CONTAINS AN INSTANCE OF THE GENEROSITY OF WILLOUGHBY
Observers of a gathering complication and a character in action
commonly resemble gleaners who are intent only on picking up the cars
of grain and huddling their store. Disinterestedly or interestedly they
wax over-eager for the little trifles, and make too much of them.
Observers should begin upon the precept, that not all we see is worth
hoarding, and that the things we see are to be weighed in the scale
with what we know of the situation, before we commit ourselves to a
measurement. And they may be accurate observers without being good
judges. They do not think so, and their bent is to glean hurriedly and
form conclusions as hasty, when their business should be sift at each
step, and question.
Miss Dale seconded Vernon Whitford in the occupation of counting looks
and tones, and noting scraps of dialogue. She was quite disinterested;
he quite believed that he was; to this degree they were competent for
their post; and neither of them imagined they could be personally
involved in the dubious result of the scenes they witnessed. They were
but anxious observers, diligently collecting. She fancied Clara
susceptible to his advice: he had fancied it, and was considering it
one of his vanities. Each mentally compared Clara's abruptness in
taking them into her confidence with her abstention from any secret
word since the arrival of Colonel De Craye. Sir Willoughby requested
Laetitia to give Miss Middleton as much of her company as she could;
showing that he was on the alert. Another Constantia Durham seemed
beating her wings for flight. The suddenness of the evident intimacy
between Clara and Colonel De Craye shocked Laetitia; their acquaintance
could be computed by hours. Yet at their first interview she had
suspected the possibility of worse than she now supposed to be; and she
had begged Vernon not immediately to quit the Hall, in consequence of
that faint suspicion. She had been led to it by meeting Clara and De
Craye at her cottage-gate, and finding them as fluent and
laughter-breathing in conversation as friends. Unable to realize the
rapid advance to a familiarity, more ostensible than actual, of two
lively natures, after such an introduction as they had undergone: and
one of the two pining in a drought of liveliness: Laetitia listened to
their wager of nothing at all--a no against a yes--in the case of poor
Flitch; and Clara's, "Willoughby will not forgive"; and De Craye's "Oh,
he's human": and the silence of Clara and De Craye's hearty cry,
"Flitch shall be a gentleman's coachman in his old seat or I haven't a
tongue!" to which there was a negative of Clara's head: and it then
struck Laetitia that this young betrothed lady, whose alienated heart
acknowledged no lord an hour earlier, had met her match, and, as the
observer would have said, her destiny. She judged of the alarming
possibility by the recent revelation to herself of Miss Middleton's
character, and by Clara's having spoken to a man as well (to Vernon),
and previously. That a young lady should speak on the subject of the
inner holies to a man, though he were Vernon Whitford, was incredible
to Laetitia; but it had to be accepted as one of the dread facts of our
inexplicable life, which drag our bodies at their wheels and leave our
minds exclaiming. Then, if Clara could speak to Vernon, which Laetitia
would not have done for a mighty bribe, she could speak to De Craye,
Laetitia thought deductively: this being the logic of untrained heads
opposed to the proceeding whereby their condemnatory deduction
hangs.--Clara must have spoken to De Craye!
Laetitia remembered how winning and prevailing Miss Middleton could be
in her confidences. A gentleman hearing her might forget his duty to
his friend, she thought, for she had been strangely swayed by Clara:
ideas of Sir Willoughby that she had never before imagined herself to
entertain had been sown in her, she thought; not asking herself whether
the searchingness of the young lady had struck them and bidden them
rise from where they lay imbedded. Very gentle women take in that
manner impressions of persons, especially of the worshipped person,
wounding them; like the new fortifications with embankments of soft
earth, where explosive missiles bury themselves harmlessly until they
are plucked out; and it may be a reason why those injured ladies
outlive a Clara Middleton similarly battered.
Vernon less than Laetitia took into account that Clara was in a state
of fever, scarcely reasonable. Her confidences to him he had excused,
as a piece of conduct, in sympathy with her position. He had not been
greatly astonished by the circumstances confided; and, on the whole, as
she was excited and unhappy, he excused her thoroughly; he could have
extolled her: it was natural that she should come to him, brave in her
to speak so frankly, a compliment that she should condescend to treat
him as a friend. Her position excused her widely. But she was not
excused for making a confidential friend of De Craye. There was a
difference.
