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

make you all the reparation that I can make you? Had I not reason to hope⁠—

No, no, no, no, as before, shaking her head with wild impatience, as resolved not to attend to what I said.

My resolutions are so honourable, if you will permit them to take effect, that I need not be solicitous where you go, if you will but permit my visits, and receive my vows.⁠—And God is my witness, that I bring you not back from the door with any view to your dishonour, but the contrary: and this moment I will send for a minister to put an end to all your doubts and fears.

Say this, and say a thousand times more, and bind every word with a solemn appeal to that God whom thou art accustomed to invoke to the truth of the vilest falsehoods, and all will still be short of what thou has vowed and promised to me. And, were not my heart to abhor thee, and to rise against thee, for thy perjuries, as it does, I would not, I tell thee once more, I would not, bind my soul in covenant with such a man, for a thousand worlds!

Compose yourself, however, Madam; for your own sake, compose yourself. Permit me to raise you up; abhorred as I am of your soul!

Nay, if I must not touch you; for she wildly slapt my hands; but with such a sweet passionate air, her bosom heaving and throbbing as she looked up to me, that although I was most sincerely enraged, I could with transport have pressed her to mine.

If I must not touch you, I will not.⁠—But depend upon it, (and I assumed the sternest air I could assume, to try what it would do), depend upon it, Madam, that this is not the way to avoid the evils you dread. Let me do what I will, I cannot be used worse⁠—Dorcas, begone!

She arose, Dorcas being about to withdraw; and wildly caught hold of her arm: O Dorcas! If thou art of mine own sex, leave me not, I charge thee!⁠—Then quitting Dorcas, down she threw herself upon her knees, in the furthermost corner of the room, clasping a chair with her face laid upon the bottom of it!⁠—O where can I be safe?⁠—Where, where can I be safe, from this man of violence?⁠—

This gave Dorcas an opportunity to confirm herself in her lady’s confidence: the wench threw herself at my feet, while I seemed in violent wrath; and embracing my knees, Kill me, Sir, kill me, Sir, if you please!⁠—I must throw myself in your way, to save my lady. I beg your pardon, Sir⁠—but you must be set on!⁠—God forgive the mischief-makers!⁠—But your own heart, if left to itself, would not permit these things⁠—spare, however, Sir! spare my lady, I beseech you!⁠—bustling on her knees about me, as if I were intending to approach her lady, had I not been restrained by her.

This, humoured by me, Begone, devil!⁠—Officious devil, begone!⁠—startled the dear creature: who, snatching up hastily her head from the chair, and as hastily popping it down again in terror, hit her nose, I suppose, against the edge of the chair; and it gushed out with blood, running in a stream down her bosom; she herself was too much frighted to heed it!

Never was mortal man in such terror and agitation as I; for I instantly concluded, that she had stabbed herself with some concealed instrument.

I ran to her in a wild agony⁠—for Dorcas was frighted out of all her mock interposition⁠—

What have you done!⁠—O what have you done!⁠—Look up to me, my dearest life!⁠—Sweet injured innocence, look up to me! What have you done!⁠—Long will I not survive you!⁠—And I was upon the point of drawing my sword to dispatch myself, when I discovered⁠—(What an unmanly blockhead does this charming creature make me at her pleasure!) that all I apprehended was but a bloody nose, which, as far as I know (for it could not be stopped in a quarter of an hour) may have saved her head and her intellects.

But I see by this scene, that the sweet creature is but a pretty coward at bottom; and that I can terrify her out of her virulence against me, whenever I put on sternness and anger. But then, as a qualifier to the advantage this gives me over her, I find myself to be a coward too, which I had not before suspected, since I was capable of being so easily terrified by the apprehensions of her offering violence to herself.

Letter 268 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

But with all this dear creature’s resentment against me, I cannot, for my heart, think but she will get all over, and consent to enter the pale with me. Were she even to die tomorrow, and to know she should, would not a woman of her sense, of her punctilio, and in her situation, and of so proud a family, rather die married, than otherwise?⁠—No doubt but she would; although she were to hate the man ever so heartily. If so, there is now but one man in the world whom she can have⁠—and that is me.

Now I talk (familiar writing is but talking, Jack) thus glibly of entering the pale, thou wilt be ready to question me, I know, as to my intentions on this head.

As much of my heart, as I know of it myself, will I tell thee.⁠—When I am from her, I cannot still help hesitating about marriage; and I even frequently resolve against it, and determine to press my favourite scheme for cohabitation. But when I am with her, I am ready to say, to swear, and to do, whatever I think will be the most acceptable to her, and were a parson at hand, I should plunge at once, no doubt of it, into the state.

I have frequently thought, in common cases, that it is happy for many giddy fellows (there