"In two or three days, Miss Middleton."
She did not request him to stay: his announcement produced no effect on her. Consequently, thought he—well, what? nothing: well, then, that she might not be minded to stay herself. Otherwise she would have regretted the loss of an amusing companion: that is the modest way of putting it. There is a modest and a vain for the same sentiment; and both may be simultaneously in the same breast; and each one as honest as the other; so shy is man's vanity in the presence of here and there a lady. She liked him: she did not care a pin for him—how could she? yet she liked him: O, to be able to do her some kindling bit of service! These were his consecutive fancies, resolving naturally to the exclamation, and built on the conviction that she did not love Willoughby, and waited for a spirited lift from circumstances. His call for a book of the trains had been a sheer piece of impromptu, in the mind as well as on the mouth. It sprang, unknown to him, of conjectures he had indulged yesterday and the day before. This morning she would have an answer to her letter to her friend, Miss Lucy Darleton, the pretty dark girl, whom De Craye was astonished not to have noticed more when he danced with her. She, pretty as she was, had come to his recollection through the name and rank of her father, a famous general of cavalry, and tactician in that arm. The colonel despised himself for not having been devoted to Clara Middleton's friend.
The morning's letters were on the bronze plate in the hall. Clara passed on her way to her room without inspecting them. De Craye opened an envelope and went upstairs to scribble a line. Sir Willoughby observed their absence at the solemn reading to the domestic servants in advance of breakfast. Three chairs were unoccupied. Vernon had his own notions of a mechanical service—and a precious profit he derived from them! but the other two seats returned the stare Willoughby cast at their backs with an impudence that reminded him of his friend Horace's calling for a book of the trains, when a minute afterward he admitted he was going to stay at the Hall another two days, or three. The man possessed by jealousy is never in need of matter for it: he magnifies; grass is jungle, hillocks are mountains. Willoughby's legs crossing and uncrossing audibly, and his tight-folded arms and clearing of the throat, were faint indications of his condition.
"Are you in fair health this morning, Willoughby?" Dr. Middleton said to him after he had closed his volumes.
"The thing is not much questioned by those who know me intimately," he replied.
"Willoughby unwell!" and, "He is health incarnate!" exclaimed the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.
Laetitia grieved for him. Sun-rays on a pest-stricken city, she thought, were like the smile of his face. She believed that he deeply loved Clara, and had learned more of her alienation.
He went into the ball to look into the well for the pair of malefactors; on fire with what he could not reveal to a soul.
De Craye was in the housekeeper's room, talking to young Crossjay, and Mrs. Montague just come up to breakfast. He had heard the boy chattering, and as the door was ajar he peeped in, and was invited to enter. Mrs. Montague was very fond of hearing him talk: he paid her the familiar respect which a lady of fallen fortunes, at a certain period after the fall, enjoys as a befittingly sad souvenir, and the respectfulness of the lord of the house was more chilling.
She bewailed the boy's trying his constitution with long walks before he had anything in him to walk on.
"And where did you go this morning, my lad?" said De Craye.
"Ah, you know the ground, colonel," said Crossjay. "I am hungry! I shall eat three eggs and some bacon, and buttered cakes, and jam, then begin again, on my second cup of coffee."
"It's not braggadocio," remarked Mrs. Montague. "He waits empty from five in the morning till nine, and then he comes famished to my table, and cats too much."
"Oh! Mrs. Montague, that is what the country people call roemancing. For, Colonel De Craye, I had a bun at seven o'clock. Miss Middleton forced me to go and buy it"
"A stale bun, my boy?"
"Yesterday's: there wasn't much of a stopper to you in it, like a new bun."
"And where did you leave Miss Middleton when you went to buy the bun? You should never leave a lady; and the street of a country town is lonely at that early hour. Crossjay, you surprise me."
"She forced me to go, colonel. Indeed she did. What do I care for a bun! And she was quite safe. We could hear the people stirring in the post-office, and I met our postman going for his letter-bag. I didn't want to go: bother the bun!—but you can't disobey Miss Middleton. I never want to, and wouldn't."
"There we're of the same mind," said the colonel, and Crossjay shouted, for the lady whom they exalted was at the door.
"You will be too tired for a ride this morning," De Craye said to her, descending the stairs.
She swung a bonnet by the ribands. "I don't think of riding to-day."
"Why did you not depute your mission to me?"
"I like to bear my own burdens, as far as I can."
"Miss Darleton is well?"
"I presume so."
"Will you try her recollection for me?"
"It will probably be quite as lively as yours was."
"Shall you see her soon?"
"I hope so."
Sir Willoughby met her at the foot of the stairs, but refrained from giving her a hand that shook.
"We shall have the day together," he said.
Clara bowed.
At the breakfast-table she faced a clock.
De Craye took out his watch. "You are five and a half minutes too slow by that clock, Willoughby."
"The man omitted to come from Rendon to set it last week, Horace. He will find the hour too late here for him when he does come."
One of the ladies compared the time of her watch with De Craye's, and Clara looked at hers and gratefully noted that she was four minutes in arrear.
She left the breakfast-room at a quarter to ten, after kissing her father. Willoughby was behind her. He had been soothed by thinking of his personal advantages over De Craye, and he felt assured that if he could be solitary with his eccentric bride and fold her in himself, he would, cutting temper adrift, be the man he had been to her not so many days back. Considering how few days back, his temper was roused, but he controlled it.
They were slightly dissenting as De Craye stepped into the hall.
"A present worth examining," Willoughby said to her: "and I do not dwell on the costliness. Come presently, then. I am at your disposal all day. I will drive you in the afternoon to call on Lady Busshe to offer your thanks: but you must see it first. It is laid out in the laboratory."
"There is time before the afternoon," said Clara.
"Wedding presents?" interposed De Craye.
"A porcelain service from Lady Busshe, Horace."
"Not in fragments? Let me have a look at it. I'm haunted by an idea that porcelain always goes to pieces. I'll have a look and take a hint. We're in the laboratory, Miss Middleton."
He put his arm under Willoughby's. The resistance to him was momentary:Willoughby had the satisfaction of the thought that De Craye being withhim was not with Clara; and seeing her giving orders to her maidBarclay, he deferred his claim on her company for some short period.
