MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. AT MRS. SINCLAIR’S, MONDAY
AFTERNOON.
All’s right, as heart can wish!—In spite of all objection—in spite of a
reluctance next to faintings—in spite of all foresight, vigilance,
suspicion—once more is the charmer of my soul in her old lodgings!
Now throbs away every pulse! Now thump, thump, thumps my bounding heart
for something!
But I have not time for the particulars of our management.
My beloved is now directing some of her clothes to be packed up—never
more to enter this house! Nor ever more will she, I dare say, when once
again out of it!
Yet not so much as a condition of forgiveness!—The Harlowe-spirited
fair-one will not deserve my mercy!—She will wait for Miss Howe’s next
letter; and then, if she find a difficulty in her new schemes, [Thank
her for nothing,]—will—will what? Why even then will take time to
consider, whether I am to be forgiven, or for ever rejected. An
indifference that revives in my heart the remembrance of a thousand of
the like nature.—And yet Lady Betty and Miss Montague, [a man would be
tempted to think, Jack, that they wish her to provoke my vengeance,]
declare, that I ought to be satisfied with such a proud suspension!
They are entirely attached to her. Whatever she says, is, must be,
gospel! They are guarantees for her return to Hampstead this night.
They are to go back with her. A supper bespoken by Lady Betty at Mrs.
Moore’s. All the vacant apartments there, by my permission, (for I had
engaged them for a month certain,) to be filled with them and their
attendants, for a week at least, or till they can prevail upon the dear
perverse, as they hope they shall, to restore me to her favour, and to
accompany Lady Betty to Oxfordshire.
The dear creature has thus far condescended—that she will write to Miss
Howe and acquaint her with the present situation of things.
If she write, I shall see what she writes. But I believe she will have
other employment soon.
Lady Betty is sure, she tells her, that she shall prevail upon her to
forgive me; though she dares say, that I deserve not forgiveness. Lady
Betty is too delicate to inquire strictly into the nature of my
offence. But it must be an offence against herself, against Miss
Montague, against the virtuous of the whole sex, or it could not be so
highly resented. Yet she will not leave her till she forgive me, and
till she see our nuptials privately celebrated. Mean time, as she
approves of her uncle’s expedient, she will address her as already my
wife before strangers.
Stedman, her solicitor, may attend her for orders in relation to her
chancery affair, at Hampstead. Not one hour they can be favoured with,
will they lose from the company and conversation of so dear, so
charming a new relation.
Hard then if she had not obliged them with her company in their
coach-and-four, to and from their cousin Leeson’s, who longed, (as they
themselves had done,) to see a lady so justly celebrated.
‘How will Lord M. be raptured when he sees her, and can salute her as
his niece!
‘How will Lady Sarah bless herself!—She will now think her loss of the
dear daughter she mourns for happily supplied!’
Miss Montague dwells upon every word that falls from her lips. She
perfectly adores her new cousin—‘For her cousin she must be. And her
cousin will she call her! She answers for equal admiration in her
sister Patty.
‘Ay, cry I, (whispering loud enough for her to hear,) how will my
cousin Patty’s dove’s eyes glisten and run over, on the very first
interview!—So gracious, so noble, so unaffected a dear creature!’
‘What a happy family,’ chorus we all, ‘will our’s be!’
These and such like congratulatory admirations every hour repeated. Her
modesty hurt by the ecstatic praises:—‘Her graces are too natural to
herself for her to be proud of them: but she must be content to be
punished for excellencies that cast a shade upon the most excellent!’
In short, we are here, as at Hampstead, all joy and rapture—all of us
except my beloved; in whose sweet face, [her almost fainting reluctance
to re-enter these doors not overcome,] reigns a kind of anxious
serenity!—But how will even that be changed in a few hours!
