladies must have gone to bed. Vernon came out of the library and was hailed. Fellow student! He waved a good night to the doctor, and said to Willoughby, The ladies are in the drawing-room. I am on my way upstairs, was the reply. Solitude and sleep after such a whine as that, and forfend us human society, the doctor shouted. But, Willoughby, sir, one tomorrow. You dispose of the cellar, sir. I am fitted to drive the horses of the sun. I would rigidly counsel one and no more. We have made a breach in the fiftieth dozen. Daily one will preserve us from having to name the fortieth quite so unseasonably. The couple of bottles per DM prognostic apes disintegration with its accompanying recklessness. Constitutionally, let me add, I bear three. I speak for posterity. During Dr. Middleton's allocution, the ladies issued from the drawing-room, Clara foremost, for she had heard her father's voice, and desired to ask him this in reference to their departure. Papa, will you tell me the hour to-morrow? She ran up the stairs to kiss him, saying again, When will you be ready to-morrow morning? Dr. Middleton announced a stoutly deliberative mind, and the bugle notes of a repeated, ahem! He bethought him of replying in his doctoral tongue. Clara's eager face admonished him to brevity. It began to look starved. Intruding on his vision of the oories couched in the inner cellar to be the reward of valiant men, it annoyed him. His brows joined. He said, I shall not be ready to-morrow morning. In the afternoon. Nor in the afternoon. When? My dear, I am ready for bed at this moment, and know of no other readiness. Ladies, he bowed to the group in the hall below him. May fair dreams pay court to you this night. Sir Willoughby had hastily descended and shaken the hands of the ladies, directed Horace Decray to the laboratory for a smoking-rom, and returned to Dr. Middleton. Vext by the scene, uncertain of his temper if he stayed with Clara, for whom he had arranged that her disappointment should take place on the morrow in his absence, he said, Good-night, good-night, to her, with due fervour bending over her flaccid fingertips, then offered his arm to the Reverend Doctor. I, son Willoughby, in friendliness, if you will, though I am a man to bear my load, the father of the stupefied girl addressed him. Candles, I believe, are on the first landing. Good-night, my love, Clara. Papa. Good-night. Oh! she lifted her breast with the interjection, standing in shame of the curtained conspiracy and herself. Good-night. Her father wound up the stairs. She stepped down. There was an understanding that Papa and I should go to London to-morrow early, she said unconcernedly to the ladies, and her voice was clear, but her face too legible. The cray was heartily unhappy at the sight. End of Chapter 20. Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey. Chapter 21 Of The Egwist This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Egwist A Comedy in Narrative by George Meredith Chapter 21 Clara's Meditations Two were sleepless that night, Miss Middleton and Colonel Decray. She was in a fever lying like stone with her brain burning. Quick natures run out to calamity in any little shadow of it flung before. Terrors of apprehension drive them. They stop not short of the uttermost when they are on the wings of dreed. A frown means tempest, a wind wreck, to see fire is to be ceased by it. When it is the approach of their loathing that they fear, they are in the tragedy of the embraced at a breath. And then is the wrestle between themselves and horror, between themselves and evil, which promises aid, themselves and weakness which calls on evil, themselves and the better part of them which whispers no beguilement. The false course she had taken through sophistical cowardice appalled the girl. She was lost. The advantage taken of it by Willoughby put on the form of strength and made her feel object reptilius. She was lost, carried away on the flood of the cataract. He had won her father for an ally. Strangely, she knew not how. He had succeeded in swaying her father who had previously not more than tolerated him. Son Willoughby on her father's lip meant something that scenes and scenes would have to struggle with, to the outwearing of her father and herself. She revolved on the son Willoughby, through moods of stupefaction, contempt, revolt, subjection. It meant that she was vanquished. It meant that her father's esteem for her was forfeited. She saw him a gigantic image of discomposure. Her recognition of her cowardly feebleness brought the brood of fatalis. What was the right of so miserable a creature as she to excite disturbance, let her fortunes be good or ill. It would be quieter to float, kinder to everybody. Thank heaven for the chances of a short life. Once in a net desperation is graceless. We may be broods in our earthly destinies. In our endurance of them we need not be brootish. She was now in the luxury of passivity, when we throw our burden on the powers above, and do not love them. The need to love them drew her out of it, that she might strive with the unbearable, and by sheer striving, even though she were graceless, come to love them humbly. It is here that the seed of good teaching supports a soul, for the condition might be mapped, and where kismet whispers us to shut eyes, and instruction bids us look up, is at a well-marked crossroad of the contest. Quick of sensation, but not courageously resolved, she perceived how blunderingly she had acted. For a punishment it seemed to her that she, who had not known her mind, must learn to conquer her nature, and submit. She had accepted Willoughby, therefore she accepted him. The fact became a matter of the past, past debating. In the abstract this contemplation of circumstances went well. A plain duty lay in her way. And then a disembodied thought flew round her, comparing her with Vernon, to her discredit. He had for years borne much that was distasteful to him, for the purpose of studying, and with his poor income helping the poorer than himself. She dwelt on him in pity and envy. He had lived in this place, and so must she, and he had not been dishonoured by his modesty. He had not failed of self-control, because he had a life within. She was almost imagining she might imitate him when the clash of a sharp physical thought. The difference, the difference, told her she was woman and never could submit. Can a woman