CHAPTER X
IN WHICH SIR WILLOUGHBY CHANCES TO SUPPLY THE TITLE FOR HIMSELF
Now Vernon was useful to his cousin; he was the accomplished secretaryof a man who governed his estate shrewdly and diligently, but had beenonce or twice unlucky in his judgements pronounced from the magisterialbench as a justice of the Peace, on which occasions a half column oftrenchant English supported by an apposite classical quotationimpressed Sir Willoughby with the value of such a secretary in acontroversy. He had no fear of that fiery dragon of scorchingbreath--the newspaper press--while Vernon was his right hand man; andas he intended to enter Parliament, he foresaw the greater need of him.Furthermore, he liked his cousin to date his own controversialwritings, on classical subjects, from Patterne Hall. It caused hishouse to shine in a foreign field; proved the service of scholarship bygiving it a flavour of a bookish aristocracy that, though not so wellworth having, and indeed in itself contemptible, is above the materialand titular; one cannot quite say how. There, however, is the flavour.Dainty sauces are the life, the nobility, of famous dishes; takenalone, the former would be nauseating, the latter plebeian. It is thus,or somewhat so, when you have a poet, still better a scholar, attachedto your household. Sir Willoughby deserved to have him, for he wasabove his county friends in his apprehension of the flavour bestowed bythe man; and having him, he had made them conscious of theirdeficiency. His cook, M. Dehors, pupil of the great Godefroy, was notthe only French cook in the county; but his cousin and secretary, therising scholar, the elegant essayist, was an unparalleled decoration;of his kind, of course. Personally, we laugh at him; you had betternot, unless you are fain to show that the higher world of politeliterature is unknown to you. Sir Willoughby could create an abjectsilence at a county dinner-table by an allusion to Vernon "at work athome upon his Etruscans or his Dorians"; and he paused a moment to letthe allusion sink, laughed audibly to himself over his eccentriccousin, and let him rest.
In addition, Sir Willoughby abhorred the loss of a familiar face in hisdomestic circle. He thought ill of servants who could accept theirdismissal without petitioning to stay with him. A servant that gavewarning partook of a certain fiendishness. Vernon's project of leavingthe Hall offended and alarmed the sensitive gentleman. "I shall have tohand Letty Dale to him at last!" he thought, yielding in bittergenerosity to the conditions imposed on him by the ungenerousness ofanother. For, since his engagement to Miss Middleton, his electricallyforethoughtful mind had seen in Miss Dale, if she stayed in theneighbourhood, and remained unmarried, the governess of his infantchildren, often consulting with him. But here was a prospect dashedout. The two, then, may marry, and live in a cottage on the borders ofhis park; and Vernon can retain his post, and Laetitia her devotion.The risk of her casting it of had to be faced. Marriage has been knownto have such an effect on the most faithful of women that a greatpassion fades to naught in their volatile bosoms when they have taken ahusband. We see in women especially the triumph of the animal over thespiritual. Nevertheless, risks must be run for a purpose in view.
Having no taste for a discussion with Vernon, whom it was his habit toconfound by breaking away from him abruptly when he had delivered hisopinion, he left it to both the persons interesting themselves in youngCrossjay to imagine that he was meditating on the question of the lad,and to imagine that it would be wise to leave him to meditate; for hecould be preternaturally acute in reading any of his fellow-creaturesif they crossed the current of his feelings. And, meanwhile, heinstructed the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to bring Laetitia Dale on avisit to the Hall, where dinner-parties were soon to be given and apleasing talker would be wanted, where also a woman of intellect,steeped in a splendid sentiment, hitherto a miracle of femaleconstancy, might stir a younger woman to some emulation. Definitely toresolve to bestow Laetitia upon Vernon was more than he could do;enough that he held the card.
Regarding Clara, his genius for perusing the heart which was not inperfect harmony with him through the series of responsive movements tohis own, informed him of a something in her character that might havesuggested to Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson her indefensible, absurd "roguein porcelain". Idea there was none in that phrase; yet, if you lookedon Clara as a delicately inimitable porcelain beauty, the suspicion ofa delicately inimitable ripple over her features touched a thought ofinnocent roguery, wildwood roguery; the likeness to the costly andlovely substance appeared to admit a fitness in the dubious epithet. Hedetested but was haunted by the phrase.
