CHAPTER XXXIX

IN THE HEART OF THE EGOIST

But already he had begun to regard the deed as his executioner. He

dreaded meeting Clara. The folly of having retained her stood before

him. How now to look on her and keep a sane resolution unwavering? She

tempted to the insane. Had she been away, he could have walked through

the performance composed by the sense of doing a duty to himself;

perhaps faintly hating the poor wretch he made happy at last, kind to

her in a manner, polite. Clara's presence in the house previous to the

deed, and, oh, heaven! after it, threatened his wits. Pride? He had

none; he cast it down for her to trample it; he caught it back ere it

was trodden on. Yes; he had pride: he had it as a dagger in his breast:

his pride was his misery. But he was too proud to submit to misery.

"What I do is right." He said the words, and rectitude smoothed his

path, till the question clamoured for answer: Would the world

countenance and endorse his pride in Laetitia? At one time, yes. And

now? Clara's beauty ascended, laid a beam on him. We are on board the

labouring vessel of humanity in a storm, when cries and countercries

ring out, disorderliness mixes the crew, and the fury of

self-preservation divides: this one is for the ship, that one for his

life. Clara was the former to him, Laetitia the latter. But what if

there might not be greater safety in holding tenaciously to Clara than

in casting her off for Laetitia? No, she had done things to set his

pride throbbing in the quick. She had gone bleeding about first to one,

then to another; she had betrayed him to Vernon, and to Mrs.

Mountstuart; a look in the eyes of Horace De Craye said, to him as

well: to whom not? He might hold to her for vengeance; but that

appetite was short-lived in him if it ministered nothing to his

purposes. "I discard all idea of vengeance," he said, and thrilled

burningly to a smart in his admiration of the man who could be so

magnanimous under mortal injury; for the more admirable he, the more

pitiable. He drank a drop or two of self-pity like a poison, repelling

the assaults of public pity. Clara must be given up. It must be seen by

the world that, as he felt, the thing he did was right. Laocoon of his

own serpents, he struggled to a certain magnificence of attitude in the

muscular net of constrictions he flung around himself. Clara must be

given up. Oh, bright Abominable! She must be given up: but not to one

whose touch of her would be darts in the blood of the yielder, snakes

in his bed: she must be given up to an extinguisher; to be the second

wife of an old-fashioned semi-recluse, disgraced in his first. And were

it publicly known that she had been cast off, and had fallen on old

Vernon for a refuge, and part in spite, part in shame, part in

desperation, part in a fit of good sense under the circumstances,

espoused him, her beauty would not influence the world in its

judgement. The world would know what to think. As the instinct of

self-preservation whispered to Willoughby, the world, were it

requisite, might be taught to think what it assuredly would not think

if she should be seen tripping to the altar with Horace De Craye.

Self-preservation, not vengeance, breathed that whisper. He glanced at

her iniquity for a justification of it, without any desire to do her a

permanent hurt: he was highly civilized: but with a strong intention to

give her all the benefit of a scandal, supposing a scandal, or ordinary

tattle.

"And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, who

opened his mouth and shut his eyes."

You hear the world? How are we to stop it from chattering? Enough that

he had no desire to harm her. Some gentle anticipations of her being

tarnished were imperative; they came spontaneously to him; otherwise

the radiance of that bright Abominable in loss would have been

insufferable; he could not have borne it; he could never have

surrendered her. Moreover, a happy present effect was the result. He

conjured up the anticipated chatter and shrug of the world so vividly

that her beauty grew hectic with the stain, bereft of its formidable

magnetism. He could meet her calmly; he had steeled himself. Purity in

women was his principal stipulation, and a woman puffed at, was not

the person to cause him tremours.

Consider him indulgently: the Egoist is the Son of Himself. He is

likewise the Father. And the son loves the father, the father the son;

they reciprocate affection through the closest of ties; and shall they

view behaviour unkindly wounding either of them, not for each other's

dear sake abhorring the criminal? They would not injure you, but they

cannot consent to see one another suffer or crave in vain. The two rub

together in sympathy besides relationship to an intenser one. Are you,

without much offending, sacrificed by them, it is on the altar of their

mutual love, to filial piety or paternal tenderness: the younger has

offered a dainty morsel to the elder, or the elder to the younger.

Absorbed in their great example of devotion do they not think of you.

They are beautiful.

Yet is it most true that the younger has the passions of youth:

whereof will come division between them; and this is a tragic state.