Methinks I begin to pity the half-apprehensive beauty!—But avaunt, thou
unseasonably-intruding pity! Thou hast more than once already well nigh
undone me! And, adieu, reflection! Begone, consideration! and
commiseration! I dismiss ye all, for at least a week to come!—But
remembered her broken word! Her flight, when my fond soul was
meditating mercy to her!—Be remembered her treatment of me in her
letter on her escape to Hampstead! Her Hampstead virulence! What is it
she ought not to expect from an unchained Beelzebub, and a plotting
villain?
Be her preference of the single life to me also remembered!—That she
despises me!—That she even refuses to be my WIFE!—A proud Lovelace to
be denied a wife!—To be more proudly rejected by a daughter of the
Harlowes!—The ladies of my own family, [she thinks them the ladies of
my family,] supplicating in vain for her returning favour to their
despised kinsman, and taking laws from her still prouder punctilio!
Be the execrations of her vixen friend likewise remembered, poured out
upon me from her representations, and thereby made her own execrations!
Be remembered still more particularly the Townsend plot, set on foot
between them, and now, in a day or two, ready to break out; and the
sordid threatening thrown out against me by that little fury!
Is not this the crisis for which I have been long waiting? Shall
Tomlinson, shall these women be engaged; shall so many engines be set
at work, at an immense expense, with infinite contrivance; and all to
no purpose?
Is not this the hour of her trial—and in her, of the trial of the
virtue of her whole sex, so long premeditated, so long
threatened?—Whether her frost be frost indeed? Whether her virtue be
principle? Whether, if once subdued, she will not be always subdued?
And will she not want the crown of her glory, the proof of her till now
all-surpassing excellence, if I stop short of the ultimate trial?
Now is the end of purposes long over-awed, often suspended, at hand.
And need I go throw the sins of her cursed family into the too-weighty
scale?
[Abhorred be force!—be the thoughts of force!—There’s no triumph over
the will in force!] This I know I have said.* But would I not have
avoided it, if I could? Have I not tried every other method? And have I
any other resource left me? Can she resent the last outrage more than
she has resented a fainter effort?—And if her resentments run ever so
high, cannot I repair by matrimony?—She will not refuse me, I know,
Jack: the haughty beauty will not refuse me, when her pride of being
corporally inviolate is brought down; when she can tell no tales, but
when, (be her resistance what it will,) even her own sex will suspect a
yielding in resistance; and when that modesty, which may fill her bosom
with resentment, will lock up her speech.
* Vol. IV. Letter XLVIII.
But how know I, that I have not made my own difficulties? Is she not a
woman! What redress lies for a perpetuated evil? Must she not live? Her
piety will secure her life.—And will not time be my friend! What, in a
word, will be her behaviour afterwards?—She cannot fly me!—She must
forgive me—and as I have often said, once forgiven, will be for ever
forgiven.
Why then should this enervating pity unsteel my foolish heart?
It shall not. All these things will I remember; and think of nothing
else, in order to keep up a resolution, which the women about me will
have it I shall be still unable to hold.
I’ll teach the dear, charming creature to emulate me in contrivance;
I’ll teach her to weave webs and plots against her conqueror! I’ll show
her, that in her smuggling schemes she is but a spider compared to me,
and that she has all this time been spinning only a cobweb!
What shall we do now! we are immersed in the depth of grief and
apprehension! How ill do women bear disappointment!—Set upon going to
Hampstead, and upon quitting for ever a house she re-entered with
infinite reluctance; what things she intended to take with her ready
packed up, herself on tiptoe to be gone, and I prepared to attend her
thither; she begins to be afraid that she shall not go this night; and
in grief and despair has flung herself into her old apartment; locked
herself in; and through the key-hole Dorcas sees her on her knees,
praying, I suppose, for a safe deliverance.
And from what? and wherefore these agonizing apprehensions?
Why, here, this unkind Lady Betty, with the dear creature’s knowledge,
though to her concern, and this mad-headed cousin Montague without it,
while she was employed in directing her package, have hurried away in
the coach to their own lodgings, [only, indeed, to put up some
night-clothes, and so forth, in order to attend their sweet cousin to
Hampstead;] and, no less to my surprise than her’s, are not yet
returned.