CHAPTER XXXIV
MRS. MOUNTSTUART AND SIR WILLOUGHBY
"Good morning, my dear Mrs. Mountstuart," Sir Willoughby wakenedhimself to address the great lady. "Why has she fled?"
"Has any one fled?"
"Laetitia Dale."
"Letty Dale? Oh, if you call that flying. Possibly to renew a closeconversation with Vernon Whitford, that I cut short. You frightened mewith your 'Shepherds-tell-me' air and tone. Lead me to one of yourgarden-seats: out of hearing to Dr. Middleton, I beg. He mesmerizes me,he makes me talk Latin. I was curiously susceptible last night. I knowI shall everlastingly associate him with an abortive entertainment andsolos on big instruments. We were flat."
"Horace was in good vein."
"You were not."
"And Laetitia--Miss Dale talked well, I thought."
"She talked with you, and no doubt she talked well. We did not mix. Theyeast was bad. You shot darts at Colonel De Craye: you tried to sting.You brought Dr. Middleton down on you. Dear me, that man is areverberation in my head. Where is your lady and love?"
"Who?"
"Am I to name her?"
"Clara? I have not seen her for the last hour. Wandering, I suppose."
"A very pretty summer bower," said Mrs. Mountstuart, seating herself"Well, my dear Sir Willoughby, preferences, preferences are not to beaccounted for, and one never knows whether to pity or congratulate,whatever may occur. I want to see Miss Middleton."
"Your 'dainty rogue in porcelain' will be at your beck--you lunch withus?--before you leave."
"So now you have taken to quoting me, have you?"
"But 'a romantic tale on her eyelashes' is hardly descriptive anylonger."
"Descriptive of whom? Now you are upon Laetitia Dale!"
"I quote you generally. She has now a graver look."
"And well may have!"
"Not that the romance has entirely disappeared."
"No; it looks as if it were in print."
"You have hit it perfectly, as usual, ma'am."
Sir Willoughby mused.
Like one resuming his instrument to take up the melody in a concertedpiece, he said: "I thought Laetitia Dale had a singularly animated airlast night."
"Why!--" Mrs. Mountstuart mildly gaped.
"I want a new description of her. You know, I collect your mottoes andsentences."
"It seems to me she is coming three parts out of her shell, and wearingit as a hood for convenience."
"Ready to issue forth at an invitation? Admirable! exact!"
"Ay, my good Sir Willoughby, but are we so very admirable and exact?Are we never to know our own minds?"
He produced a polysyllabic sigh, like those many-jointed compounds ofpoets in happy languages, which are copious in a single expression:"Mine is known to me. It always has been. Cleverness in women is notuncommon. Intellect is the pearl. A woman of intellect is as good as aGreek statue; she is divinely wrought, and she is divinely rare."
"Proceed," said the lady, confiding a cough to the air.
"The rarity of it: and it is not mere intellect, it is a sympatheticintellect; or else it is an intellect in perfect accord with anintensely sympathetic disposition;--the rarity of it makes it tooprecious to be parted with when once we have met it. I prize it themore the older I grow."
"Are we on the feminine or the neuter?"
"I beg pardon?"
"The universal or the individual?"
He shrugged. "For the rest, psychological affinities may existcoincident with and entirely independent of material or moralprepossessions, relations, engagements, ties."
"Well, that is not the raving of passion, certainly," said MrsMountstuart, "and it sounds as if it were a comfortable doctrine formen. On that plea, you might all of you be having Aspasia and a wife.We saw your fair Middleton and Colonel de Craye at a distance as weentered the park. Professor Crooklyn is under some hallucination."
"What more likely?"
The readiness and the double-bearing of the reply struck her comicsense with awe.
"The Professor must hear that. He insists on the fly, and the inn, andthe wet boots, and the warming mixture, and the testimony of thelandlady and the railway porter."
"I say, what more likely?"
"Than that he should insist?"
