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

whose aid I am to get the license, I took papers out of my pocket, to divert myself; and thy last popped officiously the first into my hand. I gave it the honour of a re-perusal; and this revived the subject with me, with which I had resolved not to trust myself.

I remember, that the dear creature, in her torn answer to my proposals, says, condescension is not meanness. She better knows how to make this out, than any mortal breathing. Condescension indeed implies dignity: and dignity ever was there in her condescension. Yet such a dignity as gave grace to the condescension; for there was no pride, no insult, no apparent superiority, indicated by it.⁠—This, Miss Howe confirms to be a part of her general character.184

I can tell her, how she might behave, to make me her own forever. She knows she cannot fly me. She knows she must see me sooner or later; the sooner the more gracious.⁠—I would allow her to resent (not because the liberties I took with her require resentment, were she not a Clarissa; but as it becomes her particular niceness to resent): but would she show more love than abhorrence of me in her resentment; would she seem, if it were but to seem, to believe the fire no device, and all that followed merely accidental; and descend, upon it, to tender expostulation, and upbraiding for the advantage I would have taken of her surprise; and would she, at last, be satisfied (as well she may) that it was attended with no further consequence; and place some generous confidence in my honour, (power loves to be trusted, Jack); I think I would put an end to all her trials, and pay her my vows at the altar.

Yet, to have taken such bold steps, as with Tomlinson and her uncle⁠—to have made such a progress⁠—O Belford, Belford, how I have puzzled myself, as well as her!⁠—This cursed aversion to wedlock how it has entangled me!⁠—What contradictions has it made me guilty of!

How pleasing to myself, to look back upon the happy days I gave her; though mine would doubtless have been unmixedly so, could I have determined to lay aside my contrivances, and to be as sincere all the time, as she deserved that I should be!

If I find this humour hold but till tomorrow morning, (and it has now lasted two full hours, and I seem, methinks, to have pleasure in encouraging it), I will make thee a visit, I think, or get thee to come to me; and then will I⁠—consult thee upon it.

But she will not trust me. She will not confide in my honour. Doubt, in this case, is defiance. She loves me not well enough to forgive me generously. She is so greatly above me! How can I forgive her for a merit so mortifying to my pride! She thinks, she knows, she has told me, that she is above me. These words are still in my ears, “Be gone, Lovelace!⁠—My soul is above thee, man!⁠—Thou hast a proud heart to contend with!⁠—My soul is above thee, man!”185 Miss Howe thinks her above me too. Thou, even thou, my friend, my intimate friend and companion, art of the same opinion. Then I fear her as much as I love her.⁠—How shall my pride bear these reflections? My wife (as I have often said, because it so often recurs to my thoughts) to be so much my superior!⁠—Myself to be considered but as the second person in my own family!⁠—Canst thou teach me to bear such a reflection as this!⁠—To tell me of my acquisition in her, and that she, with all her excellencies, will be mine in full property, is a mistake⁠—it cannot be so⁠—for shall I not be hers; and not my own?⁠—Will not every act of her duty (as I cannot deserve it) be a condescension, and a triumph over me?⁠—And must I owe it merely to her goodness that she does not despise me?⁠—To have her condescend to bear with my follies!⁠—To wound me with an eye of pity!⁠—A daughter of the Harlowes thus to excel the last, and as I have heretofore said, not the meanest of the Lovelaces186⁠—forbid it!

Yet forbid it not⁠—for do I not now⁠—do I not every moment⁠—see her before me all over charms, and elegance and purity, as in the struggles of the past midnight? And in these struggles, heart, voice, eyes, hand, and sentiments, so greatly, so gloriously consistent with the character she has sustained from her cradle to the present hour?

But what advantages do I give thee?

Yet have I not always done her justice? Why then thy teasing impertinence?

However, I forgive thee, Jack⁠—since (so much generous love am I capable of!) I had rather all the world should condemn me, than that her character should suffer the least impeachment.

The dear creature herself once told me, that there was a strange mixture in my mind.187 I have been called Devil and Beelzebub, between the two proud beauties: I must indeed be a Beelzebub, if I had not some tolerable qualities.

But as Miss Howe says, the suffering time of this excellent creature is her shining time.188 Hitherto she has done nothing but shine.

She called me villain, Belford, within these few hours. And what is the sum of the present argument; but that had I not been a villain in her sense of the word, she had not been such an angel?

O Jack, Jack! This midnight attempt has made me mad; has utterly undone me! How can the dear creature say, I have made her vile in her own eyes, when her behaviour under such a surprise, and her resentment under such circumstances, have so greatly exalted her in mine?

Whence, however, this strange rhapsody?⁠—Is it owing to my being here? That I am not at Sinclair’s? But if there be infection in that house, how has my