Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady Volume VII Part 3

What wretches, Belford, what spiteful wretches, are poor mortals!--So rejoiced to sting one another! to see each other stung!

Lord M. [Reading.] 'For while I was endeavouring to save a drowning wretch, I have been, not accidentally, but premeditatedly, and of set purpose, drawn in after him.'--What say you to that, Sir-r?

Lady S. | Ay, Sir, what say you to this?

Lady B. |

Lovel. Say! Why I say it is a very pretty metaphor, if it would but hold.--But, if you please, my Lord, read on. Let me hear what is further said, and I will speak to it all together.

Lord M. I will. 'And he has had the glory to add to the list of those he has ruined, a name that, I will be bold to say, would not have disparaged his own.'

They all looked at me, as expecting me to speak.

Lovel. Be pleased to proceed, my Lord: I will speak to this by-and-by-- How came she to know I kept a list?--I will speak to this by-and-by.

Lord M. [Reading on.] 'And this, Madam, by means that would shock humanity to be made acquainted with.'

Then again, in a hurry, off went the spectacles.

This was a plaguy stroke upon me. I thought myself an oak in impudence; but, by my troth, this almost felled me.

Lord M. What say you to this, SIR-R!

Remember, Jack, to read all their Sirs in this dialogue with a double rr, Sir-r! denoting indignation rather than respect.

They all looked at me as if to see if I could blush.

Lovel. Eyes off, my Lord!----Eyes off, Ladies! [Looking bashfully, I believe.]--What say I to this, my Lord!--Why, I say, that this lady has a strong manner of expressing herself!--That's all.--There are many things that pa.s.s among lovers, which a man cannot explain himself upon before grave people.

Lady Betty. Among lovers, Sir-r! But, Mr. Lovelace, can you say that this lady behaved either like a weak, or a credulous person?--Can you say--

Lovel. I am ready to do the lady all manner of justice.--But, pray now, Ladies, if I am to be thus interrogated, let me know the contents of the rest of the letter, that I may be prepared for my defence, as you are all for my arraignment. For, to be required to answer piecemeal thus, without knowing what is to follow, is a cursed ensnaring way of proceeding.

They gave me the letter: I read it through to myself:--and by the repet.i.tion of what I said, thou wilt guess at the remaining contents.

You shall find, Ladies, you shall find, my Lord, that I will not spare myself. Then holding the letter in my hand, and looking upon it, as a lawyer upon his brief,

Miss Harlowe says, 'That when your Ladys.h.i.+p,' [turning to Lady Betty,]

'shall know, that, in the progress to her ruin, wilful falsehoods, repeated forgeries, and numberless perjuries, were not the least of my crimes, you will judge that she can have no principles that will make her worthy of an alliance with ladies of your's, and your n.o.ble sister's character, if she could not, from her soul, declare, that such an alliance can never now take place.'

Surely, Ladies, this is pa.s.sion! This is not reason. If our family would not think themselves dishonoured by my marrying a person whom I had so treated; but, on the contrary, would rejoice that I did her this justice: and if she has come out pure gold from the a.s.say; and has nothing to reproach herself with; why should it be an impeachment of her principles, to consent that such an alliance take place?

She cannot think herself the worse, justly she cannot, for what was done against her will.

Their countenances menaced a general uproar--but I proceeded.

Your Lords.h.i.+p read to us, that she had an hope, a presumptuous one: nay, a punishably-presumptuous one, she calls it; 'that she might be a mean, in the hand of Providence, to reclaim me; and that this, she knew, if effected, would give her a merit with you all.' But from what would she reclaim me?--She had heard, you'll say, (but she had only heard, at the time she entertained that hope,) that, to express myself in the women's dialect, I was a very wicked fellow!--Well, and what then?--Why, truly, the very moment she was convinced, by her own experience, that the charge against me was more than hearsay; and that, of consequence, I was a fit subject for her generous endeavours to work upon; she would needs give me up. Accordingly, she flies out, and declares, that the ceremony which would repair all shall never take place!--Can this be from any other motive than female resentment?

This brought them all upon me, as I intended it should: it was as a tub to a whale; and after I had let them play with it a while, I claimed their attention, and, knowing that they always loved to hear me prate, went on.

The lady, it is plain, thought, that the reclaiming of a man from bad habits was a much easier task than, in the nature of things, it can be.

She writes, as your Lords.h.i.+p has read, 'That, in endeavouring to save a drowning wretch, she had been, not accidentally, but premeditatedly, and of set purpose, drawn in after him.' But how is this, Ladies?--You see by her own words, that I am still far from being out of danger myself.

Had she found me, in a quagmire suppose, and I had got out of it by her means, and left her to perish in it; that would have been a crime indeed.

--But is not the fact quite otherwise? Has she not, if her allegory prove what she would have it prove, got out herself, and left me floundering still deeper and deeper in?--What she should have done, had she been in earnest to save me, was, to join her hand with mine, that so we might by our united strength help one another out.--I held out my hand to her, and besought her to give me her's:--But, no truly! she was determined to get out herself as fast as she could, let me sink or swim: refusing her a.s.sistance (against her own principles) because she saw I wanted it.--You see, Ladies, you see, my Lord, how pretty tinkling words run away with ears inclined to be musical.

