Why do you call Mr. Solmes vile?
Don’t you think him so, Madam?
Why should I? Did Mr. Solmes ever do vilely by me?
Dearest creature! don’t distract me by hateful comparisons! and perhaps
by a more hateful preference.
Don’t you, Sir, put questions to me that you know I will answer truly,
though my answer were ever so much to enrage you.
My heart, Madam, my soul is all your’s at present. But you must give me
hope, that your promise, in your own construction, binds you, no new
cause to the contrary, to be mine on Thursday. How else can I leave
you?
Let me go to Hampstead; and trust to my favour.
May I trust to it?—Say only may I trust to it?
How will you trust to it, if you extort an answer to this question?
Say only, dearest creature, say only, may I trust to your favour, if
you go to Hampstead?
How dare you, Sir, if I must speak out, expect a promise of favour from
me?—What a mean creature must you think me, after the ungrateful
baseness to me, were I to give you such a promise?
Then standing up, Thou hast made me, O vilest of men! [her hands
clasped, and a face crimsoned with indignation,] an inmate of the
vilest of houses—nevertheless, while I am in it, I shall have a heart
incapable of any thing but abhorrence of that and of thee!
And round her looked the angel, and upon me, with fear in her sweet
aspect of the consequence of her free declaration—But what a devil must
I have been, I who love bravery in a man, had I not been more struck
with admiration of her fortitude at the instant, than stimulated by
revenge?
Noblest of creatures!—And do you think I can leave you, and my interest
in such an excellence, precarious? No promise!—no hope!—If you make me
not desperate, may lightning blast me, if I do you not all the justice
’tis in my power to do you!
If you have any intention to oblige me, leave me at my own liberty, and
let me not be detained in this abominable house. To be constrained as I
have been constrained! to be stopt by your vile agents! to be brought
up by force, and be bruised in my own defence against such illegal
violence!—I dare to die, Lovelace—and she who fears not death, is not
to be intimidated into a meanness unworthy of her heart and principles!
Wonderful creature! But why, Madam, did you lead me to hope for
something favourable for next Thursday?—Once more, make me not
desperate—With all your magnanimity, glorious creature! [I was more
than half frantic, Belford,] you may, you may—but do not, do not make
me brutally threaten you—do not, do not make me desperate!
My aspect, I believe, threatened still more than my words. I was
rising—She rose—Mr. Lovelace, be pacified—you are even more dreadful
than the Lovelace I have long dreaded—let me retire—I ask your leave to
retire—you really frighten me—yet I give you no hope—from my heart I
ab——
Say not, Madam, you abhor me. You must, for your own sake, conceal your
hatred—at least not avow it. I seized her hand.
Let me retire—let me, retire, said she, in a manner out of breath.
I will only say, Madam, that I refer myself to your generosity. My
heart is not to be trusted at this instant. As a mark of my submission
to your will, you shall, if you please, withdraw—but I will not go to
M. Hall—live or die my Lord M. I will not go to M. Hall—but will attend
the effect of your promise. Remember, Madam, you have promised to
endeavour to make yourself easy till you see the event of next
Thursday—next Thursday, remember, your uncle comes up, to see us
married—that’s the event.—You think ill of your Lovelace—do not, Madam,
suffer your own morals to be degraded by the infection, as you called
it, of his example.
Away flew the charmer with this half permission—and no doubt thought
that she had an escape—nor without reason.
I knew not for half an hour what to do with myself. Vexed at the heart,
nevertheless, (now she was from me, and when I reflected upon her
hatred of me, and her defiances,) that I suffered myself to be so
overawed, checked, restrained——
And now I have written thus far, (have of course recollected the whole
of our conversation,) I am more and more incensed against myself.
But I will go down to these women—and perhaps suffer myself to be
laughed at by them.
Devil fetch them, they pretend to know their own sex. Sally was a woman
well educated—Polly also—both have read—both have sense—of parentage
not mean—once modest both—still, they say, had been modest, but for
me—not entirely indelicate now; though too little nice for my personal
intimacy, loth as they both are to have me think so—the old one, too, a
woman of family, though thus (from bad inclination as well as at first
from low circumstances) miserably sunk:—and hence they all pretend to
remember what once they were; and vouch for the inclinations and
hypocrisy of the whole sex, and wish for nothing so ardently, as that I
will leave the perverse lady to their management while I am gone to
Berkshire; undertaking absolutely for her humility and passiveness on
my return; and continually boasting of the many perverse creatures whom
they have obliged to draw in their traces.