The Egoist
George Meredith
CHAPTER XXII Page 1
THE RIDE
"I say, Miss Middleton, we're to have the whole day to ourselves, after morning lessons. Will you come and fish with me and see me bird's-nest?"
"Not for the satisfaction of beholding another cracked crown, my son," the colonel interposed: and bowing to Clara: "Miss Middleton is handed over to my exclusive charge for the day, with her consent?"
"I scarcely know," said she, consulting a sensation of languor that seemed to contain some reminiscence. "If I am here. My father's plans are uncertain. I will speak to him. If I am here, perhaps Crossjay would like a ride in the afternoon."
"Oh, yes," cried the boy; "out over Bournden, through Mewsey up to Closharn Beacon, and down on Aspenwell, where there's a common for racing. And ford the stream!"
"An inducement for you," De Craye said to her.
"We won't go without you, Crossjay."
"You don't carry a comb, my man, when you bathe?"
"I like that boy," said De Craye.
"I love him," said Clara.
Crossjay's troubled eyelids in his honest young face became a picture for her.
"After all, Miss Middleton, Willoughby's notions about him are not so bad, we consider that you will be in the place of a mother to him."
"I think them bad."
"You are disinclined to calculate the good fortune of the boy in having more of you on land than he would have in crown and anchor buttons!"
"We had a talk last night."
"Willoughby returns?" she said.
"He dines here, I know; for he holds the key of the inner cellar, and Doctor Middleton does him the honour to applaud his wine. Willoughby was good enough to tell me that he thought I might contribute to amuse you."
She was brooding in stupefaction on her father and the wine as she requested Colonel De Craye to persuade Willoughby to take the general view of Crossjay's future and act on it.
"He seems fond of the boy, too," said De Craye, musingly.
"You speak in doubt?"
"Not at all. But is he not--men are queer fish!--make allowance for us--a trifle tyrannical, pleasantly, with those he is fond of?"
It was meant for an interrogation; it was not with the sound of one that the words dropped. "My dear Crossjay!" she sighed. "I would willingly pay for him out of my own purse, and I will do so rather than have him miss his chance. I have not mustered resolution to propose it."
"I may be mistaken, Miss Middleton. He talked of the boy's fondness of him."
"I suppose he is hardly peculiar in liking to play Pole-star."
"For the rest, your influence should be all-powerful."
"It is not."
De Craye looked a wandering eye at the heavens.
"We are having a spell of weather perfectly superb. And the odd thing is, that whenever we have splendid weather at home we're all for rushing abroad. I'm booked for a Mediterranean cruise--postponed to give place to your ceremony."
"That?" she could not control her accent.
"What worthier?"
She was guilty of a pause.
De Craye saved it from an awkward length. "I have written half an essay on Honeymoons, Miss Middleton."
"Is that the same as a half-written essay, Colonel De Craye?"
"Just the same, with the difference that it's a whole essay written all on one side."
"On which side?"
"The bachelor's."
"Why does he trouble himself with such topics?"
"To warm himself for being left out in the cold."
"Does he feel envy?"
"He has to confess it."
"He has liberty."
"A commodity he can't tell the value of if there's no one to buy."
"Why should he wish to sell?"
"He's bent on completing his essay."
"There we touch the key of the subject. For what is to rescue the pair from a monotony multiplied by two? And so a bachelor's recommendation, when each has discovered the right sort of person to be dull with, pushes them from the churchdoor on a round of adventures containing a spice of peril, if 'tis to be had. Let them be in danger of their lives the first or second day. A bachelor's loneliness is a private affair of his own; he hasn't to look into a face to be ashamed of feeling it and inflicting it at the same time; 'tis his pillow; he can punch it an he pleases, and turn it over t'other side, if he's for a mighty variation; there's a dream in it. But our poor couple are staring wide awake. All their dreaming's done. They've emptied their bottle of elixir, or broken it; and she has a thirst for the use of the tongue, and he to yawn with a crony; and they may converse, they're not aware of it, more than the desert that has drunk a shower. So as soon as possible she's away to the ladies, and he puts on his Club. That's what your bachelor sees and would like to spare them; and if he didn't see something of the sort he'd be off with a noose round his neck, on his knees in the dew to the morning milkmaid."
"The bachelor is happily warned and on his guard," said Clara, diverted, as he wished her to be. "Sketch me a few of the adventures you propose."
"I have a friend who rowed his bride from the Houses of Parliament up the Thames to the Severn on into North Wales. They shot some pretty weirs and rapids."
"That was nice."
"They had an infinity of adventures, and the best proof of the benefit they derived is, that they forgot everything about them except that the adventures occurred."
"Those two must have returned bright enough to please you."
"They returned, and shone like a wrecker's beacon to the mariner. You see, Miss Middleton, there was the landscape, and the exercise, and the occasional bit of danger. I think it's to be recommended. The scene is always changing, and not too fast; and 'tis not too sublime, like big mountains, to tire them of their everlasting big Ohs. There's the difference between going into a howling wind and launching among zephyrs. They have fresh air and movement, and not in a railway carriage; they can take in what they look on. And she has the steering ropes, and that's a wise commencement. And my lord is all day making an exhibition of his manly strength, bowing before her some sixty to the minute; and she, to help him, just inclines when she's in the mood. And they're face to face in the nature of things, and are not under the obligation of looking the unutterable, because, you see, there's business in hand; and the boat's just the right sort of third party, who never interferes, but must be attended to. And they feel they're labouring together to get along, all in the proper proportion; and whether he has to labour in life or not, he proves his ability. What do you think of it, Miss Middleton?"
