continuing faithful, I should rather say, regretful, can do, is to devote the remainder of life to the picking up of the fragments; an occupation properly to be pursued, for the comfort of mankind, within the enclosure of an appointed asylum.'
'You destroy the poetry of sentiment, Dr. Middleton.'
'To invigorate the poetry of nature, Mr. Whitford.'
'Then you maintain, sir, that when faith is broken by one, the engagement ceases, and the other is absolutely free?'
'I do; I am the champion of that platitude, and sound that knell to the sentimental world; and since you have chosen to defend it, I will appeal to Willoughby, and ask him if he would not side with the world of good sense in applauding the nuptials of man or maid married within a month of a jilting?' Clara slipped her arm under her father's.
'Poetry, sir,' said Willoughby, 'I never have been hypocrite enough to pretend to understand or care for.'
Dr. Middleton laughed. Vernon too seemed to admire his cousin for a reply that rung in Clara's ears as the dullest ever spoken. Her arm grew cold on her father's. She began to fear Willoughby again.
He depended entirely on his agility to elude the thrusts that assailed him. Had he been able to believe in the treachery of the Powers above, he would at once have seen design in these deadly strokes, for his feelings had rarely been more acute than at the present crisis; and he would then have led away Clara, to wrangle it out with her, relying on Vernon's friendliness not to betray him to her father: but a wrangle with Clara promised no immediate fruits, nothing agreeable; and the lifelong trust he had reposed in his protecting genii obscured his intelligence to evidence he would otherwise have accepted on the spot, on the faith of his delicate susceptibility to the mildest impressions which wounded him. Clara might have stooped to listen at the door: she might have heard sufficient to create a suspicion. But Vernon was not in the house last night; she could not have communicated it to him, and he had not seen L?titia, who was, besides trustworthy, an admirable if a foolish and ill-fated woman.
Preferring to consider Vernon a pragmatical moralist played upon by a sententious drone, he thought it politic to detach them, and vanquish Clara while she was in the beaten mood, as she had appeared before Vernon's vexatious arrival.
'I'm afraid, my dear fellow, you are rather too dainty and fussy for a very successful wooer,' he said. 'It's beautiful on paper, and absurd in life. We have a bit of private business to discuss. We will go inside, sir, I think. I will soon release you.' Clara pressed her father's arm.
'More?' said he.
'Five minutes. There's a slight delusion to clear, sir. My dear Clara, you will see with different eyes.'
'Papa wishes to work with Mr. Whitford.'
Her heart sunk to hear her father say: 'No, 'tis a lost morning. I must consent to pay tax of it for giving another young woman to the world. I have a daughter! You will, I hope, compensate me, Mr. Whitford, in the afternoon. Be not downcast. I have observed you meditative of late. You will have no clear brain so long as that stuff is on the mind. I could venture to propose to do some pleading for you, should it be needed for the prompter expedition of the affair.'
Vernon briefly thanked him, and said:
'Willoughby has exerted all his eloquence, and you see the result: you have lost Miss Dale and I have not won her. He did everything that one man can do for another in so delicate a case: even to the repeating of her famous birthday verses to him, to flatter the poetess. His best efforts were foiled by the lady's indisposition for me.'
'Behold,' said Dr. Middleton, as Willoughby, electrified by the mention of the verses, took a sharp stride or two, 'you have in him an advocate who will not be rebuffed by one refusal, and I can affirm that he is tenacious, pertinacious as are few. Justly so. Not to believe in a lady's No is the approved method of carrying that fortress built to yield. Although unquestionably to have a young man pleading in our interests with a lady, counts its objections. Yet Willoughby being notoriously engaged, may be held to enjoy the privileges of his elders.'
'As an engaged man, sir, he was on a level with his elders in pleading on my behalf with Miss Dale,' said Vernon. Willoughby strode and muttered. Providence had grown mythical in his thoughts, if not malicious: and it is the peril of this worship that the object will wear such an alternative aspect when it appears no longer subservient.
'Are we coming, sir?' he said, and was unheeded. The Rev. Doctor would not be defrauded of rolling his billow.
'As an honourable gentleman faithful to his own engagement and desirous of establishing his relatives, he deserves, in my judgement, the lady's esteem as well as your cordial thanks; nor should a temporary failure dishearten either of you, notwithstanding the precipitate retreat of the lady from Patterne, and her seclusion in her sanctum on the occasion of your recent visit.'
'Supposing he had succeeded,' said Vernon, driving Willoughby to frenzy, 'should I have been bound to marry?' Matter for cogitation was offered to Dr. Middleton.
'The proposal was without your sanction?'
'Entirely.'
'You admire the lady?'
'Respectfully.'
'You do not incline to the state?'
'An inch of an angle would exaggerate my inclination.'
'How long are we to stand and hear this insufferable nonsense you talk?' cried Willoughby.
'But if Mr. Whitford was not consulted…' Dr. Middleton said, and was overborne by Willoughby's hurried, 'Oblige me, sir. — Oblige me, my good fellow!' He swept his arm to Vernon, and gestured a conducting hand to Clara.
'Here is Mrs. Mountstuart!' she exclaimed.
Willoughby stared. Was it an irruption of a friend or a foe? He doubted, and stood petrified between the double question. Clara had seen Mrs. Mountstuart and Colonel De Craye separating: and now the great lady sailed along the sward like a royal barge in festival trim.
She looked friendly, but friendly to everybody, which was always a frost on Willoughby, and terribly friendly to Clara.
Coming up to her she whispered: 'News, indeed! Wonderful! I could not credit his hint of it yesterday. Are you satisfied?'
'Pray, Mrs. Mountstuart, take an opportunity to speak to papa,' Clara whispered in return.
Mrs. Mountstuart bowed to Dr. Middleton, nodded to Vernon, and swam upon Willoughby, with, 'Is it? But is it? Am I really to believe? You have? My dear Sir Willoughby? Really?' The confounded gentleman heaved on a bare plank of wreck in mid sea.
He could oppose only a paralyzed smile to the assault.
His intuitive discretion taught him to fall back a step while she said, 'So!' the plummet word of our mysterious deep fathoms; and he fell back further saying, 'Madam?' in a tone advising her to speak low.
She recovered her volubility, followed his partial retreat, and dropped her voice, —
'Impossible to have imagined it as an actual fact! You were always full of surprises, but this! this! Nothing manlier, nothing more gentlemanly has ever been done: nothing: nothing that so completely changes an untenable situation into a comfortable and proper footing for everybody. It is what I like: it is what I love: — sound sense! Men are so selfish: one cannot persuade them to be reasonable in such positions. But you, Sir Willoughby, have shown wisdom and sentiment: the rarest of all combinations in men.'
'Where have you?…' Willoughby contrived to say.
'Heard? The hedges, the housetops, everywhere. All the neighbourhood will have it before nightfall. Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer will soon be rushing here, and declaring they never expected anything else, I do not doubt. I am not so pretentious. I beg your excuse for that 'twice' of mine yesterday. Even if it hurt my vanity, I should be happy to confess my error: I was utterly out. But then I did not reckon on a fatal attachment, I thought men were incapable of it. I thought we women were the only poor creatures persecuted by a fatality. It is a fatality! You tried hard to escape, indeed you did. And she will do honour to your final surrender, my dear friend. She is gentle, and very clever, very: she is devoted to you: she will entertain excellently. I see her like a flower in sunshine. She will expand to a perfect hostess. Patterne will shine under her reign; you have my warrant for that. And so will you. Yes, you flourish best when adored. It must be adoration. You have been under a cloud of late. Years ago I said it was a
