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

as near as I can remember them; for his behaviour was so strangely wild and fervent, that I was perfectly frighted. I thought he would have devoured my hand. I wished myself a thousand miles distant from him.

I told him, I by no means approved of his violent temper: he was too boisterous a man for my liking. I saw now, by the conversation that had passed, what was his boasted regard to my injunctions; and should take my measures accordingly, as he should soon find. And, with a half frighted earnestness, I desired him to withdraw, and leave me to myself.

He obeyed; and that with extreme complaisance in his manner, but with his complexion greatly heightened, and a countenance as greatly dissatisfied.

But, on recollecting all that passed, I plainly see that he means not, if he can help it, to leave me to the liberty of refusing him; which I had nevertheless preserved a right to do; but looks upon me as his, by a strange sort of obligation, for having run away with me against my will.

Yet you see he but touches upon the edges of matrimony neither. And that at a time, generally, when he has either excited one’s passions or apprehensions; so that one cannot at once descend. But surely this cannot be his design.⁠—And yet such seemed to be his behaviour to my sister,95 when he provoked her to refuse him, and so tamely submitted, as he did, to her refusal. But he dare not⁠—What can one say of so various a man?⁠—I am now again out of conceit with him. I wish I were fairly out of his power.

He has sent up three times to beg admittance; in the two last with unusual earnestness. But I have sent him word, I will finish what I am about.

What to do about going from this place, I cannot tell. I could stay here with all my heart, as I have said to him: the gentlewoman and her daughters are desirous that I will: although not very convenient for them, I believe, neither: but I see he will not leave me, while I do⁠—so I must remove somewhere.

I have long been sick of myself: and now I am more and more so. But let me not lose your good opinion. If I do, that loss will complete the misfortunes of

Your

Cl. Harlowe.

Letter 122 Miss Clarissa Harlowe, to Miss Howe

Sunday Night, April 16

I may send to you, although you are forbid to write to me; may I not?⁠—For that is not a correspondence (is it?) where letters are not answered.

I am strangely at a loss what to think of this man. He is a perfect Proteus. I can but write according to the shape he assumes at the time. Don’t think me the changeable person, I beseech you, if in one letter I contradict what I wrote in another; nay, if I seem to contradict what I said in the same letter: for he is a perfect chameleon; or rather more variable than the chameleon; for that, it is said, cannot assume the red and the white; but this man can. And though black seems to be his natural colour, yet has he taken great pains to make me think him nothing but white.

But you shall judge of him as I proceed. Only, if I anywhere appear to you to be credulous, I beg you to set me right: for you are a stander-by, as you say in a former96⁠—Would to Heaven I were not to play! for I think, after all, I am held to a desperate game.

Before I could finish my last to you, he sent up twice more to beg admittance. I returned for answer, that I would see him at my own time: I would neither be invaded nor prescribed to.

Considering how we parted, and my delaying his audience, as he sometimes calls it, I expected him to be in no very good humour, when I admitted of his visit; and by what I wrote, you will conclude that I was not. Yet mine soon changed, when I saw his extreme humility at his entrance, and heard what he had to say.

I have a letter, Madam, said he, from Lady Betty Lawrance, and another from my cousin Charlotte. But of these more by-and-by. I came now to make my humble acknowledgement to you upon the arguments that passed between us so lately.

I was silent, wondering what he was driving at.

I am a most unhappy creature, proceeded he: unhappy from a strange impatiency of spirit, which I cannot conquer. It always brings upon me deserved humiliation. But it is more laudable to acknowledge, than to persevere when under the power of conviction.

I was still silent.

I have been considering what you proposed to me, Madam, that I should acquiesce with such terms as you should think proper to comply with, in order to a reconciliation with your friends.

Well, Sir.

And I find all just, all right, on your side; and all impatience, all inconsideration on mine.

I stared, you may suppose. Whence this change, Sir? and so soon?

I am so much convinced that you must be in the right in all you think fit to insist upon, that I shall for the future mistrust myself; and, if it be possible, whenever I differ with you, take an hour’s time for recollection, before I give way to that vehemence, which an opposition, to which I have not been accustomed, too often gives me.

All this is mighty good, Sir: But to what does it tend?

Why, Madam, when I came to consider what you had proposed, as to the terms of reconciliation with your friends; and when I recollected that you had always referred to yourself to approve or reject me, according to my merits or demerits; I plainly saw, that it was rather a condescension in you, that you were pleased to ask