Well, the difference was, that De Craye had not the smarting sense of
honour with women which our meditator had: an impartial judiciary, it
will be seen: and he discriminated between himself and the other
justly: but sensation surging to his brain at the same instant, he
reproached Miss Middleton for not perceiving that difference as
clearly, before she betrayed her position to De Craye, which Vernon
assumed that she had done. Of course he did. She had been guilty of it
once: why, then, in the mind of an offended friend, she would be guilty
of it twice. There was evidence. Ladies, fatally predestined to appeal
to that from which they have to be guarded, must expect severity when
they run off their railed highroad: justice is out of the question:
man's brains might, his blood cannot administer it to them. By chilling
him to the bone they may get what they cry for. But that is a method
deadening to their point of appeal.
I the evening, Miss Middleton and the colonel sang a duet. She had of
late declined to sing. Her voice was noticeably firm. Sir Willoughby
said to her, "You have recovered your richness of tone, Clara." She
smiled and appeared happy in pleasing him. He named a French ballad.
She went to the music-rack and gave the song unasked. He should have
been satisfied, for she said to him at the finish, "Is that as you like
it?" He broke from a murmur to Miss Dale, "Admirable." Some one
mentioned a Tuscan popular canzone. She waited for Willoughby's
approval, and took his nod for a mandate.
Traitress! he could have bellowed.
He had read of this characteristic of caressing obedience of the women
about to deceive. He had in his time profited by it.
"Is it intuitively or by their experience that our neighbours across
Channel surpass us in the knowledge of your sex?" he said to Miss Dale,
and talked through Clara's apostrophe to the 'Santissinia Virgine
Maria,' still treating temper as a part of policy, without any effect
on Clara; and that was matter for sickly green reflections. The lover
who cannot wound has indeed lost anchorage; he is woefully adrift: he
stabs air, which is to stab himself. Her complacent proof-armour bids
him know himself supplanted.
During the short conversational period before the ladies retired for
the night, Miss Eleanor alluded to the wedding by chance. Miss Isabel
replied to her, and addressed an interrogation to Clara. De Craye
foiled it adroitly. Clara did not utter a syllable. Her bosom lifted to
a wavering height and sank. Subsequently she looked at De Craye
vacantly, like a person awakened, but she looked. She was astonished by
his readiness, and thankful for the succour. Her look was cold, wide,
unfixed, with nothing of gratitude or of personal in it. The look,
however, stood too long for Willoughby's endurance.
Ejaculating "Porcelain!" he uncrossed his legs; a signal for the ladies
Eleanor and Isabel to retire. Vernon bowed to Clara as she was rising.
He had not been once in her eyes, and he expected a partial recognition
at the good-night. She said it, turning her head to Miss Isabel, who
was condoling once more with Colonel De Craye over the ruins of his
wedding-present, the porcelain vase, which she supposed to have been in
Willoughby's mind when he displayed the signal. Vernon walked off to
his room, dark as one smitten blind: bile tumet jecur: her stroke of
neglect hit him there where a blow sends thick obscuration upon
eyeballs and brain alike.
Clara saw that she was paining him and regretted it when they were
separated. That was her real friend! But he prescribed too hard a task.
Besides, she had done everything he demanded of her, except the
consenting to stay where she was and wear out Willoughby, whose
dexterity wearied her small stock of patience. She had vainly tried
remonstrance and supplication with her father hoodwinked by his host,
she refused to consider how; through wine?--the thought was
repulsive.
Nevertheless, she was drawn to the edge of it by the contemplation of
her scheme of release. If Lucy Darleton was at home; if Lucy invited
her to come: if she flew to Lucy: oh! then her father would have cause
for anger. He would not remember that but for hateful wine! . . .
What was there in this wine of great age which expelled reasonableness,
fatherliness? He was her dear father: she was his beloved child: yet
something divided them; something closed her father's ears to her: and
could it be that incomprehensible seduction of the wine? Her
dutifulness cried violently no. She bowed, stupefied, to his arguments
for remaining awhile, and rose clear-headed and rebellious with the
reminiscence of the many strong reasons she had urged against them.
The strangeness of men, young and old, the little things (she regarded
a grand wine as a little thing) twisting and changing them, amazed her.
And these are they by whom women are abused for variability! Only the
most imperious reasons, never mean trifles, move women, thought she.
Would women do an injury to one they loved for oceans of that--ah, pah!
