CHAPTER XXIX
IN WHICH THE SENSITIVENESS OF SIR WILLOUGHBY IS EXPLAINED: AND HERECEIVES MUCH INSTRUCTION
THE Hall-dock over the stables was then striking twelve. It was thehour for her flight to be made known, and Clara sat in a turmoil of dimapprehension that prepared her nervous frame for a painful blush on herbeing asked by Colonel De Craye whether she had set her watchcorrectly. He must, she understood, have seen through her at thebreakfast table: and was she not cruelly indebted to him for herevasion of Willoughby? Such perspicacity of vision distressed andfrightened her; at the same time she was obliged to acknowledge that hehad not presumed on it. Her dignity was in no way the worse for him.But it had been at a man's mercy, and there was the affliction.
She jumped from the fly as if she were leaving danger behind. She couldat the moment have greeted Willoughby with a conventionally friendlysmile. The doors were thrown open and young Crossjay flew out to her.He hung and danced on her hand, pressed the hand to his mouth, hardlybelieving that he saw and touched her, and in a lingo of dashes andasterisks related how Sir Willoughby had found him under the boathouseeaves and pumped him, and had been sent off to Hoppner's farm, wherethere was a sick child, and on along the road to a labourer's cottage:"For I said you're so kind to poor people, Miss Middleton; that's true,now that is true. And I said you wouldn't have me with you for fear ofcontagion!" This was what she had feared.
"Every crack and bang in a boys vocabulary," remarked the colonel,listening to him after he had paid Flitch.
The latter touched his hat till he had drawn attention to himself, whenhe exclaimed, with rosy melancholy: "Ah! my lady, ah! colonel, if everI lives to drink some of the old port wine in the old Hall atChristmastide!" Their healths would on that occasion be drunk, it wasimplied. He threw up his eyes at the windows, humped his body and droveaway.
"Then Mr. Whitford has not come back?" said Clara to Crossjay.
"No, Miss Middleton. Sir Willoughby has, and he's upstairs in his roomdressing."
"Have you seen Barclay?"
"She has just gone into the laboratory. I told her Sir Willoughbywasn't there."
"Tell me, Crossjay, had she a letter?"
"She had something."
"Run: say I am here; I want the letter, it is mine."
Crossjay sprang away and plunged into the arms of Sir Willoughby.
"One has to catch the fellow like a football," exclaimed the injuredgentleman, doubled across the boy and holding him fast, that he mighthave an object to trifle with, to give himself countenance: he neededit. "Clara, you have not been exposed to the weather?"
"Hardly at all."
"I rejoice. You found shelter?"
"Yes."
"In one of the cottages?"
"Not in a cottage; but I was perfectly sheltered. Colonel De Crayepassed a fly before he met me . . ."
"Flitch again!" ejaculated the colonel.
"Yes, you have luck, you have luck," Willoughby addressed him, stillclutching Crossjay and treating his tugs to get loose as an invitationto caresses. But the foil barely concealed his livid perturbation.
"Stay by me, sir," he said at last sharply to Crossjay, and Claratouched the boy's shoulder in admonishment of him.
She turned to the colonel as they stepped into the hall: "I have notthanked you, Colonel De Craye." She dropped her voice to its lowest: "Aletter in my handwriting in the laboratory."
Crossjay cried aloud with pain.
"I have you!" Willoughby rallied him with a laugh not unlike the squeakof his victim.
"You squeeze awfully hard, sir."
"Why, you milksop!"
"Am I! But I want to get a book."
"Where is the book?"
"In the laboratory."
Colonel De Craye, sauntering by the laboratory door, sung out: "I'llfetch you your book. What is it? EARLY NAVIGATORS? INFANT HYMNS? Ithink my cigar-case is in here."
"Barclay speaks of a letter for me," Willoughby said to Clara, "markedto be delivered to me at noon!"
"In case of my not being back earlier; it was written to avertanxiety," she replied.
"You are very good."
"Oh, good! Call me anything but good. Here are the ladies. Dearladies!" Clara swam to meet them as they issued from a morning-roominto the hall, and interjections reigned for a couple of minutes.
Willoughby relinquished his grasp of Crossjay, who dartedinstantaneously at an angle to the laboratory, whither he followed, andhe encountered De Craye coming out, but passed him in silence.
