The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative

by George Meredith

  "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!"

  "My dear, I have it from Mr. Dale."

  "Mr. Dale, what can be the signification of her conduct?"

  "Indeed, Lady Culmer," said Mr. Dale, not unpleasantly agitated by the interest he excited, in spite of his astonishment at a public discussion of the matter in this house, "I am in the dark. Her father should know, but I do not. Her door is locked to me; I have not seen her. I am absolutely in the dark. I am a recluse. I have forgotten the ways of the world. I should have supposed her father would first have been addressed."

  "Tut-tut. Modern gentlemen are not so formal; they are creatures of impulse and take a pride in it. He spoke. We settle that. But where did you get this tale of a refusal?"

  "I have it from Dr. Middleton."

  "From Dr. Middleton?" shouted Lady Busshe.

  "The Middletons are here," said Lady Culmer.

  "What whirl are we in?" Lady Busshe got up, ran two or three steps and seated herself in another chair. "Oh! do let us proceed upon system. If not we shall presently be rageing; we shall be dangerous. The Middletons are here, and Dr. Middleton himself communicates to Mr. Dale that Lætitia Dale has refused the hand of Sir Willoughby, who is ostensibly engaged to his own daughter! And pray, Mr. Dale, how did Dr. Middleton speak of it? Compose yourself; there is no violent hurry, though our sympathy with you and our interest in all the parties does perhaps agitate us a little. Quite at your leisure — speak!"

  "Madam… Lady Busshe." Mr. Dale gulped a ball in his throat. "I see no reason why I should not speak. I do not see how I can have been deluded. The Miss Patternes heard him. Dr. Middleton began upon it, not I. I was unaware, when I came, that it was a refusal. I had been informed that there was a proposal. My authority for the tale was positive. The object of my visit was to assure myself of the integrity of my daughter's conduct. She had always the highest sense of honour. But passion is known to mislead, and there was this most strange report. I feared that our humblest apologies were due to Dr. Middleton and his daughter. I know the charm Lætitia can exercise. Madam, in the plainest language, without a possibility of my misapprehending him, Dr. Middleton spoke of himself as the advocate of the suitor for my daughter's hand. I have a poor head. I supposed at once an amicable rupture between Sir Willoughby and Miss Middleton, or that the version which had reached me of their engagement was not strictly accurate. My head is weak. Dr. Middleton's language is trying to a head like mine; but I can speak positively on the essential points: he spoke of himself as ready to be the impassioned advocate of the suitor for my daughter's hand. Those were his words. I understood him to entreat me to intercede with her. Nay, the name was mentioned. There was no concealment. I am certain there could not be a misapprehension. And my feelings were touched by his anxiety for Sir Willoughby's happiness. I attributed it to a sentiment upon which I need not dwell. Impassioned advocate, he said."

  "We are in a perfect maelstrom!" cried Lady Busshe, turning to everybody.

  "It is a complete hurricane!" cried Lady Culmer.

  A light broke over the faces of the Patterne ladies. They exchanged it with one another.

  They had been so shocked as to be almost offended by Lady Busshe, but their natural gentleness and habitual submission rendered them unequal to the task of checking her.

  "Is it not," said Miss Eleanor, "a misunderstanding that a change of names will rectify?"

  "This is by no means the first occasion," said Miss Isabel, "that Willoughby has pleaded for his cousin Vernon."

  "We deplore extremely the painful error into which Mr. Dale has fallen."

  "It springs, we now perceive, from an entire misapprehension of Dr. Middleton."

  "Vernon was in his mind. It was clear to us."

  "Impossible that it could have been Willoughby!"

  "You see the impossibility, the error!"

  "And the Middletons here!" said Lady Busshe. "Oh! if we leave unilluminated we shall be the laughing-stock of the county. Mr. Dale, please, wake up. Do you see? You may have been mistaken."

  "Lady Busshe," he woke up; "I may have mistaken Dr. Middleton; he has a language that I can compare only to a review-day of the field forces. But I have the story on authority that I cannot question: it is confirmed by my daughter's unexampled behaviour. And if I live through this day I shall look about me as a ghost to-morrow."

