Clarissa Harlowe or the History of a Young Lady - Volume 5 (18 page)

'The next day, Miss Lardner sent the same
servant, out of mere curiosity, to make private in-
quiry whether Mr. Lovelace were, or were not,
with you there.--And this inquiry brought out,
>>> from different people, that the house was suspected
to be one of those genteel wicked houses, which
receive and accommodate fashionable people of both
sexes.

'Miss Lardner, confounded at this strange intel- ligence, made further inquiry; enjoining secrecy to the servant she had sent, as well as to the gentle- >>> man whom she employed; who had it confirmed from a rakish friend, who knew the house; and told him, that there were two houses: the one in which all decent appearances were preserved, and guests rarely admitted; the other, the receptacle of those who were absolutely engaged, and broken to the vile yoke.'

>>> Say--my dear creature--say--Shall I not exe- crate the wretch?--But words are weak--What can I say, that will suitably express my abhorrence of such a villain as he must have been, when he meditated to carry a Clarissa to such a place!

'Miss Lardner kept this to herself some days, not knowing what to do; for she loves you, and admires you of all women. At last she revealed it, but in confidence, to Miss Biddulph, by letter. Miss Biddulph, in like confidence, being afraid it would distract me, were I to know it, communi- cated it to Miss Lloyd; and so, like a whispered scandal, it passed through several canals, and then it came to me; which was not till last Monday.'

I thought I should have fainted upon the surpris- ing communication. But rage taking place, it blew away the sudden illness. I besought Miss Lloyd to re-enjoin secrecy to every one. I told her that >>> I would not for the world that my mother, or any of your family, should know it. And I instantly caused a trusty friend to make what inquiries he could about Tomlinson.

>>> I had thoughts to have done it before I had this intelligence: but not imagining it to be needful, and little thinking that you could be in such a house, and as you were pleased with your changed prospects, I >>> forbore. And the rather forbore, as the matter is so laid, that Mrs. Hodges is supposed to know nothing of the projected treaty of accommodation; but, on the contrary, that it was designed to be a secret to her, and to every body but immediate parties; and it was Mrs. Hodges that I had pro- posed to sound by a second hand.

>>> Now, my dear, it is certain, without applying to that too-much-favoured housekeeper, that there is not such a man within ten miles of your uncle.-- Very true!--One Tomkins there is, about four miles off; but he is a day-labourer: and one Thompson, about five miles distant the other way; but he is a parish schoolmaster, poor, and about seventy.

>>> A man, thought but of £.800 a year, cannot come from one country to settle in another, but every body in both must know it, and talk of it.

>>> Mrs. Hodges may yet be sounded at a distance, if you will. Your uncle is an old man. Old men imagine themselves under obligation to their para- >>> mours, if younger than themselves, and seldom keep any thing from their knowledge. But if we suppose him to make secret of this designed treaty, it is impossible, before that treaty was thought of, but she must have seen him, at least have heard your uncle speak praisefully of a man he is said to be so intimate with, let him have been ever so little a while in those parts.

>>> Yet, methinks, the story is so plausible--Tom- linson, as you describe him, is so good a man, and so much of a gentleman; the end to be answered >>> by his being an impostor, so much more than neces- sary if Lovelace has villany in his head; and as >>> you are in such a house--your wretch's behaviour to him was so petulant and lordly; and Tomlin- son's answer so full of spirit and circumstance; >>> and then what he communicated to you of Mr. Hickman's application to your uncle, and of Mrs. Norton's to your mother, [some of which particu- >>> lars, I am satisfied, his vile agent, Joseph Leman, could not reveal to his vile employer;] his press- ing on the marriage-day, in the name of your uncle, which it could not answer any wicked pur- >>> pose for him to do; and what he writes of your uncle's proposal, to have it thought that you were married from the time that you have lived in one house together; and that to be made to agree with the time of Mr. Hickman's visit to your uncle. >>> The insisting on a trusty person's being present at the ceremony, at that uncle's nomination--These things make me willing to try for a tolerable construc- tion to be made of all. Though I am so much puzzled by what occurs on both sides of the ques- >>> tion, that I cannot but abhor the devilish wretch, whose inventions and contrivances are for ever em- ploying an inquisitive head, as mine is, without affording the means of absolute detection.

