CHAPTER VII
THE BETROTHED
During the drive from Upton to Patterne, Miss Middleton hoped, shepartly believed, that there was to be a change in Sir Willoughby'smanner of courtship. He had been so different a wooer. She rememberedwith some half-conscious desperation of fervour what she had thought ofhim at his first approaches, and in accepting him. Had she seen himwith the eyes of the world, thinking they were her own? That look ofhis, the look of "indignant contentment", had then been a most nobleconquering look, splendid as a general's plume at the gallop. It couldnot have altered. Was it that her eyes had altered?
The spirit of those days rose up within her to reproach, her andwhisper of their renewal: she remembered her rosy dreams and the imageshe had of him, her throbbing pride in him, her choking richness ofhappiness: and also her vain attempting to be very humble, usuallyending in a carol, quaint to think of, not without charm, but quaint,puzzling.
Now men whose incomes have been restricted to the extent that they mustlive on their capital, soon grow relieved of the forethoughtful anguishwasting them by the hilarious comforts of the lap upon which they havesunk back, insomuch that they are apt to solace themselves for theirintolerable anticipations of famine in the household by giving loose toone fit or more of reckless lavishness. Lovers in like manner live ontheir capital from failure of income: they, too, for the sake ofstifling apprehension and piping to the present hour, are lavish oftheir stock, so as rapidly to attenuate it: they have their fits ofintoxication in view of coming famine: they force memory into play,love retrospectively, enter the old house of the past and ravage thelarder, and would gladly, even resolutely, continue in illusion if itwere possible for the broadest honey-store of reminiscences to hold outfor a length of time against a mortal appetite: which in good soothstands on the alternative of a consumption of the hive or of thecreature it is for nourishing. Here do lovers show that they areperishable. More than the poor clay world they need fresh supplies,right wholesome juices; as it were, life in the burst of the bud,fruits yet on the tree, rather than potted provender. The latter isexcellent for by-and-by, when there will be a vast deal more toremember, and appetite shall have but one tooth remaining. Should theirminds perchance have been saturated by their first impressions and haveretained them, loving by the accountable light of reason, they may havefair harvests, as in the early time; but that case is rare. In otherwords, love is an affair of two, and is only for two that can be asquick, as constant in intercommunication as are sun and earth, throughthe cloud or face to face. They take their breath of life from oneanother in signs of affection, proofs of faithfulness, incentives toadmiration. Thus it is with men and women in love's good season. But asolitary soul dragging a log must make the log a God to rejoice in theburden. That is not love.
Clara was the least fitted of all women to drag a log. Few girls wouldbe so rapid in exhausting capital. She was feminine indeed, but shewanted comradeship, a living and frank exchange of the best in both,with the deeper feelings untroubled. To be fixed at the mouth of amine, and to have to descend it daily, and not to discover greatopulence below; on the contrary, to be chilled in subterraneansunlessness, without any substantial quality that she could grasp, onlythe mystery of the inefficient tallow-light in those caverns of thecomplacent-talking man: this appeared to her too extreme a probationfor two or three weeks. How of a lifetime of it!
She was compelled by her nature to hope, expect and believe that SirWilloughby would again be the man she had known when she accepted him.Very singularly, to show her simple spirit at the time, she was unawareof any physical coldness to him; she knew of nothing but her mind atwork, objecting to this and that, desiring changes. She did not dreamof being on the giddy ridge of the passive or negative sentiment oflove, where one step to the wrong side precipitates us into the stateof repulsion.
Her eyes were lively at their meeting--so were his. She liked to seehim on the steps, with young Crossjay under his arm. Sir Willoughbytold her in his pleasantest humour of the boy's having got into thelaboratory that morning to escape his task-master, and blown out thewindows. She administered a chiding to the delinquent in the samespirit, while Sir Willoughby led her on his arm across the threshold,whispering: "Soon for good!" In reply to the whisper, she begged formore of the story of young Crossjay. "Come into the laboratory," saidhe, a little less laughingly than softly; and Clara begged her fatherto come and see young Crossjay's latest pranks. Sir Willoughbywhispered to her of the length of their separation, and his joy towelcome her to the house where she would reign as mistress very won. Henumbered the weeks. He whispered: "Come." In the hurry of the momentshe did not examine a lightning terror that shot through her. Itpassed, and was no more than the shadow which bends the summer grasses,leaving a ruffle of her ideas, in wonder of her having feared herselffor something. Her father was with them. She and Willoughby were notyet alone.