  "Dear Mr. Dale!" said the Patterne ladies, compassionately. Lady Busshe murmured to them: "You know the two did not agree; they did not get on: I saw it; I predicted it."

  "She will understand him in time," said they.

  "Never. And my belief is, they have parted by consent, and Letty Dale wins the day at last. Yes, now I do believe it."

  The ladies maintained a decided negative, but they knew too much not to feel perplexed, and they betrayed it, though they said: "Dear Lady Busshe! is it credible, in decency?"

  "Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!" Lady Busshe invoked her great rival appearing among them: "You come most opportunely; we are in a state of inextricable confusion: we are bordering on frenzy. You, and none but you, can help us. You know, you always know; we hang on you. Is there any truth in it? a particle?"

  Mrs. Mountstuart seated herself regally "Ah, Mr. Dale!" she said, inclining to him. "Yes, dear Lady Busshe, there is a particle."

  "Now, do not roast us. You can; you have the art. I have the whole story. That is, I have a part. I mean, I have the outlines, I cannot be deceived, but you can fill them in, I know you can. I saw it yesterday. Now, tell us, tell us. It must be quite true or utterly false. Which is it?"

  "Be precise."

  "His fatality! you called her. Yes, I was sceptical. But here we have it all come round again, and if the tale is true, I shall own you infallible. Has he? — and she?"

  "Both."

  "And the Middletons here? They have not gone; they keep the field. And more astounding, she refuses him. And to add to it, Dr. Middleton intercedes with Mr. Dale for Sir Willoughby."

  "Dr. Middleton intercedes!" This was rather astonishing to Mrs. Mountstuart.

  "For Vernon," Miss Eleanor emphasized.

  "For Vernon Whitford, his cousin." said Miss Isabel, still more emphatically.

  "Who," said Mrs. Mountstuart, with a sovereign lift and turn of her head, "speaks of a refusal?"

  "I have it from Mr. Dale," said Lady Busshe.

  "I had it, I thought, distinctly from Dr. Middleton," said Mr. Dale.

  "That Willoughby proposed to Lætitia for his cousin Vernon, Doctor Middleton meant," said Miss Eleanor.

  Her sister followed: "Hence this really ridiculous misconception! — sad, indeed," she added, for balm to Mr. Dale.

  "Willoughby was Vernon's proxy. His cousin, if not his first, is ever the second thought with him."

  "But can we continue…?"

  "Such a discussion!"

  Mrs. Mountstuart gave them a judicial hearing. They were regarded in the county as the most indulgent of nonentities, and she as little as Lady Busshe was restrained from the burning topic in their presence.

  She pronounced:

  "Each
party is right, and each is wrong."

  A dry: "I shall shriek!" came from Lady Busshe.

  "Cruel!" groaned Lady Culmer.

  "Mixed, you are all wrong. Disentangled, you are each of you right. Sir Willoughby does think of his cousin Vernon; he is anxious to establish him; he is the author of a proposal to that effect."

  "We know it!" the Patterne ladies exclaimed. "And Lætitia rejected poor Vernon once more!"

  "Who spoke of Miss Dale's rejection of Mr. Whitford?"

  "Is he not rejected?" Lady Culmer inquired.

  "It is in debate, and at this moment being decided."

  "Oh! do he seated, Mr. Dale," Lady Busshe implored him, rising to thrust him back to his chair if necessary. "Any dislocation, and we are thrown out again! We must hold together if this riddle is ever to be read. Then, dear Mrs. Mountstuart, we are to say that there is-no truth in the other story?"

  "You are to say nothing of the sort, dear Lady Busshe."

  "Be merciful! And what of the fatality?"

  "As positive as the Pole to the needle."

  "She has not refused him?"

  "Ask your own sagacity."

  "Accepted?"

  "Wait."

  "And all the world's ahead of me! Now, Mrs. Mountstuart, you are oracle. Riddles, if you like, only speak. If we can't have corn, why, give us husks."

