Your CLARISSA HARLOWE.
LETTER LXVIII
MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE [IN CONTINUATION.]
I was very ill, and obliged to lay down my pen. I thought I should have fainted. But am better now--so will proceed.
The pretended ladies, the more we talked, the fonder they seemed to be of me. And the Lady Betty had Mrs. Moore called up; and asked her, If she had accommodations for her niece and self, her woman, and two men servants, for three or four days?
Mr. Lovelace answered for her that she had.
She would not ask her dear niece Lovelace, [Permit me, my dear, whispered she, this charming style before strangers! I will keep your uncle"s secret,] whether she should be welcome or not to be so near her. But for the time she should stay in these parts, she would come up every night-- What say you, niece Charlotte?
The pretended Charlotte answered, she should like to do so, of all things.
The Lady Betty called her an obliging girl. She liked the place, she said. Her cousin Leeson would excuse her. The air, and my company, would do her good. She never chose to lie in the smoky town, if she could help it. In short, my dear, said she to me, I will stay with you till you hear from Miss Howe; and till I have your consent to go with me to Glenham-hall. Not one moment will I be out of your company, when I can have it. Stedman, my solicitor, as the distance from town is so small, may attend me here for instructions. Niece Charlotte, one word with you, child.
They retired to the further end of the room, and talked about their night-dresses.
The Miss Charlotte said, Morrison might be dispatched for them.
True, said the other--but I have some letters in my private box, which I must have up. And you know, Charlotte, that I trust n.o.body with the keys of that.
Could not Morrison bring up the box?
No. She thought it safest where it was. She had heard of a robbery committed but two days ago at the food of Hampstead-hill; and she should be ruined in she lost her box.
Well, then, it was but going to town to undress, and she would leave her jewels behind her, and return; and should be easier a great deal on all accounts.
For my part, I wondered they came up with them. But that was to be taken as a respect paid to me. And then they hinted at another visit of ceremony which they had thought to make, had they not found me so inexpressibly engaging.
They talked loud enough for me to hear them; on purpose, no doubt, though in affected whispers; and concluded with high praises of me.
I was not fool enough to believe, or to be puffed up with their encomiums; yet not suspecting them, I was not displeased at so favourable a beginning of acquaintance with Ladies (whether I were to be related to them or not) of whom I had always heard honourable mention. And yet at the time, I thought, highly as they exalted me, that in some respects (though I hardly know in what) they fell short of what I expected them to be.
The grand deluder was at the farther end of the room, another way; probably to give me an opportunity to hear these preconcerted praises-- looking into a book, which had there not been a preconcert, would not have taken his attention for one moment. It was Taylor"s Holy Living and Dying.
When the pretended ladies joined me, he approached me with it in his hand --a smart book, this, my dear!--this old divine affects, I see, a mighty flowery style of an ordinary country funeral, where, the young women, in honour of a defunct companion, especially if she were a virgin, or pa.s.sed for such, make a flower-bed of her coffin.
And then, laying down the book, turning upon his heel, with one of his usual airs of gaiety, And are you determined, Ladies, to take up your lodgings with my charming creature?
Indeed they were.
Never were there more cunning, more artful impostors, than these women.
Practised creatures, to be sure: yet genteel; and they must have been well-educated--once, perhaps, as much the delight of their parents, as I was of mine: and who knows by what arts ruined, body and mind--O my dear!
how pregnant is this reflection!
But the man!--Never was there a man so deep. Never so consummate a deceiver; except that detested Tomlinson; whose years and seriousness, joined with a solidity of sense and judgment that seemed uncommon, gave him, one would have thought, advantages in villany, the other had not time for. Hard, very hard, that I should fall into the knowledge of two such wretches; when two more such I hope are not to be met with in the world!--both so determined to carry on the most barbarous and perfidious projects against a poor young creature, who never did or wished harm to either.
Take the following slight account of these women"s and of this man"s behaviour to each other before me.
Mr. Lovelace carried himself to his pretended aunt with high respect, and paid a great deference to all she said. He permitted her to have all the advantage over him in the repartees and retorts that pa.s.sed between them. I could, indeed, easily see, that it was permitted; and that he forbore that vivacity, that quickness, which he never spared showing to his pretended Miss Montague; and which a man of wit seldom knows how to spare showing, when an opportunity offers to display his wit.
The pretended Miss Montague was still more respectful in her behaviour to her pretended aunt. While the aunt kept up the dignity of the character she had a.s.sumed, rallying both of them with the air of a person who depends upon the superiority which years and fortune give over younger persons, who might have a view to be obliged to her, either in her life, or at her death.
The severity of her raillery, however, was turned upon Mr. Lovelace, on occasion of the character of the people who kept the lodgings, which, she said, I had thought myself so well warranted to leave privately.
