Chapter 9 of The Egwist This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Lars Rolander. Chapter 9 Clara and Letizia Meet They Are Compaired An hour before the time for lessons next morning, John Cross Jay was on the lawn with a big bunch of wildflowers. He left them at the hall door for Miss Milton and vanished into bushes. These vulgar weeds were about to be dismissed to the dust heap by the great officials of the household. But as it happened that Miss Milton had seen them from the window in Cross Jay's hands, the discovery was made that they were indeed his presentation bouquet, and a footman received orders to place them before her. She was very pleased. The arrangement of the flowers bore witness to fairer fingers than the boys own in the disposition of the rings of color. The campion and anemone, cow slip and speedwell, primroses and wood hearsins, and rising out of the blue was a branch bearing thick white blossom, so thick and so pure a whiteness that Miss Milton, while praising Cross Jay for soliciting the aid of Miss Dale, was at loss to name the tree. It is a gardener's improvement of the vestal of the forest, the wild cherry, said Dr. Milton, and in this case we may admit the gardener's claim to be valid, though I believe that with his gift of double blossom he has improved away the fruit. Call this the vestal of civilization, then he has at least done something to vindicate the beauty of the office as well as the justice of the title. It is vernal solely tree that young rascal has been despoiling, said Sir Willoughby Maryly. Miss Milton was informed that this double blossom wild cherry tree was worshipped by Mr. Wettford. Sir Willoughby promised he would conduct her to it. You, he said to her, can bear the trial, few complexions can. It is to most ladies a crueler test than snow. Miss Dale, for example, becomes old lace within a dozen yards of it. I should like to place her under the tree beside you. Dear me, though, but that is investing the ha-madriad with novel and terrible functions, exclaimed Dr. Milton. Clara said, Miss Dale could drag me into a superior court to show me fading beside her in gifts more valuable than a complexion. She has a finability, said Vernon. All the word knew, so Clara knew of Miss Dale's romantic admiration of Sir Willoughby. She was curious to see Miss Dale and study the nature of a devotion that might be within reason immutable, for a man who could speak with such steely coldness of the poor lady he had fascinated. Well, perhaps it was good for the hearts of women to be beneath a frost, to be schooled, restrained, turned inward on their dreams. Yes, then his coldness was desirable. It encouraged an ideal of him. It suggested and seemed to propose to Clara's mind the diviness of separation instead of the deadly accuracy of an intimate perusal. She tried to look on him as Miss Dale might look, and while partly despising her for the dupery she envied, and more than criticizing him for the inhuman numbness of sentiment which offered up his worshipper to point a complementary comparison. She was able to imagine a distance whence it would be possible to observe him uncritically, kindly, admiringly, as the moon a handsome mortal, for example. In the midst of her thoughts she surprised herself by saying, I certainly was difficult to instruct. I might see things clearer if I had a fine ability. I never remember to have been perfectly pleased with my immediate lesson. She stopped wondering whether her tongue was leading her, then added to save herself. And that may be why I feel for poor Cross J. Mr. Whitford apparently did not think it remarkable that she should have been set off gambling of a fine ability, though the geologistic phrase had been pronounced by him with an impressiveness to make his ear aware of an echo. Sir Willoughby dispersed her vaporish confusion. Exactly, he said, I have insisted with Vernon. I don't know how often that you must have the lad by his affections. He won't bear driving. It had no effect on me. Boys of spirit kick at it. I think I know boys claram. He found himself addressing eyes that regarded him as though he were a small speck, a pin's head in the circle of their remote contemplation. They were wide. They closed. She opened them to gaze elsewhere. He was very sensitive. Even then, when knowingly wounding him or because of it, she was trying to climb back to that altitude of the thin division of neutral ground from which we see a lover's faults and are above them, pure surveyors. She climbed unsuccessfully. It is true, soon despairing and using the effort as a pretext to fall back lower. Dr. Middleton withdrew Sir Willoughby's attention from the imperceptible annoyance. No, sir, no. The birch, the birch, boys of spirit commonly turn into solid men, and the solider the men, the more surely do they vote for Busby. For me I pray he may be immortal in Great Britain. Sea air, nor mountain air, is half so bracing. I venture to say that the power to take a licking is better worth having than the power to administer one. Horse him and birch him if Cross J runs from his box. It is your opinion, sir? He's hosed bowed to him affably, chocked on behalf of the ladies. So positively so, sir, that I will undertake without knowledge of their antecedents to lay my finger on the men in public life who have not had early Busby. They are ill-balanced men. Their seat of reason is not a concrete. They won't take rough and smooth as they come. They make bad blood, can't forgive, sniff right and left for a probation, and are excited to anger if an east wind does not flatter them. Why, sir, when they have grown to be seniors, you find these men mixed up with the nonsense of their youth. You see, they are unthrashed. We English beat the world because we take a licking well. I hold it for the surety of a proper sweetness of blood. The smile of Sir Willoughby waxed ever softer, as the shakes of his head increased in contradictoriness. And yet, said he, with the air of conceding a little after having answered the reverend doctor, and convicted him of error. Jack requires it to keep him in order. On board ship, your argument may apply. Not, I suspect, among gentlemen. No. Good night to you, gentlemen, said Dr. Milton. Clara heard Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel interchanged remarks. Willoughby would not have suffered it. It would entirely have altered him. She sighed and put a tooth on her underly. The gift of humorous fancy is in women fenced run with forbidding placards. They have to choke it if they perceive a piece of humor. For instance, the young Willoughby grasped by his master and his horrified relatives rigid at the sight of preparations for the seed of sacrilege. They have to blindfold the mind's eye. They are society's hard-drilled soldiery. Prussians that must both march and think in step. It is for the advantage of the civilized world, if you like, since men have decreed it, or matrons have so read the decree.  Clara speculated as to whether Miss Dale might be, perhaps, a person of a certain liberty of mind. She asked for some little, only some little, free play of mind in a house that seemed to wear, as it were, a cap of iron. So Willoughby not merely ruled. He throned. He inspired. And how? She had noticed an irascible sensitiveness in him alert against a shadow of disagreement. And as he was kind when perfectly appeased, the soap was offered by him for submission. She noticed that even Mr. Whitford for bore to alarm the sentiment of authority in his cousin. If he did not breathe Sir Willoughby, like the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, he would either acquiesce in a syllable or be silent. He never strongly dissented. The habit of the house with its iron cap was on him, as it was on the servants and would be, oh, shudders of the shipwreck that see their end drowning on the wife. When do I meet Miss Dale? She inquired. This very evening at dinner replied Sir Willoughby. Then thought she there is that to look forward to.  And long before the approach of the hour, her hope of encountering any other than another doll at hern of Sir Willoughby had fled. So she was languid for two of the three minutes when she sat alone with Letizia in the drawing room before the rest had assembled. It is Miss Middleton, Letizia said, advancing to her. My jealousy tells me, for you have won my boy who stays hard and done more to bring him to obedience in a few minutes than we have been able to do in months. His wild flowers were so welcome to me, said Clara. He was very modest over them, and I mention it because boys of his age usually thrust their gifts in our faces fresh as they plucked them, and you were to be treated quite differently. We saw his good, fair his hand. She resigns her office, but I pray you not to love him too well in return, for you ought to be away reading with one of those men who get boys through their examinations. He is, we all think, a born sailor, and his place is in the navy. But Miss Dale, I love him so well that I shall consult his interests and not my own selfishness. And if I have influence, he will not be a week with you longer. It should have been spoke of today. I must have been in some dream. I thought of it, I know. I will not forget to do what may be in my power. Clara's heart sank at the renewed engagement and plighting of herself involved in her asking a favour, urging any sort of petition. The course was good. Besides, she was plighted already. Sir Willow is really fond of the boy, she said. He is fond of exciting fondness in the boy, said Miss Dale. He has not dealt much with children. I am sure he likes cross-jay. He could not either wise be so forebearing. It is wonderful what he endures and laughs at. Sir Willow be entered. The