likewise and more, he would have been hangdog abject.
As for De Craye, Willoughby recollected his own exploits too proudly to put his trust in a man. That fatal conjunction of temper and policy had utterly thrown him off his guard, or he would not have trusted the fellow even in the first hour of his acquaintance with Clara. But he had wished her to be amused while he wove his plans to retain her at the Hall: — partly imagining that she would weary of his neglect: vile delusion! In truth he should have given festivities, he should have been the sun of a circle, and have revealed himself to her in his more dazzling form. He went near to calling himself foolish after the tremendous reverberation of 'Fooled!' had ceased to shake him.
How behave? It slapped the poor gentleman's pride in the face to ask. A private talk with her would rouse her to renew her supplications. He saw them flickering behind the girl's transparent calmness. That calmness really drew its dead ivory hue from the suppression of them: something as much he guessed; and he was not sure either of his temper or his policy if he should hear her repeat her profane request.
An impulse to address himself to Vernon and discourse with him jocularly on the childish whim of a young lady, moved perhaps by some whiff of jealousy, to shun the yoke, was checked. He had always taken so superior a pose with Vernon that he could not abandon it for a moment: on such a subject too! Besides, Vernon was one of your men who entertain the ideas about women of fellows that have never conquered one: or only one, we will say in his case, knowing his secret history; and that one no flag to boast of. Densely ignorant of the sex, his nincompoopish idealizations, at other times preposterous, would now be annoying. He would probably presume on Clara's inconceivable lapse of dignity to read his master a lecture: he was quite equal to a philippic upon woman's rights. This man had not been afraid to say that he talked common sense to women. He was an example of the consequence!
Another result was that Vernon did not talk sense to men. Willoughby's wrath at Clara's exposure of him to his cousin dismissed the proposal of a colloquy so likely to sting his temper, and so certain to diminish his loftiness. Unwilling to speak to anybody, he was isolated, yet consciously begirt by the mysterious action going on all over the house, from Clara and De Craye to L?titia and young Crossjay, down to Barclay the maid. His blind sensitiveness felt as we may suppose a spider to feel when plucked from his own web and set in the centre of another's. L?titia looked her share in the mystery. A burden was on her eyelashes. How she could have come to any suspicion of the circumstances, he was unable to imagine. Her intense personal sympathy, it might be; he thought so with some gentle pity for her — of the paternal pat-back order of pity. She adored him, by decree of Venus; and the Goddess had not decreed that he should find consolation in adoring her. Nor could the temptings of prudent counsel in his head induce him to run the risk of such a total turnover as the incurring of L?titia's pity of himself by confiding in her. He checked that impulse also, and more sovereignly. For him to be pitied by L?titia seemed an upsetting of the scheme of Providence. Providence, otherwise the discriminating dispensation of the good things of life, had made him the beacon, her the bird: she was really the last person to whom he could unbosom. The idea of his being in a position that suggested his doing so, thrilled him with fits of rage; and it appalled him. There appeared to be another Power. The same which had humiliated him once was menacing him anew. For it could not be Providence, whose favourite he had ever been. We must have a couple of Powers to account for discomfort when Egoism is the kernel of our religion. Benevolence had singled him for uncommon benefits: malignancy was at work to rob him of them. And you think well of the world, do you!
Of necessity he associated Clara with the darker Power pointing the knife at the quick of his pride. Still, he would have raised her weeping: he would have stanched her wounds bleeding: he had an infinite thirst for her misery, that he might ease his heart of its charitable love. Or let her commit herself, and be cast off. Only she must commit herself glaringly, and be cast off by the world as well. Contemplating her in the form of a discarded weed, he had a catch of the breath: she was fair. He implored his Power that Horace De Craye might not be the man! Why any man? An illness, fever, fire, runaway horses, personal disfigurement, a laming, were sufficient. And then a formal and noble offer on his part to keep to the engagement with the unhappy wreck: yes, and to lead the limping thing to the altar, if she insisted. His imagination conceived it, and the world's applause besides.
Nausea, together with a sense of duty to his line, extinguished that loathsome prospect of a mate, though without obscuring his chivalrous devotion to his gentleman's word of honour, which remained in his mind to compliment him permanently.
On the whole, he could reasonably hope to subdue her to admiration. He drank a glass of champagne at his dressing; an unaccustomed act, but, as he remarked casually to his man Pollington, for whom the rest of the bottle was left, he had taken no horse-exercise that day.
Having to speak to Vernon on business, he went to the schoolroom, where he discovered Clara, beautiful in full evening attire, with her arm on young Crossjay's shoulder, and heard that the hard task-master had abjured Mrs. Mountstuart's party, and had already excused himself, intending to keep Crossjay to the grindstone. Willoughby was for the boy, as usual, and more sparklingly than usual. Clara looked at him in some surprise. He rallied Vernon with great zest, quite silencing him when he said: 'I bear witness that the fellow was here at his regular hour for lessons, and were you?' He laid his hand on Crossjay, touching Clara's.
'You will remember what I told you, Crossjay,' said she, rising from the seat gracefully to escape the touch. 'It is my command.'
Crossjay frowned and puffed.
'But only if I'm questioned,' he said.
'Certainly,' she replied.
'Then I question the rascal,' said Willoughby, causing a start. 'What, sir, is your opinion of Miss Middleton in her robe of state this evening?'
'Now, the truth, Crossjay!' Clara held up a finger; and the boy could see she was playing at archness, but for Willoughby it was earnest. 'The truth is not likely to offend you or me either,' he murmured to her.
'I wish him never, never, on any excuse, to speak anything else.'
'I always did think her a Beauty,' Crossjay growled. He hated the having to say it.
'There!' exclaimed Sir Willoughby, and bent, extending an arm to her. 'You have not suffered from the truth, my Clara!'
Her answer was: 'I was thinking how he might suffer if he were taught to tell the reverse.'
'Oh! for a fair lady!'
'That is the worst of teaching, Willoughby.'
'We'll leave it to the fellow's instinct; he has our blood in him. I could convince you, though, if I might cite circumstances. Yes! But yes! And yes again! The entire truth cannot invariably be told. I venture to say it should not.'
'You would pardon it for the 'fair lady'?'
'Applaud, my love.'
He squeezed the hand within his arm, contemplating her.
She was arrayed in a voluminous robe of pale blue silk vapourous with trimmings of light gauze of the same hue, gaze de Chambery, matching her fair hair and dear skin for the complete overthrow of less inflammable men than Willoughby.
'Clara!' sighed be.
'If so, it would really be generous,' she said, 'though the teaching h bad.'
'I fancy I can be generous.'
'Do we ever know?'
He turned his head to Vernon, issuing brief succinct instructions for letters to be written, and drew her into the hall, saying: 'Know? There are people who do not know themselves and as they are the majority they manufacture the axioms. And it is assumed that we have to swallow them. I may observe that I think I know. I decline to be engulphed in those majorities. 'Among them, but not of them. I know this, that my aim in life is to be generous.'
'Is it not an impulse or disposition rather than an aim?'
'So much I know,' pursued Willoughby, refusing to be tripped. But she rang discordantly in his ear. His 'fancy that he could be generous' and his 'aim at being generous' had met with no response. 'I have given proofs,' he said, briefly, to drop a subject upon which he was not permitted to dilate; and he murmured, 'People acquainted with me…!' She was asked if she expected him to boast of generous deeds. 'From childhood!' she heard him mutter; and she said to herself, 'Release me, and you shall be everything!'
