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

Still I answered only by my tears and sighs.

Well, child, you shall be told these things afterwards, when you will be in a better state of mind to hear them; and then you will rejoice in the escape you will have had. It will be some excuse, then, for you to plead for your behaviour to Mr. Solmes, that you could not have believed Mr. Lovelace had been so very vile a man.

My heart fluttered with impatience and anger at being so plainly talked to as the wife of this man; but yet I then chose to be silent. If I had spoken, it would have been with vehemence.

Strange, my dear, such silence!⁠—Your concern is infinitely more on this side the day, than it will be on the other.⁠—But let me ask you, and do not be displeased, Will you choose to see what generous stipulations for you there are in the settlements?⁠—You have knowledge beyond your years⁠—give the writings a perusal: do, my dear: they are engrossed, and ready for signing, and have been for some time. Excuse me, my love⁠—I mean not to disorder you:⁠—your father would oblige me to bring them up, and to leave them with you. He commands you to read them. But to read them, Niece⁠—since they are engrossed, and were before you made them absolutely hopeless.

And then, to my great terror, she drew some parchments form her handkerchief, which she had kept, (unobserved by me), under her apron; and rising, put them in the opposite window. Had she produced a serpent, I could not have been more frightened.

Oh! my dearest Aunt, turning away my face, and holding out my hands, hide from my eyes those horrid parchments!⁠—Let me conjure you to tell me⁠—by all the tenderness of near relationship, and upon your honour, and by your love for me, say, Are they absolutely resolved, that, come what will, I must be that man’s?

My dear, you must have Mr. Solmes: indeed you must.

Indeed I never will!⁠—This, as I have said over and over, is not originally my father’s will.⁠—Indeed I never will⁠—and that is all I will say!

It is your father’s will now, replied my aunt: and, considering how all the family is threatened by Mr. Lovelace, and the resolution he has certainly taken to force you out of their hands, I cannot but say they are in the right, not to be bullied out of their child.

Well, Madam, then nothing remains for me to say. I am made desperate. I care not what becomes of me.

Your piety, and your prudence, my dear, and Mr. Lovelace’s immoral character, together with his daring insults, and threatenings, which ought to incense you, as much as anybody, are everyone’s dependence. We are sure the time will come, when you’ll think very differently of the steps your friends take to disappoint a man who has made himself so justly obnoxious to them all.

She withdrew; leaving me full of grief and indignation:⁠—and as much out of humour with Mr. Lovelace as with anybody; who, by his conceited contrivances, has made things worse for me than before; depriving me of the hopes I had of gaining time to receive your advice, and private assistance to get to town; and leaving me not other advice, in all appearance, than either to throw myself upon his family, or to be made miserable forever with Mr. Solmes. But I was still resolved to avoid both these evils, if possible.

I sounded Betty, in the first place, (whom my aunt sent up, not thinking it proper, as Betty told me, that I should be left by myself, and who, I found, knew their designs), whether it were not probable that they would forbear, at my earnest entreaty, to push matters to the threatened extremity.

But she confirmed all my aunt said; rejoicing (as she said they all did) that Mr. Lovelace had given them so good a pretence to save me from him now, and forever.

She ran on about equipages bespoken; talked of my brother’s and sister’s exultations that now the whole family would soon be reconciled to each other: of the servants’ joy upon it: of the expected license: of a visit to be paid me by Dr. Lewen, or another clergyman, whom they named not to her; which was to crown the work: and of other preparations, so particular, as made me dread that they designed to surprise me into a still nearer day than Wednesday.

These things made me excessively uneasy. I knew not what to resolve upon.

At one time, What have I to do, thought I, but to throw myself at once into the protection of Lady Betty Lawrance?⁠—But then, in resentment of his fine contrivances, which had so abominably disconcerted me, I soon resolved to the contrary: and at last concluded to ask the favour of another half-hour’s conversation with my aunt.

I sent Betty to her with my request.

She came.

I put it to her, in the most earnest manner, to tell me, whether I might not obtain the favour of a fortnight’s respite?

She assured me, it would not be granted.

Would a week? Surely a week would?

She believed a week might, if I would promise two things: the first, upon my honour, not to write a line out of the house, in that week: for it was still suspected, she said, that I found means to write to somebody. And, secondly, to marry Mr. Solmes, at the expiration of it.

Impossible! Impossible! I said with a passion⁠—What! might not I be obliged with one week, without such a horrid condition as the last?

She would go down, she said, that she might not seem of her own head to put upon me what I thought a hardship so great.

She went down: and came up again.

Did I want, was the answer, to give the vilest of men an opportunity to put his murderous schemes into execution?⁠—It was time for them to put an end to my obstinacy (they were tired out with me) and to his hopes at