me?'
'No! no!'
'Where do you propose to go?'
'To London; to a friend — Miss Darleton.'
'What message is there for your father?'
'Say I have left a letter for him in a letter to be delivered to you.'
'To me! And what message for Willoughby?'
'My maid Barclay will hand him a letter at noon.'
'You have sealed Crossjay's fate.'
'How?'
'He is probably at this instant undergoing an interrogation. You may guess at his replies. The letter will expose him, and Willoughby does not pardon.'
'I regret it. I cannot avoid it. Poor boy! My dear Crossjay! I did not think of how Willoughby might punish him. I was very thoughtless. Mr. Whitford, my pin-money shall go for his education. Later, when I am a little older, I shall be able to support him.'
'That's an encumbrance; you should not tie yourself to drag it about. You are unalterable, of course, but circumstances are not, and as it happens, women are more subject to them than we are.'
'But I will not be!'
'Your command of them is shown at the present moment.'
'Because I determine to be free?'
'No: because you do the contrary; you don't determine: you run away from the difficulty, and leave it to your father and friends to bear. As for Crossjay, you see you destroy one of his chances. I should have carried him off before this, if I had not thought it prudent to keep him on terms with Willoughby. We'll let Crossjay stand aside. He'll behave like a man of honour, imitating others who have had to do the same for ladies.'
'Have spoken falsely to shelter cowards, you mean, Mr. Whitford. Oh, I know. — I have but two minutes. The die is cast. I cannot go back. I must get ready. Will you see me to the station? I would rather you should hurry home.'
'I will see the last of you. I will wait for you here. An express runs ahead of your train, and I have arranged with the clerk for a signal; I have an eye on the window.'
'You are still my best friend, Mr. Whitford.'
'Though?'
'Well, though you do not perfectly understand what torments have driven me to this.'
'Carried on tides and blown by winds?'
'Ah! you do not understand.'
'Mysteries?'
'Sufferings are not mysteries, they are very simple facts.'
'Well, then, I don't understand. But decide at once. I wish you to have your free will.'
She left the room.
Dry stockings and boots are better for travelling in than wet ones, but in spite of her direct resolve, she felt when drawing them on like one that has been tripped. The goal was desirable, the ardour was damped. Vernon's wish that she should have her free will compelled her to sound it: and it was of course to go, to be liberated, to cast off incubus and hurt her father? injure Crossjay? distress her friends? No, and ten times no!
She returned to Vernon in haste, to shun the reflex of her mind.
He was looking at a closed carriage drawn up at the station door.
'Shall we run over now, Mr. Whitford?'
'There's no signal. Here it's not so chilly.'
'I ventured to enclose my letter to papa in yours, trusting you would attend to my request to you to break the news to him gently and plead for me.'
'We will all do the utmost we can.'
'I am doomed to vex those who care for me. I tried to follow your counsel.'
'First you spoke to me, and then you spoke to Miss Dale; and at least you have a clear conscience.'
'No.'
'What burdens it?'
'I have done nothing to burden it.'
'Then it's a clear conscience.'
'No.'
Vernon's shoulders jerked. Our patience with an innocent duplicity in women is measured by the place it assigns to us and another. If he had liked he could have thought: 'You have not done but meditated something to trouble conscience.' That was evident, and her speaking of it was proof too of the willingness to be dear. He would not help her. Man's blood, which is the link with women and responsive to them on the instant for or against, obscured him. He shrugged anew when she said: 'My character would have been degraded utterly by my staying there. Could you advise it?'
'Certainly not the degradation of your character,' he said, black on the subject of De Craye, and not lightened by feelings which made him sharply sensible of the beggarly dependant that he was, or poor adventuring scribbler that he was to become.
'Why did you pursue me and wish to stop me, Mr. Whitford?' said Clara, on the spur of a wound from his tone.
He replied: 'I suppose I'm a busybody; I was never aware of it till now.'
'You are my friend. Only you speak in irony so much. That was irony, about my clear conscience. I spoke to you and to Miss Dale: and then I rested and drifted. Can you not feel for me, that to mention it is like a scorching furnace? Willoughby has entangled papa. He schemes incessantly to keep me entangled. I fly from his cunning as much as from anything. I dread it. I have told you that I am more to blame than he, but I must accuse him. And wedding-presents! and congratulations! And to be his guest!'
'All that makes up a plea in mitigation,' said Vernon.
'Is it not sufficient for you?' she asked him timidly.
'You have a masculine good sense that tells you you won't be respected if you run. Three more days there might cover a retreat with your father.'
'He will not listen to me. He confuses me; Willoughby has bewitched him.'
'Commission me: I will see that he listens.'
'And go back? Oh, no! To London! Besides, there is the dining with Mrs. Mountstuart this evening; and I like her very well, but I must avoid her. She has a kind of idolatry… And what answers can I give? I supplicate her with looks. She observes them, my efforts to divert them from being painful produce a comic expression to her, and I am a charming 'rogue', and I am entertained on the topic she assumes to be principally interesting me. I must avoid her. The thought of her leaves me no choice. She is clever. She could tattoo me with epigrams.'
'Stay… there you can hold your own.'
'She has told me you give me credit for a spice of wit. I have not discovered my possession. We have spoken of it; we call it your delusion. She grants me some beauty; that must be hers.'
'There's no delusion in one case or the other, Miss Middleton. You have beauty and wit; public opinion will say, wildness: indifference to your reputation will be charged on you, and your friends will have to admit it. But you will be out of this difficulty.'
'Ah — to weave a second?'
'Impossible to judge until we see how you escape the first. And I have no more to say. I love your father. His humour of sententiousness and doctorial stilts is a mask he delights in, but you ought to know him and not be frightened by it. If you sat with him an hour at a Latin task, and if you took his hand and told him you could not leave him, and no tears! — he would answer you at once. It would involve a day or two further; disagreeable to you, no doubt: preferable to the present mode of escape, as I think. But I have no power whatever to persuade. I have not the 'lady's tongue'. My appeal is always to reason.'
'It is a compliment. I loathe the 'lady's tongue'.'
'It's a distinctly good gift, and I wish I had it. I might have succeeded instead of failing, and appearing to pay