De Craye detained him in the laboratory, first over the China cups and saucers, and then with the latest of London—tales of youngest Cupid upon subterranean adventures, having high titles to light him. Willoughby liked the tale thus illuminated, for without the title there was no special savour in such affairs, and it pulled down his betters in rank. He was of a morality to reprobate the erring dame while he enjoyed the incidents. He could not help interrupting De Craye to point at Vernon through the window, striding this way and that, evidently on the hunt for young Crossjay. "No one here knows how to manage the boy except myself But go on, Horace," he said, checking his contemptuous laugh; and Vernon did look ridiculous, out there half-drenched already in a white rain, again shuffled off by the little rascal. It seemed that he was determined to have his runaway: he struck up the avenue at full pedestrian racing pace.
"A man looks a fool cutting after a cricket-ball; but, putting on steam in a storm of rain to catch a young villain out of sight, beats anything I've witnessed," Willoughby resumed, in his amusement.
"Aiha!" said De Craye, waving a hand to accompany the melodious accent, "there are things to beat that for fun."
He had smoked in the laboratory, so Willoughby directed a servant to transfer the porcelain service to one of the sitting-rooms for Clara's inspection of it.
"You're a bold man," De Craye remarked. "The luck may be with you, though. I wouldn't handle the fragile treasure for a trifle."
"I believe in my luck," said Willoughby.
Clara was now sought for. The lord of the house desired her presence impatiently, and had to wait. She was in none of the lower rooms. Barclay, her maid, upon interrogation, declared she was in none of the upper. Willoughby turned sharp on De Craye: he was there.
The ladies Eleanor and Isabel and Miss Dale were consulted. They had nothing to say about Clara's movements, more than that they could not understand her exceeding restlessness. The idea of her being out of doors grew serious; heaven was black, hard thunder rolled, and lightning flushed the battering rain. Men bearing umbrellas, shawls, and cloaks were dispatched on a circuit of the park. De Craye said: "I'll be one."
"No," cried Willoughby, starting to interrupt him, "I can't allow it."
"I've the scent of a hound, Willoughby; I'll soon be on the track."
"My dear Horace, I won't let you go."
"Adieu, dear boy! and if the lady's discoverable, I'm the one to find her."
He stepped to the umbrella-stand. There was then a general question whether Clara had taken her umbrella. Barclay said she had. The fact indicated a wider stroll than round inside the park: Crossjay was likewise absent. De Craye nodded to himself.
Willoughby struck a rattling blow on the barometer.
"Where's Pollington?" he called, and sent word for his man Pollington to bring big fishing-boots and waterproof wrappers.
An urgent debate within him was in progress.
Should he go forth alone on his chance of discovering Clara and forgiving her under his umbrella and cloak? or should he prevent De Craye from going forth alone on the chance he vaunted so impudently?
"You will offend me, Horace, if you insist," he said.
"Regard me as an instrument of destiny, Willoughby," replied De Craye.
"Then we go in company."
"But that's an addition of one that cancels the other by conjunction, and's worse than simple division: for I can't trust my wits unless I rely on them alone, you see."
"Upon my word, you talk at times most unintelligible stuff, to be frank with you, Horace. Give it in English."
"'Tis not suited, perhaps, to the genius of the language, for I thoughtI talked English."
"Oh, there's English gibberish as well as Irish, we know!"
"And a deal foolisher when they do go at it; for it won't bear squeezing, we think, like Irish."
"Where!" exclaimed the ladies, "where can she be! The storm is terrible."
Laetitia suggested the boathouse.
"For Crossjay hadn't a swim this morning!" said De Craye.
No one reflected on the absurdity that Clara should think of taking Crossjay for a swim in the lake, and immediately after his breakfast: it was accepted as a suggestion at least that she and Crossjay had gone to the lake for a row.
In the hopefulness of the idea, Willoughby suffered De Craye to go on his chance unaccompanied. He was near chuckling. He projected a plan for dismissing Crossjay and remaining in the boathouse with Clara, luxuriating in the prestige which would attach to him for seeking and finding her. Deadly sentiments intervened. Still he might expect to be alone with her where she could not slip from him.
The throwing open of the hall-doors for the gentlemen presented a framed picture of a deluge. All the young-leaved trees were steely black, without a gradation of green, drooping and pouring, and the song of rain had become an inveterate hiss.
The ladies beholding it exclaimed against Clara, even apostrophized her, so dark are trivial errors when circumstances frown. She must be mad to tempt such weather: she was very giddy; she was never at rest. Clara! Clara! how could you be so wild! Ought we not to tell Dr. Middleton?
Laetitia induced them to spare him.
"Which way do you take?" said Willoughby, rather fearful that his companion was not to be got rid of now.
"Any way," said De Craye. "I chuck up my head like a halfpenny, and go by the toss."
This enraging nonsense drove off Willoughby. De Craye saw him cast a furtive eye at his heels to make sure he was not followed, and thought, "Jove! he may be fond of her. But he's not on the track. She's a determined girl, if I'm correct. She's a girl of a hundred thousand. Girls like that make the right sort of wives for the right men. They're the girls to make men think of marrying. To-morrow! only give me a chance. They stick to you fast when they do stick."
Then a thought of her flower-like drapery and face caused him fervently to hope she had escaped the storm.
Calling at the West park-lodge he heard that Miss Middleton had been seen passing through the gate with Master Crossjay; but she had not been seen coming back. Mr. Vernon Whitford had passed through half an hour later.
"After his young man!" said the colonel.
The lodge-keeper's wife and daughter knew of Master Crossjay's pranks; Mr. Whitford, they said, had made inquiries about him and must have caught him and sent him home to change his dripping things; for Master Crossjay had come back, and had declined shelter in the lodge; he seemed to be crying; he went away soaking over the wet grass, hanging his head. The opinion at the lodge was that Master Crossjay was unhappy.
"He very properly received a wigging from Mr. Whitford, I have no doubt," said Colonel Do Craye.
Mother and daughter supposed it to be the case, and considered Crossjay very wilful for not going straight home to the Hall to change his wet clothes; he was drenched.
