Lætitia burst forth with: "No!"
"I do not know you?" said he, searchingly mellifluous.
"Hardly."
"How not?"
"I am changed."
"In what way?"
"Deeply."
"Sedater?"
"Materially."
"Colour will come back: have no fear; I promise it. If you imagine you want renewing, I have the specific, I, my love, I!"
"Forgive me — will you tell me, Sir Willoughby, whether you have broken with Miss Middleton?"
"Rest satisfied, my dear Lætitia. She is as free as I am. I can do no more than a man of honour should do. She releases me. To-morrow or next day she departs. We, Lætitia, you and I, my love, are home birds. It does not do for the home bird to couple with the migratory. The little imperceptible change you allude to, is nothing. Italy will restore you. I am ready to stake my own health — never yet shaken by a doctor of medicine: — I say medicine advisedly, for there are doctors of divinity who would shake giants: — that an Italian trip will send you back — that I shall bring you home from Italy a blooming bride. You shake your head — despondently? My love, I guarantee it. Cannot I give you colour? Behold! Come to the light, look in the glass."
"I may redden," said Lætitia. "I suppose that is due to the action of the heart. I am changed. Heart, for any other purpose, I have not. I am like you, Sir Willoughby, in this: I could not marry without loving, and I do not know what love is, except that it is an empty dream."
"Marriage, my dearest…"
"You are mistaken."
"I will cure you, my Lætitia. Look to me, I am the tonic. It is not common confidence, but conviction. I, my love, I!"
"There is no cure for what I feel, Sir Willoughby."
"Spare me the formal prefix, I beg. You place your hand in mine, relying on me. I am pledge for the remainder. We end as we began: my request is for your hand — your hand in marriage."
"I cannot give it."
"To be my wife!"
"It is an honour; I must decline it."
"Are you quite well, Lætitia? I propose in the plainest terms I can employ, to make you Lady Patterne — mine."
"I am compelled to refuse."
"Why? Refuse? Your reason!"
"The reason has been named."
He took a stride to inspirit his wits.
"There's a madness comes over women at times, I know. Answer me, Lætitia: — by all the evidence a man can have, I could swear it: — but answer me; you loved me once?"
"I was an exceedingly foolish, romantic girl."
"You evade my question: I am serious. Oh!" he walked away from her booming a sound of utter repudiation of her present imbecility, and hurrying to her side, said: "But it was manifest to the whole world! It was a legend. To love like Lætitia Dale, was a current phrase. You were an example, a light to women: no one was your match for devotion. You were a precious cameo, still gazing! And I was the object. You loved me. You loved me, you belonged to me, you were mine, my possession, my jewel; I was prouder of your constancy than of anything else that I had on earth. It was a part of the order of the universe to me. A doubt of it would have disturbed my creed. Why, good heaven! where are we? Is nothing solid on earth? You loved me!"
"I was childish, indeed."
"You loved me passionately!"
"Do you insist on shaming me through and through, Sir Willoughby? I have been exposed enough."
"You cannot blot out the past: it is written, it is recorded. You loved me devotedly, silence is no escape. You loved me."
"I did."
"You never loved me, you shallow woman! 'I did! As if there could be a cessation of a love! What are we to reckon on as ours? We prize a woman's love; we guard it jealously, we trust to it, dream of it; there is our wealth; there is our talisman! And when we open the casket it has flown! — barren vacuity! — we are poorer than dogs. As well think of keeping a costly wine in potter's clay as love in the heart of a woman! There are women — women! Oh, they are all of a stamp coin! Coin for any hand! It's a fiction, an imposture — they cannot love. They are the shadows of men. Compared with men, they have as much heart in them as the shadow beside the body. Lætitia!"
"Sir Willoughby."
"You refuse my offer?"
"I must."
"You refuse to take me for your husband?"
"I cannot be your wife."
"You have changed?… you have set your heart?… you could marry?… there is a man?… you could marry one! I will have an answer, I am sick of evasions. What was in the mind of Heaven when women were created, will be the riddle to the end of the world! Every good man in turn has made the inquiry. I have a right to know who robs me — We may try as we like to solve it. — Satan is painted laughing! — I say I have a right to know who robs me. Answer me."
"I shall not marry."
"That is not an answer."
"I love no one."
"You loved me. — You are silent? — but you confessed it. Then you confess it was a love that could die! Are you unable to perceive how that redounds to my discredit? You loved me, you have ceased to love me. In other words you charge me with incapacity to sustain a woman's love. You accuse me of inspiring a miserable passion that cannot last a lifetime! You let the world see that I am a man to be aimed at for a temporary mark! And simply because I happen to be in your neighbourhood at an age when a young woman is impressionable! You make a public example of me as a for whom women may have a caprice, but that is all; he cannot enchain them; he fascinates passingly; they fall off. Is it just, for me to be taken up and cast down at your will? Reflect on that scandal! Shadows? Why, a man's shadow is faithful to him at least. What are women? There is not a comparison in nature that does not tower above them! not one that does not hoot at them! I, throughout my life, guided by absolute deference to their weakness — paying them politeness, courtesy — whatever I touch I am happy in, except when I touch women! How is it? What is the mystery? Some monstrous explanation must exist. What can it be? I am favoured by fortune from my birth until I enter into relations with women. But will you be so good as to account for it in your defence of them? Oh! were the relations dishonourable, it would be quite another matter. Then they… I could recount… I disdain to chronicle such victories. Quite another matter. But they are flies, and I am something more stable. They are flies. I look beyond the day; I owe a duty to my line. They are flies. I foresee it, I shall be crossed in my fate so long as I fail to shun them — flies! Not merely born for the day, I maintain that they are spiritually ephemeral — Well, my opinion of your sex is directly traceable to you. You may alter it, or fling another of us men out on the world with the old bitter experience. Consider this, that it is on your head if my ideal of women is wrecked. It rests with you to restore it. I love you. I discover that you are the one woman I have always loved. I come to you, I sue you, and suddenly — you have changed! 'I have changed: I am not the same. What can it mean? 'I cannot marry: I love no one. And you say you do not know what love is — avowing in the same breath that you did love me! Am I the empty dream? My hand, heart, fortune, name, are yours, at your feet; you kick them hence. I am here — you reject me. But why, for what mortal reason am I here other than my faith in your love? You drew me to you, to repel me, and have a wretched revenge."