CONTAINS CLEVER FENCING AND INTIMATIONS OF THE NEED FOR IT
That woman, Lady Busshe, had predicted, after the event, Constantia
Durham's defection. She had also, subsequent to Willoughby's departure
on his travels, uttered sceptical things concerning his rooted
attachment to Laetitia Dale. In her bitter vulgarity, that beaten rival
of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson for the leadership of the county had
taken his nose for a melancholy prognostic of his fortunes; she had
recently played on his name: she had spoken the hideous English of his
fate. Little as she knew, she was alive to the worst interpretation of
appearances. No other eulogy occurred to her now than to call him the
best of cousins, because Vernon Whitford was housed and clothed and fed
by him. She had nothing else to say for a man she thought luckless!
She was a woman barren of wit, stripped of style, but she was wealthy
and a gossip--a forge of showering sparks--and she carried Lady Culmer
with her. The two had driven from his house to spread the malignant
rumour abroad; already they blew the biting world on his raw wound.
Neither of them was like Mrs. Mountstuart, a witty woman, who could be
hoodwinked; they were dull women, who steadily kept on their own scent
of the fact, and the only way to confound such inveterate forces was to
be ahead of them, and seize and transform the expected fact, and
astonish them, when they came up to him, with a totally unanticipated
fact.
"You see, you were in error, ladies."
"And so we were, Sir Willoughby, and we acknowledge it. We never could
have guessed that!"
Thus the phantom couple in the future delivered themselves, as well
they might at the revelation. He could run far ahead.
Ay, but to combat these dolts, facts had to be encountered, deeds done,
in groaning earnest. These representatives of the pig-sconces of the
population judged by circumstances: airy shows and seems had no effect
on them. Dexterity of fence was thrown away.
A flying peep at the remorseless might of dulness in compelling us to a
concrete performance counter to our inclinations, if we would deceive
its terrible instinct, gave Willoughby for a moment the survey of a
sage. His intensity of personal feeling struck so vivid an illumination
of mankind at intervals that he would have been individually wise, had
he not been moved by the source of his accurate perceptions to a
personal feeling of opposition to his own sagacity. He loathed and he
despised the vision, so his mind had no benefit of it, though he
himself was whipped along. He chose rather (and the choice is open to
us all) to be flattered by the distinction it revealed between himself
and mankind.
But if he was not as others were, why was he discomfited, solicitous,
miserable? To think that it should be so, ran dead against his
conqueror's theories wherein he had been trained, which, so long as he
gained success awarded success to native merit, grandeur to the grand
in soul, as light kindles light: nature presents the example. His
early training, his bright beginning of life, had taught him to look to
earth's principal fruits as his natural portion, and it was owing to a
girl that he stood a mark for tongues, naked, wincing at the possible
malignity of a pair of harridans. Why not whistle the girl away?
Why, then he would be free to enjoy, careless, younger than his youth
in the rebound to happiness!
And then would his nostrils begin to lift and sniff at the creeping up
of a thick pestiferous vapour. Then in that volume of stench would he
discern the sullen yellow eye of malice. A malarious earth would hunt
him all over it. The breath of the world, the world's view of him, was
partly his vital breath, his view of himself. The ancestry of the
tortured man had bequeathed him this condition of high civilization
among their other bequests. Your withered contracted Egoists of the hut
and the grot reck not of public opinion; they crave but for liberty and
leisure to scratch themselves and soothe an excessive scratch.
Willoughby was expansive, a blooming one, born to look down upon a
tributary world, and to exult in being looked to. Do we wonder at his
consternation in the prospect of that world's blowing foul on him?
Princes have their obligations to teach them they are mortal, and the
brilliant heir of a tributary world is equally enchained by the homage
it brings him;--more, inasmuch as it is immaterial, elusive, not
gathered by the tax, and he cannot capitally punish the treasonable
recusants. Still must he be brilliant; he must court his people. He
must ever, both in his reputation and his person, aching though he be,
show them a face and a leg.
The wounded gentleman shut himself up in his laboratory, where he could
stride to and fro, and stretch out his arms for physical relief, secure
from observation of his fantastical shapes, under the idea that he was
meditating. There was perhaps enough to make him fancy it in the heavy
fire of shots exchanged between his nerves and the situation; there
were notable flashes. He would not avow that he was in an agony: it was
merely a desire for exercise.