Crossjay was rangeing and peering all over the room. Willoughby wentto his desk and the battery-table and the mantelpiece. He found noletter. Barclay had undoubtedly informed him that she had left a letterfor him in the laboratory, by order of her mistress after breakfast.
He hurried out and ran upstairs in time to see De Craye and Barclaybreaking a conference.
He beckoned to her. The maid lengthened her upper lip and beat herdress down smooth: signs of the apprehension of a crisis and of thegetting ready for action.
"My mistress's bell has just rung, Sir Willoughby."
"You had a letter for me."
"I said . . ."
"You said when I met you at the foot of the stairs that you had left aletter for me in the laboratory."
"It is lying on my mistress's toilet-table."
"Get it."
Barclay swept round with another of her demure grimaces. It wasapparently necessary with her that she should talk to herself in thispublic manner.
Willoughby waited for her; but there was no reappearance of the maid.
Struck by the ridicule of his posture of expectation, and of his wholebehaviour, he went to his bedroom suite, shut himself in, and paced thechambers, amazed at the creature he had become. Agitated like thecommonest of wretches, destitute of self-control, not able to preservea decent mask, be, accustomed to inflict these emotions and tremoursupon others, was at once the puppet and dupe of an intriguing girl. Hisvery stature seemed lessened. The glass did not say so, but theshrunken heart within him did, and wailfully too. Hercompunction--'Call me anything but good'--coming after her return tothe Hall beside De Craye, and after the visible passage of a secretbetween them in his presence, was a confession: it blew at him with thefury of a furnace-blast in his face. Egoist agony wrung the outcry fromhim that dupery is a more blessed condition. He desired to be deceived.
He could desire such a thing only in a temporary transport; for aboveall he desired that no one should know of his being deceived; and werehe a dupe the deceiver would know it, and her accomplice would know it,and the world would soon know of it: that world against whose tonguehe stood defenceless. Within the shadow of his presence he compressedopinion, as a strong frost binds the springs of earth, but beyond ithis shivering sensitiveness ran about in dread of a stripping in awintry atmosphere. This was the ground of his hatred of the world: itwas an appalling fear on behalf of his naked eidolon, the tender infantSelf swaddled in his name before the world, for which he felt as themost highly civilized of men alone can feel, and which it wasimpossible for him to stretch out hands to protect. There the poorlittle loveable creature ran for any mouth to blow on; and frostnippedand bruised, it cried to him, and he was of no avail! Must we notdetest a world that so treats us? We loathe it the more, by the measureof our contempt for them, when we have made the people within theshadow-circle of our person slavish.
And he had been once a young prince in popularity: the world had beenhis possession. Clara's treatment of him was a robbery of land andsubjects. His grander dream had been a marriage with a lady of soglowing a fame for beauty and attachment to her lord that the worldperforce must take her for witness to merits which would silencedetraction and almost, not quite (it was undesireable), extinguishenvy. But for the nature of women his dream would have been realized.He could not bring himself to denounce Fortune. It had cost him agrievous pang to tell Horace De Craye he was lucky; he had beeneducated in the belief that Fortune specially pri
zed and cherishedlittle Willoughby: hence of necessity his maledictions fell upon women,or he would have forfeited the last blanket of a dream warm as poetsrevel in.
But if Clara deceived him, he inspired her with timidity. There wasmatter in that to make him wish to be deceived. She had not looked himmuch in the face: she had not crossed his eyes: she had lookeddeliberately downward, keeping her head up, to preserve an exteriorpride. The attitude had its bewitchingness: the girl's physical prideof stature scorning to bend under a load of conscious guilt, had acertain black-angel beauty for which he felt a hugging hatred: andaccording to his policy when these fits of amorous meditation seizedhim, he burst from the present one in the mood of his more favourableconception of Clara, and sought her out.
The quality of the mood of hugging hatred is, that if you aredisallowed the hug, you do not hate the fiercer.
Contrariwise the prescription of a decorous distance of two feet teninches, which is by measurement the delimitation exacted of a rightlyrespectful deportment, has this miraculous effect on the great creatureman, or often it has: that his peculiar hatred returns to the reluctantadmiration begetting it, and his passion for the hug falls prostrate asone of the Faithful before the shrine; he is reduced to worship byfasting.
(For these mysteries, consult the sublime chapter in the GREAT BOOK,the Seventy-first on LOVE, wherein nothing is written, but the Readerreceives a Lanthorn, a Powder-cask and a Pick-axe, and therewithpursues his yellow-dusking path across the rubble of precedingexcavators in the solitary quarry: a yet more instructive passage thanthe overscrawled Seventieth, or French Section, whence the chapteropens, and where hitherto the polite world has halted.)