presence of Miss Dale illuminated him as the burning taper lights up a consecrated plate, deeply respecting her for her constancy, esteeming her for a model of taste he was never in her society without that happy consciousness of shining which calls forth the treasures of the man. And these it is no exaggeration to term unbounded when all that comes from him is taken for gold. The effect of the evening on Clara was to render her distrustful of her later antagonist. She had unknowingly passed into the spirit of Miss Dale. Sir Willow be aiding for she could sympathize with the view of his constant admirer on seeing him so cordially and smoothly gay as one may say domestically witty, the most agreeable form of wit. Mrs. Montsteward Jenkinson discerned that he had a leg of physical perfection. Miss Dale distinguished it in him in the vital essence. And before either of these ladies he was not simply a radiant, he was a productive creature. So true it is that praise is our fractifying sum. He had even a touch of the romantic air which Clara remembered as her first impression of the favorite of the county. And strange she found it to observe this resuscitated idea confronting her experience. What if she had been captured in considerate? Oh blissful revival of the sense of peace. The happiness of pain departing was all that she looked for. And her conception of liberty was to learn to love her chains provided that he would spare her the caress. In this mood she sternly condemned Constancia. We must try to do good. We must not be thinking of ourselves. We must make the best of our path in life. She revolved these infantile precepts with humble earnestness and not to be tardy in her striving to do good with a remote but pleasurably glimpse of Mr. Whitford hearing of it. She took the opportunity to speak to Sir Willoughby on the subject of John Cross J. At a moment when, alighting from horseback, he had shown himself to advantage among a gallant cantering company. He showed to great advantage on horseback among men. Being invariably the best mounted, and he had a cavalry style, possibly cultivated but effective, on footies raced head and half-dropped eyelids to palpably assumed superiority. Willoughby, I want to speak, she said and shrank as she spoke, lest he would immediately grant everything in the mood of courtship and invade her respite. I want to speak of that dear boy Cross J. You are fond of him. He is rather an idle boy here and wasting time. Now you are here, and when you are here for good, my love for good. He fluttered away in loveliness, forgetful of Cross J, whom he presently took up. The boy recognizes his most sovereign lady and will do your bidding, though you should order him to learn his lessons. Who would not obey? Your beauty alone commands. But what is there beyond? A grace, a you divine, that sets you not so much above as a part, severed from the world? Clara produced an active smile in duty and pursued. If Cross J were sent at once to some house where men prepare boys to pass for the navy, he would have his chance, and the navy is distinctly his profession. His father is a brave man, and he inherits bravery, and he has a passion for a sailor's life. Only he must be able to pass his examination, and he has not much time. Sir Willoughby gave a slight laugh in sad amusement. My dear Clara, you adore the world, and I suppose you have to learn that there is not a question in this wrangling world about which we have not disputes and contests ad nauseam. I have my notions a concerning Cross J. Vernon has his. I should wish to make a gentleman of him. Vernon marks him for a sailor, but Vernon is the lad's protector. I am not. Vernon took him from his father to instruct him, and he has a right to say what shall be done with him. I do not interfere. Only I can't prevent the lad from liking me. Old Vernon seems to feel it. I assure you I hold entirely aloof. If I am asked in spite of my disapproval of Vernon's plans for the boy to subscribe to his departure, I can but shrug because as you see I have never opposed. Old Vernon pays for him. He is the master. He decides, and if Cross J is blown from the masthead in a gale, the blame does not fall on me. These, my dear, are matters of reason. I would not venture to intrude on them, said Clara, if I had not suspected that money. Yes, cried Willoughby, and it is a part. And let Old Vernon surrender the boy to me. I will immediately relieve him of the burden on his purse. Can I do that, my dear, for the furtherance of a scheme I condemn? The point is thus. Laterally I have invited Captain Patern to visit me, just previous to his departure for the African coast, where government dispatches Marines when there is no other way of killing them. I sent him a special invitation. He thanked me and curtly declined. The man, I may almost say, is my pensioner. Well, he calls himself a patern. He is undoubtedly a man of courage. He has elements of our blood and the name. I think I am to be approved for desiring to make a better gentleman of the son than I behold in the father. And seeing that life from an early age on board ship has anything but made a gentleman of the father, I hold that I am right in shaping another course for the son. Naval officers, Clara suggested. Some, said Willoughby, but they must be men of birth coming out of homes of good breeding. I strip them of the halo of the title of naval officers, and I fear you would not often say gentlemen when they step into a drawing room. I went so far as to fancy I had some claim to make John Cross Jay something different. It can be done. The patern comes out in his behavior to you, my love. It can be done. But if I take him, I claim undisputed sway over him. I cannot make a gentleman of the fellow if I am to compete with this person and that. In fine he must look up to me. He must have one model. Would you then provide for him subsequently? According to his behavior. Would not that be precarious for him? More so than the profession you appear inclined to choose for him. But there he would be under clear regulations. With me he would have to respond to affection. Would you secure him a settled income? For an idle gentleman is bad enough. A penniless gentleman. He has only to please me, my dear, and he will be launched and protected. But if he does not succeed in pleasing you. Is it so difficult? Oh! Clara fretted. You see my love. I answer you, said Sir Willoughby. He resumed. But let Old Vernon have his trial with the lad. He has his own ideas. Let him carry them out. I shall watch the experiment. Clara was for abandoning her task in sheer faintness. Is not the question one of money? She said shyly, knowing Mr. Whitford to be poor. Old Vernon chooses to spend his money that way, replied Sir Willoughby. If it saves him from breaking his shins and risking his neck on his alps, we may consider it well employed. Yes, Clara's voice occupied a pause. She seized her languor as it were a curling snake, and cast it off. But I understand that Mr. Whitford wants your assistance. Is he not, not rich? When he leaves the hall to try his fortune in literature in London, he may not be so well able to support Cross Day and obtain the instruction necessary for the boy, and it would be generous to help him. Leaves the hall? exclaimed Willoughby. I have not heard a word of it. He made a bad start at the beginning, and I should have thought that would have tamed him. Had to throw over his fellowship. Then he received a small legacy some time back and wanted to be off to push his luck in literature. Rank gambling, as I told him. Londonising can do him no good. I thought that nonsense of his was over years ago. What is it he has from me? About a hundred and fifty years, and it might be doubled for the asking. And all the books he requires, and these writers and scholars no sooner think of a book than they must have it. And do not suppose me to complain. I am a man who will not have a single shilling expended by those who serve immediately about my person. I confess to exacting that kind of dependency. Feudalism is not an objectionable thing if you can be sure of the Lord. You know Clara, and you should know me in my weakness too. I do not claim servitude. I stipulate for affection.  And with one dearest, so that we too can shut out the world, we live what is the dream of others. Nothing imaginable can be sweeter. It is a veritable heaven on earth to be the possessor of the whole of you. Your thoughts, hopes, all. Sir Willoughby intensified his imagination to conceive more. He could not or could not express it and pursued. But what is this talk of Vernon's leaving me? He cannot leave. He has barely a hundred a year of his own. You see, I consider him. I do not speak of the ingratitude of the wish to leave. You know, my dear, I have a deadly abhorrence of partings and such like. As far as I can, I surround myself with healthy people, especially to guard myself from having my feelings rung, and accept in me stale whom you like. My darling does like her. The answer satisfied him. With that one exception, I am not aware of a case that threatens or torment me. And here is a man under no compulsion, talking of leaving the whole. In the name of goodness, why, but why? Am I to imagine that the sight of perfect felicitate distresses him? We are told that the world is desperately wicked. I do not like to think it of my friends. Yet, otherwise, their conduct is often hard to account for. If it were true, you would not punish Cross Jay? Clara feebly interposed. I should certainly take Cross Jay and make a man of him after my own model, my dear. But who spoke to you of this? Mr. Whitford himself. And let me give you my opinion, Willoughby, that he will take Cross Jay with him rather than