The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative

  CHAPTER XXXII

  LAETITIA DALE DISCOVERS A SPIRITUAL CHANGE AND DR MIDDLETON A PHYSICAL

  Clara tripped over the lawn in the early morning to Laetitia to greether. She broke away from a colloquy with Colonel De Craye under SirWilloughby's windows. The colonel had been one of the bathers, and hestood like a circus-driver flicking a wet towel at Crossjay capering.

  "My dear, I am very unhappy!" said Clara.

  "My dear, I bring you news," Laetitia replied.

  "Tell me. But the poor boy is to be expelled! He burst into Crossjay'sbedroom last night and dragged the sleeping boy out of bed to questionhim, and he had the truth. That is one comfort: only Crossjay is to bedriven from the Hall, because he was untruthful previously--for me; toserve me; really, I feel it was at my command. Crossjay will be out ofthe way to-day, and has promised to come back at night to try to beforgiven. You must help me, Laetitia."

  "You are free, Clara! If you desire it, you have but to ask for yourfreedom."

  "You mean . . ."

  "He will release you."

  "You are sure?"

  "We had a long conversation last night."

  "I owe it to you?"

  "Nothing is owing to me. He volunteered it."

  Clara made as if to lift her eyes in apostrophe. "Professor Crooklyn!Professor Crooklyn! I see. I did not guess that."

  "Give credit for some generosity, Clara; you are unjust!"

  "By and by: I will be more than just by and by. I will practise on thetrumpet: I will lecture on the greatness of the souls of men when weknow them thoroughly. At present we do but half know them, and we areunjust. You are not deceived, Laetitia? There is to be no speaking topapa? no delusions? You have agitated me. I feel myself a very smallperson indeed. I feel I can understand those who admire him. He givesme back my word simply? clearly? without--Oh, that long wrangle inscenes and letters? And it will be arranged for papa and me to go notlater than to-morrow? Never shall I be able to explain to any one how Ifell into this! I am frightened at myself when I think of it. I takethe whole blame: I have been scandalous. And, dear Laetitia! you cameout so early in order to tell me?"

  "I wished you to hear it."

  "Take my heart."

  "Present me with a part--but for good."

  "Fie! But you have a right to say it."

  "I mean no unkindness; but is not the heart you allude to an alarminglysearching one?"

  "Selfish it is, for I have been forgetting Crossjay. If we are going tobe generous, is not Crossjay to be forgiven? If it were only that theboy's father is away fighting for his country, endangering his life dayby day, and for a stipend not enough to support his family, we arebound to think of the boy! Poor dear silly lad! with his 'I say, MissMiddleton, why wouldn't (some one) see my father when he came here tocall on him, and had to walk back ten miles in the rain?'--I couldalmost fancy that did me mischief. . . But we have a splendid morningafter yesterday's rain. And we will be generous. Own, Laetitia, that itis possible to gild the most glorious day of creation."

  "Doubtless the spirit may do it and make its hues permanent," saidLaetitia.

  "You to me, I to you, he to us. Well, then, if he does, it shall be oneof my heavenly days. Which is for the probation of experience. We arenot yet at sunset."

  "Have you seen Mr. Whitford this morning?"

  "He passed me."

  "Do not imagine him ever ill-tempered."

  "I had a governess, a learned lady, who taught me in person thepicturesqueness of grumpiness. Her temper was ever perfect, because shewas never in the wrong, but I being so, she was grumpy. She carried myiniquity under her brows, and looked out on me through it. I was atrying child."

  Laetitia said, laughing: "I can believe it!"

  "Yet I liked her and she liked me: we were a kind of foreground andbackground: she threw me into relief and I was an apology for herexistence."

  "You picture her to me."

  "She says of me now that I am the only creature she has loved. Whoknows that I may not come to say the same of her?"

  "You would plague her and puzzle her still."

  "Have I plagued and puzzled Mr. Whitford?"

  "He reminds you of her?"

  "You said you had her picture."

  "Ah! do not laugh at him. He is a true friend."

  "The man who can be a friend is the man who will presume to be acensor."

  "A mild one."

  "As to the sentence he pronounces, I am unable to speak, but hisforehead is Rhadamanthine condemnation."

