Clarissa Harlowe, Samuel Richardson [black authors fiction .txt] 📗

good-natured young person to give a negative where it disesteems not.

Our hearts may harden and contract, as we gain experience, and when we have smarted perhaps for our easy folly: and so they ought, or we should be upon very unequal terms with the world.

Excuse these grave reflections. This man has vexed me heartily. I see his gentleness was art: fierceness, and a temper like what I have been too much used to at home, are Nature in him. Nothing, I think, shall ever make me forgive him; for, surely, there can be no good reason for his impatience on an expectation given with reserve, and revocable.⁠—I so much to suffer through him; yet, to be treated as if I were obliged to bear insults from him⁠—!

But here you will be pleased to read his letter; which I shall enclose.

To Miss Clarissa Harlowe

Good God!

What is now to become of me!⁠—How shall I support this disappointment!⁠—No new cause!⁠—On one knee, kneeling with the other, I write!⁠—My feet benumbed with midnight wanderings through the heaviest dews that ever fell: my wig and my linen dripping with the hoar frost dissolving on them!⁠—Day but just breaking⁠—Sun not risen to exhale⁠—May it never rise again!⁠—Unless it bring healing and comfort to a benighted soul! In proportion to the joy you had inspired (ever lovely promiser!) in such proportion is my anguish!

O my beloved creature!⁠—But are not your very excuses confessions of excuses inexcusable? I know not what I write!⁠—That servant in your way!37 By the great God of Heaven, that servant was not, dared not, could not, be in your way!⁠—Curse upon the cool caution that is pleased to deprive me of an expectation so transporting!

And are things drawing towards a crisis between your friends and you?⁠—Is not this a reason for me to expect, the rather to expect, the promised interview?

Can I write all that is in my mind, say you?⁠—Impossible!⁠—Not the hundredth part of what is in my mind, and in my apprehension, can I write!

Oh! the wavering, the changeable sex!⁠—But can Miss Clarissa Harlowe⁠—

Forgive me, Madam!⁠—I know not what I write!

Yet, I must, I do, insist upon your promise⁠—or that you will condescend to find better excuses for the failure⁠—or convince me, that stronger reasons are imposed upon you, than those you offer.⁠—A promise once given (upon deliberation given), the promised only can dispense with; except in cases of a very apparent necessity imposed upon the promiser, which leaves no power to perform it.

The first promise you ever made me! Life and death perhaps depending upon it⁠—my heart desponding from the barbarous methods resolved to be taken with you in malice to me!

You would sooner choose death than Solmes. (How my soul spurns the competition!) O my beloved creature, what are these but words?⁠—Whose words?⁠—Sweet and ever adorable⁠—What?⁠—Promise breaker⁠—must I call you?⁠—How shall I believe the asseveration, (your supposed duty in the question! Persecution so flaming!⁠—Hatred to me so strongly avowed!) after this instance of you so lightly dispensing with your promise?

If, my dearest life! you would prevent my distraction, or, at least, distracted consequences, renew the promised hope!⁠—My fate is indeed upon its crisis.

Forgive me, dearest creature, forgive me!⁠—I know I have written in too much anguish of mind!⁠—Writing this, in the same moment that the just dawning light has imparted to me the heavy disappointment.

I dare not re-peruse what I have written. I must deposit it. It may serve to show you my distracted apprehension that this disappointment is but a prelude to the greatest of all.⁠—Nor, having here any other paper, am I able to write again, if I would, on this gloomy spot. (Gloomy is my soul; and all Nature around me partakes of my gloom!)⁠—I trust it therefore to your goodness⁠—if its fervour excite your displeasure rather than your pity, you wrong my passion; and I shall be ready to apprehend, that I am intended to be the sacrifice of more miscreants than one! (Have patience with me, dearest creature!⁠—I mean Solmes and your brother only). But if, exerting your usual generosity, you will excuse and re-appoint, may that God, whom you profess to serve, and who is the God of truth and of promises, protect and bless you, for both; and for restoring to himself, and to hope,

Your ever-adoring, yet almost desponding,

Lovelace!

Ivy Cavern, in the Coppice⁠—Day but just breaking.

This is the answer I shall return:

Wednesday Morning.

I am amazed, Sir, at the freedom of your reproaches. Pressed and teased, against convenience and inclination, to give you a private meeting, am I to be thus challenged and upbraided, and my sex reflected upon, because I thought it prudent to change my mind?⁠—A liberty I had reserved to myself, when I made the appointment, as you call it. I wanted not instances of your impatient spirit to other people: yet may it be happy for me, that I can have this new one; which shows, that you can as little spare me, when I pursue the dictates of my own reason, as you do others, for acting up to theirs. Two motives you must be governed by in this excess. The one my easiness; the other your own presumption. Since you think you have found out the first, and have shown so much of the last upon it, I am too much alarmed, not to wish and desire, that your letter of this day may conclude all the trouble you had from, or for,

Your humble servant,

Cl. Harlowe.

I believe, my dear, I may promise myself your approbation, whenever I write or speak with spirit, be it to whom it will. Indeed, I find but too much reason to exert it, since I have to deal with people, who govern themselves in their conduct to me, not by what is fit or decent, right or wrong, but by what they think my temper will bear. I have, till very lately, been praised for mine;