leave him if there is a fear of the boys missing his chance of the navy. Marines appear to be in the ascendant, said Sir Willoughby, astonished at the locution and pleading in the interests of a son of one. Then Cross Jay he must take. I cannot accept half the boy. I am, he laughed. The legitimate claimant in the application for judgment before the wise king. Besides, the boy has a dose of my blood in him. He has none of Verne's, not one drop. Ah! You see my love? Oh, I do see, yes. I put forth no pretensions to perfection. Sir Willoughby continued, I can bear a considerable amount of provocation. Still I can be offended, and I am unforgiving when I have been offended. Speak to Vernon if a natural occasion should spring up. I shall of course have to speak to him. You may, Clara, have observed a man who passed me on the road as we were cantering home without a hint of a touch to his hat. That man is a tenant of mine farming six hundred acres, Hopner by name, a man bound to remember that I have independently of my position obliged him frequently. His lease of my ground has five years to run. I must say I detest the cheerlessness of our country population, and where it comes across me I chastise it. Vernon is a different matter. He will only require to be spoken to. One would fancy the old fellow laboured now and then under a magnetic attraction to beggary. My love, he bent to her and checked their pacing up and down. You are tired? I am very tired today, said Clara. His arm was offered. She laid two fingers on it, and they dropped when he attempted to press them to his rib. He did not insist. To walk beside her was to share in the stateliness of her walking. He placed himself at a corner of the doorway for her to pass him into the house, and doted on her cheek, her ear, and the softly dusky nape of her neck, where this way and that, the little lighter-coloured, irreclaimable curls running through and from the comb and the knot, curls, half-curls, root curls, vine ringlets, wedding rings, fledgling feathers, tufts of down, blown wisps, waved or fell, waved over or up, or involutedly or strayed, loose and downward, in the form of small silken paws, hardly any of them much thicker than a crayon shading, cunninger than long round locks of gold to trick the heart. Letizia had nothing to show resembling such beauty. End of Chapter 9, Read by Lars Rolander Chapter 10 in which Sir Willoughby chances to supply the title for himself. Chapter 10 in which Sir Willoughby chances to supply the title for himself. Now Vernon was useful to his cousin. He was the accomplished secretary of a man who governed his estate shrewdly and diligently, but had been once or twice unlucky in his judgments, pronounced from the medisterial bench as a justice of peace, on which occasions a half-colon of trenchant English supported by an opposite classical quotation impressed Sir Willoughby with the value of such a secretary in a controversy. He had no fear of that fiery dragon of scorching breath, the newspaper press, while Vernon was his right-hand man. And as he intended to enter Parliament, he foresaw the greater need of him. Furthermore, he liked his cousin to date his own controversial writings on classical subjects from Patern Hall. It caused his house to shine in a foreign field, proved the service of scholarship by giving it a flavor of bookish aristocracy, that though not so well worth having, and indeed in itself contemptible, is above the material and titular, one cannot quite say how. There, however, is the flavor, dainty sources of the life, the nobility of famous dishes taken alone. The former would be no-seating the latter plebeian. It is thus or somewhat so, when you have a poet, still better a scholar, attached to your household. Sir Willoughby deserved to have him, for he was above his county friends in his apprehension of the flavor bestowed by the man, and having him, he had made them conscious of their deficiency. His cook, Monsieur de Hors, pupil of the great Goudefroy, was not the only French cook in the county, but his cousin and secretary, the rising scholar, the elegant assist, was an unparalleled decoration of his kind, of course. Personally, we laugh at him. You had better not, unless you are feigned to show that the higher world of polite literature is unknown to you. Sir Willoughby could create an abject silence at a county dinner table by an allusion to Vernon at work at home upon his Etruscans or historians, and he paused a moment to let the allusion sink, laughed audibly to himself over his eccentric cousin, and let him rest. In addition, Sir Willoughby abhorred the loss of a familiar face in his domestic circle. He thought ill of servants who could accept their dismissal without petitioning to stay with him. Her servant that gave warning partook of a certain fetishness. Vernon's project of leaving the hall offended and alarmed the sensitive gentleman. I shall have to hand let it ale to him at last, he thought, dealing in bitter generosity to the conditions imposed on him by the ungenerousness of another. For since his engagement to Miss Middleton, his electrically forethoughtful mind had seen in Miss Dale if she stayed in the neighborhood and remained unmarried, the governess of his infant children, often consulting with him. But here was a prospect dashed out. The two then may marry and live in a cottage on the borders of his park, and Vernon can retain his post and let it see her devotion. The risk of her casting it off had to be faced. Marriage has been known to have such an effect on the most faithful of women that a great passion fades to not in their volatile bosoms when they have taken a husband. We see in women especially the triumph of the animal over the spiritual. Nevertheless, risks must be run for a purpose in view. Having no taste for a discussion with Vernon, whom it was his habit to confound by breaking away from him abruptly when he had delivered his opinion, he left it to both the persons interesting themselves in young Cross J to imagine that he was meditating on the question of the lad, and to imagine that it would be wise to leave him to meditate. For he could be prenaturally acute in reading any of his fellow creatures if they crossed the current of his feelings. And meanwhile he instructed the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to bring Letizia Dale on a visit to the hall, where dinner parties were soon to be given, and a pleasing talker would be wanted, where also a woman of intellect steeped in a splendid sentiment hitherto a miracle of female constancy might stir a jungle woman to some emulation. Definitely to resolve to bestow Letizia upon Vernon was more than he could do enough that he held the card. Regarding Clara, his genius for producing the heart which was not in perfect harmony with him, though the series of responsive movements to his own informed him of a something in her character that might have suggested to Mrs. Monsdure Jenkinson her indefensible absurd rouge in porcelain. Idea there was none in that phrase. Yet if you looked on Clara as a delicately inimitable porcelain beauty, the suspicion of a delicately inimitable ripple of her features touched a thought of innocent rudgery, while would rudgery. The likeness to the costly and lovely substance appeared to admit a fitness in the dubious epithet. He detested what was haunted by the phrase. She certainly had at times the look of the nymph that had gazed too long on the form and has unwittingly copied his lurking lip and long sliding eye. Her play with young Cross Day resembled a return of the lady to the cat. She flung herself into it as if her real vitality had been in suspense till she saw the boy. Sir Willoughby by no means disapproved of a physical liveliness that promised him health in his mate. But he began to feel in their conversations that she did not sufficiently think of making herself a nest for him. Steely points were opposed to him when he, figuratively, bared his bosom to be taken to the softest and fairest.  She reasoned against him publicly and learned Vernon to support her. Influence is to be counted for power and her influence of a Vernon was displayed in her persuading him to dance one evening at Lady Calmer's, after his melancholy exhibitions of himself in the art. And not only did she persuade him to stand up fronting her, she maneuvered him through the dance like a clever boy, cajoling atop him to him without reeling, both to Vernon's contentment and to Sir Willoughby's, for he was the last man to object to a manifestation of power in his bride. Considering her influence with Vernon, he renewed the discourse upon Young Cross J, and, as he was addicted to system, he took her into his confidence that she might be taught to look to him and act for him. Old Vernon has not spoken to you again of that lad, he said. Yes, Mr. Whitford has asked me. He does not ask me, my dear. He may fancy me of greater aid than I am. You see, my love, if he puts Cross J on me he will be off. He has this craze for enlisting his pen in London, as he calls it, and I am accustomed to him. I don't like to think of him as a hackscribe, writing nonsense from dictation to earn a pitiful subsistence. I want him here, and supposing he goes, he offends me. He loses a friend, and it will not be the first time that a friend has tried me too far. But if he offends me, he is extinct. Is what, cried Clara, with a look of fright? He becomes to me at once as if he had never been. He is extinct. In spite of your affection? On account of it, I might say, our nature is mysterious and mine as much so as any. Whatever my regrets, he goes out. This is not a language I talk to the world. I do the man no harm. I am not to be named un-Christian, but... So will it be mildly