Young Crossjay had not accomplished so fine a piece of destruction asSir Willoughby's humour proclaimed of him. He had connected a batterywith a train of gunpowder, shattering a window-frame and unsettlingsome bricks. Dr. Middleton asked if the youth was excluded from thelibrary, and rejoiced to hear that it was a sealed door to him. Thitherthey went. Vernon Whitford was away on one of his long walks.
"There, papa, you see he is not so very faithful to you," said Clara.
Dr Middleton stood frowning over MS notes on the table, in Vernon'shandwriting. He flung up the hair from his forehead and dropped into aseat to inspect them closely. He was now immoveable. Clara was obligedto leave him there. She was led to think that Willoughby had drawn themto the library with the design to be rid of her protector, and shebegan to fear him. She proposed to pay her respects to the ladiesEleanor and Isabel. They were not seen, and a footman reported in thedrawing-room that they were out driving. She grasped young Crossjay'shand. Sir Willoughby dispatched him to Mrs. Montague, the housekeeper,for a tea of cakes and jam.
"Off!" he said, and the boy had to run.
Clara saw herself without a shield.
"And the garden!" she cried. "I love the garden; I must go and see whatflowers are up with you. In spring I care most for wild flowers, and ifyou will show me daffodils and crocuses and anemones . . ."
"My dearest Clara! my bride!" said he.
"Because they are vulgar flowers?" she asked him, artlessly, to accountfor his detaining her.
Why would he not wait to deserve her!--no, not deserve--to reconcileher with her real position; not reconcile, but to repair the image ofhim in her mind, before he claimed his apparent right!
He did not wait. He pressed her to his bosom.
"You are mine, my Clara--utterly mine; every thought, every feeling. Weare one: the world may do its worst. I have been longing for you,looking forward. You save me from a thousand vexations. One isperpetually crossed. That is all outside us. We two! With you I amsecure! Soon! I could not tell you whether the world's alive or dead.My dearest!"
She came out of it with the sensations of the frightened child that hashad its dip in sea-water, sharpened to think that after all it was notso severe a trial. Such was her idea; and she said to herselfimmediately: What am I that I should complain? Two minutes earlier shewould not have thought it; but humiliated pride falls lower thanhumbleness.
She did not blame him; she fell in her own esteem; less because she wasthe betrothed Clara Middleton, which was now palpable as a shot in thebreast of a bird, than that she was a captured woman, of whom it isabsolutely expected that she must submit, and when she would rather begazing at flowers. Clara had shame of her sex. They cannot take a stepwithout becoming bondwomen: into what a slavery! For herself, her trialwas over, she thought. As for herself, she merely complained of aprematureness and crudity best unanalyzed. In truth, she could hardlybe said to complain. She did but criticize him and wonder that a manwas unable to perceive, or was not arrested by perceiving,unwillingness, discordance, dull compliance; the bondwoman's dueinstead of the bride's consent. Oh, sharp distinc
tion, as between twospheres!
She meted him justice; she admitted that he had spoken in a lover-liketone. Had it not been for the iteration of "the world", she would nothave objected critically to his words, though they were words ofdownright appropriation. He had the right to use them, since she was tobe married to him. But if he had only waited before playing theprivileged lover!
Sir Willoughby was enraptured with her. Even so purely coldly,statue-like, Dian-like, would he have prescribed his bride's receptionof his caress. The suffusion of crimson coming over her subsequently,showing her divinely feminine in reflective bashfulness, agreed withhis highest definitions of female character.
"Let me conduct you to the garden, my love," he said.
She replied: "I think I would rather go to my room."
"I will send you a wild-flower posy."
"Flowers, no; I do not like them to be gathered."
"I will wait for you on the lawn."
"My head is rather heavy."
His deep concern and tenderness brought him close.
She assured him sparklingly that she was well. She was ready toaccompany him to the garden and stroll over the park.
"Headache it is not," she added.
But she had to pay the fee for inviting a solicitous acceptedgentleman's proximity.
This time she blamed herself and him, and the world he abused, anddestiny into the bargain. And she cared less about the probation; butshe craved for liberty. With a frigidity that astonished her, shemarvelled at the act of kissing, and at the obligation it forced uponan inanimate person to be an accomplice. Why was she not free? By whatstrange right was it that she was treated as a possession?
"I will try to walk off the heaviness," she said.
