The Egoist

by George Meredith

  Her voice was musically thrilling in that low muted tone of the very heart, impossible to deride or disbelieve.

  Mrs Mountstuart set her head nodding on springs.

  ‘Is he clever?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘He talks well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Handsome?’

  ‘He might be thought so.’

  ‘Witty?’

  ‘I think he is.’

  ‘Gay, cheerful?’

  ‘In his manner.’

  ‘Why, the man would be a mountebank if he adopted any other. And poor?’

  ‘He is not wealthy.’

  Mrs Mountstuart preserved a lengthened silence, but nipped Clara’s fingers once or twice to reassure her without approving. ‘Of course he’s poor,’ she said at last; ‘directly the reverse of what you could have, it must be. Well, my fair Middleton, I can’t say you have been dishonest. I’ll help you as far as I’m able. How, it is quite impossible to tell. We’re in the mire. The best way seems to me to get this pitiable angel to cut some ridiculous capers and present you another view of him. I don’t believe in his innocence. He knew you to be a plighted woman.’

  ‘He has not once by word or sign hinted a disloyalty.’

  ‘Then how do you know…’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘He is not the cause of your wish to break your engagement?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you have succeeded in just telling me nothing. What is?’

  ‘Ah! madam!’

  ‘You would break your engagement purely because the admirable creature is in existence?’

  Clara shook her head: she could not say she was dizzy. She had spoken out more than she had ever spoken to herself: and in doing so she had cast herself a step beyond the line she dared to contemplate.

  ‘I won’t detain you any longer,’ said Mrs Mountstuart. ‘The more we learn, the more we are taught that we are not so wise as we thought we were. I have to go to school to Lady Busshe! I really took you for a very clever girl. If you change again, you will notify the important circumstance to me, I trust.’

  ‘I will,’ said Clara, and no violent declaration of the impossibility of her changeing again would have had such an effect on her hearer.

  Mrs Mountstuart scanned her face for a new reading of it to match with her later impressions.

  ‘I am to do as I please with the knowledge I have gained?’

  ‘I am utterly in your hands, madam.’

  ‘I have not meant to be unkind.’

  ‘You have not been unkind; I could embrace you.’

  ‘I am rather too shattered, and kissing won’t put me together. I laughed at Lady Busshe! No wonder you went off like a rocket with a disappointing bouquet when I told you you had been successful with poor Sir Willoughby and he could not give you up. I noticed that. A woman like Lady Busshe, always prying for the lamentable, would have required no further enlightenment. Has he a temper?’

  Clara did not ask her to signalize the person thus abruptly obtruded.

  ‘He has faults,’ she said.

  ‘There’s an end to Sir Willoughby, then! Though I don’t say he will give you up even when he hears the worst, if he must hear it, as for his own sake he should. And I won’t say he ought to give you up. He’ll be the pitiable angel if he does. For you – but you don’t deserve compliments; they would be immoral. You have behaved badly, badly, badly. I have never had such a right-about-face in my life. You will deserve the stigma: you will be notorious: you will be called Number Two. Think of that! Not even original! We will break the conference, or I shall twaddle to extinction. I think I heard the luncheon bell.’

  ‘It rang.’

  ‘You don’t look fit for company, but you had better come.’

  ‘Oh, yes; every day it’s the same.’

  ‘Whether you’re in my hands or I’m in yours, we’re a couple of arch-conspirators against the peace of the family whose table we’re sitting at, and the more we rattle the viler we are, but we must do it to ease our minds.’

  Mrs Mountstuart spread the skirts of her voluminous dress, remarking further: ‘At a certain age our teachers are young people: we learn by looking backward. It speaks highly for me that I have not called you mad. – Full of faults, goodish-looking, not a bad talker, cheerful, poorish; – and she prefers that to this!’ the great lady exclaimed in her reverie while emerging from the circle of shrubs upon a view of the Hall.

  Colonel De Craye advanced to her; certainly good-looking, certainly cheerful, by no means a bad talker, nothing of a Croesus, and variegated with faults.

  His laughing smile attacked the irresolute hostility of her mien, confident as the sparkle of sunlight in a breeze. The effect of it on herself angered her on behalf of Sir Willoughby’s bride.