Do Craye drew out his watch. The time was ten minutes past eleven. If the surmise he had distantly spied was correct, Miss Middleton would have been caught in the storm midway to her destination. By his guess at her character (knowledge of it, he would have said), he judged that no storm would daunt her on a predetermined expedition. He deduced in consequence that she was at the present moment flying to her friend, the charming brunette Lucy Darleton.
Still, as there was a possibility of the rain having been too much for her, and as he had no other speculation concerning the route she had taken, he decided upon keeping along the road to Rendon, with a keen eye at cottage and farmhouse windows.
The lodge-keeper had a son, who was a chum of Master Crossjay's, and errant-fellow with him upon many adventures; for this boy's passion was to become a gamekeeper, and accompanied by one of the head-gamekeeper's youngsters, he and Crossjay were in the habit of rangeing over the country, preparing for a profession delightful to the tastes of all three. Crossjay's prospective connection with the mysterious ocean bestowed the title of captain on him by common consent; he led them, and when missing for lessons he was generally in the society of Jacob Croom or Jonathan Fernaway. Vernon made sure of Crossjay when he perceived Jacob Croom sitting on a stool in the little lodge-parlour. Jacob's appearance of a diligent perusal of a book he had presented to the lad, he took for a decent piece of trickery. It was with amazement that he heard from the mother and daughter, as well as Jacob, of Miss Middleton's going through the gate before ten o'clock with Crossjay beside her, the latter too hurried to spare a nod to Jacob. That she, of all on earth, should be encouraging Crossjay to truancy was incredible. Vernon had to fall back upon Greek and Latin aphoristic shots at the sex to believe it.
Rain was universal; a thick robe of it swept from hill to hill; thunder rumbled remote, and between the ruffled roars the downpour pressed on the land with a great noise of eager gobbling, much like that of the swine's trough fresh filled, as though a vast assembly of the hungered had seated themselves clamorously and fallen to on meats and drinks in a silence, save of the chaps. A rapid walker poetically and humourously minded gathers multitudes of images on his way. And rain, the heaviest you can meet, is a lively companion when the resolute pacer scorns discomfort of wet clothes and squealing boots. South-western rain-clouds, too, are never long sullen: they enfold and will have the earth in a good strong glut of the kissing overflow; then, as a hawk with feathers on his beak of the bird in his claw lifts head, they rise and take veiled feature in long climbing watery lines: at any moment they may break the veil and show soft upper cloud, show sun on it, show sky, green near the verge they spring from, of the green of grass in early dew; or, along a travelling sweep that rolls asunder overhead, heaven's laughter of purest blue among titanic white shoulders: it may mean fair smiling for awhile, or be the lightest interlude; but the watery lines, and the drifting, the chasing, the upsoaring, all in a shadowy fingering of form, and the animation of the leaves of the trees pointing them on, the bending of the tree-tops, the snapping of branches, and the hurrahings of the stubborn hedge at wrestle with the flaws, yielding but a leaf at most, and that on a fling, make a glory of contest and wildness without aid of colour to inflame the man who is at home in them from old association on road, heath, and mountain. Let him be drenched, his heart will sing. And thou, trim cockney, that jeerest, consider thyself, to whom it may occur to be out in such a scene, and with what steps of a nervous dancing-master it would be thine to play the hunted rat of the elements, for the preservation of the one imagined dryspot about thee, somewhere on thy luckless person! The taking of rain and sun alike befits men of our climate, and he who would have the secret of a strengthening intoxication must court the clouds of the South-west with a lover's blood.
Vernon's happy recklessness was dashed by fears for Miss Middleton. Apart from those fears, he had the pleasure of a gull wheeling among foam-streaks of the wave. He supposed the Swiss and Tyrol Alps to have hidden their heads from him for many a day to come, and the springing and chiming South-west was the next best thing. A milder rain descended; the country expanded darkly defined underneath the moving curtain; the clouds were as he liked to see them, scaling; but their skirts dragged. Torrents were in store, for they coursed streamingly still and had not the higher lift, or eagle ascent, which he knew for one of the signs of fairness, nor had the hills any belt of mist-like vapour.
On a step of the stile leading to the short-cut to Rendon youngCrossjay was espied. A man-tramp sat on the top-bar.
"There you are; what are you doing there? Where's Miss Middleton?" saidVernon. "Now, take care before you open your mouth."
Crossjay shut the mouth he had opened.
"The lady has gone away over to a station, sir," said the tramp.
"You fool!" roared Crossjay, ready to fly at him.
"But ain't it now, young gentleman? Can you say it ain't?"
"I gave you a shilling, you ass!"
"You give me that sum, young gentleman, to stop here and take care of you, and here I stopped."
"Mr. Whitford!" Crossjay appealed to his master, and broke of in disgust. "Take care of me! As if anybody who knows me would think I wanted taking care of! Why, what a beast you must be, you fellow!"
"Just as you like, young gentleman. I chaunted you all I know, to keep up your downcast spirits. You did want comforting. You wanted it rarely. You cried like an infant."
"I let you 'chaunt', as you call it, to keep you from swearing."
"And why did I swear, young gentleman? because I've got an itchy coat in the wet, and no shirt for a lining. And no breakfast to give me a stomach for this kind of weather. That's what I've come to in this world! I'm a walking moral. No wonder I swears, when I don't strike up a chaunt."
"But why are you sitting here wet through, Crossjay! Be off home at once, and change, and get ready for me."
"Mr. Whitford, I promised, and I tossed this fellow a shilling not to go bothering Miss Middleton."
"The lady wouldn't have none o" the young gentleman, sir, and I offered to go pioneer for her to the station, behind her, at a respectful distance."
"As if!—you treacherous cur!" Crossjay ground his teeth at the betrayer. "Well, Mr. Whitford, and I didn't trust him, and I stuck to him, or he'd have been after her whining about his coat and stomach, and talking of his being a moral. He repeats that to everybody."
"She has gone to the station?" said Vernon.
Not a word on that subject was to be won from Crossjay.
"How long since?" Vernon partly addressed Mr. Tramp.
The latter became seized with shivers as he supplied the information that it might be a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. "But what's time to me, sir? If I had reglar meals, I should carry a clock in my inside. I got the rheumatics instead."