She certainly had at times the look of the nymph that has gazed toolong on the faun, and has unwittingly copied his lurking lip and longsliding eye. Her play with young Crossjay resembled a return of thelady to the cat; she flung herself into it as if her real vitality hadbeen in suspense till she saw the boy. Sir Willoughby by no meansdisapproved of a physical liveliness that promised him health in hismate; but he began to feel in their conversations that she did notsufficiently think of making herself a nest for him. Steely points wereopposed to him when he, figuratively, bared his bosom to be taken tothe softest and fairest. She reasoned: in other words, armed herignorance. She reasoned against him publicly, and lured Vernon tosupport her. Influence is to be counted for power, and her influenceover Vernon was displayed in her persuading him to dance one evening atLady Culmer's, after his melancholy exhibitions of himself in the art;and not only did she persuade him to stand up fronting her, shemanoeuvred him through the dance like a clever boy cajoling a top tocome to him without reeling, both to Vernon's contentment and to SirWilloughby's; for he was the last man to object to a manifestation ofpower in his bride. Considering her influence with Vernon, he renewedthe discourse upon young Crossjay; and, as he was addicted to system,he took her into his confidence, that she might be taught to look tohim and act for him.
"Old Vernon has not spoken to you again of that lad?" he said.
"Yes, Mr. Whitford has asked me."
"He does not ask me, my dear!"
"He may fancy me of greater aid than I am."
"You see, my love, if he puts Crossjay on me, he will be off. He hasthis craze for 'enlisting' his pen in London, as he calls it; and I amaccustomed to him; I don't like to think of him as a hack scribe,writing nonsense from dictation to earn a pitiful subsistence; I wanthim here; and, supposing he goes, he offends me; he loses a friend; andit will not be the first time that a friend has tried me too far; butif he offends me, he is extinct."
"Is what?" cried Clara, with a look of fright.
"He becomes to me at once as if he had never been. He is extinct."
"In spite of your affection?"
"On account of it, I might say. Our nature is mysterious, and mine asmuch so as any. Whatever my regrets, he goes out. This is not alanguage I talk to the world. I do the man no harm; I am not to benamed unchristian. But . . . !"
Sir Willoughby mildly shrugged, and indicated a spreading out of thearms.
"But do, do talk to me as you talk to the world, Willoughby; give mesome relief!"
"My own Clara, we are one. You should know me at my worst, we will say,if you like, as well as at my best."
"Should I speak too?"
"What could you have to confess?"
She hung silent; the wave of an insane resolution swelled in her bosomand subsided before she said, "Cowardice, incapacity to speak."
"Women!" said he.
We do not expect so much of women; the heroic virtues as little as thevices. They have not to unfold the scroll of character.
He resumed, and by his tone she understood that she was now in theinner temple of him: "I tell you these things; I quite acknowledge theydo not elevate me. They help to constitute my character. I tell youmost humbly that I have in me much--too much of the fallen archangel'spride."
Clara bowed her head over a sustained in-drawn breath.
"It must be pride," he said, in a reverie superinduced by herthoughtfulness over the revelation, and glorying in the black flamesdemoniacal wherewith he crowned himself.
"Can you no
t correct it?" said she.
He replied, profoundly vexed by disappointment: "I am what I am. Itmight be demonstrated to you mathematically that it is corrected byequivalents or substitutions in my character. If it be afailing--assuming that."
"It seems one to me: so cruelly to punish Mr. Whitford for seeking toimprove his fortunes."
"He reflects on my share in his fortunes. He has had but to apply to mefor his honorarium to be doubled."
"He wishes for independence."
"Independence of me!"
"Liberty!"
"At my expense!"
"Oh, Willoughby!"
"Ay, but this is the world, and I know it, my love; and beautiful asyour incredulity may be, you will find it more comforting to confide inmy knowledge of the selfishness of the world. My sweetest, youwill?--you do! For a breath of difference between us is intolerable. Doyou not feel how it breaks our magic ring? One small fissure, and wehave the world with its muddy deluge!--But my subject was old Vernon.Yes, I pay for Crossjay, if Vernon consents to stay. I waive my ownscheme for the lad, though I think it the better one. Now, then, toinduce Vernon to stay. He has his ideas about staying under a mistressof the household; and therefore, not to contest it--he is a man of noargument; a sort of lunatic determination takes the place of it withold Vernon!--let him settle close by me, in one of my cottages; verywell, and to settle him we must marry him."
