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

to do for me. Everyone has her direction as to the last offices.⁠—And my desk, that I now write upon⁠—O my dearest Mrs. Norton, all is provided!⁠—All is ready! And all will be as decent as it should be!

And pray let my Miss Howe know, that by the time you will receive this, and she your signification of the contents of it, will, in all probability, be too late for her to do me the inestimable favour, as I should once have thought it, to see me. God will have no rivals in the hearts of those he sanctifies. By various methods he deadens all other sensations, or rather absorbs them all in the love of him.

I shall nevertheless love you, my Mamma Norton, and my Miss Howe, whose love to me has passed the love of woman, to my latest hour!⁠—But yet, I am now above the quick sense of those pleasures which once delighted me, and once more I say, that I do not wish to see objects so dear to me, which might bring me back again into sense, and rival my supreme love.

Twice have I been forced to leave off. I wished, that my last writing might be to you, or to Miss Howe, if it might not be to my dearest Ma⁠—

Mamma, I would have wrote⁠—is the word distinct?⁠—My eyes are so misty!⁠—If, when I apply to you, I break off in half-words, do you supply them⁠—the kindest are your due.⁠—Be sure take the kindest, to fill up chasms with, if any chasms there be⁠—

Another breaking off!⁠—But the new day seems to rise upon me with healing in its wings. I have gotten, I think, a recruit of strength: spirits, I bless God, I have not of late wanted.

Let my dearest Miss Howe purchase her wedding-garments⁠—and may all temporal blessings attend the charming preparation!⁠—Blessings will, I make no question, notwithstanding the little cloudiness that Mr. Hickman encounters with now and then, which are but prognostications of a future golden day to him: for her heart is good, and her head not wrong.⁠—But great merit is coy, and that coyness had not always its foundation in pride: but if it should seem to be pride, take off the skin-deep covering, and, in her, it is noble diffidence, and a love that wants but to be assured!

Tell Mr. Hickman I write this, and write it, as I believe, with my last pen; and bid him bear a little at first, and forbear; and all the future will be crowning gratitude, and rewarding love: for Miss Howe had great sense, fine judgment, and exalted generosity; and can such a one be ungrateful or easy under those obligations which his assiduity and obligingness (when he shall be so happy as to call her his) will lay her under to him?

As for me, never bride was so ready as I am. My wedding garments are bought⁠—and though not fine or gawdy to the sight, though not adorned with jewels, and set off with gold and silver, (for I have no beholders’ eyes to wish to glitter in), yet will they be the easiest, the happiest suit, that ever bridal maiden wore⁠—for they are such as carry with them a security against all those anxieties, pains, and perturbations, which sometimes succeed to the most promising outsettings.

And now, my dear Mrs. Norton, do I wish for no other.

O hasten, good God, if it be thy blessed will, the happy moment that I am to be decked out in his all-quieting garb! And sustain, comfort, bless, and protect with the all-shadowing wing of thy mercy, my dear parents, my uncles, my brother, my sister, my cousin Morden, my ever-dear and ever-kind Miss Howe, my good Mrs. Norton, and every deserving person to whom they wish well! is the ardent prayer, first and last, of every beginning hour, as the clock tells it me, (hours now are days, nay, years), of

Your now not sorrowing or afflicted, but happy,

Clarissa Harlowe.

Letter 466 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

Wed. Morn. Sept. 6, half an hour after Three

I am not the savage which you and my worst enemies think me. My soul is too much penetrated by the contents of the letter which you enclosed in your last, to say one word more to it, than that my heart has bled over it from every vein!⁠—I will fly from the subject⁠—but what other can I choose, that will not be as grievous, and lead into the same?

I could quarrel with all the world; with thee, as well as the rest; obliging as thou supposest thyself for writing to me hourly. How darest thou, (though unknown to her), to presume to take an apartment under the sane roof with her?⁠—I cannot bear to think that thou shouldest be seen, at all hours passing to and repassing from her apartments, while I, who have so much reason to call her mine, and one was preferred by her to all the world, am forced to keep aloof, and hardly dare to enter the city where she is!

If there be anything in Brand’s letter that will divert me, hasten it to me. But nothing now will ever divert me, will ever again give me joy or pleasure! I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep. I am sick of all the world.

Surely it will be better when all is over⁠—when I know the worst the Fates can do against me⁠—yet how shall I bear that worst?⁠—O Belford, Belford! write it not to me!⁠—But if it must happen, get somebody else to write; for I shall curse the pen, the hand, the head, and the heart, employed in communicating to me the fatal tidings. But what is this saying, when already I curse the whole world except her⁠—myself most?

In fine, I am a most miserable being. Life is a burden to me. I would not bear it upon these terms for one week more, let what would be my