Mellefont, Marwood, Hannah.
Ha! Marwood----
Ah, Mellefont!
The murderess! What a look!
I must embrace you, faithless, dear fugitive! Share my joy with me! Why do you tear yourself from my caresses!
I expected, Marwood, that you would receive me differently.
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!
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.
Reproaches? What reproaches should I have for you, Mellefont? None!
Then you might have spared yourself the journey, I should think.
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!
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.
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?
To keep it? You have never possessed it, I tell you.
And I tell you, that in reality I possess it still!
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
It is well that you mention this letter. Tell me, who did you get to write it?
Did not I write it myself?
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.
Keep them all, 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, mightnotbe.
What demon intent upon my destruction speaks through you now! Voluptuous Marwood does not think so nobly.
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."
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.
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.
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!
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. (ExitHannah).
What intercessor, 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.
You alarm me. Surely you have not----
Arabella, Hannah, Mellefont, Marwood.
What do I see? It is she! Marwood, how could you dare to----
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.
God, what shall I have to suffer here?
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?
You are silent, Mellefont? You grudge the innocent child a single look?
Ah!
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!
Go, my child, go, fall at his feet! He wants to leave us, to leave us for ever.
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.
I will help you in your entreaties, my child! And you must help me too! Now, Mellefont, you see me too at your feet....
Marwood, dangerous Marwood! And you, too, my dearest Bella (raising her up), you too are the enemy of your Mellefont?
I your enemy?
What is your resolve?
What it ought not to be, Marwood; what it ought not to be.
Ah, I know that the honesty of your heart has always overcome the obstinacy of your desires.
Do not importune me any longer! I am already what you wish to make me; a perjurer, a seducer, a robber, a murderer!
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?
Oh yes, do!
Return with you! How can I?
Nothing is easier, if you only wish it.
And my Sara----
And your Sara may look to herself.
Ha! cruel Marwood, these words reveal the very bottom of your heart to me. And yet I, wretch, do not repent?
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.
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?
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.
What do you say?
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.
Oh, Marwood! With what feelings did I come to you, and with what must I leave you! A kiss, my dear Bella.
That was for you, now one for me! But come back again soon, do!
(ExitMellefont).
Marwood, Arabella, Hannah.
Victory, Hannah! but a hard victory! Give me a chair, I feel quite exhausted (sitting down). He surrendered only just in time, if he had hesitated another moment, I should have shown him quite a different Marwood.
Ah, Madam, what a woman you are! I should like to Bee the man who could resist you.
He has resisted me already too long. And assuredly, assuredly, I will not forgive him that he almost let me go down on my knees to him.
No, no! You must forgive him everything. He is so good, so good----
Be silent, little silly!
I do not know on what side you did not attack him! But nothing, I think, touched him more, than the disinterestedness with which you offered to return all his presents to him.
I believe so too. Ha! ha! ha! (contemptuously).
Why do you laugh, Madam? You really risked a great deal, if you were not in earnest about it. Suppose he had taken you at your word?
Oh, nonsense, one knows with whom one has to deal.
I quite admit that! But you too, my pretty Bella, did your part excellently, excellently!
How so? Could I do it, then, any other way? I had not seen him for such a long time. I hope you are not angry, Madam, that I love him so? I love you as much as him, just as much.
Very well, I will pardon you this time that you do not love me better than him.
This time?
Why, you are crying actually? What is it about?
Ah, no! I am not crying. Do not get angry! I will love you both so much, so much, that it will be impossible to love either of you more.
Very well.
I am so unhappy.
Now be quiet----but what is that?
Mellefont, Marwood, Arabella, Hannah.
Why do you come back again so soon, Mellefont? (rising).
Because I needed but a few moments to recover my senses.
Well?
I was stunned, Marwood, but not moved! You have had all your trouble in vain. Another atmosphere than this infectious one of your room has given me back my courage and my strength, to withdraw my foot in time from this dangerous snare. Were the tricks of a Marwood not sufficiently familiar to me, unworthy wretch that I am?
What language is that?
The language of truth and anger.
Gently, Mellefont! or I too shall speak in the same language.
I return only in order not to leave you one moment longer under a delusion with regard to me, which must make me despicable even in your eyes.
Oh, Hannah!
Look at me as madly as you like. The more madly the better! Was it possible that I could hesitate only for one moment between a Marwood and a Sara, and that I had well nigh decided for the former?
Oh, Mellefont!
Do not tremble, Bella! For your sake too I came back. Give me your hand, and follow me without fear!
Whom shall she follow, traitor?
Her father!
Go, pitiable wretch, and learn first to know her mother.
I know her. She is a disgrace to her sex.
Take her away, Hannah!
Remain here, Bella (attempting to stop her).
No force, Mellefont, or----
(ExeuntHannahandArabella).
Mellefont, Marwood.
