Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady Volume VI Part 46

But indeed I know nothing of any messenger from you.

Believing myself secure at Hampstead, I staid longer there than I would have done, in hopes of the letter promised me in your short one of the 9th, brought me by my own messenger, in which you undertake to send for and engage Mrs. Townsend in my favour.*

* See Vol. V. Letter XXIX.

I wondered I had not heard from you: and was told you were sick; and, at another time, that your mother and you had had words on my account, and that you had refused to admit Mr. Hickman's visits upon it: so that I supposed, at one time, that you were not able to write; at another, that your mother's prohibition had its due force with you. But now I have no doubt that the wicked man must have intercepted your letter; and I wish he found not means to corrupt your messenger to tell you so strange a story.

It was on Sunday, June 11, you say, that the man gave it me. I was at church twice that day with Mrs. Moore. Mr. Lovelace was at her house the while, where he boarded, and wanted to have lodged; but I would not permit that, though I could not help the other. In one of these s.p.a.ces it must be that he had time to work upon the man. You'll easily, my dear, find that out, by inquiring the time of his arrival at Mrs. Moore's and other circ.u.mstances of the strange way he pretended to see me in, on a couch, and the rest.

Had any body seen me afterwards, when I was betrayed back to the vile house, struggling under the operation of wicked potions, and robbed indeed of my intellects (for this, as you shall hear, was my dreadful case,) I might then, perhaps, have appeared bloated and flush-coloured, and I know not how myself. But were you to see your poor Clarissa, now (or even to have seen her at Hampstead before she suffered the vilest of all outrages,) you would not think her bloated or flush-coloured: indeed you would not.

In a word, it could not be me your messenger saw; nor (if any body) who it was can I divine.

I will now, as briefly as the subject will permit, enter into the darker part of my sad story: and yet I must be somewhat circ.u.mstantial, that you may not think me capable of reserve or palliation. The latter I am not conscious that I need. I should be utterly inexcusable were I guilty of the former to you. And yet, if you know how my heart sinks under the thoughts of a recollection so painful, you would pity me.

As I shall not be able, perhaps, to conclude what I have to write in even two or three letters, I will begin a new one with my story; and send the whole of it together, although written at different periods, as I am able.

Allow me a little pause, my dear, at this place; and to subscribe myself

Your ever affectionate and obliged, CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER LXVII

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE [REFERRED TO IN LETTER XII.]

THURSDAY NIGHT.

He had found me out at Hampstead: strangely found me out; for I am still at a loss to know by what means.

I was loth, in my billet of the 6th,* to tell you so, for fear of giving you apprehensions for me; and besides, I hoped then to have a shorter and happier issue to account to you for, through your a.s.sistance, than I met with.

* See Vol. V. Letter x.x.xI.

[She then gives a narrative of all that pa.s.sed at Hampstead between herself, Mr. Lovelace, Capt. Tomlinson, and the women there, to the same effect with that so amply given by Mr. Lovelace.]

Mr. Lovelace, finding all he could say, and all Captain Tomlinson could urge, ineffectual, to prevail upon me to forgive an outrage so flagrantly premeditated; rested all his hopes on a visit which was to be paid me by Lady Betty Lawrance and Miss Montague.

In my uncertain situation, my prospects all so dark, I knew not to whom I might be obliged to have recourse in the last resort: and as those ladies had the best of characters, insomuch that I had reason to regret that I had not from the first thrown myself upon their protection, (when I had forfeited that of my own friends,) I thought I would not shun an interview with them, though I was too indifferent to their kinsman to seek it, as I doubted not that one end of their visit would be to reconcile me to him.

On Monday, the 12th of June, these pretended ladies came to Hampstead; and I was presented to them, and they to me by their kinsman.

They were richly dressed, and stuck out with jewels; the pretended Lady Betty's were particularly very fine.

They came in a coach-and-four, hired, as was confessed, while their own was repairing in town: a pretence made, I now perceive, that I should not guess at the imposture by the want of the real lady's arms upon it. Lady Betty was attended by her woman, who she called Morrison; a modest country-looking person.

I had heard, that Lady Betty was a fine woman, and that Miss Montague was a beautiful young lady, genteel, and graceful, and full of vivacity.-- Such were these impostors: and having never seen either of them, I had not the least suspicion, that they were not the ladies they personated; and being put a little out of countenance by the richness of their dresses, I could not help, (fool that I was!) to apologize for my own.

The pretended Lady Betty then told me, that her nephew had acquainted them with the situation of affairs between us. And although she could not but say, that she was very glad that she had not put such a slight upon his Lordship and them, as report had given them cause to apprehend, (the reasons for which report, however, she must have approved of;) yet it had been matter of great concern to her, and to her niece Montague, and would to the whole family, to find so great a misunderstanding subsisting between us, as, if not made up, might distance all their hopes.

She could easily tell who was in fault, she said. And gave him a look both of anger and disdain; asking him, How it was possible for him to give an offence of such a nature to so charming a lady, [so she called me,] as should occasion a resentment so strong?

He pretended to be awed into shame and silence.

