If the lady has so much honour, bawled the mother, excuse me, so—excuse me, sir—(confound the old wretch! she had like to have said son!) If the lady has so much honour, as we have supposed, she will appear to vindicate a poor servant, misled as she has been by such large promises! But I hope, sir, you will do them both justice; I hope you will! Justice I ever loved.
Just then, we heard the lady’s door unbar, unlock, unbolt.
• • •
Now, Belford, see us all sitting in judgement, resolved to punish the fair briberess—and hear her unbolt, unlock, unbar, the door; then, as it proved afterwards, put the key into the lock on the outside, lock the door, and put it in her pocket; Will I knew below, who would give me notice if, while we were all above, she should mistake her way and go downstairs, instead of coming into the dining-room; the street doors also doubly secured, and every shutter to the windows round the house fastened, that no noise or screaming should be heard (such was the brutal preparation)—and then hear her step towards us, and instantly see her enter among us, confiding in her own innocence; and with a majesty in her person and manner that is natural to her; but which then shone out in all its glory! Every tongue silent, every eye awed, every heart quaking, mine, in a particular manner, sunk, throbless. She silent too, looking round her, first on me; then on the mother, as no longer fearing her; then on Sally, Polly; and the culprit Dorcas! Such the glorious power of innocence exerted at that awful moment!
She would have spoken, but could not, looking down my guilt into confusion: a mouse might have been heard passing over the floor, her own light feet and rustling silks could not have prevented it; for she seemed to tread air, and to be all soul. She passed to the door, and back towards me, two or three times, before speech could get the better of indignation, and at last, after twice or thrice hemming, to recover her articulate voice—Oh thou contemptible and abandoned Lovelace, thinkest thou that I see not through this poor villainous plot of thine, and of these thy wicked accomplices?
Thou woman, looking at the mother, once my terror! always my dislike! but now my detestation! shouldst once more (for thine perhaps was the preparation) have provided for me intoxicating potions, to rob me of my senses.
And then, turning to me, Thou, wretch, mightest more securely have depended upon such a low contrivance as this!
And ye, vile women, who perhaps have been the ruin, body and soul, of hundreds of innocents (you show me how, in full assembly), know that I am not married—ruined as I am by your helps, I bless God, I am not married to this miscreant. And I have friends that will demand my honour at your hands! And to whose authority I will apply; for none has this man over me. Look to it then, what further insults you offer me, or incite him to offer me. I am a person, though thus vilely betrayed, of rank and fortune.
And as for thee, thou vile Dorcas!—thou double deceiver!—whining out thy pretended love for me!—begone, wretch! Nobody will hurt thee! Begone, I say! Thou hast too well acted thy part to be blamed by any here but myself. Thou art safe: thy guilt is thy security in such a house as this! Steal away into darkness!
Madam, said I, let me tell you; and was advancing towards her with a fierce aspect, most cursedly vexed and ashamed too.
But she turned to me: Stop where thou art, Oh vilest and most abandoned of men! Nor, with that determined face, offer to touch me, if thou wouldst not that I should be a corpse at thy feet!
To my astonishment, she held forth a penknife in her hand, the point to her own bosom, grasping resolutely the whole handle, so that there was no offering to take it from her.
I offer not mischief to anybody but myself. You, sir, and ye women, are safe from every violence of mine. The LAW shall be all my resource: the LAW, and she spoke the word with emphasis, that to such people carries natural terror with it, and now struck a panic into them.
The LAW only shall be my refuge!
The infamous mother whispered me that it were better to make terms with this strange lady, and let her go.
Sally, notwithstanding all her impudent bravery at other times, said: If Mr Lovelace had told them what was not true of her being his wife—
And Polly Horton: That she must needs say, the lady, if she were not my wife, had been very much injured; that was all.
