"You knew Miss Durham?"
"And Harry Oxford too. And they're a pair as happy as blackbirds in a cherry-tree, in a summer sunrise, with the owner of the garden asleep. Because of that apprehension of mine, I refused the office of best man till Willoughby had sent me a third letter. He insisted on my coming. I came, saw, and was conquered. I trust with all my soul I did not betray myself, I owed that duty to my position of concealing it. As for entirely hiding that I had used my eyes, I can't say: they must answer for it."
The colonel was using his eyes with an increasing suavity that threatened more than sweetness.
"I believe you have been sincerely kind," said Clara. "We will descend to the path round the lake."
She did not refuse her hand on the descent, and he let it escape the moment the service was done. As he was performing the admirable character of the man of honour, he had to attend to the observance of details; and sure of her though he was beginning to feel, there was a touch of the unknown in Clara Middleton which made him fear to stamp assurance; despite a barely resistible impulse, coming of his emotions and approved by his maxims. He looked at the hand, now a free lady's hand. Willoughby settled, his chance was great. Who else was in the way? No one. He counselled himself to wait for her; she might have ideas of delicacy. Her face was troubled, speculative; the brows clouded, the lips compressed.
"You have not heard this from Miss Dale?" she said.
"Last night they were together: this morning she fled. I saw her this morning distressed. She is unwilling to send you a message: she talks vaguely of meeting you some days hence. And it is not the first time he has gone to her for his consolation."
"That is not a proposal," Clara reflected. "He is too prudent. He did not propose to her at the time you mention. Have you not been hasty, Colonel De Craye?"
Shadows crossed her forehead. She glanced in the direction of the house and stopped her walk.
"Last night, Miss Middleton, there was a listener."
"Who?"
"Crossjay was under that pretty silk coverlet worked by the Miss Patternes. He came home late, found his door locked, and dashed downstairs into the drawing-room, where he snuggled up and dropped asleep. The two speakers woke him; they frightened the poor dear lad in his love for you, and after they had gone, he wanted to run out of the house, and I met him just after I had come back from my search, bursting, and took him to my room, and laid him on the sofa, and abused him for not lying quiet. He was restless as a fish on a bank. When I woke in the morning he was off. Doctor Corney came across him somewhere on the road and drove him to the cottage. I was ringing the bell. Corney told me the boy had you on his brain, and was miserable, so Crossjay and I had a talk."
"Crossjay did not repeat to you the conversation he had heard?" saidClara.
"No."
She smiled rejoicingly, proud of the boy, as she walked on.
"But you'll pardon me, Miss Middleton—and I'm for him as much as you are—if I was guilty of a little angling."
"My sympathies are with the fish."
"The poor fellow had a secret that hurt him. It rose to the surface crying to be hooked, and I spared him twice or thrice, because he had a sort of holy sentiment I respected, that none but Mr. Whitford ought to be his father confessor."
"Crossjay!" she cried, hugging her love of the boy.
"The secret was one not to be communicated to Miss Dale of all people."
"He said that?"
"As good as the very words. She informed me, too, that she couldn't induce him to face her straight."
"Oh, that looks like it. And Crossjay was unhappy? Very unhappy?"
"He was just where tears are on the brim, and would have been over, if he were not such a manly youngster."
"It looks. . ." She reverted in thought to Willoughby, and doubted, and blindly stretched hands to her recollection of the strange old monster she had discovered in him. Such a man could do anything.
That conclusion fortified her to pursue her walk to the house and give battle for freedom. Willoughby appeared to her scarce human, unreadable, save by the key that she could supply. She determined to put faith in Colonel De Craye's marvellous divination of circumstances in the dark. Marvels are solid weapons when we are attacked by real prodigies of nature. Her countenance cleared. She conversed with De Craye of the polite and the political world, throwing off her personal burden completely, and charming him.
At the edge of the garden, on the bridge that crossed the haha from the park, he had a second impulse, almost a warning within, to seize his heavenly opportunity to ask for thanks and move her tender lowered eyelids to hint at his reward. He repressed it, doubtful of the wisdom.
Something like "heaven forgive me" was in Clara's mind, though she would have declared herself innocent before the scrutator.
Clara had not taken many steps in the garden before she learned how great was her debt of gratitude to Colonel De Craye. Willoughby and her father were awaiting her. De Craye, with his ready comprehension of circumstances, turned aside unseen among the shrubs. She advanced slowly.
"The vapours, we may trust, have dispersed?" her father hailed her.
"One word, and these discussions are over, we dislike them equally," said Willoughby.
"No scenes," Dr. Middleton added. "Speak your decision, my girl, pro forma, seeing that he who has the right demands it, and pray release me."
Clara looked at Willoughby.
"I have decided to go to Miss Dale for her advice."
There was no appearance in him of a man that has been shot.
"To Miss Dale?—for advice?"
Dr Middleton invoked the Furies. "What is the signification of this new freak?"
"Miss Dale must be consulted, papa."
"Consulted with reference to the disposal of your hand in marriage?"
"She must be."
"Miss Dale, do you say?"
"I do, Papa."
Dr Middleton regained his natural elevation from the bend of body habitual with men of an established sanity, paedagogues and others, who are called on at odd intervals to inspect the magnitude of the infinitesimally absurd in human nature: small, that is, under the light of reason, immense in the realms of madness.
His daughter profoundly confused him. He swelled out his chest, remarking to Willoughby: "I do not wonder at your scared expression of countenance, my friend. To discover yourself engaged to a girl mad as Cassandra, without a boast of the distinction of her being sun-struck, can be no specially comfortable enlightenment. I am opposed to delays, and I will not have a breach of faith committed by daughter of mine."
"Do not repeat those words," Clara said to Willoughby. He started. She had evidently come armed. But how, within so short a space? What could have instructed her? And in his bewilderment he gazed hurriedly above, gulped air, and cried: "Scared, sir? I am not aware that my countenance can show a scare. I am not accustomed to sue for long: I am unable to sustain the part of humble supplicant. She puts me out of harmony with creation—We are plighted, Clara. It is pure waste of time to speak of soliciting advice on the subject."
"Would it be a breach of faith for me to break my engagement?" she said.
"You ask?"
"It is a breach of sanity to propound the interrogation," said her father.
She looked at Willoughby. "Now?"
He shrugged haughtily.
"Since last night?" she said.
"Last night?"
"Am I not released?"
