Chapter XXI

O what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do! not knowing what they do! MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

One morning, about these days, Mr. and Miss Haye were seated at the opposite ends of the breakfast-table. They had been there for some time, silently buttering rolls and sipping coffee, in a leisurely way on Mr. Haye's part, and an ungratified one on the part of his daughter. He was considering, also in a leisurely sort of way, the columns of the morning paper; she considering him and the paper, and at intervals knocking with her knife against the edge of her plate, -- a meditative and discontented knife, and an impassive and unimpressed plate. So breakfast went on till Elizabeth's cup was nearly emptied.

"Father," said she, "it is very unsociable and stupid for you to read the paper, and me to eat my breakfast alone. You might read aloud, if you must read."

Mr. Haye brought his head round from the paper long enough to swallow half a cupful of coffee.

"Where's Rose?"

"In bed, for aught I know. There is no moving her till she has a mind."

"'Seems to me, it is quite as difficult to move you," said her father.

"Ay, but then I _have a mind_ -- which makes all the difference."

Mr. Haye went back to his paper and considered it till the rest of his cup of coffee was thoroughly cold. Elizabeth finished her breakfast, and sat, drawn back into herself, with arms folded, looking into the fireplace. Finding his coffee cold, Mr. Haye's attention came at length back upon his daughter.

"What do you want me to talk about?" he said.

"It don't signify, your talking about anything now," said Elizabeth. "Everything is cold -- mind and matter together. I don't know how you'll find the coffee, father."

Mr. Haye stirred it, with a discontented look.

"Rose is late," he remarked again.

"_That's_ nothing new," said Elizabeth. "Late is her time."

Mr. Haye drunk his cold cupful.

"You're very fond of her, Lizzie, aren't you?"

"No," said Elizabeth. "I don't think I am."

"Not fond of her!" said Mr. Haye in a very surprised tone.

"No," said Elizabeth, -- "I don't think I am."

"I thought you were," said her father, in a voice that spoke both chagrin and displeasure.

"What made you think so?"

"You always seemed fond of her," said Mr. Haye.

"I can't have seemed so, for I never was so. There isn't enough of her to be fond of. I talk to her, and like her after a fashion, because she is the only person near me that I can talk to -- that's all."

"_I_ am fond of her," said Mr. Haye.

"It takes more to make me fond of anybody," said his daughter. "I know _you_ are."

"What does Rose want, to have the honour of your good opinion?"

"O don't talk in that tone!" said Elizabeth. "I had rather you would not talk at all. You have chosen an unhappy subject. It takes a good deal to make me like anybody much, father."

"What does Rose want?"

"As near as possible, everything," said Elizabeth, -- "if you _will_ have the answer."

"What?"

"Why father, she has nothing in the world but a very pretty face."

"You grant her that," said Mr. Haye.

"Yes, I grant her that, though it is a great while since _I_ saw it pretty. Father, I care nothing at all for any face which has nothing beneath the outside. It's a barren prospect to me, however fair the outside may be -- I don't care to let my eye dwell on it."

"How do you like the prospect of your own, in the glass?"

"I should be very sorry if I didn't think it had infinitely more in it than the face we have been speaking of. It is not so beautifully tinted, nor so regularly cut; but _I_ like it better."

"I am afraid few people will agree with you," said her father dryly.

"There's one thing," said Elizabeth, -- "I sha'n't know it if they don't. But then I see my face at a disadvantage, looking stupidly at itself in the glass -- I hope it does better to other people."

"I didn't know you thought quite so much of yourself," said Mr. Haye.

"I haven't told you the half," said Elizabeth, looking at him. "I am afraid I think more of myself than anybody else does, or ever will."

"If you do it so well for yourself, I'm afraid other people won't save you the trouble," said her father.

"I'm afraid _you_ will not, by the tone in which you speak, father."

"What has set you against Rose?"

"Nothing in the world! I am not set against her. Nothing in the world but her own emptiness and impossibility of being anything like a companion to me."

"Elizabeth! --"

"Father! -- What's the matter?"

"How dare you talk in that manner?"

"Why father," said Elizabeth, her tone somewhat quieting as his was roused, -- "I never saw the thing yet I didn't dare say, if I thought it. Why shouldn't I?"