That is not now a matter to be disputed, cried I: you and I know, madam—
We do so, said she; and I thank God, I am not thine. Once more, I thank God for it! I have no doubt of the further baseness that thou hadst intended me by this vile and low trick: but I have my SENSES, Lovelace: and from my heart I despise thee, thou very poor Lovelace! How canst thou stand in my presence! Thou, that—
Madam, madam, madam—these are insults not to be borne—and was approaching her. She withdrew to the door, and set her back against it, holding the pointed knife to her heaving bosom; while the women held me, beseeching me not to provoke the violent lady.
Approach me, Lovelace, with resentment, if thou wilt. I dare die. It is in defence of my honour. God will be merciful to my poor soul! I expect no mercy from thee! I have gained this distance, and two steps nearer me and thou shalt see what I dare do!
Leave me, women, to myself, and to my angel! They retired at a distance. Oh my beloved creature, how you terrify me! Say you will sheathe your knife in the injurer’s, not the injured’s, heart; and then will I indeed approach you, but not else.
Thank God! Thank God! said the angel. Delivered for the present; for the present delivered from myself. Keep, sir, keep that distance (looking down towards me, who was prostrate on the floor, my heart pierced as with an hundred daggers!): that distance has saved a life; to what reserved, the Almighty only knows!
To be happy, madam; and to make happy! And Oh let me but hope for your favour for tomorrow. I will put off my journey till then. And may God—
This I say, of this you may assure yourself, I never, never will be yours. And let me hope that I may be entitled to the performance of your promise, to permit me to leave this innocent house, as one called it (but long have my ears been accustomed to such inversions of words), as soon as the day breaks.
Then, taking one of the lights, she turned from us; and away she went, unmolested. Not a soul was able to molest her.
Mabel saw her, tremblingly and in a hurry, take the key of her chamber door out of her pocket and unlock it; and, as soon as she entered, heard her double-lock, bar, and bolt it.
By her taking out her key, when she came out of her chamber to us, she no doubt suspected my design: which was to have carried her in my arms thither, if she made such force necessary, after I had intimidated her, and to have been her companion for that night.
She was to have had several bedchamber women to assist to undress her upon occasion: but, from the moment she entered the dining-room with so much intrepidity, it was absolutely impossible to think of prosecuting my villainous designs against her.
• • •
This, this, Belford, was the hand I made of a contrivance I expected so much from! And now am I ten times worse off than before!
But for the lady, by my soul I love her, I admire her, more than ever! I must have her. I will have her still. With honour, or without, as I have often vowed.
I will press her with letters for the Thursday. She shall yet be mine, legally mine. For, as to cohabitation, there is now no such thing to be thought of.
The captain shall give her away, as proxy for her uncle. My lord will die. My fortune will help my will, and set me above everything and everybody.
But here is the curse. She despises me, Jack! What man, as I have heretofore said, can bear to be despised especially by his wife? Oh Lord! Oh Lord! What a hand, what a cursed hand have I made of this plot! and here ends
The history of the Lady and the Penknife!!! The devil take the penknife! It goes against me to say, God bless the lady.
Near 5, Sat. morn.
Letter 284: MR LOVELACE TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
(Superscribed, To Mrs Lovelace)
M. Hall, Monday, June 26
There is no time to be lost. And I would not have next Thursday go over without being entitled to call you mine, for the world; and that as well for your sake as my own. Hitherto all that has passed is between you and me only; but, after Thursday, if my wishes are unanswered, the whole will be before the world.
My lord is extremely ill, and endures not to have me out of his sight for one half-hour.
My Lord M. but just now has told me how happy he should think himself to have an opportunity, before he dies, to salute you as his niece.
Do not, dearest creature, dissipate all these promising appearances, and, by refusing to save your own and your family’s reputation in the eye of the world, use yourself worse than the ungratefullest wretch on earth has used you. For, if we are married, all the disgrace you imagine you have suffered while a single lady will be my own; and only known to ourselves.