"Not by me."
"By your act."
"My dear Clara!"
"Have you not virtually disengaged me?"
"I who claim you as mine?"
"Can you?"
"I do and must."
"After last night?"
"Tricks! shufflings! jabber of a barbarian woman upon the evolutions of a serpent!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "You were to capitulate, or to furnish reasons for your refusal. You have none. Give him your hand, girl, according to the compact. I praised you to him for returning within the allotted term, and now forbear to disgrace yourself and me."
"Is he perfectly free to offer his? Ask him, papa."
"Perform your duty. Do let us have peace!"
"Perfectly free! as on the day when I offered it first." Willoughby frankly waved his honourable hand.
His face was blanched: enemies in the air seemed to have whispered things to her: he doubted the fidelity of the Powers above.
"Since last night?" said she.
"Oh! if you insist, I reply, since last night."
"You know what I mean, Sir Willoughby."
"Oh! certainly."
"You speak the truth?"
"'Sir Willoughby!'" her father ejaculated in wrath. "But will you explain what you mean, epitome that you are of all the contradictions and mutabilities ascribed to women from the beginning! 'Certainly', he says, and knows no more than I. She begs grace for an hour, and returns with a fresh store of evasions, to insult the man she has injured. It is my humiliation to confess that our share in this contract is rescued from public ignominy by his generosity. Nor can I congratulate him on his fortune, should he condescend to bear with you to the utmost; for instead of the young woman I supposed myself to be bestowing on him, I see a fantastical planguncula enlivened by the wanton tempers of a nursery chit. If one may conceive a meaning in her, in miserable apology for such behaviour, some spirit of jealousy informs the girl."
"I can only remark that there is no foundation for it," said Willoughby. "I am willing to satisfy you, Clara. Name the person who discomposes you. I can scarcely imagine one to exist: but who can tell?"
She could name no person. The detestable imputation of jealousy would be confirmed if she mentioned a name: and indeed Laetitia was not to be named.
He pursued his advantage: "Jealousy is one of the fits I am a stranger to,—I fancy, sir, that gentlemen have dismissed it. I speak for myself.—But I can make allowances. In some cases, it is considered a compliment; and often a word will soothe it. The whole affair is so senseless! However, I will enter the witness-box, or stand at the prisoner's bar! Anything to quiet a distempered mind."
"Of you, sir," said Dr. Middleton, "might a parent be justly proud."
"It is not jealousy; I could not be jealous!" Clara cried, stung by the very passion; and she ran through her brain for a suggestion to win a sign of meltingness if not esteem from her father. She was not an iron maiden, but one among the nervous natures which live largely in the moment, though she was then sacrificing it to her nature's deep dislike. "You may be proud of me again, papa."
She could hardly have uttered anything more impolitic.
"Optume; but deliver yourself ad rem," he rejoined, alarmingly pacified. "Firmavit fidem. Do you likewise, and double on us no more like puss in the field."
"I wish to see Miss Dale," she said.
Up flew the Rev. Doctor's arms in wrathful despair resembling an imprecation.
"She is at the cottage. You could have seen her," said Willoughby.
Evidently she had not.
"Is it untrue that last night, between twelve o'clock and one, in the drawing-room, you proposed marriage to Miss Dale?" He became convinced that she must have stolen down-stairs during his colloquy with Laetitia, and listened at the door.
"On behalf of old Vernon?" he said, lightly laughing. "The idea is not novel, as you know. They are suited, if they could see it.—Laetitia Dale and my cousin Vernon Whitford, sir."
"Fairly schemed, my friend, and I will say for you, you have the patience, Willoughby, of a husband!"
Willoughby bowed to the encomium, and allowed some fatigue to be visible. He half yawned: "I claim no happier title, sir," and made light of the weariful discussion.
Clara was shaken: she feared that Crossjay had heard incorrectly, or that Colonel De Craye had guessed erroneously. It was too likely that Willoughby should have proposed Vernon to Laetitia.
There was nothing to reassure her save the vision of the panic amazement of his face at her persistency in speaking of Miss Dale. She could have declared on oath that she was right, while admitting all the suppositions to be against her. And unhappily all the Delicacies (a doughty battalion for the defence of ladies until they enter into difficulties and are shorn of them at a blow, bare as dairymaids), all the body-guard of a young gentlewoman, the drawing-room sylphides, which bear her train, which wreathe her hair, which modulate her voice and tone her complexion, which are arrows and shield to awe the creature man, forbade her utterance of what she felt, on pain of instant fulfilment of their oft-repeated threat of late to leave her to the last remnant of a protecting sprite. She could not, as in a dear melodrama, from the aim of a pointed finger denounce him, on the testimony of her instincts, false of speech, false in deed. She could not even declare that she doubted his truthfulness. The refuge of a sullen fit, the refuge of tears, the pretext of a mood, were denied her now by the rigour of those laws of decency which are a garment to ladies of pure breeding.
"One more respite, papa," she implored him, bitterly conscious of the closer tangle her petition involved, and, if it must be betrayed of her, perceiving in an illumination how the knot might become so woefully Gordian that haply in a cloud of wild events the intervention of a gallant gentleman out of heaven, albeit in the likeness of one of earth, would have to cut it: her cry within, as she succumbed to weakness, being fervider, "Anything but marry this one!" She was faint with strife and dejected, a condition in the young when their imaginative energies hold revel uncontrolled and are projectively desperate.
"No respite!" said Willoughby, genially.
"And I say, no respite!" observed her father. "You have assumed a position that has not been granted you, Clara Middleton."
"I cannot bear to offend you, father."
"Him! Your duty is not to offend him. Address your excuses to him. I refuse to be dragged over the same ground, to reiterate the same command perpetually."
"If authority is deputed to me, I claim you," said Willoughby.
"You have not broken faith with me?"
"Assuredly not, or would it be possible for me to press my claim?"
"And join the right hand to the right," said Dr. Middleton; "no, it would not be possible. What insane root she has been nibbling, I know not, but she must consign herself to the guidance of those whom the gods have not abandoned, until her intellect is liberated. She was once . . . there: I look not back—if she it was, and no simulacrum of a reasonable daughter. I welcome the appearance of my friend Mr. Whitford. He is my sea-bath and supper on the beach of Troy, after the day's battle and dust."
Vernon walked straight up to them: an act unusual with him, for he was shy of committing an intrusion.