have an inner life apart from him she is joked to? She tried to nestle deep away in herself, in some corner where the abstract view had comforted her, to flee from thinking as her feminine blood directed. It was a vain effort. The difference, the cruel fate, the defenselessness of women pursued her, strung her to wild horses' backs, tossed her on savage wastes. In her case duty was shame, hence it could not be broadly duty. That intolerable difference proscribed the word. But the fire of a brain burning high and kindling everything lighted up herself against herself. Was one so volatile as she a person with a will? Were they not a multitude of flitting wishes that she took for a will? Was she feather-headed that she was a person to make a stand on physical pride? If she could yield her hand without reflection, as she conceived she had done from incapacity to conceive herself doing it reflectively, was she much better than purchasable stuff that has nothing to say to the bargain? Furthermore, said her incandescent reason, she had not suspected such art of cunning in Willoughby. Then might she not be deceived altogether? Might she not have misread him? Stronger than she had fancied, might he not be likewise more estimable? The world was favourable to him. He was prized by his friends. She reviewed him. It was all in one flash. It was not much less intentionally favourable than the world's review and that of his friends. But beginning with the idea of them, she recollected, heard Willoughby's voice pronouncing his opinion of his friends and the world, of Vernon Whitford and Colonel Decray, for example, and of men and women. An undefined agreement to have the same regard for him as his friends and the world had, provided that he kept at the same distance from her, was the termination of this phase, occupying about a minute in time, and reached through a series of intensely vivid pictures, his face at her petition to be released, lowering behind them for a background and a comment. I cannot, I cannot, she cried aloud, and it struck her that her repulsion was a holy warning. Better be graceless than a loathing wife. Better appear inconsistent. Why should she not appear such as she was? Why? We answer that question usually in angry reliance on certain superb qualities, injured fine qualities of ours undiscovered by the world. Not much more than suspected by ourselves, which are still our fortress, where pride sits at home, solitary and impervious as an octogenarian conservative. But it is not possible to answer it so, when the brain is raging like a pine torch, and the devouring illumination leaves not a spot of our nature coved. The aspect of her weakness was unrelieved and frightened her back to her loathing. From her loathing as soon as her sensations had quickened to realize it, she was hurled on her weakness. She was graceless, she was inconsistent, she was volatile, she was unprincipled, she was worse than a prey to wickedness, capable of it. She was only waiting to be misled. Nay, the idea of being misled suffused her with languor, for then the battle would be over, and she a happy weed of the sea no longer suffering those tugs at the roots, but leaving it to the sea to heave and contend. She would be like Constancia then, like her inner fortunes, never so brave she feared. Perhaps very like Constancia in her fortunes. Poor troubled bodies waking up in the night to behold, visually the specter cast forth from the perplexed machinery inside them, stare at it for a space, till touching consciousness they dived down under the sheets with fish-like alacrity. Clara looked at her thought, and suddenly headed downward in a crimson gulf. She must have obtained absolution, or else it was oblivion below. Soon after the plunge her first object of meditation was Colonel Decray. She thought of him calmly. He seemed a refuge. He was very nice. He was a holiday character. His sleet figure, neat firm footing of the stag, swift intelligent expression, and his ready frolic sumness, pleasant humor, cordial temper, and his irishry wear on, he was at liberty to play, as on the emblem harp of the Isle, were soothing to think of. The suspicion that she tricked herself with this calm observation of him was dismissed. Eschewing out of torture her young nature eluded the irradiating grain in search of refreshment, and she luxuriated at a feast in considering him, shower on a parched land that he was. He spread new air abroad. She had no reason to suppose he was not a good man. She could securely think of him. Besides, he was bound by his prospective office in support of his friend Willoughby to be quite harmless. And besides, you are not to expect logical sequences. The showery refreshment in thinking of him lay in the sort of assurance it conveyed, that the more she thought, the less would he be likely to figure as an obnoxious official. That is, as the man to do by Willoughby at the altar what her father would, under the supposition, be doing by her. Her mind reposed on Colonel Decray. His name was Horace. Her father had worked with her at Horace. She knew most of the odes and some of the satires and epistles of the poet. They reflected benevolent beams on the gentleman of the poet's name. He too was vivacious, had fun, common sense, elegance, loved rusticity. He said, sighed for a country life, fancied retiring to Canada to cultivate his own domain. Modus agri non ita magnus, a delight. And he too, when in the country sighed for town. There were strong features of resemblance. He had hinted in fun at not being rich. Que virtus et quanta sit vivere parvo. But that quotation applied to and belonged to Vernon Whitford. Even so little disarranged her meditations. She would have thought of Vernon as her instinct of safety prompted, had not his exactions been excessive. He proposed to help her with advice only. She was to do everything for herself, do and dare everything, decide upon everything. He told her flatly that so would she learn to know her own mind, and flatly that it was her penance. She had gained nothing by breaking down and pouring herself out to him. He would have her bring Willoughby and her father face to face and be witness of their interview, herself the theme. What alternative was there? Obedience to the word she had pledged. He talked of patience, of self-examination, and patience. But all of her she was all marked urgent. This house was a