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

her friends.

But never did morning dawn so tardily as this!⁠—Neither is the chariot yet come.

A gentleman to speak with me, Dorcas?⁠—Who can want me thus early?

Captain Tomlinson, sayest thou? Surely he must have traveled all night! Early riser as I am, how could he think to find me up thus early?

Let but the chariot come, and he shall accompany me in it to the bottom of the hill, (though he return to town on foot; for the Captain is all obliging goodness), that I may hear all he has to say, and tell him all my mind, and lose no time.

Well, now I am satisfied that this rebellious flight will turn to my advantage, as all crushed rebellions do to the advantage of a sovereign in possession.

Dear Captain, I rejoice to see you⁠—just in the nick of time⁠—See! See!

The rosy-finger’d morn appears,
And from her mantle shakes her tears:
The sun arising mortals cheers,
And drives the rising mists away,
In promise of a glorious day.

Excuse me, Sir, that I salute you from my favourite bard. He that rises with the lark will sing with the lark. Strange news since I saw you, Captain!⁠—Poor mistaken lady!⁠—But you have too much goodness, I know, to reveal to her uncle Harlowe the error of this capricious beauty. It will all turn out for the best. You must accompany me part of the way. I know the delight you take in composing differences. But ’tis the task of the prudent to heal the breaches made by the rashness and folly of the imprudent.

And now, (all around me so still and so silent), the rattling of the chariot-wheels at a street’s distance do I hear! And to this angel of a woman I fly!

Reward, O God of Love! (The cause is thy own!) Reward thou, as it deserves, my suffering perseverance!⁠—Succeed my endeavours to bring back to thy obedience this charming fugitive! Make her acknowledge her rashness; repent her insults; implore my forgiveness; beg to be reinstated in my favour, and that I will bury in oblivion the remembrance of her heinous offence against thee, and against me, thy faithful votary.

The chariot at the door!⁠—I come! I come!

I attend you, good Captain⁠—

Indeed, Sir⁠—

Pray, Sir⁠—civility is not ceremony.

And now, dressed as a bridegroom, my heart elated beyond that of the most desiring one, (attended by a footman whom my beloved never saw), I am already at Hampstead!

Letter 232 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

Upper-Flask, Hampstead.
Fri. Morn. 7 o’clock. (June 9).

I am now here, and here have been this hour and half.⁠—What an industrious spirit have I!⁠—Nobody can say that I eat the bread of idleness. I take true pains for all the pleasure I enjoy. I cannot but admire myself strangely; for certainly, with this active soul, I should have made a very great figure in whatever station I had filled. But had I been a prince, (to be sure I should have made a most noble prince!) I should have led up a military dance equal to that of the great Macedonian. I should have added kingdom to kingdom, and despoiled all my neighbour sovereigns, in order to have obtained the name of Robert the Great! And I would have gone to war with the Great Turk, and the Persian, and Mogul, for the seraglios; for not one of those eastern monarchs should have had a pretty woman to bless himself with till I had done with her.

And now I have so much leisure upon my hands, that, after having informed myself of all necessary particulars, I am set to my shorthand writing in order to keep up with time as well as I can; for the subject is now become worthy of me; and it is yet too soon, I doubt, to pay my compliments to my charmer, after all her fatigues for two or three days past. And, moreover, I have abundance of matters preparative to my future proceedings to recount, in order to connect and render all intelligible.

I parted with the Captain at the foot of the hill, trebly instructed; that is to say, as to the fact, to the probable, and to the possible. If my beloved and I can meet, and make up without the mediating of this worthy gentleman, it will be so much the better. As little foreign aid as possible in my amorous conflicts has always been a rule with me; though here I have been obliged to call in so much. And who knows but it may be the better for the lady the less she makes necessary? I cannot bear that she should sit so indifferent to me as to be in earnest to part with me forever upon so slight, or even upon any occasion. If I find she is⁠—but no more threatenings till she is in my power⁠—thou knowest what I have vowed.

All Will’s account, from the lady’s flight to his finding her again, all the accounts of the people of the house, the coachman’s information to Will, and so forth, collected together, stand thus:

“The Hampstead coach, when the dear fugitive came to it, had but two passengers in it. But she made the fellow to go off directly, paying for the vacant places.

“The two passengers directing the coachman to set them down at the Upper Flask, she bid him set her down there also.

“They took leave of her, (very respectfully, no doubt), and she went into the house, and asked, if she could not have a dish of tea, and a room to herself for half an hour.

“They showed her up to the very room where I now am. She sat at the very table I now write upon; and, I believe, the chair I sit in was hers.” O Belford, if thou knowest what love is, thou wilt be able to account for these minutiae.

“She seemed spiritless and fatigued. The gentlewoman herself chose to attend so genteel and lovely a guest. She asked her if she