Clara guessed by that, and more by the dancing frown of speculative humour he turned on Willoughby, that he had come charged in support of her. His forehead was curiously lively, as of one who has got a surprise well under, to feed on its amusing contents.
"Have you seen Crossjay, Mr. Whitford?" she said.
"I've pounced on Crossjay; his bones are sound."
"Where did he sleep?"
"On a sofa, it seems."
She smiled, with good hope—Vernon had the story.
Willoughby thought it just to himself that he should defend his measure of severity.
"The boy lied; he played a double game."
"For which he should have been reasoned with at the Grecian portico of a boy," said the Rev. Doctor.
"My system is different, sir. I could not inflict what I would not endure myself"
"So is Greek excluded from the later generations; and you leave a field, the most fertile in the moralities in youth, unplowed and unsown. Ah! well. This growing too fine is our way of relapsing upon barbarism. Beware of over-sensitiveness, where nature has plainly indicated her alternative gateway of knowledge. And now, I presume, I am at liberty."
"Vernon will excuse us for a minute or two."
"I hold by Mr. Whitford now I have him."
"I'll join you in the laboratory, Vernon," Willoughby nodded bluntly.
"We will leave them, Mr. Whitford. They are at the time-honoured dissension upon a particular day, that, for the sake of dignity, blushes to be named."
"What day?" said Vernon, like a rustic.
"THE day, these people call it."
Vernon sent one of his vivid eyeshots from one to the other. His eyes fixed on Willoughby's with a quivering glow, beyond amazement, as if his humour stood at furnace-heat, and absorbed all that came.
Willoughby motioned to him to go.
"Have you seen Miss Dale, Mr. Whitford?" said Clara.
He answered, "No. Something has shocked her."
"Is it her feeling for Crossjay?"
"Ah!" Vernon said to Willoughby, "your pocketing of the key ofCrossjay's bedroom door was a master-stroke!"
The celestial irony suffused her, and she bathed and swam in it, on hearing its dupe reply: "My methods of discipline are short. I was not aware that she had been to his door."
"But I may hope that Miss Dale will see me," said Clara. "We are in sympathy about the boy."
"Mr. Dale might be seen. He seems to be of a divided mind with his daughter," Vernon rejoined. "She has locked herself up in her room."
"He is not the only father in that unwholesome predicament," said DrMiddleton.
"He talks of coming to you, Willoughby."
"Why to me?" Willoughby chastened his irritation: "He will be welcome, of course. It would be better that the boy should come."
"If there is a chance of your forgiving him," said Clara. "Let the Dales know I am prepared to listen to the boy, Vernon. There can be no necessity for Mr. Dale to drag himself here."
"How are Mr. Dale and his daughter of a divided mind, Mr. Whitford?" said Clara.
Vernon simulated an uneasiness. With a vacant gaze that enlarged aroundWilloughby and was more discomforting than intentness, he replied:"Perhaps she is unwilling to give him her entire confidence, MissMiddleton."
"In which respect, then, our situations present their solitary point of unlikeness in resemblance, for I have it in excess," observed Dr. Middleton.
Clara dropped her eyelids for the wave to pass over. "It struck me thatMiss Dale was a person of the extremest candour."
"Why should we be prying into the domestic affairs of the Dales?" Willoughby interjected, and drew out his watch, merely for a diversion; he was on tiptoe to learn whether Vernon was as well instructed as Clara, and hung to the view that he could not be, while drenching in the sensation that he was:—and if so, what were the Powers above but a body of conspirators? He paid Laetitia that compliment. He could not conceive the human betrayal of the secret. Clara's discovery of it had set his common sense adrift.
"The domestic affairs of the Dales do not concern me," said Vernon.
"And yet, my friend," Dr. Middleton balanced himself, and with an air of benevolent slyness the import of which did not awaken Willoughby, until too late, remarked: "They might concern you. I will even add, that there is a probability of your being not less than the fount and origin of this division of father and daughter, though Willoughby in the drawingroom last night stands accusably the agent."
"Favour me, sir, with an explanation," said Vernon, seeking to gather it from Clara.
Dr Middleton threw the explanation upon Willoughby.
Clara, communicated as much as she was able in one of those looks of still depth which say, Think! and without causing a thought to stir, takes us into the pellucid mind.
Vernon was enlightened before Willoughby had spoken. His mouth shut rigidly, and there was a springing increase of the luminous wavering of his eyes. Some star that Clara had watched at night was like them in the vivid wink and overflow of its light. Yet, as he was perfectly sedate, none could have suspected his blood to be chasing wild with laughter, and his frame strung to the utmost to keep it from volleying. So happy was she in his aspect, that her chief anxiety was to recover the name of the star whose shining beckons and speaks, and is in the quick of spirit-fire. It is the sole star which on a night of frost and strong moonlight preserves an indomitable fervency: that she remembered, and the picture of a hoar earth and a lean Orion in flooded heavens, and the star beneath Eastward of him: but the name! the name!—She heard Willoughby indistinctly.
"Oh, the old story; another effort; you know my wish; a failure, of course, and no thanks on either side, I suppose I must ask your excuse.—They neither of them see what's good for them, sir."
"Manifestly, however," said Dr. Middleton, "if one may opine from the division we have heard of, the father is disposed to back your nominee."
"I can't say; as far as I am concerned, I made a mess of it." Vernon withstood the incitement to acquiesce, but he sparkled with his recognition of the fact.
"You meant well, Willoughby."
"I hope so, Vernon."
"Only you have driven her away."
"We must resign ourselves."
"It won't affect me, for I'm off to-morrow."
"You see, sir, the thanks I get."
"Mr. Whitford," said Dr. Middleton, "You have a tower of strength in the lady's father."
"Would you have me bring it to bear upon the lady, sir?"
"Wherefore not?"
"To make her marriage a matter of obedience to her father?"
"Ay, my friend, a lusty lover would have her gladly on those terms, well knowing it to be for the lady's good. What do you say, Willoughby?"
"Sir! Say? What can I say? Miss Dale has not plighted her faith. Had she done so, she is a lady who would never dishonour it."
"She is an ideal of constancy, who would keep to it though it had been broken on the other side," said Vernon, and Clara thrilled.
"I take that, sir, to be a statue of constancy, modelled upon which a lady of our flesh may be proclaimed as graduating for the condition of idiocy," said Dr. Middleton.