"Way there!" Vernon cried, and took the stile at a vault.
"That's what gentlemen can do, who sleeps in their beds warm," moaned the tramp. "They've no joints."
Vernon handed him a half-crown piece, for he had been of use for once.
"Mr. Whitford, let me come. If you tell me to come I may. Do let me come," Crossjay begged with great entreaty. "I sha'n't see her for . . ."
"Be off, quick!" Vernon cut him short and pushed on.
The tramp and Crossjay were audible to him; Crossjay spurning the consolations of the professional sad man.
Vernon spun across the fields, timing himself by his watch to reach Rendon station ten minutes before eleven, though without clearly questioning the nature of the resolution which precipitated him. Dropping to the road, he had better foothold than on the slippery field-path, and he ran. His principal hope was that Clara would have missed her way. Another pelting of rain agitated him on her behalf. Might she not as well be suffered to go?—and sit three hours and more in a railway-carriage with wet feet!
He clasped the visionary little feet to warm them on his breast.—But Willoughby's obstinate fatuity deserved the blow!—But neither she nor her father deserved the scandal. But she was desperate. Could reasoning touch her? if not, what would? He knew of nothing. Yesterday he had spoken strongly to Willoughby, to plead with him to favour her departure and give her leisure to sound her mind, and he had left his cousin, convinced that Clara's best measure was flight: a man so cunning in a pretended obtuseness backed by senseless pride, and in petty tricks that sprang of a grovelling tyranny, could only be taught by facts.
Her recent treatment of him, however, was very strange; so strange that he might have known himself better if he had reflected on the bound with which it shot him to a hard suspicion. De Craye had prepared the world to hear that he was leaving the Hall. Were they in concert? The idea struck at his heart colder than if her damp little feet had been there.
Vernon's full exoneration of her for making a confidant of himself, did not extend its leniency to the young lady's character when there was question of her doing the same with a second gentleman. He could suspect much: he could even expect to find De Craye at the station.
That idea drew him up in his run, to meditate on the part he should play; and by drove little Dr. Corney on the way to Rendon and hailed him, and gave his cheerless figure the nearest approach to an Irish bug in the form of a dry seat under an umbrella and water-proof covering.
"Though it is the worst I can do for you, if you decline to supplement it with a dose of hot brandy and water at the Dolphin," said he: "and I'll see you take it, if you please. I'm bound to ease a Rendon patient out of the world. Medicine's one of their superstitions, which they cling to the harder the more useless it gets. Pill and priest launch him happy between them.—'And what's on your conscience, Pat?—It's whether your blessing, your Riverence, would disagree with another drop. Then put the horse before the cart, my son, and you shall have the two in harmony, and God speed ye!'—Rendon station, did you say, Vernon? You shall have my prescription at the Railway Arms, if you're hurried. You have the look. What is it? Can I help?"
"No. And don't ask."
"You're like the Irish Grenadier who had a bullet in a humiliating situation. Here's Rendon, and through it we go with a spanking clatter. Here's Doctor Corney's dog-cart post-haste again. For there's no dying without him now, and Repentance is on the death-bed for not calling him in before. Half a charge of humbug hurts no son of a gun, friend Vernon, if he'd have his firing take effect. Be tender to't in man or woman, particularly woman. So, by goes the meteoric doctor, and I'll bring noses to window-panes, you'll see, which reminds me of the sweetest young lady I ever saw, and the luckiest man. When is she off for her bridal trousseau? And when are they spliced? I'll not call her perfection, for that's a post, afraid to move. But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next it. Poetry's wanted to speak of her. I'm Irish and inflammable, I suppose, but I never looked on a girl to make a man comprehend the entire holy meaning of the word rapturous, like that one. And away she goes! We'll not say another word. But you're a Grecian, friend Vernon. Now, couldn't you think her just a whiff of an idea of a daughter of a peccadillo-Goddess?"
"Deuce take you, Corney, drop me here; I shall be late for the train," said Vernon, laying hand on the doctor's arm to check him on the way to the station in view.
Dr Corney had a Celtic intelligence for a meaning behind an illogical tongue. He drew up, observing. "Two minutes run won't hurt you."
He slightly fancied he might have given offence, though he was well acquainted with Vernon and had a cordial grasp at the parting.
The truth must be told that Vernon could not at the moment bear any more talk from an Irishman. Dr. Corney had succeeded in persuading him not to wonder at Clara Middleton's liking for Colonel de Craye.
Clara stood in the waiting-room contemplating the white rails of the rain-swept line. Her lips parted at the sight of Vernon.
"You have your ticket?" said he.
She nodded, and breathed more freely; the matter-of-fact question was reassuring.
"You are wet," he resumed; and it could not be denied.
"A little. I do not feel it."
"I must beg you to come to the inn hard by—half a dozen steps. We shall see your train signalled. Come."
She thought him startlingly authoritative, but he had good sense to back him; and depressed as she was by the dampness, she was disposed to yield to reason if he continued to respect her independence. So she submitted outwardly, resisted inwardly, on the watch to stop him from taking any decisive lead.
"Shall we be sure to see the signal, Mr. Whitford?"
"I'll provide for that."
He spoke to the station-clerk, and conducted her across the road.
"You are quite alone, Miss Middleton?"
"I am: I have not brought my maid."
"You must take off boots and stockings at once, and have them dried.I'll put you in the hands of the landlady."
"But my train!"
"You have full fifteen minutes, besides fair chances of delay."
He seemed reasonable, the reverse of hostile, in spite of his commanding air, and that was not unpleasant in one friendly to her adventure. She controlled her alert distrustfulness, and passed from him to the landlady, for her feet were wet and cold, the skirts of her dress were soiled; generally inspecting herself, she was an object to be shuddered at, and she was grateful to Vernon for his inattention to her appearance.
Vernon ordered Dr. Corney's dose, and was ushered upstairs to a room of portraits, where the publican's ancestors and family sat against the walls, flat on their canvas as weeds of the botanist's portfolio, although corpulency was pretty generally insisted on, and there were formidable battalions of bust among the females. All of them had the aspect of the national energy which has vanquished obstacles to subside on its ideal. They all gazed straight at the guest. "Drink, and come to this!" they might have been labelled to say to him. He was in the private Walhalla of a large class of his countrymen. The existing host had taken forethought to be of the party in his prime, and in the central place, looking fresh-fattened there and sanguine from the performance. By and by a son would shove him aside; meanwhile he shelved his parent, according to the manners of energy.
