The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  IN THE HEART OF THE EGOIST

  But already he had begun to regard the deed as his executioner. Hedreaded meeting Clara. The folly of having retained her stood beforehim. How now to look on her and keep a sane resolution unwavering? Shetempted to the insane. Had she been away, he could have walked throughthe performance composed by the sense of doing a duty to himself;perhaps faintly hating the poor wretch he made happy at last, kind toher in a manner, polite. Clara's presence in the house previous to thedeed, and, oh, heaven! after it, threatened his wits. Pride? He hadnone; he cast it down for her to trample it; he caught it back ere itwas trodden on. Yes; he had pride: he had it as a dagger in his breast:his pride was his misery. But he was too proud to submit to misery."What I do is right." He said the words, and rectitude smoothed hispath, till the question clamoured for answer: Would the worldcountenance and endorse his pride in Laetitia? At one time, yes. Andnow? Clara's beauty ascended, laid a beam on him. We are on board thelabouring vessel of humanity in a storm, when cries and countercriesring out, disorderliness mixes the crew, and the fury ofself-preservation divides: this one is for the ship, that one for hislife. Clara was the former to him, Laetitia the latter. But what ifthere might not be greater safety in holding tenaciously to Clara thanin casting her off for Laetitia? No, she had done things to set hispride throbbing in the quick. She had gone bleeding about first to one,then to another; she had betrayed him to Vernon, and to Mrs.Mountstuart; a look in the eyes of Horace De Craye said, to him aswell: to whom not? He might hold to her for vengeance; but thatappetite was short-lived in him if it ministered nothing to hispurposes. "I discard all idea of vengeance," he said, and thrilledburningly to a smart in his admiration of the man who could be somagnanimous under mortal injury; for the more admirable he, the morepitiable. He drank a drop or two of self-pity like a poison, repellingthe assaults of public pity. Clara must be given up. It must be seen bythe world that, as he felt, the thing he did was right. Laocoon of hisown serpents, he struggled to a certain magnificence of attitude in themuscular net of constrictions he flung around himself. Clara must begiven up. Oh, bright Abominable! She must be given up: but not to onewhose touch of her would be darts in the blood of the yielder, snakesin his bed: she must be given up to an extinguisher; to be the secondwife of an old-fashioned semi-recluse, disgraced in his first. And wereit publicly known that she had been cast off, and had fallen on oldVernon for a refuge, and part in spite, part in shame, part indesperation, part in a fit of good sense under the circumstances,espoused him, her beauty would not influence the world in itsjudgement. The world would know what to think. As the instinct ofself-preservation whispered to Willoughby, the world, were itrequisite, might be taught to think what it assuredly would not thinkif she should be seen tripping to the altar with Horace De Craye.Self-preservation, not vengeance, breathed that whisper. He glanced ather iniquity for a justification of it, without any desire to do her apermanent hurt: he was highly civilized: but with a strong intention togive her all the benefit of a scandal, supposing a scandal, or ordinarytattle.

  "And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, whoopened his mouth and shut his eyes."

  You hear the world? How are we to stop it from chattering? Enough thathe had no desire to harm her. Some gentle anticipations of her beingtarnished were imperative; they came spontaneously to him; otherwisethe radiance of that bright Abominable in loss would have beeninsufferable; he could not have borne it; he could never havesurrendered her. Moreover, a happy present effect was the result. Heconjured up the anticipated chatter and shrug of the world so vividlythat her beauty grew hectic with the stain, bereft of its formidablemagnetism. He could meet her calmly; he had steeled himself. Purity inwomen was his principal stipulation, and a woman puffed at, was notthe person to cause him tremours.

  Consider him indulgently: the Egoist is the Son of Himself. He islikewise the Father. And the son loves the father, the father the son;they reciprocate affection through the closest of ties; and shall theyview behaviour unkindly wounding either of them, not for each other'sdear sake abhorring the criminal? They would not injure you, but theycannot consent to see one another suffer or crave in vain. The two rubtogether in sympathy besides relationship to an intenser one. Are you,without much offending, sacrificed by them, it is on the altar of theirmutual love, to filial piety or paternal tenderness: the younger hasoffered a dainty morsel to the elder, or the elder to the younger.Absorbed in their great example of devotion do they not think of you.They are beautiful.

