youth their singular attire impressed me. People tell me they have been re-uniformed: I am sorry. They remain one of my liveliest recollections of the Eternal City. They affected my sense of humour, always alert in me, as you are aware. We English have humour. It is the first thing struck in us when we land on the Continent: our risible faculties are generally active all through the tour. Humour, or the clash of sense with novel examples of the absurd, is our characteristic. I do not condescend to boisterous displays of it. I observe, and note the people's comicalities for my correspondence. But you have read my letters — most of them, if not all?'
'Many of them.'
'I was with you then! — I was about to say — that Swiss-guard reminded me — you have not been in Italy. I have constantly regretted it. You are the very woman, you have the soul for Italy. I know no other of whom I could say it, with whom I should not feel that she was out of place, discordant with me. Italy and L?titia! often have I joined you together. We shall see. I begin to have hopes. Here you have literally stagnated. Why, a dinner-party refreshes you! What would not travel do, and that heavenly climate! You are a reader of history and poetry. Well, poetry! I never yet saw the poetry that expressed the tenth part of what I feel in the presence of beauty and magnificence, and when I really meditate — profoundly. Call me a positive mind. I feel: only I feel too intensely for poetry. By the nature of it, poetry cannot be sincere. I will have sincerity. Whatever touches our emotions should be spontaneous, not a craft. I know you are in favour of poetry. You would win me, if any one could. But history! there I am with you. Walking over ruins: at night: the arches of the solemn black amphitheatre pouring moonlight on us — the moonlight of Italy!'
'You would not laugh there, Sir Willoughby?' said L?titia, rousing herself from a stupor of apprehensive amazement, to utter something and realize actual circumstances.
'Besides, you, I think, or I am mistaken in you' — he deviated from his projected speech — 'you are not a victim of the sense of association and the ludicrous.'
'I can understand the influence of it: I have at least a conception of the humourous, but ridicule would not strike me in the Coliseum of Rome. I could not bear it, no, Sir Willoughby!'
She appeared to be taking him in very strong earnest, by thus petitioning him not to laugh in the Coliseum, and now he said: 'Besides, you are one who could accommodate yourself to the society of the ladies, my aunts. Good women, L?titia! I cannot imagine them de trop in Italy, or in a household. I have of course reason to be partial in my judgement.'
'They are excellent and most amiable ladies; I love them,' said L?titia, fervently; the more strongly excited to fervour by her enlightenment as to his drift.
She read it that he designed to take her to Italy with the ladies: — after giving Miss Middleton her liberty; that was necessarily implied. And that was truly generous. In his boyhood he had been famous for his bountifulness in scattering silver and gold. Might he not have caused himself to be misperused in later life?
Clara had spoken to her of the visit and mission of the ladies to the library: and L?titia daringly conceived herself to be on the certain track of his meaning, she being able to enjoy their society as she supposed him to consider that Miss Middleton did not, and would not either abroad or at home.
Sir Willoughby asked her: 'You could travel with them?'
'Indeed I could!'
'Honestly?'
'As affirmatively as one may protest. Delightedly.'
'Agreed. It is an undertaking.' He put his hand out.
'Whether I be of the party or not! To Italy, L?titia! It would give me pleasure to be with you, and it will, if I must be excluded, to think of you in Italy.'
His hand was out. She had to feign inattention or yield her own. She had not the effrontery to pretend not to see, and she yielded it. He pressed it, and whenever it shrunk a quarter inch to withdraw, he shook it up and down, as an instrument that had been lent him for due emphasis to his remarks. And very emphatic an amorous orator can make it upon a captive lady.
'I am unable to speak decisively on that or any subject. I am, I think you once quoted, 'tossed like a weed on the ocean. Of myself I can speak: I cannot speak for a second person. I am infinitely harassed. If I could cry, 'To Italy tomorrow! Ah!.. Do not set me down for complaining. I know the lot of man. But, L?titia, deceit! deceit! It is a bad taste in the mouth. It sickens us of humanity. I compare it to an earthquake: we lose all our reliance on the solidity of the world. It is a betrayal not simply of the person; it is a betrayal of humankind. My friend! Constant friend! No, I will not despair. Yes, I have faults; I will remember them. Only, forgiveness is another question. Yes, the injury I can forgive; the falseness never. In the interests of humanity, no. So young, and such deceit!'