One should not be a critic of our works of Art in uncomfortable garments. Vernon turned from the portraits to a stuffed pike in a glass case, and plunged into sympathy with the fish for a refuge.
Clara soon rejoined him, saying: "But you, you must be very wet. You were without an umbrella. You must be wet through, Mr. Whitford."
"We're all wet through, to-day," said Vernon. "Crossjay's wet through, and a tramp he met."
"The horrid man! But Crossjay should have turned back when I told him.Cannot the landlord assist you? You are not tied to time. I beggedCrossjay to turn back when it began to rain: when it became heavy Icompelled him. So you met my poor Crossjay?"
"You have not to blame him for betraying you. The tramp did that. I was thrown on your track quite by accident. Now pardon me for using authority, and don't be alarmed, Miss Middleton; you are perfectly free for me; but you must not run a risk to your health. I met Doctor Corney coming along, and he prescribed hot brandy and water for a wet skin, especially for sitting in it. There's the stuff on the table; I see you have been aware of a singular odour; you must consent to sip some, as medicine; merely to give you warmth."
"Impossible, Mr. Whitford: I could not taste it. But pray, obey Dr.Corney, if he ordered it for you."
"I can't, unless you do."
"I will, then: I will try."
She held the glass, attempted, and was baffled by the reek of it.
"Try: you can do anything," said Vernon.
"Now that you find me here, Mr. Whitford! Anything for myself it would seem, and nothing to save a friend. But I will really try."
"It must be a good mouthful."
"I will try. And you will finish the glass?"
"With your permission, if you do not leave too much."
They were to drink out of the same glass; and she was to drink some of this infamous mixture: and she was in a kind of hotel alone with him: and he was drenched in running after her:—all this came of breaking loose for an hour!
"Oh! what a misfortune that it should be such a day, Mr. Whitford!"
"Did you not choose the day?"
"Not the weather."
"And the worst of it is, that Willoughby will come upon Crossjay wet to the bone, and pump him and get nothing but shufflings, blank lies, and then find him out and chase him from the house."
Clara drank immediately, and more than she intended. She held the glass as an enemy to be delivered from, gasping, uncertain of her breath.
"Never let me be asked to endure such a thing again!"
"You are unlikely to be running away from father and friends again."
She panted still with the fiery liquid she had gulped: and she wondered that it should belie its reputation in not fortifying her, but rendering her painfully susceptible to his remarks.
"Mr. Whitford, I need not seek to know what you think of me."
"What I think? I don't think at all; I wish to serve you if I can."
"Am I right in supposing you a little afraid of me? You should not be. I have deceived no one. I have opened my heart to you, and am not ashamed of having done so."
"It is an excellent habit, they say."
"It is not a habit with me."
He was touched, and for that reason, in his dissatisfaction with himself, not unwilling to hurt. "We take our turn, Miss Middleton. I'm no hero, and a bad conspirator, so I am not of much avail."
"You have been reserved—but I am going, and I leave my character behind. You condemned me to the poison-bowl; you have not touched it yourself"
"In vino veritas: if I do I shall be speaking my mind."
"Then do, for the sake of mind and body."
"It won't be complimentary."
"You can be harsh. Only say everything."
"Have we time?"
They looked at their watches.
"Six minutes," Clara said.
Vernon's had stopped, penetrated by his total drenching.
She reproached herself. He laughed to quiet her. "My dies solemnes are sure to give me duckings; I'm used to them. As for the watch, it will remind me that it stopped when you went."
She raised the glass to him. She was happier and hoped for some little harshness and kindness mixed that she might carry away to travel with and think over.
He turned the glass as she had given it, turned it round in putting it to his lips: a scarce perceptible manoeuvre, but that she had given it expressly on one side.
It may be hoped that it was not done by design. Done even accidentally, without a taint of contrivance, it was an affliction to see, and coiled through her, causing her to shrink and redden.
Fugitives are subject to strange incidents; they are not vessels lying safe in harbour. She shut her lips tight, as if they had stung. The realizing sensitiveness of her quick nature accused them of a loss of bloom. And the man who made her smart like this was formal as a railway official on a platform.
"Now we are both pledged in the poison-bowl," said he. "And it has the taste of rank poison, I confess. But the doctor prescribed it, and at sea we must be sailors. Now, Miss Middleton, time presses: will you return with me?"
"No! no!"
"Where do you propose to go?"
"To London; to a friend—Miss Darleton."
"What message is there for your father?"
"Say I have left a letter for him in a letter to be delivered to you."
"To me! And what message for Willoughby?"
"My maid Barclay will hand him a letter at noon."
"You have sealed Crossjay's fate."
"How?"
"He is probably at this instant undergoing an interrogation. You may guess at his replies. The letter will expose him, and Willoughby does not pardon."
"I regret it. I cannot avoid it. Poor boy! My dear Crossjay! I did not think of how Willoughby might punish him. I was very thoughtless. Mr. Whitford, my pin-money shall go for his education. Later, when I am a little older, I shall be able to support him."
"That's an encumbrance; you should not tie yourself to drag it about. You are unalterable, of course, but circumstances are not, and as it happens, women are more subject to them than we are."
"But I will not be!"
"Your command of them is shown at the present moment."
"Because I determine to be free?"
"No: because you do the contrary; you don't determine: you run away from the difficulty, and leave it to your father and friends to bear. As for Crossjay, you see you destroy one of his chances. I should have carried him off before this, if I had not thought it prudent to keep him on terms with Willoughby. We'll let Crossjay stand aside. He'll behave like a man of honour, imitating others who have had to do the same for ladies."
"Have spoken falsely to shelter cowards, you mean, Mr. Whitford. Oh, I know.—I have but two minutes. The die is cast. I cannot go back. I must get ready. Will you see me to the station? I would rather you should hurry home."
