CHAPTER IV

LAETITIA DALE

That was another surprise to the county.

Let us not inquire into the feelings of patiently starving women; they

must obtain some sustenance of their own, since, as you perceive, they

live; evidently they are not in need of a great amount of nourishment;

and we may set them down for creatures with a rush-light of animal fire

to warm them. They cannot have much vitality who are so little

exclamatory. A corresponding sentiment of patient compassion, akin to

scorn, is provoked by persons having the opportunity for pathos, and

declining to use it. The public bosom was open to Laetitia for several

weeks, and had she run to it to bewail herself she would have been

cherished in thankfulness for a country drama. There would have been a

party against her, cold people, critical of her pretensions to rise

from an unrecognized sphere to be mistress of Patterne Hall, but there

would also have been a party against Sir Willoughby, composed of the

two or three revolutionists, tired of the yoke, which are to be found

in England when there is a stir; a larger number of born sympathetics,

ever ready to yield the tear for the tear; and here and there a

Samaritan soul prompt to succour poor humanity in distress. The

opportunity passed undramatized. Laetitia presented herself at church

with a face mildly devout, according to her custom, and she accepted

invitations to the Hall, she assisted at the reading of Willoughby's

letters to his family, and fed on dry husks of him wherein her name was

not mentioned; never one note of the summoning call for pathos did this

young lady blow.

So, very soon the public bosom closed. She had, under the fresh

interpretation of affairs, too small a spirit to be Lady Willoughby of

Patterne; she could not have entertained becomingly; he must have seen

that the girl was not the match for him in station, and off he went to

conquer the remainder of a troublesome first attachment, no longer

extremely disturbing, to judge from the tenour of his letters; really

incomparable letters! Lady Busshe and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson

enjoyed a perusal of them. Sir Willoughby appeared as a splendid young

representative island lord in these letters to his family, despatched

from the principal cities of the United States of America. He would

give them a sketch of "our democratic cousins", he said. Such cousins!

They might all have been in the Marines. He carried his English

standard over that continent, and by simply jotting down facts, he left

an idea of the results of the measurement to his family and friends at

home. He was an adept in the irony of incongruously grouping. The

nature of the Equality under the stars and stripes was presented in

this manner. Equality! Reflections came occasionally: "These cousins of

ours are highly amusing. I am among the descendants of the Roundheads.

Now and then an allusion to old domestic differences, in perfect good

temper. We go on in our way; they theirs, in the apparent belief that

Republicanism operates remarkable changes in human nature. Vernon tries

hard to think it does. The upper ten of our cousins are the Infernal of

Paris. The rest of them is Radical England, as far as I am acquainted

with that section of my country."--Where we compared, they were absurd;

where we contrasted, they were monstrous. The contrast of Vernon's

letters with Willoughby's was just as extreme. You could hardly have

taken them for relatives travelling together, or Vernon Whitford for a

born and bred Englishman. The same scenes furnished by these two pens

might have been sketched in different hemispheres. Vernon had no irony.

He had nothing of Willoughby's epistolary creative power, which,

causing his family and friends to exclaim: "How like him that is!"

conjured them across the broad Atlantic to behold and clap hands at his

lordliness.

They saw him distinctly, as with the naked eye; a word, a turn of the

pen, or a word unsaid, offered the picture of him in America, Japan,

China, Australia, nay, the continent of Europe, holding an English

review of his Maker's grotesques. Vernon seemed a sheepish fellow,

without stature abroad, glad of a compliment, grateful for a dinner,

endeavouring sadly to digest all he saw and heard. But one was a

Patterne; the other a Whitford. One had genius; the other pottered

after him with the title of student. One was the English gentleman

wherever he went; the other was a new kind of thing, nondescript,

produced in England of late, and not likely to come to much good

himself, or do much good to the country.

Vernon's dancing in America was capitally described by Willoughby.

"Adieu to our cousins!" the latter wrote on his voyage to Japan. "I

may possibly have had some vogue in their ball-rooms, and in showing

them an English seat on horseback: I must resign myself if I have not

been popular among them. I could not sing their national song--if a

congery of states be a nation--and I must confess I listened with

frigid politeness to their singing of it. A great people, no doubt.

