Part 4
The first moment of your doubt would be the last moment of my life! Alas, Sara, what have I done, that you should remind me even of the possibility of it? It is true the confessions, which I have made to you without fear, of my early excesses cannot do me honour, but they should at least awaken confidence. A coquettish Marwood held me in her meshes, because I felt for her that which is so often taken for love which it so rarely is. I should still bear her shameful fetters, had not Heaven, which perhaps did not think my heart quite unworthy to bum with better flames, taken pity on me. To see you, dearest Sara, was to forget all Marwoods! But how dearly have you paid for taking me out of such hands! I had grown too familiar with vice, and you know it too little----
SARA.
Let us think no more of it.
Scene VIII.
Norton, Mellefont, Sara.
MELLEFONT.
What do you want?
NORTON.
While I was standing before the house, a servant gave me this letter. It is directed to you, sir!
MELLEFONT.
To me? Who knows my name here? (_looking at the letter_). Good heavens!
SARA.
You are startled.
MELLEFONT.
But without cause, Sara, as I now perceive. I was mistaken in the handwriting.
SARA.
May the contents be as agreeable to you as you can wish.
MELLEFONT.
I suspect that they will be of very little importance.
SARA.
One is less constrained when one is alone, so allow me to retire to my room again.
MELLEFONT.
You entertain suspicions, then, about it?
SARA.
Not at all, Mellefont.
MELLEFONT (_going with her to the back of the stage_).
I shall be with you in a moment, dearest Sara.
Scene IX.
Mellefont, Norton.
MELLEFONT (_still looking at the letter_).
Just Heaven!
NORTON.
Woe to you, if it is only just!
MELLEFONT.
Is it possible? I see this cursed handwriting again and am not chilled with terror? Is it she? Is it not she? Why do I still doubt? It is she! Alas, friend, a letter from Marwood! What fury, what demon has betrayed my abode to her? What does she still want from me? Go, make preparations immediately that we may get away from here. Yet stop! Perhaps it is unnecessary; perhaps the contempt of my farewell letters has only caused Marwood to reply with equal contempt. There, open the letter; read it! I am afraid to do it myself.
NORTON (_reads_).
"If you will deign, Mellefont, to glance at the name which you will find at the bottom of the page, it will be to me as though I had written you the longest of letters."
MELLEFONT.
Curse the name! Would I had never heard it! Would it could be erased from the book of the living!
NORTON (_reads on_).
"The labour of finding you out has been sweetened by the love which helped me in my search."
MELLEFONT.
Love? Wanton creature! You profane the words which belong to virtue alone.
NORTON (_continues_).
"Love has done more still"----
MELLEFONT.
I tremble----
NORTON.
"It has brought me to you"----
MELLEFONT.
Traitor, what are you reading? (_snatches the letter from his hand and reads himself_). "I am here; and it rests with you, whether you will await a visit from me, or whether you will anticipate mine by one from you. Marwood." What a thunderbolt! She is here! Where is she? She shall atone for this audacity with her life!
NORTON.
With her life? One glance from her and you will be again at her feet. Take care what you do! You must not speak with her, or the misfortunes of your poor young lady will be complete.
MELLEFONT.
O, wretched man that I am! No, I must speak with her! She would go even into Sara's room in search of me, and would vent all her rage on the innocent girl.
NORTON.
But, sir----
MELLEFONT.
Not a word! Let me see (_looking at the letter_) whether she has given the address. Here it is! Come, show me the way! (_Exeunt_).
ACT II.
Scene I.--Marwood's _room in another inn_.
Marwood (_in negligee_), Hannah.
MARWOOD.
I hope Belfort has delivered the letter at the right address, Hannah?
HANNAH.
He has.
MARWOOD.
To him himself?
HANNAH.
To his servant.
MARWOOD.
