For early I saw that there was no credulity in her to graft upon: no pretending to whine myself into her confidence. She was proof against amorous persuasion. She had reason in her love. Her penetration and good sense made her hate all compliments that had not truth and nature in them. What could I have done with her in any other place? and yet how long, even there, was I kept in awe, in spite of natural incitement, and unnatural instigations, (as I now think them,) by the mere force of that native dignity, and obvious purity of mind and manners, which fill every one with reverence, if not with holy love, as thou callest it,* the moment he sees her!--Else, thinkest thou not, it was easy for me to be a fine gentleman, and a delicate lover, or, at least a specious and flattering one?
* See Letter XXI. of this volume.
Lady Sarah and Lady Betty, finding the treaty, upon the success of which they have set their foolish hearts, likely to run into length, are about departing to their own seats; having taken from me the best security the nature of the case will admit of, that is to say, my word, to marry the lady, if she will have me.
And after all, (methinks thou asked,) art thou still resolved to repair, if reparation be put into thy power?
Why, Jack, I must needs own that my heart has now-and-then some retrograde motions upon thinking seriously of the irrevocable ceremony.
We do not easily give up the desire of our hearts, and what we imagine essential to our happiness, let the expectation or hope of compa.s.sing it be ever so unreasonable or absurd in the opinion of others. Recurrings there will be; hankerings that will, on every but-remotely-favourable incident, (however before discouraged and beaten back by ill success,) pop up, and abate the satisfaction we should otherwise take in contrariant overtures.
"Tis ungentlemanly, Jack, man to man, to lie.----But matrimony I do not heartily love--although with a CLARISSA--yet I am in earnest to marry her.
But I am often thinking that if now this dear creature, suffering time, and my penitence, my relations" prayers, and Miss Howe"s mediation to soften her resentments, (her revenge thou hast prettily* distinguished away,) and to recall repulsed inclination, should consent to meet me at the altar--How vain will she then make all thy eloquent periods of execration!--How many charming interjections of her own will she spoil!
And what a couple of old patriarchs shall we become, going in the mill-horse round; getting sons and daughters; providing nurses for them first, governors and governesses next; teaching them lessons their fathers never practised, nor which their mother, as her parents will say, was much the better for! And at last, perhaps, when life shall be turned into the dully sober stillness, and I become desirous to forget all my past rogueries, what comfortable reflections will it afford to find them all revived, with equal, or probably greater trouble and expense, in the persons and manners of so many young Lovelaces of the boys; and to have the girls run away with varlets, perhaps not half so ingenious as myself; clumsy fellows, as it might happen, who could not afford the baggages one excuse for their weakness, besides those disgraceful ones of s.e.x and nature!--O Belford! who can bear to think of these things!----Who, at my time of life especially, and with such a bias for mischief!
* See Letter XVIII. of this volume.
Of this I am absolutely convinced, that if a man ever intends to marry, and to enjoy in peace his own reflections, and not be afraid retribution, or of the consequences of his own example, he should never be a rake.
This looks like conscience; don"t it, Belford?
But, being in earnest still, as I have said, all I have to do in my present uncertainty, is, to brighten up my faculties, by filing off the rust they have contracted by the town smoke, a long imprisonment in my close attendance to so little purpose on my fair perverse; and to brace up, if I can, the relaxed fibres of my mind, which have been twitched and convulsed like the nerves of some tottering paralytic, by means of the tumults she has excited in it; that so I may be able to present to her a husband as worthy as I can be of her acceptance; or, if she reject me, be in a capacity to resume my usual gaiety of heart, and show others of the misleading s.e.x, that I am not discouraged, by the difficulties I have met with from this sweet individual of it, from endeavouring to make myself as acceptable to them as before.
In this latter case, one tour to France and Italy, I dare say, will do the business. Miss Harlowe will by that time have forgotten all she has suffered from her ungrateful Lovelace: though it will be impossible that her Lovelace should ever forget a woman, whose equal he despairs to meet with, were he to travel from one end of the world to the other.
If thou continuest paying off the heavy debts my long letters, for so many weeks together, have made thee groan under, I will endeavour to restrain myself in the desires I have, (importunate as they are,) of going to town, to throw myself at the feet of my soul"s beloved. Policy and honesty, both join to strengthen the restraint my own promise and thy engagement have laid me under on this head. I would not afresh provoke: on the contrary, would give time for her resentments to subside, that so all that follows may be her own act and deed.
Hickman, [I have a mortal aversion to that fellow!] has, by a line which I have just now received, requested an interview with me on Friday at Mr.
Dormer"s, as at a common friend"s. Does the business he wants to meet me upon require that it should be at a common friend"s?--A challenge implied: Is it not, Belford?--I shall not be civil to him, I doubt. He has been an intermeddler?--Then I envy him on Miss Howe"s account: for if I have a right notion of this Hickman, it is impossible that that virago can ever love him.
Every one knows that the mother, (saucy as the daughter sometimes is,) crams him down her throat. Her mother is one of the most violent-spirited women in England. Her late husband could not stand in the matrimonial contention of Who should? but tipt off the perch in it, neither knowing how to yield, nor knowing how to conquer.