The hurry of the hero is on us, we have no time to spare for miningworks: he hurried to catch her alone, to wreak his tortures on her in abitter semblance of bodily worship, and satiated, then comfortably tospurn. He found her protected by Barclay on the stairs.
"That letter for me?" he said.
"I think I told you, Willoughby, there was a letter I left with Barclayto reassure you in case of my not returning early," said Clara. "It wasunnecessary for her to deliver it."
"Indeed? But any letter, any writing of yours, and from you to me! Youhave it still?"
"No, I have destroyed it."
"That was wrong."
"It could not have given you pleasure."
"My dear Clara, one line from you!"
"There were but three."
Barclay stood sucking her lips. A maid in the secrets of her mistressis a purchaseable maid, for if she will take a bribe with her righthand she will with her left; all that has to be calculated is thenature and amount of the bribe: such was the speculation indulged bySir Willoughby, and he shrank from the thought and declined to knowmore than that he was on a volcanic hillside where a thin crust quakedover lava. This was a new condition with him, representing Clara's gainin their combat. Clara did not fear his questioning so much as hefeared her candour.
Mutually timid, they were of course formally polite, and no plainspeaking could have told one another more distinctly that each wasdefensive. Clara stood pledged to the fib; packed, scaled and posted;and he had only to ask to have it, supposing that he asked with a voicenot exactly peremptory.
She said in her heart, "It is your fault: you are relentless and youwould ruin Crossjay to punish him for devoting himself to me, like thepoor thoughtless boy he is! and so I am bound in honour to do my utmostfor him."
The reciprocal devotedness, moreover, served two purposes: it preservedher from brooding on the humiliation of her lame flight, and flutterback, and it quieted her mind in regard to the precipitate intimacy ofher relations with Colonel De Craye. Willoughby's boast of hisimplacable character was to blame. She was at war with him, and she wascompelled to put the case in that light. Crossjay must be shielded fromone who could not spare an offender, so Colonel De Craye quitenaturally was called on for his help, and the colonel's dexterous aidappeared to her more admirable than alarming.
Nevertheless, she would not have answered a direct question falsely.She was for the fib, but not the lie; at a word she could be disdainfulof subterfuges. Her look said that. Willoughby perceived it. She hadwritten him a letter of three lines: "There were but three": and shehad destroyed the letter. Something perchance was repented by her? Thenshe had done him an injury! Between his wrath at the suspicion of aninjury, and the prudence enjoined by his abject coveting of her, heconsented to be fooled for the sake of vengeance, and somethingbesides.
"Well! here you are, safe; I have you!" said he, with courtlyexultation: "and that is better than your handwriting. I have been allover the country after you."
"Why did you? We are not in a barbarous land," said Clara.
"Crossjay talks of your visiting a sick child, my love:--you havechanged your dress?"
"You see."
"The boy declared you were going to that farm of Hoppner's, and somecottage. I met at my gates a tramping vagabond who swore to seeing youand the boy in a totally contrary direction."
"Did you give him money?"
"I fancy so."
"Then he was paid for having seen me."
Willoughby tossed his head: it might be as she suggested; beggars areliars.
"But who sheltered you, my dear Clara? You had not been heard of atHoppner's."
"The people have been indemnified for their pains. To pay them morewould be to spoil them. You disperse money too liberally. There was nofever in the place. Who could have anticipated such a downpour! I wantto consult Miss Dale on the important theme of a dress I think ofwearing at Mrs Mountstuart's to-night."
"Do. She is unerring."
"She has excellent taste."
"She dresses very simply herself."
"But it becomes her. She is one of the few women whom I feel I couldnot improve with a touch."
"She has judgement."
He reflected and repeated his encomium.
The shadow of a dimple in Clara's cheek awakened him to the idea thatshe had struck him somewhere: and certainly he would never again beable to put up the fiction of her jealousy of Laetitia. What, then,could be this girl's motive for praying to be released? Theinterrogation humbled him: he fled from the answer.
Willoughby went in search of De Craye. That sprightly intriguer had nointention to let himself be caught solus. He was undiscoverable untilthe assembly sounded, when Clara dropped a public word or two, and hespoke in perfect harmony with her. After that, he gave his company toWilloughby for an hour at billiards, and was well beaten.