I am all impatience to see what effect it will have. Do I not seem a little uneasy to you, Hannah? And I am so. The traitor! But gently! I must not on any account give way to anger. Forbearance, love, entreaty are the only weapons which I can use against him, if I rightly understand his weak side.
HANNAH.
But if he should harden himself against them?
MARWOOD.
If he should harden himself against them? Then I shall not be angry. I shall rave! I feel it, Hannah, and I would rather do so to begin with.
HANNAH.
Calm yourself! He may come at any moment.
MARWOOD.
I only hope he may come; I only hope he has not decided to await me on his own ground. But do you know, Hannah, on what I chiefly found my hopes of drawing away the faithless man from this new object of his love? On our Bella!
HANNAH.
It is true, she is a little idol to him; and there could not have been a happier idea than that of bringing her with you.
MARWOOD.
Even if his heart should be deaf to an old love, the language of blood will at least be audible to him. He tore the child from my arms a short time ago under the pretext of wishing to give her an education such as she could not have with me. It is only by an artifice that I have been able to get her again from the lady who had charge of her. He had paid more than a year in advance, and had given strict orders the very day before his flight that they should by no means give admission to a certain Marwood, who would perhaps come and give herself out as mother of the child. From this order I see the distinction which he draws between us. He regards Arabella as a precious portion of himself, and me as an unfortunate creature, of whose charms he has grown weary.
HANNAH.
What ingratitude!
MARWOOD.
Ah, Hannah! Nothing more infallibly draws down ingratitude, than favours for which no gratitude would be too great. Why have I shown him these fatal favours? Ought I not to have foreseen that they could not always retain their value with him; that their value rested on the difficulty in the way of their enjoyment, and that the latter must disappear with the charm of our looks which the hand of time imperceptibly but surely effaces?
HANNAH.
You, Madam, have not anything to fear for a long time from this dangerous hand! To my mind your beauty is so far from having passed the point of its brightest bloom, that it is rather advancing towards it, and would enchain fresh hearts for you every day if you only would give it the permission.
MARWOOD.
Be silent, Hannah! You flatter me on an occasion which makes me suspicious of any flattery. It is nonsense to speak of new conquests, if one has not even sufficient power to retain possession of those which one has already made.
Scene II.
A Servant, Marwood, Hannah.
SERVANT.
Some one wishes to have the honour of speaking with you.
MARWOOD.
Who is it?
SERVANT.
I suppose it is the gentleman to whom the letter was addressed. At least the servant to whom I delivered it is with him.
MARWOOD.
Mellefont!--Quick, bring him up! (_Exit_ Servant.) Ah, Hannah! He is here now! How shall I receive him? What shall I say? What look shall I put on? Is this calm enough? Just see!
HANNAH.
Anything but calm.
MARWOOD.
This, then?
HANNAH.
Throw a little sweetness into it.
MARWOOD.
So, perhaps?
HANNAH.
Too sad.
MARWOOD.
Would this smile do?
HANNAH.
Perfectly--only less constrained--He is coming.
Scene III.
Mellefont, Marwood, Hannah.
MELLEFONT (_entering with wild gestures_).
Ha! Marwood----
MARWOOD (_running to meet him smiling, and with open arms_).
Ah, Mellefont!
MELLEFONT (_aside_).
The murderess! What a look!
MARWOOD.
I must embrace you, faithless, dear fugitive! Share my joy with me! Why do you tear yourself from my caresses!
MELLEFONT.
I expected, Marwood, that you would receive me differently.
MARWOOD.
Why differently? With more love, perhaps? With more delight? Alas, how unhappy I am, that I cannot express all that I feel! Do you not see, Mellefont, do you not see that joy, too, has its tears? Here they fall, the offspring of sweetest delight! But alas, vain tears! His hand does not dry you!
MELLEFONT.
Marwood, the time is gone, when such words would have charmed me. You must speak now with me in another tone. I come to hear your last reproaches and to answer them.
MARWOOD.
Reproaches? What reproaches should I have for you, Mellefont? None!
