MISS MIDDLETON AND MR. VERNON WHITFORD
Looking upward, not quite awakened out of a transient doze, at a fair
head circled in dazzling blossom, one may temporize awhile with common
sense, and take it for a vision after the eyes have regained direction
of the mind. Vernon did so until the plastic vision interwound with
reality alarmingly. This is the embrace of a Melusine who will soon
have the brain if she is encouraged. Slight dalliance with her makes
the very diminutive seem as big as life. He jumped to his feet, rattled
his throat, planted firmness on his brows and mouth, and attacked the
dream-giving earth with tremendous long strides, that his blood might
be lively at the throne of understanding. Miss Middleton and young
Crossjay were within hail: it was her face he had seen, and still the
idea of a vision, chased from his reasonable wits, knocked hard and
again for readmission. There was little for a man of humble mind
toward the sex to think of in the fact of a young lady's bending rather
low to peep at him asleep, except that the poise of her slender figure,
between an air of spying and of listening, vividly recalled his
likening of her to the Mountain Echo. Man or maid sleeping in the open
air provokes your tiptoe curiosity. Men, it is known, have in that
state cruelly been kissed; and no rights are bestowed on them, they are
teased by a vapourish rapture; what has happened to them the poor
fellows barely divine: they have a crazy step from that day. But a
vision is not so distracting; it is our own, we can put it aside and
return to it, play at rich and poor with it, and are not to be summoned
before your laws and rules for secreting it in our treasury. Besides,
it is the golden key of all the possible; new worlds expand beneath the
dawn it brings us. Just outside reality, it illumines, enriches and
softens real things;--and to desire it in preference to the simple fact
is a damning proof of enervation.
Such was Vernon's winding up of his brief drama of fantasy. He was
aware of the fantastical element in him and soon had it under. Which
of us who is of any worth is without it? He had not much vanity to
trouble him, and passion was quiet, so his task was not gigantic.
Especially be it remarked, that he was a man of quick pace, the
sovereign remedy for the dispersing of the mental fen-mist. He had
tried it and knew that nonsense is to be walked off.
Near the end of the park young Crossjay overtook him, and after acting
the 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 what
fellows girls are!--here she comes as if nothing had happened, and I
saw her feel at her side."
Clara was shaking her head to express a denial. "I am not at all
unwell," she said, when she came near. "I guessed Crossjay's business
in running up to you; he's a good-for-nothing, officious boy. I was
tired, and rested for a moment."
Crossjay peered at her eyelids. Vernon looked away and said: "Are you
too 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 the
double, but she with her short, swift, equal steps glided along easily
on a fine by his shoulder, and he groaned to think that of all the
girls of earth this one should have been chosen for the position of
fine 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. You
want 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 are
conquered. I can plod. Anything to be high up!"
"Well, there you have the secret of good work: to plod on and still
keep 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 have
these most woeful captives? Horror shrouds it, and shame reddens
through the folds to tell of innermost horror.
"Take me back to the mountains, if you please, Mr. Whitford," Miss
Middleton said, fallen out of sympathy with him. "Captives have death
in 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 will
you talk of skeletons! The very name of mountain seems life in
comparison with any other subject."
"I assure you," said Vernon, with the fervour of a man lighting on an
actual truth in his conversation with a young lady, "it's not the first
time I have thought you would be at home in the Alps. You would walk
and climb as well as you dance."
She liked to hear Clara Middleton talked of, and of her having been
thought of, and giving him friendly eyes, barely noticing that he was
in a glow, she said: "If you speak so encouragingly I shall fancy we
are 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 earnest
tone.
Miss Middleton suggested a lady's mountain first, for a trial. "And
then, if you think well enough of me--if I have not stumbled more than
twice, or asked more than ten times how far it is from the top, I
should 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 for
the strenuous exercise of her climbing powers because she loved Italian
colour; and it seemed an exceedingly good reason to the genial
imagination 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 with
the halting affirmative.
She inquired wonderingly why he spoke in apparent hesitation.
"Well, you have French feet, for example: French wits, French
impatience," 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 can
say for it!" she dropped a dramatic sigh.
Had he been willing she would have continued the theme, for the
pleasure a poor creature long gnawing her sensations finds in seeing
herself from the outside. It fell away. After a silence, she could not
renew it; and he was evidently indifferent, having to his own
satisfaction dissected and stamped her a foreigner. With it passed her
holiday. 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 and she corrected it. If she had
not, she would have made a greater mistake."
"The manner. . ."
"That was bad--as far as we know. The world has not much right to
judge. A false start must now and then be made. It's better not to take
notice 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 the
subject: young ladies are enigmas to me; I fancy they must have a
natural perception of the husband suitable to them, and the reverse;
and if they have a certain degree of courage, it follows that they
please 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 must
break our engagement--I have never been put to the proof, but to
suppose 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 a
girl to come to such a resolution without previously showing signs of
it to her . . . the man she is engaged to. I think it unfair to engage
a girl for longer than a week or two, just time enough for her
preparations and publications."
"If he is always intent on himself, signs are likely to be unheeded by
him," 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 of
inconstancy."
"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 to
the historian, who is bound to be a professional moralist and put pleas
of human nature out of the scales. The lady in question may have been
to blame, but no hearts were broken, and here we have four happy
instead of two miserable."
His persecuting geniality of countenance appealed to her to confirm
this judgement by results, and she nodded and said: "Four," as the
awe-stricken speak.
From that moment until young Crossjay fell into the green-rutted lane
from a tree, and was got on his legs half stunned, with a hanging lip
and a face like the inside of a flayed eel-skin, she might have been
walking in the desert, and alone, for the pleasure she had in society.
They led the fated lad home between them, singularly drawn together by
their joint ministrations to him, in which her delicacy had to stand
fire, and sweet good-nature made naught of any trial. They were hand in
hand with the little fellow as physician and professional nurse.