With the exception of the time spent in the dining-room, the young
people saw little of Sir Iltyd. That he liked Dartmouth and enjoyed
his society were facts he did not pretend to disguise. But the habits
of years were too strong, and he always wandered back to his books. He
did not trouble himself about proprieties. Weir had grown up and ruled
the castle all these years without a chaperon, and he had lived out
of the world too long to suggest the advisability of one now. His
daughter and her lover experienced no yearning for supervision, and
the free, untrammelled life was a very pleasant one, particularly to
Dartmouth, who always gave to novelty its just meed of appreciation.
At this period, in fact, Dartmouth's frame of mind left nothing to be
desired. In the first place, it was a delightful experience to find
himself able to stand the uninterrupted society of one woman from
morning till night, day after day, without a suggestion of fatigue.
And in the second, he found her a charming study. It is true that he
was very much in love, very sincerely and passionately in love; but
at the same time, his brain had been trained through too many years to
the habit of analysis; he could no more help studying Weir and drawing
her on to reveal herself than he could help loving her. She was not a
difficult problem to solve, individual as she was, because she was so
natural. Her experience with the world had been too brief to give her
an opportunity to encase herself in any shell which would not fall
from her at the first reaction to primitive conditions; and above all,
she was in love.
In the love of a woman there is always a certain element of
childishness, which has a reflex, if but temporary action upon her
whole nature. The phenomenon is due partly to the fact that she is
under the dominant influence of a wholly natural instinct, partly to
the fact that the object of her love is of stronger make than herself,
mentally, spiritually, and physically. This sense of dependence and
weakness, and, consequently, of extreme youth, remains until she
has children. Then, under the influence of peculiarly strong
responsibilities, she gives her youth to them, and with it the
plasticity of her nature.
At present Weir was in the stage where she analyzed herself for her
lover's benefit, and confided to him every sensation she had ever
experienced; and he encouraged her. He had frequently encouraged other
women to do the same thing, and in each case, after the first few
chapters, he had found it a good deal of a bore. The moment a woman
falls in love, that moment she becomes an object of paramount interest
in her own eyes. All her life she has regarded herself from the
outside; her wants and needs have been purely objective; consequently
she has not known herself, and her spiritual nature has claimed but
little of her attention. But under the influence of love she plunges
into herself, as it were, and her life for the time being is purely
subjective. She broadens, expands, develops, concentrates; and her
successive evolutions are a perpetual source of delight and absorbing
study. Moreover, her sense of individuality grows and flourishes,
and becomes so powerful that she is unalterably certain--until it is
over--that her experience is an isolated and wholly remarkable
one. Naturally she must talk to someone; she is teeming with her
discoveries, her excursions into the heretofore unexplored depths
of human nature; the necessity for a confidant is not one to be
withstood, and who so natural or understanding a confidant as her
lover? If the lover be a clever man and an analyst, he is profoundly
interested at first, particularly if she have some trick of mind which
gives her, or seems to give her, the smack of individuality. If he be
a true lover, and a man with any depth of feeling and of mind, he
does not tire, of course; but otherwise he eventually becomes either
oppressed or frightened; he either wishes that women would not take
themselves so seriously and forget to be amusing, or her belief in her
peculiar and absolute originality communicates itself to him, and he
does not feel equal to handling and directing so remarkable a passion.
There was no question about the strength and verity of Dartmouth's
love for Weir, and he had yet to be daunted by anything in life;
consequently he found his present course of psychological research
without flaw. Moreover, the quaintness of her nature pervaded all
her ideas. She had an old-fashioned simplicity and directness which,
combined with a charming quality of mind and an unusual amount of
mental development, gave her that impress of originality which he had
recognized and been attracted by. He was gratified also to find that
the old-time stateliness, almost primness, which had been to him
from the first her chiefest exterior charm did not disappear with
association. She might sit on a rock muffled to her ears in furs, and
with her feet dangling in the air, and yet manage to look as dignified
as a duchess. She might race with him on horseback and clamber down a
cliff with the thoughtlessness of a child, but she always looked as
if she had been brought up on a chessboard. Dartmouth used to tell her
that her peculiarly erect carriage and lofty fashion of carrying her
head gave her the effect of surveillance over an invisible crown with
an unreliable fit, and that she stepped like the maiden in the fairy
tale who was obliged to walk upon peas. He made a tin halo one day,
and put it suddenly on her head when her back was turned, and she
avenged herself by wearing it until he went down on his knees and
begged her to take it off. When she sat in her carved high-back chair
at the head of her father's table, with the deep collar and cuffs
of linen and heavy lace to which she was addicted, and her dark,
sensuous, haughty, tender face motionless for the moment, against the
dark background of the leather, she looked like a Vandyke; and at such
times Dartmouth's artistic nature was keenly responsive, and he forgot
to chaff.