Sunday afternoon
Oh Belford! what a hair’s-breadth escape have I had! Such a one, that I tremble between terror and joy at the thoughts of what might have happened and did not.
What a perverse girl is this, to contend with her fate, yet has reason to think that her very stars fight against her! I am the luckiest of men! But my breath almost fails me when I reflect upon what a slender thread my destiny hung.
But not to keep thee in suspense; I have, within this half-hour, obtained possession of the expected letter from Miss Howe—and by such an accident! But here, with the former, I dispatch this; thy messenger waiting.
Letter 251: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
(In continuation)
Thus it was. My charmer accompanied Mrs Moore again to church this afternoon. I had been very earnest, in the first place, to obtain her company at dinner: but in vain. In the next place, I besought her to favour me after dinner with another garden walk. But she would again go to church. And what reason have I to rejoice that she did!
My worthy friend Mrs Bevis thought one sermon a day, well-observed, enough; so stayed at home to bear me company.
The lady and Mrs Moore had not been gone a quarter of an hour, when a young country fellow on horseback came to the door, and inquired for Mrs Harriot Lucas. The widow and I (undetermined how we were to entertain each other) were in the parlour next the door; and hearing the fellow’s inquiry, Oh my dear Mrs Bevis, said I, I am undone, undone for ever, if you don’t help me out! Since here, in all probability, is a messenger from that implacable Miss Howe with a letter; which, if delivered to Mrs Lovelace, may undo all we have been doing.
What, said she, would you have me do?
Call the maid in this moment, that I may give her her lesson; and if it be as I imagine, I’ll tell you what you shall do.
WIDOW. Margaret! Margaret! come in this minute.
LOVEL[ACE]. My dearest widow, do you personate Mrs Lovelace—for Heaven’s sake do you personate Mrs Lovelace!
WID[OW]. I personate Mrs Lovelace, sir! How can I do that? She is fair: I am a brown woman. She is slender: I am plump.
LOVEL. No matter, no matter. The fellow may be a new come servant: he is not in livery, I see. He may not know her person. You can but be bloated, and in a dropsy.
Now, my dear widow, lie along on the settee, and put your handkerchief over your face, that, if he will speak to you himself, he may not see your eyes and your hair—so—that’s right. I’ll step into the closet by you.
I did so.
PEGGY [MARGARET]. (returning) He won’t deliver his business to me. He will speak to Mrs Harry Lucas her own self.
LOVEL. (holding the door in my hand) Tell him that this is Mrs Harriot Lucas; and let him come in. Whisper him, if he doubts, that she is bloated, dropsical, and not the woman she was.
Away went Margery.
In came the fellow, bowing and scraping, his hat poked out before him with both his hands.
WIDOW. What is thy business? I hope Miss Howe is well.
FELLOW. Yes, madam; pure well, I thank God. I wish you were so too.
WIDOW. My head aches so dreadfully, I cannot hold it up. I must beg of you to let me know your business.
FELLOW. Nay, and that be all, my business is soon known. It is but to give this letter into your own partiklar hands. Here it is.
Her lady mother must not know as how I came of this errand. But the letter, I suppose, will tell you all.
WIDOW. How shall I satisfy you for this kind trouble?
FELLOW. Nahow at all. What I do is for love of Miss Howe. She will satisfy me more than enough. But mayhap you can send no answer, you are so ill.
WIDOW. Was you ordered to wait for an answer?
FELLOW. No. I can’t say I was. But I was bidden to observe how you looked, and how you was; and if you did write a line or so, to take care of it, and give it only to our young landlady, in secret.
WIDOW. You see I look strangely. Not so well as I used to do.
FELLOW. Nay, I don’t know that I ever saw you but once before; and that was at a stile, where I met you and my young landlady; but knew better than to stare a gentlewoman in the face; especially at a stile.
He withdrew, bowing and scraping.
And so the shocking rascal went away: and glad at my heart was I when he was gone; for I feared nothing so much as that he would have stayed till they came from church.