A charming encouragement for a man of intrigue, when he has reason to believe that the woman he has a view upon has no love for her husband!
What good principles must that wife have, who is kept in against temptation by a sense of her duty, and plighted faith, where affection has no hold of her!
Pr"ythee let"s know, very particularly, how it fares with poor Belton.
"Tis an honest fellow. Something more than his Thomasine seems to stick with him.
Thou hast not been preaching to him conscience and reformation, hast thou?--Thou shouldest not take liberties with him of this sort, unless thou thoughtest him absolutely irrecoverable. A man in ill health, and crop-sick, cannot play with these solemn things as thou canst, and be neither better nor worse for them.--Repentance, Jack, I have a notion, should be set about while a man is in health and spirits. What"s a man fit for, [not to begin a new work, surely!] when he is not himself, nor master of his faculties?--Hence, as I apprehend, it is that a death-bed repentance is supposed to be such a precarious and ineffectual thing.
As to myself, I hope I have a great deal of time before me; since I intend one day to be a reformed man. I have very serious reflections now-and-then. Yet am I half afraid of the truth of what my charmer once told me, that a man cannot repent when he will.--Not to hold it, I suppose she meant! By fits and starts I have repented a thousand times.
Casting my eye over the two preceding paragraphs, I fancy there is something like contradiction in them. But I will not reconsider them.
The subject is a very serious one. I don"t at present quite understand it. But now for one more airy.
Tourville, Mowbray, and myself, pa.s.s away our time as pleasantly as possibly we can without thee. I wish we don"t add to Lord M."s gouty days by the joy we give him.
This is one advantage, as I believe I have elsewhere observed, that we male-delinquents in love-matters have of the other s.e.x:--for while they, poor things! sit sighing in holes and corners, or run to woods and groves to bemoan themselves on their baffled hopes, we can rant and roar, hunt and hawk; and, by new loves, banish from our hearts all remembrance of the old ones.
Merrily, however, as we pa.s.s our time, my reflections upon the injuries done to this n.o.ble creature bring a qualm upon my heart very often. But I know she will permit me to make her amends, after she has plagued me heartily; and that"s my consolation.
An honest fellow still--clap thy wings, and crow, Jack!----
LETTER XXIV
MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE THURSDAY MORN. JUNE* 20.
* Text error: should be JULY.
What, my dearest creature, have been your sufferings!--What must have been your anguish on so disgraceful an insult, committed in the open streets, and in the broad day!
No end, I think, of the undeserved calamities of a dear soul, who had been so unhappily driven and betrayed into the hands of a vile libertine!
--How was I shocked at the receiving of your letter written by another hand, and only dictated by you!--You must be very ill. Nor is it to be wondered at. But I hope it is rather from hurry, and surprise, and lowness, which may be overcome, than from a grief given way to, which may be attended with effects I cannot bear to think of.
But whatever you do, my dear, you must not despond! Indeed you must not despond! Hitherto you have been in no fault: but despair would be all your own: and the worst fault you can be guilty of.
I cannot bear to look upon another hand instead of your"s. My dear creature, send me a few lines, though ever so few, in your own hand, if possible.--For they will revive my heart; especially if they can acquaint me of your amended health.
I expect your answer to my letter of the 13th. We all expect it with impatience.
His relations are persons of so much honour--they are so very earnest to rank you among them--the wretch is so very penitent: every one of his family says he is--your own are so implacable--your last distress, though the consequence of his former villany, yet neither brought on by his direction nor with his knowledge; and so much resented by him--that my mother is absolutely of opinion that you should be his--especially if, yielding to my wishes, as expressed in my letter, and those of all his friends, you would have complied, had it not been for this horrid arrest.
I will enclose the copy of the letter I wrote to Miss Montague last Tuesday, on hearing that n.o.body knew what was become of you; and the answer to it, underwritten and signed by Lord M., Lady Sarah Sadleir, and Lady Betty Lawrance, as well as by the young Ladies; and also by the wretch himself.
I own, that I like not the turn of what he has written to me; and, before I will further interest myself in his favour, I have determined to inform myself, by a friend, from his own mouth, of his sincerity, and whether his whole inclination be, in his request to me, exclusive of the wishes of his relations. Yet my heart rises against him, on the supposition that there is the shadow of a reason for such a question, the woman Miss Clarissa Harlowe. But I think, with my mother, that marriage is now the only means left to make your future life tolerably easy--happy there is no saying.--His disgraces, in that case, in the eye of the world itself, will be more than your"s: and, to those who know you, glorious will be your triumph.
I am obliged to accompany my mother soon to the Isle of Wight. My aunt Harman is in a declining way, and insists upon seeing us both--and Mr.
Hickman too, I think.
His sister, of whom we had heard so much, with her lord, were brought t"other day to visit us. She strangely likes me, or says she does.
I can"t say but that I think she answers the excellent character we heard of her.
It would be death to me to set out for the little island, and not see you first: and yet my mother (fond of exerting an authority that she herself, by that exertion, often brings into question) insists, that my next visit to you must be a congratulatory one as Mrs. Lovelace.
When I know what will be the result of the questions to be put in my name to that wretch, and what is your mind on my letter of the 13th, I shall tell you more of mine.