"Because it is not true -- a word of it."

"I'm sure I wish it wasn't true," said Elizabeth. "What I said was true. It's a sorrowful truth to me, too, for I haven't a soul to talk to that can understand me -- not even you, father, it seems."

"I wish I didn't understand you," said Mr. Haye.

"It's nothing very dreadful to understand," said Elizabeth, -- "what I have been saying now. I wonder how you can think so much of it. I know you love Rose better than I do."

"I love her so well --" said Mr. Haye, and stopped.

"So well that what?"

"That I can hardly talk to you with temper."

"Then don't let us talk about it at all," said Elizabeth, whose own heightened colour shewed that her temper was moving.

"Unhappily it is necessary," said Mr. Haye dryly.

"Why in the world is it necessary? You can't alter the matter, father, by talking; -- it must stand so."

"Stand how?"

"Why, as it does stand -- Rose and I as near as possible nothing to each other."

"Things can hardly stand so," said Mr. Haye. "You must be either less or more."

Elizabeth sat silent and looked at him. He looked at nothing but what was on his plate.

"How would you like to have Rose take your place?"

"My place?" said Elizabeth.

"Yes," said Mr. Haye laconically.

"No place that I fill, _could_ be filled by Rose," said Elizabeth, with the slightest perceptible lifting of her head and raising of her brow.

"We will try that," said Mr. Haye bitterly; "for I will put her over your head, and we will see."

"Put her _where?_" said Elizabeth.

"Over this house -- over my establishment -- at this table -- in your place as the head of this family."

"You will take _her_ for your daughter, and discard me?" said Elizabeth.

"No -- I will not, --" said Mr. Haye, cutting a piece of beefsteak in a way that shewed him indifferent to its fate. "I will not! -- I will make her my wife! --"

Elizabeth had risen from the table and now she stood on the rug before the fire, with her arms behind her, looking down at the breakfast-table and her father. Literally, looking down _upon_ them. Her cheeks were very pale, but fires that were not heaven-lit were burning somewhere within her, shining out at her eye and now and then colouring her face with a sudden flare. There was a pause. Mr. Haye tried what he could do with his beefsteak; and his daughter's countenance shewed the cloud and the flame of the volcano by turns. For awhile the father and daughter held off from each other. But Mr. Haye's breakfast gave symptoms of coming to an end.

"Father," said Elizabeth, bringing her hands in front of her and clasping them, -- "say you did not mean that!"

"Ha! --" said Mr. Haye without looking at her, and brushing the crumbs from his pantaloons.

Elizabeth waited.

"What did you mean?"

"I spoke plain enough," said he.

"Do you mean to say that you _meant_ that?" said Elizabeth, the volcanic fires leaping up bright.

"Meant it?" said Mr. Haye, looking at her. "Yes, I meant it."

"Father, you did not! --"

Mr. Haye looked again at her hands and her face, and answered coolly.

"Ask Rose whether I meant it, --"

And left the room.

Elizabeth neither saw nor heard, for some minutes; they might have been many or few. Then she became aware that the servant was asking her if he should leave the breakfast-table still for Miss Cadwallader; and her answer, "No -- take it away!" -- was given with startling decision. The man had known his young mistress before to speak with lips that were supreme in their expression. He only obeyed, without even wondering. Elizabeth in a whirl of feeling that like the smoke of the volcano hid everything but itself, went and stood in the window; present to nothing but herself; seeing neither the street without nor the house within. Wrapped in that smoke, she did not know when the servant went out, nor whether anybody else came in. She stood there pale, with lips set, her hands folded against her waist, and pressing there with a force the muscles never relaxed. How long she did not know. Something aroused her, and she discerned, through the smoke, another figure in the room and coming towards her. Elizabeth stepped out from the window, without altering anything but her place, and stood opposite to Winthrop Landholm. If it had been Queen Elizabeth of old and one of her courtiers, it would have been all one; the young man's respectful greeting could not have been met with more superb regality of head and brow.

"I have a letter for Mr. Haye," said Winthrop, "which my brother left in my charge. That brought me here this morning, and I ventured to make business an excuse for pleasure."

"It may lie on the table till he comes," said Elizabeth with the slightest bend of her stately little head. She might have meant the letter or the pleasure or the business, or all three.

