Clarissa Harlowe Samuel Richardson (most important books to read TXT) 📖

shall never have my vows I am resolved! and I will say nothing but no, as long as I shall be able to speak. And who will presume to look upon such an act of violence as a marriage?⁠—It is impossible, surely, that a father and mother can see such a dreadful compulsion offered to their child⁠—but if mine should withdraw, and leave the task to my brother and sister, they will have no mercy.

I am grieved to be driven to have recourse to the following artifices.

I have given them a clue, by the feather of a pen sticking out, where they will find such of my hidden stories, as I intend they shall find.

Two or three little essays I have left easy to be seen, of my own writing.

About a dozen lines also of a letter begun to you, in which I express my hopes, (although I say that appearances are against me), and that my friends will relent. They know from your mother, by my uncle Antony, that, some how or other, I now and then get a letter to you. In this piece of a letter I declare renewedly my firm resolution to give up the man so obnoxious to my family, on their releasing me from the address of the other.

Near the essays, I have left the copy of my letter to Lady Drayton;53 which affording arguments suitable to my case, may chance (thus accidentally to be fallen upon) to incline them to favour me.

I have reserves of pens and ink, you may believe; and one or two in the ivy summerhouse; with which I shall amuse myself, in order to lighten, if possible, those apprehensions which more and more affect me, as Wednesday, the day of trial, approaches.

Letter 91 Miss Clarissa Harlowe, to Miss Howe

Ivy Summerhouse, Eleven o’clock

He has not yet got my letter: and while I was contriving here how to send my officious gaoleress from me, that I might have time for the intended interview, and had hit upon an expedient, which I believe would have done, came my aunt, and furnished me with a much better. She saw my little table covered, preparative to my solitary dinner; and hoped, she told me, that this would be the last day that my friends would be deprived of my company at table.

You may believe, my dear, that the thoughts of meeting Mr. Lovelace, for fear of being discovered, together with the contents of my cousin Dolly’s letter, gave me great and visible emotions. She took notice of them⁠—Why these sighs, why these heavings here? said she, patting my neck⁠—O my dear Niece, who would have thought so much natural sweetness could be so very unpersuadable?

I could not answer her, and she proceeded⁠—I am come, I doubt, upon a very unwelcome errand. Some things have been told us yesterday, which came from the mouth of one of the most desperate and insolent men in the world, convince your father, and all of us, that you still find means to write out of the house. Mr. Lovelace knows everything that is done here; and that as soon as done; and great mischief is apprehended from him, which you are as much concerned as anybody to prevent. Your mother has also some apprehensions concerning yourself, which yet she hopes are groundless; but, however, cannot be easy, if she would, unless (while you remain here in the garden, or in this summerhouse) you give her the opportunity once more of looking into your closet, your cabinet and drawers. It will be the better taken, if you give me cheerfully your keys. I hope, my dear, you won’t dispute it. Your desire of dining in this place was the more readily complied with for the sake of such an opportunity.

I thought myself very lucky to be so well prepared by my cousin Dolly’s means for this search: but yet I artfully made some scruples, and not a few complaints of this treatment: after which, I not only gave her the keys of all, but even officiously emptied my pockets before her, and invited her to put her fingers in my stays, that she might be sure I had no papers there.

This highly obliged her; and she said, she would represent my cheerful compliance as it deserved, let my brother and sister say what they would. My mother in particular, she was sure, would rejoice at the opportunity given her to obviate, as she doubted not would be the case, some suspicions that were raised against me.

She then hinted, That there were methods taken to come at all Mr. Lovelace’s secrets, and even, from his careless communicativeness, at some secret of mine; it being, she said, his custom, boastingly to prate to his very servants of his intentions, in particular cases. She added, that deep as he was thought to be, my brother was as deep as he, and fairly too hard for him at his own weapons⁠—as one day it would be found.

I knew not, I said, the meaning of these dark hints. I thought the cunning she hinted at, on both sides, called rather for contempt than applause. I myself might have been put upon artifices which my heart disdained to practise, had I given way to the resentment, which, I was bold to say, was much more justifiable than the actions that occasioned it: that it was evident to me, from what she had said, that their present suspicions of me were partly owing to this supposed superior cunning of my brother, and partly to the consciousness that the usage I met with might naturally produce a reason for such suspicions: that it was very unhappy for me to be made the butt of my brother’s wit: that it would have been more to his praise to have aimed at showing a kind heart than a cunning head: that, nevertheless, I wished he knew himself as well as I imagined