Anna St. Ives Part 22

So, sir! You are very familiar with that lady! What right have you to intrude into her apartments?

When she herself desires me, sir, I have a right.

She desire you! 'Tis false!

Sir?

'Tis false, sir!

False?

Yes, sir. And falsehood deserves to be chastised!

Chastised? [It is in vain, Oliver, to endeavour to conceal the truth from myself; my folly incurred its own punishment--I repeat] Chastised?

[I was lunatic enough to walk up to him, with a ridiculous and despicable air of defiance. He re-echoed my words, and instantly in contempt struck me on the cheek with the back of his hand.]

Yes, sir; chastised!

His rashness restored me to some sense of the farcical heroism which I had been aping. I hurried from him, without another word.

Oliver, I can conceive nothing more painful than this wresting, this tearing of pa.s.sion from its purpose.

I walked a few minutes to calm my thoughts, and wrote him the following note.

Sir,

'I feel at present the humility of my situation: but not from your blow; for that has brought me to myself, not humbled me. No man can be degraded by another; it must be his own act: and you have degraded yourself, not me. My error is in having, for a moment, yielded to the impulse of pa.s.sion. If you think I fear you, continue to think so; till I can shew my forbearance is from a better motive. Cowardice might make me kill you; but true courage will teach me calmly to hear the world call me coward, rather than commit an act so wicked, so abhorred, as that of taking or throwing away life. I wished to seek your friends.h.i.+p; and even now I will not shun you. Make the world imagine me a coward; imagine me one yourself, if you can. I will live under the supposed obloquy; and leave the tenor of my life to shew whether living be the act of fear, or of reason. I pardon you, sir, and leave you to pardon yourself.

F. HENLEY

My forbearance and this letter mitigated my sense of pain. Yet I am very ill satisfied with myself. Am I so easily to be moved? 'Tis true the scene I had just quitted was fermenting, as it were, in my veins, and shaking my whole system.

What is worse, I am child enough to be tormented, in my own despite, by the recollection of having received a blow! And why? In many countries, and even in my own, among the cla.s.s in which I was born, the stigma is none, or trifling--Stigma? Absurd!--Cowardice!--Murder!--If vanity were ever becoming, I have perhaps more reason to be vain, considering the danger to which I had exposed myself, of this than of any act of my life.

Well, well, Oliver--I hope these agitations are over; and that from this time thou wilt begin to think better of me.

I communicate my whole thoughts to thee. If the experiments made upon my mind can be of any use to thine, my letters will then answer the best of the purposes for which they are written.

F. HENLEY

LETTER XLIII

_c.o.ke Clifton to Guy Fairfax_

_Chateau de Villebrun_

Your last, Fairfax, pleased me. You say truly, and I like your remark, 'Such fellows ought not to claim a moment's attention from me. I should brush them away, like flies from my forehead, when they presume to tease or settle themselves upon me.' I have taken your advice, and fly-slapped the wasp that was more willing than able to sting.

I have lately grown dissatisfied with myself; I know not how, or why. I suspect this youth, in part, has made me so, with his visionary morality. I hate such sermonizing. Who has a right to control me? Whose slave am I? I was born to rule, not to be ruled. My appet.i.tes are keen, my desires vast, and I would enjoy. Why else am I here? Delay to me is insufferable; suspense distracts me; and the possibility that another should be preferred to myself drives me mad! I too heartily despise the tame creatures, that crawl upon the earth, to suffer opposition from them. Who would be braved by bats and beetles, buzzing in his ears?

I never before saw a woman whom any temptation could have induced me to marry; and now I have found one I am troubled with doubts, infested with fears, and subjected to the intolerable penance of procrastination. Impeded in my course; and by what? Why, I am told to scrutinize myself, and to discover whether I am quite as perfect as it is necessary I should be! 'Tis unjust! 'Tis unkind! I did not doubt of her perfections; and both love and pride, equally jealous of their honour, demand that mine should have been taken for granted.

The time has been when this would have been revenged. But I seem to be half subdued. My fierce spirit, before so untameable, declines contending with her. Not but I frequently feel it struggling with suffocation, kindling, and again ready to burst into a more furious blaze.

Yet let me do her justice. Mild, gentle, and affectionate, she conquers my impetuosity with prayers, and soothing, and with kindness irresistible. Still she conquers.

Then she suffers these animals to torment me. I am angry to think that, in so short a s.p.a.ce, I should have so entirely lost all power over myself!

But where is the mortal that can look and not love? Were I myself not an actor in the play, how should I enjoy the perplexity of these French _amoureux_! There are I know not how many of them; each more busy than the other. 'Tis laughable to see with what industry they labour to make love according to her liking; for they find that their own trifling manner is inefficient, and can never succeed with her. One of them, that said crazy Provencal Count, is very earnest indeed, in his endeavours; but she keeps him in due awe. And it is well perhaps for him that she does, or I would. Still however he is d.a.m.ned troublesome and impertinent; and I could wish she were more peremptory. Yet it is unjust to blame her, for the animal is so full of antics, that it is impossible to be angry.