Thus, Jack, got I my heart’s-ease, the letter of Miss Howe; and through such a train of accidents, as make me say that the lady’s stars fight against her.
They are all three just come in. I hasten to them.
Letter 252: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
By the enclosed thou wilt see that neither of the correspondents deserve mercy from me: and I am resolved to make the ending with one, the beginning with the other.
Here read the letter, if thou wilt. But thou art not my friend if thou offerest to plead for either of the saucy creatures, after thou hast read it.
• • •
to Mrs Harriot Lucas, at Mrs Moore’s at Hampstead
Had the villain attempted to fire a city instead of a house, I should not have wondered at it. All that I am amazed at, is, that he (whose boast, as I am told it is, that no woman shall keep him out of her bedchamber, when he has made a resolution to be in it) did not discover his [cloven] foot before. And it is as strange to me that, having got you at such a shocking advantage, and in such an horrid house, you could, at the time, escape dishonour, and afterwards get from such a set of infernals.
Your thought of going abroad, and your reasons for so doing, most sensibly affect me. But, be comforted my dear; I hope you will not be under a necessity of quitting your native country. Were I sure that that must be the cruel case, I would abandon all my own better prospects, and soon be with you. And I would accompany you whithersoever you went, and share fortunes with you: for it is impossible that I should be happy if I knew that you were exposed not only to the perils of the sea, but to the attempts of other vile men; your personal graces attracting every eye, and exposing you to those hourly dangers which others, less distinguished by the gifts of nature, might avoid—All that I know, that beauty (so greatly coveted, and so greatly admired) is good for!
Sat. afternoon
I have just parted with Mrs Townsend. I thought you had once seen her with me: but she says she never had the honour to be personally known to you. She has a manlike spirit. She knows the world. And her two brothers being in town, she is sure she can engage them, in so good a cause and (if there should be occasion) both their ships’ crews, in your service.
Give your consent, my dear; and the horrid villain shall be repaid with broken bones, at least, for all his vileness!
The misfortune is, Mrs Townsend cannot be with you till Thursday next, or Wednesday at soonest. Are you sure you can be safe where you are till then? I think you are too near London; and perhaps you had better be in it. If you remove, let me know whither, the very moment.
Mrs Townsend will in person attend you—she hopes on Wednesday. Her brothers, and some of their people, will scatteringly, and as if they knew nothing of you (so we have contrived), see you safe not only to London, but to her house at Deptford.
She has a kinswoman who will take your commands there, if she herself be obliged to leave you. And there you may stay till the wretch’s fury on losing you, and his search, are over.
After a while, I can procure you a lodging in one of the neighbouring villages; where I may have the happiness to be your daily visitor. And if this Hickman be not silly and apish, and if my mother do not do unaccountable things, I may the sooner think of marrying, that I may without control receive and entertain the darling of my heart.
Many, very many, happy days, do I hope we shall yet see together: and as this is my hope, I expect that it wi
ll be your consolation.
I shall long to hear how you and Mrs Townsend order matters. I wish she could have been with you sooner. But I have lost no time in engaging her, as you will suppose. I refer to her, what I have further to say and advise. So shall conclude with my prayers that Heaven will direct, and protect, my dearest creature, and make your future days happy!
ANNA HOWE
• • •
And now, Jack, I will suppose that thou hast read this cursed letter.
Miss Howe will abandon her own better prospects, and share fortunes with her were she to go abroad. Charming romancer! I must set about this girl, Jack. I have always had hopes of a woman whose passions carry her into such altitudes! Had I attacked Miss Howe first, her passions (inflamed and guided as I could have managed them) would have brought her to my lure in a fortnight.
