Clara put up her hands with the motion of intending to stop her ears.
‘Before I go!’ said she. ‘If I might know this was to be, which all desire, before I leave, I should not feel as I do now. I long to see you happy… him, yes, him too. Is it like asking you to pay my debt? Then, please! But, no; I am not more than partly selfish on this occasion. He has won my gratitude. He can be really generous.’
‘An Egoist?’
‘Who is?’
‘You have forgotten our conversation on the day of our walk to the cottage?’
‘Help me to forget it – that day, and those days, and all those days! I should be glad to think I passed a time beneath the earth, and have risen again. I was the Egoist. I am sure, if I had been buried, I should not have stood up seeing myself more vilely stained, soiled, disfigured – oh! Help me to forget my conduct, Laetitia. He and I were unsuited – and I remember I blamed myself then. You and he are not: and now I can perceive the pride that can be felt in him. The worst that can be said is that he schemes too much.’
‘Is there any fresh scheme?’ said Laetitia.
The rose came over Clara’s face.
‘You have not heard? It was impossible, but it was kindly intended. Judging by my own feeling at this moment, I can understand his. We love to see our friends established.’
Laetitia bowed. ‘My curiosity is piqued, of course.’
‘Dear friend, to-morrow we shall be parted. I trust to be thought of by you as a little better in grain than I have appeared, and my reason for trusting it is that I know I have been always honest – a boorish young woman in my stupid mad impatience: but not insincere. It is no lofty ambition to desire to be remembered in that character, but such is your Clara, she discovers. I will tell you. It is his wish… his wish that I should promise to give my hand to Mr Whitford. You see the kindness.’
Laetitia’s eyes widened and fixed:
‘You think it kindness?’
‘The intention. He sent Mr Whitford to me, and I was taught to expect him.’
‘Was that quite kind to Mr Whitford?’
‘What an impression I must have made on you during that walk to the cottage, Laetitia! I do not wonder; I was in a fever.’
‘You consented to listen?’
‘I really did. It astonishes me now, but I thought I could not refuse.’
‘My poor friend Vernon Whitford tried a love speech?’
‘He? no: Oh! no.’
‘You discouraged him?’
‘I? No.’
‘Gently, I mean.’
‘No.’
‘Surely you did not dream of trifling? He has a deep heart.’
‘Has he?’
‘You ask that: and you know something of him.’
‘He did not expose it to me, dear; not even the surface of the mighty deep.’
Laetitia knitted her brows.
‘No,’ said Clara, ‘not a coquette: she is not a coquette, I assure you.’
With a laugh, Laetitia replied: ‘You have still the “dreadful power” you made me feel that day.’
‘I wish I could use it to good purpose!’
‘He did not speak?’
‘Of Switzerland, Tyrol, the Iliad, Antigone.’
‘That was all?’
‘No, Political Economy. Our situation, you will own, was unexampled: or mine was. Are you interested in me?’
‘I should be if I knew your sentiments.’
‘I was grateful to Sir Willoughby: grieved for Mr Whitford.’
‘Real grief?’
‘Because the task imposed on him of showing me politely that he did not enter into his cousin’s ideas was evidently very great, extremely burdensome.’
‘You, so quick-eyed in some things, Clara!’
‘He felt for me. I saw that in his avoidance of… And he was, as he always is, pleasant. We rambled over the park for I know not how long, though it did not seem long.’
‘Never touching that subject?’
‘Not ever neighbouring it, dear. A gentleman should esteem the girl he would ask… certain questions. I fancy he has a liking for me as a volatile friend.’
‘If he had offered himself?’
‘Despising me?’
‘You can be childish, Clara. Probably you delight to tease. He had his time of it, and it is now my turn.’
‘But he must despise me a little.’
‘Are you blind?’
‘Perhaps, dear, we both are, a little.’
The ladies looked deeper into one another.
‘Will you answer me?’ said Laetitia.
‘Your if? If he had, it would have been an act of condescension.’