Once more then, consider well the situation we are both in; and remember, my dearest life, that Thursday will be soon here; and that you have no time to lose.
In a letter sent by the messenger whom I dispatch with this, I have desired that my friend Mr Belford, who is your very great admirer and who knows all the secrets of my heart, will wait upon you to know what I am to depend upon, as to the chosen day.
One motive for the gentle restraint I have presumed to lay you under is to prevent the mischiefs that might ensue (as probably to the more innocent, as to the less) were you to write to anybody, while your passions were so much raised and inflamed against me. Having apprised you of my direction on this head, I wonder you should have endeavoured to send a letter to Miss Howe, although in a cover directed to that young lady’s servant; as you must think it would be likely to fall into my hands.
The just sense of what I have deserved the contents should be leaves me no room to doubt what they are. Nevertheless, I return it you enclosed with the seal, as you will see, unbroken.
Your ever-affectionate and obliged
LOVELACE
Letter 292: MR MOWBRAY TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.
Wednesday, 12 o’clock
Dear Lovelace,
I have plaguy news to acquaint thee with. Miss Harlowe is gon off! Quite gon, by my soul! I have not time for particulars, your servant being going off. But iff I had, we are not yet come to the bottom of the matter. The ladies here are all blubbering like devils, accusing one another most confoundedly: whilst Belton and I damn them all together in thy name.
If thou shouldst hear that thy fellow Will is taken dead out of some horse-pond, and Dorcas cutt down from her bed’s tester, from dangling in her own garters, be not surprised. Here’s the devill to pay. Nobody serene but Jack Belford, who is taking minnutes of examminations, accusations, and confessions, with the signifficant air of a Middlesex Justice, and intends to write at large all particulars, I suppose.
I heartily condole with thee: so does Belton. But it may turn out for the best: for she is gone away with thy marks, I understand. A foolish little devill! Where will she mend herself? For nobody will look upon her. And they tell me that thou wouldst certainly have married her had she stayed—but I know thee better.
Dear Bobby, adieu. If thy uncle will die now, to comfort thee for this loss, what a seasonable exit would he make! Let’s have a letter from thee: prithee do. Thou canst write devil-like to Belford, who shows us nothing at all.
Thine heartily,
RD. MOWBRAY
Letter 294: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
Friday, June 30
I am ruined, undone, blown-up, destroyed, and worse than annihilated, that’s certain! But was not the news shocking enough, dost thou think, without thy throwing into the too weighty scale reproaches which thou couldst have had no opportunity to make, but for my own voluntary communications? At a time too, when, as it falls out, I have another very sensible disappointment to struggle with?
• • •
Though it answer thy unfriendly purpose to own it, I cannot forbear to own it, that I am stung to the very soul with this unhappy—accident, must I call it? Have I nobody, whose throat, either for carelessness or treachery, I ought to cut in order to pacify my vengeance!
• • •
Let me add that the lady’s plot to escape appears to me no extraordinary one. There was much more luck than probability that it should do: since, to make it succeed, it was necessary that Dorcas and Will and Sinclair and her nymphs should be all deceived, or off their guard. It belongs to me, when I see them, to give them my hearty thanks that they were; and that their selfish care to provide for their own future security should induce them to leave their outward door upon their bolt-latch, and be cursed to them!
Mabel deserves a pitch-suit and a bonfire, rather than the lustring; and as her clothes are returned, let the lady’s be put to her others, to be sent to her when it can be told whither. But not till I give the word, neither; for we must get the dear fugitive back again, if possible.
I suppose that my stupid villain [Will], who knew not such a goddess-shaped lady with a mien so noble from the awkward and bent-shouldered Mabel, has been at Hampstead to see after her: and yet I hardly think she would go thither. He ought to go through every street where bills for lodgings are up, to inquire after a new-comer. The houses of such as deal in women’s matters, and tea, coffee, and suchlike, are those to be inquired at for her. If some tidings be not quickly heard of her, I would not have either Dorcas, Will or Mabel, appear in my sight, whatever their superiors think fit to do.