cage, and the world, her brain was a cage, until she could obtain her prospect of freedom. As for the house, she might leave it, Jonder was the dawn. She went to her window to gaze at the first color along the gray. Small satisfaction came of gazing at that or at herself. She shunned glass and sky. One and the other stamped her as a slave in a frame. It seemed to her she had been so long in this place that she was fixed here. It was her world, and to imagine an Alp was like seeking to get back to childhood. Unless a miracle intervened, here she would have to pass her days. Men are so little shivers now that no miracle ever intervenes. Consequently, she was doomed. She took a pen and began a letter to a dear friend, Lucy Dalton, a promised bridesmaid, bidding her countermand orders for her bridal dress, and proposing a tour in Switzerland. She wrote of the mountain country with real abandonment to imagination. It became a visioned loophole of escape. She rose and clasped the shawl over her nitrous toward of chillness, and sitting to the table again could not produce a word. The lines she had written were condemned. They were ludicrously inefficient. The letter was torn to pieces. She stood very clearly doomed. After a fall of tears upon looking at the scraps, she dressed herself and sat by the window, and watched the black bird on the lawn as he hopped from shafts of dewy sunlight to the long-stretched dewy tree shadows, considering in her mind that dark dews are more meaningful than bright, the beauty of the dews of woods more sweet than meadow dews. It signified only that she was quieter. She had gone through her crisis in the anticipation of it. That is how quick natures will often be cold and hard, or not much more when the positive crisis arrives, and why it is that they are prepared for astonishing leaps over the gradations which should render their conduct comprehensible to us, if not excusable. She watched the black bird throw up his head stiffly, and pecked to right and left, dangling the worm on each side his orange beak. Speckle-breasted thrushes were at work, and a wag-tile that ran us with Clara's own rapid little steps. Thrush and black bird flew to the nest. They had wings, the lovely morning breath of sweet earth into her open window, and made it painful in the dense tweeter, chirped cheap and song of the air to resist the innocent intoxication. Oh, to love was not said by her, but if she had sung as her nature prompted, it would have been. Her war with willow-bees sprang of a desire to love repelled by distaste. Her cry for freedom was a cry to be free to love. She discovered it, half shuddering, to love. Oh, no, no shape of man, nor impalpable nature either, but to love unselfishness and helpfulness, and planted strength in something. Then loving and being loved a little, what strength would be hers? She could utter all the words needed to Willoughby and to her father, locked in her love, walking in this world, living in that. Previously she had cried despairing, If I were loved, jealousy of Constantia's happiness, envy of her escape ruled her then. And she remembered the cry, though not perfectly her plain speaking to herself. She chose to think she had meant, if Willoughby were capable of truly loving. For now the fire of her brain had sunk, and refuges and subterfuges were round about it. The thought of personal love was encouraged. She chose to think for the sake of the strength it lent her to carve her way to freedom. She had just before felt rather the reverse, but she could not exist with that feeling, and it was true that freedom was not so indistinct in her fancy as the idea of love. Were men, when they were known, like him, she knew too well? The arch-temper's question to her was there. She put it away, wherever she turned, he stood observing her. She knew so much of one man, nothing of the rest. Naturally she was curious. Vernon might be sworn to be unlike, but he was exceptional. What of the other in the house? Maidens are commonly reduced to read the masters of their destinies by their instincts, and when these have been edged by overactivity they must hoodwink their maidenliness to suffer themselves to read, and then they must dupe their minds. Else men would soon see they were gifted to discern. Total ignorance being their pledge of purity to men, they have to expunge the writing of their perceptives on the tablets of the brain. They have to know, not when they do know. The instinct of seeking to know, crossed by the task of blotting knowledge out, creates that conflict of the natural with the artificial creature to which their ultimately revealed double face, complained of by ever dissatisfied men, is owing. Wander in no degree that they indulge a craving to be fools, or that many of them act the character. Cheer at them as little for not showing growth, you have reared them to this pitch, and at this pitch they have partly civilized you. Supposing you to want it done folly, you must yield just as many points in your requisitions, as are needed to let the wits of young women reap that you harvest, and be of good use to their souls. You will then have a fair battle, a braver with better results. Clara's inner eye traversed Colonel Decret at a shot. She had immediately to blot out the vision of Captain Oxford in him, the revelation of his laughing contempt for Willoughby, the view of mercurial principles, the scribble histories of light-love passages. She blotted it out, kept it from her mind, so she knew him, knew him to be a sweeter and a variable Willoughby, a generous kind of Willoughby, a Willoughby butterfly, without having the free mind to summarize him and picture him for a warning. Scattered features of him, such as the instincts call up, were not sufficiently impressive, besides the clouded mind was opposed to her receiving impressions. John Crossier's voice in the still-morning air came to her ears. The dear Gill is chatter of the boy's voice. Why, assuredly, it was John Crossier who was the man she loved, and he loved her, and he was going to be an unselfish, sustaining, true strong man, the man she longed for, for anchorage. Oh, the dear voice, woodpecker and thrush in one. He never ceased to chatter to Vernon Whitford, walking beside him with a swinging stride off to the lake for their morning swing. Happy couple, the morning gave them both a freshness and innocence above human. They seemed to