The announcement of a visit of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson took thegentlemen to the drawing-room, rather suspecting that something stoodin the way of her dinner-party. As it happened, she was lamenting onlythe loss of one of the jewels of the party: to wit, the great ProfessorCrooklyn, invited to meet Dr. Middleton at her table; and she relatedhow she had driven to the station by appointment, the professor beingnotoriously a bother-headed traveller: as was shown by the fact that hehad missed his train in town, for he had not arrived; nothing had beenseen of him. She cited Vernon Whitford for her authority that the trainhad been inspected, and the platform scoured to find the professor.
"And so," said she, "I drove home your Green Man to dry him; he was wetthrough and chattering; the man was exactly like a skeleton wrapped ina sponge, and if he escapes a cold he must be as invulnerable as heboasts himself. These athletes are terrible boasters."
"They climb their Alps to crow," said Clara, excited by herapprehension that Mrs. Mountstuart would speak of having seen thecolonel near the station.
There was a laugh, and Colonel De Craye laughed loudly as it flashedthrough him that a quick-witted impressionable girl like Miss Middletonmust, before his arrival at the Hall, have speculated on such obdurateclay as Vernon Whitford was, with humourous despair at his uselessnessto her. Glancing round, he saw Vernon standing fixed in a stare at theyoung lady.
"You heard that, Whitford?" he said, and Clara's face betokening anextremer
contrition than he thought was demanded, the colonel ralliedthe Alpine climber for striving to be the tallest of them--SignorExcelsior!--and described these conquerors of mountains pancaked on therocks in desperate embraces, bleached here, burned there, barked allover, all to be able to say they had been up "so high"--had conqueredanother mountain! He was extravagantly funny and self-satisfied: aconqueror of the sex having such different rewards of enterprise.
Vernon recovered in time to accept the absurdities heaped on him.
"Climbing peaks won't compare with hunting a wriggler," said he.
His allusion to the incessant pursuit of young Crossjay to pin him tolessons was appreciated.
Clara felt the thread of the look he cast from herself to Colonel DeCraye. She was helpless, if he chose to misjudge her. Colonel De Crayedid not!
Crossjay had the misfortune to enter the drawing-room while Mrs.Mountstuart was compassionating Vernon for his ducking in pursuit ofthe wriggler; which De Craye likened to "going through the river afterhis eel:" and immediately there was a cross-questioning of the boybetween De Craye and Willoughby on the subject of his latest truancy,each gentleman trying to run him down in a palpable fib. They weresucceeding brilliantly when Vernon put a stop to it by marching him offto hard labour. Mrs. Mountstuart was led away to inspect the beautifulporcelain service, the present of Lady Busshe. "Porcelain again!" shesaid to Willoughby, and would have signalled to the "dainty rogue" tocome with them, had not Clara been leaning over to Laetitia, talking toher in an attitude too graceful to be disturbed. She called hisattention to it, slightly wondering at his impatience. She departed tomeet an afternoon train on the chance that it would land the professor."But tell Dr. Middleton," said she, "I fear I shall have no one worthyof him! And," she added to Willoughby, as she walked out to hercarriage, "I shall expect you to do the great-gunnery talk at table."
"Miss Dale keeps it up with him best," said Willoughby.
"She does everything best! But my dinner-table is involved, and Icannot count on a young woman to talk across it. I would hire a lion ofa menagerie, if one were handy, rather than have a famous scholar at mytable, unsupported by another famous scholar. Doctor Middleton wouldride down a duke when the wine is in him. He will terrify my poorflock. The truth is, we can't leaven him: I foresee undigested lumps ofconversation, unless you devote yourself."
"I will devote myself," said Willoughby.
"I can calculate on Colonel De Craye and our porcelain beauty for anyquantity of sparkles, if you promise that. They play well together. Youare not to be one of the gods to-night, but a kind of Jupiter'scup-bearer;--Juno's, if you like; and Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer, andall your admirers shall know subsequently what you have done. You seemy alarm. I certainly did not rank Professor Crooklyn among thepossibly faithless, or I never would have ventured on Doctor Middletonat my table. My dinner-parties have hitherto been all successes.Naturally I feel the greater anxiety about this one. For a singlefailure is all the more conspicuous. The exception is everlastinglycited! It is not so much what people say, but my own sentiments. I hateto fail. However, if you are true, we may do."