  ‘Good-morning, Mrs Mountstuart; I believe I am the last to greet you.’

  ‘And how long do you remain here, Colonel De Craye?’

  ‘I kissed earth when I arrived, like the Norman William, and consequently I’ve an attachment to the soil, ma’am.’

  ‘You’re not going to take possession of it, I suppose?’

  ‘A handful would satisfy me.’

  ‘You play the Conqueror pretty much, I have heard. But property is held more sacred than in the times of the Norman William.’

  ‘And speaking of property, Miss Middleton, your purse is found,’ he said.

  ‘I know it is,’ she replied as unaffectedly as Mrs Mountstuart could have desired, though the ingenuous air of the girl incensed her somewhat.

  Clara passed on.

  ‘You restore purses,’ observed Mrs Mountstuart.

  Her stress on the word and her look thrilled De Craye; for there had been a long conversation between the young lady and the dame.

  ‘It was an article that dropped and was not stolen,’ said he.

  ‘Barely sweet enough to keep, then!’

  ‘I think I could have felt to it like poor Flitch, the flyman, who was the finder.’

  ‘If you are conscious of these temptations to appropriate what is not your own, you should quit the neighbourhood.’

  ‘And do it elsewhere? But that’s not virtuous counsel.’

  ‘And I’m not counselling in the interests of your virtue, Colonel De Craye.’

  ‘And I dared for a moment to hope that you were, ma’am,’ he said, ruefully drooping.

  They were close to the dining-room window, and Mrs Mountstuart preferred the terminating of a dialogue that did not promise to leave her features the austerely iron cast with which she had commenced it. She was under the spell of gratitude for his behaviour yesterday evening at her dinner-table; she could not be very severe.

  CHAPTER 36

  Animated Conversation at a Luncheon-Table

  VERNON was crossing the hall to the dining-room as Mrs Mountstuart stepped in. She called to him: ‘Are the champions reconciled?’

  He replied: ‘Hardly that, but they have consented to meet at an altar to offer up a victim to the gods in the shape of modern poetic imitations of the classical.’

  ‘That seems innocent enough. The Professor has not been anxious about his chest?’

  ‘He recollects his cough now and then.’

  ‘You must help him to forget it.’

  ‘Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer are here,’ said Vernon, not supposing it to be a grave announcement until the effect of it on Mrs Mountstuart admonished him.

  She dropped her voice: ‘Engage my fair friend for one of your walks the moment we rise from table. You may have to rescue her; but do. I mean it.’

  ‘She’s a capital walker,’ Vernon remarked in simpleton style.

  ‘There’s no necessity for any of your pedestrian feats,’ Mrs Mountstuart said, and let him go, turning to Colonel De Craye to pronounce an encomium on him: ‘The most open-minded man I know! Warranted to do perpetual service, and no mischief. If you were all… instead of catching at every prize you covet! Yes, you would have
your reward for unselfishness, I assure you. Yes, and where you seek it! That is what none of you men will believe.’

  ‘When you behold me in your own livery!’ cried the colonel.

  ‘Do I?’ said she, dallying with a half-formed design to be confidential. ‘How is it one is always tempted to address you in the language of innuendo? I can’t guess.’

  ‘Except that as a dog doesn’t comprehend good English we naturally talk bad to him.’

  The great lady was tickled. Who could help being amused by this man? And after all, if her fair Middleton chose to be a fool there could be no gainsaying her, sorry though poor Sir Willoughby’s friends must feel for him.

  She tried not to smile.

  ‘You are too absurd. Or a baby, you might have added.’

  ‘I hadn’t the daring.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Colonel De Craye, I shall end by falling in love with you; and without esteeming you, I fear.’

  ‘The second follows as surely as the flavour upon a draught of Bacchus, if you’ll but toss off the glass, ma’am.’

  ‘We women, sir, think it should be first.’

  ‘ ’Tis to transpose the seasons, and give October the blossom and April the apple, and no sweet one! Esteem’s a mellow thing that comes after bloom and fire, like an evening at home; because if it went before it would have no father and couldn’t hope for progeny; for there’d be no nature in the business. So please, ma’am, keep to the original order, and you’ll be nature’s child, and I the most blessed of mankind.’