MELLEFONT.
Then you might have spared yourself the journey, I should think.
MARWOOD.
Dearest, capricious heart. Why will you forcibly compel me to recall a trifle which I forgave you the same moment I heard of it? Does a passing infidelity which your gallantry, but not your heart, has caused, deserve these reproaches? Come, let us laugh at it!
MELLEFONT.
You are mistaken; my heart is more concerned in it, than it ever was in all our love affairs, upon which I cannot now look back but with disgust.
MARWOOD.
Your heart, Mellefont, is a good little fool. It lets your imagination persuade it to whatever it will. Believe me, I know it better than you do yourself! Were it not the best, the most faithful of hearts, should I take such pains to keep it?
MELLEFONT.
To keep it? You have never possessed it, I tell you.
MARWOOD.
And I tell you, that in reality I possess it still!
MELLEFONT.
Marwood! if I knew that you still possessed one single fibre of it, I would tear it out of my breast here before your eyes.
MARWOOD.
You would see that you were tearing mine out at the same time. And then, then these hearts would at last attain that union which they have sought so often upon our lips.
MELLEFONT (_aside_).
What a serpent! Flight will be the best thing here.--Just tell me briefly, Marwood, why you have followed me, and what you still desire of me! But tell it me without this smile, without this look, in which a whole' hell of seduction lurks and terrifies me.
MARWOOD (_insinuatingly_).
Just listen, my dear Mellefont! I see your position now. Your desires and your taste are at present your tyrants. Never mind, one must let them wear themselves out. It is folly to resist them. They are most safely lulled to sleep, and at last even conquered, by giving them free scope. They wear themselves away. Can you accuse me, my fickle friend, of ever having been jealous, when more powerful charms than mine estranged you from me for a time? I never grudged you the change, by which I always won more than I lost. You returned with new ardour, with new passion to my arms, in which with light bonds, and never with heavy fetters I encompassed you. Have I not often even been your confidante though you had nothing to confide but the favours which you stole from me, in order to lavish them on others. Why should you believe then, that I would now begin to display a capriciousness just when I am ceasing, or, perhaps have already ceased, to be justified in it. If your ardour for the pretty country girl has not yet cooled down, if you are still in the first fever of your love for her; if you cannot yet do without the enjoyment she gives you; who hinders you from devoting yourself to her, as long as you think good? But must you on that account make such rash projects, and purpose to fly from the country with her?
MELLEFONT.
Marwood! You speak in perfect keeping with your character, the wickedness of which I never understood so well as I do now, since, in the society of a virtuous woman, I have learned to distinguish love from licentiousness.
MARWOOD.
Indeed! Your new mistress is then a girl of fine moral sentiments, I suppose? You men surely cannot know yourselves what you want. At one time you are pleased with the most wanton talk and the most unchaste jests from us, at another time we charm you, when we talk nothing but virtue, and seem to have all the seven sages on our lips. But the worst is, that you get tired of one as much as the other. We may be foolish or reasonable, worldly or spiritual; our efforts to make you constant are lost either way. The turn will come to your beautiful saint soon enough. Shall I give you a little sketch? Just at present you are in the most passionate paroxysm over her. I allow this two or at the most three days more. To this will succeed a tolerably calm love; for this I allow a week. The next week you will only think occasionally of this love. In the third week, you will have to be reminded of it; and when you have got tired of being thus reminded, you will so quickly see yourself reduced to the most utter indifference, that I can hardly allow the fourth week for this final change. This would be about a month altogether. And this month, Mellefont, I will overlook with the greatest pleasure; but you will allow that I must not lose sight of you.
MELLEFONT.
You try all the weapons in vain which you remember to have used successfully with me in bygone days. A virtuous resolution secures me against both your tenderness and your wit. However, I will not expose myself longer to either. I go, and have nothing more to tell you but that in a few days you shall know that I am bound in such a manner as will utterly destroy all your hope of my ever returning into your sinful slavery. You will have learned my justification sufficiently from the letter which I sent to you before my departure.