"My own girl must not fatigue herself."
"Oh, no; I shall not."
"Sit with me. Your Willoughby is your devoted attendant."
"I have a desire for the air."
"Then we will walk out."
She was horrified to think how far she had drawn away from him, and nowplaced her hand on his arm to appease her self-accusations andpropitiate duty. He spoke as she had wished, his manner was what shehad wished; she was his bride, almost his wife; her conduct was a kindof madness; she could not understand it.
Good sense and duty counselled her to control her wayward spirit.
He fondled her hand, and to that she grew accustomed; her hand was at adistance. And what is a hand? Leaving it where it was, she treated itas a link between herself and dutiful goodness. Two months hence shewas a bondwoman for life! She regretted that she had not gone to herroom to strengthen herself with a review of her situation, and meet himthoroughly resigned to her fate. She fancied she would have come downto him amicably. It was his present respectfulness and easyconversation that tricked her burning nerves with the fancy. Five weeksof perfect liberty in the mountains, she thought, would have preparedher for the days of bells. All that she required was a separationoffering new scenes, where she might reflect undisturbed, feel clearagain.
He led her about the flower-beds; too much as if he were giving aconvalescent an airing. She chafed at it, and pricked herself withremorse. In contrition she expatiated on the beauty of the garden.
"All is yours, my Clara."
An oppressive load it seemed to her! She passively yielded to the manin his form of attentive courtier; his mansion, estate, and wealthoverwhelmed her. They suggested the price to be paid. Yet sherecollected that on her last departure through the park she had beenproud of the rolling green and spreading trees. Poison of some sortmust be operating in her. She had not come to him to-day with thisfeeling of sullen antagonism; she had caught it here.
"You have been well, my Clara?"
"Quite."
"Not a hint of illness?"
"None."
"My bride must have her health if all the doctors in the kingdom diefor it! My darling!"
"And tell me: the dogs?"
"Dogs and horses are in very good condition."
"I am glad. Do you know, I love those ancient French chateaux and farmsin one, where salon windows look on poultry-yard and stalls. I likethat homeliness with beasts and peasants."
He bowed indulgently.
"I am afraid we can't do it for you in England, my Clara."
"No."
"And I like the farm," said he. "But I think our drawing-rooms have abetter atmosphere off the garden. As to our peasantry, we cannot, Iapprehend, modify our class demarcations without risk of disintegratingthe social structure."
"Perhaps. I proposed nothing."
"My love, I would entreat you to propose if I were convinced that Icould obey."
"You are very good."
"I find my merit nowhere but in your satisfaction."
Although she was not thirsting for dulcet sayings, the peacefulness ofother than invitations to the exposition of his mysteries and of theirisolation in oneness, inspired her with such calm that she beat aboutin her brain, as if it were in the brain, for the specific injury hehad committed. Sweeping from sensation to sensation, the young, whomsensations impel and distract, can rarely date their disturbance from aparticular one; unless it be some great villain injury that has beendone; and Clara had not felt an individual shame in his caress; theshame of her sex was but a passing protest, that left no stamp. So sheconceived she had been behaving cruelly, and said, "Willoughby";because she was aware of the omission of his name in her previousremarks.
His whole attention was given to her.
She had to invent the sequel. "I was going to beg you, Willoughby, donot seek to spoil me. You compliment me. Compliments are not suited tome. You think too highly of me. It is nearly as bad as to be slighted.I am . . . I am a . . ." But she could not follow his example; even asfar as she had gone, her prim little sketch of herself, set beside herreal, ugly, earnest feelings, rang of a mincing simplicity, and was astep in falseness. How could she display what she was?
"Do I not know you?" he said.
The melodious bass notes, expressive of conviction on that point,signified as well as the words that no answer was the right answer. Shecould not dissent without turning his music to discord, his complacencyto amazement. She held her tongue, knowing that he did not know her,and speculating on the division made bare by their degrees of theknowledge, a deep cleft.
He alluded to friends in her neighbourhood and his own. Thebridesmaids were mentioned.
"Miss Dale, you will hear from my aunt Eleanor, declines, on the pleaof indifferent health. She is rather a morbid person, with all herreally estimable qualities. It will do no harm to have none but youngladies of your own age; a bouquet of young buds: though one blowingflower among them . . . However, she has decided. My principalannoyance has been Vernon's refusal to act as my best man."
"Mr. Whitford refuses?"