"But faith is faith, sir."
"But the broken is the broken, sir, whether in porcelain or in human engagements; and all that one of the two continuing faithful, I should rather say, regretful, can do, is to devote the remainder of life to the picking up of the fragments; an occupation properly to be pursued, for the comfort of mankind, within the enclosure of an appointed asylum."
"You destroy the poetry of sentiment, Dr. Middleton."
"To invigorate the poetry of nature, Mr. Whitford."
"Then you maintain, sir, that when faith is broken by one, the engagement ceases, and the other is absolutely free?"
"I do; I am the champion of that platitude, and sound that knell to the sentimental world; and since you have chosen to defend it, I will appeal to Willoughby, and ask him if he would not side with the world of good sense in applauding the nuptials of man or maid married within a month of a jilting?" Clara slipped her arm under her father's.
"Poetry, sir," said Willoughby, "I never have been hypocrite enough to pretend to understand or care for."
Dr. Middleton laughed. Vernon too seemed to admire his cousin for a reply that rung in Clara's ears as the dullest ever spoken. Her arm grew cold on her father's. She began to fear Willoughby again.
He depended entirely on his agility to elude the thrusts that assailed him. Had he been able to believe in the treachery of the Powers above, he would at once have seen design in these deadly strokes, for his feelings had rarely been more acute than at the present crisis; and he would then have led away Clara, to wrangle it out with her, relying on Vernon's friendliness not to betray him to her father: but a wrangle with Clara promised no immediate fruits, nothing agreeable; and the lifelong trust he had reposed in his protecting genii obscured his intelligence to evidence he would otherwise have accepted on the spot, on the faith of his delicate susceptibility to the mildest impressions which wounded him. Clara might have stooped to listen at the door: she might have heard sufficient to create a suspicion. But Vernon was not in the house last night; she could not have communicated it to him, and he had not seen Laetitia, who was, besides trustworthy, an admirable if a foolish and ill-fated woman.
Preferring to consider Vernon a pragmatical moralist played upon by asententious drone, he thought it politic to detach them, and vanquishClara while she was in the beaten mood, as she had appeared beforeVernon's vexatious arrival.
"I'm afraid, my dear fellow, you are rather too dainty and fussy for a very successful wooer," he said. "It's beautiful on paper, and absurd in life. We have a bit of private business to discuss. We will go inside, sir, I think. I will soon release you." Clara pressed her father's arm.
"More?" said he.
"Five minutes. There's a slight delusion to clear, sir. My dear Clara, you will see with different eyes."
"Papa wishes to work with Mr. Whitford."
Her heart sunk to hear her father say: "No, 'tis a lost morning. I must consent to pay tax of it for giving another young woman to the world. I have a daughter! You will, I hope, compensate me, Mr. Whitford, in the afternoon. Be not downcast. I have observed you meditative of late. You will have no clear brain so long as that stuff is on the mind. I could venture to propose to do some pleading for you, should it be needed for the prompter expedition of the affair."
Vernon briefly thanked him, and said:
"Willoughby has exerted all his eloquence, and you see the result: you have lost Miss Dale and I have not won her. He did everything that one man can do for another in so delicate a case: even to the repeating of her famous birthday verses to him, to flatter the poetess. His best efforts were foiled by the lady's indisposition for me."
"Behold," said Dr. Middleton, as Willoughby, electrified by the mention of the verses, took a sharp stride or two, "you have in him an advocate who will not be rebuffed by one refusal, and I can affirm that he is tenacious, pertinacious as are few. Justly so. Not to believe in a lady's No is the approved method of carrying that fortress built to yield. Although unquestionably to have a young man pleading in our interests with a lady, counts its objections. Yet Willoughby being notoriously engaged, may be held to enjoy the privileges of his elders."
"As an engaged man, sir, he was on a level with his elders in pleading on my behalf with Miss Dale," said Vernon. Willoughby strode and muttered. Providence had grown mythical in his thoughts, if not malicious: and it is the peril of this worship that the object will wear such an alternative aspect when it appears no longer subservient.
"Are we coming, sir?" he said, and was unheeded. The Rev. Doctor would not be defrauded of rolling his billow.
"As an honourable gentleman faithful to his own engagement and desirous of establishing his relatives, he deserves, in my judgement, the lady's esteem as well as your cordial thanks; nor should a temporary failure dishearten either of you, notwithstanding the precipitate retreat of the lady from Patterne, and her seclusion in her sanctum on the occasion of your recent visit."
"Supposing he had succeeded," said Vernon, driving Willoughby to frenzy, "should I have been bound to marry?" Matter for cogitation was offered to Dr. Middleton.
"The proposal was without your sanction?"
"Entirely."
"You admire the lady?"
"Respectfully."
"You do not incline to the state?"
"An inch of an angle would exaggerate my inclination."
"How long are we to stand and hear this insufferable nonsense you talk?" cried Willoughby.
"But if Mr. Whitford was not consulted . . ." Dr. Middleton said, and was overborne by Willoughby's hurried, "Oblige me, sir.—Oblige me, my good fellow!" He swept his arm to Vernon, and gestured a conducting hand to Clara.
"Here is Mrs. Mountstuart!" she exclaimed.
Willoughby stared. Was it an irruption of a friend or a foe? He doubted, and stood petrified between the double question. Clara had seen Mrs. Mountstuart and Colonel De Craye separating: and now the great lady sailed along the sward like a royal barge in festival trim.
She looked friendly, but friendly to everybody, which was always a frost on Willoughby, and terribly friendly to Clara.
Coming up to her she whispered: "News, indeed! Wonderful! I could not credit his hint of it yesterday. Are you satisfied?"
"Pray, Mrs. Mountstuart, take an opportunity to speak to papa," Clara whispered in return.
Mrs. Mountstuart bowed to Dr. Middleton, nodded to Vernon, and swam upon Willoughby, with, "Is it? But is it? Am I really to believe? You have? My dear Sir Willoughby? Really?" The confounded gentleman heaved on a bare plank of wreck in mid sea.
He could oppose only a paralyzed smile to the assault.
His intuitive discretion taught him to fall back a step while she said, "So!" the plummet word of our mysterious deep fathoms; and he fell back further saying, "Madam?" in a tone advising her to speak low.