  ‘Really, were I fifteen years younger. I am not so certain… I might try and make you harmless.’

  ‘Draw the teeth of the lamb so long as you pet him!’

  ‘I challenged you, colonel, and I won’t complain of your pitch. But now lay your wit down beside your candour, and descend to an every-day level with me for a minute.’

  ‘Is it innuendo?’

  ‘No; though I daresay it would be easier for you to respond to if it were.’

  ‘I’m the straightforwardest of men at a word of command.’

  ‘This is a whisper. Be alert, as you were last night. Shuffle the table well. A little liveliness will do it. I don’t imagine malice, but there’s curiosity, which is often as bad, and not so lightly foiled. We have Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer here.’

  ‘To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky!’

  ‘Well, then, can you fence with broomsticks?’

  ‘I have had a bout with them in my time.’

  ‘They are terribly direct.’

  ‘They “give point”, as Napoleon commanded his cavalry to do.’

  ‘You must help me to ward it.’

  ‘They will require variety in the conversation.’

  ‘Constant. You are an angel of intelligence, and if I have the judgeing of you, I’m afraid you’ll be allowed to pass, in spite of the scandal above. Open the door; I don’t unbonnet.’

  De Craye threw the door open.

  Lady Busshe was at that moment saying, ‘And are we indeed to have you for a neighbour, Dr Middleton?’

  The Rev. Doctor’s reply was drowned by the new arrivals.

  ‘I thought you had forsaken us,’ observed Sir Willoughby to Mrs Mountstuart.

  ‘And run away with Colonel De Craye? I’m too weighty, my dear friend. Besides, I have not looked at the wedding-presents yet.’

  ‘The very object of our call!’ exclaimed Lady Culmer.

  ‘I have to confess I am in dire alarm about mine,’ Lady Busshe nodded across the table at Clara. ‘Oh! you may shake your head, but I would rather hear a rough truth than the most complimentary evasion.’

  ‘How would you define a rough truth, Dr Middleton?’ said Mrs Mountstuart.

  Like the trained warrior who is ready at all hours for the trumpet to arms, Dr Middleton waked up for judicial allocution in a trice.

  ‘A rough truth, madam, I should define to be that description of truth which is not imparted to mankind without a powerful impregnation of the roughness of the teller.’

  ‘It is a rough truth, ma’am, that the world is composed of fools, and that the exceptions are knaves,’ Professor Crooklyn furnished that example avoided by the Rev. Doctor.

  ‘Not to precipitate myself into the jaws of the foregone definition, which strikes me as being as happy as Jonah’s whale, that could carry probably the most learned man of his time inside without the necessity of digesting him,’ said De Craye, ‘a rough truth is a rather strong charge of universal nature for the firing off of a modicum of personal fact.’

  ‘It is a rough truth that Plato is Moses atticizing,’ said Vernon to Dr Middleton, to keep the diversion alive.

  ‘And that Aristotle had the globe under his cranium,’ rejoined the Rev. Doctor.

  ‘And that the Moderns live on the Ancients.’

  ‘And that not one in ten thousand can refer to the particular treasury he filches.’

  ‘The Art of our days is a revel of rough truth,’ remarked Professor Crooklyn.

  ‘And the literature has laboriously mastered the adjective, wherever it may be in relation to the noun,’ Dr Middleton added.

  ‘Orson’s first appearance at court was in the figure of a rough truth, causing the Maids of Honour, accustomed to Tapestry Adams, astonishment and terror,’ said De Craye.

  That he might not be left out of the sprightly play, Sir Willoughby levelled a lance at the quintain, smiling on Laetitia. ‘In fine, caricature is rough truth.’

  She said, ‘Is one end of it, and realistic directness is the other.’

  He bowed. ‘The palm is yours.’

  Mrs Mountstuart admired herself as each one trotted forth in turn characteristically, with one exception unaware of the aid which was being rendered to a distressed damsel wretchedly incapable of decent hypocrisy. Her intrepid lead had shown her hand to the colonel and drawn the enemy at a blow.

