CHAPTER III
CONSTANTIA DURHAM
The great question for the county was debated in many households,daughter-thronged and daughterless, long subsequent to the memorableday of Willoughby's coming of age. Lady Busshe was for ConstantiaDurham. She laughed at Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson's notion of LaetitiaDale. She was a little older than Mrs. Mountstuart, and had knownWilloughby's father, whose marriage into the wealthiest branch of theWhitford family had been strictly sagacious. "Patternes marry money;they are not romantic people," she said. Miss Durham had money, and shehad health and beauty: three mighty qualifications for a Patternebride. Her father, Sir John Durham, was a large landowner in thewestern division of the county; a pompous gentleman, the picture of afather-in-law for Willoughby. The father of Miss Dale was a batteredarmy surgeon from India, tenant of one of Sir Willoughby's cottagesbordering Patterne Park. His girl was portionless and a poetess. Herwriting of the song in celebration of the young baronet's birthday wasthought a clever venture, bold as only your timid creatures can bebold. She let the cat out of her bag of verse before the multitude; shealmost proposed to her hero in her rhymes. She was pretty; hereyelashes were long and dark, her eyes dark-blue, and her soul wasready to shoot like a rocket out of them at a look from Willoughby. Andhe looked, he certainly looked, though he did not dance with her oncethat night, and danced repeatedly with Miss Durham. He gave Laetitia toVernon Whitford for the final dance of the night, and he may havelooked at her so much in pity of an elegant girl allied to such apartner. The "Phoebus Apollo turned fasting friar" had entirelyforgotten his musical gifts in motion. He crossed himself and crossedhis bewildered lady, and crossed everybody in the figure, extortingshouts of cordial laughter from his cousin Willoughby. Be it said thatthe hour was four in the morning, when dancers must laugh at somebody,if only to refresh their feet, and the wit of the hour administers tothe wildest laughter. Vernon was likened to Theseus in the maze,entirely dependent upon his Ariadne; to a fly released from a jam-pot;to a "salvage", or green, man caught in a web of nymphs and made to gothe paces. Willoughby was inexhaustible in the happy similes he pouredout to Miss Durham across the lines of Sir Roger de Coverley, and theywere not forgotten, they procured him a reputation as a convivialsparkler. Rumour went the round that he intended to give Laetitia toVernon for good, when he could decide to take Miss Durham to himself;his generosity was famous; but that decision, though the rope was inthe form of a knot, seemed reluctant for the conclusive close haul; itpreferred the state of slackness; and if he courted Laetitia on behalfof his cousin, his cousinly love must have been greater than hispassion, one had to suppose. He was generous enough for it, or formarrying the portionless girl himself.
There was a story of a brilliant young widow of our aristocracy who hadvery nearly snared him. Why should he object to marry into ouraristocracy? Mrs. Mountstuart asked him, and he replied that the girlsof that class have no money, and he doubted the quality of their blood.He had his eyes awake. His duty to his House was a foremost thoughtwith him, and for such a reason he may have been more anxious to givethe slim and not robust Laetitia to Vernon than accede to his personalinclination. The mention of the widow singularly offended him,notwithstanding the high rank of the lady named. "A widow?" he said."I!" He spoke to a widow; an oldish one truly; but his wrath at thesuggestion of his union with a widow led him to be for the momentoblivious of the minor shades of good taste. He desired Mrs.Mountstuart to contradict the story in positive terms. He repeated hisdesire; he was urgent to have it contradicted, and said again, "Awidow!" straightening his whole figure to the erectness of the letterI. She was a widow unmarried a second time, and it has been known ofthe stedfast women who retain the name of their first husband, or donot hamper his title with a little new squire at their skirts, thatthey can partially approve the objections indicated by Sir Willoughby.They are thinking of themselves when they do so, and they will rarelysay, "I might have married;" rarely within them will they avow that,with their permission, it might have been. They can catch an idea of agentleman's view of the widow's cap. But a niceness that could feelsharply wounded by the simple rumour of his alliance with the youngrelict of an earl was mystifying. Sir Willoughby unbent. His militaryletter I took a careless glance at itself lounging idly and proudly atease in the glass of his mind, decked with a wanton wreath, as hedropped a hint, generously vague, just to show the origin of therumour, and the excellent basis it had for not being credited. He waschidden. Mrs. Mountstuart read him a lecture. She was however able tocontradict the tale of the young countess. "There is no fear of hismarrying her, my dears."
Meanwhile there was a fear that he would lose his chance of marryingthe beautiful Miss Durham.