  "Is any one of us able to anticipate events, Lady Busshe?"

  "Yes, I believe that you are. I bow to you. I do sincerely. So it's another person for Mr. Whitford? You nod. And it is our Lætitia for Sir Willoughby? You smile. You would not deceive me? A very little, and I run about crazed and howl at your doors. And Dr. Middleton is made to play blind man in the midst? And the other person is — now I see day! An amicable rupture, and a smooth new arrangement. She has money; she was never the match for our hero; never; I saw it yesterday, and before, often; and so he hands her over — tuthe-rum-tum-tum, tuthe-rum-tum-tum," Lady Busshe struck a quick march on her knee. "Now isn't that clever guessing? The shadow of a clue for me. And because I know human nature. One peep, and I see the combination in a minute. So he keeps the money in the family, becomes a benefactor to his cousin by getting rid of the girl, and succumbs to his fatality. Rather a pity he let it ebb and flow so long. Time counts the tides, you know. But it improves the story. I defy any other county in the kingdom to produce one fresh and living to equal it. Let me tell you I suspected Mr. Whitford, and I hinted it yesterday."

  "Did you indeed!" said Mrs. Mountstuart, humouring her excessive acuteness.

  "I really did. There is that dear good man on his feet again. And looks agitated again."

  Mr. Dale had been compelled both by the lady's voice and his interest in the subject to listen. He had listened more than enough; he was exceedingly nervous. He held on by his chair, afraid to quit his moorings, and "Manners!" he said to himself unconsciously aloud, as he cogitated on the libertine way with which these chartered great ladies of the district discussed his daughter. He was heard and unnoticed. The supposition, if any, would have been that he was admonishing himself. At this juncture Sir Willoughby entered the drawing-room by the garden window, and simultaneously Dr. Middleton by the door.

  Chapter XLVI

  The Scene Of Sir Willoughby's Generalship

  History, we may fear, will never know the qualities of leadership inherent in Sir Willoughby Patterne to fit him for the post of Commander of an army, seeing that he avoided the fatigues of the service and preferred the honours bestowed in his country upon the quiet administrators of their own estates: but his possession of particular gifts, which are military, and especially of the proleptic mind, which is the stamp and sign-warrant of the heaven-sent General, was displayed on every urgent occasion when, in the midst of difficulties likely to have extinguished one less alert than he to the threatening aspect of disaster, he had to manoeuvre himself.

  He had received no intimation of Mr. Dale's presence in his house, nor of the arrival of the dreaded women Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer: his locked door was too great a terror to his domestics. Having finished with Vernon, after a tedious endeavour to bring the fellow to a sense of the policy of the step urged on him, he walked out on the lawn with the desire to behold the opening of an interview not promising to lead to much, and possibly to profit by its failure. Clara had been prepared, according to his directions, by Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, as Vernon had been prepared by him. His wishes, candidly and kindly expressed both to Vernon and Mrs Mountstuart, were, that since the girl appeared disinclined to make him a happy man, she would make one of his cousin. Intimating to Mrs. Mountstuart that he would be happier without her, he alluded to the benefit of the girl's money to poor old Vernon, the general escape from a scandal if old Vernon could manage to catch her as she dropped, the harmonious arrangement it would be for all parties. And only on the condition of her taking Vernon would he consent to give her up. This he said imperatively, adding that such was the meaning of the news she had received relating to Lætitia Dale. From what quarter had she received it? he asked. She shuffled in her reply, made a gesture to signify that it was in the air, universal, and fell upon the proposed arrangement. He would listen to none of Mrs. Mountstuart's woman-of-the-world instances of the folly of pressing it upon a girl who had shown herself a girl of spirit. She foretold the failure. He would not be advised; he said: "It is my scheme"; and perhaps the look of mad benevolence about it induced the lady to try whether there was a chance that it would hit the madness in our nature, and somehow succeed or lead to a pacification. Sir Willoughby condescended to arrange things thus for Clara's good; he would then proceed to realize his own. Such was the face he put upon it. We can wear what appearance we please before the world until we are found out, nor is the world's praise knocking upon hollowness always hollow music; but Mrs Mountstuart's laudation of his kindness and simplicity disturbed him; for though he had recovered from his rebuff enough to imagine that Lætitia could not refuse him under reiterated pressure, he had let it be supposed that she was a submissive handmaiden throbbing for her elevation; and Mrs Mountstuart's belief in it afflicted his recent bitter experience; his footing was not perfectly secure. Besides, assuming it to be so, he considered the sort of prize he had won; and a spasm of downright hatred of a world for which we make mighty sacrifices to be repaid in a worn, thin, comparatively valueless coin, troubled his counting of his gains. Lætitia, it was true, had not passed through other hands in coming to him, as Vernon would know it to be Clara's case: time only had worn her: but the comfort of the reflection was annoyed by the physical contrast of the two. Hence an unusual melancholy in his tone that Mrs. Mountstuart thought touching. It had the scenic effect on her which greatly contributes to delude the wits. She talked of him to Clara as being a man who had revealed an unsuspected depth.

