Ah! this man, my dear! We have had warmer dialogues than ever yet we
have had. At fair argument, I find I need not fear him;* but he is such
a wild, such an ungovernable creature [he reformed!] that I am half
afraid of him.
* See this confirmed by Mr. Lovelace, Letter XI. of this volume.
He again, on my declaring myself uneasy at his stay with me here,
proposed that I would put myself into Lady Betty's protection; assuring
me that he thought he could not leave me at Mrs. Sorlings's with safety
to myself. And upon my declining to do that, for the reasons I gave you
in my last,* he urged me to make a demand of my estate.
* See Letter XXVIII. of this volume.
He knew it, I told him, to be my resolution not to litigate with my
father.
Nor would he put me upon it, he replied, but as the last thing. But
if my spirit would not permit me to be obliged, as I called it, to any
body, and yet if my relations would refuse me my own, he knew not how
I could keep up that spirit, without being put to inconveniences,
which would give him infinite concern--Unless--unless--unless, he said,
hesitating, as if afraid to speak out--unless I would take the only
method I could take, to obtain the possession of my own.
What is that, Sir?
Sure the man saw by my looks, when he came with his creeping unless's,
that I guessed what he meant.
Ah! Madam, can you be at a loss to know what that method is?--They will
not dispute with a man that right which they contest with you.
Why said he with a man, instead of with him? Yet he looked as if he
wanted to be encouraged to say more.
So, Sir, you would have me employ a lawyer, would you, notwithstanding
what I have ever declared as to litigating with my father?
No, I would not, my dearest creature, snatching my hand, and pressing it
with his lips--except you would make me the lawyer.
Had he said me at first, I should have been above the affectation of
mentioning a lawyer.
I blushed. The man pursued not the subject so ardently, but that it was
more easy as well as more natural to avoid it than to fall into it.
Would to Heaven he might, without offending!--But I so over-awed
him!--[over-awed him!--Your* notion, my dear!]--And so the over-awed,
bashful man went off from the subject, repeating his proposal, that I
would demand my own estate, or empower some man of the law to demand it,
if I would not [he put in] empower a happier man to demand it. But it
could not be amiss, he thought, to acquaint my two trustees, that I
intended to assume it.
* See Letter XIX. of this volume.
I should know better what to do, I told him, when he was at a distance
from me, and known to be so. I suppose, Sir, that if my father propose
my return, and engage never to mention Solmes to me, nor any other man,
but by my consent, and I agree, upon that condition, to think no more of
you, you will acquiesce.
I was willing to try whether he had the regard to all of my previous
declarations, which he pretended to have to some of them.
He was struck all of a heap.
What say you, Mr. Lovelace? You know, all you mean is for my good.
Surely I am my own mistress: surely I need not ask your leave to make
what terms I please for myself, so long as I break none with you?
He hemm'd twice or thrice--Why, Madam--why, Madam, I cannot say--then
pausing--and rising from his seat with petulance; I see plainly enough,
said he, the reason why none of my proposals can be accepted: at last I
am to be a sacrifice to your reconciliation with your implacable family.
It has always been your respectful way, Mr. Lovelace, to treat my family
in this free manner. But pray, Sir, when you call others implacable, see
that you deserve not the same censure yourself.
He must needs say, there was no love lost between some of my family and
him; but he had not deserved of them what they had of him.
Yourself being judge, I suppose, Sir?
All the world, you yourself, Madam, being judge.
Then, Sir, let me tell you, had you been less upon your defiances,
they would not have been irritated so much against you. But nobody ever
heard, that avowed despite to the relations of a person was a proper
courtship, either to that person, or to her friends.
Well, Madam, all that I know is, that their malice against me is such,
that, if you determine to sacrifice me, you may be reconciled when you
please.
And all I know, Sir, is, that if I do give my father the power of a
negative, and he will be contented with that, it will be but my duty to
give it him; and if I preserve one to myself, I shall break through no
obligation to you.
Your duty to your capricious brother, not to your father, you mean,
Madam.
If the dispute lay between my brother and me at first, surely, Sir, a
father may choose which party he will take.
He may, Madam--but that exempts him not from blame for all that, if he
take the wrong--
Different people will judge differently, Mr. Lovelace, of the right and
the wrong. You judge as you please. Shall not others as they please? And
who has a right to controul a father's judgment in his own family, and
in relation to his own child?