My dearest niece, said she, and took my hand, (I must call you niece, as well from love, as to humour your uncle's laudable expedient,) permit me to be, not an advocate, but a mediatrix for him; and not for his sake, so much as for my own, my Charlotte's, and all our family's. The indignity he has offered to you, may be of too tender a nature to be inquired into.

But as he declares, that it was not a premeditated offence; whether, my dear, [for I was going to rise upon it in my temper,] it were or not; and as he declares his sorrows for it, (and never did creature express a deeper sorrow for any offence than he); and as it is a repairable one; let us, for this one time, forgive him; and thereby lay an obligation upon this man of errors--Let US, I say, my dear: for, Sir, [turning to him,]

an offence against such a peerless lady as this, must be an offence against me, against your cousin here, and against all the virtuous of our s.e.x.

See, my dear, what a creature he had picked out! Could you have thought there was a woman in the world who could thus express herself, and yet be vile? But she had her princ.i.p.al instructions from him, and those written down too, as I have reason to think: for I have recollected since, that I once saw this Lady Betty, (who often rose from her seat, and took a turn to the other end of the room with such an emotion, as if the joy of her heart would not let her sit still) take out a paper from her stays, and look into it, and put it there again. She might oftener, and I not observe it; for I little thought that there could be such impostors in the world.

I could not forbear paying great attention to what she said. I found my tears ready to start; I drew out my handkerchief, and was silent. I had not been so indulgently treated a great while by a person of character and distinction, [such I thought her;] and durst not trust to the accent of my voice.

The pretended Miss Montague joined in on this occasion: and drawing her chair close to me, took my other hand, and besought me to forgive her cousin; and consent to rank myself as one of the princ.i.p.als of a family that had long, very long, coveted the honour of my alliance.

I am ashamed to repeat to you, my dear, now I know what wretches they are, the tender, the obliging, and the respectful things I said to them.

The wretch himself then came forward. He threw himself at my feet. How was I beset!--The women grasping, one my right hand, the other my left: the pretended Miss Montague pressing to her lips more than once the hand she held: the wicked man on his knees, imploring my forgiveness; and setting before me my happy and my unhappy prospects, as I should forgive and not forgive him. All that he thought would affect me in former pleas, and those of Capt. Tomlinson, he repeated. He vowed, he promised, he bespoke the pretended ladies to answer for him; and they engaged their honours in his behalf.

Indeed, my dear, I was distressed, perfectly distressed. I was sorry that I had given way to this visit. For I knew not how, in tenderness to relations, (as I thought them,) so worthy, to treat so freely as he deserved, a man nearly allied to them: so that my arguments and my resolutions were deprived of their greatest force.

I pleaded, however, my application to you. I expected every hour, I told them, an answer from you to a letter I had written, which would decide my future destiny.

They offered to apply to you themselves in person, in their own behalf, as they politely termed it. They besought me to write to you to hasten your answer.

I said, I was sure that you would write the moment that the event of an application to be made to a third person enabled you to write. But as to the success of their request in behalf of their kinsman, that depended not upon the expected answer; for that, I begged their pardon, was out of the question. I wished him well. I wished him happy. But I was convinced, that I neither could make him so, nor he me.

Then! how the wretch promised!--How he vowed!--How he entreated!--And how the women pleaded!--And they engaged themselves, and the honour of their whole family, for his just, his kind, his tender behaviour to me.

In short, my dear, I was so hard set, that I was obliged to come to a more favourable compromise with them than I had intended. I would wait for your answer to my letter, I said: and if that made doubtful or difficult the change of measures I had resolved upon, and the scheme of life I had formed, I would then consider of the matter; and, if they would permit me, lay all before them, and take their advice upon it, in conjunction with your's, as if the one were my own aunt, and the other were my own cousin.

They shed tears upon this--of joy they called them:--But since, I believe, to their credit, bad as they are, that they were tears of temporary remorse; for, the pretended Miss Montague turned about, and, as I remember, said, There was no standing it.

But Mr. Lovelace was not so easily satisfied. He was fixed upon his villanous measures perhaps; and so might not be sorry to have a pretence against me. He bit his lip--he had been but too much used, he said, to such indifference, such coldness, in the very midst of his happiest prospects. I had on twenty occasions shown him, to his infinite regret, that any favour I was to confer upon him was to be the result of--there he stopt--and not of my choice.

This had like to have set all back again. I was exceedingly offended.

But the pretended ladies interposed. The elder severely took him to task. He ought, she told him, to be satisfied with what I had said. She desired no other condition. And what, Sir, said she, with an air of authority, would you commit errors, and expect to be rewarded for them?

They then engaged me in a more agreeable conversation--the pretended lady declared, that she, Lord M. and Lady Sarah, would directly and personally interest themselves to bring about a general reconciliation between the two families, and this either in open or private concert with my uncle Harlowe, as should be thought fit. Animosities on one side had been carried a great way, she said; and too little care had been shown on the other to mollify or heal. My father should see that they could treat him as a brother and a friend; and my brother and sister should be convinced that there was no room either for the jealously [sic] or envy they had conceived from motives too unworthy to be avowed.

Could I help, my dear, being pleased with them?--

Permit me here to break off. The task grows too heavy, at present, for the heart of