>>> Yet, methinks, the story is so plausible--Tom- linson, as you describe him, is so good a man, and so much of a gentleman; the end to be answered >>> by his being an impostor, so much more than neces- sary if Lovelace has villany in his head; and as >>> you are in such a house--your wretch"s behaviour to him was so petulant and lordly; and Tomlin- son"s answer so full of spirit and circ.u.mstance; >>> and then what he communicated to you of Mr.
Hickman"s application to your uncle, and of Mrs.
Norton"s to your mother, [some of which particu- >>> lars, I am satisfied, his vile agent, Joseph Leman, could not reveal to his vile employer;] his press- ing on the marriage-day, in the name of your uncle, which it could not answer any wicked pur- >>> pose for him to do; and what he writes of your uncle"s proposal, to have it thought that you were married from the time that you have lived in one house together; and that to be made to agree with the time of Mr. Hickman"s visit to your uncle.
>>> The insisting on a trusty person"s being present at the ceremony, at that uncle"s nomination--These things make me willing to try for a tolerable construc- tion to be made of all. Though I am so much puzzled by what occurs on both sides of the ques- >>> tion, that I cannot but abhor the devilish wretch, whose inventions and contrivances are for ever em- ploying an inquisitive head, as mine is, without affording the means of absolute detection.
But this is what I am ready to conjecture, that Tomlinson, specious as he is, is a machine of Love- >>> lace; and that he is employed for some end, which has not yet been answered. This is certain, that not only Tomlinson, but Mennell, who, I think, attended you more than once at this vile house, must know it to be a vile house.
What can you then think of Tomlinson"s declar- ing himself in favour of it upon inquiry?
Lovelace too must know it to be so; if not before he brought you to it, soon after.
>>> Perhaps the company he found there, may be the most probable way of accounting for his bearing with the house, and for his strange suspensions of marriage, when it was in his power to call such an angel of a woman his.--
>>> O my dear, the man is a villain!--the greatest of villains, in every light!--I am convinced that he is.--And this Doleman must be another of his implements!
>>> There are so many wretches who think that to be no sin, which is one of the greatest and most ungrateful of all sins,--to ruin young creatures of our s.e.x who place their confidence in them; that the wonder is less than the shame, that people, of appearance at least, are found to promote the horrid purposes of profligates of fortune and interest!
>>> But can I think [you will ask with indignant astonishment] that Lovelace can have designs upon your honour?
>>> That such designs he has had, if he still hold them or not, I can have no doubt, now that I know the house he has brought you to, to be a vile one.
This is a clue that has led me to account for all his behaviour to you ever since you have been in his hands.
Allow me a brief retrospection of it all.
We both know, that pride, revenge, and a delight to tread in unbeaten paths, are princ.i.p.al ingredients in the character of this finished libertine.
>>> He hates all your family--yourself excepted: and I have several times thought, that I have seen >>> him stung and mortified that love has obliged him to kneel at your footstool, because you are a Har- lowe. Yet is this wretch a savage in love.--Love >>> that humanizes the fiercest spirits, has not been able to subdue his. His pride, and the credit which a >>> few plausible qualities, sprinkled among his odious ones, have given him, have secured him too good a reception from our eye-judging, our undistinguish- ing, our self-flattering, our too-confiding s.e.x, to make a.s.siduity and obsequiousness, and a conquest of his unruly pa.s.sions, any part of his study.
>>> He has some reason for his animosity to all the men, and to one woman of your family. He has always shown you, and his own family too, that he >>> prefers his pride to his interest. He is a declared marriage-hater; a notorious intriguer; full of his inventions, and glorying in them: he never could draw you into declarations of love; nor till your >>> wise relations persecuted you as they did, to receive his addresses as a lover. He knew that you pro- fessedly disliked him for his immoralities; he could not, therefore, justly blame you for the coldness and indifference of your behaviour to him.
>>> The prevention of mischief was your first main view in the correspondence he drew you into. He ought not, then, to have wondered that you declared your preference of the single life to any matrimonial engagement. He knew that this was always your >>> preference; and that before he tricked you away so artfully. What was his conduct to you afterwards, that you should of a sudden change it?
Thus was your whole behaviour regular, con- sistent, and dutiful to those to whom by birth you owed duty; and neither prudish, coquettish, nor tyrannical to him.
>>> He had agreed to go on with you upon those your own terms, and to rely only on his own merits and future reformation for your favour.
