wonders would be explained, and never a hand need to interject, if the mystifying man were but accompanied by that monkey-eyed confraternity. They spy the heart and its twists.
The heart is the magical gentleman. None of them would follow where there was no heart. The twists of the heart are the comedy.
'The secret of the heart is its pressing love of self', says the Book.
By that secret the mystery of the organ is legible: and a comparison of the heart to the mountain rillet is taken up to show us the unbaffled force of the little channel in seeking to swell its volume, strenuously, sinuously, ever in pursuit of self; the busiest as it is the most single-aiming of forces on our earth. And we are directed to the sinuosities for posts of observation chiefly instructive.
Few maintain a stand there. People see, and they rush away to interchange liftings of hands at the sight, instead of patiently studying the phenomenon of energy.
Consequently a man in love with one woman, and in all but absolute consciousness, behind the thinnest of veils, preparing his mind to love another, will be barely credible. The particular hunger of the forceful but adaptable heart is the key of him. Behold the mountain rillet, become a brook, become a torrent, how it inarms a handsome boulder: yet if the stone will not go with it, on it hurries, pursuing self in extension, down to where perchance a dam has been raised of a sufficient depth to enfold and keep it from inordinate restlessness. L?titia represented this peaceful restraining space in prospect.
But she was a faded young woman. He was aware of it; and systematically looking at himself with her upturned orbs, he accepted her benevolently as a God grateful for worship, and used the divinity she imparted to paint and renovate her. His heart required her so. The heart works the springs of imagination; imagination received its commission from the heart, and was a cunning artist.
Cunning to such a degree of seductive genius that the masterpiece it offered to his contemplation enabled him simultaneously to gaze on Clara and think of L?titia. Clara came through the park-gates with Vernon, a brilliant girl indeed, and a shallow one: a healthy creature, and an animal; attractive, but capricious, impatient, treacherous, foul; a woman to drag men through the mud. She approached.
Chapter XXXVIII
In Which We Take A Step To The Centre Of Egoism
They met; Vernon soon left them.
'You have not seen Crossjay?' Willoughby inquired.
'No,' said Clara. 'Once more I beg you to pardon him. He spoke falsely, owing to his poor boy's idea of chivalry.'
'The chivalry to the sex which commences in lies ends by creating the woman's hero, whom we see about the world and in certain courts of law.'
His ability to silence her was great: she could not reply to speech like that.
'You have,' said he, 'made a confidante of Mrs. Mountstuart.'
'Yes.'
'This is your purse.'
'I thank you.'
'Professor Crooklyn has managed to make your father acquainted with your project. That, I suppose, is the railway ticket in the fold of the purse. He was assured at the station that you had taken a ticket to London, and would not want the fly.'
'It is true. I was foolish.'
'You have had a pleasant walk with Vernon — turning me in and out?'
'We did not speak of you. You allude to what he would never consent to.'
'He's an honest fellow, in his old-fashioned way. He's a secret old fellow. Does he ever talk about his wife to you?'
Clara dropped her purse, and stooped and picked it up.
'I know nothing of Mr. Whitford's affairs,' she said, and she opened the purse and tore to pieces the railway ticket.
'The story's a proof that romantic spirits do not furnish the most romantic history. You have the word 'chivalry' frequently on your lips. He chivalrously married the daughter of the lodging-house where he resided before I took him. We obtained information of the auspicious union in a newspaper report of Mrs. Whitford's drunkenness and rioting at a London railway terminus — probably the one whither your ticket would have taken you yesterday, for I heard the lady was on her way to us for supplies, the connubial larder being empty.'
'I am sorry; I am ignorant; I have heard nothing; I know nothing,' said Clara.
'You are disgusted. But half the students and authors you hear of marry in that way. And very few have Vernon's luck.'
'She had good qualities?' asked Clara.
Her under lip hung.
It looked like disgust; he begged her not indulge the feeling.
'Literary men, it is notorious, even with the entry to society, have no taste in women. The housewife is their object. Ladies frighten and would, no doubt, be an annoyance and hindrance to them at home.'
'You said he was fortunate.'
'You have a kindness for him.'
'I respect him.'
'He is a friendly old fellow in his awkward fashion; honourable, and so forth. But a disreputable alliance of that sort sticks to a man. The world will talk. Yes, he was fortunate so far; he fell into the mire and got out of it. Were he to marry again…'
'She…'
'Died. Do not be startled; it was a natural death. She responded to the sole wishes left to his family. He buried the woman, and I received him. I took him on my tour. A second marriage might cover the first: there would be a buzz about the old business: the woman's relatives write to him still, try to bleed him, I dare say. However, now you understand his gloominess. I don't imagine he regrets his loss. He probably sentimentalizes, like most men when they are well rid of a burden. You must not think the worse of him.'
'I do not,' said Clara.
'I defend him whenever the matter's discussed.'
'I hope you do.'
'Without approving his folly. I can't wash him clean.'
They were at the Hall-doors. She waited for any personal communications he might be pleased to make, and as there was none, she ran upstairs to her room.
He had tossed her to Vernon in his mind, not only painlessly, but with a keen acid of satisfaction. The heart is the wizard.
Next he bent his deliberate steps to L?titia.
The mind was guilty of some hesitation; the feet went forward.
She was working at an embroidery by an open window. Colonel De Craye leaned outside, and Willoughby pardoned her air of demure amusement, on hearing him say: 'No, I have had one of the pleasantest half-hours of my life, and would rather idle here, if idle you will have it, than employ my faculties on horse-back,'
'Time is not lost in conversing with Miss Dale,' said Willoughby.
The light was tender to her complexion where she sat in partial shadow.
De Craye asked whether Crossjay had been caught.
L?titia murmured a kind word for the boy. Willoughby examined her embroidery.
The ladies Eleanor and Isabel appeared.
They invited her to take carriage exercise with them.
L?titia did not immediately answer, and Willoughby remarked: 'Miss Dale has been reproving Horace for idleness and I recommend you to enlist him to do duty, while I relieve him here.'