‘You are too slippery.’
‘Stay, dear Laetitia. He was considerate in forbearing to pain me.’
‘That is an answer. You allowed him to perceive that it would have pained you.’
‘Dearest, if I may convey to you what I was, in a simile for comparison: I think I was like a fisherman’s float on the water, perfectly still, and ready to go down at any instant, or up. So much for my behaviour.’
‘Similes have the merit of satisfying the finder of them, and cheating the hearer,’ said Laetitia. ‘You admit that your feelings would have been painful.’
‘I was a fisherman’s float: please admire my simile; any way you like, this way or that, or so quiet as to tempt the eyes to go to sleep. And suddenly I might have disappeared in the depths, or flown in the air. But no fish bit.’
‘Well, then, to follow you, supposing the fish or the fisherman, for I don’t know which is which… Oh, no, no: this is too serious for imagery. I am to understand that you thanked him at least for his reserve.’
‘Yes.’
‘Without the slightest encouragement to him to break it?’
‘A fisherman’s float, Laetitia!’
Baffled and sighing, Laetitia kept silence for a space.
The simile chafed her wits with a suspicion of a meaning hidden in it.
‘If he had spoken?’ she said.
‘He is too truthful a man.’
‘And the railings of men at pussy women who wind about and will not be brought to a mark, become intelligible to me.’
‘Then Laetitia, if he had spoken, if, and one could have imagined him sincere…’
‘So truthful a man?’
‘I am looking at myself. If! – why, then, I should have burnt to death with shame. Where have I read? – some story – of an inextinguishable spark. That would have been shot into my heart.’
‘Shame, Clara? You are free.’
‘As much as remains of me.’
‘I could imagine a certain shame, in such a position, where there was no feeling but pride.’
‘I could not imagine it where there was no feeling but pride.’
Laetitia mused. ‘And you dwell on the kindness of a proposition so extraordinary!’ Gaining some light, impatiently she cried: ‘Vernon loves you.’
‘Do not say it!’
‘I have seen it.’
‘I have never had a sign of it.’
‘There is the proof.’
‘When it might have been shown again and again!’
‘The greater proof!’
‘Why did he not speak when he was privileged? – strangely, but privileged.’
‘He feared.’
‘Me?’
‘Feared to wound you – and himself as well, possibly. Men may be pardoned for thinking of themselves in these cases.’
‘But why should he fear?’
‘That another was dearer to you?’
‘What cause had I given… Ah! see! He could fear that; suspect it! See his opinion of me! Can he care for such a girl? Abuse me, Laetitia. I should like a good round of abuse. I need purification by fire. What have I been in this house? I have a sense of whirling through it like a madwoman. And to be loved, after it all! – No! we must be hearing a tale of an antiquary prizing a battered relic of the battle-field
that no one else would look at. To be loved, I see, is to feel our littleness, hollowness – feel shame. We come out in all our spots. Never to have given me one sign, when a lover would have been so tempted! Let me be incredulous, my own dear Laetitia. Because he is a man of honour, you would say! But are you unconscious of the torture you inflict? For if I am – you say it – loved by this gentleman, what an object it is he loves –that has gone clamouring about more immodestly than women will bear to hear of, and she herself to think of! Oh, I have seen my own heart. It is a frightful spectre. I have seen a weakness in me that would have carried me anywhere. And truly I shall be charitable to women – I have gained that. But loved! by Vernon Whitford! The miserable little me to be taken up and loved after tearing myself to pieces! Have you been simply speculating? You have no positive knowledge of it! Why do you kiss me?’
‘Why do you tremble and blush so?’
Clara looked at her as clearly as she could. She bowed her head. ‘It makes my conduct worse!’
She received a tenderer kiss for that. It was her avowal, and it was understood: to know that she had loved or had been ready to love him, shadowed her in the retrospect.
‘Ah! you read me through and through,’ said Clara, sliding to her for a whole embrace.
‘Then there never was cause for him to fear?’ Laetitia whispered.