"Whenever the great gun goes off I will fall on my face, madam!"
"Something of that sort," said the dame, smiling, and leaving him toreflect on the egoism of women. For the sake of her dinner-party he wasto be a cipher in attendance on Dr. Middleton, and Clara and De Crayewere to be encouraged in sparkling together! And it happened that heparticularly wished to shine. The admiration of his county made himbelieve he had a flavour in general society that was not yetdistinguished by his bride, and he was to relinquish his opportunity inorder to please Mrs. Mountstuart! Had she been in the pay of hisrival, she could not have stipulated for more.
He remembered young Crossjay's instant quietude, after struggling inhis grasp, when Clara laid her hand on the boy: and from thatinfinitesimal circumstance he deduced the boy's perception of adiffering between himself and his bride, and a transfer of Crossjay'sallegiance from him to her. She shone; she had the gift of femalebeauty; the boy was attracted to it. That boy must be made to feel histreason. But the point of the cogitation was, that similarly were Clarato see her affianced shining, as shine he could when lighted up byadmirers, there was the probability that the sensation of herlittleness would animate her to take aim at him once more. And then wasthe time for her chastisement.
A visit to Dr. Middleton in the library satisfied him that she had notbeen renewing her entreaties to leave Patterne. No, the miserablecoquette had now her pastime, and was content to stay. Deceit was inthe air: he heard the sound of the shuttle of deceit without seeing it;but, on the whole, mindful of what he had dreaded during the hours ofher absence, he was rather flattered, witheringly flattered. What wasit that he had dreaded? Nothing less than news of her running away.Indeed a silly fancy, a lover's fancy! yet it had led him so far as tosuspect, after parting with De Craye in the rain, that his friend andhis bride were in collusion, and that he should not see them again. Hehad actually shouted on the rainy road the theatric call "Fooled!" oneof the stage-cries which are cries of nature! particularly the cry ofnature with men who have driven other men to the cry.
Constantia Durham had taught him to believe women capable of explosionsof treason at half a minute's notice. And strangely, to prove thatwomen are all of a pack, she had worn exactly the same placidity ofcountenance just before she fled, as Clara yesterday and to-day; nonervousness, no flushes, no twitches of the brows, but smoothness, easeof manner--an elegant sisterliness, one might almost say: as if thecreature had found a midway and borderline to walk on between crueltyand kindness, and between repulsion and attraction; so that up to theverge of her breath she did forcefully attract, repelling at one foot'slength with her armour of chill serenity. Not with any disdain, with nopassion: such a line as she herself pursued she indicated to him on aneighbouring parallel. The passion in her was like a place of wavesevaporated to a crust of salt. Clara's resemblance to Constantia inthis instance was ominous. For him whose tragic privilege it had beento fold each of them in his arms, and weigh on their eyelids, and seethe dissolving mist-deeps in their eyes, it was horrible. Once more thecomparison overcame him. Constantia he could condemn for revealing toomuch to his manly sight: she had met him almost half-way: well, thatwas complimentary and sanguine: but her frankness was a baldness oftenrendering it doubtful which of the two, lady or gentleman, was theobject of the chase--an extreme perplexity to his manly soul. NowClara's inner spirit was shyer, shy as a doe down those rose-tingedabysses; she allured both the lover and the hunter; forests ofheavenliness were in her flitting eyes. Here the difference of thesefair women made his present fate an intolerable anguish. For ifConstantia was like certain of the ladies whom he had rendered unhappy,triumphed over, as it is queerly called, Clara was not. Herindividuality as a woman was a thing he had to bow to. It wasimpossible to roll her up in the sex and bestow a kick on thetravelling bundle. Hence he loved her, though she hurt him. Hence hiswretchedness, and but for the hearty sincerity of his faith in the Selfhe loved likewise and more, he would have been hangdog abject.
As for De Craye, Willoughby recollected his own exploits too proudly toput his trust in a man. That fatal conjunction of temper and policy hadutterly thrown him off his guard, or he would not have trusted thefellow even in the first hour of his acquaintance with Clara. But hehad wished her to be amused while he wove his plans to retain her atthe Hall:--partly imagining that she would weary of his neglect: viledelusion! In truth he should have given festivities, he should havebeen the sun of a circle, and have revealed himself to her in his moredazzling form. He went near to calling himself foolish after thetremendous reverberation of "Fooled!" had ceased to shake him.