She recovered her volubility, followed his partial retreat, and dropped her voice,—
"Impossible to have imagined it as an actual fact! You were always full of surprises, but this! this! Nothing manlier, nothing more gentlemanly has ever been done: nothing: nothing that so completely changes an untenable situation into a comfortable and proper footing for everybody. It is what I like: it is what I love:—sound sense! Men are so selfish: one cannot persuade them to be reasonable in such positions. But you, Sir Willoughby, have shown wisdom and sentiment: the rarest of all combinations in men."
"Where have you? . . ." Willoughby contrived to say.
"Heard? The hedges, the housetops, everywhere. All the neighbourhood will have it before nightfall. Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer will soon be rushing here, and declaring they never expected anything else, I do not doubt. I am not so pretentious. I beg your excuse for that 'twice' of mine yesterday. Even if it hurt my vanity, I should be happy to confess my error: I was utterly out. But then I did not reckon on a fatal attachment, I thought men were incapable of it. I thought we women were the only poor creatures persecuted by a fatality. It is a fatality! You tried hard to escape, indeed you did. And she will do honour to your final surrender, my dear friend. She is gentle, and very clever, very: she is devoted to you: she will entertain excellently. I see her like a flower in sunshine. She will expand to a perfect hostess. Patterne will shine under her reign; you have my warrant for that. And so will you. Yes, you flourish best when adored. It must be adoration. You have been under a cloud of late. Years ago I said it was a match, when no one supposed you could stoop. Lady Busshe would have it was a screen, and she was deemed high wisdom. The world will be with you. All the women will be: excepting, of course, Lady Busshe, whose pride is in prophecy; and she will soon be too glad to swell the host. There, my friend, your sincerest and oldest admirer congratulates you. I could not contain myself; I was compelled to pour forth. And now I must go and be talked to by Dr. Middleton. How does he take it? They leave?"
"He is perfectly well," said Willoughby, aloud, quite distraught.
She acknowledged his just correction of her for running on to an extreme in low-toned converse, though they stood sufficiently isolated from the others. These had by this time been joined by Colonel De Craye, and were all chatting in a group—of himself, Willoughby horribly suspected.
Clara was gone from him! Gone! but he remembered his oath and vowed it again: not to Horace de Craye! She was gone, lost, sunk into the world of waters of rival men, and he determined that his whole force should be used to keep her from that man, the false friend who had supplanted him in her shallow heart, and might, if he succeeded, boast of having done it by simply appearing on the scene.
Willoughby intercepted Mrs. Mountstuart as she was passing over to DrMiddleton. "My dear lady! spare me a minute."
De Craye sauntered up, with a face of the friendliest humour:
"Never was man like you, Willoughby, for shaking new patterns in a kaleidoscope."
"Have you turned punster, Horace?" Willoughby replied, smarting to find yet another in the demon secret, and he draw Dr. Middleton two or three steps aside, and hurriedly begged him to abstain from prosecuting the subject with Clara.
"We must try to make her happy as we best can, sir. She may have her reasons—a young lady's reasons!" He laughed, and left the Rev. Doctor considering within himself under the arch of his lofty frown of stupefaction.
De Craye smiled slyly and winningly as he shadowed a deep droop on the bend of his head before Clara, signifying his absolute devotion to her service, and this present good fruit for witness of his merits.
She smiled sweetly though vaguely. There was no concealment of their intimacy.
"The battle is over," Vernon said quietly, when Willoughby had walked some paces beside Mrs. Mountstuart, adding: "You may expect to see Mr. Dale here. He knows."
Vernon and Clara exchanged one look, hard on his part, in contrast with her softness, and he proceeded to the house. De Craye waited for a word or a promising look. He was patient, being self-assured, and passed on.
Clara linked her arm with her father's once more, and said, on a sudden brightness: "Sirius, papa!" He repeated it in the profoundest manner: "Sirius! And is there," he asked, "a feminine scintilla of sense in that?"
"It is the name of the star I was thinking of, dear papa."
"It was the star observed by King Agamemnon before the sacrifice in Aulis. You were thinking of that? But, my love, my Iphigenia, you have not a father who will insist on sacrificing you."
"Did I hear him tell you to humour me, papa?"
Dr Middleton humphed.
"Verily the dog-star rages in many heads," he responded.
Clara looked up at the flying clouds. She travelled with them now, and tasted freedom, but she prudently forbore to vex her father; she held herself in reserve.
They were summoned by the midday bell.
Few were speakers at the meal, few were eaters. Clara was impelled to join it by her desire to study Mrs. Mountstuart's face. Willoughby was obliged to preside. It was a meal of an assembly of mutes and plates, that struck the ear like the well-known sound of a collection of offerings in church after an impressive exhortation from the pulpit. A sally of Colonel De Craye's met the reception given to a charity-boy's muffled burst of animal spirits in the silence of the sacred edifice. Willoughby tried politics with Dr. Middleton, whose regular appetite preserved him from uncongenial speculations when the hour for appeasing it had come; and he alone did honour to the dishes, replying to his host:
"Times are bad, you say, and we have a Ministry doing with us what they will. Well, sir, and that being so, and opposition a manner of kicking them into greater stability, it is the time for wise men to retire within themselves, with the steady determination of the seed in the earth to grow. Repose upon nature, sleep in firm faith, and abide the seasons. That is my counsel to the weaker party."
The counsel was excellent, but it killed the topic.
Dr. Middleton's appetite was watched for the signal to rise and breathe freely; and such is the grace accorded to a good man of an untroubled conscience engaged in doing his duty to himself, that he perceived nothing of the general restlessness; he went through the dishes calmly, and as calmly he quoted Milton to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, when the company sprung up all at once upon his closing his repast. Vernon was taken away from him by Willoughby. Mrs Mountstuart beckoned covertly to Clara. Willoughby should have had something to say to him, Dr. Middleton thought: the position was not clear. But the situation was not disagreeable; and he was in no serious hurry, though he wished to be enlightened.
"This," Dr. Middleton said to the spinster aunts, as he accompanied them to the drawing-room, "shall be no lost day for me if I may devote the remainder of it to you."
"The thunder, we fear, is not remote," murmured one.
"We fear it is imminent," sighed the other.
They took to chanting in alternation.
"—We are accustomed to peruse our Willoughby, and we know him by a shadow."
"—From his infancy to his glorious youth and his established manhood."
"—He was ever the soul of chivalry."
"—Duty: duty first. The happiness of his family. The well-being of his dependants."
