'I am not yet… I never may be…'
'My wife?' He laughed triumphantly, and silenced her by manly smothering.
Her scruple was perhaps an honourable one, he said. Perhaps the jewels were safer in their iron box. He had merely intended a surprise and gratification to her.
Courage was coming to enable her to speak more plainly, when his discontinuing to insist on her wearing the jewels, under an appearance of deference of her wishes, disarmed her by touching her sympathies.
She said, however, 'I fear we do not often agree, Willoughby.'
'When you are a little older!' was the irritating answer.
'It would then be too late to make the discovery.'
'The discovery, I apprehend, is not imperative, my love.'
'It seems to me that our minds are opposed.'
'I should,' said he, 'have been awake to it at a single indication, be sure.'
'But I know,' she pursued, 'I have learned that the ideal of conduct for women is to subject their minds to the part of an accompaniment.'
'For women, my love? my wife will be in natural harmony with me.'
'Ah!' She compressed her lips. The yawn would come. 'I am sleepier here than anywhere.'
'Ours, my Clara, is the finest air of the kingdom. It has the effect of sea-air.'
'But if I am always asleep here?'
'We shall have to make a public exhibition of the Beauty.'
This dash of his liveliness defeated her.
She left him, feeling the contempt of the brain feverishly quickened and fine-pointed, for the brain chewing the cud in the happy pastures of unawakedness. So violent was the fever, so keen her introspection, that she spared few, and Vernon was not among them. Young Crossjay, whom she considered the least able of all to act as an ally, was the only one she courted with a real desire to please him, he was the one she affectionately envied; he was the youngest, the freest, he had the world before him, and he did not know how horrible the world was, or could be made to look. She loved the boy from expecting nothing of him. Others, Vernon Whitford, for instance, could help, and moved no hand. He read her case. A scrutiny so penetrating under its air of abstract thoughtfulness, though his eyes did but rest on her a second or two, signified that he read her line by line, and to the end — excepting what she thought of him for probing her with that sharp steel of insight without a purpose.
She knew her mind's injustice. It was her case, her lamentable case — the impatient panic-stricken nerves of a captured wild creature which cried for help. She exaggerated her sufferings to get strength to throw them off, and lost it in the recognition that they were exaggerated: and out of the conflict issued recklessness, with a cry as wild as any coming of madness; for she did not blush in saying to herself. 'If some one loved me!' Before hearing of Constantia, she had mused upon liberty as a virgin Goddess — men were out of her thoughts; even the figure of a rescuer, if one dawned in her mind, was more angel than hero. That fair childish maidenliness had ceased. With her body straining in her dragon's grasp, with the savour of loathing, unable to contend, unable to speak aloud, she began to speak to herself, and all the health of her nature made her outcry womanly: 'If I were loved!' — not for the sake of love, but for free breathing; and her utterance of it was to insure life and enduringness to the wish, as the yearning of a mother on a drowning ship is to get her infant to shore. 'If some noble gentleman could see me as I am and not disdain to aid me! Oh! to be caught up out of this prison of thorns and brambles. I cannot tear my own way out. I am a coward. My cry for help confesses that. A beckoning of a finger would change me, I believe. I could fly bleeding and through hootings to a comrade. Oh! a comrade! I do not want a lover. I should find another Egoist, not so bad, but enough to make me take a breath like death. I could follow a soldier, like poor Sally or Molly. He stakes his life for his country, and a woman may be proud of the worst of men who do that. Constantia met a soldier. Perhaps she prayed and her prayer was answered. She did ill. But, oh, how I love her for it! His name was Harry Oxford. Papa would call him her Perseus. She must have felt that there was no explaining what she suffered. She had only to act, to plunge. First she fixed her mind on Harry Oxford. To be able to speak his name and see him awaiting her, must have been relief, a reprieve. She did not waver, she cut the links, she signed herself over. Oh, brave girl! what do you think of me? But I have no Harry Whitford, I am alone. Let anything be said against women; we must be very bad to have such bad things written of us: only, say this, that to ask them to sign themselves over by oath and ceremony, because of an ignorant promise, to the man they have been mistaken in, is… it is — ' the sudden consciousness that she had put another name for Oxford, struck her a buffet, drowning her in crimson.
Chapter XI
The Double-Blossom Wild Cherry-Tree
Sir Willoughby chose a moment when Clara was with him and he had a good retreat through folding-windows to the lawn, in case of cogency on the enemy's part, to attack his cousin regarding the preposterous plot to upset the family by a scamper to London: 'By the way, Vernon, what is this you've been mumbling to everybody save me, about leaving us to pitch yourself into the stew-pot and be made broth of? London is no better, and you are fit for considerably better. Don't, I beg you, continue to annoy me. Take a run abroad, if you are restless. Take two or three months, and join us as we are travelling home; and then think of settling, pray. Follow my example, if you like. You can have one of my cottages, or a place built for you. Anything to keep a man from destroying the sense of stability about one. In London, my dear old fellow, you lose your identity. What are you there? I ask you, what? One has the feeling of the house crumbling when a man is perpetually for shifting and cannot fix himself. Here you are known, you can study at your ease; up in London you are nobody; I tell you honestly, I feel it myself, a week of London literally drives me home to discover the individual where I left him. Be advised. You don't mean to go.'
'I have the intention,' said Vernon.
'Why?'
'I've mentioned it to you.'
'To my face?'
'Over your shoulder is generally the only chance you give me.'
'You have not mentioned it to me, to my knowledge. As to the reason, I might hear a dozen of your reasons, and I should not understand one. It's against your interests and against my wishes. Come, friend, I am not the only one you distress. Why, Vernon, you yourself have said that the English would be very perfect Jews if they could manage to live on the patriarchal system. You said it, yes, you said it! — but I recollect it clearly. Oh, as for your double-meanings, you said the thing, and you jeered at the incapacity of English families to live together, on account of bad temper; and now you are the first to break up our union! I decidedly do not profess to be a perfect Jew, but I do…'
Sir Willoughby caught signs of a probably smiling commerce between his bride and his cousin. He raised his face, appeared to be consulting his eyelids, and resolved to laugh: 'Well, I own it. I do like the idea of living patriarchally.' He turned to Clara. 'The Rev. Doctor one of us!'
'My father?' she said.
'Why not?'
'Papa's habits are those of a scholar.'
'That you might not be separated from him, my dear!'
Clara thanked Sir Willoughby for the kindness of thinking of her father, mentally analysing the kindness, in which at least she found no unkindness, scarcely egoism, though she knew it to be there.
'We might propose it,' said he.
'As a compliment?'
'If he would condescend to accept it as a compliment. These great scholars!.. And if Vernon goes, our inducement for Dr. Middleton to stay… But it is too absurd for discussion… Oh, Vernon, about Master Crossjay; I will see to it.'
He was about to give Vernon his shoulder and step into the garden, when Clara said, 'You will have Crossjay trained for the navy, Willoughby? There is not a day to lose.'
'Yes, yes; I will see to it. Depend on me for holding the young rascal in view.'
He presented his hand to her to lead her over the step to the gravel, surprised to behold how flushed she