How behave? It slapped the poor gentleman's pride in the face to ask. Aprivate talk with her would rouse her to renew her supplications. Hesaw them flickering behind the girl's transparent calmness. Thatcalmness really drew its dead ivory hue from the suppression of them:something as much he guesse
d; and he was not sure either of his temperor his policy if he should hear her repeat her profane request.
An impulse to address himself to Vernon and discourse with himjocularly on the childish whim of a young lady, moved perhaps by somewhiff of jealousy, to shun the yoke, was checked. He had always takenso superior a pose with Vernon that he could not abandon it for amoment: on such a subject too! Besides, Vernon was one of your men whoentertain the ideas about women of fellows that have never conqueredone: or only one, we will say in his case, knowing his secret history;and that one no flag to boast of. Densely ignorant of the sex, hisnincompoopish idealizations, at other times preposterous, would now beannoying. He would probably presume on Clara's inconceivable lapse ofdignity to read his master a lecture: he was quite equal to a philippicupon woman's rights. This man had not been afraid to say that he talkedcommon sense to women. He was an example of the consequence!
Another result was that Vernon did not talk sense to men. Willoughby'swrath at Clara's exposure of him to his cousin dismissed the proposalof a colloquy so likely to sting his temper, and so certain to diminishhis loftiness. Unwilling to speak to anybody, he was isolated, yetconsciously begirt by the mysterious action going on all over thehouse, from Clara and De Craye to Laetitia and young Crossjay, down toBarclay the maid. His blind sensitiveness felt as we may suppose aspider to feel when plucked from his own web and set in the centre ofanother's. Laetitia looked her share in the mystery. A burden was onher eyelashes. How she could have come to any suspicion of thecircumstances, he was unable to imagine. Her intense personal sympathy,it might be; he thought so with some gentle pity for her--of thepaternal pat-back order of pity. She adored him, by decree of Venus;and the Goddess had not decreed that he should find consolation inadoring her. Nor could the temptings of prudent counsel in his headinduce him to run the risk of such a total turnover as the incurring ofLaetitia's pity of himself by confiding in her. He checked that impulsealso, and more sovereignly. For him to be pitied by Laetitia seemed anupsetting of the scheme of Providence. Providence, otherwise thediscriminating dispensation of the good things of life, had made himthe beacon, her the bird: she was really the last person to whom hecould unbosom. The idea of his being in a position that suggested hisdoing so, thrilled him with fits of rage; and it appalled him. Thereappeared to be another Power. The same which had humiliated him oncewas menacing him anew. For it could not be Providence, whose favouritehe had ever been. We must have a couple of Powers to account fordiscomfort when Egoism is the kernel of our religion. Benevolence hadsingled him for uncommon benefits: malignancy was at work to rob him ofthem. And you think well of the world, do you!
Of necessity he associated Clara with the darker Power pointing theknife at the quick of his pride. Still, he would have raised herweeping: he would have stanched her wounds bleeding: he had an infinitethirst for her misery, that he might ease his heart of its charitablelove. Or let her commit herself, and be cast off. Only she must commitherself glaringly, and be cast off by the world as well. Contemplatingher in the form of a discarded weed, he had a catch of the breath: shewas fair. He implored his Power that Horace De Craye might not be theman! Why any man? An illness, fever, fire, runaway horses, personaldisfigurement, a laming, were sufficient. And then a formal and nobleoffer on his part to keep to the engagement with the unhappy wreck:yes, and to lead the limping thing to the altar, if she insisted. Hisimagination conceived it, and the world's applause besides.
Nausea, together with a sense of duty to his line, extinguished thatloathsome prospect of a mate, though without obscuring his chivalrousdevotion to his gentleman's word of honour, which remained in his mindto compliment him permanently.
On the whole, he could reasonably hope to subdue her to admiration. Hedrank a glass of champagne at his dressing; an unaccustomed act, but,as he remarked casually to his man Pollington, for whom the rest of thebottle was left, he had taken no horse-exercise that day.
Having to speak to Vernon on business, he went to the schoolroom, wherehe discovered Clara, beautiful in full evening attire, with her arm onyoung Crossjay's shoulder, and heard that the hard task-master hadabjured Mrs. Mountstuart's party, and had already excused himself,intending to keep Crossjay to the grindstone. Willoughby was for theboy, as usual, and more sparklingly than usual. Clara looked at him insome surprise. He rallied Vernon with great zest, quite silencing himwhen he said: "I bear witness that the fellow was here at his regularhour for lessons, and were you?" He laid his hand on Crossjay, touchingClara's.