clear a maid of morning air and clear lake water. Crossier's voice ran up and down a diatonic scale, with here and there a query in semitone, and a laugh on a ringing note. She wondered what he could have to talk of so incessantly, and imagined all the dialogue. He prattled of his yesterday, today, and tomorrow, which did not imply past and future, but his vivid present. She felt like one vainly trying to fly in hearing him. She felt old. The consolation she arrived at was to feel maternal. She wished to hug the boy. Trot and stride, Crossier and Vernon entered the park, careless about wet grass, not once looking at the house. Crossier ranged ahead and picked flowers, bounding back to show them. Claire's heart beat at a fancy that her name was mentioned. If those flowers were for her, she would price them. The two bathers dipped over an undulation. Her loss of them rattled her chains. Deeply dwelling on their troubles, has the effect upon the jung of helping to forgetfulness, for they cannot think without imagining their imaginations are saturated with their pleasures. And the collision, though they are unable to exchange sad for sweet distills and opiate. Am I solemnly engaged? She asked herself. She seemed to be awakening. She glanced at her bed, where she had passed the night of ineffectual moaning, and out on the high wave of grass, where Crossier and his good friend had vanished. Was the struggle all to be gone over again? Little by little, her intelligence of her actual position crept up to submerge her heart. I am in his house, she said. It resembled a discovery. So strangely, had her opiate and power of dreaming wrought through her tortures. She said it gasping. She was in his house, his guest. His betrothed swore to him. The fact stood out, cutting steel on the pitiless daylight. That consideration drew her to be an early wanderer in the wake of Crossier. Her station was among the beaches on the flank of the boys' return, and while waiting there, the novelty of her waiting to waylay anyone, she who had played the contrary part, told her more than it pleased her to think. Yet she could admit that she did desire to speak with Vernon, as with a counselor, harsh and curt but wholesome. The bathers reappeared on the grass ridge, racing and flapping wet towels. Someone hailed them. A sound of the galloping hoof drew her attention to the avenue. She saw Willoughby dash across the park level, and dropping a word to Vernon right away. Then she allowed herself to be seen. Crossier shouted. Willoughby turned his head, but not his horse's head. The boys sprang up to Clara. He had swum across the lake and back. He had raised Mr. Whitford and beaten him. How he wished Miss Middleton had been able to be one of them. Clara listened to him enduously. Her thought was, we women are nailed to our sex. She said, and you have just been talking to Sir Willoughby? Crossier drew himself up to give an imitation of the Baronet's hand moving in adieu. He would not have done that had he not smelled sympathy with the performance. She declined to smile. Crossier repeated it and laughed. He made a broader exhibition of it to Vernon approaching. I say, Mr. Whitford, who's this? Vernon doubled to catch him. Crossier fled and resumed his magnificent air in the distance. Good morning, Miss Middleton. You are out early, said Vernon, rather pale and stringy, from his cold swim, and rather hard-eyed with a sharp exercise following it. She had expected some of the kindness she wanted to reject, for he could speak very kindly, and she regarded him as her doctor of medicine, who would at least present the futile drug. Good morning, she replied. Willoughby will not be home till the evening. You could not have had a finer morning for your bath. No. I will walk as fast as you like. I'm perfectly warm. But you prefer fast-walking. Out. Ah, yes, that I understand. The walk back. Why is Willoughby away today? He has business. After several steps, she said, he makes very sure of Papa. Not without reason, you will find, said Vernon. Can it be? I'm bewildered. I had Papa's promise. To leave the hall for a day or two? It would have been. Possibly, but other heads are at work as well as yours. If you had been in earnest about it, you would have taken your father into your confidence at once. That was the course I ventured to propose on the supposition. In earnest, I cannot imagine that you doubted it. I wish to spare him. This is a case in which he can't be spared. If I had been bound to any other, I did not know then who held me a prisoner. I thought I had only to speak to him sincerely. Not many men would give up their price for a word. Willoughby the last of any. Price rang through her thrillingly from Vernon's mouth, and soothed her degradation. She would have liked to protest that she was very little of a price, a poor price, not one at all in general estimation. Only one to a man reckoning his property. No price in the true sense. The importunity of pain saved her. Does he think I can change again? Am I treated as something one in a lottery? To stay here is indeed more than I can bear. And if he's calculating, Mr. Whitford, if he calculates on another change, his plotting to keep me here is inconsiderate, not very wise. Changes may occur in absence. Wise or not, he has the right to scheme his best to keep you. She looked on Vernon with a shade of wandering reproach. Why? What right? The right you admit when you ask him to release you. He has the right to think you deluded, and to think you may come to a better mood if you remain. A mood more agreeable to him. I mean, he has that right absolutely. You are bound to remember also that you stand in the wrong. You confess it when you appeal to his generosity, and every man has the right to retain a treasure in his hand if he can. Look straight at these facts. You expect me to be all reason? Try to be. It's the way to learn whether you are really in earnest. I will try. It will drive me to worse. Try honestly. What is wisest now is, in my opinion, for you to resolve to stay. I speak in the character of the person you sketched for yourself as requiring. Well, then a friend repeats the same advice. You might have gone with your father. Now you will only disturb him and annoy him. The chances are he will refuse to go. Are women ever so changeable as men, then? Papa consented. He agreed. He had some of my feeling. I saw it. That was