"If he is under the hallucination!"
"He may convince others."
"I have only to repeat. . ."
"'What more likely?' It's extremely philosophical. Coincident with apursuit of the psychological affinities."
"Professor Crooklyn will hardly descend, I suppose, from his classicalaltitudes to lay his hallucinations before Dr. Middleton?"
"Sir Willoughby, you are the pink of chivalry!"
By harping on Laetitia, he had emboldened Mrs. Mountstuart to lift thecurtain upon Clara. It was offensive to him, but the injury done to hispride had to be endured for the sake of his general plan ofself-protection.
"Simply desirous to save my guests from annoyance of any kind", hesaid. "Dr Middleton can look 'Olympus and thunder', as Vernon callsit."
"Don't. I see him. That look! It is Dictionary-bitten! Angry, homedDictionary!--an apparition of Dictionary in the night--to a dunce!"
"One would undergo a good deal to avoid the sight."
"What the man must be in a storm! Speak as you please of yourself: youare a true and chivalrous knight to dread it for her. But now,candidly, how is it you cannot condescend to a little management?Listen to an old friend. You are too lordly. No lover can afford to beincomprehensible for half an hour. Stoop a little. Sermonizings arenot to be thought of. You can govern unseen. You are to know that I amone who disbelieves in philosophy in love. I admire the look of it, Igive no credit to the assumption. I rather like lovers to be out attimes: it makes them picturesque, and it enlivens their monotony. Iperceived she had a spot of wildness. It's proper that she should wearit off before marriage."
"Clara? The wildness of an infant!" said Willoughby, paternally, musingover an inward shiver. "You saw her at a distance just now, or youmight have heard her laughing. Horace diverts her excessively."
"I owe him my eternal gratitude for his behaviour last night. She wasone of my bright faces. Her laughter was delicious; rain in the desert!It will tell you what the load on me was, when I assure you those twowere merely a spectacle to me--points I scored in a lost game. And Iknow they were witty."
"They both have wit; a kind of wit," Willoughby assented.
"They struck together like a pair of cymbals."
"Not the highest description of instrument. However, they amuse me. Ilike to hear them when I am in the vein."
"That vein should be more at command with you, my friend. You can beperfect, if you like."
"Under your tuition."
Willoughby leaned to her, bowing languidly. He was easier in his painfor having hoodwinked the lady. She was the outer world to him; shecould tune the world's voice; prescribe which of the two was to bepitied, himself or Clara; and he did not intend it to be himself, if itcame to the worst. They were far away from that at present, and hecontinued:
"Probably a man's power of putting on a face is not equal to a girl's.I detest petty dissensions. Probably I show it when all is not quitesmooth. Little fits of suspicion vex me. It is a weakness, not to playthem off, I know. Men have to learn the arts which come to women bynature. I don't sympathize with suspicion, from having none myself."
His eyebrows shot up. That ill-omened man Flitch had sidled round bythe bushes to within a few feet of him. Flitch primarily defendedhimself against the accusation of drunkenness, which was hurled at himto account for his audacity in trespassing against the interdict; buthe admitted that he had taken "something short" for a fortification invisiting scenes where he had once been happy--at Christmastide, whenall the servants, and the butler at head, grey old Mr. Chessington, satin rows, toasting the young heir of the old Hall in the old port wine!Happy had he been then, before ambition for a shop, to be his ownmaster and a
n independent gentleman, had led him into his quagmire:--tolook back envying a dog on the old estate, and sigh for the smell ofPatterne stables: sweeter than Arabia, his drooping nose appeared tosay.
He held up close against it something that imposed silence on SirWilloughby as effectively as a cunning exordium in oratory will enchainmobs to swallow what is not complimenting them; and this he displayedsecure in its being his licence to drivel his abominable pathos. SirWilloughby recognized Clara's purse. He understood at once how the musthave come by it: he was not so quick in devising a means of stoppingthe tale. Flitch foiled him. "Intact," he replied to the question:"What have you there?" He repeated this grand word. And then he turnedto Mrs. Mountstuart to speak of Paradise and Adam, in whom he saw theprototype of himself: also the Hebrew people in the bondage of Egypt,discoursed of by the clergymen, not without a likeness to him.
