Anna St. Ives Part 59

It cannot be, Mr. Clifton! You this moment feel it cannot! You have begun a course of fraud, and which the whole arrangement of to-day is only meant as so much pitiful machinery to effect. You are conscious, Mr. Clifton, you are conscious, Lord Fitz-Allen, that our meeting was not, as you have both pretended, accidental. And I here call upon you--you, Mr. Clifton, to tell for what purpose or where you have sent the lad who wrote the letter, and to what place you have removed his aunt? Such an artifice is vile, sir! And to challenge your accusers to stand forward, and with a look such as you a.s.sumed to affirm, 'Upon your honour you were not the inventor and author of the letter,' is so much more vile that I shudder for you! Your own proceedings have conjured up a train of recollections that speak a concerted plan of perfidy. You mean mischief! But I once more tell you, sir, I do not fear you! I will not fear you! My fears indeed are strong, but they are for yourself. Beware! The more guilt you have committed, the more you will be driven to commit. Turn back! You are in a dreadful path!

It is unworthy of you, Mr. Clifton! It is unworthy of you!

I instantly withdrew, and was followed by Mrs. Wenbourne, who began to express something like blame of the positive manner in which I had spoken, and the high language I had used to Lord Fitz-Allen; but it was too feeble to incite an answer in my then state of mind. I requested she would order her carriage, and set me down. She asked if I would not first pay my respects to my uncle. I answered yes, when my uncle should be more deserving of respect. She said I was a strange young lady. I replied I sincerely hoped there were many young ladies stranger even than I.

She took offence at these retorts upon her words, and I perceived that, though the spirit of my answer was right, the manner was wrong; and explained and apologised as became me. She was appeased, and when the carriage came again asked if I would not go with her to take leave. I answered I imagined my uncle would be glad to wave the ceremony; and, as I thought he had acted very improperly, curtsying and taking leave would but be practising the customary hypocrisy of our manners, which I hoped I should on all occasions have the firmness to oppose.

Accordingly my aunt went herself; and his lordship, still preserving his dignity, pretended to forbid me his presence, till I better understood what was due to the relationship and rank in which he stood.

This my aunt reported, and I returned no answer, but left her to make her own reflections.

Thus ended this painful interview--Tell me, what ought I to think? What can be the purport of a conduct so very wrong? Such a string of falsehoods! How different would the behaviour of Mr. Clifton have been, had not conscious criminality oppressed and chained up his faculties!

Such persistence in duplicity must have some end in view. Could I consent to marriage, which is now utterly impossible, he has certainly no such meaning. If he had he could not have written, he could not have acted as he has done; and even less in this last instance since his writing than before, for he could not but know that, though he could appear this generous man of honour to Lord Fitz-Allen, he must stand detected by me. It was not possible he should suppose otherwise.

Well! Let him mean me all the harm he pleases; only let me find some opportunity of convincing him what a depraved, unmanly, trivial turn his mind has taken, and let me but give it a different bent, and I will willingly suffer all he shall have the power to inflict. I do not find myself, Louisa, disposed to stand in that dread of baseness and violence which they generally inspire. Virtue is not a pa.s.sive but an active quality; and its fort.i.tude is much more potent than the rash vehemence of vice.

Adieu, dear Louisa. Peace and felicity guard you!

A. W. ST. IVES

LETTER CIV

_c.o.ke Clifton to Guy Fairfax_

_London, Dover Street_

Thank you, Fairfax, for your speed and precautions, which I must request you not to slacken. Do not let the lad escape you: his appearance here would be ruin. Let but my grand scheme be completed, and then I care not though the legions of h.e.l.l were to rise, and mow and run a tilt at me. I would face their whole fury. The scene would delight me. Let them come all! I burn to turn upon and rend them! The more desperate the more grateful.

I told you, Fairfax, she hated me! I have it now from her own mouth!

She feels I am become her foe! My hand is already upon her! My deepest darkest thoughts of vengeance do not exceed her imagination.

And yet she fears me not! He; words, her looks, her gestures are all cool, firm defiance! She is a miracle, Fairfax! A miracle! But I will overmatch her. A heroine! She would have unhorsed Orlando himself had she lived in the times of the knights Paladin.

