THREE different times tapped I at the door, but had no answer. Permit me, dearest creature, to inquire after your health. As you have not been seen today, I am impatient to know how you do. Not a word of answer, but a deep sigh, even to sobbing. Let me beg of you, madam, to accompany me up another pair of stairs-you'll rejoice to see what a happy escape we have all had. A happy escape indeed, Jack!-For the fire had scorched the window-board, singed the hangings, and burnt through the slit-deal linings of the window-jambs." No answer, madam!-Am I not worthy of one word? Is it thus you keep your promise with me?—Shall I not have the favour of your company for two minutes [only for two minutes in the dining-room? Hem!—and a deep sigh !—were all the an swer. Answer me but how you do! Answer me but that you are well! Is this the forgiveness that was the condition of my obedience? Then, in a faintish, but angry voice, Begone from my door!-Wretch! inhuman, barbarous, and all that is base and treacherous !-begone from my door! Nor teaze thus a poor creature entitled to protection, not outrage. I see, madam, how you keep your word with me-if a sudden impulse, the effect of an unthought-of accident, cannot be forgiven O the dreadful weight of a father's curse, thus in the very letter of it And then her voice dying away in murmurs inarticulate, I looked through the key-hole, and saw her on her knees, her face, though not towards me, lifted up, as well as hands, and these folded, deprecating, I suppose, that gloomy tyrant's curse. I could not help being moved. My dearest life! admit me to your presence but for two minutes, and confirm your promised pardon; and may lightning blast me on the spot, if I offer anything but my penitence, at a shrine so sacred! I will afterwards leave you for a whole day, and till to-morrow morning, and then attend you with writings, all ready to sign, a licence obtained, or if it cannot, a minister without one. This once believe me! When you see the reality of the danger that gave occasion for this your unhappy resentment, you will think less hardly of me. And let me beseech you to perform a promise on which I made a reliance not altogether ungenerous. I cannot see you! Would to Heaven I never had! If I write, that's all I can do. Let your writing, then, my dearest life, confirm your promise, and I will withdraw in expectation of it. Past Eleven o'clock. SHE rung her bell for Dorcas, and, with her door in her hand, only half-opened, gave her a billet for me. How did the dear creature look, Dorcas? She was dressed. She turned her face quite from me, and sighed as if her heart would break. Sweet creature! I kissed the wet wafer, and drew it from the paper with my breath. These are the contents. No inscriptive Sir ! No Mr Lovelace! I CANNOT see you, nor will I, if I can help it. Words cannot express the anguish of my soul on your baseness and ingratitude. If the circumstances of things are such that I can have no way for reconciliation with those who would have been my natural protectors from such outrages, but through you, the only inducement I can have to stay a moment longer in your knowledge, pen and ink must be, at present, the only means of communication between us. Vilest of men, and most detestable of plotters! how have I deserved from you the shocking indignities-but no more-only for your own sake, wish not, at least for a week to come, to see The undeservedly injured and insulted So thou seest, nothing could have stood me in stead, but this plot of Tomlinson and her uncle! To what a pretty pass, nevertheless, have I brought myself!-Had Cæsar been such a fool, he had never passed the Rubicon. But after he had passed it, had he retreated re infectâ, intimidated by a senatorial edict, what a pretty figure would he have made in history!I might have known, that to attempt a robbery, and put a person in bodily fear, is as punishable as if the robbery had been actually committed. But not to see her for a week!-Dear, pretty soul! how she anticipates me in everything! The counsellor will have finished the writings to-day, or to-morrow at farthest; the licence with the parson, or the parson without the licence, must also be procured within the next four-and-twenty hours. Pritchard is as good as ready with his indentures tripartite; Tomlinson is at hand with a favourable answer from her uncle-yet not to see her for a week!-Dear sweet soul, her good angel is gone a journey; is truanting at least. But nevertheless, in thy week's time, or in much less, my charmer, I doubt not to complete my triumph! But what vexes me of all things is, that such an excellent creature should break her word; fie, fie upon her !-But nobody is absolutely perfect! 'Tis human to err, but not to persevere— I hope my charmer cannot be inhuman! INDEED, my dearest life, you carry this matter too far. What will the people below, who suppose us one as to the ceremony, think of so great a niceness? Liberties so innocent! the occasion so accidental !