CHAPTER XXXI
SIR WILLOUGHBY ATTEMPTS AND ACHIEVES PATHOS
Both were seated. Apparently he would have preferred to watch her darkdowncast eyelashes in silence under sanction of his air of abstractmeditation and the melancholy superinducing it. Blood-colour was inher cheeks; the party had inspirited her features. Might it be thatlively company, an absence of economical solicitudes, and a flourishinghome were all she required to make her bloom again? The supposition wasnot hazardous in presence of her heightened complexion.
She raised her eyes. He could not meet her look without speaking.
"Can you forgive deceit?"
"It would be to boast of more charity than I know myself to possess,were I to say that I can, Sir Willoughby. I hope I am able to forgive.I cannot tell. I should like to say yes."
"Could you live with the deceiver?"
"No."
"No. I could have given that answer for you. No semblance of unionshould be maintained between the deceiver and ourselves. Laetitia!"
"Sir Willoughby?"
"Have I no right to your name?"
"If it pleases you to . . ."
"I speak as my thoughts run, and they did not know a Miss Dale so wellas a dear Laetitia: my truest friend! You have talked with ClaraMiddleton?"
"We had a conversation."
Her brevity affrighted him. He flew off in a cloud.
"Reverting to that question of deceivers: is it not your opinion thatto pardon, to condone, is to corrupt society by passing off as purewhat is false? Do we not," he wore the smile of haggard playfulness ofa convalescent child the first day back to its toys, "Laetitia, do wenot impose a counterfeit on the currency?"
"Supposing it to be really deception."
"Apart from my loathing of deception, of falseness in any shape, uponany grounds, I hold it an imperious duty to expose, punish, off withit. I take it to be one of the forms of noxiousness which a goodcitizen is bound to extirpate. I am not myself good citizen enough, Iconfess, for much more than passive abhorrence. I do not forgive: I amat heart serious and I cannot forgive:--there is no possiblereconciliation, there can be only an ostensible truce, between the twohostile powers dividing this world."
She glanced at him quickly.
"Good and evil!" he said.
Her face expressed a surprise relapsing on the heart.
He spelt the puckers of her forehead to mean that she feared he mightbe speaking unchristianly.
"You will find it so in all religions, my dear Laetitia: the Hindoo,the Persian, ours. It is universal; an experience of our humanity.Deceit and sincerity cannot live together. Truth must kill the lie, orthe lie will kill truth. I do not forgive. All I say to the person is,go!"
"But that is right! that is generous!" exclaimed Laetitia, glad toapprove him for the sake of escaping her critical soul, and relieved bythe idea of Clara's difficulty solved.
"Capable of generosity, perhaps," he mused, aloud.
She wounded him by not supplying the expected enthusiastic asseverationof her belief in his general tendency to magnanimity.
He said, after a pause: "But the world is not likely to be impressed byanything not immediately gratifying it. People change, I find: as weincrease in years we cease to be the heroes we were. I myself aminsensible to change: I do not admit the charge. Except in this we willsay: personal ambition. I have it no more. And what is it when we haveit? Decidedly a confession of inferiority! That is, the desire to bedistinguished is an acknowledgement of insufficiency. But I have stillthe craving for my dearest friends to think well of me. A weakness?Call it so. Not a dishonourable weakness!"
Laetitia racked her brain for the connection of his present speech withthe preceding dialogue. She was baffled, from not knowing "the heat ofthe centre in him", as Vernon opaquely phrased it in charity to theobject of her worship.
