'Whatever had been your usage:--and you have a credulity, Madam, against
all probability, if you believe you should have avoided being
Solmes's wife: That I have put you upon sacrificing your duty and
conscience--yet, dearest creature! see you not the contradiction that
your warmth of temper has surprised you into, when the reluctance
you shewed to the last to leave your persecutors, has cleared your
conscience from the least reproach of this sort?'--
O Sir! Sir! are you so critical then? Are you so light in your anger as
to dwell upon words?--
Indeed, my dear, I have since thought that his anger was not owing to
that sudden impetus, which cannot be easily bridled; but rather was a
sort of manageable anger let loose to intimidate me.
'Forgive me, Madam--I have just done--Have I not, in your opinion,
hazarded my life to redeem you from oppression? Yet is not my reward,
after all, precarious?--For, Madam, have you not conditioned with me
(and, hard as the condition is, most sacredly will I observe it) that
all my hope must be remote? That you are determined to have it in your
power to favour or reject me totally, as you please?'
See, my dear! in every respect my condition changed for the worse! Is it
in my power to take your advice, if I should think it ever so right to
take it?*
* Clarissa had been censured as behaving to Mr. Lovelace, in their first
conversation at St. Alban's, and afterwards, with too much reserve, and
even with haughtiness. Surely those, who have thought her to blame on
this account, have not paid a due attention to the story. How early, as
above, and in what immediately follows, does he remind her of the terms
of distance which she had prescribed to him, before she was in his
power, in hopes to leave the door open for a reconciliation with
her friends, which her heart was set upon? And how artfully does he
(unrequired) promise to observe the conditions in which she in her
present circumstances and situation (in pursuance of Miss Howe's advice)
would gladly have dispensed with?--To say nothing of the resentment she
was under a necessity to shew, at the manner of his getting her away, in
order to justify to him the sincerity of her refusal to go off with him.
See, in her subsequent Letter to Miss Howe, No. IX., her own sense upon
the subject.
'And have you not furthermore declared,' proceeded he 'that you will
engage to renounce me for ever, if your friends insist upon that cruel
renunciation, as the terms of being reconciled to you?
'But nevertheless, Madam, all the merit of having saved you from an
odious compulsion, shall be mine. I glory in it, though I were to lose
you for ever. As I see I am but too likely to do, from your present
displeasure; and especially, if your friends insist upon the terms you
are ready to comply with.
'That you are your own mistress, through my means, is, I repeat, my
boast. As such, I humbly implore your favour, and that only upon the
conditions I have yielded to hope for it. As I do now, thus humbly,
[the proud wretch falling on one knee,] your forgiveness, for so long
detaining your ear, and for all the plain dealing that my undesigning
heart would not be denied to utter by my lips.'
O Sir, pray rise! Let the obliged kneel, if one of us must kneel! But,
nevertheless, proceed not in this strain, I beseech you. You have had
a great deal of trouble about me: but had you let me know in time, that
you expected to be rewarded for it at the price of my duty, I should
have spared you much of it.
Far be it from me, Sir, to depreciate merit so extraordinary. But let me
say, that had it not been for the forbidden correspondence I was teased
by you into; and which I had not continued (every letter, for many
letters, intended to be the last) but because I thought you a sufferer
from my friends; I had not been either confined or ill treated: nor
would my brother's low-meant violence have had a foundation to work
upon.
I am far from thinking my case would have been so very desperate as you
imagine had I staid. My father loved me in his heart: he would not see
me before; and I wanted only to see him, and to be heard; and a delay
of his sentence was the least thing I expected from the trial I was to
stand.
You are boasting of your merits, Sir: let merit be your boast; nothing
else can attract me. If personal considerations had principal weight
with me, either in Solmes's disfavour, or in your favour, I shall
despise myself: if you value yourself upon them, in preference to the
person of the poor Solmes, I shall despise you!
You may glory in your fancied merits in getting me away: but the cause
of your glory, I tell you plainly, is my shame.
Make to yourself a title to my regard, which I can better approve of; or
else you will not have so much merit with me, as you have with yourself.
But here, Sir, like the first pair, (I, at least, driven out of my
paradise,) are we recriminating. No more shall you need to tell me of
your sufferings, and your merits! your all hours, and all weathers! For
I will bear them in memory as long as I live; and if it be impossible
for me to reward them, be ever ready to own the obligation. All that
I desire of you now is, to leave it to myself to seek for some private
abode: to take the chariot with you to London, or elsewhere: and, if
I have any further occasion for your assistance and protection, I will
signify it to you, and be still further obliged to you.
You are warm, my dearest life!--But indeed there is no occasion for it.
Had I any views unworthy of my faithful love for you, I should not have
been so honest in my declarations.