  Vernon took the communication curiously. He seemed readier to be in love with his benevolent relative than with the lady. He was confused, undisguisedly moved, said the plan was impossible, out of the question, but thanked Willoughby for the best of intentions, thanked him warmly. After saying that the plan was impossible, the comical fellow allowed himself to be pushed forth on the lawn to see how Miss Middleton might have come out of her interview with Mrs. Mountstuart. Willoughby observed Mrs. Mountstuart meet him, usher him to the place she had quitted among the shrubs, and return to the open turf-spaces. He sprang to her.

  "She will listen." Mrs. Mountstuart said: "She likes him, respects him, thinks he is a very sincere friend, clever, a scholar, and a good mountaineer; and thinks you mean very kindly. So much I have impressed on her, but I have not done much for Mr. Whitford."

  "She consents to listen," said Willoughby, snatching at that as the death-blow to his friend Horace.

  "She consents to listen, because you have arranged it so that if she declined she would be rather a savage."

  "You think it will have no result?"

  "None at all."

  "Her listening will do."

  "An
d you must be satisfied with it."

  "We shall see."

  "'Anything for peace', she says: and I don't say that a gentleman with a tongue would not have a chance. She wishes to please you."

  "Old Vernon has no tongue for women, poor fellow! You will have us be spider or fly, and if a man can't spin a web all he can hope is not to be caught in one. She knows his history, too, and that won't be in his favour. How did she look when you left them?"

  "Not so bright: like a bit of china that wants dusting. She looked a trifle gauche, it struck me; more like a country girl with the hoyden taming in her than the well-bred creature she is. I did not suspect her to have feeling. You must remember, Sir Willoughby, that she has obeyed your wishes, done her utmost: I do think we may say she has made some amends; and if she is to blame she repents, and you will not insist too far."

  "I do insist," said he.

  "Beneficent, but a tyrant!"

  "Well, well." He did not dislike the character.

  They perceived Dr. Middleton wandering over the lawn, and Willoughby went to him to put him on the wrong track: Mrs. Mountstuart swept into the drawing-room. Willoughby quitted the Rev. Doctor, and hung about the bower where he supposed his pair of dupes had by this time ceased to stutter mutually: — or what if they had found the word of harmony? He could bear that, just bear it. He rounded the shrubs, and, behold, both had vanished. The trellis decorated emptiness. His idea was, that they had soon discovered their inability to be turtles: and desiring not to lose a moment while Clara was fretted by the scene, he rushed to the drawing-room with the hope of lighting on her there, getting her to himself, and finally, urgently, passionately offering her the sole alternative of what she had immediately rejected. Why had he not used passion before, instead of limping crippled between temper and policy? He was capable of it: as soon as imagination in him conceived his personal feelings unwounded and unimperiled, the might of it inspired him with heroical confidence, and Clara grateful, Clara softly moved, led him to think of Clara melted. Thus anticipating her he burst into the room.