  "Dr Middleton!"

  Clara looked round. "Who? I? Did you hear an echo of papa? He wouldnever have put Rhadamanthus over European souls, because it appearsthat Rhadamanthus judged only the Asiatic; so you are wrong, Miss Dale.My father is infatuated with Mr. Whitford. What can it be? We womencannot sound the depths of scholars, probably because their pearls haveno value in our market; except when they deign to chasten animpertinent; and Mr. Whitford stands aloof from any notice of smallfry. He is deep, studious, excellent; and does it not strike you thatif he descended among us he would be like a Triton ashore?"

  Laetitia's habit of wholly subservient sweetness, which was her idealof the feminine, not yet conciliated with her acuter character, owingto the absence of full pleasure from her life--the unhealed wound shehad sustained and the cramp of a bondage of such old date as to seemiron--induced her to say, as if consenting: "You think he is not quiteat home in society?" But she wished to defend him strenuously, and as aconsequence she had to quit the self-imposed ideal of her daily acting,whereby--the case being unwonted, very novel to her--the lady'sintelligence became confused through the process that quickened it; sosovereign a method of hoodwinking our bright selves is the acting of apart, however naturally it may come to us! and to this will each honestautobiographical member of the animated world bear witness.

  She added: "You have not found him sympathetic? He is. You fancy himbrooding, gloomy? He is the reverse, he is cheerful, he is indifferentto personal misfortune. Dr. Corney says there is no laugh like VernonWhitford's, and no humour like his. Latterly he certainly . . . But ithas not been your cruel word grumpiness. The truth is, he is anxiousabout Crossjay: and about other things; and he wants to leave. He is ata disadvantage beside very lively and careless gentlemen at present,but your 'Triton ashore' is unfair, it is ugly. He is, I can say, thetruest man I know."

  "I did not question his goodness, Laetitia."

  "You threw an accent on it."

  "Did I? I must be like Crossjay, who declares he likes fun best."

  "Crossjay ought to know him, if anybody should. Mr. Whitford hasdefended you against me, Clara, even since I took to calling you Clara.Perhaps when you supposed him so like your ancient governess, he wasmeditating how he could aid you. Last night he gave me reasons forthinking you would do wisely to confide in Mrs. Mountstuart. It is nolonger necessary. I merely mention it. He is a devoted friend."

  "He is an untiring pedestrian."

  "Oh!"

  Colonel De Craye, after hovering near the ladies in the hope of seeingthem divide, now adopted the system of making three that two may comeof it.

  As he joined them with his glittering chatter, Laetitia looked at Clarato consult her, and saw the face rosy as a bride's.

  The suspicion she had nursed sprung out of her arms a muscular fact onthe spot.

  "Where is my dear boy?" Clara said.

  "Out for a holiday," the colonel answered in her tone.

  "Advise Mr. Whitford not to waste his time in searching for Crossjay,Laetitia. Crossjay is better out of the way to-day. At least, I thoughtso just now. Has he pocket-money, Colonel De Craye?"

  "My lord can command his inn."

  "How thoughtful you are!"

  Laetitia's bosom swelled upon a mute exclamation, equivalent to:"Woman! woman! snared ever by the sparkling and frivolous!undiscerning of the faithful, the modest and beneficent!"

  In the secret musings of moralists this dramatic rhetoric survive
s.

  The comparison was all of her own making, and she was indignant at thecontrast, though to what end she was indignant she could not have said,for she had no idea of Vernon as a rival of De Craye in the favour of aplighted lady. But she was jealous on behalf of her sex: her sex'sreputation seemed at stake, and the purity of it was menaced by Clara'sidle preference of the shallower man. When the young lady spoke socarelessly of being like Crossjay, she did not perhaps know that alikeness, based on a similarity of their enthusiasms, loves, andappetites, had been established between women and boys. Laetitia hadformerly chafed at it, rejecting it utterly, save when now and then ina season of bitterness she handed here and there a volatile young lady(none but the young) to be stamped with the degrading brand. Vernonmight be as philosophical as he pleased. To her the gaiety of thesetwo, Colonel De Craye and Clara Middleton, was distressingly musical:they harmonized painfully. The representative of her sex was hurt byit.