"He half refuses. I do not take no from him. His pretext is a disliketo the ceremony."
"I share it with him."
"I sympathize with you. If we might say the words and pass from sight!There is a way of cutting off the world: I have it at times completely:I lose it again, as if it were a cabalistic phrase one had to utter.But with you! You give it me for good. It will be for ever, eternally,my Clara. Nothing can harm, nothing touch us; we are one another's. Letthe world fight it out; we have nothing to do with it."
"If Mr. Whitford should persist in refusing?"
"So entirely one, that there never can be question of externalinfluences. I am, we will say, riding home from the hunt: I see youawaiting me: I read your heart as though you were beside me. And Iknow that I am coming to the one who reads mine! You have me, you haveme like an open book, you, and only you!"
"I am to be always at home?" Clara said, unheeded, and relieved by hisnot hearing.
"Have you realized it?--that we are invulnerable! The world cannot hurtus: it cannot touch us. Felicity is ours, and we are impervious in theenjoyment of it. Something divine! surely something divine on earth?Clara!--being to
one another that between which the world can neverinterpose! What I do is right: what you do is right. Perfect to oneanother! Each new day we rise to study and delight in new secrets. Awaywith the crowd! We have not even to say it; we are in an atmospherewhere the world cannot breathe."
"Oh, the world!" Clara partly carolled on a sigh that sunk deep.
Hearing him talk as one exulting on the mountain-top, when she knew himto be in the abyss, was very strange, provocative of scorn.
"My letters?" he said, incitingly.
"I read them."
"Circumstances have imposed a long courtship on us, my Clara; and I,perhaps lamenting the laws of decorum--I have done so!--still felt thebenefit of the gradual initiation. It is not good for women to besurprised by a sudden revelation of man's character. We also havethings to learn--there is matter for learning everywhere. Some day youwill tell me the difference of what you think of me now, from what youthought when we first . . . ?"
An impulse of double-minded acquiescence caused Clara to stammer as ona sob.
"I--I daresay I shall."
She added, "If it is necessary."
Then she cried out: "Why do you attack the world? You always make mepity it."
He smiled at her youthfulness. "I have passed through that stage. Itleads to my sentiment. Pity it, by all means."
"No," said she, "but pity it, side with it, not consider it so bad. Theworld has faults; glaciers have crevices, mountains have chasms; but isnot the effect of the whole sublime? Not to admire the mountain and theglacier because they can be cruel, seems to me . . . And the world isbeautiful."
"The world of nature, yes. The world of men?"
"Yes."
"My love, I suspect you to be thinking of the world of ballrooms."
"I am thinking of the world that contains real and great generosity,true heroism. We see it round us."
"We read of it. The world of the romance writer!"
"No: the living world. I am sure it is our duty to love it. I am surewe weaken ourselves if we do not. If I did not, I should be looking onmist, hearing a perpetual boom instead of music. I remember hearing Mr.Whitford say that cynicism is intellectual dandyism without thecoxcomb's feathers; and it seems to me that cynics are only happy inmaking the world as barren to others as they have made it forthemselves."
"Old Vernon!" ejaculated Sir Willoughby, with a countenance ratheruneasy, as if it had been flicked with a glove. "He strings his phrasesby the dozen."
"Papa contradicts that, and says he is very clever and very simple."
"As to cynics, my dear Clara, oh, certainly, certainly: you are right.They are laughable, contemptible. But understand me. I mean, we cannotfeel, or if we feel we cannot so intensely feel, our oneness, except bydividing ourselves from the world."
"Is it an art?"
"If you like. It is our poetry! But does not love shun the world? Twothat love must have their sustenance in isolation."
"No: they will be eating themselves up."
"The purer the beauty, the more it will be out of the world."
"But not opposed."
"Put it in this way," Willoughby condescended. "Has experience the sameopinion of the world as ignorance?"
"It should have more charity."
"Does virtue feel at home in the world?"
"Where it should be an example, to my idea."
"Is the world agreeable to holiness?"
"Then, are you in favour of monasteries?"
He poured a little runlet of half laughter over her head, of the soundassumed by genial compassion.
It is irritating to hear that when we imagine we have spoken to thepoint.
"Now in my letters, Clara . . ."
"I have no memory, Willoughby!"
"You will, however, have observed that I am not completely myself in myletters . . ."
"In your letters to men you may be."
