'Your grave!' he exclaimed over her head; 'my own girl!'
'Is not the orchid naturally a stranger in ground so far away from the chalk, Willoughby?'
'I am incompetent to pronounce an opinion on such important matters. My mother had a passion for every description of flower. I fancy I have some recollection of her scattering the flower you mention over the park.'
'If she were living now!'
'We should be happy in the blessing of the most estimable of women, my Clara.'
'She would have listened to me. She would have realized what I mean.'
'Indeed, Clara — poor soul!' he murmured to himself, aloud; 'indeed you are absolutely in error. If I have seemed — but I repeat, you are deceived. The idea of 'fitness' is a total hallucination. Supposing you — I do it even in play painfully — entirely out of the way, unthought of…'
'Extinct,' Clara said low.
'Non-existent for me,' he selected a preferable term. 'Suppose it; I should still, in spite of an admiration I have never thought it incumbent on me to conceal, still be — I speak emphatically — utterly incapable of the offer of my hand to Miss Dale. It may be that she is embedded in my mind as a friend, and nothing but a friend. I received the stamp in early youth. People have noticed it — we do, it seems, bring one another out, reflecting, counter- reflecting.'
She glanced up at him with a shrewd satisfaction to see that her wicked shaft had stuck.
'You do; it is a common remark,' she said. 'The instantaneous difference when she comes near, any one might notice.'
'My love,' he opened the iron gate into the garden, 'you encourage the naughty little suspicion.'
'But it is a beautiful sight, Willoughby. I like to see you together. I like it as I like to see colours match.'
'Very well. There is no harm then. We shall often be together. I like my fair friend. But the instant! — you have only to express a sentiment of disapprobation.'
'And you dismiss her.'
'I dismiss her. That is, as to the word, I constitute myself your echo, to clear any vestige of suspicion. She goes.'
'That is a case of a person doomed to extinction without offending.'
'Not without: for whoever offends my bride, my wife, my sovereign lady, offends me: very deeply offends me.'
'Then the caprices of your wife…' Clara stamped her foot imperceptibly on the lawn-sward, which was irresponsively soft to her fretfulness. She broke from the inconsequent meaningless mild tone of irony, and said: 'Willoughby, women have their honour to swear by equally with men: — girls have: they have to swear an oath at the altar; may I to you now? Take it for uttered when I tell you that nothing would make me happier than your union with Miss Dale. I have spoken as much as I can. Tell me you release me.'
With the well-known screw-smile of duty upholding weariness worn to inanition, he rejoined: 'Allow me once more to reiterate, that it is repulsive, inconceivable, that I should ever, under any mortal conditions, bring myself to the point of taking Miss Dale for my wife. You reduce me to this perfectly childish protestation — pitiably childish! But, my love, have I to remind you that you and I are plighted, and that I am an honourable man?'
'I know it, I feel it — release me!' cried Clara.
Sir Willoughby severely reprehended his short-sightedness for seeing but the one proximate object in the particular attention he had bestowed on Miss Dale. He could not disavow that they had been marked, and with an object, and he was distressed by the unwonted want of wisdom through which he had been drawn to overshoot his object. His design to excite a touch of the insane emotion in Clara's bosom was too successful, and, 'I was not thinking of her,' he said to himself in his candour, contrite.
She cried again: 'Will you not, Willoughby — release me?'
He begged her to take his arm.
To consent to touch him while petitioning for a detachment, appeared discordant to Clara, but, if she expected him to accede, it was right that she should do as much as she could, and she surrendered her hand at arm's length, disdaining the imprisoned fingers. He pressed them and said: 'Dr Middleton is in the library. I see Vernon is at work with Crossjay in the West-room — the boy has had sufficient for the day. Now, is it not like old Vernon to drive his books at a cracked head before it's half mended?'
He signalled to young Crossjay, who was up and out through the folding windows in a twinkling.
'And you will go in, and talk to Vernon of the lady in question,' Sir Willoughby whispered to Clara. 'Use your best persuasions in our joint names. You have my warrant for saying that money is no consideration; house and income are assured. You can hardly have taken me seriously when I requested you to undertake Vernon before. I was quite in earnest then as now. I prepare Miss Dale. I will not have a wedding on our wedding-day; but either before or after it, I gladly speed their alliance. I think now I give you the best proof possible, and though I know that with women a delusion may be seen to be groundless and still be cherished, I rely on your good sense.'
Vernon was at the window and stood aside for her to enter. Sir Willoughby used a gentle insistence with her. She bent her head as if she were stepping into a cave. So frigid was she, that a ridiculous dread of calling Mr. Whitford Mr. Oxford was her only present anxiety when Sir Willoughby had closed the window on them.
Chapter XIV
Sir Willoughby And L?titia
'I prepare Miss Dale.'
Sir Willoughby thought of his promise to Clara. He trifled awhile with young Crossjay, and then sent the boy flying, and wrapped himself in meditation. So shall you see standing many a statue of statesmen who have died in harness for their country.
In the hundred and fourth chapter of the thirteenth volume of the Book of Egoism it is written: Possession without obligation to the object possessed approaches felicity.
It is the rarest condition of ownership. For example: the possession of land is not without obligation both to the soil and the tax-collector; the possession of fine clothing is oppressed by obligation; gold, jewelry, works of art, enviable household furniture, are positive fetters; the possession of a wife we find surcharged with obligation. In all these cases possession is a gentle term for enslavement, bestowing the sort of felicity attained to by the helot drunk. You can have the joy, the pride, the intoxication of possession; you can have no free soul.
But there is one instance of possession, and that the most perfect, which leaves us free, under not a shadow of obligation, receiving ever, never giving, or if giving, giving only of our waste; as it were (sauf votre respect), by form of perspiration, radiation, if you like; unconscious poral bountifulness; and it is a beneficent process for the system. Our possession of an adoring female's worship is this instance.
The soft cherishable Parsee is hardly at any season other than prostrate. She craves nothing save that you continue in being — her sun: which is your firm constitutional endeavour: and thus you have a most exact alliance; she supplying spirit to your matter, while at the same time presenting matter to your spirit, verily a comfortable apposition. The Gods do bless it.
That they do so indeed is evident in the men they select for such a felicitous crown and aureole. Weak men would be rendered nervous by the flattery of a woman's worship; or they would be for returning it, at least partially, as though it could be bandied to and fro without emulgence of the poetry; or they would be pitiful, and quite spoil the thing. Some would be for transforming the beautiful solitary vestal flame by the first effort of the multiplication- table into your hearth-fire of slippered affection. So these men are not they whom the Gods have ever selected, but rather men of a pattern with themselves, very high and very solid men, who maintain the crown by holding divinely independent of the great emotion they have sown.
Even for them a pass of danger is ahead, as we shall see in our sample of one among the highest of them.
A clear approach to felicity had long been the portion of Sir Willoughby Patterne in his relations with L?titia Dale. She belonged to him; he was quite unshackled by her. She was everything that is good in a parasite, nothing that is bad. His dedicated critic she was, reviewing him with a favour equal to perfect efficiency in her office; and whatever the world might say of him, to her the happy gentleman could constantly turn for his refreshing balsamic