"Who is there?" said Clara, beating for the lady in her mind.
"Women," said Willoughby, "are born match-makers, and the mostpersuasive is a young bride. With a man--and a man like old Vernon!--sheis irresistible. It is my wish, and that arms you. It is your wish,that subjugates him. If he goes, he goes for good. If he stays, he ismy friend. I deal simply with him, as with every one. It is the secretof authority. Now Miss Dale will soon lose her father. He exists on apension; she has the prospect of having to leave the neighbourhood ofthe Hall, unless she is established near us. Her whole heart is in thisregion; it is the poor soul's passion. Count on her agreeing. But shewill require a little wooing: and old Vernon wooing! Picture the sceneto yourself, my love. His notion of wooing. I suspect, will be to treatthe lady like a lexicon, and turn over the leaves for the word, and flythrough the leaves for another word, and so get a sentence. Don't frownat the poor old fellow, my Clara; some have the language on theirtongues, and some have not. Some are very dry sticks; manly men, honestfellows, but so cut away, so polished away from the sex, that they arein absolute want of outsiders to supply the silken filaments to attachthem. Actually!" Sir Willoughby laughed in Clara's face to relax thedreamy stoniness of her look. "But I can assure you, my dearest, I haveseen it. Vernon does not know how to speak--as we speak. He has, or hehad, what is called a sneaking affection for Miss Dale. It was the mostamusing thing possible; his courtship!--the air of a dog with an uneasyconscience, trying to reconcile himself with his master! We were all infits of laughter. Of course it came to nothing."
"Will Mr. Whitford," said Clara, "offend you to extinction if hedeclines?"
Willoughby breathed an affectionate "Tush!" to her silliness.
"We bring them together, as we best can. You see, Clara, I desire, andI will make some sacrifices to detain him."
"But what do you sacrifice?--a cottage?" said Clara, combative at allpoints.
"An ideal, perhaps. I lay no stress on sacrifice. I strongly object toseparations. And therefore, you will say, I prepare the ground forunions? Put your influence to good service, my love. I believe youcould persuade him to give us the Highland fling on the drawing-roomtable."
"There is nothing to say to him of Crossjay?"
"We hold Crossjay in reserve."
"It is urgent."
"Trust me. I have my ideas. I am not idle. That boy bids fair for acapital horseman. Eventualities might . . ." Sir Willoughby murmured tohimself, and addressing his bride, "The cavalry? If we put him into thecavalry, we might make a gentleman of him--not be ashamed of him. Or,under certain eventualities, the Guards. Think it over, my love. DeCraye, who will, I suppose, act best man for me, supposing old Vernonto pull at the collar, is a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Guards, athorough gentleman--of the brainless class, if you like, but an elegantfellow; an Irishman; you will see him, and I should like to set a navallieutenant beside him in a drawingroom, for you to compare them andconsider the model you would choose for a boy you are interested in.Horace is grace and gallantry incarnate; fatuous, probably: I havealways been too friendly with him to examine closely. He made himselfone of my dogs, though my elder, and seemed to like to be at my heels.One of the few men's faces I can call admirably handsome;--withnothing behind it, perhaps. As Vernon says, 'a nothing picked by thevultures and bleached by the desert'. Not a bad talker, if you aresatisfied with keeping up the ball. He will amuse you. Old Horace doesnot know how amusing he is!"
"Did Mr. Whitford say that of Colonel De Craye?"
"I forget the person of whom he said it. So you have noticed oldVernon's foible? Quote him one of his epigrams, and he is in motionhead and heels! It is an infallible receipt for tuning him. If I wantto have him in good temper, I have only to remark, 'as you said'. Istraighten his back instantly."
"I," said Clara, "have noticed chiefly his anxiety concerning the boy;for which I admire him."
