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

our sex’s valuing a libertine; since she made choice of my father in preference to several suitors of equal fortune, because they were of inferior reputation for morals!

“Your father, added she, at his going out, told me what he expected from me, in case I found out that I had not the requisite influence upon you⁠—It was this⁠—That I should directly separate myself from you, and leave you singly to take the consequence of your double disobedience⁠—I therefore entreat you, my dear Clarissa, concluded she, and that in the most earnest and condescending manner, to signify to your father, on his return, your ready obedience; and this as well for my sake as your own.”

Affected by my mother’s goodness to me, and by that part of her argument which related to her own peace, and to the suspicions they had of her secretly inclining to prefer the man so hated by them, to the man so much my aversion, I could not but wish it were possible for me to obey, I therefore paused, hesitated, considered, and was silent for some time. I could see, that my mother hoped that the result of this hesitation would be favourable to her arguments. But then recollecting, that all was owing to the instigations of a brother and sister, wholly actuated by selfish and envious views; that I had not deserved the treatment I had of late met with; that my disgrace was already become the public talk; that the man was Mr. Solmes; and that my aversion to him was too generally known, to make my compliance either creditable to myself or to them: that it would give my brother and sister a triumph over me, and over Mr. Lovelace, which they would not fail to glory in; and which, although it concerned me but little to regard on his account, yet might be attended with fatal mischiefs⁠—And then Mr. Solmes’s disagreeable person; his still more disagreeable manners; his low understanding⁠—Understanding! the glory of a man, so little to be dispensed with in the head and director of a family, in order to preserve to him that respect which a good wife (and that for the justification of her own choice) should pay him herself, and wish everybody to pay him.⁠—And as Mr. Solmes’s inferiority in this respectable faculty of the human mind (I must be allowed to say this to you, and no great self assumption neither) would proclaim to all future, as well as to all present observers, what must have been my mean inducement. All these reflections crowding upon my remembrance; I would, Madam, said I, folding my hands, with an earnestness in which my whole heart was engaged, bear the cruelest tortures, bear loss of limb, and even of life, to give you peace. But this man, every moment I would, at your command, think of him with favour, is the more my aversion. You cannot, indeed you cannot, think, how my whole soul resists him!⁠—And to talk of contracts concluded upon; of patterns; of a short day!⁠—Save me, save me, O my dearest Mamma, save your child, from this heavy, from this insupportable evil⁠—!

Never was there a countenance that expressed so significantly, as my mother’s did, an anguish, which she struggled to hide, under an anger she was compelled to assume⁠—till the latter overcoming the former, she turned from me with an uplifted eye, and stamping⁠—Strange perverseness! were the only words I heard of a sentence that she angrily pronounced; and was going. I then, half-frantically I believe, laid hold of her gown⁠—Have patience with me, dearest Madam! said I⁠—Do not you renounce me totally!⁠—If you must separate yourself from your child, let it not be with absolute reprobation on your own part!⁠—My uncles may be hardhearted⁠—my father may be immovable⁠—I may suffer from my brother’s ambition, and from my sister’s envy!⁠—But let me not lose my Mamma’s love; at least, her pity.

She turned to me with benigner rays⁠—You have my love! You have my pity! But, O my dearest girl⁠—I have not yours.

Indeed, indeed, Madam, you have: and all my reverence, all my gratitude, you have!⁠—But in this one point⁠—Cannot I be this once obliged?⁠—Will no expedient be accepted? Have I not made a very fair proposal as to Mr. Lovelace?

I wish, for both our sakes, my dear unpersuadable girl, that the decision of this point lay with me. But why, when you know it does not, why should you thus perplex and urge me?⁠—To renounce Mr. Lovelace is now but half what is aimed at. Nor will anybody else believe you in earnest in the offer, if I would. While you remain single, Mr. Lovelace will have hopes⁠—and you, in the opinion of others, inclinations.

Permit me, dearest Madam, to say, that your goodness to me, your patience, your peace, weigh more with me, than all the rest put together: for although I am to be treated by my brother, and, through his instigations, by my father, as a slave in this point, and not as a daughter, yet my mind is not that of a slave. You have not brought me up to be mean.

So, Clary! you are already at defiance with your father! I have had too much cause before to apprehend as much⁠—What will this come to?⁠—I, and then my dear mamma sighed⁠—I, am forced to put up with many humours⁠—

That you are, my ever-honoured Mamma, is my grief. And can it be thought, that this very consideration, and the apprehension of what may result from a much worse-tempered man, (a man who has not half the sense of my father), has not made an impression upon me, to the disadvantage of the married life? Yet ’tis something of an alleviation, if one must bear undue control, to bear it from a man of sense. My father, I have heard you say, Madam, was for years a very good-humoured gentleman⁠—unobjectionable in person and manners⁠—but the man proposed to me⁠—

Forbear reflecting upon your father: (Did I, my dear, in what I