succeed with old Vernon yesterday? He will and he won't? He's a very woman in these affairs. I can't forgive him for giving you a headache. You were found weeping.'
'Yes, I cried,' said Clara.
'And now tell me about it. You know, my dear girl, whether he does or doesn't, our keeping him somewhere in the neighbourhood — perhaps not in the house — that is the material point. It can hardly be necessary in these days to urge marriages on. I'm sure the country is over… Most marriages ought to be celebrated with the funeral knell!'
'I think so,' said Clara.
'It will come to this, that marriages of consequence, and none but those, will be hailed with joyful peals.'
'Do not say such things in public, Willoughby.'
'Only to you, to you! Don't think me likely to expose myself to the world. Well, and I sounded Miss Dale, and there will be no violent obstacle. And now about Vernon?'
'I will speak to you, Willoughby, when I return from my walk with Miss Dale, soon after twelve.'
'Twelve!' said he.
'I name an hour. It seems childish. I can explain it. But it is named, I cannot deny, because I am a rather childish person perhaps, and have it prescribed to me to delay my speaking for a certain length of time. I may tell you at once that Mr. Whitford is not to be persuaded by me, and the breaking of our engagement would not induce him to remain.'
'Vernon used those words?'
'It was I.'
''The breaking of our engagement! Come into the laboratory, my love.'
'I shall not have time.'
'Time shall stop rather than interfere with our conversation! 'The breaking…! But it's a sort of sacrilege to speak of it.'
'That I feel; yet it has to be spoken of'
'Sometimes? Why? I can't conceive the occasion. You know, to me, Clara, plighted faith, the affiancing of two lovers, is a piece of religion. I rank it as holy as marriage; nay, to me it is holier; I really cannot tell you how; I can only appeal to you in your bosom to understand me. We read of divorces with comparative indifference. They occur between couples who have rubbed off all romance.'
She could have asked him in her fit of ironic iciness, on hearing him thus blindly challenge her to speak out, whether the romance might be his piece of religion.
He propitiated the more unwarlike sentiments in her by ejaculating, 'Poor souls! let them go their several ways. Married people no longer lovers are in the category of the unnameable. But the hint of the breaking of an engagement — our engagement! — between us? Oh!'
'Oh!' Clara came out with a swan's note swelling over mechanical imitation of him to dolorousness illimitable. 'Oh!' she breathed short, 'let it be now. Do not speak till you have heard me. My head may not be clear by-and-by. And two scenes — twice will be beyond my endurance. I am penitent for the wrong I have done you. I grieve for you. All the blame is mine. Willoughby, you must release me. Do not let me hear a word of that word; jealousy is unknown to me… Happy if I could call you friend and see you with a worthier than I, who might by-and-by call me friend! You have my plighted troth… given in ignorance of my feelings. Reprobate a weak and foolish girl's ignorance. I have thought of it, and I cannot see wickedness, though the blame is great, shameful. You have none. You are without any blame. You will not suffer as I do. You will be generous to me? I have no respect for myself when I beg you to be generous and release me.'
'But was this the…' Willoughby preserved his calmness, 'this, then, the subject of your interview with Vernon?'
'I have spoken to him. I did my commission, and I spoke to him.'
'Of me?'
'Of myself. I see how I hurt you; I could not avoid it. Yes, of you, as far as we are related. I said I believed you would release me. I said I could be true to my plighted word, but that you would not insist. Could a gentleman insist? But not a step beyond; not love; I have none. And, Willoughby, treat me as one perfectly worthless; I am. I should have known it a year back. I was deceived in myself. There should be love.'
'Should be!' Willoughby's tone was a pungent comment on her.
'Love, then, I find I have not. I think I am antagonistic to it. What people say of it I have not experienced. I find I was mistaken. It is lightly said, but very painful. You understand me, that my prayer is for liberty, that I may not be tied. If you can release and pardon me, or promise ultimately to pardon me, or say some kind word, I shall know it is because I am beneath you utterly that I have been unable to give you the love you should have with a wife. Only say to me, go! It is you who break the match, discovering my want of a heart. What people think of me matters little. My anxiety will be to save you annoyance.'
She waited for him; he seemed on the verge of speaking.
He perceived her expectation; he had nothing but clownish tumult within, and his dignity counselled him to disappoint her.
Swaying his head, like the oriental palm whose shade is a blessing to the perfervid wanderer below, smiling gravely, he was indirectly asking his dignity what he could say to maintain it and deal this mad young woman a bitterly compassionate rebuke. What to think, hung remoter. The thing to do struck him first.
He squeezed both her hands, threw the door wide open, and said, with countless blinkings: 'In the laboratory we are uninterrupted. I was at a loss to guess where that most unpleasant effect on the senses came from. They are always 'guessing' through the nose. I mean, the remainder of breakfast here. Perhaps I satirized them too smartly — if you know the letters. When they are not 'calculating'. More offensive than debris of a midnight banquet! An American tour is instructive, though not so romantic. Not so romantic as Italy, I mean. Let us escape.'
She held back from his arm. She had scattered his brains; it was pitiable: but she was in the torrent and could not suffer a pause or a change of place.
'It must be here; one minute more — I cannot go elsewhere to begin again. Speak to me here; answer my request. Once; one word. If you forgive me, it will be superhuman. But, release me.'
'Seriously,' he rejoined, 'tea-cups and coffee-cups, breadcrumbs. egg-shells, caviare, butter, beef, bacon! Can we? The room reeks.'
'Then I will go for my walk with Miss Dale. And you will speak to me when I return?'
'At all seasons. You shall go with Miss Dale. But, my dear! my love! Seriously, where are we? One hears of lover's quarrels. Now I never quarrel. It is a characteristic of mine. And you speak of me to my cousin Vernon! Seriously, plighted faith signifies plighted faith, as much as an iron-cable is iron to hold by. Some little twist of the mind? To Vernon, of all men! Tush! she has been dreaming of a hero of perfection, and the comparison is unfavourable to her Willoughby. But, my Clara, when I say to you, that bride is bride, and you are mine, mine!'
'Willoughby, you mentioned them, — those separations of two married. You said, if they do not love… Oh! say, is it not better — instead of later?'
He took advantage of her modesty in speaking to exclaim. 'Where are we now? Bride is bride, and wife is wife, and affianced is, in honour, wedded. You cannot be released. We are united. Recognize it; united. There is no possibility of releasing a wife!'
'Not if she ran…?'
This was too direct to be histrionically misunderstood. He had driven her to the extremity of more distinctly imagining the circumstance she had cited, and with that cleared view the desperate creature gloried in launching such a bolt at the man's real or assumed insensibility as must, by shivering it, waken him.
But in a moment she stood in burning rose, with dimmed eyesight. She saw his horror, and, seeing, shared it; shared just then only by seeing it; which led her to rejoice with the deepest of sighs that some shame was left in her.
'Ran? ran? ran?' he said as rapidly as he blinked. 'How? where? what idea…?'
Close was he upon an explosion that would have sullied his conception of the purity of the younger members of the sex hauntingly.
That she, a young lady, maiden, of strictest education, should, and without his teaching, know that wives
