“You do not know what mischief your being near me might have prevented. You shall hear from me to-morrow; in the meantime, don’t be alarmed. I am in no immediate peril.”
One is further helped to understand by a letter to Moore written, after a longer silence than usual, on November 30:
“Since I last wrote to you, much has occurred, good, bad, and indifferent,—not to make me forget you, but to prevent me of reminding you of one who, nevertheless, has often thought of you....
“Your French quotation was very confoundedly to the purpose,—though very unexpectedly pertinent, as you may imagine by what I said before, and my silence since. However, ‘Richard’s himself again,’ and except all night, and some part of the morning, I don’t think very much about the matter.”
The French quotation referred to is Fontenelle’s: “Si je recommençais ma carrière je ferais tout ce que j’ai fait.” The inference from the allusion to it, and from the two letters given, is quite clear. Something has happened—at Newstead or in the neighbourhood, as the dates demonstrate—something which Byron cannot bring himself to regret, even though he feels that it is going to make trouble for him. Hints at the possibility of a duel which follow in later letters make it not less clear that the trouble—or a part of it—may come from the indignation of an angry husband. “I shall not return his fire,” Byron writes—an indication, we may take it, that a sense of guilt, and some remorse, is mingled with his passion.
That is what we gather, and cannot help gathering, from the letters, in spite of their vagueness and intentional obscurity. We will take up the thread of the story from them again in a moment. In the meanwhile we will turn to the Journal and see how Byron presents the story to himself.
CHAPTER XV
RENEWAL AND INTERRUPTION OF RELATIONS WITH MARY CHAWORTH