"Well," said he, unappeased, "and besides the passion to excel, I havechanged somewhat in the heartiness of my thirst for the amusementsincident to my station. I do not care to keep a stud--I was oncetempted: nor hounds. And I can remember the day when I determined tohave the best kennels and the best breed of horses in the kingdom.Puerile! What is distinction of that sort, or of any acquisition andaccomplishment? We ask! one's self is not the greater. To seek it, ownsto our smallness, in real fact; and when it is attained, what then? Myhorses are good, they are admired, I challenge the county to surpassthem: well? These are but my horses; the praise is of the animals, notof me. I decline to share in it. Yet I know men content to swallow thepraise of their beasts and be semi-equine. The littleness of one'sfellows in the mob of life is a very strange experience! One may regretto have lost the simplicity of one's forefathers, which could acceptthose and other distinctions with a cordial pleasure, not to say pride.As, for instance, I am, as it is called, a dead shot. 'Give youracclamations, gentlemen, to my ancestors, from whom I inherited asteady hand and quick sight.' They do not touch me. Where I do not findmyself--that I am essentially I--no applause can move me. To speak toyou as I would speak to none, admiration--you know that in my earlyyouth I swam in flattery--I had to swim to avoid drowning!--admirationof my personal gifts has grown tasteless. Changed, therefore, inasmuchas there has been a growth of spirituality. We are all in submission tomortal laws, and so far I have indeed changed. I may add that it isunusual for country gentlemen to apply themselves to scientificresearches. These are, however, in the spirit of the time. Iapprehended that instinctively when at College. I forsook the classicsfor science. And thereby escaped the vice of domineeringself-sufficiency peculiar to classical men, of which you had an amusingexample in the carriage, on the way to Mrs. Mountstuart's this evening.Science is modest; slow, if you like; it deals with facts, and havingmastered them, it masters men; of necessity, not with a stupid,loud-mouthed arrogance: words big and oddly garbed as the Pope'sbody-guard. Of course, one bows to the Infallible; we must, when hisgiant-mercenaries level bayonets."
Sir Willoughby offered Miss Dale half a minute that she might in gentlefeminine fashion acquiesce in the implied reproof of Dr. Middleton'sbehaviour to him during the drive to Mrs. Mountstuart's. She did not.
Her heart was accusing Clara of having done it a wrong and a hurt. Forwhile he talked he seemed to her to justify Clara's feelings and herconduct: and her own reawakened sensations of injury came to thesurface a moment to look at him, affirming that they pardoned him, andpitied, but hardly wondered.
The heat of the centre in him had administered the comfort he wanted,though the conclusive accordant notes he loved on woman's lips, thatsubservient harmony of another instrument desired of musicians whenthey have done their solo-playing, came not to wind up the performance:not a single bar. She did not speak. Probably his Laetitia wasovercome, as he had long known her to be when they conversed;nerve-subdued, unable to deploy her mental resources or her musical.Yet ordinarily she had command of the latter.--Was she too condoling?Did a reason exist for it? Had the impulsive and desperate girl spokenout to Laetitia to the fullest?--shameless daughter of a domineeringsire that she was! Ghastlier inquiry (it struck the centre of him witha sounding ring), was Laetitia pitying him overmuch for worse than thepain of a little difference between lovers--for treason on the part ofhis bride? Did she know of a rival? know more than he?
When the centre of him was violently struck he was a genius inpenetration. He guessed that she did know: and by this was he presentlyhelped to achieve pathos.
"So my election was for Science," he continued; "and if it makes me, asI fear, a rara avis among country gentlemen, it unites me, puts me inthe main, I may say, in the only current of progress--a wordsufficiently despicable in their political jargon.--You enjoyed yourevening at Mrs. Mountstuart's?"
"Very greatly."
"She brings her Professor to dine here the day after tomorrow. Does itastonish you? You started."
"I did not hear the invitation."
"It was arranged at the table: you and I were separated--cruelly, Itold her: she declared that
we see enough of one another, and that itwas good for me that we should be separated; neither of which is true.I may not have known what is the best for me: I do know what is good.If in my younger days I egregiously erred, that, taken of itself alone,is, assuming me to have sense and feeling, the surer proof of presentwisdom. I can testify in person that wisdom is pain. If pain is to addto wisdom, let me suffer! Do you approve of that, Laetitia?"
"It is well said."
"It is felt. Those who themselves have suffered should know the benefitof the resolution."
"One may have suffered so much as to wish only for peace."
"True: but you! have you?"
"It would be for peace, if I prayed for any earthly gift."
