like an oracle.'
'Is she so sure of her nature?' said Miss Dale.
'You may doubt it; I do not. I am surprised at her coming back. De Craye is a man of the world, and advised it, I suppose. He — well, I never had the persuasive tongue, and my failing doesn't count for much.'
'But the suddenness of the intimacy!'
'The disaster is rather famous 'at first sight'. He came in a fortunate hour… for him. A pigmy's a giant if he can manage to arrive in season. Did you not notice that there was danger, at their second or third glance? You counselled me to hang on here, where the amount of good I do in proportion to what I have to endure is microscopic.'
'It was against your wishes, I know,' said L?titia, and when the words were out she feared that they were tentative. Her delicacy shrank from even seeming to sound him in relation to a situation so delicate as Miss Middleton's.
The same sentiment guarded him from betraying himself, and he said: 'Partly against. We both foresaw the possible — because, like most prophets, we knew a little more of circumstances enabling us to see the fatal. A pigmy would have served, but De Craye is a handsome, intelligent, pleasant fellow.'
'Sir Willoughby's friend!'
'Well, in these affairs! A great deal must be charged on the goddess.'
'That is really Pagan fatalism!'
'Our modern word for it is Nature. Science condescends to speak of natural selection. Look at these! They are both graceful and winning and witty, bright to mind and eye, made for one another, as country people say. I can't blame him. Besides, we don't know that he's guilty. We're quite in the dark, except that we're certain how it must end. If the chance should occur to you of giving Willoughby a word of counsel — it may — you might, without irritating him as my knowledge of his plight does, hint at your eyes being open. His insane dread of a detective world makes him artificially blind. As soon as he fancies himself seen, he sets to work spinning a web, and he discerns nothing else. It's generally a clever kind of web; but if it's a tangle to others it's the same to him, and a veil as well. He is preparing the catastrophe, he forces the issue. Tell him of her extreme desire to depart. Treat her as mad, to soothe him. Otherwise one morning he will wake a second time…! It is perfectly certain. And the second time it will be entirely his own fault. Inspire him with some philosophy.'
'I have none.'
'I if I thought so, I would say you have better. There are two kinds of philosophy, mine and yours. Mine comes of coldness, yours of devotion.'
'He is unlikely to choose me for his confidante.'
Vernon meditated. 'One can never quite guess what he will do, from never knowing the heat of the centre in him which precipitates his actions: he has a great art of concealment. As to me, as you perceive, my views are too philosophical to let me be of use to any of them. I blame only the one who holds to the bond. The sooner I am gone! — in fact, I cannot stay on. So Dr. Middleton and the Professor did not strike fire together?'
'Doctor Middleton was ready, and pursued him, but Professor Crooklyn insisted on shivering. His line of blank verse, 'A Railway platform and a Railway inn! became pathetic in repetition. He must have suffered.'
'Somebody has to!'
'Why the innocent?'
'He arrives a propos. But remember that Fridolin sometimes contrives to escape and have the guilty scorched. The Professor would not have suffered if he had missed his train, as he appears to be in the habit of doing. Thus his unaccustomed good-fortune was the cause of his bad.'
'You saw him on the platform?'
'I am unacquainted with the professor. I had to get Mrs Mountstuart out of the way.'
'She says she described him to you. 'Complexion of a sweetbread, consistency of a quenelle, grey, and like a Saint without his dish behind the head.'
'Her descriptions are strikingly accurate, but she forgot to sketch his back, and all that I saw was a narrow sloping back and a broad hat resting the brim on it. My report to her spoke of an old gentleman of dark complexion, as the only traveller on the platform. She has faith in the efficiency of her descriptive powers, and so she was willing to drive off immediately. The intention was a start to London. Colonel De Craye came up and effected in five minutes what I could not compass in thirty.'
'But you saw Colonel De Craye pass you?'
'My work was done; I should have been an intruder. Besides I was acting wet jacket with Mrs. Mountstuart to get her to drive off fast, or she might have jumped out in search of her Professor herself.'
'She says you were lean as a fork, with the wind whistling through the prongs.'
'You see how easy it is to deceive one who is an artist in phrases. Avoid them, Miss Dale; they dazzle the penetration of the composer. That is why people of ability like Mrs Mountstuart see so little; they are so bent on describing brilliantly. However, she is kind and charitable at heart. I have been considering to-night that, to cut this knot as it is now, Miss Middleton might do worse than speak straight out to Mrs. Mountstuart. No one else would have such influence with Willoughby. The simple fact of Mrs. Mountstuart's knowing of it would be almost enough. But courage would be required for that. Good-night, Miss Dale.'
'Good-night, Mr. Whitford. You pardon me for disturbing you?'
Vernon pressed her hand reassuringly. He had but to look at her and review her history to think his cousin Willoughby punished by just retribution. Indeed, for any maltreatment of the dear boy Love by man or by woman, coming under your cognizance, you, if you be of common soundness, shall behold the retributive blow struck in your time.
Miss Dale retired thinking how like she and Vernon were to one another in the toneless condition they had achieved through sorrow. He succeeded in masking himself from her, owing to her awe of the circumstances. She reproached herself for not having the same devotion to the cold idea of duty as he had; and though it provoked inquiry, she would not stop to ask why he had left Miss Middleton a prey to the sparkling colonel. It seemed a proof of the philosophy he preached.
As she was passing by young Crossjay's bedroom door a face appeared. Sir Willoughby slowly emerged and presented himself in his full length, beseeching her to banish alarm.
He said it in a hushed voice, with a face qualified to create sentiment.
'Are you tired? sleepy?' said he.
She protested that she was not: she intended to read for an hour.
He begged to have the hour dedicated to him. 'I shall be relieved by conversing with a friend.'
No subterfuge crossed her mind; she thought his midnight visit to the boy's bedside a pretty feature in him; she was full of pity, too; she yielded to the strange request, feeling that it did not become 'an old woman' to attach importance even to the public discovery of midnight interviews involving herself as one, and feeling also that she was being treated as an old friend in the form of a very old woman. Her mind was bent on arresting any recurrence to the project she had so frequently outlined in the tongue of innuendo, of which, because of her repeated tremblings under it, she thought him a master.
He conducted her along the corridor to the private sitting-room of the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.
'Deceit!' he said, while lighting the candles on the mantelpiece.
She was earnestly compassionate, and a word that could not relate to her personal destinies refreshed her by displacing her apprehensive antagonism and giving pity free play.
Chapter XXXI
Sir Willoughby Attempts And Achieves Pathos
Both were seated. Apparently he would have preferred to watch her dark downcast eyelashes in silence under sanction of his air of abstract meditation and the melancholy superinducing it. Blood-colour was in her cheeks; the party had inspirited her features. Might it be that lively company, an absence of economical solicitudes, and a flourishing home were all she required to make her bloom again? The supposition was not hazardous in presence of her heightened complexion.
