CHAPTER XXXII

LAETITIA DALE DISCOVERS A SPIRITUAL CHANGE AND DR MIDDLETON A PHYSICAL

Clara tripped over the lawn in the early morning to Laetitia to greet

her. She broke away from a colloquy with Colonel De Craye under Sir

Willoughby's windows. The colonel had been one of the bathers, and he

stood like a circus-driver flicking a wet towel at Crossjay capering.

"My dear, I am very unhappy!" said Clara.

"My dear, I bring you news," Laetitia replied.

"Tell me. But the poor boy is to be expelled! He burst into Crossjay's

bedroom last night and dragged the sleeping boy out of bed to question

him, and he had the truth. That is one comfort: only Crossjay is to be

driven from the Hall, because he was untruthful previously--for me; to

serve me; really, I feel it was at my command. Crossjay will be out of

the way to-day, and has promised to come back at night to try to be

forgiven. You must help me, Laetitia."

"You are free, Clara! If you desire it, you have but to ask for your

freedom."

"You mean . . ."

"He will release you."

"You are sure?"

"We had a long conversation last night."

"I owe it to you?"

"Nothing is owing to me. He volunteered it."

Clara made as if to lift her eyes in apostrophe. "Professor Crooklyn!

Professor Crooklyn! I see. I did not guess that."

"Give credit for some generosity, Clara; you are unjust!"

"By and by: I will be more than just by and by. I will practise on the

trumpet: I will lecture on the greatness of the souls of men when we

know them thoroughly. At present we do but half know them, and we are

unjust. You are not deceived, Laetitia? There is to be no speaking to

papa? no delusions? You have agitated me. I feel myself a very small

person indeed. I feel I can understand those who admire him. He gives

me back my word simply? clearly? without--Oh, that long wrangle in

scenes and letters? And it will be arranged for papa and me to go not

later than to-morrow? Never shall I be able to explain to any one how I

fell into this! I am frightened at myself when I think of it. I take

the whole blame: I have been scandalous. And, dear Laetitia! you came

out so early in order to tell me?"

"I wished you to hear it."

"Take my heart."

"Present me with a part--but for good."

"Fie! But you have a right to say it."

"I mean no unkindness; but is not the heart you allude to an alarmingly

searching one?"

"Selfish it is, for I have been forgetting Crossjay. If we are going to

be generous, is not Crossjay to be forgiven? If it were only that the

boy's father is away fighting for his country, endangering his life day

by day, and for a stipend not enough to support his family, we are

bound to think of the boy! Poor dear silly lad! with his 'I say, Miss

Middleton, why wouldn't (some one) see my father when he came here to

call on him, and had to walk back ten miles in the rain?'--I could

almost fancy that did me mischief. . . But we have a splendid morning

after yesterday's rain. And we will be generous. Own, Laetitia, that it

is possible to gild the most glorious day of creation."

"Doubtless the spirit may do it and make its hues permanent," said

Laetitia.

"You to me, I to you, he to us. Well, then, if he does, it shall be one

of my heavenly days. Which is for the probation of experience. We are

not yet at sunset."

"Have you seen Mr. Whitford this morning?"

"He passed me."

"Do not imagine him ever ill-tempered."

"I had a governess, a learned lady, who taught me in person the

picturesqueness of grumpiness. Her temper was ever perfect, because she

was never in the wrong, but I being so, she was grumpy. She carried my

iniquity under her brows, and looked out on me through it. I was a

trying child."

Laetitia said, laughing: "I can believe it!"

"Yet I liked her and she liked me: we were a kind of foreground and

background: she threw me into relief and I was an apology for her

existence."

"You picture her to me."

"She says of me now that I am the only creature she has loved. Who

knows that I may not come to say the same of her?"

"You would plague her and puzzle her still."

"Have I plagued and puzzled Mr. Whitford?"

"He reminds you of her?"

"You said you had her picture."

"Ah! do not laugh at him. He is a true friend."

"The man who can be a friend is the man who will presume to be a

censor."

"A mild one."

"As to the sentence he pronounces, I am unable to speak, but his

forehead is Rhadamanthine condemnation."

"Dr Middleton!"