shrugged and indicated as spreading out of the arms. Do talk to me as you talk to the world. Will it be? Give me some relief. My own Clara, we are one. You should know me at my worst, we will say, if you like, as well as at my best. Should I speak too? What could you have to confess? She hangs silent. The wave of an insane resolution swelled in her bosom and subsided before she said, cowardice, incapacity to speak. Women, said he. We do not expect so much of women. The heroic virtues as little as the vices. They have not to unfold the scroll of character. He resumed, and by his tone, she understood that she was now in the inner temple of him. I tell you these things. I quite acknowledge they do not elevate me. They help to constitute my character. I tell you most humbly that I have in me much too much of the fallen arch-angel's pride. Clara bowed her head over a sustained in-drawn breath. It must be pride, he said, in a reverie super-induced by her thoughtfulness over the revelation and glorying in the black flames demoniacal wherewith he crowned himself. Can you not correct it? said she. He replied profoundly vexed by disappointment. I am what I am. It might be demonstrated to you mathematically that it is corrected by equivalence or substitutions in my character if it be a failing assuming that. It seems to me so cruelly to punish Mr. Whitford for seeking to improve his fortunes. He reflects on my share in his fortunes. He has had but to apply to me for his honorarium to be doubled. He wishes for independence. Independence of me. Liberty. At my expense. Oh, will-o'-be. Aye, but this is the world and I know it my love and beautiful as your incredulity may be. You will find it more comforting to confine in my knowledge of the selfishness of the world. My sweetest, you will. You do. For a breath of difference between us is intolerable. Do you not feel how it breaks our magic ring? One small fissure and we have the world with its muddy deluge. But my subject was old Vernon. Yes, I pay for cross jay if Vernon consents to stay. I waive my own scheme for the lad, though I think it the better one. Now, then, to induce Vernon to stay. He has his ideas about staying under a mistress of the household, and, therefore, not to contest it, he is a man of no argument. A sort of lunatic determination takes the place of it with old Vernon. Let him settle close by me in one of my cottages. Very well, and to settle him we must marry him. Who is there, said Clara, beating for the lady in her mind? Women, said Willoughby, are born matchmakers, and the most persuasive in a young bride. With a man and a man like old Vernon, she is irresistible. It is my wish, and that arms you. It is your wish that subjugates him. If he goes, he goes for good. If he stays, he is my friend. I deal simply with him as with everyone. It is the secret of authority. Now, Miss Dale will soon lose her father. He exists on a pension. She has the prospect of having to leave the neighborhood of the hall unless she is established near us. Her whole heart is in this region. It is the poor soul's passion. Count on her agreeing, but she will require a little wooing, and old Vernon wooing. Picture the scene to yourself, my love. His notion of wooing, I suspect will be to treat the lady like a lexicon, and turn over the leaves for the word, and fly through the leaves for another word, and so get a sentence. Don't frown at the poor old fellow, my Clara. Some have the language on their tongues, and some have not. Some are very dry sticks, manly men, honest fellows, but so cut away, so polished away from the sex, that they are in absolute want of outsiders to supply the silken filaments to touch them, actually. So will it be laughed in Clara's face to relax the dreamy stoniness of her look. But I can assure you, my dearest, I have seen it. Vernon does not know how to speak as we speak. He has, or he had, what is called a sneaking affection for mistail. It was the most amusing thing possible, his courtship, the air of a dog with an uneasy conscience trying to reconcile himself with his master. We were all in fits of laughter. Of course it came to nothing. Well, Mr. Whitford, said Clara, offend you to extinction if he declines. Willoughby breed an affectionate touch to her silliness. We bring them together as we best can. You see, Clara, I desire, and I will make some of sacrifices to detain him. But what do you sacrifice? A cottage, said Clara, combative at all points. An ideal, perhaps, I lay no stress on sacrifice. I strongly object to separations, and therefore you will say I prepare the ground for unions, put your influence to good service, my love. I believe you could persuade him to give us the highland fling on the drawing-room table. There is nothing to say to him of Cross Jay. We hold Cross Jay in reserve. It is urgent. Trust me, I have my ideas. I am not idle. That boy bids fare for a capital horseman. Eventualities smite. Sir Willoughby murmured to himself and addressing his bride. The cavalry? If we put him into the cavalry we might make a gentleman of him, not to be shamed of him, or under certain eventualities the guards. Think it over, my love. Decray, who will I suppose act best man for me, supposing old Vernon to pull at the collar, is a lieutenant colonel in the guards. A thorough gentleman of the brainless class, if you like, an elegant fellow, an Irishman, you will see him and I should like to set a naval lieutenant beside him in a drawing-room. For you to compare them and consider the model you would choose for a boy you are interested in. Horace is Grayson gallantry incarnate. Fatuous, probably? I have always been too friendly with him to examine closely. He made himself one of my dogs, though my elder, to be at my heels. One of the few men's faces I can call admirably handsome, with nothing behind it perhaps.  Old Horace does not know how amusing he is. Did Mr. Whitford say that of Colonel Decray? I forget the person of whom he said it, so you have noticed Old Vernon's foible?  It is an infallible receipt for turning him. If I want to have him in good temper, I have only to remark, as you said, I straighten his back instantly. I, said Clara, have noticed chiefly his anxiety concerning the boy for which I admire him. Credit of all, if not particularly far sighted and suggestuous. Well then, my dear, attack him at once, lead him to the subject of our fair neighbor. She is to be our guest for a week or so, and the whole affair might be concluded far enough to fix him before she leaves. She is at present awaiting the rival of the cussing to attend on her father. A little gentle pushing will precipitate Old Vernon on his knees as far as he ever can unbend them. But when a lady is made ready to expect a declaration, you know why she does not, does she? Demand the entire formula, though some beautiful fortresses? He enfolded her. Clara was growing hardened to it. To this she was fated and not seeing any way to escape. She invoked a friendly frost to strike her blood and passed through the minute unfeelingly. Having passed it, she reproached herself for making so much of it, thinking it a lesser endurance than to listen to him. What could she do? She was caged by her word of honour as she at one time thought by her cowardice at another and dimly sensible that the latter was a stronger lock than the former. She mused on the abstract question whether a woman's cowardice can be so absolute as to cast her into the jaws of her aversion. Is it to be conceived? Is there not a moment when it stands at bay? But Haggard visaged honour then starts up claiming to be dealt with in turn. For having courage restored to her she must have the courage to break with honour. She must dare to be faithless and not merely say I will be brave but be brave enough to be dishonourable. The cage of a plighted woman hungering for her disengagement has two keepers a noble and a vile where on earth is creature so dreadfully enclosed. It lies without overcome what degrades her and may win to liberty by overcoming what exalts. Contemplating her situation this idea or vapour of youth taking the godlike semblance of an idea sprang born of a present sickness in Clara's mind that it must be an ill-constructed tumbling world where the hour of ignorance is made the creator of our destiny by being forced to the passive elections upon which life's main issues hang her teacher had brought her to contemplate his view of the world. She thought likewise how must a man despise women who can expose himself as he does to me. Miss Middleton owed to it to Sir Willoughby pattern that she sees to think like a girl when had the great change begun back she could imagine that it was near the period we call in love the first almost from the first and she was led to imagine it through having become bared from imagining her own emotions of that season. They were so dead as not to arise even under the form of shadows in fancy without imputing blame to him for she was reasonable so far she deemed herself a person entrapped in a dream somehow she had committed herself to a lifelong imprisonment and oh terror not in a quiet dungeon the barren walls closed round her talked, called for ardour expected admiration she was unable to say why she could not give it why she retreated more outwardly why she invoked the frost to kill her tenderness feelings she was in revolt until a whisper of the day of bells reduced her to blank submission out of which a breath of peace drew her to revolt again in gradual rapid stages and once more the aspect of that singular day of merry blackness felled her to earth it was alive it advanced it had a mouth she received letters of bridesmaids writing of it and felt them as waves that hurl a log a wreck to shore following which