Clara slid her head more out of sight. ‘Not that my heart… But I said I have seen it; and it is unworthy of him. And if, as I think now, I could have been so rash, so weak, wicked, unpardonable – such thoughts were in me! – then to hear him speak would make it necessary for me to uncover myself and tell him – incredible to you, yes! – that while… yes, Laetitia, all this is true: and thinking of him as the noblest of men, I could have welcomed any help to cut my knot. So there,’ said Clara, issuing from her nest with winking eyelids, ‘you see the pain I mentioned.’
‘Why did you not explain it to me at once?’
‘Dearest, I wanted a century to pass.’
‘And you feel that it has passed?’
‘Yes; in Purgatory – with an angel by me. My report of the place will be favourable. Good angel, I have yet to say something.’
‘Say it, and expiate.’
‘I think I did fancy once or twice, very dimly, and especially to-day… properly I ought not to have had any idea: but his coming to me, and his not doing as another would have done, seemed… A gentleman of real nobleness does not carry the common light for us to read him by. I wanted his voice; but silence, I think, did tell me more: if a nature like mine could only have had faith without hearing the rattle of a tongue.’
A knock at the door caused the ladies to exchange looks.
Laetitia rose as Vernon entered.
‘I am just going to my father for a few minutes,’ she said.
‘And I have just come from yours,’ Vernon said to Clara.
She observed a very threatening expression in him.
The sprite of contrariety mounted to her brain to indemnify her for her recent self-abasement. Seeing the bedroom door shut on Laetitia, she said: ‘And of course papa has gone to bed’; implying, ‘otherwise –’
‘Yes, he has gone. He wished me well.’
‘His formula of good-night would embrace that wish.’
‘And failing, it will be good-night for good to me!’
Clara’s breathing gave a little leap. ‘We leave early to-morrow.’
‘I know. I have an appointment at Bregenz for June.’
‘So soon? With papa?’
‘And from there we break into Tyrol, and round away to the right, Southward.’
‘To the Italian Alps! And was it assumed that I should be of this expedition?’
‘Your father speaks dubiously.’
‘You have spoken of me, then?’
‘I ventured to speak of you. I am not over-bold, as you know.’
Her lovely eyes troubled the lids to hide their softness.
‘Papa should not think of my presence with him dubiously.’
‘He leaves it to you to decide.’
‘Yes, then: many times: all that can be uttered.’
‘Do you consider what you are saying?’
‘Mr Whitford, I shut my eyes and say Yes.’
‘Beware. I give you one warning. If you shut your eyes –’
‘Of course,’ she flew from him, ‘big mountains must be satisfied with my admiration at their feet.’
‘That will do for a beginning.’
‘They speak encouragingly.’
‘One of them.’ Vernon’s breast heaved high.
‘To be at your feet makes a mountain of you?’ said she.
‘With the heart of a mouse if that satisfies me!’
‘You tower too high; you are inaccessible.’
‘I give you a second warning. You may be seized and lifted.’
‘Some one would stoop, then.’
‘To plant you like the flag on the conquered peak!’
‘You have indeed been talking to papa, Mr Whitford.’
Vernon changed his tone.
‘Shall I tell you what he said?’
‘I know his language so well.’
‘He said –’
‘But you have acted on it?’
‘Only partly. He said –’
‘You will teach me nothing.’
‘He said…’
‘Vernon, no! oh! not in this house!’
That supplication coupled with his name confessed the end to which her quick vision perceived she was being led, where she would succumb.
She revived the same shrinking in him from a breath of their great word yet: not here; somewhere in the shadow of the mountains.
But he was sure of her. And their hands might join. The two hands thought so, or did not think, behaved like innocents.