Clara looked round. "Who? I? Did you hear an echo of papa? He would

never have put Rhadamanthus over European souls, because it appears

that Rhadamanthus judged only the Asiatic; so you are wrong, Miss Dale.

My father is infatuated with Mr. Whitford. What can it be? We women

cannot sound the depths of scholars, probably because their pearls have

no value in our market; except when they deign to chasten an

impertinent; and Mr. Whitford stands aloof from any notice of small

fry. He is deep, studious, excellent; and does it not strike you that

if he descended among us he would be like a Triton ashore?"

Laetitia's habit of wholly subservient sweetness, which was her ideal

of the feminine, not yet conciliated with her acuter character, owing

to the absence of full pleasure from her life--the unhealed wound she

had sustained and the cramp of a bondage of such old date as to seem

iron--induced her to say, as if consenting: "You think he is not quite

at home in society?" But she wished to defend him strenuously, and as a

consequence she had to quit the self-imposed ideal of her daily acting,

whereby--the case being unwonted, very novel to her--the lady's

intelligence became confused through the process that quickened it; so

sovereign a method of hoodwinking our bright selves is the acting of a

part, however naturally it may come to us! and to this will each honest

autobiographical member of the animated world bear witness.

She added: "You have not found him sympathetic? He is. You fancy him

brooding, gloomy? He is the reverse, he is cheerful, he is indifferent

to personal misfortune. Dr. Corney says there is no laugh like Vernon

Whitford's, and no humour like his. Latterly he certainly . . . But it

has not been your cruel word grumpiness. The truth is, he is anxious

about Crossjay: and about other things; and he wants to leave. He is at

a disadvantage beside very lively and careless gentlemen at present,

but your 'Triton ashore' is unfair, it is ugly. He is, I can say, the

truest man I know."

"I did not question his goodness, Laetitia."

"You threw an accent on it."

"Did I? I must be like Crossjay, who declares he likes fun best."

"Crossjay ought to know him, if anybody should. Mr. Whitford has

defended you against me, Clara, even since I took to calling you Clara.

Perhaps when you supposed him so like your ancient governess, he was

meditating how he could aid you. Last night he gave me reasons for

thinking you would do wisely to confide in Mrs. Mountstuart. It is no

longer necessary. I merely mention it. He is a devoted friend."

"He is an untiring pedestrian."

"Oh!"

Colonel De Craye, after hovering near the ladies in the hope of seeing

them divide, now adopted the system of making three that two may come

of it.

As he joined them with his glittering chatter, Laetitia looked at Clara

to consult her, and saw the face rosy as a bride's.

The suspicion she had nursed sprung out of her arms a muscular fact on

the spot.

"Where is my dear boy?" Clara said.

"Out for a holiday," the colonel answered in her tone.

"Advise Mr. Whitford not to waste his time in searching for Crossjay,

Laetitia. Crossjay is better out of the way to-day. At least, I thought

so just now. Has he pocket-money, Colonel De Craye?"

"My lord can command his inn."

"How thoughtful you are!"

Laetitia's bosom swelled upon a mute exclamation, equivalent to:

"Woman! woman! snared ever by the sparkling and frivolous!

undiscerning of the faithful, the modest and beneficent!"

In the secret musings of moralists this dramatic rhetoric survives.

The comparison was all of her own making, and she was indignant at the

contrast, though to what end she was indignant she could not have said,

for she had no idea of Vernon as a rival of De Craye in the favour of a

plighted lady. But she was jealous on behalf of her sex: her sex's

reputation seemed at stake, and the purity of it was menaced by Clara's

idle preference of the shallower man. When the young lady spoke so

carelessly of being like Crossjay, she did not perhaps know that a

likeness, based on a similarity of their enthusiasms, loves, and

appetites, had been established between women and boys. Laetitia had

formerly chafed at it, rejecting it utterly, save when now and then in

a season of bitterness she handed here and there a volatile young lady

(none but the young) to be stamped with the degrading brand. Vernon

might be as philosophical as he pleased. To her the gaiety of these

two, Colonel De Craye and Clara Middleton, was distressingly musical:

they harmonized painfully. The representative of her sex was hurt by

it.