I am an insufferable b.o.o.by, an eternal lunatic, for having first thought of quarrelling with her. But it is too late! I might have foreseen the advantages I give a woman like her. She openly, magnanimously tells me what my intents are, and then spurns at them.

She keeps her anger under indeed, but does not repress its energy; a proof of the subjection in which she holds her pa.s.sions. She once endeavoured to teach me this art, would I but have listened. But that is past!

I could not have thought it was in woman! The poor, wailing, watery-eyed beings I had before encountered would not suffer me to suppose a female could possess the high courage of the daring, n.o.ble mind. Never but one short moment did I overtop her: nor are there any means but those I then used. Inspire her with the dread of offending what she thinks principle, and she becomes a coward!

But I will rouse! I will soar above her, will subdue her, will have her prostrate in humble submission, or perish! In the presence of witnesses I feel I cannot succeed; but singly, face to face, pa.s.sion to pa.s.sion, and being to being, distinct and eminent as she stands above all woman-kind, I will yet prove to her she is not the equal of the man Clifton.

She herself has even thrown the gauntlet. I have had such a scene with her! A public exhibition! I cannot relate the manner of it. I dare not trust my brain with the full reminiscence.

Why did I quarrel with her? She meant me well--Tortures!--I am a lunatic to tease myself with such recollections. This is a d.a.m.ned, wrong headed, ignorant, blundering, vile world; and I cannot see my way in it. I should have had no suspicion that it is all this but for her.

That Henley shall never have her! I'll murder him first! Though the bottomless pit were to gape and swallow me, he shall not have her! The contemptible buzzard, Sir Arthur, is now completely veered about. But in vain! It shall not be! By h.e.l.l it shall not!

This fellow, this Henley must some how or other be disposed of. The contempt of the arrogant peer, her uncle, will harm him but little; for the lord, with all his dignity, is no match for the plebeian!

Neither will his lordship hastily seek another combat with his niece.

The only advantage I have, in so insignificant an ally, is that of hereafter making suspicion alight on Henley, and not on me; for I mean to carry them both off, Henley and Anna. I know not where or how I shall yet dispose of them, but there is no other mode of accomplishing vengeance. They must be confined too. I care not how desperate the means! I will not retract! They shall be taught the danger of raising up an enemy like me! I will have them at my feet! Will separate them!

Will glut my revenge, and do the deed that shall prevent their ever meeting more, except perhaps to reproach each other with the madness of having injured, aggravated, and defied a Clifton!

My whole days are dedicated to this single object. I have been riding round the skirts of this shapeless monster of a city, on all sides, in search of lonely tenantless houses; some two of which I mean to provide with inhabitants. I have met with more than one that are not ill situated.

But I want agents! Desperados! Hungry and old traders in violence! I care not where I go for them; have them I will, though I seek them in the purlieus of infamy and detestation. To succeed by any other means is impossible. She will not admit me in the same apartment with herself, nor I believe in the same world, had she the power to exclude me.

I met her indeed at Lord Fitz-Allen's, where the scene abovementioned pa.s.sed; but it was a plan concerted with his lordship, which she easily detected, and publicly reproached him with his duplicity. I gloried to hear her; for she had not injured him. A poor compound of pride and selfishness! Incapable of understanding the worth of such a niece! But she made him feel his own insignificance.

Henley and she are now never asunder. I have mentioned the maid Laura to you. She tells me they have long conversations in the morning, long walks in the afternoon, and at night they have neither of them the power to rise and separate. But I will come upon them! My spirit at present is haunting them, never leaves them, girds at and terrifies them at every instant, during their amorous dalliance! I know it does!

They cannot get quit of me! I am with them, weighing them down, convulsing them! They feel they are in my gripe!--Hah! The thought is heart's ease.

When there is no company, and when Sir Arthur is not sitting with them, this maid, Laura, has that honour. Whence it appears that even these immaculate souls have some dread of scandal.

And who is it inspires that dread? It is I! They seem to have discovered that all circ.u.mstances, all incidents wear a double face and that I am the malignant genius who can make which he pleases the true one--Yes! I am with them! I send the Incubus that hag-rides them in their dreams! They gasp and would awake, but cannot!