"I will see the last of you. I will wait for you here. An express runs ahead of your train, and I have arranged with the clerk for a signal; I have an eye on the window."
"You are still my best friend, Mr. Whitford."
"Though?"
"Well, though you do not perfectly understand what torments have driven me to this."
"Carried on tides and blown by winds?"
"Ah! you do not understand."
"Mysteries?"
"Sufferings are not mysteries, they are very simple facts."
"Well, then, I don't understand. But decide at once. I wish you to have your free will."
She left the room.
Dry stockings and boots are better for travelling in than wet ones, but in spite of her direct resolve, she felt when drawing them on like one that has been tripped. The goal was desirable, the ardour was damped. Vernon's wish that she should have her free will compelled her to sound it: and it was of course to go, to be liberated, to cast off incubus and hurt her father? injure Crossjay? distress her friends? No, and ten times no!
She returned to Vernon in haste, to shun the reflex of her mind.
He was looking at a closed carriage drawn up at the station door.
"Shall we run over now, Mr. Whitford?"
"There's no signal. Here it's not so chilly."
"I ventured to enclose my letter to papa in yours, trusting you would attend to my request to you to break the news to him gently and plead for me."
"We will all do the utmost we can."
"I am doomed to vex those who care for me. I tried to follow your counsel."
"First you spoke to me, and then you spoke to Miss Dale; and at least you have a clear conscience."
"No."
"What burdens it?"
"I have done nothing to burden it."
"Then it's a clear conscience."
"No."
Vernon's shoulders jerked. Our patience with an innocent duplicity in women is measured by the place it assigns to us and another. If he had liked he could have thought: "You have not done but meditated something to trouble conscience." That was evident, and her speaking of it was proof too of the willingness to be dear. He would not help her. Man's blood, which is the link with women and responsive to them on the instant for or against, obscured him. He shrugged anew when she said: "My character would have been degraded utterly by my staying there. Could you advise it?"
"Certainly not the degradation of your character," he said, black on the subject of De Craye, and not lightened by feelings which made him sharply sensible of the beggarly dependant that he was, or poor adventuring scribbler that he was to become.
"Why did you pursue me and wish to stop me, Mr. Whitford?" said Clara, on the spur of a wound from his tone.
He replied: "I suppose I'm a busybody; I was never aware of it till now."
"You are my friend. Only you speak in irony so much. That was irony, about my clear conscience. I spoke to you and to Miss Dale: and then I rested and drifted. Can you not feel for me, that to mention it is like a scorching furnace? Willoughby has entangled papa. He schemes incessantly to keep me entangled. I fly from his cunning as much as from anything. I dread it. I have told you that I am more to blame than he, but I must accuse him. And wedding-presents! and congratulations! And to be his guest!"
"All that makes up a plea in mitigation," said Vernon.
"Is it not sufficient for you?" she asked him timidly.
"You have a masculine good sense that tells you you won't be respected if you run. Three more days there might cover a retreat with your father."
"He will not listen to me. He confuses me; Willoughby has bewitched him."
"Commission me: I will see that he listens."
"And go back? Oh, no! To London! Besides, there is the dining with Mrs. Mountstuart this evening; and I like her very well, but I must avoid her. She has a kind of idolatry . . . And what answers can I give? I supplicate her with looks. She observes them, my efforts to divert them from being painful produce a comic expression to her, and I am a charming 'rogue', and I am entertained on the topic she assumes to be principally interesting me. I must avoid her. The thought of her leaves me no choice. She is clever. She could tattoo me with epigrams."
"Stay . . . there you can hold your own."
"She has told me you give me credit for a spice of wit. I have not discovered my possession. We have spoken of it; we call it your delusion. She grants me some beauty; that must be hers."
"There's no delusion in one case or the other, Miss Middleton. You have beauty and wit; public opinion will say, wildness: indifference to your reputation will be charged on you, and your friends will have to admit it. But you will be out of this difficulty."
"Ah—to weave a second?"
"Impossible to judge until we see how you escape the first. And I have no more to say. I love your father. His humour of sententiousness and doctorial stilts is a mask he delights in, but you ought to know him and not be frightened by it. If you sat with him an hour at a Latin task, and if you took his hand and told him you could not leave him, and no tears!—he would answer you at once. It would involve a day or two further; disagreeable to you, no doubt: preferable to the present mode of escape, as I think. But I have no power whatever to persuade. I have not the 'lady's tongue'. My appeal is always to reason."
"It is a compliment. I loathe the 'lady's tongue'."
"It's a distinctly good gift, and I wish I had it. I might have succeeded instead of failing, and appearing to pay a compliment."
"Surely the express train is very late, Mr. Whitford?"
"The express has gone by."
"Then we will cross over."
"You would rather not be seen by Mrs. Mountstuart. That is her carriage drawn up at the station, and she is in it."
Clara looked, and with the sinking of her heart said: "I must brave her!"
"In that case I will take my leave of you here, Miss Middleton."
She gave him her hand. "Why is Mrs. Mountstuart at the station to-day?"
"I suppose she has driven to meet one of the guests for her dinner-party. Professor Crooklyn was promised to your father, and he may be coming by the down-train."
"Go back to the Hall!" exclaimed Clara. "How can I? I have no more endurance left in me. If I had some support!—if it were the sense of secretly doing wrong, it might help me through. I am in a web. I cannot do right, whatever I do. There is only the thought of saving Crossjay. Yes, and sparing papa.—Good-bye, Mr. Whitford. I shall remember your kindness gratefully. I cannot go back."
"You will not?" said he, tempting her to hesitate.
"No."
"But if you are seen by Mrs. Mountstuart, you must go back. I'll do my best to take her away. Should she see you, you must patch up a story and apply to her for a lift. That, I think, is imperative."
"Not to my mind," said Clara.
He bowed hurriedly, and withdrew. After her confession, peculiar to her, of possibly finding sustainment in secretly doing wrong, her flying or remaining seemed to him a choice of evils: and whilst she stood in bewildered speculation on his reason for pursuing her—which was not evident—he remembered the special fear inciting him, and so far did her justice as to have at himself on that subject. He had done something perhaps to save her from a cold: such was his only consolatory thought. He had also behaved like a man of honour, taking no personal advantage of her situation; but to reflect on it recalled his astonishing dryness. The strict man of honour plays a part that he should not reflect on till about the fall of the curtain, otherwise he will be likely sometimes to feel the shiver of foolishness at his good conduct.