They were all ready to exclaim again: but I went on, proleptically, as a rhetorician would say, before their voices would break out into words.

But my fair accuser says, that, 'I have added to the list of those I have ruined, a name that would not have disparaged my own.' It is true, I have been gay and enterprising. It is in my const.i.tution to be so. I know not how I came by such a const.i.tution: but I was never accustomed to check or controul; that you all know. When a man finds himself hurried by pa.s.sion into a slight offence, which, however slight, will not be forgiven, he may be made desperate: as a thief, who only intends a robbery, is often by resistance, and for self-preservation, drawn in to commit murder.

I was a strange, a horrid wretch, with every one. But he must be a silly fellow who has not something to say for himself, when every cause has its black and its white side.--Westminster-hall, Jack, affords every day as confident defences as mine.

But what right, proceeded I, has this lady to complain of me, when she as good as says--Here, Lovelace, you have acted the part of a villain by me!

--You would repair your fault: but I won't let you, that I may have the satisfaction of exposing you; and the pride of refusing you.

But, was that the case? Was that the case? Would I pretend to say, I would now marry the lady, if she would have me?

Lovel. You find she renounces Lady Betty's mediation----

Lord M. [Interrupting me.] Words are wind; but deeds are mind: What signifies your cursed quibbling, Bob?--Say plainly, if she will have you, will you have her? Answer me, yes or no; and lead us not a wild-goose chace after your meaning.

Lovel. She knows I would. But here, my Lord, if she thus goes on to expose herself and me, she will make it a dishonour to us both to marry.

Charl. But how must she have been treated--

Lovel. [Interrupting her.] Why now, Cousin Charlotte, chucking her under the chin, would you have me tell you all that has pa.s.sed between the lady and me? Would you care, had you a bold and enterprizing lover, that proclamation should be made of every little piece of amorous roguery, that he offered to you?

Charlotte reddened. They all began to exclaim. But I proceeded.

The lady says, 'She has been dishonoured' (devil take me, if I spare myself!) 'by means that would shock humanity to be made acquainted with them.' She is a very innocent lady, and may not be a judge of the means she hints at. Over-niceness may be under-niceness: Have you not such a proverb, my Lord?--tantamount to, One extreme produces another!----Such a lady as this may possibly think her case more extraordinary than it is.

This I will take upon me to say, that if she has met with the only man in the world who would have treated her, as she says I have treated her, I have met in her with the only woman in the world who would have made such a rout about a case that is uncommon only from the circ.u.mstances that attend it.

This brought them all upon me; hands, eyes, voices, all lifted at once.

But my Lord M. who has in his head (the last seat of retreating lewdness) as much wickedness as I have in my heart, was forced (upon the air I spoke this with, and Charlotte's and all the rest reddening) to make a mouth that was big enough to swallow up the other half of his face; crying out, to avoid laughing, Oh! Oh!--as if under the power of a gouty twinge.

Hadst thou seen how the two tabbies and the young grimalkins looked at one another, at my Lord, and at me, by turns, thou would have been ready to split thy ugly face just in the middle. Thy mouth hath already done half the work. And, after all, I found not seldom in this conversation, that my humourous undaunted airs forced a smile into my service from the prim mouths of the young ladies. They perhaps, had they met with such another intrepid fellow as myself, who had first gained upon their affections, would not have made such a rout as my beloved has done, about such an affair as that we were a.s.sembled upon. Young ladies, as I have observed on an hundred occasions, fear not half so much for themselves as their mothers do for them. But here the girls were forced to put on grave airs, and to seem angry, because the antiques made the matter of such high importance. Yet so lightly sat anger and fellow-feeling at their hearts, that they were forced to purse in their mouths, to suppress the smiles I now-and-then laid out for: while the elders having had roses (that is to say, daughters) of their own, and knowing how fond men are of a trifle, would have been very loth to have had them nipt in the bud, without saying to the mother of them, By your leave, Mrs. Rose-bush.

The next article of my indictment was for forgery; and for personating of Lady Betty and my cousin Charlotte.

Two shocking charges, thou'lt say: and so they were!--The Peer was outrageous upon the forgery charge. The Ladies vowed never to forgive the personating part.

Not a peace-maker among them. So we all turned women, and scolded.

My Lord told me, that he believed in his conscience there was not a viler fellow upon G.o.d's earth than me.--What signifies mincing the matter? said he--and that it was not the first time I had forged his hand.

To this I answered, that I supposed, when the statute of Scandalum Magnatum was framed, there were a good many in the peerage who knew they deserved hard names; and that that law therefore was rather made to privilege their qualities, than to whiten their characters.

He called upon me to explain myself, with a Sir-r, so p.r.o.nounced, as to show that one of the most ignominious words in our language was in his head.

People, I said, that were fenced in by their quality, and by their years, should not take freedoms that a man of spirit could not put up with, unless he were able heartily to despise the insulter.