  Yet is it most true that the younger has the passions of youth:whereof will come division between them; and this is a tragic state.They are then pathetic. This was the state of Sir Willoughby lendingear to his elder, until he submitted to bite at the fruit proposed tohim--with how wry a mouth the venerable senior chose not to mark. Atleast, as we perceive, a half of him was ripe of wisdom in his owninterests. The cruder half had but to be obedient to the leadership ofsagacity for his interests to be secured, and a filial dispositionassisted him; painfully indeed; but the same rare quality directed thegood gentleman to swallow his pain. That the son should bewail his fatewere a dishonour to the sire. He reverenced, and submitted. Thus, tosay, consider him indulgently, is too much an appeal for charity onbehalf of one requiring but initial anatomy--a slicing in halves--toexonerate, perchance exalt him. The Egoist is our fountain-head,primeval man: the primitive is born again, the elemental reconstituted.Born again, into new conditions, the primitive may be highly polishedof men, and forfeit nothing save the roughness of his original nature.He is not only his own father, he is ours; and he is also our son. Wehave produced him, he us. Such were we, to such are we returning: notother, sings the poet, than one who toilfully works his shallop againstthe tide, "si brachia forte remisit":--let him haply relax the labourof his arms, however high up the stream, and back he goes, "in pejus",to the early principle of our being, with seeds and plants, that are ascarelessly weighed in the hand and as indiscriminately husbanded as ourhumanity.

  Poets on the other side may be cited for an assurance that theprimitive is not the degenerate: rather is he a sign of theindestructibility of the race, of the ancient energy in removingobstacles to individual growth; a sample of what we would be, had wehis concentrated power. He is the original innocent, the pure simple.It is we who have fallen; we have melted into Society, diluted ouressence, dissolved. He stands in the midst monumentally, a land-mark ofthe tough and honest old Ages, with the symbolic alphabet of strikingarms and running legs, our early language, scrawled over his person,and the glorious first flint and arrow-head for his crest: at once thespectre of the Kitchen-midden and our ripest issue.

  But Society is about him. The occasional spectacle of the primitivedangling on a rope has impressed his mind with the strength of hisnatural enemy: from which uncongenial sight he has turned shudderinghardly less to behold the blast that is blown upon a reputation whereone has been disrespectful of the many. By these means, throughmeditation on the contrast of circumstances in life, a pulse ofimagination has begun to stir, and he has entered the upper sphere orcircle of spiritual Egoism: he has become the civilized Egoist;primitive still, as sure as man has teeth, but developed in his mannerof using them.

  Degenerate or not (and there is no just reason to suppose it) SirWilloughby was a social Egoist, fiercely imaginative in whatsoeverconcerned him. He had discovered a greater realm than that of thesensual appetites, and he rushed across and around it in his conqueringperiod with an Alexander's pride. On these wind-like journeys he hadcarried Constantia, subsequently Clara; and however it may have been inthe case of Miss Durham, in that of Miss Middleton it is almost certainshe caught a glimpse of his interior from sheer fatigue in hearing himdiscourse of it. What he revealed was not the cause of her sickness:women can bear revelations--they are exciting: but the monotonousness.He slew imagination. There is no direr disaster in love than the deathof imagination. He dragged her through the labyrinths of hispenetra
lia, in his hungry coveting to be loved more and still more,more still, until imagination gave up the ghost, and he talked to herplain hearing like a monster. It must have been that; for the spell ofthe primitive upon women is masterful up to the time of contact.

  "And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, whoopened his mouth and shut his eyes."

  The urgent question was, how it was to be accomplished. Willoughbyworked at the subject with all his power of concentration: a power thathad often led him to feel and say, that as a barrister, a diplomatist,or a general, he would have won his grades: and granting him a personalinterest in the business, he might have achieved eminence: he schemedand fenced remarkably well.

