Chapter V: Vacillation

_Lady Plyant_. O consider it, what you would have to answer for, if you should provoke me to frailty. Alas! humanity is feeble, and unable to support itself.

WYCHERLEY.--_The Double Dealer._

When Marmaduke called, he found Mrs. Vyner as polite and as distant as before, with something in her manner which looked like timidity. He had anticipated a very different reception. After the implicit avowal, contained in the passage of Petrarch, he anticipated that all coquetry, all reserve, would be cast aside, and that she would throw herself into his arms. How little he understood her!

Irritated by this resumption of her former manner, he at last said,--

"Mary, I am not to be trifled with any longer. Tell me once for all,--Did you give me that book on Monday evening to make a fool of me; or did you give it that I might understand you?"

She was knitting a purse, and continued her work without making the slightest observation.

"Mary, take care! take care! I am violent--do not rouse me. I must decide to-day whether I am to be your's or _another's_."

She trembled slightly as he said this, and raised her eyes to his.

"You have played with my affection too long already. To-day must end it. Mary, do you love me?"

She kept her eyes fixed upon his, and smiled.

"I will take no equivocal answer," he said, rising, and approaching her; "if it is to end, it had better end at once."

She shook back her golden tresses, and motioning him to be seated, with a most significant smile, said,--"Marmaduke, you need not go."

He sat upon the ground at her feet, and looking up into her face, whispered,--

"My own Mary!"

She drooped over him, so as to cover his head with her luxuriant hair, and kissed him on the brow.

His heart swelled with triumph, and his senses were violently agitated.

She also triumphed, as she gazed upon the fierce, impetuous creature whom she had subdued, and who now sat at her feet, his head resting on her lap, passion darting from his lustrous eyes, sitting there her slave and her adorer. A scornful remembrance of the haughty Violet, over whom she now triumphed, gave additional keenness to her delight.

After allowing him to remain some minutes in ecstatic contemplation, she bade him rise.

"Oh, let me still sit here. Here could I spend my life. Here, my own exquisite Mary, at your feet--your strange eyes looking thus into mine, and stirring the fibres of my heart as no eyes ever stirred them."

"Dearest Marmaduke, remember our love is sacred, but it must not make us forget prudence--

Salvando la tua vita e'l nostro onore."

This quotation from the passage in Petrarch at once checked the current of Marmaduke's feelings, and made him remember he had a part to play. It quelled the emotions of the scene, and recalled to him that he was but an actor.

He rose, and with well-feigned reluctance entered into her plans for the preservation of her honour and her virtue, without, at the same time, affecting their love. They were to love Platonically; they were to imitate Petrarch and Laura in the depth, constancy, and purity of their affection.

"Now," thought he, "for my revenge."

How great his vexation when he found that Violet had left home, and left it for some weeks. He had anticipated an immediate triumph; he thought from vows of Platonic and Petrarchian love to pass at once to his declaration to Violet, so that his engagement to her should come upon Mrs. Vyner like a thunderclap. But now he saw this delayed for weeks; and to one of his impatient temper this was a serious irritation.

The absence of Violet weakened his resolution. He was too susceptible of Mrs. Vyner's personal charms, and too fascinated by her manner, to remain long in her society without danger. So long as Violet was present, her magnificent beauty and strong character were as spells upon him, which counteracted the more sensual attractions of Mrs. Vyner, and kept him to his meditated plans. But Violet absent, his senses and vanity were laid open to the assaults of the adroit coquette. He became more and more in earnest. His desire for her possession daily encroached upon his desire for vengeance; till at last he began to think only of accomplishing the former.

The reader may condemn him: he will do so; but he should remember that Marmaduke was no paragon of virtue, who could resist the temptations of his senses and his vanity. He belonged, indeed, to that race of human beings on whom, however great the moral qualities, yet, from their highly nervous organizations, temptation comes with tenfold force to what it does on colder-blooded mortals. He had fine qualities; but neither his education nor his organization fitted him for a paragon. He was, indeed, a most imperfect hero: very erring, very human. And, bold and reckless as he was, he pursued the suggestions of his erring nature without regard to consequences: if those suggestions were noble, they led him to heroism; if base, they led him to crime. I state the facts, "nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice;" let those cast the first stone at him, who feel they can do so with a clear conscience.