They are then pathetic. This was the state of Sir Willoughby lending

ear to his elder, until he submitted to bite at the fruit proposed to

him--with how wry a mouth the venerable senior chose not to mark. At

least, as we perceive, a half of him was ripe of wisdom in his own

interests. The cruder half had but to be obedient to the leadership of

sagacity for his interests to be secured, and a filial disposition

assisted him; painfully indeed; but the same rare quality directed the

good gentleman to swallow his pain. That the son should bewail his fate

were a dishonour to the sire. He reverenced, and submitted. Thus, to

say, consider him indulgently, is too much an appeal for charity on

behalf of one requiring but initial anatomy--a slicing in halves--to

exonerate, perchance exalt him. The Egoist is our fountain-head,

primeval man: the primitive is born again, the elemental reconstituted.

Born again, into new conditions, the primitive may be highly polished

of men, and forfeit nothing save the roughness of his original nature.

He is not only his own father, he is ours; and he is also our son. We

have produced him, he us. Such were we, to such are we returning: not

other, sings the poet, than one who toilfully works his shallop against

the tide, "si brachia forte remisit":--let him haply relax the labour

of his arms, however high up the stream, and back he goes, "in pejus",

to the early principle of our being, with seeds and plants, that are as

carelessly weighed in the hand and as indiscriminately husbanded as our

humanity.

Poets on the other side may be cited for an assurance that the

primitive is not the degenerate: rather is he a sign of the

indestructibility of the race, of the ancient energy in removing

obstacles to individual growth; a sample of what we would be, had we

his concentrated power. He is the original innocent, the pure simple.

It is we who have fallen; we have melted into Society, diluted our

essence, dissolved. He stands in the midst monumentally, a land-mark of

the tough and honest old Ages, with the symbolic alphabet of striking

arms and running legs, our early language, scrawled over his person,

and the glorious first flint and arrow-head for his crest: at once the

spectre of the Kitchen-midden and our ripest issue.

But Society is about him. The occasional spectacle of the primitive

dangling on a rope has impressed his mind with the strength of his

natural enemy: from which uncongenial sight he has turned shuddering

hardly less to behold the blast that is blown upon a reputation where

one has been disrespectful of the many. By these means, through

meditation on the contrast of circumstances in life, a pulse of

imagination has begun to stir, and he has entered the upper sphere or

circle of spiritual Egoism: he has become the civilized Egoist;

primitive still, as sure as man has teeth, but developed in his manner

of using them.

Degenerate or not (and there is no just reason to suppose it) Sir

Willoughby was a social Egoist, fiercely imaginative in whatsoever

concerned him. He had discovered a greater realm than that of the

sensual appetites, and he rushed across and around it in his conquering

period with an Alexander's pride. On these wind-like journeys he had

carried Constantia, subsequently Clara; and however it may have been in

the case of Miss Durham, in that of Miss Middleton it is almost certain

she caught a glimpse of his interior from sheer fatigue in hearing him

discourse of it. What he revealed was not the cause of her sickness:

women can bear revelations--they are exciting: but the monotonousness.

He slew imagination. There is no direr disaster in love than the death

of imagination. He dragged her through the labyrinths of his

penetralia, in his hungry coveting to be loved more and still more,

more still, until imagination gave up the ghost, and he talked to her

plain hearing like a monster. It must have been that; for the spell of

the primitive upon women is masterful up to the time of contact.

"And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, who

opened his mouth and shut his eyes."

The urgent question was, how it was to be accomplished. Willoughby

worked at the subject with all his power of concentration: a power that

had often led him to feel and say, that as a barrister, a diplomatist,

or a general, he would have won his grades: and granting him a personal

interest in the business, he might have achieved eminence: he schemed

and fenced remarkably well.

He projected a scene, following expressions of anxiety on account of

old Vernon and his future settlement: and then Clara maintaining her

doggedness, to which he was now so accustomed that he could not

conceive a change in it--says he: "If you determine on breaking I give

you back your word on one condition." Whereupon she starts: he insists

on her promise: she declines: affairs resume their former footing; she

frets: she begs for the disclosure: he flatters her by telling her his

desire to keep her in the family: she is unilluminated, but strongly

moved by curiosity: he philosophizes on marriage "What are we? poor

creatures! we must get through life as we can, doing as much good as we

can to those we love; and think as you please, I love old Vernon. Am I

not giving you the greatest possible proof of it?" She will not see.

Then flatly out comes the one condition. That and no other. "Take

Vernon and I release you." She refuses. Now ensues the debate, all the

oratory being with him. "Is it because of his unfortunate first

marriage? You assured me you thought no worse of him," etc. She

declares the proposal revolting. He can distinguish nothing that should

offend her in a proposal to make his cousin happy if she will not him.