Now we are alone! Say now once more, whether you are determined to sacrifice me for a foolish girl?
Sacrifice you? You recall to my mind that impure animals were also sacrificed to the ancient gods.
Express yourself without these learned allusions.
I tell you, then, that I am firmly resolved never to think of you again, but with the most fearful of curses. Who are you? And who is Sara? You are a voluptuous, egoistic, shameful strumpet, who certainly can scarcely remember any longer that she ever was innocent. I have nothing to reproach myself with but that I have enjoyed with you that which otherwise you would perhaps have let the whole world enjoy. You have sought me, not I you, and if I now know who Marwood is, I have paid for this knowledge dearly enough. It has cost me my fortune, my honour, my happiness----
And I would that it might also cost you your eternal happiness. Monster! Is the devil worse than you, when he lures feeble mortals into crimes and himself accuses them afterwards for these crimes which are his own work! What is my innocence to you? What does it matter to you when and how I lost it. If I could not sacrifice my virtue, I have at least staked my good name for you. The former is no more valuable than the latter. What do I say? More valuable? Without it the former is a silly fancy, which brings one neither happiness nor guilt. The good name alone gives it some value, and can exist quite well without it. What did it matter what I was before I knew you, you wretch! It is enough that in the eyes of the world I was a woman without reproach. Through you only it has learned that I am not so; solely through my readiness to accept your heart, as I then thought, without your hand.
This very readiness condemns you, vile woman!
But do you remember to what base tricks you owed it? Was I not persuaded by you, that you could not be publicly united to me without forfeiting an inheritance which you wished to share with me only? Is it time now to renounce it? And to renounce it, not for me but for another!
It is a real delight to me to be able to tell you that this difficulty will soon be removed. Content yourself therefore with having deprived me of my father's inheritance, and let me enjoy a far smaller one with a more worthy wife.
Ha! Now I see what it is that makes you so perverse. Well, I will lose no more words. Be it so! Be assured I shall do everything to forget you. And the first thing that I will do to this end, shall be this. You will understand me! Tremble for your Bella! Her life shall not carry the memory of my despised love down to posterity; my cruelty shall do it. Behold in me a new Medea!
Marwood!----
Or, if you know a more cruel mother still, behold her cruelty doubled in me! Poison and dagger shall avenge me. But no, poison and dagger are tools too merciful for me! They would kill your child and mine too soon. I will not see it dead. I will see it dying! I will see each feature of the face which she has from you disfigured, distorted, and obliterated by slow torture. With eager hand will I part limb from limb, vein from vein, nerve from nerve, and will not cease to cut and burn the very smallest of them, even when there is nothing remaining but a senseless carcass! I--I shall at least feel in it--how sweet is revenge!
You are raving, Marwood----
You remind me that my ravings are not directed against the right person. The father must go first! He must already be in yonder world, when, through a thousand woes the spirit of his daughter follows him (she advances towards him with a dagger which she draws from her bosom). So die, traitor!
Insane woman! What hinders me now from turning the steel against you? But live, and your punishment shall be left for a hand void of honour.
Heaven, what have I done? Mellefont----
Your grief shall not deceive me. I know well why you are sorry--not that you wished to stab me, but that you failed to do so.
Give me back the erring steel! Give it me back, and you shall see for whom it was sharpened! For this breast alone, which for long has been too narrow for a heart which will rather renounce life than your love.
Hannah!
What are you doing, Mellefont?
Hannah(in terror),Marwood, Mellefont.
Did you hear, Hannah, how madly your mistress was behaving? Remember that I shall hold you responsible for Arabella!
Madam, how agitated you are!
I will place the innocent child in safety immediately. Justice will doubtless be able to bind the murderous hands of her cruel mother (going).
Whither, Mellefont? Is it astonishing that the violence of my grief deprived me of my reason? Who forces me to such unnatural excess? Is it not you yourself? Where can Bella be safer than with me? My lips may rave, but my heart still remains the heart of a mother. Oh, Mellefont, forget my madness, and to excuse it think only of its cause.
There is only one thing which can induce me to forget it.
And that is?
That you return immediately to London! I will send Arabella there under another escort. You must by no means have anything further to do with her.
Very well! I submit to everything; but grant me one single request more. Let me see your Sara once.
And what for?
To read in her eyes my future fate. I will judge for myself whether she is worthy of such a breach of faith as you commit against me; and whether I may cherish the hope of receiving again, some day at any rate, a portion of your love.
Vain hope!
Who is so cruel as to grudge even hope to the unhappy? I will not show myself to her as Marwood, but as a relation of yours. Announce me to her as such; you shall be present when I call upon her, and I promise you, by all that is sacred, to say nothing that is in any way displeasing to her. Do not refuse my request, for otherwise I might perhaps do all that is in my power to show myself to her in my true character.
