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

Give sorrow words (says Shakespeare)
—The grief that does not speak,
Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.

I know, my dear Belton, thou usedst to take pleasure in repetitions from the poets; but thou must be tasteless of their beauties now: yet be not discountenanced by this uncouth and unreflecting Mowbray, for, as Juvenal says, Tears are the prerogative of manhood.

’Tis at least seasonably said, my dear Belford. It is kind to keep me in countenance for this womanish weakness, as Mowbray has been upbraidingly calling it, ever since he has been with me: and in so doing, (whatever I might have thought in such high health as he enjoys), has convinced me, that bottle-friends feel nothing but what moves in that little circle.

Well, well, proceed in your own way, Jack. I love my friend Belton as well as you can do; yet for the blood of me, I cannot but think, that soothing a man’s weakness is increasing it.

If it be a weakness, to be touched at great and concerning events, in which our humanity is concerned, said I, thou mayest be right.

I have seen many a man, said the rough creature, going up Holborn-hill, that has behaved more like a man than either of you.

Ay, but, Mowbray, replied the poor man, those wretches have not had their minds enervated by such infirmities of body as I have long laboured under. Thou art a shocking fellow, and ever wert.⁠—But to be able to remember nothing in these moments but what reproaches me, and to know that I cannot hold it long, and what may then be my lot, if⁠—but interrupting himself, and turning to me, Give me thy pity, Jack; ’tis balm to my wounded soul; and let Mowbray sit indifferent enough to the pangs of a dying friend, to laugh at us both.

The hardened fellow then retired, with the air of a Lovelace; only more stupid; yawning and stretching, instead of humming a tune as thou didst at Smith’s.

I assisted to get the poor man into bed. He was so weak and low, that he could not bear the fatigue, and fainted away; and I verily thought was quite gone. But recovering, and his doctor coming, and advising to keep him quiet, I retired, and joined Mowbray in the garden; who took more delight to talk of the living Lovelace and levities, than of the dying Belton and his repentance.

I just saw him again on Saturday night before I went to bed; which I did early; for I was surfeited with Mowbray’s frothy insensibility, and could not bear him.

It is such a horrid thing to think of, that a man who had lived in such strict terms of⁠—what shall I call it? with another; the proof does not come out so, as to say, friendship; who had pretended so much love for him; could not bear to be out of his company; would ride an hundred miles on end to enjoy it; and would fight for him, be the cause right or wrong: yet now, could be so little moved to see him in such misery of body and mind, as to be able to rebuke him, and rather ridicule than pity him, because he was more affected by what he felt, than he had seen a malefactor, (hardened perhaps by liquor, and not softened by previous sickness), on his going to execution.

This put me strongly in mind of what the divine Miss Harlowe once said to me, talking of friendship, and what my friendship to you required of me: “Depend upon it, Mr. Belford,” said she, “that one day you will be convinced, that what you call friendship, is chaff and stubble; and that nothing is worthy of that sacred name,

“That has not virtue for its base.”

Sunday morning, I was called up at six o’clock, at the poor man’s earnest request, and found him in a terrible agony. O Jack! Jack! said he, looking wildly, as if he had seen a spectre⁠—Come nearer me!⁠—Dear, dear Belford, save me! Then clasping my arm with both his hands, and rearing up his head towards me, his eyes strangely rolling, Save me! dear Belford, save me! repeated he.

I put my other arm about him⁠—Save you from what, my dear Belton! said I; save you from what? Nothing shall hurt you. What must I save you from?

Recovering from his terror, he sunk down again, O save me from myself! said he; save me from my own reflections. O dear Jack! what a thing it is to die; and not to have one comfortable reflection to revolve! What would I give for one year of my past life?⁠—only one year⁠—and to have the same sense of things that I now have?

I tried to comfort him as well as I could: but free-livers to free-livers are sorry deathbed comforters. And he broke in upon me: O my dear Belford, said he, I am told, (and I have heard you ridiculed for it), that the excellent Miss Harlowe has wrought a conversion in you. May it be so! You are a man of sense: O may it be so! Now is your time! Now, that you are in full vigour of mind and body!⁠—But your poor Belton, alas! your poor Belton kept his vices, till they left him⁠—and see the miserable effects in debility of mind and despondency! Were Mowbray here, and were he to laugh at me, I would own that this is the cause of my despair⁠—that God’s justice cannot let his mercy operate for my comfort: for, Oh! I have been very, very wicked; and have despised the offers of his grace, till he has withdrawn it from me forever.

I used all the arguments I could think of to give him consolation: and what I said had such an effect upon him, as to quiet his mind for the greatest part of the day; and in a lucid hour his