yesterday, and at night. He spoke to each of us at night in a different tone from usual. With me he was hardly affectionate. But when you advise me to stay, Mr. Whitford, you do not perhaps reflect that it would be at the sacrifice of all candor. Regard it as a probational term. It has gone too far with me. Take the matter into the head. Try the case there. Are you not cancelling me as if I were a woman of intellect? The crystal ring in her voice told him that tears were near to flowing. He shuddered slightly. You have intellect, he said, nodded and crossed the lawn, leaving her. He had to dress. She was not permitted to feel lonely, for she was immediately joined by Colonel Decray. End of chapter 21. Read by Lars Rolander. Chapter 22. Of The Aguist. This is a LibriVox recording. All 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 22. The Ride. Cross day darted up to her a nose ahead of the Colonel. I say, Miss Middleton, we are to have the whole day to ourselves after morning lessons. Will you come and fish with me and see me burge's nest? Not for the satisfaction of beholding another cracked crown, my son. The Colonel interposed, and bowing to Clara. Miss Middleton is handed over to my exclusive charge for the day with her consent. I scarcely know, said she, consulting a sensation of languor that seemed to contain some reminiscence. If I am here, my father's plan are uncertain. I will speak to him. If I am here, perhaps Cross Day would like a ride in the afternoon. Oh, yes, cried the boy, out overbonding, through Musee up to Closon Beacon, and down to Aspenwell, where there's a common for racing, and for the stream. An inducement for you, the craze said to her. She smiled and squeezed the boy's hand. We won't go without you, Cross Day. You don't carry comb, my man, when you've bathed? At this remark of the Colonel's, young Cross Day conceived the appearance of his matted locks in the eyes of his adorable lady. He gave her one dear look through his redness and fled. I like that boy, said the craze. I love him, said Clara. Cross Day's troubled eyelids in his honest young face became a picture for her. After all, Miss Middleton, Willowbush's notions about him are not so bad, if we consider that you will be in the place of a mother to him. I think them bad. You are disinclined to calculate the good fortune of the boy in having more of you on land than he would have in crown and anchor buttons. You have talked of him with Willowby? We had a talk last night. Of how much, thought she? Willowby returns, she said. He dines hair. I know, for he holds the key of the inner cellar, and Dr. Middleton does seem the honor to applaud his wine. Willowby was good enough to tell me that he thought I might contribute to amuse you. She was broadening in the stupefaction on her father and the wine, as she requested Colonel Decray to persuade Willowby to take the general view of Cross Jay's future and act on it. He seems fond of the boy too, said the Decray musingly. You speak in doubt? Not at all. But is he not men are queer fish, make allowance for us a trifle tyrannical, pleasantly with those he's fond of? If they look bright and left? It was meant for an interrogation. It was not with the sound of one that the words dropped. My dear Cross Jay, she said, I would willingly pay for him out of my own purse, and I will do so rather than have him miss his chance. I have not mustered a solution to propose it. I may be mistaken, Ms. Middleton. He talked of the boy's fondness of him. He would. I suppose he's hardly peculiar in liking to play pole-star. He may not be. For the rest, your influence should be all-powerful. It is not. Decray looked with a wandering eye at the heavens. We are having a spell of weather perfectly superb, and the odd thing is that whenever we have splendid weather at home, we are all for rushing abroad. I'm booked for a Mediterranean cruise, postponed to give place to your ceremony. That, she could not control her accent. What worthier? She was guilty of a pause. Decray saved it from an awkward length. I have written half an essay on honeymoon, Ms. Middleton. Is that the same as a half-written essay, Colonel Decray? Just the same, with the difference that it's a whole essay written all on one side. On which side? The bachelor's. Why does he trouble himself with such topics? To warm himself for being left out in the cold. Does he feel envy? He has to confess it. He has liberty. A commodity he can't tell the value of if there is no one to buy. Why should he wish to sell? He spent on completing his essay. To make the reading dull? There we touch the key of the subject, for what is to rescue the pair from a monotony multiplied by two. And so a bachelor's recommendation, when each has discovered the right sort of person to be dull with, pushes them from the church door on a round of adventures containing a spice of peril, if this to be had. Let them be in danger of their lives the first or second day. A bachelor's loneliness is a private affair of his own. He hasn't a look into a face to be ashamed of feeling it and inflicting it at the same time. Tis his pillow. He can punch it and he pleases and turn it over to other side, if he's for a mighty variation. There is a dream in it, but our poor couple are staring wide awake. All the dreaming's done. They've emptied their bottle of elixir or broken it, and she has a thirst for the use of the tongue, and he tojawn with a crony, and they may converse, they're not aware of it, more than the desert that has drank a shower. So as soon as possible she's away to the ladies, and he puts on his club. That's what your bachelor sees and would like to spare them, and if he didn't see something of the sort, he'd be off with a noose round his neck, on his knees in the dew to the morning milk-mate. The bachelor is happily worn, and on his guard, said Clara, diverted as she wished her to be. Sketch me a few of the adventures you propose. I have a friend who rode his bride from the houses of parliament up the Thames to the Seven on into North Wales. They shot some pretty wares and rapids. That was nice. They had an infinity of adventures, and the best proof of the benefit they derivis that they forgot everything about them, except that the adventures occurred. Those two must have returned bright enough to please you. They returned and shone like a wrecker's beacon to the mariner. You see, Miss Middleton, there