"You are well, Miss Haye?" said Winthrop doubtfully.

"No -- I am well enough," said Elizabeth. A revulsion of feeling had very nearly brought down her head in a flood of tears; but she kept that back carefully and perfectly; and the next instant she started with another change, for Rose came in. _She_ gave Winthrop a very smiling and bright salutation; which he acknowledged silently, gravely, and even distantly.

"Aren't you well, Mr. Landholm?" was Rose's next instant question, most sweetly given.

"Very well," he said with another bow.

"What have you been talking about, to get so melancholy? Lizzie --"

But Rose caught sight of the gathered blackness of that face, and stopped short. Elizabeth bestowed one glance upon her; and as she then turned to the other person of the party the revulsion came over her again, so strong that it was overcoming. For a minute her hands went to her face, and it was with extreme difficulty that the rising heart was kept down. Will had the mastery, however, and her face looked up again more dark than ever.

"We have talked of nothing at all," she said. "Mr. Landholm only came to bring a letter."

Mr. Landholm could not stay after that, for anything. He bowed himself out; and left Elizabeth standing in the middle of the floor, looking as if the crust of the earth had given way under her and 'chaos was come again.' She stood there as she had stood in the window, still and cold; and Rose afar off by the chimney corner stood watching her, as one would a wild beast or a venomous creature in the room, not a little fear mingled with a shadow of something else in her face.

Elizabeth's first movement was to walk a few steps up and down, swinging one clenched hand, but half the breadth of the room was all she went. She sunk down there beside a chair and hid her face, exclaiming or rather groaning out, one after the other, -- "Oh! -- oh!" -- in such tones as are dragged from very far down in the heart; careless of Rose's hearing her.

"What is the matter, Lizzie?" -- her companion ventured timidly. But Elizabeth gave no answer; and neither of them stirred for many minutes, an occasional uneasy flutter of Rose's being the exception. The question at last was asked over again, and responded to.

"That my father has disgraced himself, and that you are the cause!"

"There's no disgrace," said Rose.

"Don't say he has not!" said Elizabeth, looking up with an eye that glared upon her adversary. "And before he had done it, I wish you had never been born, -- or I."

"It's no harm, --" said Rose confusedly.

"Harm! -- harm, --" repeated Elizabeth; then putting her face down again; "Oh! -- what's the use of living, in such a world!"

"I don't see what harm it does to you," said Rose, muttering her words.

"Harm?" repeated Elizabeth. "If it was right to wish it, -- which I believe it isn't, -- I could wish that I was dead. It almost seems to me I wish I were!"

"You're not sure about it," said Rose.

"No, I am not," said Elizabeth looking up at her again with eyes of fire and a face from which pain and passion had driven all but livid colour, -- but looking at her steadily, -- "because there is something after death; and I am not sure that I am ready for it. I _dare_ not say I wish I was dead, Rose Cadwallader, or you would drive me to it!"

"I'm sure, I've done nothing," -- said Rose whimpering.

"Done nothing!" said Elizabeth with a concentrated power of expression. "Oh I wish you had done anything, before my father had lowered himself in my eyes and you had been the cause! --"

"I'm not the cause of anything," said Rose.

Elizabeth did not answer; she was crouching by the side of the chair in an uneasy position that said how far from ease the spirit was.

"And he hasn't lowered himself," Rose went on pouting.

"It is done!" -- said Elizabeth, getting up from the floor and standing, not unlike a lightning-struck tree. -- "I wonder what will become of me! --"

"What are you going to do?"

"I would find a way out of this house, if I knew how."

"That's easy enough," said Rose with a slight sneer. "There are plenty of ways."

"Easy enough, --if one could find the right one."

"Why you've had me in the house a great while, already," said Rose.

"I _have had_ --" said Elizabeth. -- "I wonder if I shall ever have anything again!"

"Why what have you lost?"

"Everything -- except myself."

"You have a great respect for Mr. Haye," said Rose.

"I had."

Rose at this point thought fit to burst into a great fit of tears. Elizabeth stood by the table, taking up and putting down one book after another, as if the touch of them gave her fingers pain; and looking as if, as she said, she had lost everything. Then stood with folded arms eyeing something that was not before her; and then slowly walked out of the room.

"Lizzie --" said Rose.