Posted in observation at a corner of the window Clara saw Vernon cross the road to Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson's carriage, transformed to the leanest pattern of himself by narrowed shoulders and raised coat-collar. He had such an air of saying, "Tom's a-cold", that her skin crept in sympathy.
Presently he left the carriage and went into the station: a bell had rung. Was it her train? He approved her going, for he was employed in assisting her to go: a proceeding at variance with many things he had said, but he was as full of contradiction to-day as women are accused of being. The train came up. She trembled: no signal had appeared, and Vernon must have deceived her.
He returned; he entered the carriage, and the wheels were soon in motion. Immediately thereupon, Flitch's fly drove past, containing Colonel De Craye.
Vernon could not but have perceived him!
But what was it that had brought the colonel to this place? The pressure of Vernon's mind was on her and foiled her efforts to assert her perfect innocence, though she knew she had done nothing to allure the colonel hither. Excepting Willoughby, Colonel De Craye was the last person she would have wished to encounter.
She had now a dread of hearing the bell which would tell her that Vernon had not deceived her, and that she was out of his hands, in the hands of some one else.
She bit at her glove; she glanced at the concentrated eyes of the publican's family portraits, all looking as one; she noticed the empty tumbler, and went round to it and touched it, and the silly spoon in it.
A little yielding to desperation shoots us to strange distances!
Vernon had asked her whether she was alone. Connecting that inquiry, singular in itself, and singular in his manner of putting it, with the glass of burning liquid, she repeated: "He must have seen Colonel De Craye!" and she stared at the empty glass, as at something that witnessed to something: for Vernon was not your supple cavalier assiduously on the smirk to pin a gallantry to commonplaces. But all the doors are not open in a young lady's consciousness, quick of nature though she may be: some are locked and keyless, some will not open to the key, some are defended by ghosts inside. She could not have said what the something witnessed to. If we by chance know more, we have still no right to make it more prominent than it was with her. And the smell of the glass was odious; it disgraced her. She had an impulse to pocket the spoon for a memento, to show it to grandchildren for a warning. Even the prelude to the morality to be uttered on the occasion sprang to her lips: "Here, my dears, is a spoon you would be ashamed to use in your teacups, yet it was of more value to me at one period of my life than silver and gold in pointing out, etc.": the conclusion was hazy, like the conception; she had her idea.
And in this mood she ran down-stairs and met Colonel De Craye on the station steps.
The bright illumination of his face was that of the confident man confirmed in a risky guess in the crisis of doubt and dispute.
"Miss Middleton!" his joyful surprise predominated; the pride of an accurate forecast, adding: "I am not too late to be of service?"
She thanked him for the offer.
"Have you dismissed the fly, Colonel De Craye?"
"I have just been getting change to pay Mr. Flitch. He passed me on the road. He is interwound with our fates to a certainty. I had only to jump in; I knew it, and rolled along like a magician commanding a genie."
"Have I been . . ."
"Not seriously, nobody doubts you being under shelter. You will allow me to protect you? My time is yours."
"I was thinking of a running visit to my friend Miss Darleton."
"May I venture? I had the fancy that you wished to see Miss Darleton to-day. You cannot make the journey unescorted."
"Please retain the fly. Where is Willoughby?"
"He is in jack-boots. But may I not, Miss Middleton? I shall never be forgiven if you refuse me."
"There has been searching for me?"
"Some hallooing. But why am I rejected? Besides, I don't require the fly; I shall walk if I am banished. Flitch is a wonderful conjurer, but the virtue is out of him for the next four-and-twenty hours. And it will be an opportunity to me to make my bow to Miss Darleton!"
"She is rigorous on the conventionalities, Colonel De Craye."
"I'll appear before her as an ignoramus or a rebel, whichever she likes best to take in leading-strings. I remember her. I was greatly struck by her."
"Upon recollection!"
"Memory didn't happen to be handy at the first mention of the lady's name. As the general said of his ammunition and transport, there's the army!—but it was leagues in the rear. Like the footman who went to sleep after smelling fire in the house, I was thinking of other things. It will serve me right to be forgotten—if I am. I've a curiosity to know: a remainder of my coxcombry. Not that exactly: a wish to see the impression I made on your friend.—None at all? But any pebble casts a ripple."
"That is hardly an impression," said Clara, pacifying her irresoluteness with this light talk.
"The utmost to be hoped for by men like me! I have your permission?—one minute—I will get my ticket."
"Do not," said Clara.
"Your man-servant entreats you!"
She signified a decided negative with the head, but her eyes were dreamy. She breathed deep: this thing done would cut the cord. Her sensation of languor swept over her.
De Craye took a stride. He was accosted by one of the railway-porters. Flitch's fly was in request for a gentleman. A portly old gentleman bothered about luggage appeared on the landing.
"The gentleman can have it," said De Craye, handing Flitch his money.
"Open the door." Clara said to Flitch.
He tugged at the handle with enthusiasm. The door was open: she stepped in.
"Then mount the box and I'll jump up beside you," De Craye called out, after the passion of regretful astonishment had melted from his features.
Clara directed him to the seat fronting her; he protested indifference to the wet; she kept the door unshut. His temper would have preferred to buffet the angry weather. The invitation was too sweet.
She heard now the bell of her own train. Driving beside the railway embankment she met the train: it was eighteen minutes late, by her watch. And why, when it flung up its whale-spouts of steam, she was not journeying in it, she could not tell. She had acted of her free will: that she could say. Vernon had not induced her to remain; assuredly her present companion had not; and her whole heart was for flight: yet she was driving back to the Hall, not devoid of calmness. She speculated on the circumstance enough to think herself incomprehensible, and there left it, intent on the scene to come with Willoughby.
"I must choose a better day for London," she remarked.
De Craye bowed, but did not remove his eyes from her.
"Miss Middleton, you do not trust me."
She answered: "Say in what way. It seems to me that I do."
"I may speak?"
"If it depends on my authority."
"Fully?"
