"My dearest! do you not rightly understand? The hand I am offering you is disengaged. It is offered to the lady I respect above all others. I have made the discovery that I cannot love without respecting; and as I will not marry without loving, it ensues that I am free--I am yours. At last?--your lips move: tell me the words. Have always loved, I said. You carry in your bosom the magnet of constancy, and I, in spite of apparent deviations, declare to you that I have never ceased to be sensible of the attraction. And now there is not an impediment. We two against the world! we are one. Let me confess to an old foible--perfectly youthful, and you will ascribe it to youth: once I desired to absorb. I mistrusted; that was the reason: I perceive it. You teach me the difference of an alliance with a lady of intellect.
The pride I have in you, Laetitia, definitely cures me of that insane passion--call it an insatiable hunger. I recognize it as a folly of youth. I have, as it were, gone the tour, to come home to you--at last?--and live our manly life of comparative equals.
At last, then! But remember that in the younger man you would have had a despot--perhaps a jealous despot. Young men, I assure you, are orientally inclined in their ideas of love. Love gets a bad name from them. We, my Laetitia, do not regard love as a selfishness. If it is, it is the essence of life. At least it is our selfishness rendered beautiful. I talk to you like a man who has found a compatriot in a foreign land. It seems to me that I have not opened my mouth for an age. I certainly have not unlocked my heart. Those who sing for joy are not unintelligible to me. If I had not something in me worth saying I think I should sing. In every sense you reconcile me to men and the world, Laetitia. Why press you to speak? I will be the speaker. As surely as you know me, I know you: and ..."
Laetitia burst forth with: "No!"
"I do not know you?" said he, searchingly mellifluous.
"Hardly."
"How not?"
"I am changed."
"In what way?"
"Deeply."
"Sedater?"
"Materially."
"Colour will come back: have no fear; I promise it. If you imagine you want renewing, I have the specific, I, my love, I!"
"Forgive me--will you tell me, Sir Willoughby, whether you have broken with Miss Middleton?"
"Rest satisfied, my dear Laetitia. She is as free as I am. I can do no more than a man of honour should do. She releases me.
To-morrow or next day she departs. We, Laetitia, you and I, my love, are home birds. It does not do for the home bird to couple with the migratory. The little imperceptible change you allude to, is nothing. Italy will restore you. I am ready to stake my own health--never yet shaken by a doctor of medicine:--I say medicine advisedly, for there are doctors of divinity who would shake giants:--that an Italian trip will send you back--that I shall bring you home from Italy a blooming bride. You shake your head--despondently? My love, I guarantee it. Cannot I give you colour? Behold! Come to the light, look in the glass."
"I may redden," said Laetitia. "I suppose that is due to the action of the heart. I am changed. Heart, for any other purpose, I have not. I am like you, Sir Willoughby, in this: I could not marry without loving, and I do not know what love is, except that it is an empty dream."
"Marriage, my dearest..."
"You are mistaken."
"I will cure you, my Laetitia. Look to me, I am the tonic. It is not common confidence, but conviction. I, my love, I!"
"There is no cure for what I feel, Sir Willoughby."
"Spare me the formal prefix, I beg. You place your hand in mine, relying on me. I am pledge for the remainder. We end as we began: my request is for your hand--your hand in marriage."
"I cannot give it."
"To be my wife!"
"It is an honour; I must decline it."
"Are you quite well, Laetitia? I propose in the plainest terms I can employ, to make you Lady Patterne--mine."
"I am compelled to refuse."
"Why? Refuse? Your reason!"
"The reason has been named."
He took a stride to inspirit his wits.
"There's a madness comes over women at times, I know. Answer me, Laetitia:--by all the evidence a man can have, I could swear it:
--but answer me; you loved me once?"
"I was an exceedingly foolish, romantic girl."
"You evade my question: I am serious. Oh!" he walked away from her booming a sound of utter repudiation of her present imbecility, and hurrying to her side, said: "But it was manifest to the whole world! It was a legend. To love like Laetitia Dale, was a current phrase. You were an example, a light to women: no one was your match for devotion. You were a precious cameo, still gazing! And I was the object. You loved me. You loved me, you belonged to me, you were mine, my possession, my jewel; I was prouder of your constancy than of anything else that I had on earth. It was a part of the order of the universe to me. A doubt of it would have disturbed my creed. Why, good heaven! where are we? Is nothing solid on earth? You loved me!"
"I was childish, indeed."
"You loved me passionately!"
"Do you insist on shaming me through and through, Sir Willoughby?
I have been exposed enough."
"You cannot blot out the past: it is written, it is recorded. You loved me devotedly, silence is no escape. You loved me."
"I did."
"You never loved me, you shallow woman! 'I did!' As if there could be a cessation of a love! What are we to reckon on as ours? We prize a woman's love; we guard it jealously, we trust to it, dream of it; there is our wealth; there is our talisman! And when we open the casket it has flown!--barren vacuity!--we are poorer than dogs. As well think of keeping a costly wine in potter's clay as love in the heart of a woman! There are women--women! Oh, they are all of a stamp coin! Coin for any hand! It's a fiction, an imposture--they cannot love. They are the shadows of men.
Compared with men, they have as much heart in them as the shadow beside the body. Laetitia!"
"Sir Willoughby."
"You refuse my offer?"
"I must."
"You refuse to take me for your husband?"
"I cannot be your wife."