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

but himself is to blame for that?⁠—Would either equity, law, or conscience, hang B for a murder?

And now to apply, said I⁠—

None of your applications, cried my cousins, both in a breath.

None of your applications, and be d⁠⸺⁠d to you, the passionate Peer.

Well then, returned I, I am to conclude it to be a case so plain that it needs none; looking at the two girls, who tried for a blush apiece. And I hold myself, of consequence, acquitted of the death.

Not so, cried my Lord, (Peers are judges, thou knowest, Jack, in the last resort): for if, by committing an unlawful act, a capital crime is the consequence, you are answerable for both.

Say you so, my good Lord?⁠—But will you take upon you to say, supposing (as in the present case) a rape (saving your presence, cousin Charlotte, saving your presence, cousin Patty)⁠—Is death the natural consequence of a rape?⁠—Did you ever hear, my Lord, or did you, Ladies, that it was?⁠—And if not the natural consequence, and a lady will destroy herself, whether by a lingering death, as of grief; or by the dagger, as Lucretia did; is there more than one fault the man’s?⁠—Is not the other hers?⁠—Were it not so, let me tell you, my dears, chucking each of my blushing cousins under the chin, we either would have had no men so wicked as young Tarquin was, or no women so virtuous as Lucretia, in the space of⁠—How many thousand years, my Lord?⁠—And so Lucretia is recorded as a single wonder!

You may believe I was cried out upon. People who cannot answer, will rave: and this they all did. But I insisted upon it to them, and so I do to you, Jack, that I ought to be acquitted of everything but a common theft, a private larceny, as the lawyers call it, in this point. And were my life to be a forfeit of the law, it would not be for murder.

Besides, as I told them, there was a circumstance strongly in my favour in this case: for I would have been glad, with all my soul, to have purchased my forgiveness by a compliance with the terms I first boggled at. And this, you all know, I offered; and my Lord, and Lady Betty, and Lady Sarah, and my two cousins, and all my cousins’ cousins, to the fourteenth generation, would have been bound for me⁠—But it would not do: the sweet miser would break her heart, and die: And how could I help it?

Upon the whole, Jack, had not the lady died, would there have been half so much said of it, as there is? Was I the cause of her death? or could I help it? And have there not been, in a million of cases like this, nine hundred and ninty-nine thousand that have not ended as this has ended?⁠—How hard, then, is my fate!⁠—Upon my soul, I won’t bear it as I have done; but, instead of taking guilt to myself, claim pity. And this (since yesterday cannot be recalled) is the only course I can pursue to make myself easy. Proceed anon.

Letter 516 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

But what a pretty scheme of life hast thou drawn out for thyself and thy old widow! By my soul, Jack, I was mightily taken with it. There is but one thing wanting in it; and that will come of course: only to be in the commission, and one of the quorum. Thou art already provided with a clerk, as good as thou’lt want, in the widow Lovick; for thou understandest law, and she conscience: a good Lord Chancellor between ye!⁠—I should take prodigious pleasure to hear thee decide in a bastard case, upon thy new notions and old remembrances.

But raillery apart. (All gloom at heart, by Jupiter! although the pen and the countenance assume airs of levity!) If, after all, thou canst so easily repent and reform, as thou thinkest thou canst: if thou canst thus shake off thy old sins, and thy old habits: and if thy old master will so readily dismiss so tried and so faithful a servant, and permit thee thus calmly to enjoy thy new system; no room for scandal; all temptation ceasing: and if at last (thy reformation warranted and approved by time) thou marriest, and livest honest:⁠—why, Belford, I cannot but say, that if all these if’s come to pass, thou standest a good chance to be a happy man!

All I think, as I told thee in my last, is, that the devil knows his own interest too well, to let thee off so easily. Thou thyself tellest me, that we cannot repent when we will. And indeed I found it so: for, in my lucid intervals, I made good resolutions: but as health turned its blithe side to me, and opened my prospects of recovery, all my old inclinations and appetites returned; and this letter, perhaps, will be a thorough conviction to thee, that I am as wild a fellow as ever, or in the way to be so.

Thou askest me, very seriously, if, upon the faint sketch thou hast drawn, thy new scheme be not infinitely preferable to any of those which we have so long pursued?⁠—Why, Jack⁠—Let me reflect⁠—Why, Belford⁠—I can’t say⁠—I can’t say⁠—but it is. To speak out⁠—It is really, as Biddy in the play says, a good comfortable scheme.

But when thou tellest me, that it was thy misfortune to love me, because thy value for me made thee a wickeder man than otherwise thou wouldst have been; I desire thee to revolve this assertion: and I am persuaded that thou wilt not find thyself in so right a train as thou imaginest.

No false colourings, no glosses, does a true penitent aim at. Debasement, diffidence, mortification, contrition, are all near of a kin, Jack, and inseparable from a repentant spirit. If thou knowest not this, thou art not got three steps (out of