"Whatever you have to say. Let me stipulate, be not very grave. I want cheering in wet weather."
"Miss Middleton, Flitch is charioteer once more. Think of it. There's a tide that carries him perpetually to the place where he was cast forth, and a thread that ties us to him in continuity. I have not the honour to be a friend of long standing: one ventures on one's devotion: it dates from the first moment of my seeing you. Flitch is to blame, if any one. Perhaps the spell would be broken, were he reinstated in his ancient office."
"Perhaps it would," said Clara, not with her best of smiles. Willoughby's pride of relentlessness appeared to her to be receiving a blow by rebound, and that seemed high justice.
"I am afraid you were right; the poor fellow has no chance," De Craye pursued. He paused, as for decorum in the presence of misfortune, and laughed sparklingly: "Unless I engage him, or pretend to! I verily believe that Flitch's melancholy person on the skirts of the Hall completes the picture of the Eden within.—Why will you not put some trust in me, Miss Middleton?"
"But why should you not pretend to engage him then, Colonel De Craye?"
"We'll plot it, if you like. Can you trust me for that?"
"For any act of disinterested kindness, I am sure."
"You mean it?"
"Without reserve. You could talk publicly of taking him to London."
"Miss Middleton, just now you were going. My arrival changed your mind. You distrust me: and ought I to wonder? The wonder would be all the other way. You have not had the sort of report of me which would persuade you to confide, even in a case of extremity. I guessed you were going. Do you ask me how? I cannot say. Through what they call sympathy, and that's inexplicable. There's natural sympathy, natural antipathy. People have to live together to discover how deep it is!"
Clara breathed her dumb admission of his truth.
The fly jolted and threatened to lurch.
"Flitch, my dear man!" the colonel gave a murmuring remonstrance; "for," said he to Clara, whom his apostrophe to Flitch had set smiling, "we're not safe with him, however we make believe, and he'll be jerking the heart out of me before he has done.—But if two of us have not the misfortune to be united when they come to the discovery, there's hope. That is, if one has courage and the other has wisdom. Otherwise they may go to the yoke in spite of themselves. The great enemy is Pride, who has them both in a coach and drives them to the fatal door, and the only thing to do is to knock him off his box while there's a minute to spare. And as there's no pride like the pride of possession, the deadliest wound to him is to make that doubtful. Pride won't be taught wisdom in any other fashion. But one must have the courage to do it!"
De Craye trifled with the window-sash, to give his words time to sink in solution.
Who but Willoughby stood for Pride? And who, swayed by languor, had dreamed of a method that would be surest and swiftest to teach him the wisdom of surrendering her?
"You know, Miss Middleton, I study character," said the colonel.
"I see that you do," she answered.
"You intend to return?"
"Oh, decidedly."
"The day is unfavourable for travelling, I must say."
"It is."
"You may count on my discretion in the fullest degree. I throw myself on your generosity when I assure you that it was not my design to surprise a secret. I guessed the station, and went there, to put myself at your disposal."
"Did you," said Clara, reddening slightly, "chance to see Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson's carriage pass you when you drove up to the station?"
De Craye had passed a carriage. "I did not see the lady. She was in it?"
"Yes. And therefore it is better to put discretion on one side: we may be certain she saw you."
"But not you, Miss Middleton."
"I prefer to think that I am seen. I have a description of courage,Colonel De Craye, when it is forced on me."
"I have not suspected the reverse. Courage wants training, as well as other fine capacities. Mine is often rusty and rheumatic."
"I cannot hear of concealment or plotting."
"Except, pray, to advance the cause of poor Flitch!"
"He shall be excepted."
The colonel screwed his head round for a glance at his coachman's back.
"Perfectly guaranteed to-day!" he said of Flitch's look of solidity. "The convulsion of the elements appears to sober our friend; he is only dangerous in calms. Five minutes will bring us to the park-gates."
Clara leaned forward to gaze at the hedgeways in the neighbourhood of the Hall strangely renewing their familiarity with her. Both in thought and sensation she was like a flower beaten to earth, and she thanked her feminine mask for not showing how nerveless and languid she was. She could have accused Vernon of a treacherous cunning for imposing it on her free will to decide her fate.
Involuntarily she sighed.
"There is a train at three," said De Craye, with splendid promptitude.
"Yes, and one at five. We dine with Mrs. Mountstuart tonight. And I have a passion for solitude! I think I was never intended for obligations. The moment I am bound I begin to brood on freedom."
"Ladies who say that, Miss Middleton!. . ."
"What of them?"
"They're feeling too much alone."
She could not combat the remark: by her self-assurance that she had the principle of faithfulness, she acknowledged to herself the truth of it:—there is no freedom for the weak. Vernon had said that once. She tried to resist the weight of it, and her sheer inability precipitated her into a sense of pitiful dependence.
Half an hour earlier it would have been a perilous condition to be traversing in the society of a closely scanning reader of fair faces. Circumstances had changed. They were at the gates of the park.
"Shall I leave you?" said De Craye.
"Why should you?" she replied.
He bent to her gracefully.
The mild subservience flattered Clara's languor. He had not compelled her to be watchful on her guard, and she was unaware that he passed it when she acquiesced to his observation, "An anticipatory story is a trap to the teller."
"It is," she said. She had been thinking as much.
He threw up his head to consult the brain comically with a dozen little blinks.
"No, you are right, Miss Middleton, inventing beforehand never prospers; 't is a way to trip our own cleverness. Truth and mother-wit are the best counsellors: and as you are the former, I'll try to act up to the character you assign me."
Some tangle, more prospective than present, seemed to be about her as she reflected. But her intention being to speak to Willoughby without subterfuge, she was grateful to her companion for not tempting her to swerve. No one could doubt his talent for elegant fibbing, and she was in the humour both to admire and adopt the art, so she was glad to be rescued from herself. How mother-wit was to second truth she did not inquire, and as she did not happen to be thinking of Crossjay, she was not troubled by having to consider how truth and his tale of the morning would be likely to harmonize.
Driving down the park, she had full occupation in questioning whether her return would be pleasing to Vernon, who was the virtual cause of it, though he had done so little to promote it: so little that she really doubted his pleasure in seeing her return.