But this is what I am ready to conjecture, that Tomlinson, specious as he is, is a machine of Love- >>> lace; and that he is employed for some end, which has not yet been answered. This is certain, that not only Tomlinson, but Mennell, who, I think, attended you more than once at this vile house, must know it to be a vile house.

What can you then think of Tomlinson's declar- ing himself in favour of it upon inquiry?

Lovelace too must know it to be so; if not before he brought you to it, soon after.

>>> Perhaps the company he found there, may be the most probable way of accounting for his bearing with the house, and for his strange suspensions of marriage, when it was in his power to call such an angel of a woman his.--

>>> O my dear, the man is a villain!--the greatest
of villains, in every light!--I am convinced that he
is.--And this Doleman must be another of his
implements!

>>> There are so many wretches who think that to be no sin, which is one of the greatest and most ungrateful of all sins,--to ruin young creatures of our sex who place their confidence in them; that the wonder is less than the shame, that people, of appearance at least, are found to promote the horrid purposes of profligates of fortune and interest!

>>> But can I think [you will ask with indignant
astonishment] that Lovelace can have designs upon
your honour?

>>> That such designs he has had, if he still hold
them or not, I can have no doubt, now that I know
the house he has brought you to, to be a vile one.
This is a clue that has led me to account for all his
behaviour to you ever since you have been in his
hands.

Allow me a brief retrospection of it all.

We both know, that pride, revenge, and a delight to tread in unbeaten paths, are principal ingredients in the character of this finished libertine.

>>> He hates all your family--yourself excepted: and I have several times thought, that I have seen >>> him stung and mortified that love has obliged him to kneel at your footstool, because you are a Har- lowe. Yet is this wretch a savage in love.--Love >>> that humanizes the fiercest spirits, has not been able to subdue his. His pride, and the credit which a >>> few plausible qualities, sprinkled among his odious ones, have given him, have secured him too good a reception from our eye-judging, our undistinguish- ing, our self-flattering, our too-confiding sex, to make assiduity and obsequiousness, and a conquest of his unruly passions, any part of his study.

>>> He has some reason for his animosity to all the men, and to one woman of your family. He has always shown you, and his own family too, that he >>> prefers his pride to his interest. He is a declared marriage-hater; a notorious intriguer; full of his inventions, and glorying in them: he never could draw you into declarations of love; nor till your >>> wise relations persecuted you as they did, to receive his addresses as a lover. He knew that you pro- fessedly disliked him for his immoralities; he could not, therefore, justly blame you for the coldness and indifference of your behaviour to him.

>>> The prevention of mischief was your first main
view in the correspondence he drew you into. He
ought not, then, to have wondered that you declared
your preference of the single life to any matrimonial
engagement. He knew that this was always you
>>> preference; and that before he tricked you away
so artfully. What was his conduct to you
afterwards, that you should of a sudden change
it?

Thus was your whole behaviour regular, con-
sistent, and dutiful to those to whom by birth you
owed duty; and neither prudish, coquettish, nor
tyrannical to him.

>>> He had agreed to go on with you upon those your own terms, and to rely only on his own merits and future reformation for your favour.

>>> It was plain to me, indeed, to whom you com- municated all that you knew of your own heart, though not all of it that I found out, that love had pretty early gained footing in it. And this you yourself would have discovered sooner than you >>> did, had not his alarming, his unpolite, his rough conduct, kept it under.

>>> I knew by experience that love is a fire that is not to be played with without burning one's fingers: I knew it to be a dangerous thing for two single persons of different sexes to enter into familiarity and correspondence with each other: Since, as to the latter, must not a person be capable of premedi- tated art, who can sit down to write, and not write from the heart?--And a woman to write her heart to a man practised in deceit, or even to a man of some character, what advantage does it give him over her?

>>> As this man's vanity had made him imagine, that no woman could be proof against love, when his address was honourable; no wonder that he struggled, like a lion held in toils, against a passion that he thought not returned. And how could you, at first, show a return in love, to so fierce a spirit, and who had seduced you away by vile artifices, but to the approval of those artifices.