"—If proud of his name it was not an overweening pride; it was founded in the conscious possession of exalted qualities. He could be humble when occasion called for it."
Dr Middleton bowed to the litany, feeling that occasion called for humbleness from him.
"Let us hope . . . !" he said, with unassumed penitence on behalf of his inscrutable daughter.
The ladies resumed:—
"—Vernon Whitford, not of his blood, is his brother!"
"—A thousand instances! Laetitia Dale remembers them better than we."
"—That any blow should strike him!"
"—That another should be in store for him!"
"—It seems impossible he can be quite misunderstood!"
"Let us hope . . . !" said Dr. Middleton.
"—One would not deem it too much for the dispenser of goodness to expect to be a little looked up to!"
"—When he was a child he one day mounted a chair, and there he stood in danger, would not let us touch him because he was taller than we, and we were to gaze. Do you remember him, Eleanor? 'I am the sun of the house!' It was inimitable!"
"—Your feelings; he would have your feelings! He was fourteen when his cousin Grace Whitford married, and we lost him. They had been the greatest friends; and it was long before he appeared among us. He has never cared to see her since."
"—But he has befriended her husband. Never has he failed in generosity. His only fault is—"
"—His sensitiveness. And that is—"
"—His secret. And that—"
"—You are not to discover! It is the same with him in manhood. No one will accuse Willoughby Patterne of a deficiency of manlinesss: but what is it?—he suffers, as none suffer, if he is not loved. He himself is inalterably constant in affection."
"—What it is no one can say. We have lived with him all his life, and we know him ready to make any sacrifice; only, he does demand the whole heart in return. And if he doubts, he looks as we have seen him to-day."
"—Shattered: as we have never seen him look before."
"We will hope," said Dr. Middleton, this time hastily. He tingled to say, "what it was": he had it in him to solve perplexity in their inquiry. He did say, adopting familiar speech to suit the theme, "You know, ladies, we English come of a rough stock. A dose of rough dealing in our youth does us no harm, braces us. Otherwise we are likely to feel chilly: we grow too fine where tenuity of stature is necessarily buffetted by gales, namely, in our self-esteem. We are barbarians, on a forcing soil of wealth, in a conservatory of comfortable security; but still barbarians. So, you see, we shine at our best when we are plucked out of that, to where hard blows are given, in a state of war. In a state of war we are at home, our men are high-minded fellows, Scipios and good legionaries. In the state of peace we do not live in peace: our native roughness breaks out in unexpected places, under extraordinary aspects—tyrannies, extravagances, domestic exactions: and if we have not had sharp early training . . . within and without . . . the old-fashioned island-instrument to drill into us the civilization of our masters, the ancients, we show it by running here and there to some excess. Ahem. Yet," added the Rev. Doctor, abandoning his effort to deliver a weighty truth obscurely for the comprehension of dainty spinster ladies, the superabundance of whom in England was in his opinion largely the cause of our decay as a people, "Yet I have not observed this ultra-sensitiveness in Willoughby. He has borne to hear more than I, certainly no example of the frailty, could have endured."
"He concealed it," said the ladies. "It is intense."
"Then is it a disease?"
"It bears no explanation; it is mystic."
"It is a cultus, then, a form of self-worship."
"Self!" they ejaculated. "But is not Self indifferent to others? Is itSelf that craves for sympathy, love, and devotion?"
"He is an admirable host, ladies."
"He is admirable in all respects."
"Admirable must he be who can impress discerning women, his life-long housemates, so favourably. He is, I repeat, a perfect host."
"He will be a perfect husband."
"In all probability."
"It is a certainty. Let him be loved and obeyed, he will be guided. That is the secret for her whom he so fatally loves. That, if we had dared, we would have hinted to her. She will rule him through her love of him, and through him all about her. And it will not be a rule he submits to, but a love he accepts. If she could see it!"
"If she were a metaphysician!" sighed Dr. Middleton.
"—But a sensitiveness so keen as his might—"
"—Fretted by an unsympathizing mate—"
"—In the end become, for the best of us is mortal—"
"—Callous!"
"—He would feel perhaps as much—"
"—Or more!—"
"—He would still be tender—"
"—But he might grow outwardly hard!"
Both ladies looked up at Dr. Middleton, as they revealed the dreadful prospect.
"It is the story told of corns!" he said, sad as they.
The three stood drooping: the ladies with an attempt to digest his remark; the Rev. Doctor in dejection lest his gallantry should no longer continue to wrestle with his good sense.
He was rescued.
The door opened and a footman announced:—
"Mr. Dale."
Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel made a sign to one another of raising their hands.
They advanced to him, and welcomed him.
"Pray be seated, Mr. Dale. You have not brought us bad news of ourLaetitia?"
"So rare is the pleasure of welcoming you here, Mr. Dale, that we are in some alarm, when, as we trust, it should be matter for unmixed congratulation."
"Has Doctor Corney been doing wonders?"
"I am indebted to him for the drive to your house, ladies," said Mr. Dale, a spare, close-buttoned gentleman, with an Indian complexion deadened in the sick-chamber. "It is unusual for me to stir from my precincts."
"The Rev. Dr. Middleton."
Mr. Dale bowed. He seemed surprised.
"You live in a splendid air, sir," observed the Rev. Doctor.
"I can profit little by it, sir," replied Mr. Dale. He asked the ladies: "Will Sir Willoughby be disengaged?"
They consulted. "He is with Vernon. We will send to him."
The bell was rung.
"I have had the gratification of making the acquaintance of your daughter, Mr. Dale, a most estimable lady," said Dr. Middleton.
Mr. Dale bowed. "She is honoured by your praises, sir. To the best of my belief—I speak as a father—she merits them. Hitherto I have had no doubts."
"Of Laetitia?" exclaimed the ladies; and spoke of her as gentleness and goodness incarnate.
"Hitherto I have devoutly thought so," said Mr. Dale.
"Surely she is the very sweetest nurse, the most devoted of daughters."
"As far as concerns her duty to her father, I can say she is that, ladies."
"In all her relations, Mr. Dale!"
"It is my prayer," he said.
The footman appeared. He announced that Sir Willoughby was in the laboratory with Mr. Whitford, and the door locked.
"Domestic business," the ladies remarked. "You know Willoughby's diligent attention to affairs, Mr. Dale."
"He is well?" Mr. Dale inquired.
"In excellent health."
"Body and mind?"