"Sorrows have done me one good, to send me attentive to church, mylady," said Flitch, "when I might have gone to London, the coachman'shome, and been driving some honourable family, with no great advantageto my morals, according to what I hear of. And a purse found under theseat of a fly in London would have a poor chance of returning intact tothe young lady losing it."
"Put it down on that chair; inquiries will be made, and you will seeSir Willoughby," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "Intact, no doubt; it is notdisputed."
With one motion of a finger she set the man rounding.
Flitch halted; he was very regretful of the termination of his feast ofpathos, and he wished to relate the finding of the purse, but he couldnot encounter Mrs. Mountstuart's look; he slouched away in very closeresemblance to the ejected Adam of illustrated books.
"It's my belief that naturalness among the common people has died outof the kingdom," she said.
Willoughby charitably apologized for him. "He has been fuddlinghimself."
Her vigilant considerateness had dealt the sensitive gentleman a shock,plainly telling him she had her ideas of his actual posture. Nor was heunhurt by her superior acuteness and her display of authority on hisgrounds.
He said, boldly, as he weighed the purse, half tossing it: "It's notunlike Clara's."
He feared that his lips and cheeks were twitching, and as he grew awareof a glassiness of aspect that would reflect any suspicion of akeen-eyed woman, he became bolder still!
"Laetitia's, I know it is not. Hers is an ancient purse."
"A present from you!"
"How do you hit on that, my dear lady?"
"Deductively."
"Well, the purse looks as good as new in quality, like the owner."
"The poor dear has not much occasion for using it."
"You are mistaken: she uses it daily."
"If it were better filled, Sir Willoughby, your old scheme might bearranged. The parties do not appear so unwilling. Professor Crooklynand I came on them just now rather by surprise, and I assure you theirheads were close, faces meeting, eyes musing."
"Impossible."
"Because when they approach the point, you won't allow it! Selfish!"
"Now," said Willoughby, very animatedly, "question Clara. Now, do, mydear Mrs. Mountstuart, do speak to Clara on that head; she willconvince you I have striven quite recently against myself, if you like.I have instructed her to aid me, given her the fullest instructions,carte blanche. She cannot possibly have a doubt. I may look to her toremove any you may entertain from your mind on the subject. I haveproposed, seconded, and chorussed it, and it will not be arranged. Ifyou expect me to deplore that fact, I can only answer that my actionsare under my control, my feelings are not. I will do everythingconsistent with the duties of a man of honour perpetually running intofatal errors because he did not properly consult the dictates of thosefeelings at the right season. I can violate them: but I can no morecommand them than I can my destiny. They were crushed of old, and solet them be now. Sentiments we won't discuss; though you know thatsentiments have a bearing on social life: are factors, as they say intheir later jargon. I never speak of mine. To you I could. It is notnecessary. If old Vernon, instead of flattening his chest at a desk,had any manly ambition to take part in public affairs, she would be thewoman for him. I have called her my Egeria. She would be his Cornelia.One could swear of her that she would have noble offspring!--But oldVernon has had his disappointment, and will moan over it up to the end.And she? So it appears. I have tried; yes, personally: without effect.In other matters I may have influence with her: not in that one. Shedeclines. She will live and die Laetitia Dale. We are alone: I confessto you, I love the name. It's an old song in my ears. Do not be tooready with a name for me. Believe me--I speak from my experiencehitherto--there is a fatality in these things. I cannot conceal from mypoor girl that this fatality exists . . ."
"Which is the poor girl at present?" said Mrs. Mountstuart, cool in amystification.