Sir Willoughby dropped a smile on her. "I mentioned the Pope'sparti-coloured body-guard just now. In my youth their singular attireimpressed me. People tell me they have been re-uniformed: I am sorry.They remain one of my liveliest recollections of the Eternal City. Theyaffected my sense of humour, always alert in me, as you are aware. WeEnglish have humour. It is the first thing struck in us when we land onthe Continent: our risible faculties are generally active all throughthe tour. Humour, or the clash of sense with novel examples of theabsurd, is our characteristic. I do not condescend to boisterousdisplays of it. I observe, and note the people's comicalities for mycorrespondence. But you have read my letters--most of them, if notall?"
"Many of them."
"I was with you then!--I was about to say--that Swiss-guard remindedme--you have not been in Italy. I have constantly regretted it. You arethe very woman, you have the soul for Italy. I know no other of whom Icould say it, with whom I should not feel that she was out of place,discordant with me. Italy and Laetitia! often have I joined youtogether. We shall see. I begin to have hopes. Here you have literallystagnated. Why, a dinner-party refreshes you! What would not travel do,and that heavenly climate! You are a reader of history and poetry.Well, poetry! I never yet saw the poetry that expressed the tenth partof what I feel in the presence of beauty and magnificence, and when Ireally meditate--profoundly. Call me a positive mind. I feel: only Ifeel too intensely for poetry. By the nature of it, poetry cannot besincere. I will have sincerity. Whatever touches our emotions should bespontaneous, not a craft. I know you are in favour of poetry. You wouldwin me, if any one could. But history! there I am with you. Walkingover ruins: at night: the arches of the solemn black amphitheatrepouring moonlight on us--the moonlight of Italy!"
"You would not laugh there, Sir Willoughby?" said Laetitia, rousingherself from a stupor of apprehensive amazement, to utter something andrealize actual circumstances.
"Besides, you, I think, or I am mistaken in you"--he deviated from hisprojected speech--"you are not a victim of the sense of association andthe ludicrous."
"I can understand the influence of it: I have at least a conception ofthe humourous, but ridicule would not strike me in the Coliseum ofRome. I could not bear it, no, Sir Willoughby!"
She appeared to be taking him in very strong earnest, by thuspetitioning him not to laugh in the Coliseum, and now he said:"Besides, you are one who could accommodate yourself to the society ofthe ladies, my aunts. Good women, Laetitia! I cannot imagine them detrop in Italy, or in a household. I have of course reason to be partialin my judgement."
"They are excellent and most amiable ladies; I love them," saidLaetitia, fervently; the more strongly excited to fervour by herenlightenment as to his drift.
She read it that he designed to take her to Italy with theladies:--after giving Miss Middleton her liberty; that was necessarilyimplied. And that was truly generous. In his boyhood he had been famousfor his bountifulness in scattering silver and gold. Might he not havecaused himself to be misperused in later life?
Clara had spoken to her of the visit and mission of the ladies to thelibrary: and Laetitia daringly conceived herself to be on the certaintrack of his meaning, she being able to enjoy their society as shesupposed him to consider that Miss Middleton did not, and would noteither abroad or at home.
Sir Willoughby asked her: "You could travel with them?"
"Indeed I could!"
"Honestly?"
"As affirmatively as one may protest. Delightedly."
"Agreed. It is an undertaking." He put his hand out.
"Whether I be of the party or not! To Italy, Laetitia! It would give mepleasure to be with you, and it will, if I must be excluded, to thinkof you in Italy."
His hand was out. She had to feign inattention or yield her own. Shehad not the effrontery to pretend not to see, and she yielded it. Hepressed it, and whenever it shrunk a quarter inch to withdraw, he shookit up and down, as an instrument that had been lent him for dueemphasis to his remarks. And very emphatic an amorous orator can makeit upon a captive lady.