MARWOOD.
It is well that you mention this letter. Tell me, who did you get to write it?
MELLEFONT.
Did not I write it myself?
MARWOOD.
Impossible! The beginning of it, in which you reckoned up--I do not know what sums--which you say you have wasted with me, must have been written by an innkeeper, and the theological part at the end by a Quaker. I will now give you a serious reply to it. As to the principal point, you well know that all the presents which you have made are still in existence. I have never considered your cheques or your jewels as my property, and I have brought them all with me to return them into the hands which entrusted them to me.
MELLEFONT.
Keep them all, Marwood!
MARWOOD.
I will not keep any of them. What right have I to them without you yourself? Although you do not love me any more, you must at least do me justice and not take me for one of those venal females, to whom it is a matter of indifference by whose booty they enrich themselves. Come, Mellefont, you shall this moment be as rich again as you perhaps might still be if you had not known me; and perhaps, too, might _not_ be.
MELLEFONT.
What demon intent upon my destruction speaks through you now! Voluptuous Marwood does not think so nobly.
MARWOOD.
Do you call that noble? I call it only just. No, Sir, no, I do not ask that you shall account the return of your gifts as anything remarkable. It costs me nothing, and I should even consider the slightest expression of thanks on your part as an insult, which could have no other meaning than this: "Marwood, I thought you a base deceiver; I am thankful that you have not wished to be so towards me at least."
MELLEFONT.
Enough, Madam, enough! I fly, since my unlucky destiny threatens to involve me in a contest of generosity, in which I should be most unwilling to succumb.
MARWOOD.
Fly, then! But take everything with you that could remind me of you. Poor, despised, without honour, and without friends, I will then venture again to awaken your pity. I will show you in the unfortunate Marwood only a miserable woman, who has sacrificed to you her person, her honour, her virtue, and her conscience. I will remind you of the first day, when you saw and loved me; of the first, stammering, bashful confession of your love, which you made me at my feet; of the first assurance of my return of your love, which you forced from me; of the tender looks, of the passionate embraces, which followed, of the eloquent silence, when each with busy mind divined the other's most secret feelings, and read the most hidden thoughts of the soul in the languishing eye; of the trembling expectation of approaching gratification; of the intoxication of its joys; of the sweet relaxation after the fulness of enjoyment, in which the exhausted spirits regained strength for fresh delights. I shall remind you of all this, and then embrace your knees, and entreat without ceasing for the only gift, which you cannot deny me, and which I can accept without blushing--for death from your hand.
MELLEFONT.
Cruel one! I would still give even my life for you. Ask it, ask it, only do not any longer claim my love. I must leave you, Marwood, or make myself an object of loathing to the whole world. I am culpable already in that I only stand here and listen to you. Farewell, farewell!
MARWOOD (_holding him back_).
You must leave me? And what, then, do you wish, shall become of me? As I am now, I am your creature; do, then, what becomes a creator; he may not withdraw his hand from the work until he wishes to destroy it utterly. Alas, Hannah, I see now, my entreaties alone are too feeble. Go, bring my intercessor, who will now, perhaps, return to me more than she ever received from me. (_Exit_ Hannah).
MELLEFONT.
What intercessor, Marwood?
MARWOOD.
Ah, an intercessor of whom you would only too willingly have deprived me. Nature will take a shorter road to your heart with her grievances.
MELLEFONT.
You alarm me. Surely you have not----
Scene IV.
Arabella, Hannah, Mellefont, Marwood.
MELLEFONT.
What do I see? It is she! Marwood, how could you dare to----
MARWOOD.
Am I not her mother? Come, my Bella, see, here is your protector again, your friend, your .... Ah! his heart may tell him what more he can be to you than a protector and a friend.
MELLEFONT (_turning away his face_).
God, what shall I have to suffer here?