The dilemmas of little princes are often grave. They should be dwelt onnow and then for an example to poor struggling commoners, of the slingsand arrows assailing fortune's most favoured men, that we may preachcontentment to the wretch who cannot muster wherewithal to marry awife, or has done it and trots the streets, pack-laden, to maintain thedame and troops of children painfully reared to fill subordinatestations. According to our reading, a moral is always welcome in amoral country, and especially so when silly envy is to be chastised byit, the restless craving for change rebuked. Young Sir Willoughby,then, stood in this dilemma:--a lady was at either hand of him; theonly two that had ever, apart from metropolitan conquests, not to berecited, touched his emotions. Susceptible to beauty, he had never seenso beautiful a girl as Constantia Durham. Equally susceptible toadmiration of himself, he considered Laetitia Dale a paragon ofcleverness. He stood between the queenly rose and the modest violet.One he bowed to; the other bowed to him. He could not have both; it isthe law governing princes and pedestrians alike. But which could heforfeit? His growing acquaintance with the world taught him to put anincreasing price on the sentiments of Miss Dale. Still Constantia'sbeauty was of a kind to send away beholders aching. She had the gloryof the racing cutter full sail on a whining breeze; and she did notcourt to win him, she flew. In his more reflective hour theattractiveness of that lady which held the mirror to his features wasparamount. But he had passionate snatches when the magnetism of theflyer drew him in her wake. Further to add to the complexity, he lovedhis liberty; he was princelier free; he had more subjects, more slaves;he ruled arrogantly in the world of women; he was more himself. Hismetropolitan experiences did not answer to his liking the particularquestion, Do we bind the woman down to us idolatrously by making a wifeof her?
In the midst of his deliberations, a report of the hot pursuit of MissDurham, casually mentioned to him by Lady Busshe, drew an immediateproposal from Sir Willoughby. She accepted him, and they were engaged.She had been nibbled at, all but eaten up, while he hung dubitative;and though that was the cause of his winning her, it offended hisniceness. She had not come to him out of cloistral purity, out ofperfect radiancy. Spiritually, likewise, was he a little prince, adespotic prince. He wished for her to have come to him out of anegg-shell, somewhat more astonished at things than a chicken, but ascompletely enclosed before he tapped the shell, and seeing him with hersex's eyes first of all men. She talked frankly of her cousins andfriends, young males. She could have replied to his bitter wish: "Hadyou asked me on the night of your twenty-first birthday, Willoughby!"Since then she had been in the dust of the world, and he conceived hispeculiar antipathy, destined to be so fatal to him, from the earlierhours of his engagement. He was quaintly incapable of a jealousy ofindividuals. A young Captain Oxford had been foremost in the swarmpursuing Constantia. Willoughby thought as little of Captain Oxford ashe did of Vernon Whitford. His enemy was the world, the mass, whichconfounds us in a lump, which has breathed on her whom we haveselected, whom we cannot, can never, rub quite clear of her contactwith the abominated crowd. The pleasure of the world is to bowl downour soldierly letter I; to encroach on our identity, soil our niceness.To begin to think is the beginning of disgust of the world.
As soon the engagement was published all the county said that there h
adnot been a chance for Laetitia, and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson humblyremarked, in an attitude of penitence, "I'm not a witch." Lady Busshecould claim to be one; she had foretold the event. Laetitia was of thesame opinion as the county. She had looked up, but not hopefully. Shehad only looked up to the brightest, and, as he was the highest, howcould she have hoped? She was the solitary companion of a sick father,whose inveterate prognostic of her, that she would live to rule atPatterne Hall, tortured the poor girl in proportion as he seemed toderive comfort from it. The noise of the engagement merely silencedhim; recluse invalids cling obstinately to their ideas. He had observedSir Willoughby in the society of his daughter, when the young baronetrevived to a sprightly boyishness immediately. Indeed, as big boy andlittle girl, they had played together of old. Willoughby had been ahandsome, fair boy. The portrait of him at the Hall, in a hat, leaningon his pony, with crossed legs, and long flaxen curls over hisshoulders, was the image of her soul's most present angel; and, as aman, he had--she did not suppose intentionally--subjected her nature tobow to him; so submissive was she, that it was fuller happiness for herto think him right in all his actions than to imagine the circumstancesdifferent. This may appear to resemble the ecstasy of the devotee ofJuggernaut, It is a form of the passion inspired by little princes, andwe need not marvel that a conservative sex should assist to keep themin their lofty places. What were there otherwise to look up to? Weshould have no dazzling beacon-lights if they were levelled and treatedas clod earth; and it is worth while for here and there a woman to beburned, so long as women's general adoration of an ideal young manshall be preserved. Purity is our demand of them. They may justly cryfor attraction. They cannot have it brighter than in the universalbearing of the eyes of their sisters upon a little prince, one who hasthe ostensible virtues in his pay, and can practise them withoutinjuring himself to make himself unsightly. Let the races of men beby-and-by astonished at their Gods, if they please. Meantime they hadbetter continue to worship.