"I am unable to speak decisively on that or any subject. I am, I thinkyou once quoted, 'tossed like a weed on the ocean.' Of myself I canspeak: I cannot speak for a second person. I am infinitely harassed. IfI could cry, 'To Italy tomorrow!' Ah! . . . Do not set me down forcomplaining. I know the lot of man. But, Laetitia, deceit! deceit! Itis a bad taste in the mouth. It sickens us of humanity. I compare it toan earthquake: we lose all our reliance on the solidity of the world.It is a betrayal not simply of the person; it is a betrayal ofhumankind. My friend! Constant friend! No, I will not despair. Yes, Ihave faults; I will remember them. Only, forgiveness is anotherquestion. Yes, the injury I can forgive; the falseness never. In theinterests of humanity, no. So young, and such deceit!"
Laetitia's bosom rose: her hand was detained: a lady who has yielded itcannot wrestle to have it back; those outworks which protect hertreacherously shelter the enemy aiming at the citadel when he has takenthem. In return for the silken armour bestowed on her by ourcivilization, it is exacted that she be soft and civil nigh up toperishing-point. She breathed tremulously high, saying on hertop-breath: "If it--it may not be so; it can scarcely. . ." A deep sighintervened. It saddened her that she knew so much.
"For when I love I love," said Sir Willoughby; "my friends and myservants know that. There can be no medium: not with me. I give all, Iclaim all. As I am absorbed, so must I absorb. We both cancel andcreate, we extinguish and we illumine one another. The error may be inthe choice of an object: it is not in the passion. Perfect confidence,perfect abandonment. I repeat, I claim it because I give it. Theselfishness of love may be denounced: it is a part of us. My answerwould be, it is an element only of the noblest of us! Love, Laetitia! Ispeak of love. But one who breaks faith to drag us through the mire,who betrays, betrays and hands us over to the world, whose prey webecome identically because of virtues we were educated to think it ablessing to possess: tell me the name for that!--Again, it has everbeen a principle with me to respect the sex. But if we see women false,treacherous . . . Why indulge in these abstract views, you would ask!The world presses them on us, full as it is of the vilest specimens.They seek to pluck up every rooted principle: they sneer at ourworship: they rob us of our religion. This bitter experience of theworld drives us back to the antidote of what we knew before we plungedinto it: of one . . . of something we esteemed and still esteem. Isthat antidote strong enough to expel the poison? I hope so! I believeso! To lose faith in womankind is terrible."
He studied her. She looked distressed: she was not moved.
She was thinking that, with the exception of a strain of haughtiness,he talked excellently to men, at least in the tone of the things hemeant to say; but that his manner of talking to women went to an excessin the artificial tongue--the tutored tongue of sentimental deferenceof the towering male: he fluted exceedingly; and she wondered whetherit was this which had wrecked him with Miss Middleton.
His intuitive sagacity counselled him to strive for pathos to move her.It was a task; for while he perceived her to be not ignorant of hisplight, he doubted her knowing the extent of it, and as his desire wasmerely to move her without an exposure of himself, he had to compassbeing pathetic as it were under the impediments of a mailed
andgauntletted knight, who cannot easily heave the bosom, or show itheaving.
Moreover, pathos is a tide: often it carries the awakener of it off hisfeet, and whirls him over and over armour and all in ignominiousattitudes of helpless prostration, whereof he may well be ashamed inthe retrospect. We cannot quite preserve our dignity when we stoop tothe work of calling forth tears. Moses had probably to take a nimblejump away from the rock after that venerable Law-giver had knocked thewater out of it.
However, it was imperative in his mind that he should be sure he hadthe power to move her.
He began; clumsily at first, as yonder gauntletted knight attemptingthe briny handkerchief.
"What are we! We last but a very short time. Why not live to gratifyour appetites? I might really ask myself why. All the means ofsatiating them are at my disposal. But no: I must aim at thehighest:--at that which in my blindness I took for the highest. Youknow the sportsman's instinct, Laetitia; he is not tempted by thestationary object. Such are we in youth, toying with happiness, leavingit, to aim at the dazzling and attractive."
"We gain knowledge," said Laetitia.
"At what a cost!"
The exclamation summoned self-pity to his aid, and pathos was handy.