Adieu to them. I have had to tear old Vernon away. He had serious

thoughts of settling, means to correspond with some of them." On the

whole, forgetting two or more "traits of insolence" on the part of his

hosts, which he cited, Willoughby escaped pretty comfortably. The

President had been, consciously or not, uncivil, but one knew his

origin! Upon these interjections, placable flicks of the lionly tail

addressed to Britannia the Ruler, who expected him in some mildish way

to lash terga cauda in retiring, Sir Willoughby Patterne passed from a

land of alien manners; and ever after he spoke of America respectfully

and pensively, with a tail tucked in, as it were. His travels were

profitable to himself. The fact is, that there are cousins who come to

greatness and must be pacified, or they will prove annoying. Heaven

forefend a collision between cousins!

Willoughby returned to his England after an absence of three years. On

a fair April morning, the last of the month, he drove along his park

palings, and, by the luck of things, Laetitia was the first of his

friends whom he met. She was crossing from field to field with a band

of school-children, gathering wild flowers for the morrow May-day. He

sprang to the ground and seized her hand. "Laetitia Dale!" he said. He

panted. "Your name is sweet English music! And you are well?" The

anxious question permitted him to read deeply in her eyes. He found the

man he sought there, squeezed him passionately, and let her go, saying:

"I could not have prayed for a lovelier home-scene to welcome me than

you and these children flower-gathering. I don't believe in chance. It

was decreed that we should meet. Do not you think so?"

Laetitia breathed faintly of her gladness.

He begged her to distribute a gold coin among the little ones; asked

for the names of some of them, and repeated: "Mary, Susan,

Charlotte--only the Christian names, pray! Well, my dears, you will

bring your garlands to the Hall to-morrow morning; and mind, early! no

slugabeds tomorrow; I suppose I am browned, Laetitia?" He smiled in

apology for the foreign sun, and murmured with rapture: "The green of

this English country is unsurpassed. It is wonderful. Leave England

and be baked, if you would appreciate it. You can't, unless you taste

exile as I have done--for how many years? How many?"

"Three," said Laetitia.

"Thirty!" said he. "It seems to me that length. At least, I am

immensely older. But looking at you, I could think it less than three.

You have not changed. You are absolutely unchanged. I am bound to hope

so. I shall see you soon. I have much to talk of, much to tell you. I

shall hasten to call on your father. I have specially to speak with

him. I--what happiness this is, Laetitia! But I must not forget I have

a mother. Adieu; for some hours--not for many!"

He pressed her hand again. He was gone.

She dismissed the children to their homes. Plucking primroses was hard

labour now--a dusty business. She could have wished that her planet had

not descended to earth, his presence agitated her so; but his

enthusiastic patriotism was like a shower that, in the Spring season of

the year, sweeps against the hard-binding East and melts the air and

brings out new colours, makes life flow; and her thoughts recurred in

wonderment to the behaviour of Constantia Durham. That was Laetitia's

manner of taking up her weakness once more. She could almost have

reviled the woman who had given this beneficent magician, this pathetic

exile, of the aristocratic sunburned visage and deeply scrutinizing

eyes, cause for grief. How deeply his eyes could read! The starveling

of patience awoke to the idea of a feast. The sense of hunger came with

it, and hope came, and patience fled. She would have rejected hope to

keep patience nigh her; but surely it can not always be Winter! said

her reasoning blood, and we must excuse her as best we can if she was

assured, by her restored warmth that Willoughby came in the order of

the revolving seasons, marking a long Winter past. He had specially to

speak with her father, he had said. What could that mean? What,

but--She dared not phrase it or view it.

At their next meeting she was "Miss Dale".

A week later he was closeted with her father.

Mr. Dale, in the evening of that pregnant day, eulogized Sir Willoughby

as a landlord. A new lease of the cottage was to be granted him on the

old terms, he said. Except that Sir Willoughby had congratulated him in

the possession of an excellent daughter, their interview was one of

landlord and tenant, it appeared; and Laetitia said, "So we shall not

have to leave the cottage?" in a tone of satisfaction, while she

quietly gave a wrench to the neck of the young hope in her breast. At

night her diary received the line: "This day I was a fool. To-morrow?"