Laetitia did continue. She saw Miss Durham at Patterne on severaloccasions. She admired the pair. She had a wish to witness the bridalceremony. She was looking forward to the day with that mixture ofeagerness and withholding which we have as we draw nigh thedisenchanting termination of an enchanting romance, when Sir Willoughbymet her on a Sunday morning, as she crossed his park solitarily tochurch. They were within ten days of the appointed ceremony. He shouldhave been away at Miss Durham's end of the county. He had, Laetitiaknew, ridden over to her the day before; but there he was; and veryunwontedly, quite surprisingly, he presented his arm to conductLaetitia to the church-door, and talked and laughed in a way thatreminded her of a hunting gentleman she had seen once rising to hisfeet, staggering from an ugly fall across hedge and fence into one ofthe lanes of her short winter walks. "All's well, all sound, neverbetter, only a scratch!" the gentleman had said, as he reeled andpressed a bleeding head. Sir Willoughby chattered of his felicity inmeeting her. "I am really wonderfully lucky," he said, and he said thatand other things over and over, incessantly talking, and telling ananecdote of county occurrences, and laughing at it with a mouth thatwould not widen. He went on talking in the church porch, and murmuringsoftly some steps up the aisle, passing the pews of Mrs. MountstuartJenkinson and Lady Busshe. Of course he was entertaining, but what astrangeness it was to Laetitia! His face would have been half under anantique bonnet. It came very close to hers, and the scrutiny he bent onher was most solicitous.
After the service, he avoided the great ladies by sauntering up towithin a yard or two of where she sat; he craved her hand on his arm tolead her forth by the park entrance to the church, all the whilebending to her, discoursing rapidly, appearing radiantly interested inher quiet replies, with fits of intentness that stared itself out intodim abstraction. She hazarded the briefest replies for fear of nothaving understood him.
One question she asked: "Miss Durham is well, I trust?"
And he answered "Durham?" and said, "There is no Miss Durham to myknowledge."
The impression he left with her was, that he might yesterday during hisride have had an accident and fallen on his head.
She would have asked that, if she had not known him for so thorough anEnglishman, in his dislike to have it thought that accidents could hurteven when they happened to him.
He called the next day to claim her for a walk. He assured her she hadpromised it, and he appealed to her father, who could not testify to apromise he had not heard, but begged her to leave him to have her walk.So once more she was in the park with Sir Willoughby, listening to hisraptures over old days. A word of assent from her sufficed him. "I amnow myself," was one of the remarks he repeated this day. She dilatedon the beauty of the park and the Hall to gratify him.
He did not speak of Miss Durham, and Laetitia became afraid to mentionher name.
At their parting, Willoughby promised Laetitia that he would call onthe morrow. He did not come; and she could well excuse him, after herhearing of the tale.
It was a lamentable tale. He had ridden to Sir John Durham's mansion, adistance of thirty miles, to hear, on his arrival, that Constantia hadquitted her father's house two days previously on a visit to an aunt inLondon, and had just sent word that she was the wife of Captain Oxford,hussar, and messmate of one of her brothers. A letter from the brideawaited Willoughby at the Hall. He had ridden back at night, notcaring how he used his horse in order to get swiftly home, so forgetfulof himself was he under the terrible blow. That was the night ofSaturday. On the day following, being Sunday, he met Laetitia in hispark, led her to church, led her out of it, and the day after that,previous to his disappearance for some weeks, was walking with her infull view of the carriages along the road.
He had, indeed, you see, been very fortunately, if not considerately,liberated by Miss Durham. He, as a man of honour, could not have takenthe initiative, but the frenzy of a jealous girl might urge her to sucha course; and how little he suffered from it had been shown to theworld. Miss Durham, the story went, was his mother's choice for himagainst his heart's inclinations; which had finally subdued LadyPatterne. Consequently, there was no longer an obstacle between SirWilloughby and Miss Dale. It was a pleasant and romantic story, and itput most people in good humour with the county's favourite, as hischoice of a portionless girl of no position would not have done withoutthe shock of astonishment at the conduct of Miss Durham, and the desireto feel that so prevailing a gentleman was not in any degree pitiable.Constantia was called "that mad thing". Laetitia broke forth in noveland abundant merits; and one of the chief points of requisition inrelation to Patterne--a Lady Willoughby who would entertain well andanimate the deadness of the Hall, became a certainty when hergentleness and liveliness and exceeding cleverness were considered. Shewas often a visitor at the Hall by Lady Patterne's express invitation,and sometimes on these occasions Willoughby was there too,superintending the filling up of his laboratory, though he was not athome to the county; it was not expected that he should be yet. He hadtaken heartily to the pursuit of science, and spoke of little else.Science, he said, was in our days the sole object worth a devotedpursuit. But the sweeping remark could hardly apply to Laetitia, ofwhom he was the courteous, quiet wooer you behold when a man has brokenloose from an unhappy tangle to return to the lady of his first andstrongest affections.
Some months of homely courtship ensued, and then, the decent intervalprescribed by the situation having elapsed, Sir Willoughby Patterneleft his native land on a tour of the globe.