afflicting sense of antagonism to the whole circle sweeping on with her she considered the possibility of her being in a commencement of madness otherwise might she not be accused of a capriciousness quite as deplorable to consider she had written to certain of these young ladies not very long since of this gentleman how in what tone and was it her madness then her recovery now it seemed to her that to have written of him enthusiastically resembled madness more than to shudder away from the junior but standing alone opposing all she had consented to set in motion is too strange to a girl for perfect justification to be found in reason when she seeks it Sir Willoughby was testing himself to supply her with that key of special insight which revealed and stamped him in a title to fortify her spirit of revolt consecrate it almost the popular physician of the county and famous anecdotal wit Dr. Corny had been a guest at dinner of a night and the next day there was talk of him and of the resources of his art displayed by Armand de Horres on his hearing that he was to minister to the tastes of a gathering of omdespri Sir Willoughby glanced at de Horres with his customary benevolent irony in speaking of the persons great in their way who served him why he cannot give us really so good a dinner one must I suppose go to French nature to learn the French are in the habit of making up for all their deficiencies with enthusiasm they have no reverence if I had said to him I want something particularly excellent de Horres I should have had a common place dinner but they have enthusiasm on draft and that is what we must pull at no one Frenchman and you know France I have had de Horres under my eye two years and I can mount his enthusiasm at a word he took omdespri to denote men of letters Frenchmen have destroyed their nobility so for the sake of excitement they put up the literary man not to worship him that they can't do it's to put themselves in a state of nervousance they will not have real greatness above them so they have sham that they must justly quality quality perhaps I for all your shake of the head my good Vernon you see human nature comes round again try as we may top set it and the French only differ from us in wading through blood to discover that they are at their own trick once more I am your equal sir your born equal oh you are a man of letters allow me to be in a bubble about you yes Vernon and I believe the fellow looks up to you as the head of the establishment I am not jealous provided he tends to his functions there's a French philosopher who's for naming the days of the year after the birthdays of Frenchmen Voltaire Day Rousseau Day so on perhaps Vernon will inform us who takes April 1st a few trifling errors are of no consequence when you are in the vein of satire said Vernon be satisfied with knowing a nation in the person of a cook they may be reading us English off in a jockey said Dr. Middleton I believe that jockeys are the exchange of cooks and our neighbors do not get the best of the bargain no but my dear good Vernon it's nonsensical said Sir Willoughby why be bawling every day the name of men or letters philosophers well philosophers of all countries and times and they are the benefactors of humanity Sir Willoughby's derisive laugh broke the word there's a pretension in all that irreconcilable with English sound sense surely you see it we might said Vernon if you like give alternative titles to the days or have alternating days devoted to our great families that perform meritorious deeds upon such a day the rebel Clara delighting in his banter was heard can we furnish sufficient a boat or two could help us perhaps a statesman she suggested a pugilist if wanted for blowy days observed Dr. Middleton and hastily in penitence picked up the conversation he had unintentionally prostrated with a general remark on newfangled notions and a word aside to Vernon which created the blissful suspicion in Clara that her father was indisposed to second Sir Willoughby's opinions even when sharing them Sir Willoughby had led the conversation displeased that the lead should be withdrawn from him he turned to Clara and related one of the after dinner anecdotes of Dr. Corny and another with a vast deal of human nature in it concerning a valid to denarian gentleman whose wife chance to be desperately ill and he went to the physicians assembled in consultation outside the sick room imploring them by all he valued and in tears to save the poor patient for him saying she's everything to me everything and if she dies I'm compelled to run the risks of marrying again I must marry again for she has accustomed me so to the little attentions of a wife that in truth I can't I can't lose her she must be saved and the loving husband of any devoted wife run his hands now there Clara there you have the eggwist added Sir Willoughby that is the perfect eggwist you see what he comes to and his wife the man was utterly unconscious of giving bent to the grossest selfishness an eggwist said Clara aware of marrying an eggwist my dear he bowed gallantly and so blindly fatuous did he appear to her that she could hardly believe him guilty of uttering the words she had heard from him and kept her eyes on him until she came to a sudden full stop in the thoughts directing her gaze she looked at Vernon she looked at her father and at the ladies Eleanor none of them saw the man in the word none noticed the word yet this word was her medical herb her illuminating lamp the key of him and alas but she thought it by feeling her need of one the advocate pleading in apology for her eggwist she beheld him unfortunate self-dexignated man that he was in his good qualities as well as bad under the implacable lamp and his good were drenched in his first person singular his generosity rode of eye louder than the rest conceive him at the age of Dr. Cornish Hero pray save my wife for me I shall positively have to get another if I lose her and one who may not love me half so well understand the peculiarities of my character and appreciate my attitudes he was in his 32nd year there for a young man strong and healthy yet his careless return to his principal theme his emphasis on I and me lent him the seeming of an old man spotted with decaying youth beware of marrying an eggwist would he help her to escape the idea of the seen ensuing upon her petition for release and the being dragged round the walls of his eggwist and having her head knocked against the corners alarmed her with sensations of sickness there was the example of Constancia but that desperate young lady had been assisted by a gallant loving gentleman she had met in Oxford Clara broaded on those two until they seemed heroic she questioned herself could she were one to come she shut her eyes in linger leaning the wrong way of her wishes yet unable to say no Sir Willoughby had positively said beware marrying him would be a deed committed in spite of his express warning as to conceive him subsequently saying I want you she conceived the state of marriage with him as that of a woman tied not to a man of heart but to an obelisk let it all over with herioglyphics and everlastingly hearing him expound them relishing renewing his lectures on them full surely this immovable stone man would not release her this petrification of egoism would from amazingly to thoroughly refuse the petition his pride would debar him from understanding her desire to be released and if she resolved on it without doing it straight way in Constancia's manner the miserable bewilderment of her father for whom such a complication would be a tragic dilemma had to be thought of her father with all his tenderness for his child would make a stand on the point of honor though certain to yield to her he would be distressed in a tempest of worry and Dr. Middleton thus afflicted through up his harness he shun books shun speech and resembled a castaway on the ocean with nothing between himself and his calamity as for the world it would be barking at her heels she might call the man she wrenched her hand from a ghost jilt the world would call her she dwelt bitterly on her agreement with Sir Willoughby regarding the world laying it to his charge that her garden had become a place of nettles her horizon an unlighted fourth side of a square Clara passed from person to person visiting the hall and as she was compelled to see honest admiration of the host not a soul had a suspicion of his cloak nature her agonial hypocrisy in accepting their compliments as the bride of Sir Willoughby was poorly moderated by contempt of them for their infatuation she tried to cheat herself with the thought that they were right and that she was the foolish and wicked in constant in her anxiety to strangle their belliousness which had been communicated from her mind to her blood and was present with her whether her mind was in action or not she encouraged the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to magnify the fictitious man of their idolatry hoping that she might enter into them imaginatively that she might to some degree help to the necessity of her position if she partly succeeded in stupefying her antagonism five minutes of him undid the work he requested her to wear the patern pearls for a dinner party of grand ladies telling her that he would commission Miss Isabel to take them to her Clara begged leave to decline them on the plea of having no right to wear them modest modesty but really it might almost be classed with affection said he I give you the right virtually you are my wife no before heaven no we are not married as my betrothed will you wear them to please me I would rather not I cannot wear borrowed jewels these I cannot wear forgive me I cannot and Willoughby she said scouring