ARABELLA (_advancing timidly towards him_).
Ah, Sir! Is it you? Are you our Mellefont? No, Madam, surely, surely it is not he! Would he not look at me, if it were? Would he not hold me in his arms? He used to do so. What an unhappy child I am! How have I grieved him, this dear, dear man, who let me call him my father?
MARWOOD.
You are silent, Mellefont? You grudge the innocent child a single look?
MELLEFONT.
Ah!
ARABELLA.
Why, he sighs, Madam! What is the matter with him? Cannot we help him? Cannot I? Nor you? Then let us sigh with him! Ah, now he looks at me! No, he looks away again! He looks up to Heaven! What does he want? What does he ask from Heaven? Would that Heaven would grant him everything, even if it refused me everything for it!
MARWOOD.
Go, my child, go, fall at his feet! He wants to leave us, to leave us for ever.
ARABELLA (_falling on her knees before him_).
Here I am already. You will leave us? You will leave us for ever? Have not we already been without you for a little "for ever." Shall we have to lose you again? You have said so often that you loved us. Does one leave the people whom one loves? I cannot love you then, I suppose, for I should wish never to leave you. Never, and I never will leave you either.
MARWOOD.
I will help you in your entreaties, my child! And you must help me too! Now, Mellefont, you see me too at your feet....
MELLEFONT (_stopping her, as she throws herself at his feet_).
Marwood, dangerous Marwood! And you, too, my dearest Bella (_raising her up_), you too are the enemy of your Mellefont?
ARABELLA.
I your enemy?
MARWOOD.
What is your resolve?
MELLEFONT.
What it ought not to be, Marwood; what it ought not to be.
MARWOOD (_embracing him_).
Ah, I know that the honesty of your heart has always overcome the obstinacy of your desires.
MELLEFONT.
Do not importune me any longer! I am already what you wish to make me; a perjurer, a seducer, a robber, a murderer!
MARWOOD.
You will be so in imagination for a few days, and after that you will see that I have prevented you from becoming so in reality. You will return with us, won't you?
ARABELLA (_insinuatingly_).
Oh yes, do!
MELLEFONT.
Return with you! How can I?
MARWOOD.
Nothing is easier, if you only wish it.
MELLEFONT.
And my Sara----
MARWOOD.
And your Sara may look to herself.
MELLEFONT.
Ha! cruel Marwood, these words reveal the very bottom of your heart to me. And yet I, wretch, do not repent?
MARWOOD.
If you had seen the bottom of my heart, you would have discovered that it has more true pity for your Sara than you yourself have. I say true pity; for your pity is egotistic and weak. You have carried this love-affair much too far. We might let it pass, that you as a man, who by long intercourse with our sex has become master in the art of seducing, used your superiority in dissimulation and experience against such a young maiden, and did not rest until you had gained your end. You can plead the impetuosity of your passion as your excuse. But, Mellefont, you cannot justify yourself for having robbed an old father of his only child, for having rendered to an honourable old man his few remaining steps to the grave harder and more bitter, for having broken the strongest ties of nature for the sake of your desires. Repair your error, then, as far as it is possible to repair it. Give the old man his support again, and send a credulous daughter back to her home, which you need not render desolate also, because you have dishonoured it.
MELLEFONT.
This only was still wanting--that you should call in my conscience against me also. But even supposing what you say were just, must I not be brazenfaced if I should propose it myself to the unhappy girl?
MARWOOD.
Well, I will confess to you, that I have anticipated this difficulty, and considered how to spare you it. As soon as I learned your address, I informed her old father privately of it. He was beside himself with joy, and wanted to start directly. I wonder he has not yet arrived.
MELLEFONT.
What do you say?
MARWOOD.
Just await his arrival quietly, and do not let the girl notice anything. I myself will not detain you any longer. Go to her again; she might grow suspicious. But I trust that I shall see you again to-day.
MELLEFONT.