-You will expose yourself as well as me. Hitherto they know nothing of what has passed. And what indeed has passed to occasion all this resentment? I am sure you will not, by a breach of your word of honour, give me reason to conclude, that, had I not obeyed you, I could have fared no worse.< Most sincerely do I repent the offence given to your delicacy. But must I, for so accidental an occurrence, be branded by such shocking names?—Vilest of men, and most detestable of plotters, are hard words!—From the pen of such a lady too. If you step up another pair of stairs, you will bec onvinced, that, however detestable I may be to you, I am no plotter in this affair. I must insist upon seeing you, in order to take your directions upon some of the subjects we talked of yesterday in the evening. All that is more than necessary is too much. I claim your promised pardon, and wish to plead it on my knees. I beg your presence in the dining-room for one quarter of an hour, and I will then leave you for the day. I am, My dearest life, Your ever adoring and truly penitent LOVELACE. TO MR LOVELACE. I WILL not see you. I cannot see you. I have no directions to give you. Let Providence decide for me as it pleases. The more I reflect upon your vileness, your ungrateful, your barbarous vileness, the more I am exasperated against you. You are the last person whose judgment I will take upon what is or is not carried too far in matters of decency. 'Tis grievous to me to write, or even to think of you at present. Urge me no more then. Once more, I will not see you. Nor care I, now you have made me vile to myself, what other people think of me. TO MRS LOVELACE. AGAIN, madam, I remind you of your promise, and beg leave to say, I insist upon the performance of it. Remember, dearest creature, that the fault of a blameable person cannot warrant a fault in one more perfect. Over-niceness may be underniceness! I cannot reproach myself with anything that deserves this high resentment. I own that the violence of my passion for you might have carried me beyond fit bounds; but that your commands and adjurations had power over me at such a moment, I humbly presume to say, deserves some consideration. You enjoin me not to see you for a week If I have not your pardon before Captain Tomlinson comes to town, what shall I say to him? I beg once more your presence in the diningroom. By my soul, madam, I must see you. I want to consult you about the licence, and other particulars of great importance. The people below think us married, and I cannot talk to you upon such subjects with the door be tween us. For Heaven's sake, favour me with your presence for a few minutes, and I will leave you for the day. If I am to be forgiven, according to your promise, the earlier forgiveness will be most obliging, and will save great pain to yourself, as well as to Your truly contrite and afflicted finite more consequence to us, to Captain Tomlinson. Let us be able, I beseech you, madam, to assure him on his next visit, that we are one. As I have no hope to be permitted to dine with you, I shall not return till evening, and then, I presume to say, I expect your promise authorizes me to use the word] to find you disposed to bless, by your consent for to-morrow, Your adoring LOVELACE. TO MR LOVELACE. THE more you teaze me, the worse it will be for you. Time is wanted to consider whether I ever should think of you at all. At present, it is my sincere wish that I may never more see your face. All that can afford you the least shadow of favour from me, arises from the hoped-for reconciliation with my real friends, not my Judas protector. I am careless at present of consequences. I hate myself: And who is it I have reason to value ?-Not the man who could form a plot to disgrace his own hopes, as well as a poor friendless creature, (made friendless by himself,) by insults not to be thought of with patience. MADAM, TO MRS LOVELACE. I WILL go to the Commons, and proceed in every particular as if I had not the misfortune to be under your displeasure. I must insist upon it, that however faulty my passion, on so unexpected an incident, made me appear to a lady of your delicacy, yet my compliance with your entreaties at such a moment, Las it gave you an instance of your power over me, which few men could have shewn, ought, duly considered, to entitle me to the effects of that solemn promise which was the condition of my obedience. I hope to find you in a kinder, and, I will say, juster disposition, on my return. Whether I get the licence or not, let me beg of you to make the soon you have been pleased to bid me hope for, to-morrow morning. This will reconcile everything, and make me the happiest of men. The settlements are ready to sign, or will be by night. For Heaven's sake, madam, do not carry your resentment into a displeasure so disproportionate to the offence, for that would be to expose us both to the people below, and, what is of in WHAT pleasure did I propose to take, how to enjoy the sweet confusion in which I expected to find her, while all was so recent !