Quintessence of worldliness, Mrs. Mountstuart appeared through his
farthest window, swinging her skirts on a turn at the end of the lawn,
with Horace De Craye smirking beside her. And the woman's vaunted
penetration was unable to detect the histrionic Irishism of the fellow.
Or she liked him for his acting and nonsense; nor she only. The voluble
beast was created to snare women. Willoughby became smitten with an
adoration of stedfastness in women. The incarnation of that divine
quality crossed his eyes. She was clad in beauty. A horrible
nondescript convulsion composed of yawn and groan drove him to his
instruments, to avert a renewal of the shock; and while arranging and
fixing them for their unwonted task, he compared himself advantageously
with men like Vernon and De Craye, and others of the county, his
fellows in the hunting-field and on the Magistrate's bench, who neither
understood nor cared for solid work, beneficial practical work, the
work of Science.
He was obliged to relinquish it: his hand shook.
"Experiments will not advance much at this rate," he said, casting the
noxious retardation on his enemies.
It was not to be contested that he must speak with Mrs Mountstuart,
however he might shrink from the trial of his facial muscles. Her not
coming to him seemed ominous: nor was her behaviour at the
luncheon-table quite obscure. She had evidently instigated the
gentlemen to cross and counterchatter Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer. For
what purpose?
Clara's features gave the answer.
They were implacable. And he could be the same.
In the solitude of his room he cried right out: "I swear it, I will
never yield her to Horace De Craye! She shall feel some of my torments,
and try to get the better of them by knowing she deserves them." He had
spoken it, and it was an oath upon the record.
Desire to do her intolerable hurt became an ecstasy in his veins, and
produced another stretching fit that terminated in a violent shake of
the body and limbs; during which he was a spectacle for Mrs.
Mountstuart at one of the windows. He laughed as he went to her,
saying: "No, no work to-day; it won't be done, positively refuses."
"I am taking the Professor away," said she; "he is fidgety about the
cold he caught."
Sir Willoughby stepped out to her. "I was trying at a bit of work for
an hour, not to be idle all day."
"You work in that den of yours every day?"
"Never less than an hour, if I can snatch it."
"It is a wonderful resource!"
The remark set him throbbing and thinking that a prolongation of his
crisis exposed him to the approaches of some organic malady, possibly
heart-disease.
"A habit," he said. "In there I throw off the world."
"We shall see some results in due time."
"I promise none: I like to be abreast of the real knowledge of my day,
that is all."
"And a pearl among country gentlemen!"
"In your gracious consideration, my dear lady. Generally speaking, it
would be more advisable to become a chatterer and keep an anecdotal
note-book. I could not do it, simply because I could not live with my
own emptiness for the sake of making an occasional display of
fireworks. I aim at solidity. It is a narrow aim, no doubt; not much
appreciated."
"Laetitia Dale appreciates it."
A smile of enforced ruefulness, like a leaf curling in heat, wrinkled
his mouth.
Why did she not speak of her conversation with Clara?
"Have they caught Crossjay?" he said.
"Apparently they are giving chase to him."
The likelihood was, that Clara had been overcome by timidity.
"Must you leave us?"
"I think it prudent to take Professor Crooklyn away."
"He still . . . ?"
"The extraordinary resemblance!"
"A word aside to Dr. Middleton will dispel that."
"You are thoroughly good."
This hateful encomium of commiseration transfixed him. Then she knew of
his calamity!
"Philosophical," he said, "would be the proper term, I think."
"Colonel De Craye, by the way, promises me a visit when he leaves you."
"To-morrow?"
"The earlier the better. He is too captivating; he is delightful. He
won me in five minutes. I don't accuse him. Nature gifted him to cast
the spell. We are weak women, Sir Willoughby."
She knew!
"Like to like: the witty to the witty, ma'am."
"You won't compliment me with a little bit of jealousy?"
"I forbear from complimenting him."
"Be philosophical, of course, if you have the philosophy."
"I pretend to it. Probably I suppose myself to succeed because I have
no great requirement of it; I cannot say. We are riddles to ourselves."
Mrs. Mountstuart pricked the turf with the point of her parasol. She
looked down and she looked up.
"Well?" said he to her eyes.
"Well, and where is Laetitia Dale?"
He turned about to show his face elsewhere.
When he fronted her again, she looked very fixedly, and set her head
shaking.
"It will not do, my dear Sir Willoughby!"
"What?"
"I never could solve enigmas."
