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

epub:type="z3998:persona">Cl. That cause must be well tried, where the offender takes his seat upon the same bench with the judge.⁠—I submit not mine to men⁠—nor, give me leave to say, to you, Captain Tomlinson, though I am willing to have a good opinion of you. Had not the man been assured that he had influenced you in his favour, he would not have brought you up to Hampstead.

Capt. That I am influenced, as you call it, Madam, is for the sake of your uncle, and for your own sake, more (I will say to Mr. Lovelace’s face) than for his. What can I have in view but peace and reconciliation? I have, from the first, blamed, and I now, again, blame Mr. Lovelace, for adding distress to distress, and terror to terror; the lady, as you acknowledge, Sir, (looking valiantly), ready before to fall into fits.

Lovel. Let me own to you, Captain Tomlinson, that I have been a very faulty, a very foolish man; and, if this dear creature ever honoured me with her love, an ungrateful one. But I have had too much reason to doubt it. And this is now a flagrant proof that she never had the value for me which my proud heart wished for; that, with such prospects before us; a day so near; settlements approved and drawn; her uncle meditating a general reconciliation which, for her sake, not my own, I was desirous to give into; she can, for an offence so really slight, on an occasion so truly accidental, renounce me forever; and, with me, all hopes of that reconciliation in the way her uncle had put it in, and she had acquiesced with; and risk all consequences, fatal ones as they may too possibly be.⁠—By my soul, Captain Tomlinson, the dear creature must have hated me all the time she was intending to honour me with her hand. And now she must resolve to abandon me, as far as I know, with a preference in her heart of the most odious of men⁠—in favour of that Solmes, who, as you tell me, accompanies her brother: and with what hopes, with what view, accompanies him!⁠—How can I bear to think of this?⁠—

Cl. It is fit, Sir, that you should judge of my regard for you by your own conscienceness of demerit. Yet you know, or you would not have dared to behave to me as sometimes you did, that you had more of it than you deserved.

She walked from us; and then returning, Captain Tomlinson, said she, I will own to you, that I was not capable of resolving to give my hand, and⁠—nothing but my hand. Had I not given a flagrant proof of this to the once most indulgent of parents? which has brought me into a distress, which this man has heightened, when he ought, in gratitude and honour, to have endeavoured to render it supportable. I had even a bias, Sir, in his favour, I scruple not to own it. Long (much too long!) bore I with his unaccountable ways, attributing his errors to unmeaning gaiety, and to a want of knowing what true delicacy, and true generosity, required from a heart susceptible of grateful impressions to one involved by his means in unhappy circumstances.

It is now wickedness in him (a wickedness which discredits all his professions) to say, that this last cruel and ungrateful insult was not a premeditated one⁠—But what need I say more of this insult, when it was of such a nature, and that it has changed that bias in his favour, and make me choose to forego all the inviting prospects he talks of, and to run all hazards, to free myself from his power?

O my dearest creature! how happy for us both, had I been able to discover that bias, as you condescend to call it, through such reserves as man never encountered with!

He did discover it, Capt. Tomlinson. He brought me, more than once, to own it; the more needlessly brought me to own it, as I dare say his own vanity gave him no cause to doubt it; and as I had apparently no other motive in not being forward to own it, than my too-justly-founded apprehensions of his want of generosity. In a word, Captain Tomlinson, (and now, that I am determined upon my measures, I the less scruple to say), I should have despised myself, had I found myself capable of affectation or tyranny to the man I intended to marry. I have always blamed the dearest friend I have in the world for a fault of this nature. In a word⁠—

Lovel. And had my angel really and indeed the favour for me she is pleased to own?⁠—Dearest creature, forgive me. Restore me to your good opinion. Surely I have not sinned beyond forgiveness. You say that I extorted from you the promise you made me. But I could not have presumed to make that promise the condition of my obedience, had I not thought there was room to expect forgiveness. Permit, I beseech you, the prospects to take place, that were opening so agreeably before us. I will go to town, and bring the license. All difficulties to the obtaining of it are surmounted. Captain Tomlinson shall be witness to the deeds. He will be present at the ceremony on the part of your uncle. Indeed he gave me hope that your uncle himself⁠—

Capt. I did, Mr. Lovelace: and I will tell you my grounds for the hope I gave. I promised to my dear friend, (your uncle, Madam), that he should give out that he would take a turn with me to my little farmhouse, as I call it, near Northampton, for a week or so.⁠—Poor gentleman! he has of late been very little abroad!⁠—Too visibly declining!⁠—Change of air, it might be given out, was good for him.⁠—But I see, Madam, that this is too tender a subject⁠—

The dear creature wept. She knew how