Marwood! This request----(after a moment's reflection) might be granted.--But will you then be sure to quit this spot?
Certainly; yes I promise you. Even more, I will spare you the visit from her father, if that is still possible.
There is no need of that! I hope that he will include me too in the pardon which he grants to his daughter. But if he will not pardon her, I too shall know how to deal with him. I will go and announce you to my Sara. Only keep your promise, Marwood. (Exit.)
Alas, Hannah, that our powers are not as great as our courage. Come, help me to dress. I do not despair of my scheme. If I could only make sure of him first. Come!
Sir William Sampson, Waitwell.
There, Waitwell, take this letter to her! It is the letter of an affectionate father, who complains of nothing but her absence. Tell her that I have sent you on before with it, and that I only await her answer, to come myself and fold her again in my arms.
I think you do well to prepare them for your arrival in this way.
I make sure of her intentions by this means, and give her the opportunity of freeing herself from any shame or sorrow which repentance might cause her, before she speaks verbally with me. In a letter it will cost her less embarrassment, and me, perhaps, fewer tears.
But may I ask, Sir, what you have resolved upon with regard to Mellefont?
Ah, Waitwell, if I could separate him from my daughter's lover, I should make some very harsh resolve. But as this cannot be, you see, he is saved from my anger. I myself am most to blame in this misfortune. But for me Sara would never have made the acquaintance of this dangerous man. I admitted him freely into my house on account of an obligation under which I believed myself to be to him. It was natural that the attention which in gratitude I paid him, should win for him the esteem of my daughter. And it was just as natural, that a man of his disposition should suffer himself to be tempted by this esteem to something more. He had been clever enough to transform it into love before I noticed anything at all, and before I had time to inquire into his former life. The evil was done, and I should have done well, if I had forgiven them everything immediately. I wished to be inexorable towards him, and did not consider that I could not be so towards him alone. If I had spared my severity, which came too late, I would at least have prevented their flight. But here I am now, Waitwell! I must fetch them back myself and consider myself happy if only I can make a son of a seducer. For who knows whether he will give up his Marwoods and his other creatures for the sake of a girl who has left nothing for his desires to wish for and who understands so little the bewitching arts of a coquette?
Well, Sir, it cannot be possible, that a man could be so wicked----
This doubt, good Waitwell, does honour to your virtue. But why, at the same time, is it true that the limits of human wickedness extend much further still? Go now, and do as I told you! Notice every look as she reads my letter. In this short deviation from virtue she cannot yet have learned the art of dissimulation, to the masks of which only deep-rooted vice can have recourse. You will read her whole soul in her face. Do not let a look escape you which might perhaps indicate indifference to me--disregard of her father. For if you should unhappily discover this, and if she loves me no more, I hope that I shall be able to conquer myself and abandon her to her fate. I hope so, Waitwell. Alas! would that there were no heart here, to contradict this hope. (Exeunt on different sides.)
Miss Sara, Mellefont.
(Sara'sroom.)
I have done wrong, dearest Sara, to leave you in uneasiness about the letter which came just now.
Oh dear, no, Mellefont! I have not been in the least uneasy about it. Could you not love me even though you still had secrets from me?
You think, then, that it was a secret?
But not one which concerns me. And that must suffice for me.
You are only too good. Let me nevertheless reveal my secret to you. The letter contained a few lines from a relative of mine, who has heard of my being here. She passes through here on her way to London, and would like to see me. She has begged at the same time to be allowed the honour of paying you a visit.
It will always be a pleasure to me to make the acquaintance of the respected members of your family. But consider for yourself, whether I can yet appear before one of them without blushing.
Without blushing? And for what? For your love to me? It is true, Sara, you could have given your love to a nobler or a richer man. You must be ashamed that you were content to give your heart for another heart only, and that in this exchange you lost sight of your happiness.
You must know yourself how wrongly you interpret my words.
Pardon me, Sara; if my interpretation is wrong, they can have no meaning at all.
What is the name of your relation?
She is--Lady Solmes. You will have heard me mention the name before.
I don't remember.
May I beg you to see her?
Beg me? You can command me to do so.
What a word! No, Sara, she shall not have the happiness of seeing you. She will regret it, but she must submit to it. Sara has her reasons, which I respect without knowing them.
How hasty you are, Mellefont! I shall expect Lady Solmes, and do my best to show myself worthy of the honour of her visit. Are you content?
Ah, Sara! let me confess my ambition. I should like to show you to the whole world! And were I not proud of the possession of such a being, I should reproach myself with not being able to appreciate her value. I will go and bring her to you at once. (Exit.)
I hope she will not be one of those proud women, who are so full of their own virtue that they believe themselves above all failings. With one single look of contempt they condemn us, and an equivocal shrug of the shoulders is all the pity we seem to deserve in their eyes.