To-morrow and many days afterwards there were dashes instead of words.

Patience travelled back to her sullenly. As we must have some kind of

food, and she had nothing else, she took to that and found it dryer

than of yore. It is a composing but a lean dietary. The dead are

patient, and we get a certain likeness to them in feeding on it

unintermittingly overlong. Her hollowed cheeks with the fallen leaf in

them pleaded against herself to justify her idol for not looking down

on one like her. She saw him when he was at the Hall. He did not

notice any change. He was exceedingly gentle and courteous. More than

once she discovered his eyes dwelling on her, and then he looked

hurriedly at his mother, and Laetitia had to shut her mind from

thinking, lest thinking should be a sin and hope a guilty spectre. But

had his mother objected to her? She could not avoid asking herself. His

tour of the globe had been undertaken at his mother's desire; she was

an ambitious lady, in failing health; and she wished to have him living

with her at Patterne, yet seemed to agree that he did wisely to reside

in London.

One day Sir Willoughby, in the quiet manner which was his humour,

informed her that he had become a country gentleman; he had abandoned

London, he loathed it as the burial-place of the individual man. He

intended to sit down on his estates and have his cousin Vernon Whitford

to assist him in managing them, he said; and very amusing was his

description of his cousin's shifts to live by literature, and add

enough to a beggarly income to get his usual two months of the year in

the Alps. Previous to his great tour, Willoughby had spoken of Vernon's

judgement with derision; nor was it entirely unknown that Vernon had

offended his family pride by some extravagant act. But after their

return he acknowledged Vernon's talents, and seemed unable to do

without him.

The new arrangement gave Laetitia a companion for her walks.

Pedestrianism was a sour business to Willoughby, whose exclamation of

the word indicated a willingness for any amount of exercise on

horseback; but she had no horse, and so, while he hunted, Laetitia and

Vernon walked, and the neighbourhood speculated on the circumstances,

until the ladies Eleanor and Isabel Patterne engaged her more

frequently for carriage exercise, and Sir Willoughby was observed

riding beside them.

A real and sunny pleasure befell Laetitia in the establishment of young

Crossjay Patterne under her roof; the son of the lieutenant, now

captain, of Marines; a boy of twelve with the sprights of twelve boys

in him, for whose board and lodgement Vernon provided by arrangement

with her father. Vernon was one of your men that have no occupation for

their money, no bills to pay for repair of their property, and are

insane to spend. He had heard of Captain Patterne's large family, and

proposed to have his eldest boy at the Hall, to teach him; but

Willoughby declined to house the son of such a father, predicting that

the boy's hair would be red, his skin eruptive, and his practices

detestable. So Vernon, having obtained Mr. Dale's consent to

accommodate this youth, stalked off to Devonport, and brought back a

rosy-cheeked, round-bodied rogue of a boy, who fell upon meats and

puddings, and defeated them, with a captivating simplicity in his

confession that he had never had enough to eat in his life. He had gone

through a training for a plentiful table. At first, after a number of

helps, young Crossjay would sit and sigh heavily, in contemplation of

the unfinished dish. Subsequently, he told his host and hostess that he

had two sisters above his own age, and three brothers and two sisters

younger than he: "All hungry!" said die boy.

His pathos was most comical. It was a good month before he could see

pudding taken away from table without a sigh of regret that he could

not finish it as deputy for the Devonport household. The pranks of the

little fellow, and his revel in a country life, and muddy wildness in

it, amused Laetitia from morning to night. She, when she had caught

him, taught him in the morning; Vernon, favoured by the chase, in the

afternoon. Young Crossjay would have enlivened any household. He was

not only indolent, he was opposed to the acquisition of knowledge

through the medium of books, and would say: "But I don't want to!" in a

tone to make a logician thoughtful. Nature was very strong in him. He

had, on each return of the hour for instruction, to be plucked out of

the earth, rank of the soil, like a root, for the exercise of his big

round headpiece on those tyrannous puzzles. But the habits of birds,

and the place for their eggs, and the management of rabbits, and the

tickling of fish, and poaching joys with combative boys of the

district, and how to wheedle a cook for a luncheon for a whole day in

the rain, he soon knew of his great nature. His passion for our naval

service was a means of screwing his attention to lessons after he had

begun to understand that the desert had to be traversed to attain

midshipman's rank. He boasted ardently of his fighting father, and,

chancing to be near the Hall as he was talking to Vernon and Laetitia

of his father, he propounded a question close to his heart, and he put

it in these words, following: "My father's the one to lead an army!"

when he paused. "I say, Mr. Whitford, Sir Willoughby's kind to me, and

gives me crown-pieces, why wouldn't he see my father, and my father

came here ten miles in the rain to see him, and had to walk ten miles

back, and sleep at an inn?"