The spirit of Dr Middleton, as Clara felt, had been blown into Vernon, rewarding him for forthright outspeaking. Over their books, Vernon had abruptly shut up a volume and related the tale of the house. ‘Has this man a spice of religion in him?’ the Rev. Doctor asked midway. Vernon made out a fair general case for his cousin in that respect. ‘The complemental dot on his i of a commonly civilized human creature!’ said Dr Middleton, looking at his watch and finding it too late to leave the house before morning. The risky communication was to come. Vernon was proceeding with the narrative of Willoughby’s generous plan when Dr Middleton electrified him by calling out: ‘He whom of all men living I should desire my daughter to espouse!’ and Willoughby rose in the Rev. Doctor’s esteem: he praised that sensibly minded gentleman,
who could acquiesce in the turn of mood of a little maid, albeit Fortune had withheld from him a taste of the switch at school. The father of the little maid’s appreciation of her volatility was exhibited in his exhortation to Vernon to be off to her at once with his authority to finish her moods and assure him of peace in the morning. Vernon hesitated. Dr Middleton remarked upon being not so sure that it was not he who had done the mischief. Thereupon Vernon, to prove his honesty, made his own story bare. ‘Go to her,’ said Dr Middleton. Vernon proposed a meeting in Switzerland, to which Dr Middleton assented, adding: ‘Go to her’: and as he appeared a total stranger to the decorum of the situation, Vernon put his delicacy aside, and taking his heart up, obeyed. He too had pondered on Clara’s consent to meet him after
she knew of Willoughby’s terms, and her grave sweet manner during the ramble over the park. Her father’s breath had been blown into him; so now, with nothing but the faith lying in sensation to convince him of his happy fortune (and how unconvincing that may be until the mind has grasped and stamped it, we experience even then when we acknowledge that we are most blessed), he held her hand. And if it was hard for him, for both, but harder for the man, to restrain their particular word from a flight to heaven when the cage stood open and nature beckoned, he was practised in self-mastery, and she loved him the more.
Laetitia was a witness of their unio
n of hands on her coming back to the room.
They promised to visit her very early in the morning, neither of them conceiving that they left her to a night of storm and tears.
She sat meditating on Clara’s present appreciation of Sir Willoughby’s generosity.
CHAPTER 49
Laetitia and Sir Willoughby
WE cannot be abettors of the tribes of imps whose revelry is in the frailties of our poor human constitution. They have their place and their service, and so long as we continue to be what we are now, they will hang on to us, restlessly plucking at the garments which cover our nakedness, nor ever ceasing to twitch them and strain at them until they have fairly stripped us for one of their horrible Walpurgis nights: when the laughter heard is of a character to render laughter frightful to the ears of men throughout the remainder of their days. But if in these festival hours under the beams of Hecate they are uncontrollable by the Comic Muse, she will not flatter them with her presence during the course of their insane and impious hilarities, whereof a description would out-Brocken Brockens and make Graymalkin and Paddock too intimately our familiars.
It shall suffice to say that from hour to hour of the midnight to the grey-eyed morn, assisted at intervals by the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, and by Mr Dale awakened and re-awakened – hearing the vehemence of his petitioning outcry to soften her obduracy – Sir Willoughby pursued Laetitia with solicitations to espouse him, until the inveteracy of his wooing wore the aspect of the life-long love he raved of aroused to a state of mania. He appeared, he departed, he returned; and all the while his imps were about him and upon him, riding him, prompting, driving, inspiring him with outrageous pathos, an eloquence to move any one but the dead, which its object seemed to be in her torpid attention. He heard them, he talked to them, caressed them; he flung them off, and ran from them, and stood vanquished for them to mount him again and swarm on him. There are men thus imp-haunted. Men who, setting their minds upon an object, must have it, breed imps. They are noted for their singularities, as their converse with the invisible and amazing distractions, are called. Willoughby became aware of them that night. He said to himself, upon one of his dashes into solitude: I believed I am possessed! And if he did not actually believe it, but only suspected it, or framed speech to account for the transformation he had undergone into a desperately beseeching creature, having lost acquaintance with his habitual personality, the operations of an impish host had undoubtedly smitten his consciousness.
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