"And though she will tell you that I have authorized and ClaraMiddleton--done as much as man can to institute the union you suggest,she will own that she is conscious of the presence of this--fatality, Icall it for want of a better title between us. It drives her in onedirection, me in another--or would, if I submitted to the pressure. Sheis not the first who has been conscious of it."
"Are we laying hold of a third poor girl?" said Mrs. Mountstuart. "Ah!I remember. And I remember we used to call it playing fast and loose inthose days, not fatality. It is very strange. It may be that you wereunblushingly courted in those days, and excusable; and we all supposed. . . but away you went for your tour."
"My mother's medical receipt for me. Partially it succeeded. She wasfor grand marriages: not I. I could make, I could not be, a sacrifice.And then I went in due time to Dr. Cupid on my own account. She has thekind of attraction. . . But one changes! On revient toujours. First webegin with a liking; then we give ourselves up to the passion ofbeauty: then comes the serious question of suitableness of the mate tomatch us; and perhaps we discover that we were wiser in early youththan somewhat later. However, she has beauty. Now, Mrs Mountstuart,you do admire her. Chase the idea of the 'dainty rogue' out of yourview of her: you admire her: she is captivating; she has a particularcharm of her own, nay, she has real beauty."
Mrs. Mountstuart fronted him to say: "Upon my word, my dear SirWilloughby, I think she has it to such a degree that I don't know theman who could hold out against her if she took the field. She is one ofthe women who are dead shots with men. Whether it's in their tongues ortheir eyes, or it's an effusion and an atmosphere--whatever it is,it's a spell, another fatality for you!"
"Animal; not spiritual!"
"Oh, she hasn't the head of Letty Dale."
Sir Willoughby allowed Mrs. Mountstuart to pause and follow herthoughts.
"Dear me!" she exclaimed. "I noticed a change in Letty Dale last night;and to-day. She looked fresher and younger; extremely well: which isnot what I can say for you, my friend. Fatalizing is not good for thecomplexion."
"Don't take away my health, pray," cried Willoughby, with a snappinglaugh.
"Be careful," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "You have got a sentimental tone.You talk of 'feelings crushed of old'. It is to a woman, not to a manthat you speak, but that sort of talk is a way of making the groundslippery. I listen in vain for a natural tongue; and when I don't hearit, I suspect plotting in men. You show your under-teeth too at timeswhen you draw in a breath, like a condemned high-caste Hindoo myhusband took me to see in a jail in Calcutta, to give me someexcitement when I was pining for England. The creature did it regularlyas he breathed; you did it last night, and you have been doing itto-day, as if the air cut you to the quick. You have been spoilt. Youhave been too much anointed. What I've just mentioned is a sign with meof a settled something on the brain of a man."
"The brain?" said Sir Willoughby, frowning.
"Yes, you laugh sourly, to look at," said she. "Mountstuart told methat the muscles of the mouth betray men sooner than the eyes, whenthey have cause to be uneasy in their minds."
"But, ma'am, I shall not break m
y word; I shall not, not; I intend, Ihave resolved to keep it. I do not fatalize, let my complexion be blackor white. Despite my resemblance to a high-caste malefactor of theCalcutta prison-wards . . ."
"Friend! friend! you know how I chatter."
He saluted her finger-ends. "Despite the extraordinary display ofteeth, you will find me go to execution with perfect calmness; with aresignation as good as happiness."
"Like a Jacobite lord under the Georges."
"You have told me that you wept to read of one: like him, then. Myprinciples have not changed, if I have. When I was younger, I had anidea of a wife who would be with me in my thoughts as well as aims: awoman with a spirit of romance, and a brain of solid sense. I shallsooner or later dedicate myself to a public life; and shall, I suppose,want the counsellor or comforter who ought always to be found at home.It may be unfortunate that I have the ideal in my head. But I wouldnever make rigorous demands for specific qualities. The cruellest thingin the world is to set up a living model before a wife, and compel herto copy it. In any case, here we are upon the road: the die is cast. Ishall not reprieve myself. I cannot release her. Marriage representsfacts, courtship fancies. She will be cured by-and-by of that covetingof everything that I do, feel, think, dream, imagine . . . ta-ta-ta-taad infinitum. Laetitia was invited here to show her the example of afixed character--solid as any concrete substance you would choose tobuild on, and not a whit the less feminine."