was the landscape, and the exercise, and the occasional bit of danger. I think it's to be recommended. The scene is always changing, and not too fast, and is not too sublime, like big mountains, to tie them of their everlasting big oars. There's the difference between going into a howling wind and launching among siphirs. They have fresh air and movement, and not in a railway carriage. They can take in what they look on, and she has the steering ropes, and that's a wise commencement. And my lord is all day making an exhibition of his manly strength, vowing before her some sixty to the minute. And she, to help him, just inclines when she's in the mood, and they are face to face in the nature of things, and are not under the obligation of looking the unutterable, because, you see, there's business in hand, and the boat's just the right sort of third party, who never interferes, but must be attended to, and they feel they're laboring together to get along, all in the proper proportion, and whether he has to labor in life or not, he proves his ability. What do you think of it, Miss Middleton? I think you have only to propose it, Colonel Decray. And if they capsize, why dis unnatural ducking? You forgot the lady's dressing-bag. The stain on the metal for a constant reminder of his progress isn't saving it. Well, and there's an alternative to that scheme and a finer. This, then, they read dramatic pieces during courtship to stop the staying of things over again, till the drum of the air becomes nothing but a drum to the poor head, and a little before they affix their signatures to the fatal registry book of the Westry. They enter into an engagement with a body of provincial actors to join the troop on the day of their nuptials, and away they go in their coach and fore, and she's Lady Kitty Kuiper for a month, and he's Sir Harry Highflyer. See the honeymoon spinning. The marvel to me is that none of the young couples do it. They could enjoy the world, see life, amuse the company, and come back fresh to their own characters, instead of giving themselves a dose of Africa without a savage to diversify it, an impression they never get over, I'm told. Many a character of the happiest auspices has irreparable mischief done it by the ordinary honeymoon. For my part, I'd rather lean to the second plan of the campaign. Clara was expected to reply, and she said, probably because you are fond of acting, it would require capacity on both the sides. Miss Middleton, I would undertake to breathe the enthusiast for the stage and the adventure. You are recommending it generally. Let my gentleman only have a fund of enthusiasm. The lady will kindle, she always does at a spark. If he has not any, then I'm afraid they must be mortally dull. She allowed her silence to speak. She knew that it did so too eloquently, and could not control the personal adembration she gave to the one point of light revealing, if he has not any, her figure seemed immediately to wear a cap and cloak of dullness. She was full of revolt and anger. She was burning with her situation. If sensible of shame now at anything that she did, he turned to wrath and threw the burden on the author of her desperate distress. The hour for blaming herself had gone by to be renewed ultimately perhaps in a season of freedom. She was bereft of her insight within at present, so blind to herself that while conscious of an accurate reading of Willoughby's friend, she thanked him in her heart for seeking simply to amuse her and slightly succeeding. The afternoon's ride with him and Cross Day was an agreeable beguilement to her in prospect. Letizia came to divide her from Colonel Decray. Dr. Middleton was not seen before his appearance at the breakfast table, where a certain air of anxiety in his daughter's presence produced the semblance of a raced map at intervals on his forehead. Few sights on earth are more deserving of our sympathy than a good man who was the troubled conscience thrust on him. The Reverend Doctor's perturbation was observed. The ladies Eleanor and Isabel, seeing his daughter to be the cause of it, blamed her, and would have assisted him to escape, but Miss Dale, whom he courted with that object, was of the opposite faction. She made way for Clara to lead her father out. He called to Vernon, who merely nodded while leaving the room by the window with Cross Day. Half an eye on Dr. Middleton's pathetic exit in captivity suffice to tell Colonel Decray that parties divided the house. At first he thought how deplorable it would be to lose Miss Middleton for two days or three, and it struck him that Vernon Whitford and Letizia Dale were acting oddly in seconding her, their aim not being discernible. For he was of the order of gentlemen of the obscurely clear in mind who have a predetermined acuteness in their watch upon their human play, and mark men and women as pieces of a bad game of chess, each pursuing an interested course. His experience of a section of the world had educated him, as gallant, frank, and manly a comrade as one could wish for, up to this point. But he soon abandoned speculations, which may be compared to a shaking animometer that will not let the troubled indicator take station. Reposing on his perceptions and his instincts, he fixed his attention on the chief persons, only glancing at the others to establish a postulate, that where there are parties in a house, the most bewitching person present is the origin of them. It is ever Helen's achievement. Miss Milton appeared to him bewitching beyond mortal, sunny in her laughter, shadowy in her smiling, a young lady shaped for perfect music with a lover. She was that and no less to every man's eye on earth. High breeding did not freeze her lovely girlishness, but will be did. This reflection intervened to blot luxurious picturings of her, and made itself acceptable by leading him back to several instances of an evident want of harmony of the pair. And now, for purely undirected impulse all within us is not, though we may be eye bandaged agents under direction. It became necessary for an honorable gentleman to cast vehement rebukes at the fellow who did not comprehend the jewel he had won. How could Willoughby behave like so complete a donkey? Decray knew him to be in his interior stiff, strange, exacting. Women had talked of him. He had been too much for one woman. The dashing Constancia he had worn one woman, sacrificing far