He turned about to show his face elsewhere.
When he fronted her again, she looked very fixedly, and set her head shaking.
'It will not do, my dear Sir Willoughby!'
'What?'
'I never could solve enigmas.'
'Playing ta-ta-ta-ta ad infinitum, then. Things have gone far. All parties would be happier for an excursion. Send her home.'
'L?titia? I can't part with her.'
Mrs. Mountstuart put a tooth on her under lip as her head renewed its brushing negative.
'In what way can it be hurtful that she should be here, ma'am?' he ventured to persist.
'Think.'
'She is proof.'
'Twice!'
The word was big artillery. He tried the affectation of a staring stupidity. She might have seen his heart thump, and he quitted the mask for an agreeable grimace.
'She is inaccessible. She is my friend. I guarantee her, on my honour. Have no fear for her. I beg you to have confidence in me. I would perish rather. No soul on earth is to be compared with her.'
Mrs. Mountstuart repeated 'Twice!'
The low monosyllable, musically spoken in the same tone of warning of a gentle ghost, rolled a thunder that maddened him, but he dared not take it up to fight against it on plain terms.
'Is it for my sake?' he said.
'It will not do, Sir Willoughby.'
She spurred him to a frenzy.
'My dear Mrs. Mountstuart, you have been listening to tales. I am not a tyrant. I am one of the most easy- going of men. Let us preserve the forms due to society: I say no more. As for poor old Vernon, people call me a good sort of cousin; I should like to see him comfortably married; decently married this time. I have proposed to contribute to his establishment. I mention it to show that the case has been practically considered. He has had a tolerably souring experience of the state; he might be inclined if, say, you took him in hand, for another venture. It's a demoralizing lottery. However, Government sanctions it.'
'But, Sir Willoughby, what is the use of my taking him in hand when, as you tell me, L?titia Dale holds back?'
'She certainly does.'
'Then we are talking to no purpose, unless you undertake to melt her.'
He suffered a lurking smile to kindle to some strength of meaning.
'You are not over-considerate in committing me to such an office.'
'You are afraid of the danger?' she all but sneered.
Sharpened by her tone, he said, 'I have such a love of stedfastness of character, that I should be a poor advocate in the endeavour to break it. And frankly, I know the danger. I saved my honour when I made the attempt: that is all I can say.'
'Upon my word,' Mrs. Mountstuart threw back her head to let her eyes behold him summarily over their fine aquiline bridge, 'you have the art of mystification, my good friend.'
'Abandon the idea of L?titia Dale.'
'And marry your cousin Vernon to whom? Where are we?'
'As I said, ma'am, I am an easy-going man. I really have not a spice of the tyrant in me. An intemperate creature held by the collar may have that notion of me, while pulling to be released as promptly as it entered the noose. But I do strictly and sternly object to the scandal of violent separations, open breaches of solemn engagements, a public rupture. Put it that I am the cause, I will not consent to a violation of decorum. Is that clear? It is just possible for things to be arranged so that all parties may be happy in their way without much hubbub. Mind, it is not I who have willed it so. I am, and I am forced to be, passive. But I will not be obstructive.'
He paused, waving his hand to signify the vanity of the more that might be said.
Some conception of him, dashed by incredulity, excited the lady's intelligence.
'Well!' she exclaimed, 'you have planted me in the land of conjecture. As my husband used to say, I don't see light, but I think I see the lynx that does. We won't discuss it at present. I certainly must be a younger woman than I supposed, for I am learning hard. — Here comes the Professor, buttoned up to the ears, and Dr. Middleton flapping in the breeze. There will be a cough, and a footnote referring to the young lady at the station, if we stand together, so please order my carriage.'
'You found Clara complacent? roguish?'
'I will call to-morrow. You have simplified my task, Sir Willoughby, very much; that is, assuming that I have not entirely mistaken you. I am so far in the dark that I have to help myself by recollecting how Lady Busshe opposed my view of a certain matter formerly. Scepticism is her forte. It will be the very oddest thing if after all…! No, I shall own, romance has not departed. Are you fond of dupes?'
'I detest the race.'
'An excellent answer. I could pardon you for it.' She refrained from adding, 'If you are making one of me.'
Sir Willoughby went to ring for her carriage.
She knew. That was palpable: Clara had betrayed him.
'The earlier Colonel De Craye leaves Patterne Hall the better: ' she had said that: and, 'all parties would be happier for an excursion.' She knew the position of things and she guessed the remainder. But what she did not know, and could not divine, was the man who fenced her. He speculated further on the witty and the dull. These latter are the redoubtable body. They will have facts to convince them: they had, he confessed it to himself, precipitated him into the novel sphere of his dark hints to Mrs. Mountstuart; from which the utter darkness might allow him to escape, yet it embraced him singularly, and even pleasantly, with the sense of a fact established.
It embraced him even very pleasantly. There was an end to his tortures. He sailed on a tranquil sea, the husband of a stedfast woman — no rogue. The exceeding beauty of stedfastness in women clothed L?titia in graces Clara could not match. A tried stedfast woman is the one jewel of the sex. She points to her husband like the sunflower; her love illuminates him; she lives in him, for him; she testifies to his worth; she drags the world to his feet; she leads the chorus of his praises; she justifies him in his own esteem. Surely there is not on earth such beauty!
If we have to pass through anguish to discover it and cherish the peace it gives to clasp it, calling it ours, is a full reward. Deep in his reverie, he said his adieus to Mrs. Mountstuart, and strolled up the avenue behind the carriage-wheels, unwilling to meet L?titia till he had exhausted the fresh savour of the cud of fancy.
Supposing it done! —
It would be generous on his part. It would redound to his credit.
His home would be a fortress, impregnable to tongues. He would have divine security in his home.
One who read and knew and worshipped him would be sitting there star-like: sitting there, awaiting him, his fixed star.
It would be marriage with a mirror, with an echo; marriage with a shining mirror, a choric echo.
It would be marriage with an intellect, with a fine understanding; to make his home a fountain of repeatable wit: to make his dear old Patterne Hall the luminary of the county.
He revolved it as a chant: with anon and anon involuntarily a discordant animadversion on Lady Busshe. Its attendant imps heard the angry inward cry.
Forthwith he set about painting L?titia in delectable human colours, like a miniature of the past century, reserving her ideal figure for his private satisfaction. The world was to bow to her visible beauty, and he gave her enamel and glow, a taller stature, a swimming air, a transcendency that exorcized the image of the old witch who had driven him to this.
The result in him was, that L?titia became humanly and avowedly beautiful. Her dark eyelashes on the pallor of her cheeks lent their aid to the transformation, which was a necessity to him, so it was performed. He received the waxen impression.
His retinue of imps had a revel. We hear wonders of men, and we see a lifting up of hands in the world. The
