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

families should be frustrated. Some little time, as this excellent lady had foreseen and hinted, will necessarily be taken up in actually procuring the license, and in perusing and signing the settlements. In that time Miss Howe’s answer may be received; and Lady Betty may arrive; and she, no doubt, will have weight to dissipate the lady’s doubts, and to accelerate the day. It shall be my part, meantime, to make Mr. Harlowe easy. All I fear is from Mr. James Harlowe’s quarter; and therefore all must be conducted with prudence and privacy: as your uncle, Madam, has proposed.

She was silent, I rejoiced in her silence. The dear creature, thought I, has actually forgiven me in her heart!⁠—But why will she not lay me under obligation to her, by the generosity of an explicit declaration?⁠—And yet, as that would not accelerate anything, while the license is not in my hands, she is the less to be blamed (if I do her justice) for taking more time to descend.

I proposed, as on the morrow night, to go to town; and doubted not to bring the license up with me on Monday morning; would she be pleased to assure me, that she would not depart from Mrs. Moore’s.

She should stay at Mrs. Moore’s till she had an answer from Miss Howe.

I told her that I hoped I might have her tacit consent at least to the obtaining of the license.

I saw by the turn of her countenance that I should not have asked this question. She was so far from tacitly consenting, that she declared to the contrary.

As I never intended, I said, to ask her to enter again into a house, with the people of which she was so much offended, would she be pleased to give orders for her clothes to be brought up hither? Or should Dorcas attend her for any of her commands on that head?

She desired not ever more to see anybody belonging to that house. She might perhaps get Mrs. Moore or Mrs. Bevis to go thither for her, and take her keys with them.

I doubted not, I said, that Lady Betty would arrive by that time. I hoped she had no objection to my bringing that lady and my cousin Montague up with me?

She was silent.

To be sure, Mr. Lovelace, said the Captain, the lady can have no objection to this.

She was still silent. So silence in this case was assent.

Would she be pleased to write to Miss Howe?⁠—

Sir! Sir! peevishly interrupting⁠—no more questions; no prescribing to me⁠—you will do as you think fit⁠—so will I, as I please. I own no obligation to you. Captain Tomlinson, your servant. Recommend me to my uncle Harlowe’s favour. And was going.

I took her reluctant hand, and besought her only to promise to meet me early in the morning.

To what purpose meet you? Have you more to say than has been said? I have had enough of vows and protestations, Mr. Lovelace. To what purpose should I meet you tomorrow morning?

I repeated my request, and that in the most fervent manner, naming six in the morning.

“You know that I am always stirring before that hour, at this season of the year,” was the half-expressed consent.

She then again recommended herself to her uncle’s favour; and withdrew.

And thus, Belford, has she mended her markets, as Lord M. would say, and I worsted mine. Miss Howe’s next letter is now the hinge on which the fate of both must turn. I shall be absolutely ruined and undone, if I cannot intercept it.

Letter 246 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

Sat. Midnight

No rest, says a text that I once heard preached upon, to the wicked⁠—and I cannot close my eyes (yet only wanted to compound for half an hour in an elbow-chair)⁠—so must scribble on.

I parted with the Captain after another strong debate with him in relation to what is to be the fate of this lady. As the fellow has an excellent head, and would have made an eminent figure in any station of life, had not his early days been tainted with a deep crime, and he detected in it; and as he had the right side of the argument; I had a good deal of difficulty with him; and at last brought myself to promise, that if I could prevail upon her generously to forgive me, and to reinstate me in her favour, I would make it my whole endeavour to get off of my contrivances, as happily as I could; (only that Lady Betty and Charlotte must come); and then substituting him for her uncle’s proxy, take shame to myself, and marry.

But if I should, Jack, (with the strongest antipathy to the state that ever man had), what a figure shall I make in rakish annals? And can I have taken all this pains for nothing? Or for a wife only, that, however excellent, (and any woman, do I think I could make good, because I could make any woman fear as well as love me), might have been obtained without the plague I have been at, and much more reputably than with it? And hast thou not seen, that this haughty woman (forgive me that I call her haughty! and a woman! Yet is she not haughty?) knows not how to forgive with graciousness? Indeed has not at all forgiven me? But holds my soul in a suspense which has been so grievous to her own.

At this silent moment, I think, that if I were to pursue my former scheme, and resolve to try whether I cannot make a greater fault serve as a sponge to wipe out the less; and then be forgiven for that; I can justify myself to myself; and that, as the fair invincible would say, is all in all.

As it is my intention, in all my reflections, to avoid repeating, at least dwelling upon, what I have before written to thee, though the state of the case may not have varied; so I would