>>> It was plain to me, indeed, to whom you com- municated all that you knew of your own heart, though not all of it that I found out, that love had pretty early gained footing in it. And this you yourself would have discovered sooner than you >>> did, had not his alarming, his unpolite, his rough conduct, kept it under.
>>> I knew by experience that love is a fire that is not to be played with without burning one"s fingers: I knew it to be a dangerous thing for two single persons of different s.e.xes to enter into familiarity and correspondence with each other: Since, as to the latter, must not a person be capable of premedi- tated art, who can sit down to write, and not write from the heart?--And a woman to write her heart to a man practised in deceit, or even to a man of some character, what advantage does it give him over her?
>>> As this man"s vanity had made him imagine, that no woman could be proof against love, when his address was honourable; no wonder that he struggled, like a lion held in toils, against a pa.s.sion that he thought not returned. And how could you, at first, show a return in love, to so fierce a spirit, and who had seduced you away by vile artifices, but to the approval of those artifices.
>>> Hence, perhaps, it is not difficult to believe, that it became possible for such a wretch as this to give way to his old prejudices against marriage; and to that revenge which had always been a first pa.s.sion with him.
This is the only way, I think, to account for his horrid views in bringing you to a vile house.
And now may not all the rest be naturally accounted for?--His delays--his teasing ways-- his bringing you to bear with his lodging in the same house--his making you pa.s.s to the people of >>> it as his wife, though restrictively so, yet with hope, no doubt, (vilest of villains as he is!) to take you >>> at an advantage--his bringing you into the com- pany of his libertine companions--the attempt of imposing upon you that Miss Partington for a bedfellow, very probably his own invention for the worst of purposes--his terrifying you at many different times--his obtruding himself upon you when you went out to church; no doubt to prevent your finding out what the people of the house were --the advantages he made of your brother"s foolish project with Singleton.
See, my dear, how naturally all this follows from >>> the discovery made by Miss Lardner. See how the monster, whom I thought, and so often called, >>> a fool, comes out to have been all the time one of the greatest villains in the world!
But if this is so, what, [it would be asked by an indifferent person,] has. .h.i.therto saved you?
Glorious creature!--What, morally speaking, but your watchfulness! What but that, and the majesty of your virtue; the native dignity, which, in a situation so very difficult, (friendless, dest.i.tute, pa.s.sing for a wife, cast into the company of crea- tures accustomed to betray and ruin innocent hearts,) has. .h.i.therto enabled you to baffle, over-awe, and confound, such a dangerous libertine as this; so habitually remorseless, as you have observed him to be; so very various in his temper, so inventive, so seconded, so supported, so instigated, too pro- bably, as he has been!--That native dignity, that heroism, I will call it, which has, on all proper occasions, exerted itself in its full l.u.s.tre, unmingled >>> with that charming obligingness and condescending sweetness, which is evermore the softener of that dignity, when your mind is free and unapprehen- sive!
>>> Let me stop to admire, and to bless my beloved friend, who, unhappily for herself, at an age so tender, unacquainted as she was with the world, and with the vile arts of libertines, having been called upon to sustain the hardest and most shocking trials, from persecuting relations on one hand, and from a villanous lover on the other, has been enabled to give such an ill.u.s.trious example of fort.i.tude and prudence as never woman gave before her; and who, as I have heretofore observed,* has made a far greater figure in adversity, than she possibly could have made, had all her shining qualities been exerted in their full force and power, by the con- >>> tinuance of that prosperous run of fortune which attended her for eighteen years of life out of nineteen.
* See Vol. IV. Letters XXIV.
>>> But now, my dear, do I apprehend, that you are in greater danger than ever yet you have been in; if you are not married in a week; and yet stay in this abominable house. For were you out of it, I own I should not be much afraid for you.
These are my thoughts, on the most deliberate >>> consideration: "That he is now convinced, that he has not been able to draw you off your guard: that therefore, if he can obtain no new advantage over you as he goes along, he is resolved to do you all the poor justice that it is in the power of such a wretch as he to do you. He is the rather induced to this, as he sees that all his own family have warmly engaged themselves in your cause: and that it is >>> his highest interest to be just to you. Then the horrid wretch loves you (as well he may) above all women. I have no doubt of this: with such a love >>> as such a wretch is capable of: with such a love as Herod loved his Marianne. He is now therefore, very probably, at last, in earnest."
I took time for inquiries of different natures, as I knew, by the train you are in, that whatever his designs are, they cannot ripen either for good or >>> evil till something shall result from this device of his about Tomlinson and your uncle.
Device I have no doubt that it is, whatever this dark, this impenetrable spirit intends by it.