And women must respect men. They necessarily respect a father. "My
dear, dear father!" Clara said in the solitude of her chamber, musing
on all his goodness, and she endeavoured to reconcile the desperate
sentiments of the position he forced her to sustain, with those of a
venerating daughter. The blow which was to fall on him beat on her
heavily in advance. "I have not one excuse!" she said, glancing at
numbers and a mighty one. But the idea of her father suffering at her
hands cast her down lower than self-justification. She sought to
imagine herself sparing him. It was too fictitious.
The sanctuary of her chamber, the pure white room so homely to her
maidenly feelings, whispered peace, only to follow the whisper with
another that went through her swelling to a roar, and leaving her as a
suing of music unkindly smitten. If she stayed in this house her
chamber would no longer be a sanctuary. Dolorous bondage! Insolent
death is not worse. Death's worm we cannot keep away, but when he has
us we are numb to dishonour, happily senseless.
Youth weighed her eyelids to sleep, though she was quivering, and
quivering she awoke to the sound of her name beneath her window. "I
can love still, for I love him," she said, as she luxuriated in young
Crossjay's boy's voice, again envying him his bath in the lake waters,
which seemed to her to have the power to wash away grief and chains.
Then it was that she resolved to let Crossjay see the last of her in
this place. He should be made gleeful by doing her a piece of service;
he should escort her on her walk to the railway station next morning,
thence be sent flying for a long day's truancy, with a little note of
apology on his behalf that she would write for him to deliver to Vernon
at night.
Crossjay came running to her after his breakfast with Mrs Montague, the
housekeeper, to tell her he had called her up.
"You won't to-morrow: I shall be up far ahead of you," said she; and
musing on her father, while Crossjay vowed to be up the first, she
thought it her duty to plunge into another expostulation.
Willoughby had need of Vernon on private affairs. Dr. Middleton betook
himself as usual to the library, after answering "I will ruin you yet,"
to Willoughby's liberal offer to despatch an order to London for any
books he might want.
His fine unruffled air, as of a mountain in still morning beams, made
Clara not indisposed to a preliminary scene with Willoughby that might
save her from distressing him, but she could not stop Willoughby; as
little could she look an invitation. He stood in the Hall, holding
Vernon by the arm. She passed him; he did not speak, and she entered
the library.
"What now, my dear? what is it?" said Dr. Middleton, seeing that the
door was shut on them.
"Nothing, papa," she replied, calmly.
"You've not locked the door, my child? You turned something there: try
the handle."
"I assure you, papa, the door is not locked."
"Mr. Whitford will be here instantly. We are engaged on tough matter.
Women have not, and opinion is universal that they never will have, a
conception of the value of time."
"We are vain and shallow, my dear papa."
"No, no, not you, Clara. But I suspect you to require to learn by
having work in progress how important is . . . is a quiet commencement
of the day's task. There is not a scholar who will not tell you so. We
must have a retreat. These invasions!--So you intend to have another
ride to-day? They do you good. To-morrow we dine with Mrs. Mountstuart
Jenkinson, an estimable person indeed, though I do not perfectly
understand our accepting.--You have not to accuse me of sitting over
wine last night, my Clara! I never do it, unless I am appealed to for
my judgement upon a wine."
"I have come to entreat you to take me away, papa."
In the midst of the storm aroused by this renewal of perplexity, Dr
Middleton replaced a book his elbow had knocked over in his haste to
dash the hair off his forehead, crying: "Whither? To what spot? That
reading of guide-books, and idle people's notes of Travel, and
picturesque correspondence in the newspapers, unsettles man and maid.
My objection to the living in hotels is known. I do not hesitate to say
that I do cordially abhor it. I have had penitentially to submit to it
in your dear mother's time, [Greek], up to the full ten thousand times.
But will you not comprehend that to the older man his miseries are
multiplied by his years? But is it utterly useless to solicit your
sympathy with an old man, Clara?"
"General Darleton will take us in, papa."
"His table is detestable. I say nothing of that; but his wine is
poison. Let that pass--I should rather say, let it not pass!--but our
political views are not in accord. True, we are not under the
obligation to propound them in presence, but we are destitute of an
opinion in common. We have no discourse. Military men have produced, or
diverged in, noteworthy epicures; they are often devout; they have
blossomed in lettered men: they are gentlemen; the country rightly
holds them in honour; but, in fine, I reject the proposal to go to
General Darleton.--Tears?"