  She had to stay beside them: Clara held her arm. The colonel's voicedropped at times to something very like a whisper. He was answeredaudibly and smoothly. The quickwitted gentleman accepted thecorrection: but in immediately paying assiduous attentions to MissDale, in the approved intriguer's fashion, he showed himself in need ofanother amounting to a reproof. Clara said: "We have been consulting,Laetitia, what is to be done to cure Professor Crooklyn of his cold."De Craye perceived that he had taken a wrong step, and he was mightilysurprised that a lesson in intrigue should be read to him of all men.Miss Middleton's audacity was not so astonishing: he recognized grandcapabilities in the young lady. Fearing lest she should proceed furtherand cut away from him his vantage-ground of secrecy with her, he turnedthe subject and was adroitly submissive.

  Clara's manner of meeting Sir Willoughby expressed a timid dispositionto friendliness upon a veiled inquiry, understood by none saveLaetitia, whose brain was racked to convey assurances to herself of hernot having misinterpreted him. Could there be any doubt? She resolvedthat there could not be; and it was upon this basis of reason that shefancied she had led him to it. Legitimate or not, the fancy sprang froma solid foundation. Yesterday morning she could not have conceived it.Now she was endowed to feel that she had power to influence him,because now, since the midnight, she felt some emancipation from thespell of his physical mastery. He did not appear to her as a differentman, but she had grown sensible of being a stronger woman. He was nomore the cloud over her, nor the magnet; the cloud onceheaven-suffused, the magnet fatally compelling her to sway round tohim. She admired him still: his handsome air, his fine proportions, thecourtesy of his bending to Clara and touching of her hand, excused afanatical excess of admiration on the part of a woman in her youth, whois never the anatomist of the hero's lordly graces. But now she admiredhim piecemeal. When it came to the putting of him together, she did itcoldly. To compassionate him was her utmost warmth. Without conceivingin him anything of the strange old monster of earth which had struckthe awakened girl's mind of Miss Middleton, Laetitia classed him withother men; he was "one of them". And she did not bring herdisenchantment as a charge against him. She accused herself,acknowledged the secret of the change to be, and her youthfulness wasdead:--otherwise could she have given him compassion, and not herselfhave been carried on the flood of it? The compassion was fervent, andpure too. She supposed he would supplicate; she saw that ClaraMiddleton was pleasant with him only for what she expected of hisgenerosity. She grieved. Sir Willoughby was fortified by her sorrowfulgaze as he and Clara passed out together to the laboratory arm in arm.

  Laetitia had to tell Vernon of the uselessness of his beating the houseand grounds for Crossjay. Dr. Middleton held him fast in discussionupon an overnight's classical wrangle with Professor Crooklyn, whichwas to be renewed that day. The Professor had appointed to callexpressly to renew it. "A fine scholar," said the Rev. Doctor, "butcrotchety, like all men who cannot stand their Port."

  "I hear that he had a cold," Vernon remarked. "I hope the wine wasgood, sir."

  As when the foreman of a sentimental jury is commissioned to inform anawful Bench exact in perspicuous English, of a verdict that must ofnecessity be pronounced in favour of the hanging of the culprit, yetwould fain attenuate the crime of a palpable villain by arecommendation to mercy, such foreman, standing in the attentive eye ofa master of grammatical construction, and feeling the weight of atleast three sentences on his brain, together with a prospect ofJudicial interrogation for the discovery of his precise meaning, isoppressed, himself is put on trial, in turn, and he hesitates, herecapitulates, the fear of involution leads him to be involved; as faras a man so posted may, he on his own behalf appeals for mercy;entreats that his indistinct statement of preposterous reasons may betaken for understood, and would gladly, were permission to do itcredible, throw in an imploring word that he may sink back among thecrowd without for the one imperishable moment publicly swinging in hislordship's estimation:--much so, moved by chivalry toward a lady,courtesy to the recollection of a hostess, and particularly by theknowledge that his hearer would expect with a certain frigid rigourcharity of him, Dr. Middleton paused, spoke and paused: he stammered.Ladies, he said, were famous poisoners in the Middle Ages. His opinionwas, that we had a class of manufacturing wine merchants on the watchfor widows in this country. But he was bound to state the fact of hiswaking at his usual hour to the minute unassailed by headache. On theother hand, this was a condition of blessedness unanticipated when hewent to bed. Mr. Whitford, however, was not to think that heentertained rancour toward the wine. It was no doubt dispensed with thehonourable intention of cheering. In point of flavour execrable,judging by results it was innocuous.

