Anna St. Ives Part 42

The words are Mr. Henley's.

I imagined as much, madam.

I thought them expressive, and amused myself with putting a tune to them.

I am as good as a witch!

How did you like the subject?

What subject, madam?

Of the words.

I really don't know--I have forgotten--

Nay, you said you thought them very fine! Oh! Yes!--True!--Very fine!--All about love--I recollect.

Well, and having so much faith in love, you do not think them the worse for that.

Oh, by no means!--But I thought you had.

Love in a song may be pardonable.

Especially, madam, if the song be written by Mr. Henley.

Clifton!--You almost teach me to despair!--You do not know me!--Perhaps however I am more to blame than you, at present. Timidity has given me some appearance of conscious guilt, which my heart disavows. But, as there is scarcely any error more dangerous to felicity than suspicion, I own I am sorry to see you so frequently its slave. Never think of that woman for a wife, in whom you cannot confide. And ask yourself whether I ought to marry a man who cannot discover that I merit his confidence?

I find, indeed, implicit faith to be as necessary in love as in religion--But you know your power, madam.

An indifferent spectator would rather say you know yours.

You will not go, madam, and leave me thus?

I must.

In this misery?

I have letters to write, and visits to pay.

You cannot be so cruel?--By heaven, madam, this torment is more than nature can support!

Less impetuosity, Clifton; less raptures, and more reason.

You would have me rock, madam! Unfeeling marble!

I would have you a man; a rational, and, if possible, a wise one. Stay at least for a moment!--Hear me!--Do not leave me in these doubts!

What doubts?--Do I not tell you the words are Mr. Henley's? The air is mine. If setting them were any guilt, it is a guilt of which I am not conscious. Shew me that it is criminal and I will instantly retract. We must either overcome these narrow, these selfish propensities, or we shall hope in vain to be happy.

I--I--I make no accusation--

Do but examine before you accuse, and I will patiently hear and cheerfully answer to accusation. If you think it wrong in me not to treat virtue and genius with neglect, bring me your proofs, and if I cannot demonstrate their fallacy I will own my error. Let me add, the accusation of reason is a duty; from which, though painful, we ought not to shrink. It is the mistaken accusation of the pa.s.sions only at which justice bids the heart revolt.

Here, Louisa, once again I left him, with struggles apparently more acute than the former. And my own mind is so affected, so oppressed as it were by crowds of ideas, that I do not yet know whether this were an accident to be wished, or even whether I have entirely acted as I ought. My mind will grow calmer, and I will then begin the scrutiny.

I am minute in relating these particulars, because I am very desirous of doing right. And who is so capable of being my judge, or who so anxious I should not err, as my dear Louisa, my friend, my sister?

All good be with you!

A. W. ST. IVES

LETTER LXXVII

_c.o.ke Clifton to Guy Fairfax_

_London, Dover-Street_

Oh, Fairfax, if my choler rose when last I wrote, where shall I now find words hot enough to paint the phrensy of my soul?--How could I rage and rave!--Is it come to this?--So barefaced!--So fearless!--So unblushingly braved!--

Fairfax, I came upon them!--By surprise!--My alert and watchful spirit, an adept in such arts, accustomed to them, and rendered suspicious by practice and experience, foreboded some such possibility--My knock at the door was counterfeit. I strode up stairs to the drawing-room, three steps at a time--Swiftly and suddenly--I opened the door--There they sat!--Alone!--She singing a miserable ditty, a bead-roll of lamentable rhymes, strung together by this Quidam!--This Henley!--Nay!--Oh!--d.a.m.nation!--Read and tremble!--Read and aid me to curse!--Set by her!--Ay!--A ballad--A love complaint--A most doleful woe-begone elegy; of sorrows, sufferings, fate, despair, and death; scribbled by him, and set and sung by her!--By her!--For his comfort, his solace, his pleasure, his diversion!--I caught them at it!--Nay they defied me, despised the wrath that drank up the moisture of my eyes, blazed in my blood, and scorched my very soul!--

And after this will I blench? Will I recant the denunciations which legitimate vengeance had p.r.o.nounced?--

Fairfax--I am not certain that I do not hate her!--No!--Angelic sorceress!--It is not hatred, neither--But it is a tumult, a congregate anarchy of feelings which I cannot unravel; except that the first feature of them is revenge!--Roused and insulted as I am, not all her blandishments can dazzle, divert, or melt me! Were mountains to be moved, dragons to be slain, or lakes of liquid fire to be traversed, I would encounter all to attain my end!--Yes--My romance shall equal hers. No epic hero, not Orpheus, Aeneas, or Milton's Lucifer himself, was ever more determined. I could plunge into Erebus, and give battle to the legion phantoms of h.e.l.l, to accomplish my fixed purpose!--Fixed!--Fixed!--Hoot me, hiss at me, despise me if I turn recreant! No--Then may all who ever heard the name of c.o.ke Clifton make it their byword and their scoff; and every idiot curl the nose and snuff me to scorn!