"Playing ta-ta-ta-ta ad infinitum, then. Things have gone far. All
parties would be happier for an excursion. Send her home."
"Laetitia? I can't part with her."
Mrs. Mountstuart put a tooth on her under lip as her head renewed its
brushing negative.
"In what way can it be hurtful that she should be here, ma'am?" he
ventured to persist.
"Think."
"She is proof."
"Twice!"
The word was big artillery. He tried the affectation of a staring
stupidity. She might have seen his heart thump, and he quitted the mask
for an agreeable grimace.
"She is inaccessible. She is my friend. I guarantee her, on my honour.
Have no fear for her. I beg you to have confidence in me. I would
perish rather. No soul on earth is to be compared with her."
Mrs. Mountstuart repeated "Twice!"
The low monosyllable, musically spoken in the same tone of warning of a
gentle ghost, rolled a thunder that maddened him, but he dared not take
it up to fight against it on plain terms.
"Is it for my sake?" he said.
"It will not do, Sir Willoughby."
She spurred him to a frenzy.
"My dear Mrs. Mountstuart, you have been listening to tales. I am not a
tyrant. I am one of the most easy-going of men. Let us preserve the
forms due to society: I say no more. As for poor old Vernon, people
call me a good sort of cousin; I should like to see him comfortably
married; decently married this time. I have proposed to contribute to
his establishment. I mention it to show that the case has been
practically considered. He has had a tolerably souring experience of
the state; he might be inclined if, say, you took him in hand, for
another venture. It's a demoralizing lottery. However, Government
sanctions it."
"But, Sir Willoughby, what is the use of my taking him in hand when, as
you tell me, Laetitia Dale holds back?"
"She certainly does."
"Then we are talking to no purpose, unless you undertake to melt her."
He suffered a lurking smile to kindle to some strength of meaning.
"You are not over-considerate in committing me to such an office."
"You are afraid of the danger?" she all but sneered.
Sharpened by her tone, he said, "I have such a love of stedfastness of
character, that I should be a poor advocate in the endeavour to break
it. And frankly, I know the danger. I saved my honour when I made the
attempt: that is all I can say."
"Upon my word," Mrs. Mountstuart threw back her head to let her eyes
behold him summarily over their fine aquiline bridge, "you have the art
of mystification, my good friend."
"Abandon the idea of Laetitia Dale."
"And marry your cousin Vernon to whom? Where are we?"
"As I said, ma'am, I am an easy-going man. I really have not a spice of
the tyrant in me. An intemperate creature held by the collar may have
that notion of me, while pulling to be released as promptly as it
entered the noose. But I do strictly and sternly object to the scandal
of violent separations, open breaches of solemn engagements, a public
rupture. Put it that I am the cause, I will not consent to a violation
of decorum. Is that clear? It is just possible for things to be
arranged so that all parties may be happy in their way without much
hubbub. Mind, it is not I who have willed it so. I am, and I am forced
to be, passive. But I will not be obstructive."
He paused, waving his hand to signify the vanity of the more that might
be said.
Some conception of him, dashed by incredulity, excited the lady's
intelligence.
"Well!" she exclaimed, "you have planted me in the land of conjecture.
As my husband used to say, I don't see light, but I think I see the
lynx that does. We won't discuss it at present. I certainly must be a
younger woman than I supposed, for I am learning hard.--Here comes the
Professor, buttoned up to the ears, and Dr. Middleton flapping in the
breeze. There will be a cough, and a footnote referring to the young
lady at the station, if we stand together, so please order my
carriage."
"You found Clara complacent? roguish?"
"I will call to-morrow. You have simplified my task, Sir Willoughby,
very much; that is, assuming that I have not entirely mistaken you. I
am so far in the dark that I have to help myself by recollecting how
Lady Busshe opposed my view of a certain matter formerly. Scepticism is
her forte. It will be the very oddest thing if after all . . . ! No, I
shall own, romance has not departed. Are you fond of dupes?"
"I detest the race."
"An excellent answer. I could pardon you for it." She refrained from
adding, "If you are making one of me."
Sir Willoughby went to ring for her carriage.
She knew. That was palpable: Clara had betrayed him.