This startled me. For having then no suspicion of the vile Tomlinson, I concluded (and your letter of the 7th* favoured my conclusion) that if the house were notorious, either he, or Mr. Mennell, would have given me or him some hints of it--nor, although I liked not the people, did I observe any thing in them very culpable, till the Wednesday night before, that they offered not to come to my a.s.sistance, although within hearing of my distress, (as I am sure they were,) and having as much reason as I to be frighted at the fire, had it been real.
* His forged letter. See Vol. V. Letter x.x.x.
I looked with indignation upon Mr. Lovelace, at this hint.
He seemed abashed. I have not patience, but to recollect the specious looks of this vile deceiver. But how was it possible, that even that florid countenance of his should enable him to command a blush at his pleasure? for blush he did, more than once: and the blush, on this occasion, was a deep-dyed crimson, unstrained for, and natural, as I thought--but he is so much of the actor, that he seems able to enter into any character; and his muscles and features appear entirely under obedience to his wicked will.*
* It is proper to observe, that there was a more natural reason than this that the Lady gives for Mr. Lovelace"s blushing. It was a blush of indignation, as he owned afterwards to his friend Belford, in conversation; for the pretended Lady Betty had mistaken her cue, in condemning the house; and he had much ado to recover the blunder; being obliged to follow her lead, and vary from his first design; which was to have the people of the house spoken well of, in order to induce her to return to it, were it but on pretence to direct her clothes to be carried to Hampstead.
The pretended lady went on, saying, she had taken upon herself to inquire after the people, on hearing that I had left the house in disgust; and though she heard not any thing much amiss, yet she heard enough to make her wonder that he could carry his spouse, a person of so much delicacy, to a house, that, if it had not a bad fame, had not a good one.
You must think, my dear, that I liked the pretended Lady Betty the better for this. I suppose it was designed that I should.
He was surprised, he said, that her Ladyship should hear a bad character of the people. It was what he had never before heard that they deserved.
It was easy, indeed, to see, that they had not very great delicacy, though they were not indelicate. The nature of their livelihood, letting lodgings, and taking people to board, (and yet he had understood that they were nice in these particulars,) led them to aim at being free and obliging: and it was difficult, he said, for persons of cheerful dispositions, so to behave as to avoid censure: openness of heart and countenance in the s.e.x (more was the pity) too often subjected good people, whose fortunes did not set them above the world, to uncharitable censure.
He wished, however, that her Ladyship would tell what she had heard: although now it signified but little, because he would never ask me to set foot within their doors again: and he begged she would not mince the matter.
Nay, no great matter, she said. But she had been informed, that there were more women-lodgers in the house than men: yet that their visiters were more men than women. And this had been hinted to her (perhaps by ill-wishers, she could not answer for that) in such a way, as if somewhat further were meant by it than was spoken.
This, he said, was the true innuendo-way of characterizing, used by detractors. Every body and every thing had a black and a white side, of which well wishers and ill wishers may make their advantage. He had observed that the front house was well let, and he believed more to the one s.e.x than to the other; for he had seen, occasionally pa.s.sing to or fro, several genteel modest looking women; and who, it was very probable, were not so ill-beloved, but they might have visiters and relations of both s.e.xes: but they were none of them any thing to us, or we to them: we were not once in any of their companies: but in the genteelest and most retired house of the two, which we had in a manner to ourselves, with the use of a parlour to the street, to serve us for a servants" hall, or to receive common visiters, or our traders only, whom we admitted not up stairs.
He always loved to speak as he found. No man in the world had suffered more from calumny than he himself had done.
Women, he owned, ought to be more scrupulous than men needed to be where they lodged. Nevertheless he wished that fact, rather than surmise, were to be the foundation of their judgments, especially when they spoke of one another.
He meant no reflection upon her Ladyship"s informants, or rather surmisants, (as he might call them,) be they who they would: nor did he think himself obliged to defend characters impeached, or not thought well of, by women of virtue and honour. Neither were these people of importance enough to have so much said about them.
The pretended Lady Betty said, all who knew her, would clear her of censoriousness: that it gave her some opinion, she must needs say, of the people, that he had continued there so long with me; that I had rather negative than positive reasons of dislike to them; and that so shrewd a man as she heard Captain Tomlinson was had not objected to them.
I think, niece Charlotte, proceeded she, as my nephew had not parted with these lodgings, you and I, (for, as my dear Miss Harlowe dislikes the people, I would not ask her for her company) will take a dish of tea with my nephew there, before we go out of town; and then we shall see what sort of people they are. I have heard that Mrs. Sinclair is a mighty forbidding creature.
With all my heart, Madam. In your Ladyship"s company I shall make no scruple of going any where.