"What?" said Elizabeth stopping at the door.

"What's the use of taking things so?"

"The use of necessity."

"But we can be just as we were before."

Elizabeth went on and gained her own room; and there she and pain had a fight that lasted the rest of the day.

The fight was not over, and weary traces of it were upon her face, when late in the afternoon she went out to try the change of a walk. The walk made no change whatever. As she was coming up the Parade, she was met by Winthrop going down. If he had seen only the gravity and reserve of the morning, it is probable he would not have stopped to speak to her; but though those were in her face still, there was beside a weary set of the brow and sorrowful line of the lips, very unwonted there, and the cheeks were pale; and instead of passing with a mere bow he came up and offered his hand. Elizabeth took it, but without the least brightening of face.

"Are you out for a walk?" said he.

"No -- I am for home -- I have had a walk."

"It is a very fine afternoon," said he, turning and beginning to walk along slowly with her.

"Is it?"

"Haven't you found out that it is?"

"No."

"Where have you been, not to know it?"

"Hum --" said Elizabeth, -- "if you mean where my _mind_ has been, that is one question; as for my bodily self, I have been on the Castle Green."

"You have lost your walk," said he. "Don't you feel inclined to turn about with me and try to pick up what you came out for?"

"Better there than at home," thought Elizabeth, and she turned about accordingly.

"People come out for a variety of things," she remarked however.

"That is true," said Winthrop smiling. "I am afraid I was hasty in presuming I could help you to find your object. I was thinking only of mine."

"I don't know but you could, as well as anybody," said Elizabeth. "If you could give me your mother's secret for not minding disagreeable things."

"I am afraid I cannot say she does not mind them," he answered.

"What then? -- I thought you said so."

"I do not remember what I said. I might have said that she does not struggle with them -- those at least which cannot be removed by struggling."

"Not struggle with them?" said Elizabeth. "Sit down quietly with them!"

"Yes," he said gravely. "Not at first, but at last."

"I don't believe in it," said Elizabeth. "That is, I don't believe in it as a general thing. It may be possible for her. I am sure it never could be for me."

Winthrop was silent, and they walked so for the space of half a block.

"Would she say that it is possible for everybody?" inquired Elizabeth then.

"I believe she would say that it is not temperament, nor circumstance, nor stoical philosophy."

"What then?"

"A drop of some pacifying oil out of a heaven-wrought chalice."

"I don't think figures are the easiest mode of getting at things, Mr. Landholm. You don't make this clear."

He smiled a little, as he pushed open the little wicket gate of the Green, and without saying anything more they sauntered in, along the broad gravel walk sweeping round the enclosure; slowly, till they had passed the fortifications and stood looking upon the bay over towards Blue Point. The sun was almost on the low ruddied horizon; a stirring north breeze came down from the up country, roughening the bay, and the sunbeams leapt across from the opposite western shore giving a touch of light to every wave. The air was very fine; the sky without a cloud, except some waiting flecks of vapour around the sun. The two friends stood still some little time, to look or to think; looking especially at the fair glowing western heaven, and the tossing water between, every roll of which was with a dance and a sparkle.

"Does _this_ make anything clear?" asked Winthrop, when some time had gone by without speech or movement from either of them.

He spoke lightly enough; but the answer was given in a tone that bespoke its truth.

"Oh no! --"

And Elizabeth's face was turned away so that he could see nothing but her bonnet, beside the tremulous swell of the throat; that he _did_ see.

"It has very often such an effect for me," -- he went on in the same tone. "And I often come here for the very purpose of trying it; when my head gets thick over law-papers."

"That may do for some things," said Elizabeth. "It won't for others."

"This would work well along with my mother's recipe," he said.

"What is that?" said Elizabeth harshly. "You didn't tell me."

"I am hardly fit to tell you," he answered, "for I do not thoroughly know it myself. But I know she would send you to the Bible, --and tell you of a hand that she trusts to do everything for her, and that she knows will do all things well, and kindly."

"But does that hinder disagreeables from being disagreeables?" said Elizabeth with some impatience of tone. "Does that hinder aches from being pain?"

"Hardly. But I believe it stops or soothes the aching. I believe it, because I have seen it."