The only answer to be given was, that Sir Willoughby could not have

been at home. "Oh! my father saw him, and Sir Willoughby said he was

not at home," the boy replied, producing an odd ring in the ear by his

repetition of "not at home" in the same voice as the apology, plainly

innocent of malice. Vernon told Laetitia, however, that the boy never

asked an explanation of Sir Willoughby.

Unlike the horse of the adage, it was easier to compel young Crossjay

to drink of the waters of instruction than to get him to the brink. His

heart was not so antagonistic as his nature, and by degrees, owing to a

proper mixture of discipline and cajolery, he imbibed. He was whistling

at the cook's windows after a day of wicked truancy, on an April night,

and reported adventures over the supper supplied to him. Laetitia

entered the kitchen with a reproving forefinger. He jumped to kiss her,

and went on chattering of a place fifteen miles distant, where he had

seen Sir Willoughby riding with a young lady. The impossibility that

the boy should have got so far on foot made Laetitia doubtful of his

veracity, until she heard that a gentleman had taken him up on the road

in a gig, and had driven him to a farm to show him strings of birds'

eggs and stuffed birds of every English kind, kingfishers, yaffles,

black woodpeckers, goat-sucker owls, more mouth than head, with dusty,

dark-spotted wings, like moths; all very circumstantial. Still, in

spite of his tea at the farm, and ride back by rail at the gentleman's

expense, the tale seemed fictitious to Laetitia until Crossjay related

how that he had stood to salute on the road to the railway, and taken

off his cap to Sir Willoughby, and Sir Willoughby had passed him, not

noticing him, though the young lady did, and looked back and nodded.

The hue of truth was in that picture.

Strange eclipse, when the hue of truth comes shadowing over our bright

ideal planet. It will not seem the planet's fault, but truth's. Reality

is the offender; delusion our treasure that we are robbed of. Then

begins with us the term of wilful delusion, and its necessary

accompaniment of the disgust of reality; exhausting the heart much more

than patient endurance of starvation.

Hints were dropping about the neighbourhood; the hedgeways twittered,

the tree-tops cawed. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson was loud on the

subject: "Patterne is to have a mistress at last, you say? But there

never was a doubt of his marrying--he must marry; and, so long as he

does not marry a foreign woman, we have no cause to complain. He met

her at Cherriton. Both were struck at the same moment. Her father is, I

hear, some sort of learned man; money; no land. No house either, I

believe. People who spend half their time on the Continent. They are

now for a year at Upton Park. The very girl to settle down and

entertain when she does think of settling. Eighteen, perfect manners;

you need not ask if a beauty. Sir Willoughby will have his dues. We

must teach her to make amends to him--but don't listen to Lady Busshe!

He was too young at twenty-three or twenty-four. No young man is ever

jilted; he is allowed to escape. A young man married is a fire-eater

bound over to keep the peace; if he keeps it he worries it. At

thirty-one or thirty-two he is ripe for his command, because he knows

how to bend. And Sir Willoughby is a splendid creature, only wanting a

wife to complete him. For a man like that to go on running about would

never do. Soberly--no! It would soon be getting ridiculous. He has been

no worse than other men, probably better--infinitely more excusable;

but now we have him, and it was time we should. I shall see her and

study her, sharply, you may be sure; though I fancy I can rely on his

judgement."

In confirmation of the swelling buzz, the Rev. Dr. Middleton and his

daughter paid a flying visit to the Hall, where they were seen only by

the members of the Patterne family. Young Crossjay had a short

conversation with Miss Middleton, and ran to the cottage full of

her--she loved the navy and had a merry face. She had a smile of very

pleasant humour according to Vernon. The young lady was outlined to

Laetitia as tall, elegant, lively; and painted as carrying youth like a

flag. With her smile of "very pleasant humour", she could not but be

winning.