The remark threw a pause across his thoughts. He was of a sensitivenessterribly tender. A single stroke on it reverberated swellingly withinthe man, and most, and infuriately searching, at the spots where he hadbeen wounded, especially where he feared the world might have guessedthe wound. Did she imply that he had no hand for love-letters? Was ither meaning that women would not have much taste for his epistolarycorrespondence? She had spoken in the plural, with an accent on "men".Had she heard of Constantia? Had she formed her own judgement about thecreature? The supernatural sensitiveness of Sir Willoughby shrieked apeal of affirmatives. He had often meditated on the moral obligation ofhis unfolding to Clara the whole truth of his conduct to Constantia;for whom, as for other suicides, there were excuses. He at least wasbound to supply them. She had behaved badly; but had he not given hersome cause? If so, manliness was bound to confess it.
Supposing Clara heard the world's version first! Men whose pride istheir backbone suffer convulsions where other men are barely aware of ashock, and Sir Willoughby was taken with galvanic jumpings of thespirit within him, at the idea of the world whispering to Clara that hehad been jilted.
"My letters to men, you say, my love?"
"Your letters of business."
"Completely myself in my letters of business?" He stared indeed.
She relaxed the tension of his figure by remarking: "You are able toexpress yourself to men as your meaning dictates. In writing to . . .to us it is, I suppose, more difficult."
"True, my love. I will not exactly say difficult. I can acknowledge nodifficulty. Language, I should say, is not fitted to express emotion.Passion rejects it."
"For dumb-show and pantomime?"
"No; but the writing of it coldly."
"Ah, coldly!"
"My letters disappoint you?"
"I have not implied that they do."
"My feelings, dearest, are too strong for transcription. I feel, pen inhand, like the mythological Titan at war with Jove, strong enough tohurl mountains, and finding nothing but pebbles. The simile is a goodone. You must not judge of me by my letters."
"I do not; I like them," said Clara.
She blushed, eyed him hurriedly, and seeing him complacent, resumed, "Iprefer the pebble to the mountain; but if you read poetry you would notthink human speech incapable of. . ."
"My love, I detest artifice. Poetry is a profession."
"Our poets would prove to you . . ."
"As I have often observed, Clara, I am no poet."
"I have not accused you, Willoughby."
"No poet, and with no wish to be a poet. Were I one, my life wouldsupply material, I can assure you, my love. My conscience is notentirely at rest. Perhaps the heaviest matter troubling it is that inwhich I was least wilfully guilty. You have heard of a Miss Durham?"
"I have heard--yes--of her."
"She may be happy. I trust she is. If she is not, I cannot escape someblame. An instance of the difference between myself and the world, now.The world charges it upon her. I have interceded to exonerate her."
"That was generous, Willoughby."
"Stay. I fear I was the primary offender. But I, Clara, I, under asense of honour, acting under a sense of honour, would have carried myengagement through."
"What had you done?"
"The story is long, dating from an early day, in the 'downy antiquityof my youth', as Vernon says."
"Mr. Whitford says that?"
"One of old Vernon's odd sayings. It's a story of an earlyfascination."
"Papa tells me Mr. Whitford speaks at times with wise humour."
"Family considerations--the lady's health among other things; herposition in the calculations of relatives--intervened. Still there wasthe fascination. I have to own it. Grounds for feminine jealousy."
"Is it at an end?"
"Now? with you? my darling Clara! indeed at an end, or could I haveopened my inmost heart to you! Could I have spoken of myself sounreservedly that in part you know me as I know myself! Oh, but wouldit have been possible to enclose you with myself in that intimateunion? so secret, unassailable!"
r /> "You did not speak to her as you speak to me?"
"In no degree."
"What could have! . . ." Clara checked the murmured exclamation.
Sir Willoughby's expoundings on his latest of texts would have pouredforth, had not a footman stepped across the lawn to inform him that hisbuilder was in the laboratory and requested permission to consult withhim.
Clara's plea of a horror of the talk of bricks and joists excused herfrom accompanying him. He had hardly been satisfied by her manner, heknew not why. He left her, convinced that he must do and say more toreach down to her female intelligence.
She saw young Crossjay, springing with pots of jam in him, join hispatron at a bound, and taking a lift of arms, fly aloft, clappingheels. Her reflections were confused. Sir Willoughby was admirable withthe lad. "Is he two men?" she thought; and the thought ensued, "Am Iunjust?" She headed a run with young Crossjay to divert her mind.