"But, dear Mr. Dale, he is never ill."
"Ah! for one to hear that who is never well! And Mr. Whitford is quite sound?"
"Sound? The question alarms me for myself," said Dr. Middleton. "Sound as our Constitution, the Credit of the country, the reputation of our Prince of poets. I pray you to have no fears for him."
Mr. Dale gave the mild little sniff of a man thrown deeper into perplexity.
He said: "Mr. Whitford works his head; he is a hard student; he may not be always, if I may so put it, at home on worldly affairs."
"Dismiss that defamatory legend of the student, Mr. Dale; and take my word for it, that he who persistently works his head has the strongest for all affairs."
"Ah! Your daughter, sir, is here?"
"My daughter is here, sir, and will be most happy to present her respects to the father of her friend, Miss Dale."
"They are friends?"
"Very cordial friends."
Mr. Dale administered another feebly pacifying sniff to himself.
"Laetitia!" he sighed, in apostrophe, and swept his forehead with a hand seen to shake.
The ladies asked him anxiously whether he felt the heat of the room; and one offered him a smelling-bottle.
He thanked them. "I can hold out until Sir Willoughby comes."
"We fear to disturb him when his door is locked, Mr. Dale; but, if you wish it, we will venture on a message. You have really no bad news of our Laetitia? She left us hurriedly this morning, without any leave-taking, except a word to one of the maids, that your condition required her immediate presence."
"My condition! And now her door is locked to me! We have spoken through the door, and that is all. I stand sick and stupefied between two locked doors, neither of which will open, it appears, to give me the enlightenment I need more than medicine."
"Dear me!" cried Dr. Middleton, "I am struck by your description of your position, Mr. Dale. It would aptly apply to our humanity of the present generation; and were these the days when I sermonized, I could propose that it should afford me an illustration for the pulpit. For my part, when doors are closed I try not their locks; and I attribute my perfect equanimity, health even, to an uninquiring acceptation of the fact that they are closed to me. I read my page by the light I have. On the contrary, the world of this day, if I may presume to quote you for my purpose, is heard knocking at those two locked doors of the secret of things on each side of us, and is beheld standing sick and stupefied because it has got no response to its knocking. Why, sir, let the world compare the diverse fortunes of the beggar and the postman: knock to give, and it is opened unto you: knock to crave, and it continues shut. I say, carry a letter to your locked door, and you shall have a good reception: but there is none that is handed out. For which reason . . ."
Mr. Dale swept a perspiring forehead, and extended his hand in supplication. "I am an invalid, Dr. Middleton," he said. "I am unable to cope with analogies. I have but strength for the slow digestion of facts."
"For facts, we are bradypeptics to a man, sir. We know not yet if nature be a fact or an effort to master one. The world has not yet assimilated the first fact it stepped on. We are still in the endeavour to make good blood of the fact of our being." Pressing his hands at his temples, Mr. Dale moaned: "My head twirls; I did unwisely to come out. I came on an impulse; I trust, honourable. I am unfit—I cannot follow you, Dr. Middleton. Pardon me."
"Nay, sir, let me say, from my experience of my countrymen, that if you do not follow me and can abstain from abusing me in consequence, you are magnanimous," the Rev. Doctor replied, hardly consenting to let go the man he had found to indemnify him for his gallant service of acquiescing as a mute to the ladies, though he knew his breathing robustfulness to be as an East wind to weak nerves, and himself an engine of punishment when he had been torn for a day from his books.
Miss Eleanor said: "The enlightenment you need, Mr. Dale? Can we enlighten you?"
"I think not," he answered, faintly. "I think I will wait for Sir Willoughby . . . or Mr. Whitford. If I can keep my strength. Or could I exchange—I fear to break down—two words with the young lady who is, was . . ."
"Miss Middleton, my daughter, sir? She shall be at your disposition; I will bring her to you." Dr. Middleton stopped at the window. "She, it is true, may better know the mind of Miss Dale than I. But I flatter myself I know the gentleman better. I think, Mr. Dale, addressing you as the lady's father, you will find me a persuasive, I could be an impassioned, advocate in his interests."
Mr. Dale was confounded; the weakly sapling caught in a gust falls back as he did.
"Advocate?" he said. He had little breath.
"His impassioned advocate, I repeat; for I have the highest opinion of him. You see, sir, I am acquainted with the circumstances. I believe," Dr. Middleton half turned to the ladies, "we must, until your potent inducements, Mr. Dale, have been joined to my instances, and we overcome what feminine scruples there may be, treat the circumstances as not generally public. Our Strephon may be chargeable with shyness. But if for the present it is incumbent on us, in proper consideration for the parties, not to be nominally precise, it is hardly requisite in this household that we should be. He is now for protesting indifference to the state. I fancy we understand that phase of amatory frigidity. Frankly, Mr. Dale, I was once in my life myself refused by a lady, and I was not indignant, merely indifferent to the marriage-tie."
"My daughter has refused him, sir?"
"Temporarily it would appear that she has declined the proposal."
"He was at liberty? . . . he could honourably? . . ."
"His best friend and nearest relative is your guarantee."
"I know it; I hear so; I am informed of that: I have heard of the proposal, and that he could honourably make it. Still, I am helpless, I cannot move, until I am assured that my daughter's reasons are such as a father need not underline."
"Does the lady, perchance, equivocate?"
"I have not seen her this morning; I rise late. I hear an astounding account of the cause for her departure from Patterne, and I find her door locked to me—no answer."
"It is that she had no reasons to give, and she feared the demand for them."
"Ladies!" dolorously exclaimed Mr. Dale.
"We guess the secret, we guess it!" they exclaimed in reply; and they looked smilingly, as Dr. Middleton looked.
"She had no reasons to give?" Mr. Dale spelled these words to his understanding. "Then, sir, she knew you not adverse?"
"Undoubtedly, by my high esteem for the gentleman, she must have known me not adverse. But she would not consider me a principal. She could hardly have conceived me an obstacle. I am simply the gentleman's friend. A zealous friend, let me add."
Mr. Dale put out an imploring hand; it was too much for him.
"Pardon me; I have a poor head. And your daughter the same, sir?"
"We will not measure it too closely, but I may say, my daughter the same, sir. And likewise—may I not add—these ladies."
Mr. Dale made sign that he was overfilled. "Where am I! And Laetitia refused him?"
