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

I had a good mind to make Miss Rawlins smart for it. Come and see Miss Rawlins, Jack.⁠—If thou likest her, I’ll get her for thee with a wet-finger, as the saying is!

The widow Bevis indeed stickled hard for me. (An innocent, or injured man, will have friends everywhere). She said, that to bear much with some wives, was to be obliged to bear more; and I reflected, with a sigh, that tame spirits must always be imposed upon. And then, in my heart, I renewed my vows of revenge upon this haughty and perverse beauty.

The second fellow came back from town about nine o’clock, with Miss Howe’s letter of Wednesday last. “Collins, it seems, when he left it, had desired, that it might be safely and speedily delivered into Miss Laetitia Beaumont’s own hands. But Wilson, understanding that neither she nor I were in town, (he could not know of our difference thou must think), resolved to take care of it till our return, in order to give it into one of our own hands; and now delivered it to her messenger.”

This was told her. Wilson, I doubt not, is in her favour upon it.

She took the letter with great eagerness; opened it in a hurry, (am glad she did; yet, I believe, all was right), before Mrs. Moore and Mrs. Bevis, (Miss Rawlins was gone home); and said, she would not for the world that I should have had that letter, for the sake of her dear friend the writer, who had written to her very uneasily about it.

Her dear friend! repeated Mrs. Bevis, when she told me this:⁠—such mischief-makers are always deemed dear friends till they are found out!

The widow says that I am the finest gentleman she ever beheld.

I have found a warm kiss now-and-then very kindly taken.

I might be a very wicked fellow, Jack, if I were to do all the mischief in my power. But I am evermore for quitting a too-easy prey to reptile rakes! What but difficulty, (though the lady is an angel), engages me to so much perseverance here?⁠—And here, conquer or die! is now the determination!

I have just now parted with this honest widow. She called upon me at my new lodgings. I told her, that I saw I must be further obliged to her in the course of this difficult affair. She must allow me to make her a handsome present when all was happily over. But I desired that she would take no notice of what should pass between us, not even to her aunt; for that she, as I saw, was in the power of Miss Rawlins: and Miss Rawlins, being a maiden gentlewoman, knew not the right and the fit in matrimonial matters, as she, my dear widow, did.

Very true: How should she? said Mrs. Bevis, proud of knowing⁠—nothing! But, for her part, she desired no present. It was enough if she could contribute to reconcile man and wife, and disappoint mischief-makers. She doubted not, that such an envious creature as Miss Howe was glad that Mrs. Lovelace had eloped⁠—jealousy and love was Old Nick!

See, Belford, how charmingly things work between me and my new acquaintance, the widow!⁠—Who knows, but that she may, after a little farther intimacy, (though I am banished the house on nights), contrive a midnight visit for me to my spouse, when all is still and fast asleep?

Where can a woman be safe, who has once entered the lists with a contriving and intrepid lover?

But as to this letter, methinkest thou sayest, of Miss Howe?

I knew thou wouldest be uneasy for me. But did not I tell thee that I had provided for everything? That I always took care to keep seals entire, and to preserve covers?207 Was it not easy then, thinkest thou, to contrive a shorter letter out of a longer; and to copy the very words?

I can tell thee, it was so well ordered, that, not being suspected to have been in my hands, it was not easy to find me out. Had it been my beloved’s hand, there would have been no imitating it for such a length. Her delicate and even mind is seen in the very cut of her letters. Miss Howe’s hand is no bad one, but it is not so equal and regular. That little devil’s natural impatience hurrying on her fingers, gave, I suppose, from the beginning, her handwriting, as well as the rest of her, its fits and starts, and those peculiarities, which, like strong muscular lines in a face, neither the pen, nor the pencil, can miss.

Hast thou a mind to see what it was I permitted Miss Howe to write to her lovely friend? Why then, read it here, so extracted from hers of Wednesday last, with a few additions of my own. The additions underscored.

My Dearest Friend,

You will perhaps think that I have been too long silent. But I had begun two letters at different times since my last, and written a great deal each time; and with spirit enough I assure you; incensed as I was against the abominable wretch you are with; particularly on reading yours of the 21st of the past month.

The first I intended to keep open till I could give you some account of my proceedings with Mrs. Townsend. It was some days before I saw her: and this intervenient space giving me time to reperuse what I had written, I thought it proper to lay that aside, and to write in a style a little less fervent; for you would have blamed me, I knew, for the freedom of some of my expressions, (execrations, if you please). And when I had gone a good way in the second, and change your prospects, on his communicating to you Miss Montague’s letter, and his better behaviour, occasioning a change in your mind, I laid that aside also. And in this uncertainty thought I would wait to see the issue