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

his application to her uncle for the favour of his presence at the private celebrations of our nuptials; and that I expected an answer, if not this night, as tomorrow.

Let me ask thee next, said she, (thou knowest the opinion I have of the women thou broughtest to me at Hampstead; and who have seduced me hither to my ruin; let me ask thee), If, really and truly, they were Lady Betty Lawrance and thy cousin Montague?⁠—What sayest thou⁠—hesitate not⁠—what sayest thou to this question?

Astonishing, my dear, that you should suspect them!⁠—But, knowing your strange opinion of them, what can I say to be believed?

And is this the answer thou returnest me? Dost thou thus evade my question? But let me know, for I am trying thy sincerity now, and all shall judge of thy new professions by thy answer to this question; let me know, I repeat, whether those women be really Lady Betty Lawrance and thy cousin Montague?

Let me, my dearest love, be enabled tomorrow to call you lawfully mine, and we will set out the next day, if you please, to Berkshire to my Lord M.’s, where they both are at this time; and you shall convince yourself by your own eyes, and by your own ears; which you will believe sooner than all I can say or swear.

Now, Belford, I had really some apprehension of treachery from thee; which made me so miserably evade; for else, I could as safely have sworn to the truth of this, as to that of the former: but she pressing me still for a categorical answer, I ventured plumb; and swore to it, (lover’s oaths, Jack!) that they were really and truly Lady Betty Lawrance and my cousin Montague.

She lifted up her hands and eyes⁠—What can I think!⁠—what can I think!

You think me a devil, Madam; a very devil! or you could not after you have put these questions to me, seem to doubt the truth of answers so solemnly sworn to.

And if I do think thee so, have I not cause? Is there another man in the world, (I hope for the sake of human nature, there is not), who could act by any poor friendless creature as thou hast acted by me, whom thou hast made friendless⁠—and who, before I knew thee, had for a friend everyone who knew me?

I told you, Madam, before that Lady Betty and my cousin were actually here, in order to take leave of you, before they set out for Berkshire: but the effects of my ungrateful crime, (such, with shame and remorse, I own it to be), were the reason you could not see them. Nor could I be fond that they should see you; since they never would have forgiven me, had they known what had passed⁠—and what reason had I to expect your silence on the subject, had you been recovered?

It signifies nothing now, that the cause of their appearance has been answered in my ruin, who or what they are: but if thou hast averred thus solemnly to two falsehoods, what a wretch do I see before me!

I thought she had now reason to be satisfied; and I begged her to allow me to talk to her of tomorrow, as of the happiest day of my life. We have the license, Madam⁠—and you must excuse me, that I cannot let you go hence till I have tried every way I can to obtain your forgiveness.

And am I then, (with a kind of frantic wildness), to be detained a prisoner in this horrid house⁠—am I, Sir?⁠—Take care! take care! holding up her hand, menacing, how you make me desperate! If I fall, though by my own hand, inquisition will be made for my blood; and be not out in thy plot, Lovelace, if it should be so⁠—make sure work, I charge thee⁠—dig a hole deep enough to cram in and conceal this unhappy body; for, depend upon it, that some of those who will not stir to protect me living, will move heaven and earth to avenge me dead!

A horrid dear creature!⁠—By my soul she made me shudder! She had need indeed to talk of her unhappiness in falling into the hands of the only man in the world, who could have used her as I have used her⁠—she is the only woman in the world, who could have shocked and disturbed me as she has done. So we are upon a foot in that respect. And I think I have the worst of it by much: since very little has been my joy⁠—very much my trouble. And her punishment, as she calls it, is over: but when mine will, or what it may be, who can tell?

Here, only recapitulating, (think, then, how I must be affected at the time), I was forced to leave off, and sing a song to myself. I aimed at a lively air; but I croaked rather than sung. And fell into the old dismal thirtieth of January strain; I hemmed up for a sprightlier note; but it would not do; and at last I ended, like a malefactor, in a dead psalm melody.

Heigh-ho!⁠—I gape like an unfledged kite in its nest, wanting to swallow a chicken, bobbed at its mouth by its marauding dam!⁠—

What a-devil ails me?⁠—I can neither think nor write!

Lie down, pen, for a moment!

Letter 267 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

There is certainly a good deal in the observation, that it costs a man ten times more pains to be wicked, than it would cost him to be good. What a confounded number of contrivances have I had recourse to, in order to carry my point with this charming creature; and yet after all, how have I puzzled myself by it; and yet am near tumbling into the pit which it was the end of all my plots to shun! What a happy man had I been with such an excellence, could I have brought