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

attribute to me more than I merit, in order to raise an emulation to me to deserve your praises!⁠—you tell me what you expect from me in the calamities I am called upon to bear. May I behave answerably!

I can a little account to myself for my silence to you, my kind, my dear maternal friend! How equally sweetly and politely do you express yourself on this occasion! I was very desirous, for your sake, as well as for my own, that you should have it to say that we did not correspond: had they thought we did, every word you could have dropped in my favour would have been rejected; and my mother would have been forbid to see you, or pay any regard to what you should say.

Then I had sometimes better and sometimes worse prospects before me. My worst would only have troubled you to know: my better made me frequently hope, that, by the next post, or the next, and so on for weeks, I should have the best news to impart to you that then could happen: cold as the wretch had made my heart to that best.⁠—For how could I think to write to you, with a confession that I was not married, yet lived in the house (for I could not help it) with such a man?⁠—Who likewise had given it out to several, that we were actually married, although with restrictions that depended on the reconciliation with my friends? And to disguise the truth, or be guilty of a falsehood, either direct or equivocal, that was what you had never taught me.

But I might have written to you for advice, in my precarious situation, perhaps you will think. But, indeed, my dear Mrs. Norton, I was not lost for want of advice. And this will appear clear to you from what I have already hinted, were I to explain myself no further:⁠—For what need had the cruel spoiler to have recourse to unprecedented arts⁠—I will speak out plainer still, (but you must not at present report it), to stupifying potions, and to the most brutal and outrageous force, had I been wanting in my duty?

A few words more upon this grievous subject⁠—

When I reflect upon all that has happened to me, it is apparent, that this generally-supposed thoughtless seducer has acted by me upon a regular and preconcerted plan of villany.

In order to set all his vile plots in motion, nothing was wanting, from the first, but to prevail upon me, either by force or fraud, to throw myself into his power: and when this was effected, nothing less than the intervention of the paternal authority, (which I had not deserved to be exerted in my behalf), could have saved me from the effect of his deep machinations. Opposition from any other quarter would but too probably have precipitated his barbarous and ungrateful violence: and had you yourself been with me, I have reason now to think, that somehow or other you would have suffered in endeavouring to save me: for never was there, as now I see, a plan of wickedness more steadily and uniformly pursued than his has been, against an unhappy creature who merited better of him: but the Almighty has thought fit, according to the general course of His providence, to make the fault bring on its own punishment: but surely not in consequence of my father’s dreadful imprecation, “That I might be punished here,” (O my mamma Norton, pray with me, if so, that here it stop!) “by the very wretch in whom I had placed my wicked confidence!”

I am sorry, for your sake, to leave off so heavily. Yet the rest must be brief.

Let me desire you to be secret in what I have communicated to you; at least till you have my consent to divulge it.

God preserve to you your more faultless child!

I will hope for His mercy, although I should not obtain that of any earthly person.

And I repeat my prohibition:⁠—You must not think of coming up to

Your ever dutiful

Cl. Harlowe.

The obliging person, who left yours for me this day, promised to call tomorrow, to see if I should have anything to return. I would not lose so good an opportunity.

Letter 308 Mrs. Norton, to Miss Clarissa Harlowe

Monday Night, July 3

O the barbarous villany of this detestable man! And is there a man in the world who could offer violence to so sweet a creature!

And are you sure you are now out of his reach?

You command me to keep secret the particulars of the vile treatment you have met with; or else, upon an unexpected visit which Miss Harlowe favoured me with, soon after I had received your melancholy letter, I should have been tempted to own I had heard from you, and to have communicated to her such parts of your two letters as would have demonstrated your penitence, and your earnestness to obtain the revocation of your father’s malediction, as well as his protection from outrages that may still be offered to you. But then your sister would probably have expected a sight of the letters, and even to have been permitted to take them with her to the family.

Yet they must one day be acquainted with the sad story:⁠—and it is impossible but they must pity you, and forgive you, when they know your early penitence, and your unprecedented sufferings; and that you have fallen by the brutal force of a barbarous ravisher, and not by the vile arts of a seducing lover.

The wicked man gives it out at Lord M.’s, as Miss Harlowe tells me, that he is actually married to you⁠—yet she believes it not: nor had I the heart to let her know the truth.

She put it close to me, Whether I had not corresponded with you from the time of your going away? I could safely tell her, (as I did), that I had not: