The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  IN WHICH THE COMIC MUSE HAS AN EYE ON TWO GOOD SOULS

  Clara met Vernon on the bowling-green among the laurels. She asked himwhere her father was.

  "Don't speak to him now," said Vernon.

  "Mr. Whitford, will you?"

  "It is not advisable just now. Wait."

  "Wait? Why not now?"

  "He is not in the right humour."

  She choked. There are times when there is no medicine for us in sages,we want slaves; we scorn to temporize, we must overbear. On she sped,as if she had made the mistake of exchanging words with a post.

  The scene between herself and Willoughby was a thick mist in her head,except the burden and result of it, that he held to her fast, wouldneither assist her to depart nor disengage her.

  Oh, men! men! They astounded the girl; she could not define them to herunderstanding. Their motives, their tastes, their vanity, theirtyranny, and the domino on their vanity, the baldness of their tyranny,clinched her in feminine antagonism to brute power. She was not theless disposed to rebellion by a very present sense of the justice ofwhat could be said to reprove her. She had but one answer: "Anythingbut marry him!" It threw her on her nature, our last and headlongadvocate, who is quick as the flood to hurry us from the heights to ourlevel, and lower, if there be accidental gaps in the channel. For saywe have been guilty of misconduct: can we redeem it by violating thatwhich we are and live by? The question sinks us back to theluxuriousness of a sunny relinquishment of effort in the directionagainst tide. Our nature becomes ingenious in devices, penetrative ofthe enemy, confidently citing its cause for being frankly elvish orworse. Clara saw a particular way of forcing herself to besurrendered. She shut her eyes from it: the sight carried her tooviolently to her escape; but her heart caught it up and huzzaed. Topress the points of her fingers at her bosom, looking up to the sky asshe did, and cry: "I am not my own; I am his!" was instigationsufficient to make her heart leap up with all her body's blush to urgeit to recklessness. A despairing creature then may say she hasaddressed the heavens and has had no answer to restrain her.

  Happily for Miss Middleton, she had walked some minutes in her chafingfit before the falcon eye of Colonel De Craye spied her away on one ofthe beech-knots.

  Vernon stood irresolute. It was decidedly not a moment for disturbingDr. Middleton's composure. He meditated upon a conversation, asfriendly as possible, with Willoughby. Round on the front-lawn, hebeheld Willoughby and Dr. Middleton together, the latter having haltedto lend attentive ear to his excellent host. Unnoticed by them ordisregarded, Vernon turned back to Laetitia, and sauntered, talkingwith her of things current for as long as he could endure to listen topraise of his pure self-abnegation; proof of how well he had disguisedhimself, but it smacked unpleasantly to him. His humourous intimacywith men's minds likened the source of this distaste to the gallantall-or-nothing of the gambler, who hates the little when he cannot havethe much, and would rather stalk from the tables clean-picked thansuffer ruin to be tickled by driblets of the glorious fortune he hasplayed for and lost. If we are not to be beloved, spare us the smallcoin of compliments on character; especially when they compliment onlyour acting. It is partly endurable to win eulogy for our statelyfortitude in losing, but Laetitia was unaware that he flung away astake; so she could not praise him for his merits.

  "Willoughby makes the pardoning of Crossjay conditional," he said, "andthe person pleading for him has to grant the terms. How could youimagine Willoughby would give her up! How could he! Who! . . . Heshould, is easily said. I was no witness of the scene between them justnow, but I could have foretold the end of it; I could almost recountthe passages. The consequence is, that everything depends upon theamount of courage she possesses. Dr. Middleton won't leave Patterneyet. And it is of no use to speak to him to-day. And she is by natureimpatient, and is rendered desperate."

  "Why is it of no use to speak to Dr. Middleton today?" cried Laetitia.

  "He drank wine yesterday that did not agree with him; he can't work.To-day he is looking forward to Patterne Port. He is not likely tolisten to any proposals to leave to-day."

  "Goodness!"

  "I know the depth of that cry!"

  "You are excluded, Mr. Whitford."

  "Not a bit of it; I am in with the rest. Say that men are to beexclaimed at. Men have a right to expect you to know your own mindswhen you close on a bargain. You don't know the world or yourselvesvery well, it's true; still the original error is on your side, andupon that you should fix your attention. She brought her father here,and no sooner was he very comfortably established than she wished todislocate him."

  "I cannot explain it; I cannot comprehend it," said Laetitia.

  "You are Constancy."

  "No." She coloured. "I am 'in with rest'. I do not say I should havedone the same. But I have the knowledge that I must not sit injudgement on her. I can waver."

  She coloured again. She was anxious that he should know her to be notthat stupid statue of Constancy in a corner doating on the anticDeception. Reminiscences of the interview overnight made it oppressiveto her to hear herself praised for always pointing like the needle. Hernewly enfranchised individuality pressed to assert its existence.Vernon, however, not seeing this novelty, continued, to her excessivediscomfort, to baste her old abandoned image with his praises. Theychecked hers; and, moreover, he had suddenly conceived an envy of herlife-long, uncomplaining, almost unaspiring, constancy of sentiment. Ifyou know lovers when they have not reason to be blissful, you willremember that in this mood of admiring envy they are given to fits ofuncontrollable maundering. Praise of constancy, moreover, smoteshadowily a certain inconstant, enough to seem to ruffle her smoothnessand do no hurt. He found his consolation in it, and poor Laetitiawrithed. Without designing to retort, she instinctively grasped at aweapon of defence in further exalting his devotedness; which reducedhim to cast his head to the heavens and implore them to partiallyenlighten her. Nevertheless, maunder he must; and he recurred to it ina way so utterly unlike himself that Laetitia stared in his face. Shewondered whether there could be anything secreted behind thiseverlasting theme of constancy. He took her awakened gaze for a summonsto asseverations of sincerity, and out they came. She would have fledfrom him, but to think of flying was to think how little it was thaturged her to fly, and yet the thought of remaining and listening topraises undeserved and no longer flattering, was a torture.

  "Mr. Whitford, I bear no comparison with you."

  "I do and must set you for my example, Miss Dale."

  "Indeed, you do wrongly; you do not know me."

  "I could say that. For years . . ."

  "Pray, Mr. Whitford!"

  "Well, I have admired it. You show us how self can be smothered."

  "An echo would be a retort on you!"

  "On me? I am never thinking of anything else."

  "I could say that."

  "You are necessarily conscious of not swerving."

  "But I do; I waver dreadfully; I am not the same two days running."

  "You are the same, with 'ravishing divisions' upon the same."

  "And you without the 'divisions.' I draw such support as I have fromyou."

  "From some simulacrum of me, then. And that will show you how littleyou require support."

  "I do not speak my own opinion only."

  "Whose?"

  "I am not alone."

  "Again let me say, I wish I were like you!"

  "Then let me add, I would willingly make the exchange!"

  "You would be amazed at your bargain."

  "Others would be!"

  "Your exchange would give me the qualities I'm in want of, Miss Dale."

  "Negative, passive, at the best, Mr. Whitford. But I should have . . ."

  "Oh!--pardon me. But you inflict the sensations of a boy, with a doseof honesty in him, called up to receive a prize he has won by thedexterous use of a crib."

  "And how do you suppose she feels who has a crown of Quee
n o' the Mayforced on her head when she is verging on November?"

  He rejected her analogy, and she his. They could neither of them bringto light the circumstances which made one another's admiration sounbearable. The more he exalted her for constancy, the more did hermind become bent upon critically examining the object of that imaginedvirtue; and the more she praised him for possessing the spirit ofperfect friendliness, the fiercer grew the passion in him whichdisdained the imputation, hissing like a heated iron-bar that flingsthe waterdrops to steam. He would none of it; would rather have stoodexposed in his profound foolishness.

  Amiable though they were, and mutually affectionate, they came to astop in their walk, longing to separate, and not seeing how it was tobe done, they had so knit themselves together with the pelting of theirinterlaudation.

  "I think it is time for me to run home to my father for an hour," saidLaetitia.

  "I ought to be working," said Vernon.

  Good progress was made to the disgarlanding of themselves thus far;yet, an acutely civilized pair, the abruptness of the transition fromfloweriness to commonplace affected them both, Laetitia chiefly, as shehad broken the pause, and she remarked:--"I am really Constancy in myopinions."

  "Another title is customary where stiff opinions are concerned. Perhapsby and by you will learn your mistake, and then you will acknowledgethe name for it."

  "How?" said she. "What shall I learn?"

  "If you learn that I am a grisly Egoist?"

  "You? And it would not be egoism," added Laetitia, revealing to him atthe same instant as to herself that she swung suspended on a scarcecredible guess.

  "--Will nothing pierce your ears, Mr. Whitford?"

  He heard the intruding voice, but he was bent on rubbing out the cloudyletters Laetitia had begun to spell, and he stammered, in a tone ofmatter-of-fact: "Just that and no better"; then turned to Mrs.Mountstuart Jenkinson.

  "--Or are you resolved you will never see Professor Crooklyn when youlook on him?" said the great lady.

  Vernon bowed to the Professor and apologized to him shufflingly andrapidly, incoherently, and with a red face; which induced Mrs.Mountstuart to scan Laetitia's.

  After lecturing Vernon for his abandonment of her yesterday evening,and flouting his protestations, she returned to the business of theday. "We walked from the lodge-gates to see the park and prepareourselves for Dr. Middleton. We parted last night in the middle of acontroversy and are rageing to resume it. Where is our redoubtableantagonist?"

  Mrs. Mountstuart wheeled Professor Crooklyn round to accompany Vernon.

  "We," she said, "are for modern English scholarship, opposed to thechampion of German."

  "The contrary," observed Professor Crooklyn.

  "Oh! We," she corrected the error serenely, "are for German scholarshipopposed to English."

  "Certain editions."

  "We defend certain editions."

  "Defend is a term of imperfect application to my position, ma'am."

  "My dear Professor, you have in Dr. Middleton a match for you inconscientious pugnacity, and you will not waste it upon me. There,there they are; there he is. Mr. Whitford will conduct you. I standaway from the first shock."

  Mrs. Mountstuart fell back to Laetitia, saying: "He pores over a littleinexactitude in phrases, and pecks at it like a domestic fowl."

  Professor Crooklyn's attitude and air were so well described thatLaetitia could have laughed.

  "These mighty scholars have their flavour," the great lady hastened toadd, lest her younger companion should be misled to suppose that theywere not valuable to a governing hostess: "their shadow-fights areridiculous, but they have their flavour at a table. Last night, no: Idiscard all mention of last night. We failed: as none else in thisneighbourhood could fail, but we failed. If we have among us acormorant devouring young lady who drinks up all the--ha!--brandy andwater--of our inns and occupies all our flys, why, our condition isabnormal, and we must expect to fail: we are deprived of accommodationfor accidental circumstances. How Mr. Whitford could have missed seeingProfessor Crooklyn! And what was he doing at the station, Miss Dale?"

  "Your portrait of Professor Crooklyn was too striking, Mrs Mountstuart,and deceived him by its excellence. He appears to have seen only theblank side of the slate."

  "Ah! He is a faithful friend of his cousin, do you not think?"

  "He is the truest of friends."

  "As for Dr. Middleton," Mrs. Mountstuart diverged from her inquiry, "hewill swell the letters of my vocabulary to gigantic proportions if Isee much of him: he is contagious."

  "I believe it is a form of his humour."

  "I caught it of him yesterday at my dinner-table in my distress, andmust pass it off as a form of mine, while it lasts. I talked Dr.Middleton half the dreary night through to my pillow. Your candidopinion, my dear, come! As for me, I don't hesitate. We seemed to havesat down to a solitary performance on the bass-viol. We were positivelyan assembly of insects during thunder. My very soul thanked Colonel DeCraye for his diversions, but I heard nothing but Dr. Middleton. Itstruck me that my table was petrified, and every one sat listening tobowls played overhead."

  "I was amused."

  "Really? You delight me. Who knows but that my guests were sincere intheir congratulations on a thoroughly successful evening? I have fallento this, you see! And I know, wretched people! that as often as not itis their way of condoling with one. I do it myself: but only wherethere have been amiable efforts. But imagine my being congratulated forthat!--Good-morning, Sir Willoughby.--The worst offender! and I am inno pleasant mood with him," Mrs. Mountstuart said aside to Laetitia,who drew back, retiring.

  Sir Willoughby came on a step or two. He stopped to watch Laetitia'sfigure swimming to the house.

  So, as, for instance, beside a stream, when a flower on the surfaceextends its petals drowning to subside in the clear still water, weexercise our privilege to be absent in the charmed contemplation of abeautiful natural incident.

  A smile of pleased abstraction melted on his features.