The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative

  CHAPTER XII

  MISS MIDDLETON AND MR. VERNON WHITFORD

  Looking upward, not quite awakened out of a transient doze, at a fairhead circled in dazzling blossom, one may temporize awhile with commonsense, and take it for a vision after the eyes have regained directionof the mind. Vernon did so until the plastic vision interwound withreality alarmingly. This is the embrace of a Melusine who will soonhave the brain if she is encouraged. Slight dalliance with her makesthe very diminutive seem as big as life. He jumped to his feet, rattledhis throat, planted firmness on his brows and mouth, and attacked thedream-giving earth with tremendous long strides, that his blood mightbe lively at the throne of understanding. Miss Middleton and youngCrossjay were within hail: it was her face he had seen, and still theidea of a vision, chased from his reasonable wits, knocked hard andagain for readmission. There was little for a man of humble mindtoward the sex to think of in the fact of a young lady's bending ratherlow to peep at him asleep, except that the poise of her slender figure,between an air of spying and of listening, vividly recalled hislikening of her to the Mountain Echo. Man or maid sleeping in the openair provokes your tiptoe curiosity. Men, it is known, have in thatstate cruelly been kissed; and no rights are bestowed on them, they areteased by a vapourish rapture; what has happened to them the poorfellows barely divine: they have a crazy step from that day. But avision is not so distracting; it is our own, we can put it aside andreturn to it, play at rich and poor with it, and are not to be summonedbefore your laws and rules for secreting it in our treasury. Besides,it is the golden key of all the possible; new worlds expand beneath thedawn it brings us. Just outside reality, it illumines, enriches andsoftens real things;--and to desire it in preference to the simple factis a damning proof of enervation.

  Such was Vernon's winding up of his brief drama of fantasy. He wasaware of the fantastical element in him and soon had it under. Whichof us who is of any worth is without it? He had not much vanity totrouble him, and passion was quiet, so his task was not gigantic.Especially be it remarked, that he was a man of quick pace, thesovereign remedy for the dispersing of the mental fen-mist. He hadtried it and knew that nonsense is to be walked off.

  Near the end of the park young Crossjay overtook him, and after actingthe pumped one a trifle more than needful, cried: "I say, Mr. Whitford,there's Miss Middleton with her handkerchief out."

  "What for, my lad?" said Vernon.

  "I'm sure I don't know. All of a sudden she bumped down. And, look whatfellows girls are!--here she comes as if nothing had happened, and Isaw her feel at her side."

  Clara was shaking her head to express a denial. "I am not at allunwell," she said, when she came near. "I guessed Crossjay's businessin running up to you; he's a good-for-nothing, officious boy. I wastired, and rested for a moment."

  Crossjay peered at her eyelids. Vernon looked away and said: "Are youtoo tired for a stroll?"

  "Not now."

  "Shall it be brisk?"

  "You have the lead."

  He led at a swing of the legs that accelerated young Crossjay's to thedouble, but she with her short, swift, equal steps glided along easilyon a fine by his shoulder, and he groaned to think that of all thegirls of earth this one should have been chosen for the position offine lady.

  "You won't tire me," said she, in answer to his look.

  "You remind me of the little Piedmontese Bersaglieri on the march."

  "I have seen them trotting into Como from Milan."

  "They cover a quantity of ground in a day, if the ground's flat. Youwant another sort of step for the mountains."

  "I should not attempt to dance up."

  "They soon tame romantic notions of them."

  "The mountains tame luxurious dreams, you mean. I see how they areconquered. I can plod. Anything to be high up!"

  "Well, there you have the secret of good work: to plod on and stillkeep the passion fresh."

  "Yes, when we have an aim in view."

  "We always have one."

  "Captives have?"

  "More than the rest of us."

  Ignorant man! What of wives miserably wedded? What aim in view havethese most woeful captives? Horror shrouds it, and shame reddensthrough the folds to tell of innermost horror.

  "Take me back to the mountains, if you please, Mr. Whitford," MissMiddleton said, fallen out of sympathy with him. "Captives have deathin view, but that is not an aim."

  "Why may not captives expect a release?"

  "Hardly from a tyrant."

  "If you are thinking of tyrants, it may be so. Say the tyrant dies?"

  "The prison-gates are unlocked and out comes a skeleton. But why willyou talk of skeletons! The very name of mountain seems life incomparison with any other subject."

  "I assure you," said Vernon, with the fervour of a man lighting on anactual truth in his conversation with a young lady, "it's not the firsttime I have thought you would be at home in the Alps. You would walkand climb as well as you dance."

  She liked to hear Clara Middleton talked of, and of her having beenthought of, and giving him friendly eyes, barely noticing that he wasin a glow, she said: "If you speak so encouragingly I shall fancy weare near an ascent."