herself for want of fortitude in not keeping to the simply blunt provocative refusal does one not look like a victim dicts for the sacrifice the garland hyfer you see on Greek vases in that array of jewelry my dear Clara exclaimed the astonished lover term them borrowed when they are the pattern jewels our family heirloom pearls unmatched I venture to affirm decidedly in my county and many others and passing to the use of the mistress of the house in the natural course of things they are yours they are not mine prospectively they are yours it would be to anticipate the fact to wear them with my consent my approval at my request I'm not yet I never may be my wife he laughed triumphantly and silenced her by manly smothering her scruple was perhaps an honourable one he said perhaps the jewels were safer in their iron box he had merely intended a surprise and gratification to her courage was coming to enable her to speak more plainly when this discontinuing to insist on her wearing the jewels under the appearance of deference of her wishes disarmed her by touching her sympathies she said however I fear we do not often agree Willoughby when you are a little older was the irritating answer it would then be too late to make the discovery the discovery I apprehend is not imperative my love it seems to me that our minds are opposed I should said he I've been awake to it at a single indication be sure but I know she pursued I have learned that the ideal of conduct for women is to subject their minds to the part of an accompaniment for women my love will be in a natural harmony with me ah she compressed her lips the Joan would come I am sleepier here than anywhere ours my Clara is the finest heir of the kingdom it has the effect of sea air but if I'm always asleep here we shall have to make a public exhibition of the beauty this stash of his liveliness defeated her she left him feeling the contempt of the brain feverishly quickened and fine pointed for the brain chewing the cud in the happy pastures of unawakiness so violent was the fever so keen her introspection that she spared few and Vernon was not among them John Crossier whom she considered the least able of all to act as an ally the only one she courted with a real desire to please him he was the one she affectionately envied he was the youngest, the freest he had the world before him and he did not know how horrible the world was or could be made to look she loved the boy from expecting nothing of him others, Vernon Whitford for instance could help and move no hand he read her case a scrutiny so penetrating under its air of abstract thoughtfulness though his eyes did butt rest on her a second or two, signified that he read her line by line and to the end expecting what she thought of him for probing her with that sharp steel of insight without a purpose she knew her mind's injustice it was her case, her lamentable case the impatient panic stricken nerves of a captured wild creature which cried for help she exaggerated her sufferings to get strength to throw them off and lost it in the recognition that they were exaggerated and out of the conflict issued recklessness with a cry as wild as any coming of madness for she did not blush in saying to herself if someone loved me before hearing of Constancia she had mused upon liberty as a virgin goddess men were out of her thoughts even the figure of a rescuer if one dawned in her mind was more angel than hero that fair childish maidliness had ceased with her body straining in her dragon's grasp with a savor of loathing unable to contend unable to speak aloud she began to speak to herself and all the health of her nature made her outcry womanly if I were loved not for the sake of love but for free breathing and her utterance of it was to ensure life and enduringness to the wish as the journeying of a mother on a drowning ship is to get her infant to shore if some noble gentleman could see me as I am and not disdain to aid me oh to be caught up out of this prison of thorns and brambles I cannot tear my own way out I am a coward my cry for help confesses that a beckoning of a finger would change me I believe I could fly bleeding and through bootings to a comrade oh a comrade I do not want a lover I should find another eggwist not so bad but enough to make me take a breath like death I could follow a soldier like poor Sally or Molly he stakes his life for his country and a woman may be proud of the worst of men who do that Constancia met a soldier perhaps she prayed and her prayer was answered she did ill but oh how I love her for it his name was Harry Oxford Papa would call him her Perseves she must have felt that there was no explaining what she suffered she had only to act to plunge first she fixed her mind on Harry Oxford to be able to speak his name awaiting her must have been relief a reprieve she did not waver she cut the links she signed herself over oh brave girl what do you think of me but I have no Harry Whitford I am alone let anything be said against women we must be very bad to have such bad things written of us only say this that to ask them to sign themselves over by oath and ceremony because of an ignorant promise to the man they have been mistaken in is it is the sudden consciousness that she had put another name for Oxford struck her a buffett drowning her in crimson end of chapter 10 read by Lars Rolander chapter 11 of the aegwist this is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recording shall in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Lars Rolander chapter 11 the double blossom wild cherry tree Sir Willoughby chose a moment when Clara was with him and a good retreat through folding windows to the lawn in case of cogency on the enemies part to attack his cousin regarding the preposterous plot to upset the family by a scamper to London by the way Vernon what is this you've been mumbling to everybody say me about leaving us to pitch yourself into the stew pot and be made brothel is no better and you are fit for considerably better don't I beg you continue to annoy me take a run abroad if you are restless take two or three months and join us as we are traveling home and then think of settling pray follow my example if you like you can have one of my cottagers or a place built for you anything to keep a man from destroying the sense of stability about one in London my dear old fellow you lose your identity what are you there I ask you what one has the feeling of the house crumbling when the man is perpetually for shifting and cannot fix himself here you are known you can study at your ease up in London you are nobody I tell you honestly I feel it myself a week of London literally drives me home to discover the individual where I left him be advised you don't mean to go I have the intention said Vernon why I mentioned it to you to my face over your shoulder is generally the only chance you give me you have not mentioned it to me my knowledge as to the reason I might hear a dozen of your reasons and I should not understand one it's against your interest and against my wishes come friend I'm not the only one you distress why Vernon you yourself have said that the English would be very perfect Jews if they could manage to live on the patriarchal system you said it yes you said it but I recollect it clearly oh as for your double meanings you said the thing and you jeered at the incapacity of English families to live together on account of bad temper and now you are the first to break up our union I decidedly do not profess to be a perfect you but I do so will you be caught signs of a probably smiling commerce between his bride and his cousin he raised his face appear to be consulting his eyelids and resolved to laugh well I own it I do like the idea of living patriarchally he turned to Clara the reverend doctor one of us my father she said why not papa's habits are those of a scholar that you might not be separated from me my dear Clara thanked Sir Willoughby for the kindness of thinking of her father mentally analyzing the kindness in which at least she found no unkindness scarcely egwis though she knew it to be there we might propose it said he as a compliment if he would condescend to accept it as a compliment these great scholars and if Vernon goes our inducement for Dr. Middleton to stay but it is too absurd for discussion oh Vernon above Master Cross J I will see to it he was about to give Vernon his shoulder and step into the garden when Clara said you will have Cross J trained in the Navy Willoughby there is not a day to lose yes yes I will see to it depend on me for holding the Jang Rascal in view he presented his hand to her to lead her over the step to the grave all surprised to behold how flushed she was she responded to the invitation by putting her hand forth from a bent elbow with hesitating fingers willoughby postponed Willoughby her attitude suggested a stipulation before she touched him it's an affair of money as you know Willoughby said Vernon if I am in London I can't well provide for the boy for some time to come or it's not certain that I can why on earth should you go that's another matter I want you to take my place with him in which case the circumstances are changed I am responsible for him and I have a right to bring him up according to my own prescription we are likely to have one idol out the more I guarantee to make a gentleman of him we have too many of your gentlemen already you can't have enough my good Vernon there the national apology for indolence training a penniless boy to be one of them is nearly as bad as an education in a thieves den he will be just as much at war with society if not game for the police Vernon have you seen Cross Jay's father the now captain of marines I think you have he's