>>> Hence, perhaps, it is not difficult to believe, that it became possible for such a wretch as this to give way to his old prejudices against marriage; and to that revenge which had always been a first passion with him.

This is the only way, I think, to account for his horrid views in bringing you to a vile house.

And now may not all the rest be naturally accounted for?--His delays--his teasing ways-- his bringing you to bear with his lodging in the same house--his making you pass to the people of >>> it as his wife, though restrictively so, yet with hope, no doubt, (vilest of villains as he is!) to take you >>> at an advantage--his bringing you into the com- pany of his libertine companions--the attempt of imposing upon you that Miss Partington for a bedfellow, very probably his own invention for the worst of purposes--his terrifying you at many different times--his obtruding himself upon you when you went out to church; no doubt to prevent your finding out what the people of the house were --the advantages he made of your brother's foolish project with Singleton.

See, my dear, how naturally all this follows from >>> the discovery made by Miss Lardner. See how the monster, whom I thought, and so often called, >>> a fool, comes out to have been all the time one of the greatest villains in the world!

But if this is so, what, [it would be asked by an indifferent person,] has hitherto saved you? Glorious creature!--What, morally speaking, but your watchfulness! What but that, and the majesty of your virtue; the native dignity, which, in a situation so very difficult, (friendless, destitute, passing for a wife, cast into the company of crea- tures accustomed to betray and ruin innocent hearts,) has hitherto enabled you to baffle, over-awe, and confound, such a dangerous libertine as this; so habitually remorseless, as you have observed him to be; so very various in his temper, so inventive, so seconded, so supported, so instigated, too pro- bably, as he has been!--That native dignity, that heroism, I will call it, which has, on all proper occasions, exerted itself in its full lustre, unmingled >>> with that charming obligingness and condescending sweetness, which is evermore the softener of that dignity, when your mind is free and unapprehen- sive!

>>> Let me stop to admire, and to bless my beloved friend, who, unhappily for herself, at an age so tender, unacquainted as she was with the world, and with the vile arts of libertines, having been called upon to sustain the hardest and most shocking trials, from persecuting relations on one hand, and from a villanous lover on the other, has been enabled to give such an illustrious example of fortitude and prudence as never woman gave before her; and who, as I have heretofore observed,* has made a far greater figure in adversity, than she possibly could have made, had all her shining qualities been exerted in their full force and power, by the con- >>> tinuance of that prosperous run of fortune which attended her for eighteen years of life out of nineteen.

* See Vol. IV. Letters XXIV.

***

>>> But now, my dear, do I apprehend, that you are in greater danger than ever yet you have been in; if you are not married in a week; and yet stay in this abominable house. For were you out of it, I own I should not be much afraid for you.

These are my thoughts, on the most deliberate >>> consideration: 'That he is now convinced, that he has not been able to draw you off your guard: that therefore, if he can obtain no new advantage over you as he goes along, he is resolved to do you all the poor justice that it is in the power of such a wretch as he to do you. He is the rather induced to this, as he sees that all his own family have warmly engaged themselves in your cause: and that it is >>> his highest interest to be just to you. Then the horrid wretch loves you (as well he may) above all women. I have no doubt of this: with such a love >>> as such a wretch is capable of: with such a love as Herod loved his Marianne. He is now therefore, very probably, at last, in earnest.'

I took time for inquiries of different natures, as I knew, by the train you are in, that whatever his designs are, they cannot ripen either for good or >>> evil till something shall result from this device of his about Tomlinson and your uncle.

Device I have no doubt that it is, whatever this dark, this impenetrable spirit intends by it.

>>> And yet I find it to be true, that Counsellor Williams (whom Mr. Hickman knows to be a man of eminence in his profession) has actually as good >>> as finished the settlements: that two draughts of them have been made; one avowedly to be sent to one Captain Tomlinson, as the clerk says:--and I find that a license has actually been more than once endeavoured to be obtained; and that difficulties have hitherto been made, equally to Lovelace's >>> vexation and disappointment. My mother's proctor, who is very intimate with the proctor applied to by the wretch, has come at this information in confidence; and hints, that, as Mr. Lovelace is a man of high fortunes, these difficulties will probably be got over.