fish.'
'You are reconciled to his leaving you?'
'False alarm! The resolution to do anything unaccustomed is quite beyond old Vernon.'
'But if Mr. Oxford — Whitford… your swans coming sailing up the lake, how beautiful they look when they are indignant! I was going to ask you, surely men witnessing a marked admiration for some one else will naturally be discouraged?'
Sir Willoughby stiffened with sudden enlightenment.
Though the word jealousy had not been spoken, the drift of her observations was clear. Smiling inwardly, he said, and the sentences were not enigmas to her: 'Surely, too, young ladies… a little? — Too far? But an old friendship! About the same as the fitting of an old glove to a hand. Hand and glove have only to meet. Where there is natural harmony you would not have discord. Ay, but you have it if you check the harmony. My dear girl! You child!'
He had actually, in this parabolic, and commendable, obscureness, for which she thanked him in her soul, struck the very point she had not named and did not wish to hear named, but wished him to strike; he was anything but obtuse. His exultation, of the compressed sort, was extreme, on hearing her cry out:
'Young ladies may be. Oh! not I, not I. I can convince you. Not that. Believe me, Willoughby. I do not know what it is to feel that, or anything like it. I cannot conceive a claim on any one's life — as a claim: or the continuation of an engagement not founded on perfect, perfect sympathy. How should I feel it, then? It is, as you say of Mr. Ox — Whitford, beyond me.'
Sir Willoughby caught up the Ox — Whitford.
Bursting with laughter in his joyful pride, he called it a portrait of old Vernon in society. For she thought a trifle too highly of Vernon, as here and there a raw young lady does think of the friends of her plighted man, which is waste of substance properly belonging to him, as it were, in the loftier sense, an expenditure in genuflexions to wayside idols of the reverence she should bring intact to the temple. Derision instructs her.
Of the other subject — her jealousy — he had no desire to hear more. She had winced: the woman had been touched to smarting in the girl: enough. She attempted the subject once, but faintly, and his careless parrying threw her out. Clara could have bitten her tongue for that reiterated stupid slip on the name of Whitford; and because she was innocent at heart she persisted in asking herself how she could be guilty of it.
'You both know the botanic titles of these wild flowers,' she said.
'Who?' he inquired.
'You and Miss Dale.'
Sir Willoughby shrugged. He was amused.
'No woman on earth will grace a barouche so exquisitely as my Clara.'
'Where?' said she.
'During our annual two months in London. I drive a barouche there, and venture to prophesy that my equipage will create the greatest excitement of any in London. I see old Horace De Craye gazing!'
She sighed. She could not drag him to the word, or a hint of it necessary to her subject.
But there it was; she saw it. She had nearly let it go, and blushed at being obliged to name it.
'Jealousy, do you mean. Willoughby? the people in London would be jealous? — Colonel De Craye? How strange! That is a sentiment I cannot understand.'
Sir Willoughby gesticulated the 'Of course not' of an established assurance to the contrary.
'Indeed, Willoughby, I do not.'
'Certainly not.'
He was now in her trap. And he was imagining himself to be anatomizing her feminine nature.
'Can I give you a proof, Willoughby? I am so utterly incapable of it that — listen to me — were you to come to me to tell me, as you might, how much better suited to you Miss Dale has appeared than I am — and I fear I am not; it should be spoken plainly; unsuited altogether, perhaps — I would, I beseech you to believe — you must believe me — give you… give you your freedom instantly; most truly; and engage to speak of you as I should think of you. Willoughby, you would have no one to praise you in public and in private as I should, for you would be to me the most honest, truthful, chivalrous gentleman alive. And in that case I would undertake to declare that she would not admire you more than I; Miss Dale would not; she would not admire you more than I; not even Miss Dale.'
This, her first direct leap for liberty, set Clara panting, and so much had she to say that the nervous and the intellectual halves of her dashed like cymbals, dazing and stunning her with the appositeness of things to be said, and dividing her in indecision as to the cunningest to move him of the many pressing.