"No, papa."
"I do hope not. Here we have everything man can desire; without
contest, an excellent host. You have your transitory tea-cup tempests,
which you magnify to hurricanes, in the approved historic manner of the
book of Cupid. And all the better; I repeat, it is the better that you
should have them over in the infancy of the alliance. Come in!" Dr.
Middleton shouted cheerily in response to a knock at the door.
He feared the door was locked: he had a fear that his daughter intended
to keep it locked.
"Clara!" he cried.
She reluctantly turned the handle, and the ladies Eleanor and Isabel
came in, apologizing with as much coherence as Dr. Middleton ever
expected from their sex. They wished to speak to Clara, but they
declined to take her away. In vain the Rev. Doctor assured them she
was at their service; they protested that they had very few words to
say, and would not intrude one moment further than to speak them.
Like a shy deputation of young scholars before the master, these very
words to come were preceded by none at all; a dismal and trying cause;
refreshing however to Dr. Middleton, who joyfully anticipated that the
ladies could be induced to take away Clara when they had finished.
"We may appear to you a little formal," Miss Isabel began, and turned
to her sister.
"We have no intention to lay undue weight on our mission, if mission it
can be called," said Miss Eleanor.
"Is it entrusted to you by Willoughby?" said Clara.
"Dear child, that you may know it all the more earnest with us, and our
personal desire to contribute to your happiness: therefore does
Willoughby entrust the speaking of it to us."
Hereupon the sisters alternated in addressing Clara, and she gazed from
one to the other, piecing fragments of empty signification to get the
full meaning when she might.
"--And in saying your happiness, dear Clara, we have our Willoughby's
in view, which is dependent on yours."
"--And we never could sanction that our own inclinations should stand
in the way."
"--No. We love the old place; and if it were only our punishment for
loving it too idolatrously, we should deem it ground enough for our
departure."
"--Without, really, an idea of unkindness; none, not any."
"--Young wives naturally prefer to be undisputed queens of their own
establishment."
"--Youth and age!"
"But I," said Clara, "have never mentioned, never had a thought . . ."
"--You have, dear child, a lover who in his solicitude for your
happiness both sees what you desire and what is due to you."
"--And for us, Clara, to recognize what is due to you is to act on it."
"--Besides, dear, a sea-side cottage has always been one of our
dreams."
"--We have not to learn that we are a couple of old maids, incongruous
associates for a young wife in the government of a great house."
"--With our antiquated notions, questions of domestic management might
arise, and with the best will in the world to be harmonious!"
"--So, dear Clara, consider it settled."
"--From time to time gladly shall we be your guests."
"--Your guests, dear, not censorious critics."
"And you think me such an Egoist!--dear ladies! The suggestion of so
cruel a piece of selfishness wounds me. I would not have had you leave
the Hall. I like your society; I respect you. My complaint, if I had
one, would be, that you do not sufficiently assert yourselves. I could
have wished you to be here for an example to me. I would not have
allowed you to go. What can he think of me! Did Willoughby speak of it
this morning?"
It was hard to distinguish which was the completer dupe of these two
echoes of one another in worship of a family idol.
"Willoughby," Miss Eleanor presented herself to be stamped with the
title hanging ready for the first that should open her lips, "our
Willoughby is observant--he is ever generous--and he is not less
forethoughtful. His arrangement is for our good on all sides."
"An index is enough," said Miss Isabel, appearing in her turn the
monster dupe.
"You will not have to leave, dear ladies. Were I mistress here I should
oppose it."
"Willoughby blames himself for not reassuring you before."
"Indeed we blame ourselves for not undertaking to go."
"Did he speak of it first this morning?" said Clara; but she could draw
no reply to that from them. They resumed the duet, and she resigned
herself to have her cars boxed with nonsense.
"So, it is understood?" said Miss Eleanor.
"I see your kindness, ladies."
"And I am to be Aunt Eleanor again?"
"And I Aunt Isabel?"
Clara could have wrung her hands at the impediment which prohibited her
delicacy from telling them why she could not name them so as she had
done in the earlier days of Willoughby's courtship. She kissed them
warmly, ashamed of kissing, though the warmth was real.
They retired with a flow of excuses to Dr. Middleton for disturbing
him. He stood at the door to bow them out, and holding the door for
Clara, to wind up the procession, discovered her at a far corner of the
room.
