The Egoist

by George Meredith

  ‘It is indeed useless,’ Clara sighed.

  ‘Not useless, my girl, that you should inform this gentleman, your affianced husband, of the ground of the objection you conceived against him.’

  ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘Do you know?’

  ‘If I could name it, I could hope to overcome it.’

  Dr Middleton addressed Sir Willoughby.

  ‘I verily believe we are directing the girl to dissect a caprice. Such things are seen large by these young people, but as they have neither organs, nor arteries, nor brains, nor membranes, dissection and inspection will be alike profitlessly practised. Your inquiry is natural for a lover, whose passion to enter into relations with the sex is ordinarily in proportion to his ignorance of the stuff composing them. At a particular age they traffic in whims: which are, I presume, the spiritual of hysterics; and are indubitably preferable, so long as they are not pushed too far. Examples are not wanting to prove that a flighty initiative on the part of the male is a handsome corrective. In that case, we should probably have had the roof off the house, and the girl now at your feet. Ha!’

  ‘Despise me, father. I am punished for ever thinking myself the superior of any woman,’ said Clara.

  ‘Your hand out to him, my dear, since he is for a formal reconciliation; and I can’t wonder.’

  ‘Father! I have said I do not… I have said I cannot…’

  ‘By the most merciful! what? what? the name for it, words for it!’

  ‘Do not frown on me, father. I wish him happiness. I cannot marry him. I do not love him.’

  ‘You will remember that you informed me aforetime that you did love him.’

  ‘I was ignorant… I did not know myself. I wish him to be happy.’

  ‘You deny him the happiness you wish him!’

  ‘It would not be for his happiness were I to wed him.’

  ‘Oh!’ burst from Willoughby.

  ‘You hear him. He rejects your prediction, Clara Middleton.’

  She caught her clasped hands up to her throat. ‘Wretched, wretched, both!’

  ‘And you have not a word against him, miserable girl.’

  ‘Miserable! I am.’

  ‘It is the cry of an animal!’

  ‘Yes, father.’

  ‘You feel like one? Your behaviour is of that shape. You have not a word?’

  ‘Against myself: not against him.’

  ‘And I, when you speak so generously, am to yield you? give you up?’ cried Willoughby. ‘Ah! my love, my Clara, impose what you will on me; not that. It is too much for man. It is, I swear it, beyond my strength.’

  ‘Pursue, continue the strain; ’tis in the right key,’ said Dr Middleton, departing.

  Willoughby wheeled and waylaid him with a bound.

  ‘Plead for me, sir; you are all-powerful. Let her be mine, she shall be happy, or I will perish for it. I will call it on my head. – Impossible! I cannot lose her. Lose you, my love? It would be to strip myself of every blessing of body and soul. It would be to deny myself possession of grace, beauty, wit, all the incomparable charms of loveliness of mind and person in woman, and plant myself in a desert. You are my mate, the sum of everything I call mine. Clara, I should be less than man to submit to such a loss. Consent to it? But I love you! I worship you! How can I consent to lose you…?’

  He saw the eyes of the desperately wily young woman slink sideways. Dr Middleton was pacing at ever shorter lengths closer by the door.

  ‘You hate me?’ Willoughby sunk his voice.

  ‘If it should turn to hate!’ she murmured.

  ‘Hatred of your husband?’

  ‘I could not promise,’ she murmured, more softly in her wiliness.

  ‘Hatred?’ he cried aloud, and Dr Middleton stopped in his walk and flung up his head: ‘Hatred of your husband? of the man you have vowed to love and honour? Oh, no! Once mine, it is not to be feared. I trust to my knowledge of your nature; I trust in your blood, I trust in your education. Had I nothing else to inspire confidence, I could trust in your eyes. And, Clara, take the confession: I would rather be hated than lose you. For if I lose you, you are in another world, out of this one holding me in its death-like cold; but if you hate me we are together, we are still together. Any alliance, any, in preference to separation!’

  Clara listened with critical ear. His language and tone were new; and comprehending that they were in part addressed to her father, whose phrase: ‘A breach of faith’: he had so cunningly used, disdain of the actor prompted the extreme blunder of her saying – frigidly though she said it:

  ‘You have not talked to me in this way before.’