"The earlier Colonel De Craye leaves Patterne Hall the better:" she had
said that: and, "all parties would be happier for an excursion." She
knew the position of things and she guessed the remainder. But what she
did not know, and could not divine, was the man who fenced her. He
speculated further on the witty and the dull. These latter are the
redoubtable body. They will have facts to convince them: they had, he
confessed it to himself, precipitated him into the novel sphere of his
dark hints to Mrs. Mountstuart; from which the utter darkness might
allow him to escape, yet it embraced him singularly, and even
pleasantly, with the sense of a fact established.
It embraced him even very pleasantly. There was an end to his tortures.
He sailed on a tranquil sea, the husband of a stedfast woman--no rogue.
The exceeding beauty of stedfastness in women clothed Laetitia in
graces Clara could not match. A tried stedfast woman is the one jewel
of the sex. She points to her husband like the sunflower; her love
illuminates him; she lives in him, for him; she testifies to his worth;
she drags the world to his feet; she leads the chorus of his praises;
she justifies him in his own esteem. Surely there is not on earth such
beauty!
If we have to pass through anguish to discover it and cherish the peace
it gives to clasp it, calling it ours, is a full reward. Deep in his
reverie, he said his adieus to Mrs. Mountstuart, and strolled up the
avenue behind the carriage-wheels, unwilling to meet Laetitia till he
had exhausted the fresh savour of the cud of fancy.
Supposing it done!--
It would be generous on his part. It would redound to his credit.
His home would be a fortress, impregnable to tongues. He would have
divine security in his home.
One who read and knew and worshipped him would be sitting there
star-like: sitting there, awaiting him, his fixed star.
It would be marriage with a mirror, with an echo; marriage with a
shining mirror, a choric echo.
It would be marriage with an intellect, with a fine understanding; to
make his home a fountain of repeatable wit: to make his dear old
Patterne Hall the luminary of the county.
He revolved it as a chant: with anon and anon involuntarily a
discordant animadversion on Lady Busshe. Its attendant imps heard the
angry inward cry.
Forthwith he set about painting Laetitia in delectable human colours,
like a miniature of the past century, reserving her ideal figure for
his private satisfaction. The world was to bow to her visible beauty,
and he gave her enamel and glow, a taller stature, a swimming air, a
transcendency that exorcized the image of the old witch who had driven
him to this.
The result in him was, that Laetitia became humanly and avowedly
beautiful. Her dark eyelashes on the pallor of her cheeks lent their
aid to the transformation, which was a necessity to him, so it was
performed. He received the waxen impression.
His retinue of imps had a revel. We hear wonders of men, and we see a
lifting up of hands in the world. The wonders would be explained, and
never a hand need to interject, if the mystifying man were but
accompanied by that monkey-eyed confraternity. They spy the heart and
its twists.
The heart is the magical gentleman. None of them would follow where
there was no heart. The twists of the heart are the comedy.
"The secret of the heart is its pressing love of self ", says the Book.
By that secret the mystery of the organ is legible: and a comparison of
the heart to the mountain rillet is taken up to show us the unbaffled
force of the little channel in seeking to swell its volume,
strenuously, sinuously, ever in pursuit of self; the busiest as it is
the most single-aiming of forces on our earth. And we are directed to
the sinuosities for posts of observation chiefly instructive.
Few maintain a stand there. People see, and they rush away to
interchange liftings of hands at the sight, instead of patiently
studying the phenomenon of energy.
Consequently a man in love with one woman, and in all but absolute
consciousness, behind the thinnest of veils, preparing his mind to love
another, will be barely credible. The particular hunger of the forceful
but adaptable heart is the key of him. Behold the mountain rillet,
become a brook, become a torrent, how it inarms a handsome boulder: yet
if the stone will not go with it, on it hurries, pursuing self in
extension, down to where perchance a dam has been raised of a
sufficient depth to enfold and keep it from inordinate restlessness.
Laetitia represented this peaceful restraining space in prospect.
But she was a faded young woman. He was aware of it; and
systematically looking at himself with her upturned orbs, he accepted
her benevolently as a God grateful for worship, and used the divinity
she imparted to paint and renovate her. His heart required her so. The
heart works the springs of imagination; imagination received its
commission from the heart, and was a cunning artist.
Cunning to such a degree of seductive genius that the masterpiece it
offered to his contemplation enabled him simultaneously to gaze on
Clara and think of Laetitia. Clara came through the park-gates with
Vernon, a brilliant girl indeed, and a shallow one: a healthy creature,
and an animal; attractive, but capricious, impatient, treacherous,
foul; a woman to drag men through the mud. She approached.