Why could she not have bestowed all this affection upon me? Why could she not? I once thought a woman might have loved me!--But it seems I was mistaken--The things that go by the general name of woman might; but when I came to woman herself, she could not, though she tried.

Would I were any where but in this infernal gloom! It is a detestable country! This town is one everlasting fog, and its inhabitants are as cloudy as its skies! Every man broods over some solitary scheme of his own, avoids human intercourse, and hates to communicate the murk of his mind. I am in a wilderness. I fly the herd, and the herd flies me. We pa.s.s and scowl enmity at each other, for I begin to look with abhorrence on the face of man. There is not a single gleam of cheerfulness around me. The sun has not once shone since the day of my disappointment, which was itself thick darkness.

Would I could get rid of myself!--I am going to take a ride, and make a second examination of a large lonely house beyond Knightsbridge. It lies to the left, and is at a sufficient distance from the road. I think it will suit my purpose. I must not have far to convey them; and Laura informs me their walks are most frequently directed through Hyde-Park, and among the fields at the back of Brompton.

I must be as quiet and appear as little myself as possible; for which reason I ride without a servant. And though I have been industrious in reading advertis.e.m.e.nts, and getting intelligence of empty houses, I have not ventured to enquire personally. Laura attends them in their walks; but she is secure.

They must both be seized at the same time, and in a manner that shall frustrate all research. It will then be concluded they have gone off together. He is a powerful fellow, a dangerous fellow, and I must be well provided. He shall never have her, Fairfax! I would die upon the wheel, hang like a negro, and parch alive in the sun ere he should have her!

C. CLIFTON

P.S. All society is become odious to me, but chiefly that society which I am obliged to frequent. This uncle Fitz-Allen, aunt Wenbourne, and brother Edward are three such poor beings, and the censures they pa.s.s on a woman who is of an order so much above them are so vapid, so selfish, or so absurd, that it is nauseating to sit and listen to them.

Yet these are the animals I am obliged to court! Hypocrisy is a d.a.m.ned trade, Fairfax; and I will have full vengeance for having been forced upon such a practice. The only present relief I have is to make the arrogant peer foam with the idea of his relationship to a gardener's son. This would be an exquisite pleasure, but that it is millions of times more maddening to me than to him!

LETTER CV

_Anna Wenbourne St. Ives to Louisa Clifton_

_London, Grosvenor Street_

Abimelech is come up to town. I am obliged very respectfully to call him Mr. Henley when Sir Arthur hears me, in compliance to his feelings: and he has hinted that hereafter, when his name is written, it must be tagged with an esquire.

The old miser [Well, Louisa, let it be the old gentleman] is so eager in pursuit of his project that he can take no rest, and is unwilling Sir Arthur should take any. He has a prodigious quant.i.ty of cunning!

Whatever he may know of the theory of the pa.s.sions as a general subject, no person certainly knows better how to work upon the pa.s.sions of Sir Arthur: at least no person who will condescend to take such an advantage. His discourse is such a continued mixture of Wenbourne-Hill, his money, mortgages, grottos, groves, the wherewithals, and the young gentleman his son, that laughter scarcely can hold to hear him. Were the thing practicable, he would render Frank Henley himself ridiculous.

It is pleasant to remark what a check the presence of this favourite son is upon his loquacity. He never suspects the possibility of there being a mortal superior to himself at other times; whereas he has then a latent consciousness of his own ridicule. The effect which the absence of Frank has produced, with the favour he is in with me, and the resolute manner in which he conquered his father when he last went down to Wenbourne-Hill, have made a total change in the old man's behaviour to this formerly neglected but now half adored son. Were habits so inveterate capable of being eradicated, Frank would yet teach him virtue; but the task is too difficult.

He is certainly in a most delicious trance. His son to be married to the daughter of his master! That master a baronet! And the estates of that baronet to be his own, as he supposes, to all eternity. For the avaricious dreams of selfishness are satisfied with nothing less. These are joys that swell and enlarge even his narrow heart, into something that endeavours to mimic urbanity.