“Not to you de—” I was nearly in it again: “not to you,” said I, stammering and blushing till I felt on fire. I suspect that she saw all the peril of the moment, for she left the room hurriedly, on the pretext of asking Mrs. Keats to take more tea.
“She is sensible of your devotion, Potts; but is she touched by it? Has she said to herself, 'That man is my fate, my destiny,—it is no use resisting him; dark and mysterious as he is, I am drawn towards him by an inscrutable sympathy'—or is she still struggling in the toils, muttering to her heart to be still, and to wait? Flutter away, gentle creature,” said I, compassionately, “but raffle not your lovely plumage too roughly; the bars of your cage are not the less impassable that they are invisible. You shall love me, and you shall be mine!”
To these rapturous fancies there now succeeded the far less captivating thought of Mrs. Keats, and an approaching interview. Can any reader explain why it is, that one sits in quiet admiration of some old woman by Teniers or Holbein, and never experiences any chagrin or impatience at trials which, if only represented in life, would be positively odious? Why is it that art transcends nature, and that ugliness in canvas is more endurable than ugliness in the flesh? Now, for my own part, I'd rather have faced a whole gallery of the Dutch school, from Van Eyck to Verbagen, than have confronted that one old lady who sat awaiting me in No. 12.
Twice as I sat at my breakfast did François put in his head, look at me, and retire without a word. “What is the matter? What do you mean?” cried I, impatiently, at the third intrusion.
“It is madam that wishes to know when monsieur will be at leisure to go upstairs to her.”
I almost bounded on my chair with passion. How was I, I would ask, to maintain any portion of that dignity with which I ought to surround myself if exposed to such demands as this? This absurd old woman would tear off every illusion in which I draped myself. What availed all the romance a rich fancy could conjure up, when that wicked old enchantress called me to her presence, and in a voice of thunder said, “Strip off these masqueradings, Potts, I know the whole story.” “Ay, but,” thought I, “she cannot do so; of me and my antecedents she knows positively nothing.” “Halt there!” interposes Conscience; “it is quite enough to pronounce the coin base, without being able to say at what mint it was fabricated. She knows you, Potts, she knows you.”
There is one great evil in castle-building, and I have thought very long and anxiously, and I must own fruitlessly, over how to meet it: it is that one never can get a lease of the ground to build on. One is always like an Irish cottier, a tenant at will, likely to be turned out at a moment's notice, and dispossessed without pity or compassion. The same language applies to each: “You know well, my good fellow, you had no right to be there; pack up and be off!” It's no use saying that it was a bit of waste land unfenced and untilled; that, until you took it in hand, it was overgrown with nettles and duckweed; that you dispossessed no one, and such like. The answer is still the same, “Where's your title? Where's your lease?”
Now, I am curious to hear what injury I was inflicting on that old woman at No. 12 by any self-deceptions of mine? Could the most exaggerated estimate I might form of myself, my present, or my future, in any degree affect her? Who constituted her a sort of ambulatory conscience, to call people's hearts to account at a moment's notice? It may be seen by the tone of these reflections, that I was fully impressed with the belief through some channel, or by some clew, Mrs. Keats knew all my history, and intended to use her knowledge tyrannically over me.
Oh that I could only retaliate! Oh that I had only the veriest fragment of her past life, out of which to construct her whole story! Just as out of a mastodon's molar, Cuvier used to build up the whole monster, never omitting a rib, nor forgetting a vertebra! How I should like to say to her, and with a most significant sigh, “I knew poor Keats well!” Could I not make even these simple words convey a world of accusation, blended with sorrow and regret?
François again, and on the same errand. “Say I am coming; that I have only finished a hasty breakfast, and that I am coming this instant,” cried I. Nor was it very easy for me to repress the more impatient expressions which struggled for utterance, particularly as I saw, or fancied I saw, the fellow pass his hand over his mouth to hide a grin at my expense.