She had to stay beside them: Clara held her arm. The colonel's voice

dropped at times to something very like a whisper. He was answered

audibly and smoothly. The quickwitted gentleman accepted the

correction: but in immediately paying assiduous attentions to Miss

Dale, in the approved intriguer's fashion, he showed himself in need of

another amounting to a reproof. Clara said: "We have been consulting,

Laetitia, what is to be done to cure Professor Crooklyn of his cold."

De Craye perceived that he had taken a wrong step, and he was mightily

surprised that a lesson in intrigue should be read to him of all men.

Miss Middleton's audacity was not so astonishing: he recognized grand

capabilities in the young lady. Fearing lest she should proceed further

and cut away from him his vantage-ground of secrecy with her, he turned

the subject and was adroitly submissive.

Clara's manner of meeting Sir Willoughby expressed a timid disposition

to friendliness upon a veiled inquiry, understood by none save

Laetitia, whose brain was racked to convey assurances to herself of her

not having misinterpreted him. Could there be any doubt? She resolved

that there could not be; and it was upon this basis of reason that she

fancied she had led him to it. Legitimate or not, the fancy sprang from

a solid foundation. Yesterday morning she could not have conceived it.

Now she was endowed to feel that she had power to influence him,

because now, since the midnight, she felt some emancipation from the

spell of his physical mastery. He did not appear to her as a different

man, but she had grown sensible of being a stronger woman. He was no

more the cloud over her, nor the magnet; the cloud once

heaven-suffused, the magnet fatally compelling her to sway round to

him. She admired him still: his handsome air, his fine proportions, the

courtesy of his bending to Clara and touching of her hand, excused a

fanatical excess of admiration on the part of a woman in her youth, who

is never the anatomist of the hero's lordly graces. But now she admired

him piecemeal. When it came to the putting of him together, she did it

coldly. To compassionate him was her utmost warmth. Without conceiving

in him anything of the strange old monster of earth which had struck

the awakened girl's mind of Miss Middleton, Laetitia classed him with

other men; he was "one of them". And she did not bring her

disenchantment as a charge against him. She accused herself,

acknowledged the secret of the change to be, and her youthfulness was

dead:--otherwise could she have given him compassion, and not herself

have been carried on the flood of it? The compassion was fervent, and

pure too. She supposed he would supplicate; she saw that Clara

Middleton was pleasant with him only for what she expected of his

generosity. She grieved. Sir Willoughby was fortified by her sorrowful

gaze as he and Clara passed out together to the laboratory arm in arm.

Laetitia had to tell Vernon of the uselessness of his beating the house

and grounds for Crossjay. Dr. Middleton held him fast in discussion

upon an overnight's classical wrangle with Professor Crooklyn, which

was to be renewed that day. The Professor had appointed to call

expressly to renew it. "A fine scholar," said the Rev. Doctor, "but

crotchety, like all men who cannot stand their Port."

"I hear that he had a cold," Vernon remarked. "I hope the wine was

good, sir."

As when the foreman of a sentimental jury is commissioned to inform an

awful Bench exact in perspicuous English, of a verdict that must of

necessity be pronounced in favour of the hanging of the culprit, yet

would fain attenuate the crime of a palpable villain by a

recommendation to mercy, such foreman, standing in the attentive eye of

a master of grammatical construction, and feeling the weight of at

least three sentences on his brain, together with a prospect of

Judicial interrogation for the discovery of his precise meaning, is

oppressed, himself is put on trial, in turn, and he hesitates, he

recapitulates, the fear of involution leads him to be involved; as far

as a man so posted may, he on his own behalf appeals for mercy;

entreats that his indistinct statement of preposterous reasons may be

taken for understood, and would gladly, were permission to do it

credible, throw in an imploring word that he may sink back among the

crowd without for the one imperishable moment publicly swinging in his

lordship's estimation:--much so, moved by chivalry toward a lady,

courtesy to the recollection of a hostess, and particularly by the

knowledge that his hearer would expect with a certain frigid rigour

charity of him, Dr. Middleton paused, spoke and paused: he stammered.