"By paying half our lives for it and all our hopes! Yes, we gainknowledge, we are the wiser; very probably my value surpasses now whatit was when I was happier. But the loss! That youthful bloom of thesoul is like health to the body; once gone, it leaves cripples behind.Nay, my friend and precious friend, these four fingers I must retain.They seem to me the residue of a wreck: you shall be released shortly:absolutely, Laetitia, I have nothing else remaining--We have spoken ofdeception; what of being undeceived?--when one whom we adored is laidbare, and the wretched consolation of a worthy object is denied to us.No misfortune can be like that. Were it death, we could worship still.Death would be preferable. But may you be spared to know a situation inwhich the comparison with your inferior is forced on you to yourdisadvantage and your loss because of your generously giving up yourwhole heart to the custody of some shallow, light-minded, self--! . . .We will not deal in epithets. If I were to find as many bad names forthe serpent as there are spots on his body, it would be serpent still,neither better nor worse. The loneliness! And the darkness! Ourluminary is extinguished. Self-respect refuses to continueworshipping, but the affection will not be turned aside. We areliterally in the dust, we grovel, we would fling away self-respect ifwe could; we would adopt for a model the creature preferred to us; wewould humiliate, degrade ourselves; we cry for justice as if it werefor pardon . . ."
"For pardon! when we are straining to grant it!" Laetitia murmured, andit was as much as she could do. She remembered how in her old miseryher efforts after charity had twisted her round to feel herself thesinner, and beg forgiveness in prayer: a noble sentiment, that filledher with pity of the bosom in which it had sprung. There was nosimilarity between his idea and hers, but her idea had certainly beenroused by his word "pardon", and he had the benefit of it in themoisture of her eyes. Her lips trembled, tears fell.
He had heard something; he had not caught the words, but they weremanifestly favourable; her sign of emotion assured him of it and of thesuccess he had sought. There was one woman who bowed to him to alleternity! He had inspired one woman with the mysterious, man-desiredpassion of self-abandonment, self-immolation! The evidence was beforehim. At any instant he could, if he pleased, fly to her and command herenthusiasm.
He had, in fact, perhaps by sympathetic action, succeeded in strikingthe same springs of pathos in her which animated his lively endeavourto produce it in himself.
He kissed her hand; then released it, quitting his chair to bend aboveher soothingly.
"Do not weep, Laetitia, you see that I do not; I can smile. Help me tobear it; you must not unman me."
She tried to stop her crying, but self-pity threatened to rain all herlong years of grief on her head, and she said: "I must go . . . I amunfit . . . good-night, Sir Willoughby."
Fearing seriously that he had sunk his pride too low in herconsideration, and had been carried farther than he intended on thetide of pathos, he remarked: "We will speak about Crossjay to-morrow.His deceitfulness has been gross. As I said, I am grievously offendedby deception. But you are tired. Good-night, my dear friend."
"Good-night, Sir Willoughby."
She was allowed to go forth.
Colonel De Craye coming up from the smoking-room, met her and noticedthe state of her eyelids, as he wished her goodnight. He saw Willoughbyin the room she had quitted, but considerately passed without speaking,and without reflecting why he was considerate.
Our hero's review of the scene made him, on the whole, satisfied withhis part in it. Of his power upon one woman he was now perfectlysure:--Clara had agonized him with a doubt of his personal mastery ofany. One was a poor feast, but the pangs of his flesh during the lastfew days and the latest hours caused him to snatch at it, hungrily ifcontemptuously. A poor feast, she was yet a fortress, a point ofsuccour, both shield and lance; a cover and an impetus. He could nowencounter Clara boldly. Should she resist and defy him, he would not benaked and alone; he foresaw that he might win honour in the world's eyefrom his position--a matter to be thought of only in most urgent need.The effect on him of his recent exercise in pathos was to compose himto slumber. He was for the period well satisfied.
His attendant imps were well satisfied likewise, and danced aroundabout his bed after the vigilant gentleman had ceased to debate on thequestion of his unveiling of himself past forgiveness of her toLaetitia, and had surrendered to sleep the present direction of hisaffairs.