But thinkest thou (and yet I think thou dost), that there is anything in these high flights among the sex? Verily, Jack, these vehement friendships are nothing but chaff and stubble, liable to be blown away by the very wind that raises them. Apes! mere apes of us! they think the word friendship has a pretty sound with it; and it is much talked of; a fashionable word: and so, truly, a single woman who thinks she has a soul, and knows that she wants something, would be thought to have found a fellow-soul for it in her own sex. But I repeat that the word is a mere word, the thing a mere name with them; a cork-bottomed shuttlecock, which they are fond of striking to and fro, to make one another glow in the frosty weather of a single state; but which, when a man comes in between the pretended inseparables, is given up like their music and other maidenly amusements; which, nevertheless, may be necessary to keep the pretty rogues out of more active mischief.
Thou hast a mind, perhaps, to make an exception for these two ladies. With all my heart. My Clarissa has, if woman has, a soul capable of friendship. Her flame is bright and steady. But Miss Howe’s, were it not kept up by her mother’s opposition, is too vehement to endure. How often have I known opposition not only cement friendship, but create love? I doubt not but poor Hickman would fare the better with this vixen, if her mother were as heartily against him as she is for him.
Thus much indeed, as to these two ladies, I will grant thee; that the active spirit of the one, and the meek disposition of the other, may make their friendship more durable than it would otherwise be; for this is certain, that in every friendship, whether male or female, there must be a man and a woman spirit (that is to say, one of them a forbearing one) to make it permanent.
Miss Howe, Jack, is a charming girl. She has no reason to quarrel with beauty! Didst ever see her? Too much fire and spirit in her eye indeed, for a girl! But that’s no fault with a man that can lower that fire and spirit at pleasure; and I know I am the man that can.
A sweet auburn beauty is Miss Howe. A first beauty among beauties, when her sweeter friend (with such a commixture of serene gracefulness, of natural elegance, of native sweetness, yet conscious, though not arrogant, dignity, every feature glowing with intelligence) is not in company.
For my own part, when I was first introduced to this lady, which was by my goddess, when she herself was a visitor at Mrs Howe’s; I had not been half an hour with her, but I even hungered and thirsted after a romping bout with the lively rogue; and in the second or third visit was more deterred by the delicacy of her friend, than by what I apprehended from her own. This charming creature’s presence, thought I, awes us both. And I wished her absence, though any other lady were present, that I might try the difference in Miss Howe’s behaviour before her friend’s face, or behind her back.
Delicate ladies make delicate ladies, as well as decent men. With all Miss Howe’s fire and spirit, it was easy to see, by her very eye, that she watched for lessons, and feared reproof from the penetrating eye of her milder-dispositioned friend: and yet it was as easy to observe, in the candour and sweet manners of the other, that the fear which Miss Howe stood in of her was more owing to her own generous apprehension, that she fell short of her excellencies, than to Miss Harlowe’s consciousness of excellence over her.
As to the comparison between the two ladies, I will expatiate more on that subject (for I like it) when I have had them both—which this letter of the vixen girl’s I hope thou wilt allow warrants me to try for.
Letter 253: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
Sunday night—Monday morning
Should she fail in the trial; should I succeed; and should she refuse to go on with me; and even to marry me; which I can have no notion of—and should she disdain to be obliged to me for the handsome provision I should be proud to make for her, even to the half of my estate; yet cannot she be altogether unhappy. Is she not entitled to an independent fortune? Will not Colonel Morden, as her trustee, put her in possession of it? And did she not, in our former conference, point out the way of life that she always preferred to the married life? To take her good Norton for her directress and guide, and to live upon her own estate in the manner her grandfather desired she should live?
It is moreover to be considered that she cannot, according to her own notions, recover above one half of her fame, were we now to intermarry; so much does she think she has suffered by her going off with me. And will she not be always repining and mourning for the loss of the other half? And if she must live a life of such uneasiness and regret for half, may she not as well repine and mourn for the whole?
Nor, let me tell thee, will her own scheme of penitence in this case be half so perfect if she do not fall, as if she does: for what a foolish penitent will she make, who has nothing to repent of? She piques herself, thou knowest, and makes it matter of reproach to me, that she went not off with me by her own consent; but was tricked out of herself.