L?titia's bosom rose: her hand was detained: a lady who has yielded it cannot wrestle to have it back; those outworks which protect her treacherously shelter the enemy aiming at the citadel when he has taken them. In return for the silken armour bestowed on her by our civilization, it is exacted that she be soft and civil nigh up to perishing-point. She breathed tremulously high, saying on her top-breath: 'If it — it may not be so; it can scarcely…' A deep sigh intervened. It saddened her that she knew so much.
'For when I love I love,' said Sir Willoughby; 'my friends and my servants know that. There can be no medium: not with me. I give all, I claim all. As I am absorbed, so must I absorb. We both cancel and create, we extinguish and we illumine one another. The error may be in the choice of an object: it is not in the passion. Perfect confidence, perfect abandonment. I repeat, I claim it because I give it. The selfishness of love may be denounced: it is a part of us. My answer would be, it is an element only of the noblest of us! Love, L?titia! I speak of love. But one who breaks faith to drag us through the mire, who betrays, betrays and hands us over to the world, whose prey we become identically because of virtues we were educated to think it a blessing to possess: tell me the name for that! — Again, it has ever been a principle with me to respect the sex. But if we see women false, treacherous… Why indulge in these abstract views, you would ask! The world presses them on us, full as it is of the vilest specimens. They seek to pluck up every rooted principle: they sneer at our worship: they rob us of our religion. This bitter experience of the world drives us back to the antidote of what we knew before we plunged into it: of one… of something we esteemed and still esteem. Is that antidote strong enough to expel the poison? I hope so! I believe so! To lose faith in womankind is terrible.'
He studied her. She looked distressed: she was not moved.
She was thinking that, with the exception of a strain of haughtiness, he talked excellently to men, at least in the tone of the things he meant to say; but that his manner of talking to women went to an excess in the artificial tongue — the tutored tongue of sentimental deference of the towering male: he fluted exceedingly; and she wondered whether it was this which had wrecked him with Miss Middleton.
His intuitive sagacity counselled him to strive for pathos to move her. It was a task; for while he perceived her to be not ignorant of his plight, he doubted her knowing the extent of it, and as his desire was merely to move her without an exposure of himself, he had to compass being pathetic as it were under the impediments of a mailed and gauntletted knight, who cannot easily heave the bosom, or show it heaving.
Moreover, pathos is a tide: often it carries the awakener of it off his feet, and whirls him over and over armour and all in ignominious attitudes of helpless prostration, whereof he may well be ashamed in the retrospect. We cannot quite preserve our dignity when we stoop to the work of calling forth tears. Moses had probably to take a nimble jump away from the rock after that venerable Law-giver had knocked the water out of it.
However, it was imperative in his mind that he should be sure he had the power to move her.
He began; clumsily at first, as yonder gauntletted knight attempting the briny handkerchief.
'What are we! We last but a very short time. Why not live to gratify our appetites? I might really ask myself why. All the means of satiating them are at my disposal. But no: I must aim at the highest: — at that which in my blindness I took for the highest. You know the sportsman's instinct, L?titia; he is not tempted by the stationary object. Such are we in youth, toying with happiness, leaving it, to aim at the dazzling and attractive.'
'We gain knowledge,' said L?titia.
'At what a cost!'
The exclamation summoned self-pity to his aid, and pathos was handy.
'By paying half our lives for it and all our hopes! Yes, we gain knowledge, we are the wiser; very probably my value surpasses now what it was when I was happier. But the loss! That youthful bloom of the soul is like health to the body; once gone, it leaves cripples behind. Nay, my friend and precious friend, these four fingers I must retain. They seem to me the residue of a wreck: you shall be released shortly: absolutely, L?titia, I have nothing else remaining — We have spoken of deception; what of being undeceived? — when one whom we adored is laid bare,