-But she must, she shall, see me on my return. It were better for herself, as well as for me, that she had not made so much ado about nothing. I must keep my anger alive, lest it sink into compassion. Love and compassion, be the provocation ever so great, are hard to be separated, while anger converts what would be pity without it, into resentment. Nothing can be lovely in a man's eye with which he is thoroughly displeased. I ordered Dorcas, on putting the last billet under the door, and finding it taken up, to tell her, that I hoped an answer to it before I went out. Her reply was verbal, Tell him that I care not whither he goes, nor what he does. And this, reurged by Dorcas, was all she had to say to me. I looked through the key-hole at my going by her door, and saw her on her knees, at her bed's feet, her head and bosom on the bed, her arms extended; [sweet creature, how I adore her! and in agony she seemed to be, sobbing, as I heard at that distance, as if her heart would break.-By my soul, Jack, I am a pity-ful fellow! Recollection is my enemy !-Divine excellence !-Happy with her for so many days together! Now so unhappy!-And for what? But she is purity herself. And why, after all, should I thus torment-But I must not trust myself with myself, in the humour I am in. WAITING here for Mowbray and Mallory, by whose aid I am to get the licence, I took papers out of my pocket to divert myself, and thy last popt officiously the first into my hand. I gave it the honour of a re-perusal, and this revived the subject with me, with which I had resolved not to trust myself. I remember that the dear creature, in her torn answer to my proposals, says, condescension is not meanness. She better knows how to make this out, than any mortal breathing. Condescension indeed implies dignity; and dignity ever was there in her condescension. Yet such a dignity as gave grace to the condescension, for there was no pride, no insult, no apparent su- Yet, to have taken such bold steps, as with Tomlinson and her uncle-to have made such a progress-O Belford, Belford, how I have puzzled myself, as well as her! This cursed aversion to wedlock, how it has entangled me! What contradiction has it made me guilty of! How pleasing to myself to look back upon the happy days I gave her, though mine would doubtless have been more unmixedly so, could I have determined to lay aside my contrivances, and to be as sincere all the time as she deserved that I should be! If I find this humour hold but till to-morrow morning, and it has now lasted two full hours, and I seem, methinks, to have pleasure in encouraging it, I will make thee a visit, I think, or get thee to come to me; and then will Iconsult thee upon it. But she will not trust me. She will not confide in my honour. Doubt, in this case, is defiance. She loves me not well enough to forgive me generously. She is so greatly above me! How can I forgive her for a merit so mortifying to my pride! She thinks, she knows, she has told me, that she is above me. These words are still in my ears, Begone, Lovelace!-My soul is above thee, man!-Thou hast a proud heart to contend with!-My soul is above thee, man!" Miss Howe thinks her above me too. Thou, even thou, my friend, my intimate friend and companion, art of the same opinion. Then I fear her as much as I love her.-How shall my pride bear these reflections? My wife (as I have often said, because it so often recurs to my thoughts) to be so much my superior!-Myself "See Letter LXXXIV. of this Vol. to be considered but as the second person in my Yet forbid it not-for do I not now-do I not every moment-see her before me all over charms, and elegance and purity, as in the struggles of the past midnight? And in these struggles, heart, voice, eyes, hands, and sentiments, so greatly, so gloriously consistent with the character she has sustained from her cradle to the present hour? But what advantages do I give thee? much generous love am I capable of!) I had The dear creature herself once told me, that there was a strange mixture in my mind.§ I have been called Devil and Beelzebub, between Beelzebub, if I had not some tolerable qualities. the two proud beauties: I must indeed be a But, as Miss Howe says, the suffering time of this excellent creature is her shining time.|| Hitherto she has done nothing but shine. She called me villain, Belford, within these few hours. And what is the sum of the present argument; but that, had I not been a villain, in her sense of the word, she had not been such an angel? O Jack, Jack! This midnight attempt has made me mad; has utterly undone me! How can the dear creature say, I have made her vile in her own eyes, when her behaviour under such a surprise, and her resentment under such circumstances, have so greatly exalted her in mine? Whence, however, this strange rhapsody?