  He projected a scene, following expressions of anxiety on account ofold Vernon and his future settlement: and then Clara maintaining herdoggedness, to which he was now so accustomed that he could notconceive a change in it--says he: "If you determine on breaking I giveyou back your word on one condition." Whereupon she starts: he insistson her promise: she declines: affairs resume their former footing; shefrets: she begs for the disclosure: he flatters her by telling her hisdesire to keep her in the family: she is unilluminated, but stronglymoved by curiosity: he philosophizes on marriage "What are we? poorcreatures! we must get through life as we can, doing as much good as wecan to those we love; and think as you please, I love old Vernon. Am Inot giving you the greatest possible proof of it?" She will not see.Then flatly out comes the one condition. That and no other. "TakeVernon and I release you." She refuses. Now ensues the debate, all theoratory being with him. "Is it because of his unfortunate firstmarriage? You assured me you thought no worse of him," etc. Shedeclares the proposal revolting. He can distinguish nothing that shouldoffend her in a proposal to make his cousin happy if she will not him.Irony and sarcasm relieve his emotions, but he convinces her he isdealing plainly and intends generosity. She is confused; she speaks inmaiden fashion. He touches again on Vernon's early escapade. She doesnot enjoy it. The scene closes with his bidding her reflect on it, andremember the one condition of her release. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson,now reduced to believe that he burns to be free, is then called in foran interview with Clara. His aunts Eleanor and Isabel besiege her.Laetitia in passionate earnest besieges her. Her father is wrought onto besiege her. Finally Vernon is attacked by Willoughby and Mrs.Mountstuart:--and here, Willoughby chose to think, was the maindifficulty. But the girl has money; she is agreeable; Vernon likes her;she is fond of his "Alps", they have tastes in common, he likes herfather, and in the end he besieges her. Will she yield? De Craye isabsent. There is no other way of shunning a marriage she isincomprehensibly but frantically averse to. She is in the toils. Herfather will stay at Patterne Hall as long as his host desires it. Shehesitates, she is overcome; in spite of a certain nausea due toVernon's preceding alliance, she yields.

  Willoughby revolved the entire drama in Clara's presence. It helped himto look on her coolly. Conducting her to the dinner-table, he spoke ofCrossjay, not unkindly; and at table, he revolved the set of sceneswith a heated animation that took fire from the wine and the face ofhis friend Horace, while he encouraged Horace to be flowingly Irish. Henipped the fellow good-humouredly once or twice, having never felt sofriendly to him since the day of his arrival; but the position ofcritic is instinctively taken by men who do not flow: and Patterne Portkept Dr Middleton in a benevolent reserve when Willoughby decided thatsomething said by De Craye was not new, and laughingly accused him offailing to consult his anecdotal notebook for the double-cross to hislast sprightly sally. "Your sallies are excellent, Horace, but spare usyour Aunt Sallies!" De Craye had no repartee, nor did Dr. Middletonchallenge a pun. We have only to sharpen our wits to trip yourseductive rattler whenever we may choose to think proper; andevidently, if we condescended to it, we could do better than he. Thecritic who has hatched a witticism is impelled to this opinion. Judgingby the smiles of the ladies, they thought so, too.

  Shortly before eleven o'clock Dr. Middleton made a Spartan standagainst the offer of another bottle of Port. The regulation couple ofbottles had been consumed in equal partnership, and the Rev. Doctorand his host were free to pay a ceremonial visit to the drawing-room,where they were not expected. A piece of work of the elder ladies, asilken boudoir sofa-rug, was being examined, with high approval of thetwo younger. Vernon and Colonel De Craye had gone out in search ofCrossjay, one to Mr. Dale's cottage, the other to call at the head andunder-gamekeeper's. They were said to be strolling and smoking, for thenight was fine. Willoughby left the room and came back with the key ofCrossjay's door in his pocket. He foresaw that the delinquent might beof service to him.

  Laetitia and Clara sang together. Laetitia was flushed, Clara pale. Ateleven they saluted the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. Willoughby said"Good-night" to each of them, contrasting as he did so the downcastlook of Laetitia with Clara's frigid directness. He divined that theywere off to talk over their one object of common interest, Crossjay.Saluting his aunts, he took up the rug, to celebrate their diligenceand taste; and that he might make Dr. Middleton impatient for bed, heprovoked him to admire it, held it out and laid it out, and caused thecourteous old gentleman some confusion in hitting on fresh terms ofcommendation.

  Before midnight the room was empty. Ten minutes later Willoughby paidit a visit, and found it untenanted by the person he had engaged to bethere. Vexed by his disappointment, he paced up and down, and chancedabstractedly to catch the rug in his hand; for what purpose, he mightwell ask himself; admiration of ladies' work, in their absence, wasunlikely to occur to him. Nevertheless, the touch of the warm, softsilk was meltingly feminine. A glance at the mantel-piece clock toldhim Laetitia was twenty minutes behind the hour. Her remissness mightendanger all his plans, alter the whole course of his life. The coloursin which he painted her were too lively to last; the madness in hishead threatened to subside. Certain it was that he could not be ready asecond night for the sacrifice he had been about to perform.

  The clock was at the half hour after twelve. He flung the silken thingon the central ottoman, extinguished the lamps, and walked out of theroom, charging the absent Laetitia to bear her misfortune with aconsciousness of deserving it.