"Creditable, if not particularly far-sighted and sagacious. Well, then,my dear, attack him at once; lead him to the subject of our fairneighbour. She is to be our guest for a week or so, and the wholeaffair might be concluded far enough to fix him before she leaves. Sheis at present awaiting the arrival of a cousin to attend on her father.A little gentle pushing will precipitate old Vernon on his knees as faras he ever can unbend them; but when a lady is made ready to expect adeclaration, you know, why, she does not--does she?--demand the entireformula?--though some beautiful fortresses . . ."
He enfolded her. Clara was growing hardened to it. To this she wasfated; and not seeing any way to escape, she invoked a friendly frostto strike her blood, and passed through the minute unfeelingly. Havingpassed it, she reproached herself for making so much of it, thinking ita lesser endurance than to listen to him. What could she do?--she wascaged; by her word of honour, as she at one time thought; by hercowardice, at another; and dimly sensible that the latter was astronger lock than the former, she mused on the abstract questionwhether a woman's cowardice can be so absolute as to cast her into thejaws of her aversion. Is it to be conceived? Is there not a moment whenit stands at bay? But haggard-visaged Honour then starts up claiming tobe dealt with in turn; for having courage restored to her, she musthave the courage to break with honour, she must dare to be faithless,and not merely say, I will be brave, but be brave enough to bedishonourable. The cage of a plighted woman hungering for herdisengagement has two keepers, a noble and a vile; where on earth iscreature so dreadfully enclosed? It lies with her to overcome whatdegrades her, that she may win to liberty by overcoming what exalts.
Contemplating her situation, this idea (or vapour of youth taking thegod-like semblance of an idea) sprang, born of her present sickness, inClara's mind; that it must be an ill-constructed tumbling world wherethe hour of ignorance is made the creator of our destiny by beingforced to the decisive elections upon which life's main issues hang.Her teacher had brought her to contemplate his view of the world.
She thought likewise: how must a man despise women, who can exposehimself as he does to me!
Miss Middleton owed it to Sir Willoughby Patterne that she ceased tothink like a girl. When had the great change begun? Glancing back, shecould imagine that it was near the period we call in love thefirst--almost from the first. And she was led to imagine it throughhaving become barred from imagining her own emotions of that season.They were so dead as not to arise even under the form of shadows infancy. Without imputing blame to him, for she was reasonable so far,she deemed herself a person entrapped. In a dream somehow she hadcommitted herself to a life-long imprisonment; and, oh terror! not in aquiet dungeon; the barren walls closed round h
er, talked, called forardour, expected admiration.
She was unable to say why she could not give it; why she retreated moreand more inwardly; why she invoked the frost to kill her tenderestfeelings. She was in revolt, until a whisper of the day of bellsreduced her to blank submission; out of which a breath of peace drewher to revolt again in gradual rapid stages, and once more the aspectof that singular day of merry blackness felled her to earth. It wasalive, it advanced, it had a mouth, it had a song. She received lettersof bridesmaids writing of it, and felt them as waves that hurl a log ofwreck to shore. Following which afflicting sense of antagonism to thewhole circle sweeping on with her, she considered the possibility ofher being in a commencement of madness. Otherwise might she not beaccused of a capriciousness quite as deplorable to consider? She hadwritten to certain of these young ladies not very long since of thisgentleman--how?--in what tone? And was it her madness then?--herrecovery now? It seemed to her that to have written of himenthusiastically resembled madness more than to shudder away from theunion; but standing alone, opposing all she has consented to set inmotion, is too strange to a girl for perfect justification to be foundin reason when she seeks it.
Sir Willoughby was destined himself to supply her with that key ofspecial insight which revealed and stamped him in a title to fortifyher spirit of revolt, consecrate it almost.