"I think you have only to propose it, Colonel De Craye."
"And if they capsize, why, 'tis a natural ducking!"
"You forgot the lady's dressing-bag."
"The stain on the metal for a constant reminder of his prowess in saving it! Well, and there's an alternative to that scheme, and a finer:--This, then: they read dramatic pieces during courtship, to stop the saying of things over again till the drum of the car becomes nothing but a drum to the poor head, and a little before they affix their signatures to the fatal Registry-book of the vestry, they enter into an engagement with a body of provincial actors to join the troop on the day of their nuptials, and away they go in their coach and four, and she is Lady Kitty Caper for a month, and he Sir Harry Highflyer. See the honeymoon spinning! The marvel to me is that none of the young couples do it. They could enjoy the world, see life, amuse the company, and come back fresh to their own characters, instead of giving themselves a dose of Africa without a savage to diversify it: an impression they never get over, I'm told. Many a character of the happiest auspices has irreparable mischief done it by the ordinary honeymoon. For my part, I rather lean to the second plan of campaign."
Clara was expected to reply, and she said: "Probably because you are fond of acting. It would require capacity on both sides."
"Miss Middleton, I would undertake to breathe the enthusiasm for the stage and the adventure."
"You are recommending it generally."
"Let my gentleman only have a fund of enthusiasm. The lady will kindle. She always does at a spark."
"If he has not any?"
"Then I'm afraid they must be mortally dull."
She allowed her silence to speak; she knew that it did so too eloquently, and could not control the personal adumbration she gave to the one point of light revealed in, "if he has not any". Her figure seemed immediately to wear a cap and cloak of dulness.
Laetitia came to divide from Colonel De Craye. Dr. Middleton was not seen before his appearance at the breakfast-table, where a certain air of anxiety in his daughter's presence produced the semblance of a raised map at intervals on his forehead. Few sights on earth are more deserving of our sympathy than a good man who has a troubled conscience thrust on him.
The Rev. Doctor's perturbation was observed. The ladies Eleanor and Isabel, seeing his daughter to be the cause of it, blamed her, and would have assisted him to escape, but Miss Dale, whom he courted with that object, was of the opposite faction. She made way for Clara to lead her father out. He called to Vernon, who merely nodded while leaving the room by the window with Crossjay.
She was that, and no less, to every man's eye on earth. High breeding did not freeze her lovely girlishness.--But Willoughby did. This reflection intervened to blot luxurious picturings of her, and made itself acceptable by leading him back to several instances of an evident want of harmony of the pair.
And now (for purely undirected impulse all within us is not, though we may be eye-bandaged agents under direction) it became necessary for an honourable gentleman to cast vehement rebukes at the fellow who did not comprehend the jewel he had won. How could Willoughby behave like so complete a donkey! De Craye knew him to be in his interior stiff, strange, exacting: women had talked of him; he had been too much for one woman--the dashing Constantia: he had worn one woman, sacrificing far more for him than Constantia, to death. Still, with such a prize as Clara Middleton, Willoughby's behaviour was past calculating in its contemptible absurdity. And during courtship! And courtship of that girl! It was the way of a man ten years after marriage.
The idea drew him to picture her doatingly in her young matronly bloom ten years after marriage: without a touch of age, matronly wise, womanly sweet: perhaps with a couple of little ones to love, never having known the love of a man.
To think of a girl like Clara Middleton never having at nine-and-twenty, and with two fair children! known the love of a man or the loving of a man, possibly, became torture to the Colonel.
For a pacification he had to reconsider that she was as yet only nineteen and unmarried.
But she was engaged, and she was unloved. One might swear to it, that she was unloved. And she was not a girl to be satisfied a big house and a high-nosed husband.
There was a rapid alteration of the sad history of Clara the unloved matron solaced by two little ones. A childless Clara tragically loving and beloved flashed across the dark glass of the future.
Either way her fate was cruel.
Some astonishment moved De Craye in the contemplation of the distance he had stepped in this morass of fancy. He distinguished the choice open to him of forward or back, and he selected forward. But fancy was dead: the poetry hovering about her grew invisible to him: he stood in the morass; that was all he knew; and momently he plunged deeper; and he was aware of an intense desire to see her face, that he might study her features again: he understood no more.
It was the clouding of the brain by the man's heart, which had come to the knowledge that it was caught.
A certain measure of astonishment moved him still. It had hitherto been his portion to do mischief to women and avoid the vengeance of the sex. What was there in Miss Middleton's face and air to ensnare a veteran handsome man of society numbering six-and-thirty years, nearly as many conquests? "Each bullet has got its commission." He was hit at last. That accident effected by Mr. Flitch had fired the shot. Clean through the heart, does not tell us of our misfortune, till the heart is asked to renew its natural beating. It fell into the condition of the porcelain vase over a thought of Miss Middleton standing above his prostrate form on the road, and walking beside him to the Hall. Her words? What have they been? She had not uttered words, she had shed meanings. He did not for an instant conceive that he had charmed her: the charm she had cast on him was too thrilling for coxcombry to lift a head; still she had enjoyed his prattle. In return for her touch upon the Irish fountain in him, he had manifestly given her relief And could not one see that so sprightly a girl would soon be deadened by a man like Willoughby? Deadened she was: she had not responded to a compliment on her approaching marriage. An allusion to it killed her smiling. The case of Mr. Flitch, with the half wager about his reinstation in the service of the Hall, was conclusive evidence of her opinion of Willoughby.