"Yes," she said, "but you make me feel myself in the dark, and when I do I have the habit of throwing myself for guidance upon such light as I have within. You shall know me, if you will, as well as I know myself. And do not think me far from the point when I say I have a feeble health. I am what the doctors call anaemic; a rather bloodless creature. The blood is life, so I have not much life. Ten years back--eleven, if I must be precise, I thought of conquering the world with a pen! The result is that I am glad of a fireside, and not sure of always having one: and that is my achievement. My days are monotonous, but if I have a dread, it is that there will be an alteration in them. My father has very little money. We subsist on what private income he has, and his pension: he was an army doctor. I may by-and-by have to live in a town for pupils. I could be grateful to any one who would save me from that. I should be astonished at his choosing to have me burden his household as well.--Have I now explained the nature of my pity? It would be the pity of common sympathy, pure lymph of pity, as nearly disembodied as can be. Last year's sheddings from the tree do not form an attractive garland. Their merit is, that they have not the ambition. I am like them. Now, Miss Middleton, I cannot make myself more bare to you. I hope you see my sincerity."
"I do see it," Clara said.
With the second heaving of her heart, she cried: "See it, and envy you that humility! proud if I could ape it! Oh, how proud if I could speak so truthfully true!--You would not have spoken so to me without some good feeling out of which friends are made. That I am sure of. To be very truthful to a person, one must have a liking. So I judge by myself. Do I presume too much?"
Kindness was on Laetitia's face.
"But now," said Clara, swimming on the wave in her bosom, "I tax you with the silliest suspicion ever entertained by one of your rank. Lady, you have deemed me capable of the meanest of our vices!--Hold this hand, Laetitia; my friend, will you? Something is going on in me."
Laetitia took her hand, and saw and felt that something was going on.
Clara said, "You are a woman."
It was her effort to account for the something.
She swam for a brilliant instant on tears, and yielded to the overflow.
When they had fallen, she remarked upon her first long breath quite coolly: "An encouraging picture of a rebel, is it not?"
Her companion murmured to soothe her.
"It's little, it's nothing," said Clara, pained to keep her lips in line.
They walked forward, holding hands, deep-hearted to one another.
"I like this country better now," the shaken girl resumed. "I could lie down in it and ask only for sleep. I should like to think of you here. How nobly self-respecting you must be, to speak as you did! Our dreams of heroes and heroines are cold glitter beside the reality. I have been lately thinking of myself as an outcast of my sex, and to have a good woman liking me a little ... loving? Oh, Laetitia, my friend, I should have kissed you, and not made this exhibition of myself--and if you call it hysterics, woe to you! for I bit my tongue to keep it off when I had hardly strength to bring my teeth together--if that idea of jealousy had not been in your head. You had it from him."
"I have not alluded to it in any word that I can recollect."
"He can imagine no other cause for my wish to be released. I have noticed, it is his instinct to reckon on women as constant by their nature. They are the needles, and he the magnet. Jealousy of you, Miss Dale! Laetitia, may I speak?"
"Say everything you please."
"I could wish:--Do you know my baptismal name?"
"Clara."
"At last! I could wish ... that is, if it were your wish. Yes, I could wish that. Next to independence, my wish would be that. I risk offending you. Do not let your delicacy take arms against me. I wish him happy in the only way that he can be made happy.
There is my jealousy."
"Was it what you were going to say just now?"
"No."
"I thought not."
"I was going to say--and I believe the rack would not make me truthful like you, Laetitia--well, has it ever struck you: remember, I do see his merits; I speak to his faithfullest friend, and I acknowledge he is attractive, he has manly tastes and habits; but has it never struck you ... I have no right to ask; I know that men must have faults, I do not expect them to be saints;
I am not one; I wish I were."
"Has it never struck me ... ?" Laetitia prompted her.
"That very few women are able to be straightforwardly sincere in their speech, however much they may desire to be?"
"They are differently educated. Great misfortune brings it to them."
"I am sure your answer is correct. Have you ever known a woman who was entirely an Egoist?"
"Personally known one? We are not better than men."
"I do not pretend that we are. I have latterly become an Egoist, thinking of no one but myself, scheming to make use of every soul I meet. But then, women are in the position of inferiors. They are hardly out of the nursery when a lasso is round their necks; and if they have beauty, no wonder they turn it to a weapon and make as many captives as they can. I do not wonder! My sense of shame at my natural weakness and the arrogance of men would urge me to make hundreds captive, if that is being a coquette. I should not have compassion for those lofty birds, the hawks. To see them with their wings clipped would amuse me. Is there any other way of punishing them?"
"Consider what you lose in punishing them."
"I consider what they gain if we do not."
Laetitia supposed she was listening to discursive observations upon the inequality in the relations of the sexes. A suspicion of a drift to a closer meaning had been lulled, and the colour flooded her swiftly when Clara said: "Here is the difference I see; I see it; I am certain of it: women who are called coquettes make their conquests not of the best of men; but men who are Egoists have good women for their victims; women on whose devoted constancy they feed; they drink it like blood. I am sure I am not taking the merely feminine view. They punish themselves too by passing over the one suitable to them, who could really give them what they crave to have, and they go where they . . ." Clara stopped. "I have not your power to express ideas," she said.
"Miss Middleton, you have a dreadful power," said Laetitia.
Clara smiled affectionately. "I am not aware of any. Whose cottage is this?"
"My father's. Will you not come in? into the garden?"
Clara took note of ivied windows and roses in the porch. She thanked Laetitia and said: "I will call for you in an hour."
"Are you walking on the road alone?" said Laetitia, incredulously, with an eye to Sir Willoughby's dismay.
"I put my trust in the high-road," Clara replied, and turned away, but turned back to Laetitia and offered her face to be kissed.
The "dreadful power" of this young lady had fervently impressed Laetitia, and in kissing her she marvelled at her gentleness and girlishness.
Clara walked on, unconscious of her possession of power of any kind.