CHAPTER XXI
CLARA'S MEDITATIONS
Two were sleepless that night: Miss Middleton and Colonel De Craye.
She was in a fever, lying like stone, with her brain burning. Quicknatures run out to calamity in any little shadow of it flung before.Terrors of apprehension drive them. They stop not short of theuttermost when they are on the wings of dread. A frown means tempest, awind wreck; to see fire is to be seized by it. When it is the approachof their loathing that they fear, they are in the tragedy of theembrace at a breath; and then is the wrestle between themselves andhorror, between themselves and evil, which promises aid; themselves andweakness, which calls on evil; themselves and the better part of them,which whispers no beguilement.
The false course she had taken through sophistical cowardice appalledthe girl; she was lost. The advantage taken of it by Willoughby put onthe form of strength, and made her feel abject, reptilious; she waslost, carried away on the flood of the cataract. He had won her fatherfor an ally. Strangely, she knew not how, he had succeeded in swayingher father, who had previously not more than tolerated him. "SonWilloughby" on her father's lips meant something that scenes and sceneswould have to struggle with, to the out-wearying of her father andherself. She revolved the "Son Willoughby" through moods ofstupefaction, contempt, revolt, subjection. It meant that she wasvanquished. 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 offatalism. What was the right of so miserable a creature as she toexcite disturbance, let her fortunes be good or ill? It would bequieter to float, kinder to everybody. Thank heaven for the chances ofa short life! Once in a net, desperation is graceless. We may bebrutes in our earthly destinies: in our endurance of them we need notbe brutish.
She was now in the luxury of passivity, when we throw our burden on thePowers above, and do not love them. The need to love them drew her outof it, that she might strive with the unbearable, and by sheerstriving, even though she were graceless, come to love them humbly. Itis here that the seed of good teaching supports a soul, for thecondition might be mapped, and where kismet whispers us to shut eyes,and instruction bids us look up, is at a well-marked cross-road of thecontest.
Quick of sensation, but not courageously resolved, she perceived howblunderingly she had acted. For a punishment, it seemed to her that shewho had not known her mind must learn to conquer her nature, andsubmit. She had accepted Willoughby; therefore she accepted him. Thefact became a matter of the past, past debating.
In the abstract this contemplation of circumstances went well. A plainduty lay in her way. And then a disembodied thought flew round her,comparing her with Vernon to her discredit. He had for years borne muchthat was distasteful to him, for the purpose of studying, and with hispoor income helping the poorer than himself. She dwelt on him in pityand envy; he had lived in this place, and so must she; and he had notbeen dishonoured by his modesty: he had not failed of self-control,because he had a life within. She was almost imagining she mightimitate him when the clash of a sharp physical thought, "Thedifference! the difference!" told her she was woman and never couldsubmit. Can a woman have an inner life apart from him she is yoked to?She tried to nestle deep away in herself: in some corner where theabstract view had comforted her, to flee from thinking as her feminineblood directed. It was a vain effort. The difference, the cruel fate,the defencelessness 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 proscribedthe word.
But the fire of a brain burning high and kindling everything lighted upherself against herself.--Was one so volatile as she a person with awill?--Were they not a multitude of flitting wishes that she took for awill? Was she, feather-headed that she was, a person to make a stand onphysical pride?--If she could yield her hand without reflection (as sheconceived she had done, from incapacity to conceive herself doing itreflectively) was she much better than purchaseable stuff that hasnothing to say to the bargain?
Furthermore, said her incandescent reason, she had not suspected suchart of cunning in Willoughby. Then might she not be deceivedaltogether--might she not have misread him? Stronger than she hadfancied, might he not be likewise more estimable? The world wasfavourable to him; he was prized by his friends.
She reviewed him. It was all in one flash. It was not much lessintentionally favourable than the world's review and that of hisfriends, but, beginning with the idea of them, she recollected--heardWilloughby's voice pronouncing his opinion of his friends and theworld; of Vernon Whitford and Colonel De Craye for example, and of menand women. An undefined agreement to have the same regard for him ashis friends and the world had, provided that he kept at the samedistance from her, was the termination of this phase, occupying about aminute in time, and reached through a series of intensely vividpictures:--his face, at her petition to be released, lowering behindthem for a background and a comment.