Irony and sarcasm relieve his emotions, but he convinces her he is

dealing plainly and intends generosity. She is confused; she speaks in

maiden fashion. He touches again on Vernon's early escapade. She does

not enjoy it. The scene closes with his bidding her reflect on it, and

remember the one condition of her release. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson,

now reduced to believe that he burns to be free, is then called in for

an interview with Clara. His aunts Eleanor and Isabel besiege her.

Laetitia in passionate earnest besieges her. Her father is wrought on

to besiege her. Finally Vernon is attacked by Willoughby and Mrs.

Mountstuart:--and here, Willoughby chose to think, was the main

difficulty. But the girl has money; she is agreeable; Vernon likes her;

she is fond of his "Alps", they have tastes in common, he likes her

father, and in the end he besieges her. Will she yield? De Craye is

absent. There is no other way of shunning a marriage she is

incomprehensibly but frantically averse to. She is in the toils. Her

father will stay at Patterne Hall as long as his host desires it. She

hesitates, she is overcome; in spite of a certain nausea due to

Vernon's preceding alliance, she yields.

Willoughby revolved the entire drama in Clara's presence. It helped him

to look on her coolly. Conducting her to the dinner-table, he spoke of

Crossjay, not unkindly; and at table, he revolved the set of scenes

with a heated animation that took fire from the wine and the face of

his friend Horace, while he encouraged Horace to be flowingly Irish. He

nipped the fellow good-humouredly once or twice, having never felt so

friendly to him since the day of his arrival; but the position of

critic is instinctively taken by men who do not flow: and Patterne Port

kept Dr Middleton in a benevolent reserve when Willoughby decided that

something said by De Craye was not new, and laughingly accused him of

failing to consult his anecdotal notebook for the double-cross to his

last sprightly sally. "Your sallies are excellent, Horace, but spare us

your Aunt Sallies!" De Craye had no repartee, nor did Dr. Middleton

challenge a pun. We have only to sharpen our wits to trip your

seductive rattler whenever we may choose to think proper; and

evidently, if we condescended to it, we could do better than he. The

critic who has hatched a witticism is impelled to this opinion. Judging

by the smiles of the ladies, they thought so, too.

Shortly before eleven o'clock Dr. Middleton made a Spartan stand

against the offer of another bottle of Port. The regulation couple of

bottles had been consumed in equal partnership, and the Rev. Doctor

and his host were free to pay a ceremonial visit to the drawing-room,

where they were not expected. A piece of work of the elder ladies, a

silken boudoir sofa-rug, was being examined, with high approval of the

two younger. Vernon and Colonel De Craye had gone out in search of

Crossjay, one to Mr. Dale's cottage, the other to call at the head and

under-gamekeeper's. They were said to be strolling and smoking, for the

night was fine. Willoughby left the room and came back with the key of

Crossjay's door in his pocket. He foresaw that the delinquent might be

of service to him.

Laetitia and Clara sang together. Laetitia was flushed, Clara pale. At

eleven they saluted the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. Willoughby said

"Good-night" to each of them, contrasting as he did so the downcast

look of Laetitia with Clara's frigid directness. He divined that they

were off to talk over their one object of common interest, Crossjay.

Saluting his aunts, he took up the rug, to celebrate their diligence

and taste; and that he might make Dr. Middleton impatient for bed, he

provoked him to admire it, held it out and laid it out, and caused the

courteous old gentleman some confusion in hitting on fresh terms of

commendation.

Before midnight the room was empty. Ten minutes later Willoughby paid

it a visit, and found it untenanted by the person he had engaged to be

there. Vexed by his disappointment, he paced up and down, and chanced

abstractedly to catch the rug in his hand; for what purpose, he might

well ask himself; admiration of ladies' work, in their absence, was

unlikely to occur to him. Nevertheless, the touch of the warm, soft

silk was meltingly feminine. A glance at the mantel-piece clock told

him Laetitia was twenty minutes behind the hour. Her remissness might

endanger all his plans, alter the whole course of his life. The colours

in which he painted her were too lively to last; the madness in his

head threatened to subside. Certain it was that he could not be ready a

second night for the sacrifice he had been about to perform.

The clock was at the half hour after twelve. He flung the silken thing

on the central ottoman, extinguished the lamps, and walked out of the

room, charging the absent Laetitia to bear her misfortune with a

consciousness of deserving it.