  ‘Finally,’ remarked her father, summing up the situation to settle it from that little speech, ‘he talks to you in this way now; and you are under my injunction to stretch your hand out to him for a symbol of union, or to state your objection to that course. He, by your admission, is at the terminus, and there, failing the why not, must you join him.’

  Her head whirled. She had been severely flagellated and weakened previous to Willoughby’s entrance. Language to express her peculiar repulsion eluded her. She formed the words, and perceived that they would not stand to bear a breath from her father. She perceived too that Willoughby was as ready with his agony of supplication as she with hers. If she had tears for a resource, he had gestures quite as eloquent; and a cry of her loathing of the union would fetch a countervailing torrent of the man’s love. – What could she say? he is an Egoist? The epithet has no meaning in such a scene. Invent! shrieked the hundred-voiced instinct of dislike within her, and alone with her father, alone with Willoughby, she could have invented some equivalent, to do her heart justice for the injury it sustained in her being unable to name the true and immense objection: but the pair in presence paralyzed her. She dramatized them each springing forward by turns, with crushing

  rejoinders. The activity of her mind revelled in giving them a tongue, but would not do it for herself. Then ensued the inevitable consequence of an incapacity to speak at the heart’s urgent dictate: heart and mind became divided. One throbbed hotly, the other hung aloof; and mentally, while the sick inarticulate heart kept clamouring, she answered it with all that she imagined for those two men to say. And she dropped poison on it to still its reproaches: bidding herself remember her fatal postponements in order to preserve the seeming of consistency before her father; calling it hypocrite; asking herself, what was she! who loved her! And thus beating down her heart, she completed the mischief with a piercing view of the foundation of her father’s advocacy of Willoughby, and more lamentably asked herself what her value was, if she stood bereft of respect for her father.

  Reason, on the other hand, was animated by her better nature to plead his case against her: she clung to her respect for him, and felt herself drowning with it: and she echoed Willoughby consciously, doubling her horror with the consciousness, in crying out on a world where the most sacred feelings are subject to such lapses. It doubled her horror, that she should echo the man: but it proved that she was no better than he: only some years younger. Those years would soon be outlived: after which, he and she would be of a pattern. She was unloved: she did no harm to any one by keeping her word to this man; she had pledged it, and it would be a breach of faith not to keep it. No one loved her. Behold the quality of her father’s love! To give him happiness was now the principal aim for her, her own happiness being decently buried; and here he was happy: why should she be the cause of his going and losing the poor pleasure he so much enjoyed?

  The idea of her devotedness flattered her feebleness. She betrayed signs of hesitation; and in hesitating, she looked away from a look at Willoughby, thinking (so much against her nature was it to resign herself to him) that it would not have been so difficult with an ill-favoured man. With one horribly ugly, it would have been a horrible exultation to cast off her youth and take the fiendish leap.

  Unfortunately for Sir Willoughby, he had his reasons for pressing impatienc
e; and seeing her deliberate, seeing her hasty look at his fine figure, his opinion of himself combined with his recollection of a particular maxim of the Great Book to assure him that her resistance was over: chiefly owing, as he supposed, to his physical perfections.

  Frequently indeed, in the contest between gentlemen and ladies, have the maxims of the Book stimulated the assailant to victory. They are rosy with blood of victims. To hear them is to hear a horn that blows the mort: has blown it a thousand times. It is good to remember how often they have succeeded, when, for the benefit of some future Lady Vauban,31 who may bestir her wits to gather maxims for the inspiriting of the Defence, the circumstance of a failure has to be recorded.

  Willoughby could not wait for the melting of the snows. He saw full surely the dissolving process; and sincerely admiring and coveting her as he did, rashly this ill-fated gentleman attempted to precipitate it, and so doing arrested.

  Whence might we draw a note upon yonder maxim, in words akin to these: Make certain ere a breath come from thee that thou be not a frost.