"Temporarily, let us assume. Will it not partly depend on you, Mr.Dale?"
"But what strange things have been happening during my daughter's absence from the cottage!" cried Mr. Dale, betraying an elixir in his veins. "I feel that I could laugh if I did not dread to be thought insane. She refused his hand, and he was at liberty to offer it? My girl! We are all on our heads. The fairy-tales were right and the lesson-books were wrong. But it is really, it is really very demoralizing. An invalid—and I am one, and no momentary exhilaration will be taken for the contrary—clings to the idea of stability, order. The slightest disturbance of the wonted course of things unsettles him. Why, for years I have been prophesying it! and for years I have had everything against me, and now when it is confirmed, I am wondering that I must not call myself a fool!"
"And for years, dear Mr. Dale, this union, in spite of counter-currents and human arrangements, has been our Willoughby's constant preoccupation," said Miss Eleanor.
"His most cherished aim," said Miss Isabel.
"The name was not spoken by me," said Dr. Middleton.
"But it is out, and perhaps better out, if we would avoid the chance of mystifications. I do not suppose we are seriously committing a breach of confidence, though he might have wished to mention it to you first himself. I have it from Willoughby that last night he appealed to your daughter, Mr. Dale—not for the first time, if I apprehend him correctly; and unsuccessfully. He despairs. I do not: supposing, that is, your assistance vouchsafed to us. And I do not despair, because the gentleman is a gentleman of worth, of acknowledged worth. You know him well enough to grant me that. I will bring you my daughter to help me in sounding his praises."
Dr Middleton stepped through the window to the lawn on an elastic foot, beaming with the happiness he felt charged to confer on his friend Mr. Whitford.
"Ladies! it passes all wonders," Mr. Dale gasped.
"Willoughby's generosity does pass all wonders," they said in chorus.
The door opened; Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer were announced.
Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer entered spying to right and left. At the sight of Mr. Dale in the room Lady Busshe murmured to her friend: "Confirmation!"
Lady Culmer murmured: "Corney is quite reliable."
"The man is his own best tonic."
"He is invaluable for the country."
Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel greeted them.
The amiability of the Patterne ladies combined with their total eclipse behind their illustrious nephew invited enterprising women of the world to take liberties, and they were not backward.
Lady Busshe said: "Well? the news! we have the outlines. Don't be astonished: we know the points: we have heard the gun. I could have told you as much yesterday. I saw it. And I guessed it the day before. Oh, I do believe in fatalities now. Lady Culmer and I agree to take that view: it is the simplest. Well, and are you satisfied, my dears?"
The ladies grimaced interrogatively: "With what?"
"With it? with all! with her! with him!"
"Our Willoughby?"
"Can it be possible that they require a dose of Corney?" Lady Busshe remarked to Lady Culmer.
"They play discretion to perfection," said Lady Culmer. "But, my dears, we are in the secret."
"How did she behave?" whispered Lady Busshe. "No high flights and flutters, I do hope. She was well-connected, they say; though I don't comprehend what they mean by a line of scholars—one thinks of a row of pinafores: and she was pretty."
"That is well enough at the start. It never will stand against brains. He had the two in the house to contrast them, and . . . the result! A young woman with brains—in a house—beats all your beauties. Lady Culmer and I have determined on that view. He thought her a delightful partner for a dance, and found her rather tiresome at the end of the gallopade. I saw it yesterday, clear as daylight. She did not understand him, and he did understand her. That will be our report."
"She is young: she will learn," said the ladies uneasily, but in total ignorance of her meaning.
"And you are charitable, and always were. I remember you had a good word for that girl Durham."
Lady Busshe crossed the room to Mr. Dale, who was turning over leaves of a grand book of the heraldic devices of our great Families.
"Study it," she said, "study it, my dear Mr. Dale; you are in it, by right of possessing a clever and accomplished daughter. At page 300 you will find the Patterne crest. And mark me, she will drag you into the peerage before she has done—relatively, you know. Sir Willoughby and wife will not be contented to sit down and manage the estates. Has not Laetitia immense ambition? And very creditable, I say."
Mr. Dale tried to protest something. He shut the book, examining the binding, flapped the cover with a finger, hoped her ladyship was in good health, alluded to his own and the strangeness of the bird out of the cage.
"You will probably take up your residence here, in a larger and handsomer cage. Mr. Dale."
He shook his head. "Do I apprehend . . ." he said.
"I know," said she.
"Dear me, can it be?"
Mr. Dale gazed upward, with the feelings of one awakened late to see a world alive in broad daylight.
Lady Busshe dropped her voice. She took the liberty permitted to her with an inferior in station, while treating him to a tone of familiarity in acknowledgment of his expected rise; which is high breeding, or the exact measurement of social dues.
"Laetitia will be happy, you may be sure. I love to see a long and faithful attachment rewarded—love it! Her tale is the triumph of patience. Far above Grizzel! No woman will be ashamed of pointing to Lady Patterne. You are uncertain? You are in doubt? Let me hear—as low as you like. But there is no doubt of the new shifting of the scene?—no doubt of the proposal? Dear Mr. Dale! a very little louder. You are here because—? of course you wish to see Sir Willoughby. She? I did not catch you quite. She? . . . it seems, you say . . . ?"
Lady Culmer said to the Patterne ladies:—
"You must have had a distressing time. These affairs always mount up to a climax, unless people are very well bred. We saw it coming. Naturally we did not expect such a transformation of brides: who could? If I had laid myself down on my back to think, I should have had it. I am unerring when I set to speculating on my back. One is cooler: ideas come; they have not to be forced. That is why I am brighter on a dull winter afternoon, on the sofa, beside my tea-service, than at any other season. However, your trouble is over. When did the Middletons leave?"
"The Middletons leave?" said the ladies.
"Dr. Middleton and his daughter."
"They have not left us."
"The Middletons are here?"
"They are here, yes. Why should they have left Patterne?"
"Why?"
"Yes. They are likely to stay some days longer."
"Goodness!"
"There is no ground for any report to the contrary, Lady Culmer."
"No ground!"
Lady Culmer called out to Lady Busshe.
A cry came back from that startled dame.
"She has refused him!"
"Who?"
"She has."
"She?—Sir Willoughby?"
"Refused!—declines the honour."
"Oh, never! No, that carries the incredible beyond romance. But is he perfectly at . . ."
"Quite, it seems. And she was asked in due form and refused."
"No, and no again!"