The popular physician of the county and famous anecdotal wit, Dr.Corney, had been a guest at dinner overnight, and the next day therewas talk of him, and of the resources of his art displayed by ArmandDehors on his hearing that he was to minister to the tastes of agathering of hommes d'esprit. Sir Willoughby glanced at Dehors with hiscustomary benevolent irony in speaking of the persons, great in theirway, who served him. "Why he cannot give us daily so good a dinner, onemust, I suppose, go to French nature to learn. The French are in thehabit of making up for all their deficiencies with enthusiasm. Theyhave no reverence; if I had said to him, 'I want something particularlyexcellent, Dehors', I should have had a commonplace dinner. But theyhave enthusiasm on draught, and that is what we must pull at. Know oneFrenchman and you know France. I have had Dehors under my eye twoyears, and I can mount his enthusiasm at a word. He took hommesd'esprit to denote men of letters. Frenchmen have destroyed theirnobility, so, for the sake of excitement, they put up the literaryman--not to worship him; that they can't do; it's to put themselves ina state of effervescence. They will not have real greatness above them,so they have sham. That they may justly call it equality, perhaps! Ay,for all your shake of the head, my good Vernon! You see, human naturecomes round again, try as we may to upset it, and the French onlydiffer from us in wading through blood to discover that they are attheir old trick once more; 'I am your equal, sir, your born equal. Oh!you are a man of letters? Allow me to be in a bubble about you!' Yes,Vernon, and I believe the fellow looks up to you as the head of theestablishment. I am not jealous. Provided he attends to his functions!There's a French philosopher who's for naming the days of the yearafter the birthdays of French men of letters. Voltaire-day,Rousseau-day, Racine-day, so on. Perhaps Vernon will inform us whotakes April 1st."
"A few trifling errors are of no consequence when you are in the veinof satire," said Vernon. "Be satisfied with knowing a nation in theperson of a cook."
"They may be reading us English off in a jockey!" said Dr. Middleton."I believe that jockeys are the exchange we make for cooks; and ourneighbours do not get the best of the bargain."
"No; but, my dear good Vernon, it's nonsensical," said Sir Willoughby;"why be bawling every day the name of men of letters?"
"Philosophers."
"Well, philosophers."
"Of all countries and times. And they are the benefactors of humanity."
"Bene--!" Sir Willoughby's derisive laugh broke the word. "There's apretension in all that, irreconcilable with English sound sense. Surelyyou see it?"
"We might," said Vernon, "if you like, give alternative titles to thedays, or have alternating days, devoted to our great families thatperformed meritorious deeds upon such a day."
The rebel Clara, delighting in his banter, was heard: "Can we furnishsufficient?"
"A poet or two could help us."
"Perhaps a statesman," she suggested.
"A pugilist, if wanted."
"For blowy days," observed Dr. Middleton, and hastily in penitencepicked up the conversation he had unintentionally prostrated, with ageneral remark on new-fangled notions, and a word aside to Vernon;which created the blissful suspicion in Clara that her father wasindisposed to second Sir Willoughby's opinions even when sharing them.
Sir Willoughby had led the conversation. Displeased that the leadshould be withdrawn from him, he turned to Clara and related one of theafter-dinner anecdotes of Dr. Corney; and another, with a vast deal ofhuman nature in it, concerning a valetudinarian gentleman, whose wifechanced to be desperately ill, and he went to the physicians assembledin consultation outside the sick-room, imploring them by all he valued,and in tears, to save the poor patient for him, saying: "She iseverything to me, everything; and if she dies I am compelled to run therisks of marrying again; I must marry again; for she has accustomed meso to the little attentions of a wife, that in truth I can't. I can'tlose her! She must be saved!" And the loving husband of any devotedwife wrung his hands.
"Now, there, Clara, there you have the Egoist," added Sir Willoughby."That is the perfect Egoist. You see what he comes to--and his wife!The man was utterly unconscious of giving vent to the grossestselfishness."
"An Egoist!" said Clara.
"Beware of marrying an Egoist, my dear!" He bowed gallantly; and soblindly fatuous did he appear to her, that she could hardly believe himguilty of uttering the words she had heard from him, and kept her eyeson him vacantly till she came to a sudden full stop in the thoughtsdirecting her gaze. She looked at Vernon, she looked at her father, andat the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. None of them saw the man in theword, none noticed the word; yet this word was her medical herb, herilluminating lamp, the key of him (and, alas, but she thought it byfeeling her need of one), the advocate pleading in apology for her.Egoist! She beheld him--unfortunate, self-designated man that hewas!--in his good qualities as well as bad under the implacable lamp,and his good were drenched in his first person singular. His generosityroared of I louder than the rest. Conceive him at the age of Dr.Corney's hero: "Pray, save my wife for me. I shall positively have toget another if I lose her, and one who may not love me half so well, orunderstand the peculiarities of my character and appreciate myattitudes." He was in his thirty-second year, therefore a young man,strong and healthy, yet his garrulous return to his principal theme,his emphasis on I and me, lent him the seeming of an old man spottedwith decaying youth.