a good man and a very gallant officer and in spite of his qualities he's a cub and an old cub he's a captain now but he takes that rank very late you will own there you have what you call a good man undoubtedly a gallant officer neutralized by the fact that he's not a gentleman holding intercourse with him is out of the question no wonder government declines to advance him rapidly John Cross Jay does not bear your name and on that point alone I should have a voice in the settlement of his career and I say emphatically that a drawing room approval of a young man is the best certificate for his general chances in life I know of a city of London merchant of some sort and I know a firm of lawyers who will have none but university men at their office at least they have the preference Cross Jay has a bullet head fit neither for the university nor the drawing room said Vernon equal to fighting and dying for you and that's all so will he be contended himself with replying the lad is a favorite of mine his anxiety to escape a rejoinder caused him to step into the garden leaving Clara behind him my love said he in apology as he turned to her she could not look stern but she had a look without a dimple to soften it and her eyes shown for she had wagered in her heart that the dialogue she provoked upon Cross Jay would expose the eggwist and there were other motives wrapped up and intertwisted unrecognizable sufficient to strike her with worse of her self-knowledge of wickedness when she detained him to speak of Cross Jay before Vernon at last it had been seen that she was conscious of suffering in her association with this eggwist Vernon stood for the world taken into her confidence the world then would not think so ill of her she thought hopefully at the same time that she thought most evilly of herself but self-accusations were for the day of reckoning she would and must have the world with her or the belief that it was coming to her in the terrible struggle she foresaw within her horizon of self now her utter boundary she needed it for the inevitable conflict little sacrifices over honesty might be made considering how weak she was how dismal and tangled daily disgraced beyond the power of any bailing to conceal from her fiery sensations a little hypocrisy was a poor girl's natural weapon she crushed her conscientious mind with the assurance that it was magnifying trifles not entirely unaware that she was there by preparing it for a convenient blindness in the presence of treed alternatives but the pride of laying such stress on small sins gave her purity a blush of pleasure and overcame the inner warning in truth she dared not think evilly of herself for long sailing into battle as she was nuns and anchorites may they have leisure she regretted the forfeits she had to pay for self-assistance and if it might be won the worlds regretted felt the peril of the loss and took them up and flung them you see old Vernon has no argument Willoughby said to her he drew her hand more securely on his arm to make her sensible that she leaned on a pillar of strength whenever the little brain is in doubt perplexed undecided which course to adopt she will come to me will she not I shall always listen he resumed soothingly my own and I to you when the world vexes me so we round our completeness you will know me you will know me in good time I am not a mystery to those to whom I unfold myself I do not pretend to mystery yet I will confess home your hearts Willoughby is not exactly identical with the Willoughby before the world one must be armed against that rough beast certain is the vengeance of the jang upon monotony nothing more certain they do not scheme it but sameness is a poison to their systems and vengeance is their heartier breathing their stretch of the limbs and the feels nature avenges them when does Colonel Decray arrive said Clara Horace in two or three days you wish him to be on the spot to learn his part my love she had not flown forward to the thought of Colonel Decray's arrival she knew not why she had mentioned him but now she flew back shocked first into shadowy out of huge and then into the criminal stock I do not wish him to be here I do not know that he has a part to learn I have no wish Willoughby did you not say I should come to you and you would listen will you listen I am so commonplace that I shall not be understood by you unless you take my words for the very meaning of the words I am unworthy I am volatile I love my liberty I want to be free flinch he called it sounded necromantic pardon me my love he said the man you see John der violates my express injunction that is not to come on my grounds and here I find him on the borders of my garden so willoughby wave his hand to the abject figure of a man standing to intersect him volatile unworthy liberty my dearest he bent to her when the man had appeased him by departing you are at liberty within the law like all good women I shall control and direct your volatility and your sense of worthiness must be re-established when we are more intimate it is timidity the sense of unworthiness is a guarantee of worthiness ensuing I believe I am in the vein of a sermon who's the fault the sight of that man was annoying flinch was a stable boy groom and coachman like his father before him at the whole thirty years his father died in our service Mr. flinch had not a single grievance here only one day the demon ceases him with the notion of bettering himself he wants his independence and he presents himself to me with the story of a shop in our county town flinch remember if you go you go for good oh he quite comprehended very well goodbye flinch the man was respectful the fool he was very soon to turn out to be since then within a period of several years I've had him against my express injunctions ten times on my grounds it's curious to calculate of course the shop failed and flitch's independence consists in walking about with his hands in his empty pockets and looking at the hall from some elevation near is he married has his children said Clara nine and a wife that cannot cook or soot or wash linen you could not give him employment after he's having dismissed himself it might be overlooked here he was happy he decided to go elsewhere to be free of course of my joke he quitted my service against my warning flitch we will say emigrated with his wife and children and the ship foundered he returns but his place is filled he's a ghost here and I object to ghosts some work might be found for him it will be the same with old Vernon my dear if he goes he goes for good it is the vital principle of my authority to insist on that a dead leaf might as reasonably demand to return to the tree once off off for all eternity I am sorry but such was your decision my friend I have you see Clara elements in me dreadful exert your persuasive powers with Vernon well naive what you will with the old fellow we have mistailed this evening for a week or two lead him to some ideas of her elements in me I was remarking which will no more bear to be handled carelessly than gunpowder at the same time there is no reason why they should not be respected managed with some degree of regard for me and attention to consequences those who have not done so have repented you do not speak to others of the elements in you said Clara I certainly do not I have but one bride was his handsome reply is it fair to me that you should show me the worst of you all myself my own his ingratiating droop and familiar smile rendered all myself so affectionately meaningful in its happy reliance upon our excess of love that at last she understood she was expected to worship him and uphold him for whatsoever he might be without any estimation of qualities as indeed love does or young love does as she perhaps did once before he chilled her senses it was before her little brain had become active and had turned her senses to revolt it was on the full river of love that Sir Willoughby supposed the whole floating bulk of his personality to be securely sustained and therefore it was that believing himself swimming at his ease he discoursed of himself she went straight away from that idea with her mental exclamation why does he not paint himself in brighter colors to me and the question has he no ideal of generosity and chivalry but the unfortunate gentleman imagined himself to be loved on love's very bosom he fancied that everything relating to himself excited maidenly curiosity womanly reverence orders to know more of him which he was ever willing to satisfy by repeating the same things his notion of women was the primitive black and white there are good women, bad women and he possessed a good one his high opinion of himself fortified the belief that providence as a matter of justice and fitness must necessarily select a good one for him or what are we to think of providence and this female shaped by that informing hand would naturally be in harmony with him from the center of his profound identity to the reigning circle of his variations know the center you know the circle and you discover that the variations are simply characteristics but you must travel on the rays from the circle to get to the center consequently Sir Willoughby put Miss Middleton on one or other of these converging lines from time to time us too he drags into the deeps but when we have harpooned away and are attached to the rope down we must go the miracle is to see us rise again women of mixed essences shading of the divine to the considerably lower than a woman his mind could as little admit an angel in pottery as a roach in porcelain for him they were what they were when fashion at the beginning many cracked many stained here and there a perfect specimen designed for the elect of men at a whisper of