"I cannot! I cannot!" she cried, aloud; and it struck her that herrepulsion 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 certainsuperb qualities, injured fine qualities of ours undiscovered by theworld, not much more than suspected by ourselves, which are still ourfortress, where pride sits at home, solitary and impervious as anoctogenarian conservative. But it is not possible to answer it so whenthe brain is rageing like a pine-torch and the devouring illuminationleaves not a spot of our nature covert. The aspect of her weakness wasunrelieved, and frightened her back to her loathing. From her loathing,as soon as her sensations had quickened to realize it, she was hurledon her weakness. She was graceless, she was inconsistent, she wasvolatile, she was unprincipled, she was worse than a prey towickedness--capable of it; she was only waiting to be misled. Nay, theidea of being misled suffused her with languor; for then the battlewould be over and she a happy weed of the sea no longer suffering thosetugs at the roots, but leaving it to the sea to heave and contend. Shewould be like Constantia then: like her in her fortunes: never sobrave, she feared.
Perhaps very like Constantia in her fortunes!
Poor troubled bodies waking up in the night to behold visually thespectre cast forth from the perplexed machinery inside them, stare atit for a space, till touching consciousness they dive down under thesheets with fish-like alacrity. Clara looked at her thought, andsuddenly 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 DeCraye. She thought of him calmly: he seemed a refuge. He was very nice,he was a holiday character. His lithe figure, neat firm footing of thestag, swift intelligent expression, and his ready frolicsomeness,pleasant humour, cordial temper, and his Irishry, whereon he was atliberty to play, as on the emblem harp of the Isle, were soothing tothink of. The suspicion that she tricked herself with this calmobservation of him was dismissed. Issuing out of torture, her youngnature eluded the irradiating brain in search of refreshment, and sheluxuriated at a feast in considering him--shower on a parched land thathe was! He spread new air abroad. She had no reason to suppose he wasnot a good man: she could securely think of him. Besides he was boundby his prospective office in support of his friend Willoughby to bequite harmless. And besides (you are not to expect logical sequences)the showery refreshment in thinking of him lay in the sort of assuranceit conveyed, that the more she thought, the less would he be likely tofigure as an obnoxious official--that is, as the man to do byWilloughby at the altar what her father would, under the supposition,be doing by her. Her mind reposed on Colonel De Craye.
His name was Horace. Her father had worked with her at Horace. She knewmost of the Odes and some of the Satires and Epistles of the poet. Theyreflected benevolent beams on the gentleman of the poet's name. He toowas vi
vacious, had fun, common sense, elegance; loved rusticity, hesaid, sighed for a country life, fancied retiring to Canada tocultivate his own domain; "modus agri non ita magnus:" a delight. Andhe, too, when in the country, sighed for town. There were strongfeatures of resemblance. He had hinted in fun at not being rich. "Quaevirtus et quanta sit vivere parvo." But that quotation applied to andbelonged to Vernon Whitford. Even so little disarranged hermeditations.
She would have thought of Vernon, as her instinct of safety prompted,had not his exactions been excessive. He proposed to help her withadvice only. She was to do everything for herself, do and dareeverything, decide upon everything. He told her flatly that so wouldshe 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 bewitness of their interview--herself the theme. What alternative wasthere?--obedience to the word she had pledged. He talked of patience,of self-examination and patience. But all of her--she was all markedurgent. 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; yonder was the dawn.
She went to her window to gaze at the first colour along the grey.Small satisfaction came of gazing at that or at herself. She shunnedglass and sky. One and the other stamped her as a slave in a frame. Itseemed to her she had been so long in this place that she was fixedhere: it was her world, and to imagine an Alp was like seeking to getback to childhood. Unless a miracle intervened here she would have topass her days. Men are so little chivalrous now that no miracle everintervenes. Consequently she was doomed.
She took a pen and began a letter to a dear friend, Lucy Darleton, apromised bridesmaid, bidding her countermand orders for her bridaldress, and purposing a tour in Switzerland. She wrote of the mountaincountry with real abandonment to imagination. It became a visionedloophole of escape. She rose and clasped a shawl over her night-dressto ward off chillness, and sitting to the table again, could notproduce a word. The lines she had written were condemned: they wereludicrously inefficient. The letter was torn to pieces. She stood veryclearly doomed.