  ‘Mine! She is mine!’ he cried: ‘mine once more! mine utterly! mine eternally!’ and he followed up his devouring exclamations in person as she, less decidedly, retreated. She retreated as young ladies should ever do, two or three steps, and he would not notice that she had become an angry Dian, all arrows: her maidenliness in surrendering pleased him. Grasping one fair hand, he just allowed her to edge on the outer circle of his embrace, crying: ‘Not a syllable of what I have gone through! You shall not have to explain it, my Clara. I will study you more diligently, to be guided by you, my darling. If I offend again, my wife will not find it hard to speak what my bride withheld – I do not ask why: perhaps not able to weigh the effect of her reticence: not at that time, when she was younger and less experienced, estimating the sacredness of a plighted engagement. It is past, we are one, my dear sir and father. You may leave us now.’

  ‘I profoundly rejoice to hear that I may,’ said Dr Middleton.

  Clara writhed her captured hand.

  ‘No, papa, stay. It is an error, an error. You must not leave me. Do not think me utterly, eternally, belonging to any one but you. No one shall say I am his but you.’

  ‘Are you quicksands, Clara Middleton, that nothing can be built on you? Whither is a flighty head and a shifty will carrying the girl?’

  ‘Clara and I, sir,’ said Willoughby.

  ‘And so you shall,’ said the Doctor, turning about.

  ‘Not yet, papa.’ Clara sprang to him.

  ‘Why, you, you, you, it was you who craved to be alone with Willoughby!’ her father shouted; ‘and here we are rounded to our starting-point, with the solitary difference that now you do not want to be alone with Willoughby. First I am bidden go; next I am pulled back; and judging by collar and coat-tail, I suspect you to be a young woman to wear an angel’s temper threadbare before you determine upon which one of the tides driving him to and fro you intend to launch on yourself. Where is your mind?’

  Clara smoothed her forehead.

  ‘I wish to please you, papa.’

  ‘I request you to please the gentleman who is your appointed husband.’

  ‘I am anxious to perform my duty.’

  ‘That should be a satisfactory basis for you, Willoughby; – as girls go!’

  ‘Let me, sir, simply entreat to have her hand in mine before you.’

  ‘Why not, Clara?’

  ‘Why an empty ceremony, papa?’

  ‘The implication is, that she is prepared for the important one, friend Willoughby.’

  ‘Her hand, sir; the reassurance of her hand in mine under your eyes: – after all that I have suffered, I claim it, I think I claim it reasonably, to restore me to confidence.’

  ‘Quite reasonably; which is not to say, necessarily; but, I will add, justifiably; and it may be, sagaciously, when dealing with the volatile.’

  ‘And here,’ said Willoughby, ‘is my hand.’

  Clara recoiled.

  He stepped on. Her father frowned. She lifted both her hands from the shrinking elbows, darted a look of repulsion at her pursuer, and ran to her father, crying: ‘Call it my mood! I am volatile, capricious, flighty, very foolish. But you see that I attach a real meaning to it, and feel it to be binding: I cannot think it an empty ceremony, if it is before you. Yes, only be a little considerate to your moody girl. She will be in a fitter state in a few hours. Spare me this moment; I must collect myself. I thought I was free; I thought he would not press me. If I give my hand hurriedly now, I shall, I know, immediately repent it. There is the picture of me! But, papa, I mean to try to be above that, and if I go and walk by myself, I shall grow calm to perceive where my duty lies…’

  ‘In which direction shall you walk?’ said Willoughby.

  ‘Wisdom is not upon a particular road,’ said Dr Middleton.

  ‘I have a dread, sir, of that one which leads to the railway-station.’

  ‘With some justice!’ Dr Middleton sighed over his daughter.

  Clara coloured to deep crimson: but she was beyond anger, and was rather gratified by an offence coming from Willoughby.

  ‘I will promise not to leave his grounds, papa.’

  ‘My child, you have threatened to be a breaker of promises.’

  ‘Oh!’ she wailed. ‘But I will make it a vow to you.’

  ‘Why not make it a vow to me this moment, for this gentleman’s contentment, that he shall be your husband within a given period?’

  ‘I will come to you voluntarily. I burn to be alone.’

  ‘I shall lose her,’ exclaimed Willoughby, in heartfelt earnest.

  ‘How so?’ said Dr Middleton. ‘I have her, sir, if you will favour me by continuing in abeyance. – You will come within an hour voluntarily, Clara; and you will either at once yield your hand to him or you will furnish reasons, and they must be good ones, for withholding it.’

  ‘Yes, papa.’

  ‘You will?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Mind, I say reasons.’