"Beware of marrying an Egoist."
Would he help her to escape? The idea of the scene ensuing upon herpetition for release, and the being dragged round the walls of hisegoism, and having her head knocked against the corners, alarmed herwith sensations of sickness.
There was the example of Constantia. But that desperate young lady hadbeen assisted by a gallant, loving gentleman; she had met a CaptainOxford.
Clara brooded on those two until they seemed heroic. She questionedherself. Could she . . . ? were one to come? She shut her eyes inlanguor, leaning the wrong way of her wishes, yet unable to say No.
Sir Willoughby had positively said beware! Marrying him would be a deedcommitted in spite of his express warning. She went so far as toconceive him subsequently saying: "I warned you." She conceived thestate of marriage with him as that of a woman tied not to a man ofheart, but to an obelisk lettered all over with hieroglyphics, andeverlastingly hearing him expound them, relishing renewing his lectureson them.
Full surely this immovable stone-man would not release her. Thispetrifaction of egoism would from amazedly to austerely refuse thepetition. His pride would debar him from understanding her desire to bereleased. And if she resolved on it, without doing it straightway inConstantia's manner, the
miserable bewilderment of her father, for whomsuch a complication would be a tragic dilemma, had to be thought of.Her father, with all his tenderness for his child, would make a standon the point of honour; though certain to yield to her, he would bedistressed in a tempest of worry; and Dr. Middleton thus afflictedthrew up his arms, he shunned books, shunned speech, and resembled acastaway on the ocean, with nothing between himself and his calamity.As for the world, it would be barking at her heels. She might call theman she wrenched her hand from, Egoist; jilt, the world would call her.She dwelt bitterly on her agreement with Sir Willoughby regarding theworld, laying it to his charge that her garden had become a place ofnettles, her horizon an unlighted fourth side of a square.
Clara passed from person to person visiting the Hall. There wasuniversal, and as she was compelled to see, honest admiration of thehost. Not a soul had a suspicion of his cloaked nature. Her agony ofhypocrisy in accepting their compliments as the bride of Sir WilloughbyPatterne was poorly moderated by contempt of them for theirinfatuation. She tried to cheat herself with the thought that they wereright and that she was the foolish and wicked inconstant. In heranxiety to strangle the rebelliousness which had been communicated fromher mind to her blood, and was present with her whether her mind was inaction or not, she encouraged the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to magnifythe fictitious man of their idolatry, hoping that she might enter intothem imaginatively, that she might to some degree subdue herself to thenecessity of her position. If she partly succeeded in stupefying herantagonism, five minutes of him undid the work.
He requested her to wear the Patterne pearls for a dinner-party ofgrand ladies, telling her that he would commission Miss Isabel to takethem to her. Clara begged leave to decline them, on the plea of havingno right to wear them. He laughed at her modish modesty. "But reallyit might almost be classed with affectation," said he. "I give you theright. Virtually you are my wife."
"No."
"Before heaven?"
"No. We are not married."
"As my betrothed, will you wear them, to please me?"
"I would rather not. I cannot wear borrowed jewels. These I cannotwear. Forgive me, I cannot. And, Willoughby," she said, scorningherself for want of fortitude in not keeping to the simply bluntprovocative refusal, "does one not look like a victim decked for thesacrifice?--the garlanded heifer you see on Greek vases, in that arrayof jewellery?"
"My dear Clara!" exclaimed the astonished lover, "how can you term themborrowed, when they are the Patterne jewels, our family heirloompearls, unmatched, I venture to affirm, decidedly in my county and manyothers, and passing to the use of the mistress of the house in thenatural course of things?"
"They are yours, they are not mine."
"Prospectively they are yours."
"It would be to anticipate the fact to wear them."
"With my consent, my approval? at my request?"
"I am not yet . . . I never may be . . ."
"My wife?" He laughed triumphantly, and silenced her by manlysmothering.
