Mrs. Leeson’s was now a crowded house, he said: and as my earnestness
could be owing to nothing but groundless apprehensions, [and Oh! what
vows, what protestations of his honour, did he then make!] he hoped I
would not add to their present concern. Charlotte, indeed, was used to
fits, he said, upon any great surprises, whether of joy or grief; and
they would hold her for one week together, if not got off in a few
hours.
You are an observer of eyes, my dear, said the villain; perhaps in
secret insult: Saw you not in Miss Montague’s, now-and-then at
Hampstead, something wildish? I was afraid for her then. Silence and
quiet only do her good: your concern for her, and her love for you,
will but augment the poor girl’s disorder, if you should go.
All impatient with grief and apprehension, I still declared myself
resolved not to stay in that house till morning. All I had in the
world, my rings, my watch, my little money, for a coach; or, if one
were not to be got, I would go on foot to Hampstead that night, though
I walked it by myself.
A coach was hereupon sent for, or pretended to be sent for. Any price,
he said, he would give to oblige me, late as it was; and he would
attend me with all his soul. But no coach was to be got.
Let me cut short the rest. I grew worse and worse in my head! now
stupid, now raving, now senseless. The vilest of vile women was brought
to frighten me. Never was there so horrible a creature as she appeared
to me at this time.
I remember I pleaded for mercy. I remember that I said I would be
his—indeed I would be his—to obtain his mercy. But no mercy found I! My
strength, my intellects failed me—And then such scenes followed—O my
dear, such dreadful scenes!—fits upon fits, (faintly indeed and
imperfectly remembered,) procuring me no compassion—But death was
withheld from me. That would have been too great a mercy!
Thus was I tricked and deluded back by blacker hearts of my own sex
than I thought there were in the world; who appeared to me to be
persons of honour; and, when in his power, thus barbarously was I
treated by this villanous man!
I was so senseless, that I dare not aver, that the horrid creatures of
the house were personally aiding and abetting: but some visionary
remembrances I have of female figures, flitting, as I may say, before
my sight; the wretched woman’s particularly. But as these confused
ideas might be owing to the terror I had conceived of the worse than
masculine violence she had been permitted to assume to me, for
expressing my abhorrence of her house; and as what I suffered from his
barbarity wants not that aggravation; I will say no more on a subject
so shocking as this must ever be to my remembrance.
I never saw the personating wretches afterwards. He persisted to the
last, (dreadfully invoking Heaven as a witness to the truth of his
assertion) that they were really and truly the ladies they pretended to
be; declaring, that they could not take leave of me, when they left
town, because of the state of senselessness and phrensy I was in. For
their intoxicating, or rather stupefying, potions had almost
deleterious effects upon my intellects, as I have hinted; insomuch
that, for several days together, I was under a strange delirium; now
moping, now dozing, now weeping, now raving, now scribbling, tearing
what I scribbled as fast as I wrote it: most miserable when
now-and-then a ray of reason brought confusedly to my remembrance what
I had suffered.