I know, Madam, there is no arguing with you. But, nevertheless, I had
hoped to have made myself some little merit with you, so as that I might
not have been the preliminary sacrifice to a reconciliation.
Your hope, Sir, had been better grounded if you had had my consent to my
abandoning of my father's house--
Always, Madam, and for ever, to be reminded of the choice you would have
made of that damn'd Solmes--rather than--
Not so hasty! not so rash, Mr. Lovelace! I am convinced that there was
no intention to marry me to that Solmes on Wednesday.
So I am told they now give out, in order to justify themselves at your
expense. Every body living, Madam, is obliged to you for your kind
thoughts but I.
Excuse me, good Mr. Lovelace [waving my hand, and bowing], that I am
willing to think the best of my father.
Charming creature! said he, with what a bewitching air is that
said!--And with a vehemence in his manner would have snatched my hand.
But I withdrew it, being much offended with him.
I think, Madam, my sufferings for your sake might have entitled me to
some favour.
My sufferings, Sir, for your impetuous temper, set against your
sufferings for my sake, I humbly conceive, leave me very little your
debtor.
Lord! Madam, [assuming a drawling air] What have you suffered?--Nothing
but what you can easily forgive. You have been only made a prisoner in
your father's house, by way of doing credit to your judgment!--You have
only had an innocent and faithful servant turned out of your service,
because you loved her!--You have only had your sister's confident
servant set over you, with leave to tease and affront you--!
Very well, Sir!
You have only had an insolent brother take upon him to treat you like a
slave, and as insolent a sister to undermine you in every body's favour,
on pretence to keep you out of hands, which, if as vile as they vilely
report, are not, however, half so vile and cruel as their own.
Go on, Sir, if you please!
You have only been persecuted, in order to oblige you to have a sordid
fellow, whom you have professed to hate, and whom every body despises!
The license has been only got! The parson has only been had in
readiness! The day, a near, a very near day, had been only fixed! And
you were only to be searched for your correspondencies, and still closer
confined till the day came, in order to deprive you of all means of
escaping the snare laid for you!--But all this you can forgive! You
can wish you had stood all this; inevitable as the compulsion must have
been!--And the man who, at the hazard of his life, had delivered you
from all these mortifications, is the only person you cannot forgive!
Can't you go on, Sir? You see I have patience to hear you. Can't you go
on, Sir?
I can, Madam, with my sufferings: which I confess ought not to be
mentioned, were I at last to be rewarded in the manner I hoped.
Your sufferings then, if you please, Sir?
Affrontingly forbidden your father's house, after encouragement given,
without any reasons they knew not before to justify the prohibition:
forced upon a rencounter I wished to avoid: the first I ever, so
provoked, wished to avoid. And that, because the wretch was your
brother!
Wretch, Sir!--And my brother!--This could be from no man breathing, but
from him before me!
Pardon me, Madam!--But oh! how unworthy to be your brother!--The quarrel
grafted upon an old one, when at college; he universally known to be the
aggressor; and revived for views equally sordid and injurious both to
yourself and me--giving life to him, who would have taken away mine!
Your generosity THIS, Sir; not your sufferings: a little more of your
sufferings, if you please!--I hope you do not repent, that you did not
murder my brother!
My private life hunted into! My morals decried! Some of the accusers not
unfaulty!
That's an aspersion, Sir!
Spies set upon my conduct! One hired to bribe my own servant's fidelity;
perhaps to have poisoned me at last, if the honest fellow had not--
Facts, Mr. Lovelace!--Do you want facts in the display of your
sufferings?--None of your perhaps's, I beseech you!
Menaces every day, and defiances, put into every one's mouth against me!
Forced to creep about in disguises--and to watch all hours--
And in all weathers, I suppose, Sir--That, I remember, was once your
grievance! In all weathers, Sir!* and all these hardships arising from
yourself, not imposed by me.
* See Letter VI. of this volume.
Like a thief, or an eaves-dropper, proceeded he: and yet neither by
birth nor alliances unworthy of their relation, whatever I may be and
am of their admirable daughter: of whom they, every one of them, are at
least as unworthy!--These, Madam, I call sufferings: justly call so; if
at last I am to be sacrificed to an imperfect reconciliation--imperfect,
I say: for, can you expect to live so much as tolerably under the same
roof, after all that has passed, with that brother and sister?
