"An Egoist?"
"Who is?"
"You have forgotten our conversation on the day of our walk to the cottage?"
"Help me to forget it — that day, and those days, and all those days! I should be glad to think I passed a time beneath the earth, and have risen again. I was the Egoist. I am sure, if I had been buried, I should not have stood up seeing myself more vilely stained, soiled, disfigured — oh! Help me to forget my conduct, Lætitia. He and I were unsuited — and I remember I blamed myself then. You and he are not: and now I can perceive the pride that can be felt in him. The worst that can be said is that he schemes too much."
"Is there any fresh scheme?" said Lætitia.
The rose came over Clara's face.
"You have not heard? It was impossible, but it was kindly intended. Judging by my own feeling at this moment, I can understand his. We love to see our friends established."
Lætitia bowed. "My curiosity is piqued, of course."
"Dear friend, to-morrow we shall be parted. I trust to be thought of by you as a little better in grain than I have appeared, and my reason for trusting it is that I know I have been always honest — a boorish young woman in my stupid mad impatience: but not insincere. It is no lofty ambition to desire to be remembered in that character, but such is your Clara, she discovers. I will tell you. It is his wish… his wish that I should promise to give my hand to Mr. Whitford. You see the kindness."
Lætitia's eyes widened and fixed:
"You think it kindness?"
"The intention. He sent Mr. Whitford to me, and I was taught to expect him."
"Was that quite kind to Mr. Whitford?"
"What an impression I must have made on you during that walk to the cottage, Lætitia! I do not wonder; I was in a fever."
"You consented to listen?"
"I really did. It astonishes me now, but I thought I could not refuse."
"My poor friend Vernon Whitford tried a love speech?"
"He? no: Oh! no."
"You discouraged him?"
"I? No."
"Gently, I mean."
"No."
"Surely you did not dream of trifling? He has a deep heart."
"Has he?"
"You ask that: and you know something of him."
"He did not expose it to me, dear; not even the surface of the mighty deep."
Lætitia knitted her brows.
"No," said Clara, "not a coquette: she is not a coquette, I assure you."
With a laugh, Lætitia replied: "You have still the 'dreadful power' you made me feel that day."
"I wish I could use it to good purpose!"
"He did not speak?"
"Of Switzerland, Tyrol, the Iliad, Antigone."
"That was all?"
"No, Political Economy. Our situation, you will own, was unexampled: or mine was. Are you interested in me?"
"I should be if I knew your sentiments."
"I was grateful to Sir Willoughby: grieved for Mr. Whitford."
"Real grief?"
"Because the task unposed on him of showing me politely that he did not enter into his cousin's ideas was evidently very great, extremely burdensome."
"You, so quick-eyed in some things, Clara!"
"He felt for me. I saw that in his avoidance of… And he was, as he always is, pleasant. We rambled over the park for I know not how long, though it did not seem long."
"Never touching that subject?"
"Not ever neighbouring it, dear. A gentleman should esteem the girl he would ask… certain questions. I fancy he has a liking for me as a volatile friend."
"If he had offered himself?"
"Despising me?"
"You can be childish, Clara. Probably you delight to tease. He had his time of it, and it is now my turn."
"But he must despise me a little."
"Are you blind?"
"Perhaps, dear, we both are, a little."
The ladies looked deeper into one another.
"Will you answer me?" said Lætitia.
"Your if? If he had, it would have been an act of condescension."
"You are too slippery."
"Stay, dear Lætitia. He was considerate in forbearing to pain me."
"That is an answer. You allowed him to perceive that it would have pained you."
"Dearest, if I may convey to you what I was, in a simile for comparison: I think I was like a fisherman's float on the water, perfectly still, and ready to go down at any instant, or up. So much for my behaviour."
"Similes have the merit of satisfying the finder of them, and cheating the hearer," said Lætitia. "You admit that your feelings would have been painful."
"I was a fisherman's float: please admire my simile; any way you like, this way or that, or so quiet as to tempt the eyes to go to sleep. And suddenly I might have disappeared in the depths, or flown in the air. But no fish bit."
"Well, then, to follow you, supposing the fish or the fisherman, for I don't know which is which… Oh! no, no: this is too serious for imagery. I am to understand that you thanked him at least for his reserve."
"Yes."
"Without the slightest encouragement to him to break it?"
"A fisherman's float, Lætitia!"
Baffled and sighing, Lætitia kept silence for a space. The simile chafed her wits with a suspicion of a meaning hidden in it.
"If he had spoken?" she said.
"He is too truthful a man."
"And the railings of men at pussy women who wind about and will not be brought to a mark, become intelligible to me."
"Then Lætitia, if he had spoken, if, and one could have imagined him sincere…"
"So truthful a man?"
"I am looking at myself If! — why, then, I should have burnt to death with shame. Where have I read? — some story — of an inextinguishable spark. That would have been shot into my heart."
"Shame, Clara? You are free."
"As much as remains of me."
"I could imagine a certain shame, in such a position, where there was no feeling but pride."
"I could not imagine it where there was no feeling but pride."
Lætitia mused. "And you dwell on the kindness of a proposition so extraordinary!" Gaining some light, impatiently she cried: "Vernon loves you."
"Do not say it!"
"I have seen it."
"I have never had a sign of it."
"There is the proof."
"When it might have been shown again and again!"
"The greater proof!"
"Why did he not speak when he was privileged? — strangely, but privileged."
"He feared."
"Me?"
"Feared to wound you — and himself as well, possibly. Men may be pardoned for thinking of themselves in these cases."
"But why should he fear?"
"That another was dearer to you?"
"What cause had I given… Ah I see! He could fear that; suspect it! See his opinion of me! Can he care for such a girl? Abuse me, Lætitia. I should like a good round of abuse. I need purification by fire. What have I been in this house? I have a sense of whirling through it like a madwoman. And to be loved, after it all! — No! we must be hearing a tale of an antiquary prizing a battered relic of the battle-field that no one else would look at. To be loved, I see, is to feel our littleness, hollowness — feel shame. We come out in all our spots. Never to have given me one sign, when a lover would have been so tempted! Let me be incredulous, my own dear Lætitia. Because he is a man of honour, you would say! But are you unconscious of the torture you inflict? For if I am — you say it — loved by this gentleman, what an object it is he loves — that has gone clamouring about more immodestly than women will bear to hear of, and she herself to think of! Oh, I have seen my own heart. It is a frightful spectre. I have seen a weakness in me that would have carried me anywhere. And truly I shall be charitable to women — I have gained that. But loved! by Vernon Whitford! The miserable little me to be taken up and loved after tearing myself to pieces! Have you been simply speculating? You have no positive knowledge of it! Why do you kiss me?"