"You will remember what I told you, Crossjay," said she, rising fromthe seat gracefully to escape the touch. "It is my command."
Crossjay frowned and puffed.
"But only if I'm questioned," he said.
"Certainly," she replied.
"Then I question the rascal," said Willoughby, causing a start. "What,sir, is your opinion of Miss Middleton in her robe of state thisevening?"
"Now, the truth, Crossjay!" Clara held up a finger; and the boy couldsee she was playing at archness, but for Willoughby it was earnest."The truth is not likely to offend you or me either," he murmured toher.
"I wish him never, never, on any excuse, to speak anything else."
"I always did think her a Beauty," Crossjay growled. He hated thehaving to say it.
"There!" exclaimed Sir Willoughby, and bent, extending an arm to her."You have not suffered from the truth, my Clara!"
Her answer was: "I was thinking how he might suffer if he were taughtto tell the reverse."
"Oh! for a fair lady!"
"That is the worst of teaching, Willoughby."
"We'll leave it to the fellow's instinct; he has our blood in him. Icould convince you, though, if I might cite circumstances. Yes! Butyes! And yes again! The entire truth cannot invariably be told. Iventure to say it should not."
"You would pardon it for the 'fair lady'?"
"Applaud, my love."
He squeezed the hand within his arm, contemplating her.
She was arrayed in a voluminous robe of pale blue silk vapourous withtrimmings of light gauze of the same hue, gaze de Chambery, matchingher fair hair and dear skin for the complete overthrow of lessinflammable men than Willoughby.
"Clara!" sighed be.
"If so, it would really be generous," she said, "though the teaching hbad."
"I fancy I can be generous."
"Do we ever know?"
He turned his head to Vernon, issuing brief succinct instructions forletters to be written, and drew her into the hall, saying: "Know?There are people who do not know themselves and as they are themajority they manufacture the axioms. And it is assumed that we have toswallow them. I may observe that I think I know. I decline to beengulphed in those majorities. 'Among them, but not of them.' I knowthis, that my aim in life is to be generous."
"Is it not an impulse or disposition rather than an aim?"
"So much I know," pursued Willoughby, refusing to be tripped. But sherang discordantly in his ear. His "fancy that he could be generous" andhis "aim at being generous" had met with no response. "I have givenproofs," he said, briefly, to drop a subject upon which he was notpermitted to dilate; and he murmured, "People acquainted with me . . . !"She was asked if she expected him to boast of generous deeds. "Fromchildhood!" she heard him mutter; and she said to herself, "Release me,and you shall be everything!"
The unhappy gentleman ached as he talked: for with men and with hostsof women to whom he was indifferent, never did he converse in thisshambling, third-rate, sheepish manner, devoid of all highness of toneand the proper precision of an authority. He was unable to fathom thecause of it, but Clara imposed it on him, and only in anger could hethrow it off. The temptation to an outburst that would flatter him withthe sound of his authoritative voice had to be resisted on a night whenhe must be composed if he intended to shine, so he merely mentionedLady Busshe's present, to gratify spleen by preparing the ground fordissension, and prudently acquiesced in her anticipated slipperiness.She would rather not l
ook at it now, she said.
"Not now; very well," said he.
His immediate deference made her regretful. "There is hardly time,Willoughby."
"My dear, we shall have to express our thanks to her."
"I cannot."
His arm contracted sharply. He was obliged to be silent.
Dr Middleton, Laetitia, and the ladies Eleanor and Isabel joining themin the hall, found two figures linked together in a shadowy indicationof halves that have fallen apart and hang on the last thread ofjunction. Willoughby retained her hand on his arm; he held to it as thesymbol of their alliance, and oppressed the girl's nerves by contact,with a frame labouring for breath. De Craye looked on them fromoverhead. The carriages were at the door, and Willoughby said, "Where'sHorace? I suppose he's taking a final shot at his Book of Anecdotes andneat collection of Irishisms."
"No," replied the colonel, descending. "That's a spring works of itselfand has discovered the secret of continuous motion, more's thepity!--unless you'll be pleased to make it of use to Science."
He gave a laugh of good-humour.
"Your laughter, Horace, is a capital comment on your wit."