After a fall of tears, upon looking at the scraps, she dressed herself,and sat by the window and watched the blackbird on the lawn as hehopped from shafts of dewy sunlight to the long-stretched dewytree-shadows, considering in her mind that dark dews are moremeaningful than bright, the beauty of the dews of woods more sweet thanmeadow-dews. It signified only that she was quieter. She had gonethrough her crisis in the anticipation of it. That is how quick natureswill often be cold and hard, or not much moved, when the positivecrisis arrives, and why it is that they are prepared for astonishingleaps over the gradations which should render their conductcomprehensible to us, if not excuseable. She watched the blackbirdthrow up his head stiffly, and peck to right and left, dangling theworm on each side his orange beak. Specklebreasted thrushes were atwork, and a wagtail that ran as with Clara's own rapid little steps.Thrush and blackbird flew to the nest. They had wings. The lovelymorning breathed of sweet earth into her open window, and made itpainful, in the dense twitter, chirp, cheep, and song of the air, toresist the innocent intoxication. O to love! was not said by her, butif she had sung, as her nature prompted, it would have been. Her warwith Willoughby sprang of a desire to love repelled by distaste. Hercry for freedom was a cry to be free to love: she discovered it, halfshuddering: to love, oh! no--no shape of man, nor impalpable natureeither: but to love unselfishness, and helpfulness, and plantedstrength in something. Then, loving and being loved a little, whatstrength would be hers! She could utter all the words needed toWilloughby and to her father, locked in her love: walking in thisworld, living in that.
Previously she had cried, despairing: If I were loved! Jealousy ofConstantia's happiness, envy of her escape, ruled her then: and sheremembered the cry, though not perfectly her plain-speaking to herself:she chose to think she had meant: If Willoughby were capable of trulyloving! For now the fire of her brain had sunk, and refuges andsubterfuges were round about it. The thought of personal love wasencouraged, she chose to think, for the sake of the strength it lenther to carve her way to freedom. She had just before felt rather thereverse, but she could not exist with that feeling; and it was truethat 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-tempter's question to her was there.
She put it away. Wherever she turned it stood observing her. She knewso 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 theother in the house?
Maidens are commonly reduced to read the masters of their destinies bytheir instincts; and when these have been edged by over-activity theymust hoodwink their maidenliness to suffer themselves to read; and thenthey must dupe their minds, else men would soon see they were gifted todiscern. Total ignorance being their pledge of purity to men, they haveto expunge the writing of their perceptives on the tablets of thebrain: they have to know not when they do know. The instinct of seekingto know, crossed by the task of blotting knowledge out, creates thatconflict of the natural with the artificial creature to which theirultimately revealed double-face, complained of by ever-dissatisfiedmen, is owing. Wonder in no degree that they indulge a craving to befools, or that many of them act the character. Jeer at them as littlefor not showing growth. You have reared them to this pitch, and at thispitch they have partly civilized you. Supposing you to want it donewholly, you must yield just as many points in your requisitions as areneeded to let the wits of young women reap their due harvest and be ofgood use to their souls. You will then have a fair battle, a braver,with better results.
Clara's inner eye traversed Colonel De Craye 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 ofmercurial principles, the scribbled histories of light love-passages.
She blotted it out, kept it from her mind: so she knew him, knew him tobe a sweeter and a variable Willoughby, a generous kind of Willoughby,a Willoughby-butterfly, without having the free mind to summarize himand picture him for a warning. Scattered features of him, such as theinstincts call up, were not sufficiently impressive. Besides, theclouded mind was opposed to her receiving impressions.
Young Crossjay's voice in the still morning air came to her cars. Thedear guileless chatter of the boy's voice. Why, assuredly it was youngCrossjay who was the man she loved. And he loved her. And he was goingto be an unselfish, sustaining, true, strong man, the man she longedfor, for anchorage. Oh, the dear voice! woodpecker and thrush in one.He never ceased to chatter to Vernon Whitford walking beside him with aswinging stride off to the lake for their morning swim. Happy couple!The morning gave them both a freshness and innocence above human. Theyseemed to Clara made of morning air and clear lake water. Crossjay'svoice ran up and down a diatonic scale with here and there a query insemitone and a laugh on a ringing note. She wondered what he could haveto talk of so incessantly, and imagined all the dialogue. He prattledof his yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, which did not imply past andfuture, but his vivid present. She felt like one vainly trying to flyin hearing him; she felt old. The consolation she arrived at was tofeel maternal. She wished to hug the boy.