He was debating upon the advisability of leaving her there, when Vernon
Whitford crossed the hall from the laboratory door, a mirror of himself
in his companion air of discomposure.
That was not important, so long as Vernon was a check on Clara; but the
moment Clara, thus baffled, moved to quit the library, Dr. Middleton
felt the horror of having an uncomfortable face opposite.
"No botheration, I hope? It's the worst thing possible to work on.
Where have you been? I suspect your weak point is not to arm yourself
in triple brass against bother and worry, and no good work can you do
unless you do. You have come out of that laboratory."
"I have, sir.--Can I get you any book?" Vernon said to Clara.
She thanked him, promising to depart immediately.
"Now you are at the section of Italian literature, my love," said Dr
Middleton. "Well, Mr. Whitford, the laboratory--ah!--where the amount
of labour done within the space of a year would not stretch an electric
current between this Hall and the railway station: say, four miles,
which I presume the distance to be. Well, sir, and a dilettantism
costly in time and machinery is as ornamental as foxes' tails and
deers' horns to an independent gentleman whose fellows are contented
with the latter decorations for their civic wreath. Willoughby, let me
remark, has recently shown himself most considerate for my girl. As far
as I could gather--I have been listening to a dialogue of ladies--he is
as generous as he is discreet. There are certain combats in which to be
the one to succumb is to claim the honours;--and that is what women
will not learn. I doubt their seeing the glory of it."
"I have heard of it; I have been with Willoughby," Vernon said,
hastily, to shield Clara from her father's allusive attacks. He wished
to convey to her that his interview with Willoughby had not been
profitable in her interests, and that she had better at once, having
him present to support her, pour out her whole heart to her father. But
how was it to be conveyed? She would not meet his eyes, and he was too
poor an intriguer to be ready on the instant to deal out the verbal
obscurities which are transparencies to one.
"I shall regret it, if Willoughby has annoyed you, for he stands high
in my favour," said Dr. Middleton.
Clara dropped a book. Her father started higher than the nervous
impulse warranted in his chair. Vernon tried to win a glance, and she
was conscious of his effort, but her angry and guilty feelings,
prompting her resolution to follow her own counsel, kept her eyelids on
the defensive.
"I don't say he annoys me, sir. I am here to give him my advice, and if
he does not accept it I have no right to be annoyed. Willoughby seems
annoyed that Colonel De Craye should talk of going to-morrow or next
day."
"He likes his friends about him. Upon my word, a man of a more genial
heart you might march a day without finding. But you have it on the
forehead, Mr. Whitford."
"Oh! no, sir."
"There," Dr. Middleton drew his finger along his brows.
Vernon felt along his own, and coined an excuse for their blackness;
not aware that the direction of his mind toward Clara pushed him to a
kind of clumsy double meaning, while he satisfied an inward and craving
wrath, as he said: "By the way, I have been racking my head; I must
apply to you, sir. I have a line, and I am uncertain of the run of the
line. Will this pass, do you think?
'In Asination's tongue he asinates';
signifying that he excels any man of us at donkey-dialect."
After a decent interval for the genius of criticism to seem to have
been sitting under his frown, Dr. Middleton rejoined with sober
jocularity: "No, sir, it will not pass; and your uncertainty in regard
to the run of the line would only be extended were the line centipedal.
Our recommendation is, that you erase it before the arrival of the
ferule. This might do:
'In Assignation's name he assignats';
signifying that he pre-eminently flourishes hypothetical promises, to
pay by appointment. That might pass. But you will forbear to cite me
for your authority."
"The line would be acceptable if I could get it to apply," said Vernon.
"Or this . . ." Dr. Middleton was offering a second suggestion, but
Clara fled, astonished at men as she never yet had been. Why, in a
burning world they would be exercising their minds in absurdities! And
those two were scholars, learned men! And both knew they were in the
presence of a soul in a tragic fever!
A minute after she had closed the door they were deep in their work.
Dr. Middleton forgot his alternative line.
"Nothing serious?" he said in reproof of the want of honourable
clearness on Vernon's brows.
"I trust not, sir; it's a case for common sense."
"And you call that not serious?"
"I take Hermann's praise of the versus dochmiachus to be not only
serious but unexaggerated," said Vernon.
Dr. Middleton assented and entered on the voiceful ground of Greek
metres, shoving your dry dusty world from his elbow.