"Ta-ta-ta-ta ad infinitum. You need not tell me you have a design inall that you do, Willoughby Patterne."
"You smell the autocrat? Yes, he can mould and govern the creaturesabout him. His toughest rebel is himself! If you see Clara . . . Youwish to see her, I think you said?"
"Her behaviour to Lady Busshe last night was queer."
"If you will. She makes a mouth at porcelain. Toujours la porcelaine!For me, her pettishness is one of her charms, I confess it. Ten yearsyounger, I could not have compared them."
"Whom?"
"Laetitia and Clara."
"Sir Willoughby, in any case, to quote you, here we are all upon theroad, and we must act as if events were going to happen; and I must askher to help me on the subject of my wedding-present, for I don't wantto have her making mouths at mine, however pretty--and she does itprettily."
"'Another dedicatory offering to the rogue in me!' she says ofporcelain."
"Then porcelain it shall not be. I mean to consult her; I have comedetermined upon a chat with her. I think I understand. But she producesfalse impressions on those who don't know you both. 'I shall have thatporcelain back,' says Lady Busshe to me, when we were shaking handslast night: 'I think,' says she, 'it should have been the WillowPattern.' And she really said: 'He's in for being jilted a secondtime!'"
Sir Willoughby restrained a bound of his body that would have sent himup some feet into the air. He felt his skull thundered at within.
"Rather than that it should fan upon her!" ejaculated he, correctinghis resemblance to the high-caste culprit as soon as it recurred tohim.
"But you know Lady Busshe," said Mrs. Mountstuart, genuinely solicitousto ease the proud man of his pain. She could see through him to thedepth of the skin, which his fencing sensitiveness vainly attempted tocover as it did the heart of him. "Lady Busshe is nothing without herflights, fads, and fancies. She has always insisted that you have anunfortunate nose. I remember her saying on the day of your majority, itwas the nose of a monarch destined to lose a throne."
"Have I ever offended Lady Busshe?"
"She trumpets you. She carries Lady Culmer with her too, and you mayexpect a visit of nods and hints and pots of alabaster. They worshipyou: you are the hope of England in their eyes, and no woman is worthyof you: but they are a pair of fatalists, and if you begin upon LettyDale with them, you might as well forbid your banns. They will be allover the country exclaiming on predestination and marriages made inheaven."
"Clara and her father!" cried Sir Willoughby.
Dr Middleton and his daughter appeared in the circle of shrubs andflowers.
"Bring her to me, and save me from the polyglot," said Mrs Mountstuart,in afright at Dr. Middleton's manner of pouring forth into the ears ofthe downcast girl.
The leisure he loved that he might debate with his genius upon any nextstep was denied to Willoughby: he had to place his trust in the skillwith which he had sown and prepared Mrs Mountstuart's understanding tomeet the girl--beautiful abhorred that she was! detested darling!thing to squeeze to death and throw to the dust, and mourn over!
He had to risk it; and at an hour when Lady Busshe's prognosticgrievously impressed his intense apprehensiveness of nature.
As it happened that Dr. Middleton's notion of a disagreeable duty incolloquy was to deliver all that he contained, and escape the listeningto a syllable of reply, Willoughby withdrew his daughter from himopportunely.
"Mrs. Mountstuart wants you, Clara."
"I shall be very happy," Clara replied, and put on a new face. Animperceptible nervous shrinking was met by another force in her bosom,that pushed her to advance without a sign of reluctance. She seemed toglitter.