Her scruple was perhaps an honourable one, he said. Perhaps the jewelswere safer in their iron box. He had merely intended a surprise andgratification to her.
Courage was coming to enable her to speak more plainly, when hisdiscontinuing to insist on her wearing the jewels, under an appearanceof deference of her wishes, disarmed her by touching her sympathies.
She said, however, "I fear we do not often agree, Willoughby."
"When you are a little older!" was the irritating answer.
"It would then be too late to make the discovery."
"The discovery, I apprehend, is not imperative, my love."
"It seems to me that our minds are opposed."
"I should," said he, "have been awake to it at a single indication, besure."
"But I know," she pursued, "I have learned that the ideal of conductfor women is to subject their minds to the part of an accompaniment."
"For women, my love? my wife will be in natural harmony with me."
"Ah!" She compressed her lips. The yawn would come. "I am sleepier herethan anywhere."
"Ours, my Clara, is the finest air of the kingdom. It has the effect ofsea-air."
"But if I am always asleep here?"
"We shall have to make a public exhibition of the Beauty."
This dash of his liveliness defeated her.
She left him, feeling the contempt of the brain feverishly quickenedand fine-pointed, for the brain chewing the cud in the happy pasturesof unawakedness. So violent was the fever, so keen her introspection,that she spared few, and Vernon was not among them. Young Crossjay,whom she considered the least able of all to act as an ally, was theonly one she courted with a real desire to please him, he was the oneshe affectionately envied; he was the youngest, the freest, he had theworld before him, and he did not know how horrible the world was, orcould be made to look. She loved the boy from expecting nothing of him.Others, Vernon Whitford, for instance, could help, and moved no hand.He read her case. A scrutiny so penetrating under its air of abstractthoughtfulness, though his eyes did but rest on her a second or two,signified that he read her line by line, and to the end--exceptingwhat she thought of him for probing her with that sharp steel ofinsight without a purpose.
She knew her mind's injustice. It was her case, her lamentablecase--the impatient panic-stricken nerves of a captured wild creaturewhich cried for help. She exaggerated her sufferings to get strength tothrow them off, and lost it in the recognition that they wereexaggerated: and out of the conflict issued recklessness, with a cry aswild as any coming of madness; for she did not blush in saying toherself. "If some one loved me!" Before hearing of Constantia, she hadmused upon liberty as a virgin Goddess--men were out of her thoughts;even the figure of a rescuer, if one dawned in her mind, was more angelthan hero. That fair childish maidenliness had ceased. With her bodystraining in her dragon's grasp, with the savour of loathing, unable tocontend, unable to speak aloud, she began to speak to herself, and allthe health of her nature made her outcry womanly: "If I wereloved!"--not for the sake of love, but for free breathing; and herutterance of it was to insure life and enduringness to the wish, as theyearning of a mother on a drowning ship is to get her infant to shore."If some noble gentleman could see me as I am and not disdain to aidme! Oh! to be caught up out of this prison of thorns and brambles. Icannot tear my own way out. I am a coward. My cry for help confessesthat. A beckoning of a finger would change me, I believe. I could flybleeding and through hootings to a comrade. Oh! a comrade! I do notwant a lover. I should find another Egoist, not so bad, but enough tomake me take a breath like death. I could follow a soldier, like poorSally or Molly. He stakes his life for his country, and a woman may beproud of the worst of men who do that. Constantia met a soldier.Perhaps she prayed and her prayer was answered. She did ill. But, oh,how I love her for it! His name was Harry Oxford. Papa would call himher Perseus. She must have felt that there was no explaining what shesuffered. She had only to act, to plunge. First she fixed her mind onHarry Oxford. To be able to speak his name and see him awaiting her,must have been relief, a reprieve. She did not waver, she cut thelinks, she signed herself over. Oh, brave girl! what do you think ofme? But I have no Harry Whitford, I am alone. Let anything be saidagainst women; we must be very bad to have such bad things written ofus: only, say this, that to ask them to sign themselves over by oathand ceremony, because of an ignorant promise, to the man they have beenmistaken in, is . . . it is--" the sudden consciousness that she hadput another name for Oxford, struck her a buffet, drowning her incrimson.