After all, I am far from satisfied respecting myself and this youth, whom I condescended to chastise. It was beneath me. It gave him a sort of right to demand satisfaction: but he affects forbearance, because, as he pretends, he despises duelling. And I hear he has actually given proofs of the most undaunted courage. He wrote a short note of only three or four sentences on the subject, after I had struck him, which produced a very uncommon effect upon me, and made me half repent, and accuse myself of haughtiness, rashness, and insult.

But these things torture me. I am out of patience with them. What right has any pedant, because he thinks proper to vex and entangle his own brain with doubts, to force his gloomy dogmas upon me? Let those who love sack-cloth wear it. Must I be made miserable, because an over-curious b.o.o.by bewilders himself in inquiry, and galls his conscience, till, like the wrung withers of a battered post-horse, it shrinks and s.h.i.+vers at the touch of a fly's foot? What, shall I not enjoy the free air, the glorious sun, the flowers, the fruits, the viands, the whole stores of nature? Who shall impede, who shall dare disturb the banquet? Were it even a dream, the meddling fool that waked me should dearly repent his rashness. Let speculative blockheads brew metaphysical nectar, make a hash of axioms, problems, corollaries and demonstrations, and feed on ideas and fatten. Be theirs the feast of reason and the flow of soul. But let me banquet with old Homer's jolly G.o.ds and heroes, revel with the Mahometan houris, or gain admission into the savoury sanctorum of the gormandizing priesthood, snuff the fumes from their altars, and gorge on the fat of lambs. Let cynic Catos truss up each his slovenly toga, rail at Heliogabalus, and fast; but let me receive his card, with--'Sir, your company is requested to dine and sup.'

I cannot forget this gardener's son. I am sometimes angry that I should for a single instant trouble myself with a fellow so much beneath me; and at others equally angry, for not shewing him the respect which he claims. There are moments in which I have even feared him as a rival; for when she speaks to him, which she is very ready to do, the usual mildness and benevolence of her voice and features are evidently increased. She must, she shall be more circ.u.mspect. Indeed I have made her so within these few days.

Prithee forgive all this. My mind is not at ease; but I know not why I should infect you with its malady. Write, relate something pleasant; tell me what has happened to you last, and relieve the dissatisfaction I feel by your unaffected flow of gaiety. Adieu.

C. CLIFTON

LETTER XLIV

_Anna Wenbourne St. Ives to Louisa Clifton_

_Chateau de Villebrun_

I cannot sufficiently applaud the resolute propriety of Frank, since our last conversation. Indeed, Louisa, his fort.i.tude is admirable! He does not indulge self-compa.s.sion, by brooding over his own loss. Nor does he, like other mistaken people whose affections have met disappointment, suppose himself into sufferings, which swell into existence in proportion as they are imagined to be real. His evident determination is not to permit any selfish motive to detach him from the great purposes of life; but cheerfully to submit to what is inevitable, without thinking it an evil.

In the mean time, I have been indulging a hope, which at moments has appeared almost a certainty, that Clifton, by our mutual efforts, shall acquire all this true ardour, which is so lovely in Frank. How sorry am I to observe that the haughtiness of Clifton and the coldness of Frank seem to be increasing! To what can this be attributed? Their behaviour is so peculiar that I almost dread something has happened, with which I am unacquainted.

But perhaps it is the present temper of my mind: the effect of sensations too irritable, doubts too tremulous, and fears too easily excited. I cannot forget the conversation: it haunts me; and, did not Frank set me the example of fort.i.tude, I have sometimes doubted of my own perseverance.

Oh, how mean is this in me! Is not the task I have proposed to myself a worthy and a high one? Am I not convinced it is an inevitable duty? And shall he, even under a contrary conviction, outstrip me in the career?--Generous and excellent youth, I will imitate thy most eminent virtues!

The Count de Beaunoir still continues to be particular, in what he calls his adoration of me; but his tone and style are too romantic to authorize me in any serious remonstrance. Clifton is not pleased, and the Count and he have fallen into a habit of rallying each other, and vaunting of what lovers dare do, to prove their affection. Their irony took so serious a turn, yesterday, that Clifton proposed they should load their pistols, and both holding by the corner of a handkerchief, fire at each other. Considering the temper in which they were, and the const.i.tutional extravagance of the Count, the proposal was terrifying: but I had the presence of mind to give it an air of ridicule, by saying--You do not understand the true point of gallantry, gentlemen.

You should go to j.a.pan, where one n.o.ble-blooded person draws his sabre, and dispatches himself, to prove he is acquainted with the high punctilio and very essence of honour; while another, enraged that he should be in waiting and have a dish to carry up to the emperor's table, requests he would condescend to live till he can come down again, that he may shew he knows what honour is as well as his disingenuous enemy, who had taken such an unfair advantage.

The Count laughed, and Clifton I should hope was not displeased that it was impossible the conversation should again a.s.sume the same desperate and absurd tone.

I took an opportunity to ask him privately how he could indulge such intemperate pa.s.sions; but I was obliged to soften my admonition by all possible mildness. I know not whether I did right, but I even took his hand, pressed it between mine, and requested of him, with an ardour which I think must sink deeply in his mind, to do justice to himself, to exert those powers of thought which he certainly possessed, and to restrain pa.s.sions which, if not restrained, must deter me, or any woman worthy of him, from a union that would be so dangerous.