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
to receive any occasional intelligence from him.
She did not choose, [a mighty word with the sex! as if they were always
to have their own wills!] that I should wait upon her. I did not much
press it, that she might not apprehend that I thought I had reason to
doubt 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 to go to church; for she seemed irresolute when I told her
that two out of a family were enough to go to church for one day. But
having her things on, (as the women call every thing,) and her aunt
Moore expecting her company, 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
till they return.
And what will be my subject thinkest thou? Why, the old beaten one to
be sure; self-debate—through temporary remorse: for the blow being not
struck, her guardian angel is redoubling his efforts to save her.
If it be not that, [and yet what power should her guardian angel have
over 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
is dead and gone, as I told thee; so it cannot be that. A young
conscience growing up, like the phoenix, from the ashes of the old one,
it cannot be, surely. But if it were, it would be hard, if I could not
overlay a young conscience.
Well, then, it must be LOVE, I fancy. LOVE itself, inspiring love of an
object so adorable—some little attention possibly paid likewise to thy
whining arguments in her favour.
Let LOVE then be allowed to be the moving principle; and the rather, as
LOVE 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
mortal offence 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 young
conscience, or love, or thyself, Jack, thou seest that I am for giving
every whiffler audience. But this must be the last debate on this
subject; for is not her fate in a manner at its crisis? And must not my
next step be an irretrievable one, tend it which way it will?
And now the debate is over.
A thousand charming things, (for LOVE is gentler than CONSCIENCE,) has
this little urchin suggested in her favour. He pretended to know both
our hearts: and he would have it, that though my love was a prodigious
strong and potent love; and though it has the merit of many months,
faithful service to plead, and has had infinite difficulties to
struggle with; 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? She
don’t pretend that it is. She owns not your sovereignty. What a d—l
moves you, to plead thus earnestly for a rebel, who despises your
power?
And then he came with his If’s and And’s—and it would have been, and
still, as he believed, would be, love, and a love of the exalted kind,
if I would encourage it by the right sort of love he talked of: and, in
justification of his opinion, pleaded her own confessions, as well
those of yesterday, as of this morning: and even went so far back as to
my ipecacuanha 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 told me, how often I had thrown cold water upon the most charming
flame that ever warmed a lady’s bosom, while but young and rising.
I required a definition of this right sort of love, he tried at it: but
made 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 which
he insisted upon the unprecedented merit of the lady. Nevertheless I
got the better of him; for he was struck absolutely dumb, when (waving
her present 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 of prudence, or any other reasoning power: and if the lady
were capable of love, it was of such a sort as he had nothing to do
with, and which never before reigned in a female heart.
I asked him, what he thought of her flight from me, at a time when I
was more than half overcome by the right sort of love he talked of?—And
then I showed him the letter she wrote, and left behind her for me,
with an intention, no doubt, absolutely to break my heart, or to
provoke me to hang, drown, or shoot myself; to say nothing of a
multitude of declarations from her, defying his power, and imputing all
that looked like love in her behaviour to me, to the persecution and
rejection of her friends; which made her think of me but as a last
resort.
LOVE then gave her up. The letter, he said, deserved neither pardon nor
excuse. 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
own sovereignty, if what I had alleged were true, and he were still to
plead for her.
I swore to the truth of all. And truly I swore: which perhaps I do not
always do.
And now what thinkest thou must become of the lady, whom LOVE itself
gives up, and CONSCIENCE cannot plead for?