more for him than Constancia to death. Still, with such a price as Clara Middleton, Willoughby's behavior was passed calculating in its contemptible absurdity, and during courtship, and courtship of that girl, it was the way of a man ten years after marriage. The idea drew him to picture her dotingly in her young matronly bloom ten years after marriage, without a touch of age, matronly wise, womanly sweet, perhaps with a couple of little ones to love, never having known the love of a man. To think of a girl like Clara Middleton, never having at nine and twenty, and with two fair children, known the love of a man, or the loving of a man, possibly became torture to the colonel. For a pacification he had to reconsider that she was as yet only nineteen, and unmarried. But she was engaged, and she was unloved. One might swear to it, that she was unloved, and she was not a girl to be satisfied with a big house, and a high-nosed husband. There was a rapid alteration, another sad history of Clara, the unloved matron, so last by two little ones. A childless Clara, tragically loving and beloved, flashed across the dark glass of the future. Either way, her fate was cruel. Some astonishment moved a cray in the contemplation of the distance he had stepped in this morass of fancy. He distinguished the choice open to him, of forward or back, and he selected forward. But fancy was dead, the poetry hooring about her grew invisible to him. He stood in the morass, that was all he knew. And momently he plunged deeper, and he was aware of an intense desire to see her face, that he might study her features again. He understood no more. It was the clouding of the brain by the man's heart, which had come to the knowledge that it was caught. A certain measure of astonishment moved him still. It had hitherto been his portion to do mischief to women, and avoid the vengeance of the sex. What was there in Miss Middleton's face and air, to ensnare a veteran handsome man of society, numbering six and thirty years, nearly as many conquests? Each bullet has got its commission. He was hit at last. That accident affected by Mr. Flitch had fired the shot. Clean through the heart does not tell us of our misfortune. Till the heart is asked to renew its natural beating. It fell into the condition of the porcelain vase over a thought of Miss Middleton standing above his prostrate form on the road, and walking beside him to the hall. Her words? What have they been? She had not uttered words. She had shed meanings. He did not for an instant conceive that he had charmed her. The charm she had cast on him was too thrilling for Corkscombrie to lift ahead. Still, she had enjoyed his prattle. In return for a touch upon the Irish fountain in him, he had manifestly given her relief, and could not once see that so sprightly a girl would soon be deadened by a man like Willoughby. Deadened she was. She had not responded to a compliment on her approaching marriage, an allusion to it killed her smiling. The case of Mr. Fletch, with a half wager about his reinstation in the service of the hall, was conclusive evidence of her opinion of Willoughby. It became again necessary that he should abuse Willoughby for his folly. Why was the man worrying her? In some way he was worrying her. What if Willoughby as well as Miss Middleton wished to be quick of the engagement? For just a second the handsome woman-flattered officer proved his man's heart more whole than he supposed it. That great organ, instead of leaping at the thought, suffered a check. Bear in mind that his heart was not merely man's, it was a conqueror's. He was of the race of amorous heroes, who glory in pursuing, overtaking, subduing, wrestling the price from a rival, having her right from exquisitely feminine inward conflicts, plucking her out of resistance in good old primitive fashion. You win the creature in her delicious flutterings. He liked her thus in cooler blood, because of society's admiration of the capturer, and somewhat because of the strife, which always enhances the value of a prize, and refreshes our vanity in recollection. Moreover, he had been matched against Willoughby. The circumstance had occurred two or three times. He could name a lady he had won, a lady he had lost. Willoughby's large fortune and grandeur of style had given him advantages at the start. But the start often means the race with women and a bit of luck. The gentle check upon the galloping heart of Colonel Decray endured no longer than a second. A simple sad glance in a headlong pace. Clara's enchantingness for a temperament like his, which is to say, for him especially, in part through the testimony of her conquest of himself, presented as to her power of sway over the universal heart, known as mans, assured him she was worth winning, even from a hand that dropped her. He had now a double reason for exclaiming at the folly of Willoughby. Willoughby's treatment of her showed either temper or weariness. Vanity and judgment led Decray to guess the former. Regarding her sentiments for Willoughby, he had come to his own conclusion. The certainty of it caused him to assume that he possessed an absolute knowledge of her character. She was an angel, born supple. She was a heavenly soul, with half a dozen of the tricks of earth. Skittish Philly was among his phrases, but she had a bearing and a gaze that forbade the dip in the common character for wherewithal to paint the creature she was. Now then to see whether he was wrong for the first time in his life, if not wrong, he had a chance. There could be nothing dishonorable in rescuing a girl from an engagement she detested, an attempt to think it a service to Willoughby faded midway. Decray dismissed that chicanery. It would be a service to Willoughby in the end, without question. There was that to soothe his manly honor. Meanwhile he had to face the thought of Willoughby as an antagonist, and the world looking heavy on his honor as a friend. Such considerations drew him tenderly close to Miss Middleton. It must however be confessed that the mental ardor of Colonel Decray had been a little sobered by his glance at the possibility of both of the couple being of one mind on the subject of their betrothal. Desirable as it was that they should be united in disagreeing, it reduced the Romans to platitude and the third person in the drama to the appearance of a stick. No man likes to play that part. Memoirs of