  "The test of it shall be the effect of it upon Professor Crooklyn, andhis appearance in the forenoon according to promise," Dr. Middletoncame to an end with his perturbed balancings. "If I hear more of theeight or twelve winds discharged at once upon a railway platform, andthe young lady who dries herself of a drenching by drinking brandy andwater with a gentleman at a railway inn, I shall solicit your sanctionto my condemnation of the wine as anti-Bacchic and a counterfeitpresentment. Do not misjudge me. Our hostess is not responsible. Butwidows should marry."

  "You must contrive to stop the Professor, sir, if he should attack hishostess in that manner," said Vernon.

  "Widows should marry!" Dr. Middleton repeated.

  He murmured of objecting to be at the discretion of a butler; unless,he was careful to add, the aforesaid functionary could boast of anUniversity education; and even then, said he, it requires a line ofancestry to train a man's taste.

  The Rev. Doctor smothered a yawn. The repression of it caused a secondone, a real monster, to come, big as our old friend of the seaadvancing on the chained-up Beauty.

  Disconcerted by this damning evidence of indigestion, his countenanceshowed that he considered himself to have been too lenient to the wineof an unhusbanded hostess. He frowned terribly.

  In the interval Laetitia told Vernon of Crossjay's flight for the day,hastily bidding the master to excuse him: she had no time to hint thegrounds of excuse. Vernon mentally made a guess.

  Dr Middleton took his arm and discharged a volley at the crotchettyscholarship of Professor Crooklyn, whom to confute by book, he directedhis march to the library. Having persuaded himself that he wasdyspeptic, he had grown irascible. He denounced all dining out,eulogized Patterne Hall as if it were his home, and remembered he haddreamed in the night--a most humiliating sign of physical disturbance."But let me find a house in proximity to Patterne, as I am induced tosuppose I shall," he said, "and here only am I to be met when I stirabroad."

  Laetitia went to her room. She was complacently anxious enough toprefer solitude and be willing to read. She was more seriously anxiousabout Crossjay than about any of the others. For Clara would be certainto speak very definitely, and how then could a gentleman oppose her? Hewould supplicate, and could she be brought to yield? It was not to beexpected of a young lady who had turned from Sir Willoughby. Hisinferiors would have had a b
etter chance. Whatever his faults, he hadthat element of greatness which excludes the intercession of pity.Supplication would be with him a form of condescension. It would beseen to be such. His was a monumental pride that could not stoop. Shehad preserved this image of the gentleman for a relic in the shipwreckof her idolatry. So she mused between the lines of her book, andfinishing her reading and marking the page, she glanced down on thelawn. Dr. Middleton was there, and alone; his hands behind his back,his head bent. His meditative pace and unwonted perusal of the turfproclaimed that a non-sentimental jury within had delivered anunmitigated verdict upon the widow's wine.

  Laetitia hurried to find Vernon.

  He was in the hall. As she drew near him, the laboratory door openedand shut.

  "It is being decided," said Laetitia.

  Vernon was paler than the hue of perfect calmness.

  "I want to know whether I ought to take to my heels like Crossjay, andshun the Professor," he said.

  They spoke in under-tones, furtively watching the door.

  "I wish what she wishes, I am sure; but it will go badly with the boy,"said Laetitia.

  "Oh, well, then I'll take him," said Vernon, "I would rather. I think Ican manage it."

  Again the laboratory door opened. This time it shut behind MissMiddleton. She was highly flushed. Seeing them, she shook the stormfrom her brows, with a dead smile; the best piece of serenity she couldput on for public wear.

  She took a breath before she moved.

  Vernon strode out of the house.

  Clara swept up to Laetitia.

  "You were deceived!"

  The hard sob of anger barred her voice.

  Laetitia begged her to come to her room with her.

  "I want air: I must be by myself," said Clara, catching at hergarden-hat.

  She walked swiftly to the portico steps and turned to the right, toavoid the laboratory windows.