Vernon spoke more of her father, a scholar of high repute; happily, a

scholar of an independent fortune. His maturer recollection of Miss

Middleton grew poetic, or he described her in an image to suit a poetic

end: "She gives you an idea of the Mountain Echo. Doctor Middleton has

one of the grandest heads in England."

"What is her Christian name?" said Laetitia.

He thought her Christian name was Clara.

Laetitia went to bed and walked through the day conceiving the Mountain

Echo the swift, wild spirit, Clara by name, sent fleeting on a far half

circle by the voice it is roused to subserve; sweeter than beautiful,

high above drawing-room beauties as the colours of the sky; and if, at

the same time, elegant and of loveable smiling, could a man resist her?

To inspire the title of Mountain Echo in any mind, a young lady must be

singularly spiritualized. Her father doated on her, Vernon said. Who

would not? It seemed an additional cruelty that the grace of a poetical

attractiveness should be round her, for this was robbing Laetitia of

some of her own little fortune, mystical though that might be. But a

man like Sir Willoughby had claims on poetry, possessing as he did

every manly grace; and to think that Miss Middleton had won him by

virtue of something native to her likewise, though mystically, touched

Laetitia with a faint sense of relationship to the chosen girl. "What

is in me, he sees on her." It decked her pride to think so, as a wreath

on the gravestone. She encouraged her imagination to brood over Clara,

and invested her designedly with romantic charms, in spite of pain; the

ascetic zealot hugs his share of Heaven--most bitter, most blessed--in

his hair-shirt and scourge, and Laetitia's happiness was to glorify

Clara. Through that chosen rival, through her comprehension of the

spirit of Sir Willoughby's choice of one such as Clara, she was linked

to him yet.

Her mood of ecstatic fidelity was a dangerous exaltation; one that in a

desert will distort the brain, and in the world where the idol dwells

will put him, should he come nigh, to its own furnace-test, and get a

clear brain out of a burnt heart. She was frequently at the Hall,

helping to nurse Lady Patterne. Sir Willoughby had hitherto treated her

as a dear insignificant friend, to whom it was unnecessary that he

should mention the object of his rides to Upton Park.

He had, however, in the contemplation of what he was gaining, fallen

into anxiety about what he might be losing. She belonged to his

brilliant youth; her devotion was the bride of his youth; he was a man

who lived backward almost as intensely as in the present; and,

notwithstanding Laetitia's praiseworthy zeal in attending on his

mother, he suspected some unfaithfulness: hardly without cause: she had

not looked paler of late; her eyes had not reproached him; the secret

of the old days between them had been as little concealed as it was

exposed. She might have buried it, after the way of woman, whose bosoms

can be tombs, if we and the world allow them to be; absolutely

sepulchres, where you lie dead, ghastly. Even if not dead and horrible

to think of, you may be lying cold, somewhere in a corner. Even if

embalmed, you may not be much visited. And how is the world to know you

are embalmed? You are no better than a rotting wretch to the world

that does not have peeps of you in the woman's breast, and see lights

burning and an occasional exhibition of the services of worship. There

are women--tell us not of her of Ephesus!--that have embalmed you, and

have quitted the world to keep the tapers alight, and a stranger comes,

and they, who have your image before them, will suddenly blow out the

vestal flames and treat you as dust to fatten the garden of their

bosoms for a fresh flower of love. Sir Willoughby knew it; he had

experience of it in the form of the stranger; and he knew the

stranger's feelings toward his predecessor and the lady.

He waylaid Laetitia, to talk of himself and his plans: the project of a

run to Italy. Enviable? Yes, but in England you live the higher moral

life. Italy boasts of sensual beauty; the spiritual is yours. "I know

Italy well; I have often wished to act as a cicerone to you there. As

it is, I suppose I shall be with those who know the land as well as I

do, and will not be particularly enthusiastic:--if you are what you

were?" He was guilty of this perplexing twist from one person to

another in a sentence more than once. While he talked exclusively of

himself it seemed to her a condescension. In time he talked principally

of her, beginning with her admirable care of his mother; and he wished

to introduce "a Miss Middleton" to her; he wanted her opinion of Miss

Middleton; he relied on her intuition of character, had never known it

err.