Willoughby said it with the air of one who has flicked a whip.
"'Tis a genial advertisement of a vacancy," said De Craye.
"Precisely: three parts auctioneer to one for the property."
"Oh, if you have a musical quack, score it a point in his favour,Willoughby, though you don't swallow his drug."
"If he means to be musical, let him keep time."
"Am I late?" said De Craye to the ladies, proving himself an adept inthe art of being gracefully vanquished, and so winning tender hearts.
Willoughby had refreshed himself. At the back of his mind there was asuspicion that his adversary would not have yielded so flatly withoutan assurance of practically triumphing, secretly getting the better ofhim; and it filled him with venom for a further bout at the nextopportunity: but as he had been sarcastic and mordant, he had shownClara what he could do in a way of speaking different from thelamentable cooing stuff, gasps and feeble protestations to which, heknew not how, she reduced him. Sharing the opinion of his race, thatblunt personalities, or the pugilistic form, administered directly onthe salient features, are exhibitions of mastery in such encounters, hefelt strong and solid, eager for the successes of the evening. De Crayewas in the first carriage as escort to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.Willoughby, with Clara, Laetitia, and Dr. Middleton, followed, allsilent, for the Rev. Doctor was ostensibly pondering; and Willoughbywas damped a little when he unlocked his mouth to say:
"And yet I have not observed that Colonel de Craye is anything of aCeltiberian Egnatius meriting fustigation for an untimely display ofwell-whitened teeth, sir: 'quicquid est, ubicunque est, quodcunqueagit, renidet:':--ha? a morbus neither charming nor urbane to thegeneral eye, however consolatory to the actor. But this gentleman doesnot offend so, or I am so strangely prepossessed in his favour as to bean incompetent witness."
Dr Middleton's persistent ha? eh? upon an honest frown of inquiryplucked an answer out of Willoughby that was meant to be humourouslyscornful, and soon became apologetic under the Doctor's interrogativelygrasping gaze.
"These Irishmen," Willoughby said, "will play the professional jesteras if it were an office they were born to. We must play critic now andthen, otherwise we should have them deluging us with their JoeMillerisms."
"With their O'Millerisms you would say, perhaps?"
Willoughby did his duty to the joke, but the Rev. Doctor, though hewore the paternal smile of a man that has begotten hilarity, was notperfectly propitiated, and pursued: "Nor to my apprehension is 'theman's laugh the comment on his wit' unchallengeably new: instances ofcousinship germane to the phrase will recur to you. But it has to benoted that it was a phrase of assault; it was ostentatiously battery;and I would venture to remind you, friend, that among the elect,considering that it is as fatally facile to spring the laugh upon a manas to deprive him of his life, considering that we have only tocondescend to the weapon, and that the more popular necessarily themore murderous that weapon is,--among the elect, to which it is yourdistinction to aspire to belong, the rule holds to abstain from anyemployment of the obvious, the percoct, and likewise, for your ownsake, from the epitonic, the overstrained; for if the former, byreadily assimilating with the understandings of your audience, areempowered to commit assassination on your victim, the latter come underthe charge of unseemliness, inasmuch as they are a description ofpublic suicide. Assuming, then, manslaughter to be your pastime, andhari-kari not to be your bent, the phrase, to escape criminality, mustrise in you as you would have it fall on him, ex improviso. Am Iright?"
"I am in the habit of thinking it impossible, sir, that you can be inerror," said Willoughby.
Dr Middleton left it the more emphatic by saying nothing further.
Both his daughter and Miss Dale, who had disapproved the waspish snapat Colonel De Craye, were in wonderment of the art of speech whichcould so soothingly inform a gentleman that his behaviour had not beengentlemanly.
Willoughby was damped by what he comprehended of it for a few minutes.In proportion as he realized an evening with his ancient admirers hewas restored, and he began to marvel greatly at his folly in not givingbanquets and Balls, instead of making a solitude about himself and hisbride. For solitude, thought he, is good for the man, the man being acreature consumed by passion; woman's love, on the contrary, will onlybe nourished by the reflex light she catches of you in the eyes ofothers, she having no passion of her own, but simply an instinctdriving her to attach herself to whatsoever is most largely admired,most shining. So thinking, he determined to change his course ofconduct, and he was happier. In the first gush of our wisdom drawndirectly from experience there is a mental intoxication that cancelsthe old world and establishes a new one, not allowing us to ask whetherit is too late.