_Coke Clifton to Guy Fairfax_
_London, Dover-Street_
Oh, Fairfax, if my choler rose when last I wrote, where shall I now
find words hot enough to paint the phrensy of my soul?--How could I
rage and rave!--Is it come to this?--So barefaced!--So fearless!--So
unblushingly braved!--
Fairfax, I came upon them!--By surprise!--My alert and watchful spirit,
an adept in such arts, accustomed to them, and rendered suspicious by
practice and experience, foreboded some such possibility--My knock at
the door was counterfeit. I strode up stairs to the drawing-room,
three steps at a time--Swiftly and suddenly--I opened the door--There
they sat!--Alone!--She singing a miserable ditty, a bead-roll of
lamentable rhymes, strung together by this Quidam!--This
Henley!--Nay!--Oh!--Damnation!--Read and tremble!--Read and aid me to
curse!--Set by her!--Ay!--A ballad--A love complaint--A most doleful
woe-begone elegy; of sorrows, sufferings, fate, despair, and death;
scribbled by him, and set and sung by her!--By her!--For his comfort,
his solace, his pleasure, his diversion!--I caught them at it!--Nay
they defied me, despised the wrath that drank up the moisture of my
eyes, blazed in my blood, and scorched my very soul!--
And after this will I blench? Will I recant the denunciations which
legitimate vengeance had pronounced?--
Fairfax--I am not certain that I do not hate her!--No!--Angelic
sorceress!--It is not hatred, neither--But it is a tumult, a congregate
anarchy of feelings which I cannot unravel; except that the first
feature of them is revenge!--Roused and insulted as I am, not all her
blandishments can dazzle, divert, or melt me! Were mountains to be
moved, dragons to be slain, or lakes of liquid fire to be traversed, I
would encounter all to attain my end!--Yes--My romance shall equal
hers. No epic hero, not Orpheus, Aeneas, or Milton's Lucifer himself,
was ever more determined. I could plunge into Erebus, and give
battle to the legion phantoms of hell, to accomplish my fixed
purpose!--Fixed!--Fixed!--Hoot me, hiss at me, despise me if I turn
recreant! No--Then may all who ever heard the name of Coke Clifton make
it their byword and their scoff; and every idiot curl the nose and
snuff me to scorn!
Recollect but the various affronts I have received, Fairfax, from her
and [Oh patience!] Her inamorato! For is he not so?--Wrongs, some of
which irritate most because they could not be resented; insults, some
petty some gigantic, which ages could not obliterate; call these to
mind, and then think whether my resolves be not rock-built! Insolent
intrusion has been his part from the first moment to the last. The
prince of upstarts, man could not abash him, nor naked steel affright!
On my first visit, entrance was denied by him! Permission was asked of
a gardener's son, and the gardener's son sturdily refused! I argued! I
threatened!--I!--And arguments and threats were so much hot breath, but
harmless! Attempts to silence or to send him back to his native barn
alike were baffled; and I, who planned his removal, was constrained to
petition for his stay. Yes, constrained!--It was do it, or!--Oh!--Be
faithful to me, memory!--He was elected president of opinions and
disputes, past, present and to come. Appeals must all be made to him,
and his sentence was definitive. Law or gospel, physics or metaphysics;
himself alone superior to college, court, or convocation. Before him
sunk scholiast and schools. In his presence the doctors all must stand
uncapped: the seraphic, the subtle, and the singular; the illuminated,
the angelic, and the irrefragable to him, were tyros all. Our censor
in private, and in public our familiar: like a malignant demon, no
respect, no place, no human barriers could exclude him. On no side
could the offended eye turn, and not find him there. Disgraced by his
company, counteracted by his arrogance, insulted by his sarcasms;
obliged to accept the first of favours, life, at his hands; his
apparent inferior in the moment of danger; my ministry rejected for
his, nay contemned, in a case where the gentleman, the man of the
world, and the man of honour merited undoubted preference; and, as the
climax of injury, wronged in my love!--Rivalled!--Furies!--
And she!--Has she been less contumelious, less annoyant, less
tormenting?--His advocate, his abettor, his adulator, with me only
she was scrupulous and severe. I generously and almost instantly
forgot all former resolves, and would have thrown myself into her
arms--Unconditionally--I, who had been accustomed to give the law,
not to receive. I assumed not the dictator. I, whose family, courage,
person, and parts have made me a favourite with the brave and fair,
though flushed with success, far from claiming superiority, I came to
cast myself, my freedom, and my trophies at her feet--Came, and was
rejected! Bargained with at least; put off with ifs and possibilities!
I must stop--Must think no more--Or the hurrying blood will burst my
veins, or suffocate my swelling heart, and impede just retribution for
these and all my other thousand wrongs, which only can be avenged by
calm and subtle foresight--Yet think not that the smallest of them is
forgotten--Oh no!--
Well then, calm will I be; for I can be, will be any thing rather than
not attain this supreme of pleasures, divine vengeance! Yes, anger must
be bridled: it has now a second time made me tread backward more than
all the steps I had taken in advance. My brain is labouring for some
certain and uniform plan, but is at present so disturbed that thought
can preserve no settled train.
Previous to this second childish overflow of passion [for if I would
succeed childish it is] I had played a master stroke, in which indeed I
must own passion was for once my best ally. With most ardent
importunity, I with great difficulty wrested a promise from her to be
mine. These romancers, Fairfax, hold love promises to be binding and
sacred. And this obtained I thought a fair foundation for my fabric.
The current of my thoughts is now wholly turned to this subject. A
thousand manoeuvres crowding present themselves; nor can I say how many
must be employed. I have generally found my brain rich in expedients,
and I think it will not fail me now. I recollect having mentioned the
maid, Laura: she is secured, and has been for some time past. The
fondness of the fool with one less expert would be dangerous; but I
have taught her to rail at me occasionally to her mistress, and to
praise the favorite, who has never lately been any great favorite with
her, having as I guess overlooked her when she had kinder inclinations.
She was tickled with the contrivance, which promised to secure her so
well from the suspicion of her mistress, and she acts her part
tolerably. In fact her mistress seems a being without suspicion,
superior to it, and holding it in contempt--So much the better!
This fellow, this king of the cucumber-beds must be removed. I know
not yet the means, but they must be found. Present he is dangerous;
absent he may perhaps be taught to act his part with safety and effect.
My ideas are not yet methodised, but I have a confused foresight of
various modes by which this and much more may and must be accomplished.
But no common efforts can be successful--Deep--Deep must be the plot by
which she is to be over-reached, the pit into which she must fall: and
deep it therefore shall be. There is no art I will not practise, no
restraint to which I will not submit, no desperate expedient to which I
will not have recourse to gratify my soul's longing--I will be
revenged!--The irrevocable decree is gone forth--I will be
revenged!--Fairfax, you soon shall hear of me and my proceedings.
Farewell.