— Is it owing to my being here? That I am not at Sinclair's? But if there be infection in that house, how has my beloved escaped it? But no more in this strain! I will see what her behaviour will be on my return-yet already do I begin to apprehend some little sinkings, § See Letter XXXII. of this Vol. some little retrogradations: for I have just now a doubt arisen, whether, for her own sake, I should wish her to forgive me lightly, or with difficulty? I AM in a way to come at the wished-for li cence. I have now given everything between my beloved and me a full consideration; and my puzzle is over. What has brought me to a speedier determination is, that I think I have found out what she means by the week's distance at which she intends to hold me. It is, that she may have time to write to Miss Howe, to put in motion that cursed scheme of hers, and to take measures upon it which shall enable her to abandon and renounce me for ever. Now, Jack, if I obtain not admission to her presence on my return, but am refused with haughtiness; if her week be insisted upon (such prospects before her); I shall be confirmed in my conjecture; and it will be plain to me, that weak at best was that love, which could give place to punctilio, at a time when the all-reconciling ceremony, as she must think, waits her command:-then will I recollect all her perversenesses; then will I re-peruse Miss Howe's letters, and the transcripts from others of them; give way to my aversion to the life of shackles: and then shall she be mine in my own way. But, after all, I am in hopes that she will have better considered of everything by the evening; that her threat of a week's distance was thrown out in the heat of passion; and that she will allow, that I have as much cause to quarrel with her for breach of her word, as she has with me for breach of the peace. These lines of Rowe have got into my head; and I shall repeat them very devoutly all the way the chairmen shall poppet me towards her by-and-by: Teach me, some power, the happy art of speech, LETTER CXXXV. MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. Thursday Evening, June 8. O FOR a curse to kill with!-Ruined! Undone! Outwitted! Tricked!-Zounds, man, the lady has gone off!-Absolutely gone off! Escaped! Thou knowest not, nor canst conceive, the pangs that wring my heart!-What can I do! -O Lord, O Lord, O Lord! And thou, too, who hast endeavoured to weaken my hands, wilt but clap thy dragon's wings at the tidings! Yet I must write, or I shall go distracted! Little less have I been these two hours; dispatching messengers to every stage, to every inn, to every waggon or coach, whether flying or creeping, and to every house with a bill up, for five miles round. The little hypocrite, who knows not a soul in this town, I thought I was sure of her at any time, such an unexperienced traitress-giving me hope too, in her first billet, that her expectation of the family-reconciliation would withhold her from taking such a step as this-curse upon her contrivances!-I thought, that it was owing to her bashfulness, to her modesty, that, after a few innocent freedoms, she could not look me in the face; when, all the while, she was impudently [yes, I say, impudently, though she be Clarissa Harlowe contriving to rob me of the dearest property I had ever purchasedpurchased by a painful servitude of many months; fighting through the wild-beasts of her family for her, and combating with a windmill virtue, which hath cost me millions of perjuries only to attempt; and which now, with its damned air-fans, has tost me a mile and a half beyond hope!-And this, just as I had arrived within view of the consummation of all my wishes! O Devil of Love! God of Love no morehow have I deserved this of thee !-Never before the friend of frozen virtue!-Powerless demon, for powerless thou must be, if thou meanedest not to frustrate my hopes, who shall henceforth kneel at thy altars!-May every enterprizing heart abhor, despise, execrate, renounce thee, as I do!-But, O Belford, Belford, what signifies cursing now! How she could effect this her wicked escape, is my astonishment; the whole sisterhood having charge of her:-for, as yet, I have not had patience enough to inquire into the particulars, nor to let a soul of them approach me. Of this I am sure, or I had not brought her hither, there is not a creature belonging to this house, that could be corrupted either by virtue or remorse: the highest joy every infernal nymph, of this worse than infernal habitation, could have known, would have been to reduce this proud beauty to her own level. And as to my villain, who also had charge of her, he is such a seasoned varlet, that he delights in mischief for the sake of it: no bribe could seduce him to betray his trust, were there but wickedness in it!'Tis well, however, he was out of my way when the cursed news was imparted to me!-Gone, the villain! in quest of her not to return, nor to see my face [so it seems he declared till he has heard some tidings of her; and all the out-of-place varlets of his numerous acquaintance are summoned and employed in the same business. |