LETTER XXX
MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE SUNDAY NIGHT, APRIL 16.
I may send to you, although you are forbid to write to me; may Inot?--For that is not a correspondence (is it?) where letters are notanswered.
I am strangely at a loss what to think of this man. He is a perfectProteus. I can but write according to the shape he assumes at the time.Don't think me the changeable person, I beseech you, if in one letter Icontradict what I wrote in another; nay, if I seem to contradict whatI said in the same letter: for he is a perfect camelion; or rather morevariable than the camelion; for that, it is said, cannot assume thered and the white; but this man can. And though black seems to behis natural colour, yet has he taken great pains to make me think himnothing but white.
But you shall judge of him as I proceed. Only, if I any where appearto you to be credulous, I beg you to set me right: for you are astander-by, as you say in a former*--Would to Heaven I were not to play!for I think, after all, I am held to a desperate game.
* See Letter VIII. of this volume.
Before I could finish my last to you, he sent up twice more to begadmittance. I returned for answer, that I would see him at my own time:I would neither be invaded nor prescribed to.
Considering how we parted, and my delaying his audience, as he sometimescalls it, I expected him to be in no very good humour, when I admittedof his visit; and by what I wrote, you will conclude that I was not. Yetmine soon changed, when I saw his extreme humility at his entrance, andheard what he had to say.
I have a letter, Madam, said he, from Lady Betty Lawrance, and anotherfrom my cousin Charlotte. But of these more by-and-by. I came now tomake my humble acknowledgement to you upon the arguments that passedbetween us so lately.
I was silent, wondering what he was driving at.
I am a most unhappy creature, proceeded he: unhappy from a strangeimpatiency of spirit, which I cannot conquer. It always brings upon medeserved humiliation. But it is more laudable to acknowledge, than topersevere when under the power of conviction.
I was still silent.
I have been considering what you proposed to me, Madam, that I shouldacquiesce with such terms as you should think proper to comply with, inorder to a reconciliation with your friends.
Well, Sir.
And I find all just, all right, on your side; and all impatience, allinconsideration on mine.
I stared, you may suppose. Whence this change, Sir? and so soon?
I am so much convinced that you must be in the right in all you thinkfit to insist upon, that I shall for the future mistrust myself; and,if it be possible, whenever I differ with you, take an hour's time forrecollection, before I give way to that vehemence, which an opposition,to which I have not been accustomed, too often gives me.
All this is mighty good, Sir: But to what does it tend?
Why, Madam, when I came to consider what you had proposed, as to theterms of reconciliation with your friends; and when I recollected thatyou had always referred to yourself to approve or reject me, accordingto my merits or demerits; I plainly saw, that it was rather acondescension in you, that you were pleased to ask my consent to thoseterms,than that you were imposing a new law: and I now, Madam, beg yourpardon for my impatience: whatever terms you think proper to come intowith your relations, which will enable you to honour me with theconditional effect of your promise to me, to these be pleased toconsent: and if I lose you, insupportable as that thought is to me; yet,as it must be by my own fault, I ought to thank myself forit.
What think you, Miss Howe?--Do you believe he can have any view inthis?--I cannot see any he could have; and I thought it best, as he putit in so right a manner, to appear not to doubt the sincerity of hisconfession, and to accept of it as sincere.
He then read to me part of Lady Betty's letter; turning down thebeginning, which was a little too severe upon him, he said, for my eye:and I believe, by the style, the remainder of it was in a correctivestrain.
It was too plain, I told him, that he must have great faults, that noneof his relations could write to him, but with a mingled censure for somebad action.
And it is as plain, my dearest creature, said he, that you, who knownot of any such faults, but by surmise, are equally ready to condemnme.--Will not charity allow you to infer, that their charges are nobetter grounded?--And that my principal fault has been carelessness ofmy character, and too little solicitude to clear myself, when aspersed?Which, I do assure you, is the case.
Lady Betty, in her letter, expresses herself in the most obliging mannerin relation to me. 'She wishes him so to behave, as to encourage me tomake him soon happy. She desires her compliments to me; and expressesher impatience to see, as her niece, so celebrated a lady [those are herhigh words]. She shall take it for an honour, she says, to be put intoa way to oblige me. She hopes I will not too long delay the ceremony;because that performed, will be to her, and to Lord M. and Lady Sarah, asure pledge of her nephew's merits and good behaviour.'
She says, 'she was always sorry to hear of the hardships I had met withon his account: that he will be the most ungrateful of men, if he make itnot all up to me: and that she thinks it incumbent upon all their familyto supply to me the lost favour of my own: and, for her part, nothing ofthat kind, she bids him assure me, shall be wanting.'
Her ladyship observes, 'That the treatment he had received from myfamily would have been much more unaccountable than it was, with suchnatural and accidental advantages as he had, had it not been owingto his own careless manners. But she hopes that he will convince theHarlowe family that they had thought worse of him than he had deserved;since now it was in his power to establish his character for ever. Thisshe prays to God to enable him to do, as well for his own honour, as forthe honour of their house,' was the magnificent word.
She concludes, with 'desiring to be informed of our nuptials the momentthey are celebrated, that she may be with the earliest in felicitatingme on the happy occasion.'
But her Ladyship gives me no direct invitation to attend her before themarriage: which I might have expected from what he had told me.
He then shewed me part of Miss Montague's more sprightly letter,'congratulating him upon the honour he had obtained, of the confidenceof so admirable a lady.' These are her words. Confidence, my dear!Nobody, indeed, as you say, will believe otherwise, were they to betold the truth: and you see that Miss Montague (and all his family, Isuppose) think that the step I have taken an extraordinary one. 'Shealso wishes for his speedy nuptials; and to see her new cousin at M.Hall: as do Lord M. she tells him, and her sister; and in general allthe well-wishers of their family.
'Whenever this happy day shall be passed, she proposes, she says, toattend me, and to make one in my train to M. Hall, if his Lordship shallcontinue as ill of the gout as he is at present. But that, should he getbetter, he will himself attend me, she is sure, and conduct me thither;and afterwards quit either of his three seats to us, till we shall besettled to our mind.'
This young lady says nothing in excuse for not meeting me on the road,or St. Alban's, as he had made me expect she would: yet mentions herhaving been indisposed. Mr. Lovelace had also told me, that Lord M. wasill of the gout; which Miss Montague's letter confirms.
But why did not the man show me these letters last night? Was he afraidof giving me too much pleasure?