The condition of feminine jealousy stood revealed.
He had driven her farther than he intended.
'Come, let me allay these…' he soothed her with hand and voice, while seeking for his phrase; 'these magnified pinpoints. Now, my Clara! on my honour! and when I put it forward in attestation, my honour has the most serious meaning speech can have; ordinarily my word has to suffice for bonds, promises, or asseverations; on my honour! not merely is there, my poor child! no ground of suspicion, I assure you, I declare to you, the fact of the case is the very reverse. Now, mark me; of her sentiments I cannot pretend to speak; I did not, to my knowledge, originate, I am not responsible for them, and I am, before the law, as we will say, ignorant of them; that is, I have never heard a declaration of them, and I, am, therefore, under pain of the stigma of excessive fatuity, bound to be non-cognizant. But as to myself I can speak for myself and, on my honour! Clara — to be as direct as possible, even to baldness, and you know I loathe it — I could not, I repeat, I could not marry L?titia Dale! Let me impress it on you. No flatteries — we are all susceptible more or less — no conceivable condition could bring it about; no amount of admiration. She and I are excellent friends; we cannot be more. When you see us together, the natural concord of our minds is of course misleading. She is a woman of genius. I do not conceal, I profess my admiration of her. There are times when, I confess, I require a L?titia Dale to bring me out, give and take. I am indebted to her for the enjoyment of the duet few know, few can accord with, fewer still are allowed the privilege of playing with a human being. I am indebted, I own, and I feel deep gratitude; I own to a lively friendship for Miss Dale, but if she is displeasing in the sight of my bride by… by the breadth of an eyelash, then…'
Sir Willoughby's arm waved Miss Dale off away into outer darkness in the wilderness.
Clara shut her eyes and rolled her eyeballs in a frenzy of unuttered revolt from the Egoist.
But she was not engaged in the colloquy to be an advocate of Miss Dale or of common humanity.
'Ah!' she said, simply determining that the subject should not drop.
'And, ah!' he mocked her tenderly. 'True, though! And who knows better than my Clara that I require youth, health, beauty, and the other undefinable attributes fitting with mine and beseeming the station of the lady called to preside over my household and represent me? What says my other self? my fairer? But you are! my love, you are! Understand my nature rightly, and you…'
'I do! I do!' interposed Clara; 'if I did not by this time I should be idiotic. Let me assure you, I understand it. Oh! listen to me: one moment. Miss Dale regards me as the happiest woman on earth. Willoughby, if I possessed her good qualities, her heart and mind, no doubt I should be. It is my wish — you must hear me, hear me out — my wish, my earnest wish, my burning prayer, my wish to make way for her. She appreciates you: I do not — to my shame, I do not. She worships you: I do not, I cannot. You are the rising sun to her. It has been so for years. No one can account for love; I daresay not for the impossibility of loving… loving where we should; all love bewilders me. I was not created to understand it. But she loves you, she has pined. I believe it has destroyed the health you demand as one item in your list. But you, Willoughby, can restore that. Travelling, and… and your society, the pleasure of your society would certainly restore it. You look so handsome together! She has unbounded devotion! as for me, I cannot idolize. I see faults: I see them daily. They astonish and wound me. Your pride would not bear to hear them spoken of, least of all by your wife. You warned me to beware — that is, you said, you said something.'
Her busy brain missed the subterfuge to cover her slip of the tongue.
Sir Willoughby struck in: 'And when I say that the entire concatenation is based on an erroneous observation of facts, and an erroneous deduction from that erroneous observation! — ? No, no. Have confidence in me. I propose it to you in this instance, purely to save you from deception. You are cold, my love? you shivered.'
'I am not cold,' said Clara. 'Some one, I suppose, was walking over my grave.'
The gulf of a caress hove in view like an enormous billow hollowing under the curled ridge.
She stooped to a buttercup; the monster swept by.