O Sir, Sir! What sufferings have yours been! And all for my sake, I
warrant!--I can never reward you for them!--Never think of me more I
beseech you--How can you have patience with me?--Nothing has been
owing to your own behaviour, I presume: nothing to your defiances for
defiances: nothing to your resolution declared more than once, that you
would be related to a family, which, nevertheless, you would not stoop
to ask a relation of: nothing, in short to courses which every body
blamed you for, you not thinking it worth your while to justify
yourself. Had I not thought you used in an ungentlemanly manner, as I
have heretofore told you, you had not had my notice by pen and ink.*
That notice gave you a supposed security, and you generously defied
my friends the more for it: and this brought upon me (perhaps not
undeservedly) my father's displeasure; without which, my brother's
private pique, and selfish views, would have wanted a foundation to
build upon: so that for all that followed of my treatment, and your
redundant only's, I might thank you principally, as you may yourself for
all your sufferings, your mighty sufferings!--And if, voluble Sir, you
have founded any merit upon them, be so good as to revoke it: and
look upon me, with my forfeited reputation, as the only sufferer--For
what--pray hear me out, Sir [for he was going to speak] have you
suffered in but your pride? Your reputation could not suffer: that
it was beneath you to be solicitous about. And had you not been an
unmanageable man, I should not have been driven to the extremity I now
every hour, as the hour passes, deplore--with this additional reflection
upon myself, that I ought not to have begun, or, having begun, not
continued a correspondence with one who thought it not worth his while
to clear his own character for my sake, or to submit to my father for
his own, in a point wherein every father ought to have an option--
* See Letter VI. of this volume.
Darkness, light; light, darkness; by my soul;--just as you please to
have it. O charmer of my heart! snatching my hand, and pressing it
between both of his, to his lips, in a strange wild way, take me, take
me to yourself: mould me as you please: I am wax in your hands; give me
your own impression; and seal me for ever yours--we were born for each
other!--You to make me happy, and save a soul--I am all error, all
crime. I see what I ought to have done. But do you think, Madam, I can
willingly consent to be sacrificed to a partial reconciliation, in
which I shall be so great, so irreparable a sufferer!--Any thing but
that--include me in your terms: prescribe to me: promise for me as you
please--put a halter about my neck, and lead me by it, upon condition
of forgiveness on that disgraceful penance, and of a prostration as
servile, to your father's presence (your brother absent), and I will
beg his consent at his feet, and bear any thing but spurning from him,
because he is your father. But to give you up upon cold conditions,
d----n me [said the shocking wretch] if I either will, or can!
These were his words, as near as I can remember them; for his behaviour
was so strangely wild and fervent, that I was perfectly frighted. I
thought he would have devoured my hand. I wished myself a thousand miles
distant from him.
I told him, I by no means approved of his violent temper: he was too
boisterous a man for my liking. I saw now, by the conversation that had
passed, what was his boasted regard to my injunctions; and should
take my measures accordingly, as he should soon find. And, with a half
frighted earnestness, I desired him to withdraw, and leave me to myself.
He obeyed; and that with extreme complaisance in his manner, but
with his complexion greatly heightened, and a countenance as greatly
dissatisfied.
But, on recollecting all that passed, I plainly see that he means not,
if he can help it, to leave me to the liberty of refusing him; which I
had nevertheless preserved a right to do; but looks upon me as his, by a
strange sort of obligation, for having run away with me against my will.
Yet you see he but touches upon the edges of matrimony neither. And
that at a time, generally, when he has either excited one's passions
or apprehensions; so that one cannot at once descend. But surely this
cannot be his design.--And yet such seemed to be his behaviour to my
sister,* when he provoked her to refuse him, and so tamely submitted, as
he did, to her refusal. But he dare not--What can one say of so various
a man?--I am now again out of conceit with him. I wish I were fairly out
of his power.
* See Vol.I. Letters II. and III.
He has sent up three times to beg admittance; in the two last with
unusual earnestness. But I have sent him word, I will finish what I am
about.
What to do about going from this place, I cannot tell. I could stay
here with all my heart, as I have said to him: the gentlewoman and her
daughters are desirous that I will: although not very convenient for
them, I believe, neither: but I see he will not leave me, while I do--so
I must remove somewhere.
I have long been sick of myself: and now I am more and more so. But
let me not lose your good opinion. If I do, that loss will complete the
misfortunes of
Your CL. HARLOWE.