Trot and stride, Crossjay and Vernon entered the park, careless aboutwet grass, not once looking at the house. Crossjay ranged ahead andpicked flowers, bounding back to show them. Clara's heart beat at afancy that her name was mentioned. If those flowers were for her shewould prize 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 young ofhelping to forgetfulness; for they cannot think without imagining,their imaginations are saturated with their Pleasures, and thecollision, though
they are unable to exchange sad for sweet, distillsan 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 ineffectualmoaning, and out on the high wave of grass, where Crossjay and his goodfriend had vanished.
Was the struggle all to be gone over again?
Little by little her intelligence of her actual position crept up tosubmerge her heart.
"I am in his house!" she said. It resembled a discovery, so strangelyhad her opiate and power of dreaming wrought through her tortures. Shesaid it gasping. She was in his house, his guest, his betrothed, swornto him. The fact stood out cut in steel on the pitiless daylight.
That consideration drove her to be an early wanderer in the wake ofCrossjay.
Her station was among the beeches on the flank of the boy's return; andwhile waiting there the novelty of her waiting to waylay anyone--shewho had played the contrary part!--told her more than it pleased her tothink. Yet she could admit that she did desire to speak with Vernon, aswith a counsellor, harsh and curt, but wholesome.
The bathers reappeared on the grass-ridge, racing and flapping wettowels.
Some one hailed them. A sound of the galloping hoof drew her attentionto the avenue. She saw Willoughby dash across the park level, anddropping a word to Vernon, ride away. Then she allowed herself to beseen.
Crossjay shouted. Willoughby turned his head, but not his horse's head.The boy sprang up to Clara. He had swum across the lake and back; hehad raced Mr. Whitford--and beaten him! How he wished Miss Middletonhad been able to be one of them!
Clara listened to him enviously. Her thought was: We women are nailedto our sex!
She said: "And you have just been talking to Sir Willoughby."
Crossjay drew himself up to give an imitation of the baronet'shand-moving in adieu.
He would not have done that had he not smelled sympathy with theperformance.
She declined to smile. Crossjay repeated it, and laughed. He made abroader exhibition of it to Vernon approaching: "I say. Mr. Whitford,who's this?"
Vernon doubled to catch him. Crossjay fled and resumed his magnificentair in the distance.
"Good-morning, Miss Middleton; you are out early," said Vernon, ratherpale and stringy from his cold swim, and rather hard-eyed with thesharp exercise following it.
She had expected some of the kindness she wanted to reject, for hecould speak very kindly, and she regarded him as her doctor ofmedicine, 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 awayto-day?"
"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 am 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 hadbeen in earnest about it you would have taken your father into yourconfidence at once. That was the course I ventured to propose, on thesupposition."
"In earnest! I cannot imagine that you doubt it. I wished to sparehim."
"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 aprisoner. I thought I had only to speak to him sincerely."
"Not many men would give up their prize for a word, Willoughby the lastof any."
"Prize" rang through her thrillingly from Vernon's mouth, and soothedher degradation.
She would have liked to protest that she was very little of a prize; apoor prize; not one at all in general estimation; only one to a manreckoning his property; no prize in the true sense.
The importunity of pain saved her.
"Does he think I can change again? Am I treated as something won in alottery? To stay here is indeed more than I can bear. And if he iscalculating--Mr. Whitford, if he calculates on another change, hisplotting to keep me here is inconsiderate, not very wise. Changes mayoccur in absence."
"Wise or not, he has the right to scheme his best to keep you."
She looked on Vernon with a shade of wondering reproach.
"Why? What right?"
"The right you admit when you ask him to release you. He has the rightto think you deluded; and to think you may come to a better mood if youremain--a mood more agreeable to him, I mean. He has that rightabsolutely. 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 theright to retain a treasure in his hand if he can. Look straight atthese 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 resolveto stay. I speak in the character of the person you sketched foryourself as requiring. Well, then, a friend repeats the same advice.You might have gone with your father: now you will only disturb him andannoy 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 mehe was hardly affectionate. But when you advise me to stay, Mr.Whitford, you do not perhaps reflect that it would be at the sacrificeof all candour."
"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 counselling 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, andcrossed the lawn, leaving her. He had to dress.
She was not permitted to feel lonely, for she was immediately joined byColonel De Craye.