She was handed to Mrs. Mountstuart.
Dr Middleton laid his hand over Willoughby's shoulder, retiring on abow before the great lady of the district. He blew and said: "Anopposition of female instincts to masculine intellect necessarilycreates a corresponding antagonism of intellect to instinct."
"Her answer, sir? Her reasons? Has she named any?"
"The cat," said Dr. Middleton, taking breath for a sentence, "thathumps her back in the figure of the letter H, or a Chinese bridge hasgiven the dog her answer and her reasons, we may presume: but he thatundertakes to translate them into human speech might likewise ventureto propose an addition to the alphabet and a continuation of Homer. Theone performance would be not more wonderful than the other. Daughters,Willoughby, daughters! Above most human peccancies, I do abhor a breachof faith. She will not be guilty of that. I demand a cheerfulfulfilment of a pledge: and I sigh to think that I cannot count on itwithout administering a lecture."
"She will soon be my care, sir."
"She shall be. Why, she is as good as married. She is at the altar. Sheis in her house. She is--why, where is she not? She has entered thesanctuary. She is out of the market. This maenad shriek for freedomwould happily entitle her to the Republican cap--the Phrygian--in arevolutionary Parisian procession. To me it has no meaning; and butthat I cannot credit child of mine with mania, I should be intrepidation of her wits."
Sir Willoughby's livelier fears were pacified by the information thatClara had simply emitted a cry. Clara had once or twice given him causefor starting and considering whether to think of her sex differently orcondemningly of her, yet he could not deem her capable of fullyunbosoming herself even to him, and under excitement. His idea of thecowardice of girls combined with his ideal of a waxwork sex to persuadehim that though they are often (he had experienced it) wantonlydesperate in their acts, their tongues are curbed by rosy prudency. Andthis was in his favour. For if she proved speechless and stupid withMrs. Mountstuart, the lady would turn her over, and beat her flat, beather angular, in fine, turn her to any shape, despising her, andcordially believe him to be the model gentleman of Christendom. Shewould fill in the outlines he had sketched to her of a picture that hehad small pride in by comparison with his early vision of afortune-favoured, triumphing squire, whose career is like the sun's,intelligibly lordly to all comprehensions. Not like your modelgentleman, that has to be expounded--a thing for abstract esteem!However, it was the choice left to him. And an alternative was enfoldedin that. Mrs. Mountstuart's model gentleman could marry either one oftwo women, throwing the other overboard. He was bound to marry: he wasbound to take to himself one of them: and whichever one he selectedwould cast a lustre on his reputation. At least she would rescue himfrom the claws of Lady Busshe, and her owl's hoot of "Willow Pattern",and her hag's shriek of "twice jilted". That flying infantWilloughby--his unprotected little incorpore
al omnipresent Self (notthought of so much as passionately felt for)--would not be scoffed atas the luckless with women. A fall indeed from his original conceptionof his name of fame abroad! But Willoughby had the high consolation ofknowing that others have fallen lower. There is the fate of the devilsto comfort us, if we are driven hard. "For one of your pangs anotherbosom is racked by ten", we read in the solacing Book.
With all these nice calculations at work, Willoughby stood abovehimself, contemplating his active machinery, which he could partlycriticize but could not stop, in a singular wonderment at the aims andschemes and tremours of one who was handsome, manly, acceptable in theworld's eyes: and had he not loved himself most heartily he would havebeen divided to the extent of repudiating that urgent and excited halfof his being, whose motions appeared as those of a body of insectsperpetually erecting and repairing a structure of extraordinarypettiness. He loved himself too seriously to dwell on the division formore than a minute or so. But having seen it, and for the first time,as he believed, his passion for the woman causing it became surchargedwith bitterness, atrabiliar.
A glance behind him, as he walked away with Dr. Middleton, showedClara, cunning creature that she was, airily executing her maliciousgraces in the preliminary courtesies with Mrs. Mountstuart.