But I have so used myself to write a great deal of late, that I know not how to help it. Yet I must add to its length, in order to explain myself on a hint I gave at the beginning of it, which was that I have another disappointment besides this of Miss Harlowe’s escape, to bemoan.
And what dost think it is? Why, the old peer, pox of his tough constitution! (for that would have helped him on), has made shift by fire and brimstone, and the devil knows what, to force the gout to quit the counterscarp of his stomach, just as it had collected all its strength in order to storm the citadel of his heart. In short they have, by the mere force of stink-pots, hand-grenades, and pop-guns, drove the slow-working pioneer quite out of the trunk into the extremities; and there it lies nibbling and gnawing upon his great toe; when I had hoped a fair end both of the distemper, and the distempered.
But I, who could write to thee of laudanum and the wet cloth formerly [i.e., contemplated murder], yet let £8,000 a year slip through my fingers, when I had entered upon it more than in imagination (for I had begun to ask the stewards questions, and to hear them talk of fines and renewals, and such sort of stuff), deserve to be mortified.
Thou canst not imagine how differently the servants, and even my cousins, look upon me since yesterday, to what they did before. Neither the one nor the other bow and curtsy half so low. Nor am I a quarter so often his honour, and your honour, as I was within these few hours with the former: and as to the latter—it is cousin Bobby again, with the usual familiarity, instead of sir, and sir, and, If you please, Mr Lovelace. And now they have the insolence to congratulate me on the recovery of the best of uncles, while I am forced to seem as much delighted as they, when, would it do me good, I could sit down and cry my eyes out.
But thus, Jack, is an observation of the old peer’s verified, that one misfortune seldom comes alone: and so concludes
Thy doubly-mortified
LOVELACE
Letter 295: MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE
Wednesday night, June 28
Oh, my dearest Miss Howe!
Once more have I escaped—but, alas! I, my best self, have not escaped! Oh! your poor Clarissa Harlowe! You also will hate me, I fear! Yet you won’t, when you know all!
But no more of myself! my lost s
elf. You that can rise in a morning to be blessed and to bless; and go to rest delighted with your own reflections, and in your unbroken, unstarting slumbers, conversing with saints and angels, the former only more pure than yourself, as they have shaken off the encumbrance of body; you shall be my subject, as you have long, long, been my only pleasure. And let me, at awful distance, revere my beloved Anna Howe, and in her reflect upon what her Clarissa Harlowe once was!
Forgive, oh! forgive my rambling. My peace is destroyed. My intellects are touched. And what flighty nonsense must you read, if now you will vouchsafe to correspond with me, as formerly!
Oh! my best, my dearest, my only friend! What a tale have I to unfold! But still upon self, this vile, this hated self! I will shake it off, if possible; and why should I not, since I think, except one wretch, I hate nothing so much! Self, then, be banished from self one moment (for I doubt it will for no longer) to inquire after a dearer object, my beloved Anna Howe!—whose mind, all robed in spotless white, charms and irradiates—but what would I say?
• • •
And how, my dearest friend, after this rhapsody, which, on re-perusal, I would not let go but to show you what a distracted mind dictates to my trembling pen; how do you? You have been very ill, it seems. That you are recovered, my dear, let me hear! That your mamma is well, pray let me hear, and hear quickly! This comfort, surely, is owing to me; for if life is no worse than chequer-work, I must now have a little white to come, having seen nothing but black, all unchequered dismal black, for a great, great while!
• • •
And what is all this wild incoherence for? It is only to beg to know how you have been, and how you now do, by a line directed for Mrs Rachel Clark, at Mr Smith’s, a glove shop, in King Street, Covent Garden; which (although my abode is a secret to everybody else) will reach the hands of your unhappy—but that’s not enough—
Your miserable
CLARISSA HARLOWE