Nor upbraid thou me upon the meditated breach of vows so repeatedly made. She will not, thou seest, permit me to fulfil them. And if she would, this I have to say, that at the time I made the most solemn of them, I was fully determined to keep them. But what prince thinks himself obliged any longer to observe the articles of the most sacredly sworn-to treaties, than suits with his interest or inclination; although the consequence of the infraction must be, as he knows, the destruction of thousands?
And now, Belford, I set out upon business.
Letter 255: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
Well, but now my plots thicken; and my employment of writing to thee on this subject will soon come to a conclusion. For now, having got the licence; and Mrs Townsend, with her tars [sailors], being to come to Hampstead next Wednesday or Thursday; and another letter possibly, or message from Miss Howe, to inquire how Miss Harlowe does, upon the rustic’s report of her ill health, and to express her wonder that she has not heard from her in answer to hers on her escapes. I must soon blow up the lady, or be blown up myself. And so I am preparing, with Lady Betty and my cousin Montague, to wait upon my beloved with a coach and four, or a set.
Thou hast seen Lady Betty Lawrance several times—hast thou not, Belford?
No, never in my life.
But thou hast; and lain with her too; or fame does thee more credit than thou deservest. Why, Jack, knowest thou not Lady Betty’s other name?
Other name! Has she two?
She has. And what thinkest thou of Lady Bab Wallis?
Oh the devil!
Now thou hast it. Lady Barbara, thou knowest, lifted up in circumstances and by pride, never appears or produces herself, but on occasions special—to pass to men of quality or price for a duchess, or countess at least. She has always been admired for a grandeur in her air that few women of quality can come up to: and never was supposed to be other than what she passed for; though often and often a paramour for lords.
And who, thinkest thou, is my cousin Montague?
Nay, how should I know?
How indeed! Why, my little Johanetta Golding, a lively, yet modest-looking girl, is my cousin Montague.
Th
ere, Belford, is an aunt! There’s a cousin! Both have wit at will. Both are accustomed to ape quality. Both are genteelly descended. Mistresses of themselves; and well educated—yet past pity. True Spartan dames; ashamed of nothing but detection—always, therefore, upon their guard against that. And in their own conceit, when assuming top parts, the very quality they ape.
And how dost think I dress them out? I’ll tell thee.
Lady Betty in a rich gold tissue, adorned with jewels of high price.
My cousin Montague in a pale pink, standing end with silver flowers of her own working. Charlotte, as well as my beloved, is admirable at her needle. Not quite so richly jewelled out as Lady Betty; but ear-rings and solitaire very valuable, and infinitely becoming.
Laces both, the richest that could be procured.
Thou canst not imagine what a sum the loan of the jewels cost me; though but for three days.
This sweet girl will half ruin me. But seest thou not by this time, that her reign is short? It must be so. And Mrs Sinclair has already prepared everything for her reception once more.
Letter 256: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
At Mrs Sinclair’s, Monday afternoon
All’s right as heart can wish! In spite of all objection—in spite of a reluctance next to fainting—in spite of all her foresight, vigilance, suspicion, once more is the charmer of my soul in her new lodgings!
Now throbs away every pulse! Now thump, thump, thumps my bounding heart for something!
My beloved is now directing some of her clothes to be packed up—never more to enter this house! Nor ever more will she, I dare say, when once again out of it!
Yet not so much as a condition of forgiveness! The Harlowe-spirited fair one will not deserve my mercy! She will wait for Miss Howe’s next letter; and then, if she find a difficulty in her new schemes (thank her for nothing)—will—Will what? Why even then will take time to consider whether I am to be forgiven, or for ever rejected. An indifference that revives in my heart the remembrance of a thousand of the like nature. And yet Lady Betty and Miss Montague (one would be tempted to think, Jack, that they wish her to provoke my vengeance) declare that I ought to be satisfied with such a proud suspension!