  Sir Willoughby’s ‘in fine’, however, did not please her: still less did his lackadaisical Lothario-like bowing and smiling to Miss Dale: and he perceived it and was hurt. For how, carrying his tremendous load, was he to compete with these unhandicapped men in the game of nonsense she had such a fondness for starting at a table? He was further annoyed to hear Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel Patterne agree together that ‘caricature’ was the final word of the definition. Relatives should know better than to deliver these awards to us in public.

  ‘Well?’ quoth Lady Busshe, expressive of stupefaction at the strange dust she had raised.

  ‘Are they on view, Miss Middleton?’ inquired Lady Culmer.

  ‘There’s a regiment of us on view and ready for inspection.’ Colonel De Craye bowed to her, but she would not be foiled. ‘Miss Middleton’s admirers are always on view,’ said he.

  ‘Are they to be seen?’ said Lady Busshe.

  Clara made her face a question, with a laudable smoothness.

  ‘The wedding-presents,’ Lady Culmer explained.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Otherwise, my dear, we are in danger of duplicating and triplicating and quadruplicating, not at all to the satisfaction of the bride.’

  ‘But there’s a worse danger to encounter in the “on view”, my lady,’ said De Craye; ‘and that’s the magnetic attraction a display of wedding-presents is sure to have for the ineffable burglar, who must have a nuptial soul in him, for wherever there’s that collection on view, he’s never a league off. And ’tis said he knows a lady’s dressing-case presented to her on the occasion fifteen years after the event.’

  ‘As many as fifteen?’ said Mrs Mountstuart.

  ‘By computation of the police. And if the presents are on view, dogs are of no use, nor bolts, nor bars: – he’s worse than Cupid. The only protection to be found, singular as it may be thought, is in a couple of bottles of the oldest Jamaica rum in the British Isles.’

  ‘Rum?’ cried Lady Busshe.

  ‘The liquor of the Royal Navy, my lady. And with your permission, I’ll relate the tale in proof of it. I
had a friend engaged to a young lady, niece of an old sea-captain of the old school, the Benbow school, the wooden leg and pigtail school; a perfectly salt old gentleman with a pickled tongue, and a dash of brine in every deed he committed. He looked rolled over to you by the last wave on the shore, sparkling: he was Neptune’s own for humour. And when his present to the bride was opened, sure enough there lay a couple of bottles of the oldest Jamaica rum in the British Isles, born before himself, and his father to boot. ’Tis a fabulous spirit I beg you to believe in, my lady, the sole merit of the story being its portentous veracity. The bottles were tied to make them appear twlns, as they both had the same claim to seniority. And there was a label on them, telling their great age, to maintain their identity. They were in truth a pair of patriarchal bottles rivalling many of the biggest houses in the kingdom for

  antiquity. They would have made the donkey that stood between the two bundles of hay look at them with obliquity: supposing him to have, for an animal, a rum taste, and a turn for hilarity. Wonderful old bottles! So, on the label, just over the date, was written large: UNCLE BENJAMIN’S WEDDING PRESENT TO HIS NIECE BESSY. Poor Bessy shed tears of disappointment and indignation enough to float the old gentleman on his native element, ship and all. She vowed it was done curmudgeonly to vex her, because her uncle hated wedding-presents and had grunted at the exhibition of cups and saucers, and this and that beautiful service, and épergnes and inkstands, mirrors, knives and forks, dressing-cases, and the whole mighty category. She protested, she flung herself about, she declared those two ugly bottles should not join the exhibition in the dining-room, where it was laid out for days, and the family ate their meals where they could, on the walls, like flies. Eut there was also Uncle Benjamin’s legacy on view, in the distance, so it was ruled against her that the bottles

  should have their place. And one fine morning down came the family after a fearful row of the domestics; shouting, screaming, cries for the police, and murder topping all. What did they see? They saw two prodigious burglars extended along the floor, each with one of the twin bottles in his hand, and a remainder of the horror of the midnight hanging about his person like a blown fog, sufficient to frighten them while they kicked him entirely intoxicated. Never was wilder disorder of wedding-presents, and not one lost! – owing, you’ll own, to Uncle Benjy’s two bottles of ancient Jamaica rum.’