Recollect but the various affronts I have received, Fairfax, from her and [Oh patience!] Her inamorato! For is he not so?--Wrongs, some of which irritate most because they could not be resented; insults, some petty some gigantic, which ages could not obliterate; call these to mind, and then think whether my resolves be not rock-built! Insolent intrusion has been his part from the first moment to the last. The prince of upstarts, man could not abash him, nor naked steel affright!

On my first visit, entrance was denied by him! Permission was asked of a gardener's son, and the gardener's son st.u.r.dily refused! I argued! I threatened!--I!--And arguments and threats were so much hot breath, but harmless! Attempts to silence or to send him back to his native barn alike were baffled; and I, who planned his removal, was constrained to pet.i.tion for his stay. Yes, constrained!--It was do it, or!--Oh!--Be faithful to me, memory!--He was elected president of opinions and disputes, past, present and to come. Appeals must all be made to him, and his sentence was definitive. Law or gospel, physics or metaphysics; himself alone superior to college, court, or convocation. Before him sunk scholiast and schools. In his presence the doctors all must stand uncapped: the seraphic, the subtle, and the singular; the illuminated, the angelic, and the irrefragable to him, were tyros all. Our censor in private, and in public our familiar: like a malignant demon, no respect, no place, no human barriers could exclude him. On no side could the offended eye turn, and not find him there. Disgraced by his company, counteracted by his arrogance, insulted by his sarcasms; obliged to accept the first of favours, life, at his hands; his apparent inferior in the moment of danger; my ministry rejected for his, nay contemned, in a case where the gentleman, the man of the world, and the man of honour merited undoubted preference; and, as the climax of injury, wronged in my love!--Rivalled!--Furies!--

And she!--Has she been less contumelious, less annoyant, less tormenting?--His advocate, his abettor, his adulator, with me only she was scrupulous and severe. I generously and almost instantly forgot all former resolves, and would have thrown myself into her arms--Unconditionally--I, who had been accustomed to give the law, not to receive. I a.s.sumed not the dictator. I, whose family, courage, person, and parts have made me a favourite with the brave and fair, though flushed with success, far from claiming superiority, I came to cast myself, my freedom, and my trophies at her feet--Came, and was rejected! Bargained with at least; put off with ifs and possibilities!

I must stop--Must think no more--Or the hurrying blood will burst my veins, or suffocate my swelling heart, and impede just retribution for these and all my other thousand wrongs, which only can be avenged by calm and subtle foresight--Yet think not that the smallest of them is forgotten--Oh no!--

Well then, calm will I be; for I can be, will be any thing rather than not attain this supreme of pleasures, divine vengeance! Yes, anger must be bridled: it has now a second time made me tread backward more than all the steps I had taken in advance. My brain is labouring for some certain and uniform plan, but is at present so disturbed that thought can preserve no settled train.

Previous to this second childish overflow of pa.s.sion [for if I would succeed childish it is] I had played a master stroke, in which indeed I must own pa.s.sion was for once my best ally. With most ardent importunity, I with great difficulty wrested a promise from her to be mine. These romancers, Fairfax, hold love promises to be binding and sacred. And this obtained I thought a fair foundation for my fabric.

The current of my thoughts is now wholly turned to this subject. A thousand manoeuvres crowding present themselves; nor can I say how many must be employed. I have generally found my brain rich in expedients, and I think it will not fail me now. I recollect having mentioned the maid, Laura: she is secured, and has been for some time past. The fondness of the fool with one less expert would be dangerous; but I have taught her to rail at me occasionally to her mistress, and to praise the favorite, who has never lately been any great favorite with her, having as I guess overlooked her when she had kinder inclinations.

She was tickled with the contrivance, which promised to secure her so well from the suspicion of her mistress, and she acts her part tolerably. In fact her mistress seems a being without suspicion, superior to it, and holding it in contempt--So much the better!

This fellow, this king of the cuc.u.mber-beds must be removed. I know not yet the means, but they must be found. Present he is dangerous; absent he may perhaps be taught to act his part with safety and effect.

My ideas are not yet methodised, but I have a confused foresight of various modes by which this and much more may and must be accomplished.

But no common efforts can be successful--Deep--Deep must be the plot by which she is to be over-reached, the pit into which she must fall: and deep it therefore shall be. There is no art I will not practise, no restraint to which I will not submit, no desperate expedient to which I will not have recourse to gratify my soul's longing--I will be revenged!--The irrevocable decree is gone forth--I will be revenged!--Fairfax, you soon shall hear of me and my proceedings.

Farewell.