the favorites of goddesses, if we had them, would confirm it of men's tastes in this respect, though the divine is to be the prize. We behold what part they played. Decray chanced to be crossing the hall from the laboratory to the stables when Clara shut the library door behind her. He said something whimsical and did not stop, nor did he look twice at the face he had been longing for. What he had seen made him fear there would be no ride out with her that day. Their next meeting reassured him. She was dressed in her riding habit and wore a countenance resolutely cheerful. He gave himself the word of command to take his tone from her. He was of a nature as quick as Clara's. Experience pushed him farther than she could go in fancy. But experience laid a sobering finger on his practical steps and bade them hang upon her initiative. She talked little. John Cross J. Cantering ahead was her favorite subject. She was very much changed since the early morning. His liveliness essayed by him at a hazard was unsuccessful. Grave English pleased her best. The descent from that was naturally to melancholy. She mentioned a regret she had that the veil was interdicted to women in Protestant countries. Decray was fortunately silent. He could think of no other veil than the Muslim, and when her meaning struck his witless head, he admitted to himself that devout attendance on a young lady's mind stupefies man's intelligence. Half an hour later, he was as foolish in supposing it a confidence. He was again saved by silence. In Aspenwell Village, she drew a letter from her bosom and called to Cross J to post it. The boy sang out, Miss Lucy Dalton, what a nice name! Clara did not show that the name betrayed anything. She said to Decray, it proves he should not be here thinking of nice names. Her companion replied, You may be right. He added to avoid feeling too subservient. Voice well. Not if they have stern masters to teach them their daily lessons, and some of the lessons of existence. Vernon Whitford is not stern enough. Mr. Whitford has to contend with other influences here. With Willoughby? Not with Willoughby. He understood her. She touched the delicate indication firmly. The man's heart respected her for it. Not many girls could be so thoughtful or dare to be so direct. He saw that she had become deeply serious, and he felt her love of the boy to be maternal, past maiden sentiment. By this light of her seriousness, the posting of her letter in a distant village, not entrusting it to the whole post-box, might have import. Not that she would apprehend the violation of her private correspondence, but we like to see our letter of weighty meaning pass into the mouth of the public box. Consequently, this letter was important. It was to suppose a sequence in the conduct of a variable damsel. Coupled with her remark about the veil, and with other things, not words, breathing from her, which were the breath of her condition, it was not unreasonably to be supposed. She might even be a very consistent person, if one only had the key of her. She spoke once of an immediate visit to London, supposing that she could induce her father to go. Decray remembered the occurrence in the hall at night, and her aspect of distress. They raced along Aspenville Common to the Ford, shallow to the chagrin of John Cross Day, between whom and themselves they left a fitting space for its rapture in leading his pony to splash up and down, Lord of the stream. Swiftness of motion so strikes the blood on the brain that our thoughts are lightnings, the heart is master of them. Decray was heated by his scallop to venture on the angling question. Am I to hear the names of the bridesmaids? The pace had nirved Clara to speak to it sharply. There's no need. Have I no claim? She was mute. Miss Lucy Dalton, for instance, whose name I'm almost as much in love with as Cross Day. She will not be bridesmaid to me. She declines. Add my petition, I beg. To all or to her? Do all the bridesmaids decline? The scene is too ghastly. A marriage? Girls have grown sick of it. Of weddings? We'll overcome the sickness. With some. Not with Miss Dalton? You tempt my eloquence. You wish it? To win her consent, certainly. The scene? Do I wish that? Marriage, exclaimed Clara, dashing into the fort, fearful of her ungovernable wildness, and of what it might have kindled. You father, you have driven me to unmaidenliness. She forgot Willoughby in her father, who will not quit the comfortable house for her all but prostrate beseeching, would not bend his mind to her explanations, answered her with the horrid iteration of such deaf misunderstanding as may be associated with a tolling bell. Decray allowed her to catch Cross Day by herself. They entered a narrow lane, mysterious with possible bird's eggs in the Maygreen hedges, as there were not room for three abreast, the colonel made up the rearguard, and was consoled by having Miss Middleton's figure to contemplate. But the readiness of her joining in Cross Day's pastime of the nest hunt was not so pleasing to a man that she had wound to a pitch of excitement. Her scornful accent on marriage rang through him. Apparently she was beginning to do with him just as she liked herself entirely unconcerned. She kept Cross Day beside her till she dismounted, and the colonel was left to the procession of elefantine ideas in his head, whose ponderousness he took for natural weight. We do not with impunity abandon the initiative. Men who have yielded it are like cavalry put on the defensive, a very small force with an ictus will scatter them. Anxiety to recover lost ground reduced the dimensions of his ideas to a practical standard. Two ideas were opposed like duelists, bent on the slaughter of one another. Either she amazed him by confirming the suspicions he had gathered of her sentiments for Willoughby in the moments of his introduction to her, or she amazed him as a model for coquettes, the married and the widow might apply to her for lessons. These combatants exchanged shots, but remained standing. The encounter was undecided, whatever the result, no person so seductive as Clara Middleton had he ever met. Her cry of loathing, marriage, coming from a girl, rang faintly clear of an ancient virginal aspiration of the sex to escape from their coil, and bespoke a pure cold savage pride that transplanted his thirst for her to higher fields. End of chapter 22, read by Lars Rolander.