Ladies, he said, were famous poisoners in the Middle Ages. His opinion

was, that we had a class of manufacturing wine merchants on the watch

for widows in this country. But he was bound to state the fact of his

waking at his usual hour to the minute unassailed by headache. On the

other hand, this was a condition of blessedness unanticipated when he

went to bed. Mr. Whitford, however, was not to think that he

entertained rancour toward the wine. It was no doubt dispensed with the

honourable intention of cheering. In point of flavour execrable,

judging by results it was innocuous.

"The test of it shall be the effect of it upon Professor Crooklyn, and

his appearance in the forenoon according to promise," Dr. Middleton

came to an end with his perturbed balancings. "If I hear more of the

eight or twelve winds discharged at once upon a railway platform, and

the young lady who dries herself of a drenching by drinking brandy and

water with a gentleman at a railway inn, I shall solicit your sanction

to my condemnation of the wine as anti-Bacchic and a counterfeit

presentment. Do not misjudge me. Our hostess is not responsible. But

widows should marry."

"You must contrive to stop the Professor, sir, if he should attack his

hostess in that manner," said Vernon.

"Widows should marry!" Dr. Middleton repeated.

He murmured of objecting to be at the discretion of a butler; unless,

he was careful to add, the aforesaid functionary could boast of an

University education; and even then, said he, it requires a line of

ancestry to train a man's taste.

The Rev. Doctor smothered a yawn. The repression of it caused a second

one, a real monster, to come, big as our old friend of the sea

advancing on the chained-up Beauty.

Disconcerted by this damning evidence of indigestion, his countenance

showed that he considered himself to have been too lenient to the wine

of an unhusbanded hostess. He frowned terribly.

In the interval Laetitia told Vernon of Crossjay's flight for the day,

hastily bidding the master to excuse him: she had no time to hint the

grounds of excuse. Vernon mentally made a guess.

Dr Middleton took his arm and discharged a volley at the crotchetty

scholarship of Professor Crooklyn, whom to confute by book, he directed

his march to the library. Having persuaded himself that he was

dyspeptic, he had grown irascible. He denounced all dining out,

eulogized Patterne Hall as if it were his home, and remembered he had

dreamed in the night--a most humiliating sign of physical disturbance.

"But let me find a house in proximity to Patterne, as I am induced to

suppose I shall," he said, "and here only am I to be met when I stir

abroad."

Laetitia went to her room. She was complacently anxious enough to

prefer solitude and be willing to read. She was more seriously anxious

about Crossjay than about any of the others. For Clara would be certain

to speak very definitely, and how then could a gentleman oppose her? He

would supplicate, and could she be brought to yield? It was not to be

expected of a young lady who had turned from Sir Willoughby. His

inferiors would have had a better chance. Whatever his faults, he had

that element of greatness which excludes the intercession of pity.

Supplication would be with him a form of condescension. It would be

seen to be such. His was a monumental pride that could not stoop. She

had preserved this image of the gentleman for a relic in the shipwreck

of her idolatry. So she mused between the lines of her book, and

finishing her reading and marking the page, she glanced down on the

lawn. Dr. Middleton was there, and alone; his hands behind his back,

his head bent. His meditative pace and unwonted perusal of the turf

proclaimed that a non-sentimental jury within had delivered an

unmitigated verdict upon the widow's wine.

Laetitia hurried to find Vernon.

He was in the hall. As she drew near him, the laboratory door opened

and shut.

"It is being decided," said Laetitia.

Vernon was paler than the hue of perfect calmness.

"I want to know whether I ought to take to my heels like Crossjay, and

shun the Professor," he said.

They spoke in under-tones, furtively watching the door.

"I wish what she wishes, I am sure; but it will go badly with the boy,"

said Laetitia.

"Oh, well, then I'll take him," said Vernon, "I would rather. I think I

can manage it."

Again the laboratory door opened. This time it shut behind Miss

Middleton. She was highly flushed. Seeing them, she shook the storm

from her brows, with a dead smile; the best piece of serenity she could

put on for public wear.

She took a breath before she moved.

Vernon strode out of the house.

Clara swept up to Laetitia.

"You were deceived!"

The hard sob of anger barred her voice.

Laetitia begged her to come to her room with her.

"I want air: I must be by myself," said Clara, catching at her

garden-hat.

She walked swiftly to the portico steps and turned to the right, to

avoid the laboratory windows.