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

of affairs between you before I wrote again; believing that all would soon be decided one way or other.

Here I was forced to break off. I am too little my own mistress:⁠—My mother208 is always up and down⁠—and watching as if I were writing to a fellow. What need I (she asks me), lock myself in,209 if I am only reading past correspondencies? For that is my pretence, when she comes poking in with her face sharpened to an edge, as I may say, by a curiosity that gives her more pain than pleasure.⁠—The Lord forgive me; but I believe I shall huff her next time she comes in.

Do you forgive me too, my dear⁠—my mother ought; because she says I am my father’s girl; and because I am sure I am hers.

Upon my life, my dear, I am sometimes of opinion, that this vile man was capable of meaning you dishonour. When I look back upon his past conduct, I cannot help, and verily believe, that he has laid aside such thoughts. My reasons for both opinions I will give you.

For the first: to-wit, that he had it once in his head to take you at advantage if he could, I consider210 that pride, revenge, and a delight to tread in unbeaten paths, are principal ingredients in the character of this finished libertine. He hates all your family, yourself excepted⁠—yet is a savage in love. His pride, and the credit which a few plausible qualities, sprinkled among his odious ones, have given him, have secured him too good a reception from our eye-judging, our undistinguishing, our self⁠—flattering, our too-confiding sex, to make assiduity and obsequiousness, and a conquest of his unruly passions, any part of his study.

He has some reason for his animosity to all the men, and to one woman of your family. He has always shown you, and his own family too, that he prefers his pride to his interest. He is a declared marriage-hater; a notorious intriguer; full of his inventions, and glorying in them.⁠—As his vanity had made him imagine that no woman could be proof against his love, no wonder that he struggled like a lion held in toils,* against a passion that he thought not returned.211 Hence, perhaps, it is not difficult to believe, that it became possible for such a wretch as this to give way to his old prejudices against marriage; and to that revenge which had always been a first passion with him.212

And hence we may account for his delays⁠—his teasing ways⁠—his bringing you to bear with his lodging in the same house⁠—his making you pass to the other people of it as his wife⁠—his bringing you into the company of his libertine companions⁠—the attempt of imposing upon you that Miss Partington for a bedfellow, etc.

My reasons for a contrary opinion, to wit, that he is now resolved to do you all the justice in his power to do you, are these:⁠—That he sees that all his own family213 have warmly engaged themselves in your cause: that the horrid wretch loves you; with such a love, however, as Herod loved his Mariamne: that, on inquiry, I find it to be true, that Counsellor Williams, (whom Mr. Hickman knows to be a man of eminence in his profession), has actually as good as finished the settlements: that two draughts of them have been made; one avowedly to be sent to this very Captain Tomlinson:⁠—and I find, that a license has actually been more than once endeavoured to be obtained, and that difficulties have hitherto been made, equally to Lovelace’s vexation and disappointment. My mother’s proctor, who is very intimate with the proctor applied to by the wretch, has come at this information in confidence; and hints, that, as Mr. Lovelace is a man of high fortunes, these difficulties will probably be got over.

I had once resolved to make strict inquiry about Tomlinson; and still, if you will, your uncle’s favourite housekeeper may be sounded at a distance.

I know that the matter is so laid,214 that Mrs. Hodges is supposed to know nothing of the treaty set on foot by means of Captain Tomlinson. But your uncle is an old man;215 and old men imagine themselves to be under obligation to their paramours, if younger than themselves, and seldom keep anything from their knowledge.⁠—Yet, methinks, there can be no need; since Tomlinson, as you describe him, is so good a man, and so much of a gentleman; the end to be answered by his being an impostor so much more than necessary, if Lovelace has villany in his head.⁠—And thus what he communicated to you of Mr. Hickman’s application to your uncle, and of Mrs. Norton’s to your mother (some of which particulars I am satisfied his vile agent Joseph Leman could not reveal to his viler employer); his pushing on the marriage-day in the name of your uncle; which it could not answer any wicked purpose for him to do; and what he writes of your uncle’s proposal, to have it thought that you were married from the time that you had lived in one house together; and that to be made to agree with the time of Mr. Hickman’s visit to your uncle; the insisting on a trusty person’s being present at the ceremony, at that uncle’s nomination⁠—these things make me assured that he now at last means honourably.

But if any unexpected delays should happen on his side, acquaint me, my dear, with the very street where Mrs. Sinclair lives; and where Mrs. Fretchville’s house is situated (which I cannot find that you have ever mentioned in your former letters⁠—which is a little odd); and I will make strict inquiries of them, and of Tomlinson too; and I will (if your heart will let you take my advice) soon procure you