  "I wish we were," said he.

  "We can realize it by dwelling on it, don't you think?"

  "We can begin climbing."

  "Oh!" she squeezed herself shadowily.

  "Which mountain shall it be?" said Vernon, in the right real earnesttone.

  Miss Middleton suggested a lady's mountain first, for a trial. "Andthen, if you think well enough of me--if I have not stumbled more thantwice, or asked more than ten times how far it is from the top, Ishould like to be promoted to scale a giant."

  They went up to some of the lesser heights of Switzerland and Styria,and settled in South Tyrol, the young lady preferring this district forthe strenuous exercise of her climbing powers because she loved Italiancolour; and it seemed an exceedingly good reason to the genialimagination she had awakened in Mr. Whitford. "Though," said he,abruptly, "you are not so much Italian as French."

  She hoped she was English, she remarked.

  "Of course you are English; . . . yes." He moderated his ascent withthe halting affirmative.

  She inquired wonderingly why he spoke in apparent hesitation.

  "Well, you have French feet, for example: French wits, Frenchimpatience," he lowered his voice, "and charm"

  "And love of compliments."

  "Possibly. I was not conscious of paying them"

  "And a disposition to rebel?"

  "To challenge authority, at least."

  "That is a dreadful character."

  "At all events, it is a character."

  "Fit for an Alpine comrade?"

  "For the best of comrades anywhere."

  "It is not a piece of drawing-room sculpture: that is the most one cansay for it!" she dropped a dramatic sigh.

  Had he been willing she would have continued the theme, for thepleasure a poor creature long gnawing her sensations finds in seeingherself from the outside. It fell away. After a silence, she could notrenew it; and he was evidently indifferent, having to his ownsatisfaction dissected and stamped her a foreigner. With it passed herholiday. She had forgotten Sir Willoughby: she remembered him and said."You knew Miss Durham, Mr. Whitford?"

  He answered briefly, "I did."

  "Was she? . . ." some hot-faced inquiry peered forth and withdrew.

  "Very handsome," said Vernon.

  "English?"

  "Yes; the dashing style of English."

  "Very courageous."

  "I dare say she had a kind of courage."

  "She did very wrong."

  "I won't say no. She discovered a man more of a match with herself;luckily not too late. We're at the mercy . . ."

  "Was she not unpardonable?"

  "I should be sorry to think that of any one."

  "But you agree that she did wrong."

  "I suppose I do. She made a mistake a
nd she corrected it. If she hadnot, she would have made a greater mistake."

  "The manner. . ."

  "That was bad--as far as we know. The world has not much right tojudge. A false start must now and then be made. It's better not to takenotice of it, I think."

  "What is it we are at the mercy of?"

  "Currents of feeling, our natures. I am the last man to preach on thesubject: young ladies are enigmas to me; I fancy they must have anatural perception of the husband suitable to them, and the reverse;and if they have a certain degree of courage, it follows that theyplease themselves."

  "They are not to reflect on the harm they do?" said Miss Middleton.

  "By all means let them reflect; they hurt nobody by doing that."

  "But a breach of faith!"

  "If the faith can be kept through life, all's well."

  "And then there is the cruelty, the injury!"

  "I really think that if a young lady came to me to inform me she mustbreak our engagement--I have never been put to the proof, but tosuppose it:--I should not think her cruel."

  "Then she would not be much of a loss."

  "And I should not think so for this reason, that it is impossible for agirl to come to such a resolution without previously showing signs ofit to her . . . the man she is engaged to. I think it unfair to engagea girl for longer than a week or two, just time enough for herpreparations and publications."

  "If he is always intent on himself, signs are likely to be unheeded byhim," said Miss Middleton.

  He did not answer, and she said, quickly:

  "It must always be a cruelty. The world will think so. It is an act ofinconstancy."

  "If they knew one another well before they were engaged."

  "Are you not singularly tolerant?" said she.

  To which Vernon replied with airy cordiality:--

  "In some cases it is right to judge by results; we'll leave severity tothe historian, who is bound to be a professional moralist and put pleasof human nature out of the scales. The lady in question may have beento blame, but no hearts were broken, and here we have four happyinstead of two miserable."

  His persecuting geniality of countenance appealed to her to confirmthis judgement by results, and she nodded and said: "Four," as theawe-stricken speak.

  From that moment until young Crossjay fell into the green-rutted lanefrom a tree, and was got on his legs half stunned, with a hanging lipand a face like the inside of a flayed eel-skin, she might have beenwalking in the desert, and alone, for the pleasure she had in society.

  They led the fated lad home between them, singularly drawn together bytheir joint ministrations to him, in which her delicacy had to standfire, and sweet good-nature made naught of any trial. They were hand inhand with the little fellow as physician and professional nurse.