>>> And yet I find it to be true, that Counsellor Williams (whom Mr. Hickman knows to be a man of eminence in his profession) has actually as good >>> as finished the settlements: that two draughts of them have been made; one avowedly to be sent to one Captain Tomlinson, as the clerk says:--and I find that a license has actually been more than once endeavoured to be obtained; and that difficulties have hitherto been made, equally to Lovelace"s >>> vexation and disappointment. My mother"s proctor, who is very intimate with the proctor applied to by the wretch, has come at this information in confidence; and hints, that, as Mr. Lovelace is a man of high fortunes, these difficulties will probably be got over.
But here follow the causes of my apprehension of your danger; which I should not have had a thought >>> of (since nothing very vile has yet been attempted) but on finding what a house you are in, and, on that discovery, laying together and ruminating on past occurrences.
"You are obliged, from the present favourable >>> appearances, to give him your company whenever he requests it.--You are under a necessity of for- getting, or seeming to forget, past disobligations; and to receive his addresses as those of a betrothed lover.--You will incur the censure of prudery and affectation, even perhaps in your own apprehension, if you keep him at that distance which has. .h.i.therto >>> been your security.--His sudden (and as suddenly recovered) illness has given him an opportunity to find out that you love him. [Alas! my dear, I knew you loved him!] He is, as you relate, every >>> hour more and more an encroacher upon it. He has seemed to change his nature, and is all love and >>> gentleness. The wolf has put on the sheep"s cloth- ing; yet more than once has shown his teeth, and his hardly-sheathed claws. The instance you have given of his freedom with your person,* which you could not but resent; and yet, as matters are circ.u.mstanced between you, could not but pa.s.s over, when Tomlinson"s letter called you into his >>> company,** show the advantage he has now over you; and also, that if he can obtain greater, he will.--And for this very reason (as I apprehend) it >>> is, that Tomlinson is introduced; that is to say, to give you the greater security, and to be a mediator, if mortal offence be given you by any villanous attempt.--The day seems not now to be so much in your power as it ought to be, since that now partly depends on your uncle, whose presence, at your own motion, he has wished on the occasion.
A wish, were all real, very unlikely, I think, to be granted."
* She means the freedom Mr. Lovelace took with her before the fire-plot.
See Vol. V. Letter XI. When Miss Howe wrote this letter she could not know of that.
** See Vol. V. Letter XII.
>>> And thus situated, should he offer greater free- doms, must you not forgive him?
I fear nothing (as I know who has said) that devil carnate or incarnate can fairly do against a >>> virtue so established.*--But surprizes, my dear, in such a house as you are in, and in such circ.u.m- stances as I have mentioned, I greatly fear! the >>> man one who has already triumphed over persons worthy of his alliance.
>>> What then have you to do, but to fly this house, this infernal house!--O that your heart would let you fly the man!
>>> If you should be disposed so to do, Mrs. Towns- end shall be ready at your command.--But if you meet with no impediments, no new causes of doubt, I think your reputation in the eye of the world, >>> though not your happiness, is concerned, that you should be his--and yet I cannot bear that these libertines should be rewarded for their villany with the best of the s.e.x, when the worst of it are too good for them.
But if you meet with the least ground for suspicion; if he would detain you at the odious house, or wish you to stay, now you know what >>> the people are; fly him, whatever your prospects are, as well as them.
In one of your next airings, if you have no other >>> way, refuse to return with him. Name me for your intelligencer, that you are in a bad house, and if you think you cannot now break with him, seem rather >>> to believe that he may not know it to be so; and that I do not believe he does: and yet this belief in us both must appear to be very gross.
But suppose you desire to go out of town for the air, this sultry weather, and insist upon it? You may plead your health for so doing. He dare not >>> resist such a plea. Your brother"s foolish scheme, I am told, is certainly given up; so you need not be afraid on that account.
If you do not fly the house upon reading of this, or some way or other get out of it, I shall judge of his power over you, by the little you will have over either him or yourself.
>>> One of my informers has made such slight inquiries concerning Mrs. Fretchville. Did he ever name to you the street or square she lived in?--I don"t >>> remember that you, in any of your"s, mentioned the place of her abode to me. Strange, very strange, this, I think! No such person or house can be found, near any of the new streets or squares, where the lights I had from your letters led me to imagine >>> her house might be.--Ask him what street the house is in, if he has not told you; and let me >>> know. If he make a difficulty of that circ.u.mstance, it will amount to a detection.--And yet, I think, you will have enough without this.