Elizabeth stood still, her bosom swelling, and that fluttering of her throat growing more fluttering. It got beyond her command. The mixed passions and vexations, and with them a certain softer and more undefined regret, reached a point where she had no control over them. The tears would come, and once arrived at that, they took their own way; with such a rush of passionate indulgence, that a thought of the time and the place and the witness, made nothing, or came in only to swell the rush. The flood poured over the barrier with such joy at being set free, that it carried all before it. Elizabeth was just conscious of being placed on a seat, near to which it happened that she was standing; and she knew nothing more. She did not even know how completely she was left to herself. Not till the fever of passion was brought a little down, and recollection and shame began to take their turn, and she checked her tears and stole a secret glance around to see what part of the gravel walk supported a certain pair of feet, for higher than the ground she dared not look. Her surprise was a good deal to find that her glance must take quite a wide range to meet with them; and then venturing a single upward look, she saw that her companion standing at a little distance was not watching her, nor apparently had been; his attitude bespoke him quietly fixed upon something else and awaiting her leisure. Elizabeth brought her eyes home again.

"What a strange young man!" was her quick thought; -- "to have been brought up a farmer's boy, and to know enough and to dare enough to put me on this seat, and then to have the wit to go off and stand there in that manner!"

But this tribute of respect to Winthrop was instantly followed by an endeavour to do herself honour, in the way of gaining self-possession and her ordinary looks as speedily as possible. She commanded herself well after once she got the reins in hand; yet however it was with a grave consciousness of swollen eyes and flushed cheeks that she presently rose from her place and went forward to the side of the quiet figure that stood there with folded arms watching the rolling waters of the bay. Elizabeth stood at his elbow a minute in hesitation.

"I am ready now, Mr. Landholm. I am sorry I have kept you by my ridiculousness."

"I have not been kept beyond my pleasure," he said.

"I lost command of myself," Elizabeth went on. "That happens to me once in a while."

"You will feel better for it," he said, as they turned and began to walk homewards.

"He takes things coolly!" thought Elizabeth.

"Do you men ever lose command of yourselves?"

"Sometimes -- I am afraid," he said with a smile.

"I suppose your greater power of nerve and of guarding appearances, is one secret of the triumphant sort of pride you wear upon occasion. There --I see it in your face now."

"I hope not," said Winthrop laughing. "The best instance of self-control that I ever saw, was most unaccompanied with any arrogance of merit or power."

"He means his mother again," thought Elizabeth.

"Was that instance in a man or a woman, Mr. Landholm?"

"It was in a woman -- unfortunately for your ground."

"Not at all," said Elizabeth. "Exceptions prove nothing."

Winthrop said nothing, for his thoughts were busy with that image of sweet self-guidance which he had never known to be unsteady or fail; and which, he knew, referred all its strength and all its stableness to the keeping of another hand. Most feminine, most humble, and most sure.

"Mr. Winthrop, your mother puzzles me," said Elizabeth. "I wish I knew some of her secrets."

"I wish I did," he answered with half a sigh.

"Why, don't you!"

"No."

"I thought you did."

"No; for she says they can only be arrived at through a certain initiation which I have not had -- after certain preliminary steps, which I have not yet taken."

Elizabeth looked at him, both surprised and curious.

"What are they?"

Winthrop's face was graver than usual, as he said,

"I wish my mother were here to answer you."

"Why, cannot you?"

"No."

"Don't you know the preliminary steps, Mr. Landholm?"

He looked very grave again.

"Not clearly enough to tell you. In general, I know she would say there is a narrow way to be passed through before the treasures of truth, or its fair prospects, can be arrived at; but I have never gone that way myself and I cannot point out the way-marks."

"Are you referring to the narrow gate spoken of in the Bible?"

"To the same."

"Then you are getting upon what _I_ do not understand," said Elizabeth.

They had mounted the steps of No. 11, and were waiting for the door to be opened. They waited silently till it was done, and then parted with only a 'good night.' Elizabeth did not ask him in, and it hardly occurred to Winthrop to wonder that she did not.

Mr. Landholm read no classics that night. Neither law. Neither, which may seem more strange, did he consult his Book of books at all. He busied himself, not exactly with the study of the human mind, but of two human minds, -- which, though at first sight it may seem an enlargement of the subject, is in fact rather a contracted view of the same.