the world he shot the prude store on them with a slam himself would have branded them as in the U of Fire privately he did so and he was constituted by his extreme sensitiveness and taste for ultra feminine refinement to be a severe critic of them during the Carnival of Egwis the love season Constancia can it be told she had been be it said a fair and frank Jang merchant with him in that season she was of a nature to be a mother of heroes she met the salute almost halfway ingeniously unlike the coming mothers of the regiments of marionettes who retire in vapors downcast as by convention ladies most flattering to the Egwistical gentlemen for they proclaim him the first Constancia's offense had been no greater but it was not that dramatic performance of purity which he decide of an affianced lady and so the offense was great the love season is the Carnival of Egwis and it brings the touch stone to our natures I speak of love not the mask and not of the flutings upon the themes of love but of the passion a flame having like our mortality death in it as well as life that may or may not be lasting applied to Sir Willoughby as to thousands of civilized males the touch stone found him requiring to be dealt with by his betrothed as an original savage she was required to play incessantly on the first reclaiming chord which led our ancestral satyr to the measures of the dance the threading of the mace setting comfortably to his partner before it was accorded to him to spin her with both hands and a chirrup of his frisky heels to keep him in av and hold him and chained there are the things she must never do dare never say must not think she must be cloisteral now strange and awful though it be to hear women perceive this requirement of them in the spirit of the man they perceive too and it may be gratefully that they address their performances less to the taming of the green and prankish monsieur of the forest then to the pacification of a voracious aesthetic gluttony craving them insatiably through all the tenses with shrieks of the lamentable letter I for their purity whether they see that it has its foundation in the sensual and distinguish the ultra-refined but linearly great grandson of the hoof in this vast and dainty exacting appetite is uncertain they probably do not the more the damage for in the appeasement of the glutton they have to practice much simulation they are in their way losers like their ancient mothers it is the palpable and material of them still which they are tempted to flourish wherewith to invite an ally pursuit a condition under which the spiritual were in their hope lies languages the capaciously strong in soul among women will ultimately detect an infinite grossness in the demand for purity infinite spotless bloom earlier or later they see they have been victims of the singular egwist have worn a mask of ignorance to be named innocent have turned themselves into market produce for his delight and have really abandoned the commodity in ministering to the lust for it suffered themselves to be dragged ages back in playing upon the fleshy innocence of happy accident to gratify his jealous greed of possession when it should have been their task to set the soul above the fairest fortune and the gift of strength in women beyond ornamental whiteness are they not of nature warriors like men men's mates to bear them here instead of puppets but the devouring male egwist prefers them as inanimate overbrought polished pure metal precious vessels of the artificer for him to walk away with hugging call all his own drink of and fill and drink of and forget that he stole them this running off on a bay road is no deviation from Sir Willoughby pattern and Miss Clara Middleton he a fairly intelligent man and very sensitive was blinded to what was going on within her visibly enough by her production of the article he demanded of her sex he had to leave the fair young lady to ride to his county town and his design was to conduct her through the covert of a group of laurels there to revel in her soft confusion she resisted nay resolutely returned to the lawnsward he contrasted her with constancia in the amorous time and rejoiced in his disappointment he saw the goddess modest a guarding purity and one would be bold to say that he did not hear the presets pure it is age granum's maternal and paternal calling approval of her over their munching gums and if you ask whether a man sensitive and a lover can be so blinded you are condemned to reproduce the foregoing paragraph Miss Middleton was not sufficiently restricted in the position of her sex to know that she had planned herself in the thick of the strife of one of their great battles her personal position however was instilling knowledge rapidly as a disease in the frame teaches us what we are and have to contend with could she marry this man he was evidently manageable could she condescend to the use of arts in managing him could she contain a placable life a horror of swampy flatness so vividly did the sight of that dead heaven over an unwaring level earth swim on her fancy that she shut her eyes in angry exclusion of it as if it were outside assailing her and she nearly stumbled upon young cross day oh have I hurt you he cried it was my fault lead me somewhere away from everybody the boy took her hand and she resumed her thoughts and pressing his fingers and feeling worn to him both for his presence and silence so does the blood in youth lead the mind even cool and innocent blood even with a touch that she said to herself and if I marry and then where will honor be then marry him to be true to my word of honor and if then an intolerable languor caused her to sigh profoundly it is written as she thought it she thought in blanks as girls do and some women a shadow of the male eggwist is in the chamber of their brains over owing them were I to marry and to run there is the thought she is offered up to your mercy we are dealing with a girl feeling herself desperately situated and not a fool I'm sure you're dead tired though said cross day no I'm not what makes you think so said Clara I do think so but why do you think so you're so hot what makes you think that you're so red so are you cross day I'm only red in the middle of the cheeks except when I've been running and then you talk to yourself just as boys do when they are blown do they they say I know I could have kept up longer on my buckle broke all to themselves when they break down running and you have noticed that and Miss Middleton I don't wish you were a boy but I should like to live near my life and be a gentleman I'm coming with Miss Dale this evening to stay at the hall and be looked after instead of stopping with her cousin who takes care of her father perhaps you and I'll play chess at night at night you will go to bed cross day not if I have Sir Willoughby to catch hold of he says I'm an authority on bird sex I can manage rabbits and poultry isn't a farmer a happy man but he doesn't marry ladies a cavalry officer has the best chance but you are going to be a naval officer I don't know it's not positive I shall bring my two dormice and make them perform gymnastics on the dinner table there's such dear little things naval officers are not like Sir Willoughby no they are not said Clara they give their lives to their country and then they're dead said cross day Clara wished Sir Willoughby were confronting her she could have spoken she asked the boy where Mr. Whitford was cross day pointed very secretly in the direction of the double blossom wild cherry coming within gaze of the stem she beheld verne on stretch at length reading she supposed asleep she discovered his finger in the leaves of a book and what book she had a curiosity to know the title of the book he would read beneath these bows and grasping cross day's hand fast as she grained her neck as one timorous of a fall in peeping over chests for a glimpse of the page but immediately and still with a bent head she turned her face to wear the load of virginal blossom whiter than summer cloud on the sky showered and drooped and clustered so thick as to claim color and seam like higher alpine snows in noon sunlight a flush of white from deep to deeper heavens of white her eyes perched and soared wonder lived in her happiness in the beauty of the tree pressed to supplant it and was more mortal and narrower reflection came contracting her vision and weighing her to earth a reflection was he must be good who loves to be and sleep beneath the branches of this tree she would rather have clung to her first impression wonder so divine so unbounded was like soaring into homes of angel crowded space sweeping through folded and onto folded white fountain bow innumerable columns but a thought of it was no recovery of it she might as well have striven to be a child the sensation of happiness promised to be less short lived in memory and would have been had not her present disease of the longing for happiness ravaged every corner of it for the secret of its existence the reflection took root he must be good reflection vowed to endure poor by comparison with what it displaced it presented itself to her as conferring something on him and she would not have had it absent though it robbed her she looked down Vernon was dreamily looking up she plucked crossed a hurriedly away whispering that he had better not wake Mr. Whitford and then she proposed to reverse their previous chase and she be the hound and he the hare cross day fetched a magnificent start on its glancing behind he saw Miss Middleton walking listlessly with a hand at her side there's a regular girl said he in some disgust for his theory was that girls always have something the matter with them to spoil a game End of chapter 11 read by Lars Rolander