  ‘Reasons, papa. If I have none…’

  ‘If you have none that are to my satisfaction, you implicitly and instantly, and cordially obey my command.’

  ‘I will obey.’

  ‘What more would you require?’ Dr Middleton bowed to Sir Willoughby in triumph.

  ‘Will she…’

  ‘Sir! sir!’

  ‘She is your daughter, sir. I am satisfied.’

  ‘She has perchance wrestled with her engagement, as the aboriginals of a land newly discovered by a crew of adventurous colonists do battle with the garments imposed on them by our considerate civilization; – ultimately to rejoice with excessive dignity in the wearing of a battered cocked-hat and trowsers not extending to the shanks: but she did not break her engagement, sir; and we will anticipate that, moderating a young woman’s native wildness, she may, after the manner of my comparison, take a similar pride in her fortune in good season.’

  Willoughby had not leisure to sound the depth of Dr Middleton’s compliment. He had seen Clara gliding out of the room during the delivery; and his fear returned on him that, not being won, she was lost.

  ‘She has gone.’ Her father noticed her absence. ‘She does not waste time in her mission to procure that astonishing product of a shallow soil, her reasons; if such be the object of her search. But no: it signifies that she deems herself to have need of composure – nothing more. No one likes to be turned about; we like to turn ourselves about; and in the question of an act to be committed, we stipulate that it shall be our act –girls and others. After the lapse of an hour, it will appear to her as her act. Happily, Willoughby, we do not dine away from Patterne to-night.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘It may be attributable to a sense of deserving, but I could plead guilty to a weakness for old Port to-day.’

  ‘There shall be an extra bottle, sir.’

  ‘All going favourably with you, as I have no cause to doubt,’ said Dr Middl
eton, with the motion of wafting his host out of the library.

  CHAPTER 42

  Shows the Divining Arts of a Perceptive Mind

  STARTING from the Hall a few minutes before Dr Middleton and Sir Willoughby had entered the drawing-room overnight, Vernon parted company with Colonel De Craye at the park-gates, and betook himself to the cottage of the Dales, where nothing had been heard of his wanderer; and he received the same disappointing reply from Dr Corney, out of the bedroom window of the genial physician, whose astonishment at his covering so long a stretch of road at night for news of a boy like Crossjay – gifted with the lives of a cat – became violent and rapped Punch-like blows on the window-sill at Vernon’s refusal to take shelter and rest. Vernon’s excuse was that he had ‘no one but that fellow to care for’, and he strode off, naming a farm five miles distant. Dr Corney howled an invitation to early breakfast to him, in the event of his passing on his way back, and retired to bed to think of him. The result of a variety of conjectures caused him to set Vernon down as Miss Middleton’s knight, and he felt a strong compassion for his poor friend. ‘Though,’ thought he, ‘a hopeless attachment is as pretty an accompaniment to the tune of life as a gentleman might wish to have, for it’s one of those big doses of discord which make all the minor ones fit in like an agreeable harmony, and so he shuffles along as pleasantly as the fortune-favoured, when they come to compute!’

  Sir Willoughby was the fortune-favoured in the little doctor’s mind; that high-stepping gentleman having wealth, and public consideration, and the most ravishing young lady in the world for a bride. Still, though he reckoned all these advantages enjoyed by Sir Willoughby at their full value, he could imagine the ultimate balance of good fortune to be in favour of Vernon. But to do so, he had to reduce the whole calculation to the extreme abstract, and feed his lean friend, as it were, on dew and roots; and the happy effect for Vernon lay in a distant future, on the borders of old age, where he was to be blessed with his lady’s regretful preference, and rejoice in the fruits of good constitutional habits. The reviewing mind was Irish. Sir Willoughby was a character of man profoundly opposed to Dr Corney’s nature; the latter’s instincts bristled with antagonism – not to his race, for Vernon was of the same race, partly of the same blood, and Corney loved him: the type of person was the annoyance. And the circumstance of its prevailing successfulness in the country where he was placed, while it held him silent as if under a law, heaped stores of insurgency in the Celtic bosom. Corney contemplating Sir Willoughby, and a trotting kern governed by Strongbow, have a point of likeness between them; with the point of difference that Corney was enlightened to know of a friend better adapted for eminent station, and especially better