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

In short, I have done, as far as I know, the most rash thing that ever I did in my life.

But let me give you the motive, and then the action will follow of course.

About six o’clock this evening, my aunt (who stays here all night, on my account, no doubt) came up and tapped at my door; for I was writing; and had locked myself in. I opened it; and she entering, thus delivered herself:

I come once more to visit you, my dear; but sorely against my will; because it is to impart to you matters of the utmost concern to you, and to the whole family.

What, Madam, is now to be done with me? said I, wholly attentive.

You will not be hurried away to your uncle’s, child; let that comfort you.⁠—They see your aversion to go.⁠—You will not be obliged to go to your uncle Antony’s.

How you revive me, Madam! this is a cordial to my heart!

I little thought, my dear, what was to follow this supposed condescension.

And then I ran over with blessings for this good news, (and she permitted me so to do, by her silence); congratulating myself, that I thought my father could not resolve to carry things to the last extremity.⁠—

Hold, Niece, said she, at last⁠—you must not give yourself too much joy upon the occasion neither.⁠—Don’t be surprised, my dear.⁠—Why look you upon me, child, with so affecting an earnestness?⁠—but you must be Mrs. Solmes, for all that.

I was dumb.

She then told me, that they had undoubted information, that a certain desperate ruffian (I must excuse her that word, she said) had prepared armed men to waylay my brother and uncles, and seize me, and carry me off.⁠—Surely, she said, I was not consenting to a violence that might be followed by murder on one side or the other; perhaps on both.

I was still silent.

That therefore my father (still more exasperated than before) had changed his resolution as to my going to my uncle’s; and was determined next Tuesday to set out thither himself with my mother; and that (for it was to no purpose to conceal a resolution so soon to be put into execution)⁠—I must not dispute it any longer⁠—on Wednesday I must give my hand⁠—as they would have me.

She proceeded, that orders were already given for a license: that the ceremony was to be performed in my own chamber, in presence of all my friends, except of my father and mother; who would not return, nor see me, till all was over, and till they had a good account of my behaviour.

The very intelligence, my dear!⁠—the very intelligence this, which Lovelace gave me!

I was still dumb⁠—only sighing, as if my heart would break.

She went on, comforting me, as she thought. “She laid before me the merit of obedience; and told me, that if it were my desire that my Norton should be present at the ceremony, it would be complied with: that the pleasure I should receive from reconciling all my friends to me, and in their congratulations upon it, must needs overbalance, with such a one as me, the difference of persons, however preferable I might think the one man to the other: that love was a fleeting thing, little better than a name, where mortality and virtue did not distinguish the object of it: that a choice made by its dictates was seldom happy; at least not durably so: nor was it to be wondered at, when it naturally exalted the object above its merits, and made the lover blind to faults, that were visible to everybody else: so that when a nearer intimacy stripped it of its imaginary perfections, it left frequently both parties surprised, that they could be so grossly cheated; and that then the indifference became stronger than the love ever was. That a woman gave a man great advantages, and inspired him with great vanity, when she avowed her love for him, and preference of him; and was generally requited with insolence and contempt: whereas the confessedly-obliged man, it was probable, would be all reverence and gratitude”⁠—and I cannot tell what.

“You, my dear, said she, believe you shall be unhappy, if you have Mr. Solmes: your parents think the contrary; and that you will be undoubtedly so, were you to have Mr. Lovelace, whose morals are unquestionably bad: suppose it were your sad lot to consider, what great consolation you will have on one hand, if you pursue your parents’ advice, that you did so; what mortification on the other, that by following your own, you have nobody to blame but yourself.”

This, you remember, my dear, was an argument enforced upon me by Mrs. Norton.

These and other observations which she made were worthy of my aunt Hervey’s good sense and experience, and applied to almost any young creature who stood in opposition to her parents’ will, but one who had offered to make the sacrifices I have offered to make, ought to have had their due weight. But although it was easy to answer some of them in my own particular case; yet having over and over, to my mother, before my confinement, and to my brother and sister, and even to my aunt Hervey, since, said what I must now have repeated, I was so much mortified and afflicted at the cruel tidings she brought me, that however attentive I was to what she said, I had neither power nor will to answer one word; and, had she not stopped of herself, she might have gone on an hour longer, without interruption from me.

Observing this, and that I only sat weeping, my handkerchief covering my face, and my bosom heaving ready to burst; What! no answer, my dear?⁠—Why so much silent grief? You know I have always loved you. You know, that I have no interest in the affair. You would not permit Mr. Solmes to acquaint you with some things which would have set your heart against Mr. Lovelace. Shall I tell you some