"If I supposed it could err, Miss Dale, I should not be so certain of

myself. I am bound up in my good opinion of you, you see; and you must

continue the same, or where shall I be?" Thus he was led to dwell upon

friendship, and the charm of the friendship of men and women,

"Platonism", as it was called. "I have laughed at it in the world, but

not in the depth of my heart. The world's platonic attachments are

laughable enough. You have taught me that the ideal of friendship is

possible--when we find two who are capable of a disinterested esteem.

The rest of life is duty; duty to parents, duty to country. But

friendship is the holiday of those who can be friends. Wives are

plentiful, friends are rare. I know how rare!"

Laetitia swallowed her thoughts as they sprang up. Why was he torturing

her?--to give himself a holiday? She could bear to lose him--she was

used to it--and bear his indifference, but not that he should disfigure

himself; it made her poor. It was as if he required an oath of her when

he said: "Italy! But I shall never see a day in Italy to compare with

the day of my return to England, or know a pleasure so exquisite as

your welcome of me. Will you be true to that? May I look forward to

just another such meeting?"

He pressed her for an answer. She gave the best she could. He was

dissatisfied, and to her hearing it was hardly in the tone of manliness

that he entreated her to reassure him; he womanized his language. She

had to say: "I am afraid I can not undertake to make it an appointment,

Sir Willoughby," before he recovered his alertness, which he did, for

he was anything but obtuse, with the reply, "You would keep it if you

promised, and freeze at your post. So, as accidents happen, we must

leave it to fate. The will's the thing. You know my detestation of

changes. At least I have you for my tenant, and wherever I am, I see

your light at the end of my park."

"Neither my father nor I would willingly quit Ivy Cottage," said

Laetitia.

"So far, then," he murmured. "You will give me a long notice, and it

must be with my consent if you think of quitting?"

"I could almost engage to do that," she said.

"You love the place?"

"Yes; I am the most contented of cottagers."

"I believe, Miss Dale, it would be well for my happiness were I a

cottager."

"That is the dream of the palace. But to be one, and not to wish to be

other, is quiet sleep in comparison."

"You paint a cottage in colours that tempt one to run from big houses

and households."

"You would run back to them faster, Sir Willoughby."

"You may know me," said he, bowing and passing on contentedly. He

stopped. "But I am not ambitious."

"Perhaps you are too proud for ambition, Sir Willoughby."

"You hit me to the life!"

He passed on regretfully. Clara Middleton did not study and know him

like Laetitia Dale.

Laetitia was left to think it pleased him to play at cat and mouse.

She had not "hit him to the life", or she would have marvelled in

acknowledging how sincere he was.

At her next sitting by the bedside of Lady Patterne she received a

certain measure of insight that might have helped her to fathom him, if

only she could have kept her feelings down.

The old lady was affectionately confidential in talking of her one

subject, her son. "And here is another dashing girl, my dear; she has

money and health and beauty; and so has he; and it appears a fortunate

union; I hope and pray it may be; but we begin to read the world when

our eyes grow dim, because we read the plain lines, and I ask myself

whether money and health and beauty on both sides have not been the

mutual attraction. We tried it before; and that girl Durham was honest,

whatever we may call her. I should have desired an appreciative

thoughtful partner for him, a woman of mind, with another sort of

wealth and beauty. She was honest, she ran away in time; there was a

worse thing possible than that. And now we have the same chapter, and

the same kind of person, who may not be quite as honest; and I shall

not see the end of it. Promise me you will always be good to him; be

my son's friend; his Egeria, he names you. Be what you were to him when

that girl broke his heart, and no one, not even his mother, was allowed

to see that he suffered anything. Comfort him in his sensitiveness.

Willoughby has the most entire faith in you. Were that destroyed--I

shudder! You are, he says, and he has often said, his image of the

constant woman."

Laetitia's hearing took in no more. She repeated to herself for days:

"His image of the constant woman!" Now, when he was a second time

forsaking her, his praise of her constancy wore the painful

ludicrousness of the look of a whimper on the face.