LETTER IV
MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
This fair inexorable is actually gone to church with Mrs. Moore and Mrs.Bevis; but Will. closely attends her motions; and I am in the way toreceive any occasional intelligence from him.
She did not choose, [a mighty word with the sex! as if they were alwaysto have their own wills!] that I should wait upon her. I did not muchpress it, that she might not apprehend that I thought I had reason todoubt her voluntary return.
I once had it in my head to have found the widow Bevis other employment.And I believe she would have been as well pleased with my company as togo to church; for she seemed irresolute when I told her that two out ofa family were enough to go to church for one day. But having her thingson, (as the women call every thing,) and her aunt Moore expecting hercompany, she thought it best to go--lest it should look oddly, you know,whispered she, to one who was above regarding how it looked.
So here am I in my dining-room; and have nothing to do but to write tillthey return.
And what will be my subject thinkest thou? Why, the old beaten one to besure; self-debate--through temporary remorse: for the blow being notstruck, her guardian angel is redoubling his efforts to save her.
If it be not that, [and yet what power should her guardian angel haveover me?] I don't know what it is that gives a check to my revenge,whenever I meditate treason against so sovereign a virtue. Conscience isdead and gone, as I told thee; so it cannot be that. A young consciencegrowing up, like the phoenix, from the ashes of the old one, it cannotbe, surely. But if it were, it would be hard, if I could not overlay ayoung conscience.
Well, then, it must be LOVE, I fancy. LOVE itself, inspiring love of anobject so adorable--some little attention possibly paid likewise to thywhining arguments in her favour.
Let LOVE then be allowed to be the moving principle; and the rather, asLOVE naturally makes the lover loth to disoblige the object of its flame;and knowing, that to an offence of the meditated kind will be a mortaloffence to her, cannot bear that I should think of giving it.
Let LOVE and me talk together a little on this subject--be it a youngconscience, or love, or thyself, Jack, thou seest that I am for givingevery whiffler audience. But this must be the last debate on thissubject; for is not her fate in a manner at its crisis? And must not mynext step be an irretrievable one, tend it which way it will?
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And now the debate is over.
A thousand charming things, (for LOVE is gentler than CONSCIENCE,) hasthis little urchin suggested in her favour. He pretended to know bothour hearts: and he would have it, that though my love was a prodigiousstrong and potent love; and though it has the merit of many months,faithful service to plead, and has had infinite difficulties to strugglewith; yet that it is not THE RIGHT SORT OF LOVE.
Right sort of love!--A puppy!--But, with due regard to your deityship,said I, what merits has she with YOU, that you should be of her party?Is her's, I pray you, a right sort of love? Is it love at all? Shedon't pretend that it is. She owns not your sovereignty. What a d---lI moves you, to plead thus earnestly for a rebel, who despises yourpower?
And then he came with his If's and And's--and it would have been, andstill, as he believed, would be, love, and a love of the exalted kind, ifI would encourage it by the right sort of love he talked of: and, injustification of his opinion, pleaded her own confessions, as well thoseof yesterday, as of this morning: and even went so far back as to myipecacuanha illness.
I never talked so familiarly with his godship before: thou mayest think,therefore, that his dialect sounded oddly in my ears. And then he toldme, how often I had thrown cold water upon the most charming flame thatever warmed a lady's bosom, while but young and rising.
I required a definition of this right sort of love, he tried at it: butmade a sorry hand of it: nor could I, for the soul of me, be convinced,that what he meant to extol was LOVE.
Upon the whole, we had a noble controversy upon this subject, in whichhe insisted upon the unprecedented merit of the lady. Nevertheless I gotthe better of him; for he was struck absolutely dumb, when (waving herpresent perverseness, which yet was a sufficient answer to all his pleas)I asserted, and offered to prove it, by a thousand instances impromptu,that love was not governed by merit, nor could be under the dominion ofprudence, or any other reasoning power: and if the lady were capable oflove, it was of such a sort as he had nothing to do with, and which neverbefore reigned in a female heart.
I asked him, what he thought of her flight from me, at a time when I wasmore than half overcome by the right sort of love he talked of?--And thenI showed him the letter she wrote, and left behind her for me, with anintention, no doubt, absolutely to break my heart, or to provoke me tohang, drown, or shoot myself; to say nothing of a multitude ofdeclarations from her, defying his power, and imputing all that lookedlike love in her behaviour to me, to the persecution and rejection of herfriends; which made her think of me but as a last resort.
LOVE then gave her up. The letter, he said, deserved neither pardon norexcuse. He did not think he had been pleading for such a declared rebel.And as to the rest, he should be a betrayer of the rights of his ownsovereignty, if what I had alleged were true, and he were still to pleadfor her.
I swore to the truth of all. And truly I swore: which perhaps I do notalways do.
And now what thinkest thou must become of the lady, whom LOVE itselfgives up, and CONSCIENCE cannot plead for?