Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 6 (12 page)

How art thou now humbled in the dust, thou proud Clarissa Harlowe! Thou that never steppedst out of thy father's house but to be admired! Who wert wont to turn thine eye, sparkling with healthful life, and self-assurance, to different objects at once as thou passedst, as if (for so thy penetrating sister used to say) to plume thyself upon the expected applauses of all that beheld thee! Thou that usedst to go to rest satisfied with the adulations paid thee in the past day, and couldst put off every thing but thy vanity!---

Rejoice not now, my Bella, my Sister, my Friend; but pity the humbled creature, whose foolish heart you used to say you beheld through the thin veil of humility which covered it.

It must have been so! My fall had not else been permitted--

You penetrated my proud heart with the jealousy of an elder sister's
searching eye.

You knew me better than I knew myself.

Hence your upbraidings and your chidings, when I began to totter.

But forgive now those vain triumphs of my heart.

I thought, poor, proud wretch that I was, that what you said was owing to
your envy.

I thought I could acquit my intention of any such vanity.

I was too secure in the knowledge I thought I had of my own heart.

My supposed advantages became a snare to me.

And what now is the end of all?--

What now is become of the prospects of a happy life, which once I thought opening before me?--Who now shall assist in the solemn preparations? Who now shall provide the nuptial ornaments, which soften and divert the apprehensions of the fearful virgin? No court now to be paid to my smiles! No encouraging compliments to inspire thee with hope of laying a mind not unworthy of thee under obligation! No elevation now for conscious merit, and applauded purity, to look down from on a prostrate adorer, and an admiring world, and up to pleased and rejoicing parents and relations!

Thou pernicious caterpillar, that preyest upon the fair leaf of virgin fame, and poisonest those leaves which thou canst not devour!

Thou fell blight, thou eastern blast, thou overspreading mildew, that destroyest the early promises of the shining year! that mockest the laborious toil, and blastest the joyful hopes, of the painful husbandman!

Thou fretting moth, that corruptest the fairest garment!

Thou eating canker-worm, that preyest upon the opening bud, and turnest the damask-rose into livid yellowness!

If, as religion teaches us, God will judge us, in a great measure, by our benevolent or evil actions to one another--O wretch! bethink thee, in time bethink thee, how great must be thy condemnation!

At first, I saw something in your air and person that displeased me not. Your birth and fortunes were no small advantages to you.--You acted not ignobly by my passionate brother. Every body said you were brave: every body said you were generous: a brave man, I thought, could not be a base man: a generous man, could not, I believed, be ungenerous, where he acknowledged obligation. Thus prepossessed, all the rest that my soul loved and wished for in your reformation I hoped!--I knew not, but by report, any flagrant instances of your vileness. You seemed frank, as well as generous: frankness and generosity ever attracted me: whoever kept up those appearances, I judged of their hearts by my own; and whatever qualities I wished to find in them, I was ready to find; and, when found, I believed them to be natives of the soil.

My fortunes, my rank, my character, I thought a further security. I was in none of those respects unworthy of being the niece of Lord M. and of his two noble sisters.--Your vows, your imprecations--But, Oh! you have barbarously and basely conspired against that honour, which you ought to have protected: and now you have made me--What is it of vile that you have not made me?--

Yet, God knows my heart, I had no culpable inclinations!--I honoured virtue!--I hated vice!--But I knew not, that you were vice itself!

Had the happiness of any of the poorest outcast in the world, whom I had neveer seen, never known, never before heard of, lain as much in my power, as my happiness did in your's, my benevolent heart would have made me fly to the succour of such a poor distressed--with what pleasure would I have raised the dejected head, and comforted the desponding heart!--But who now shall pity the poor wretch, who has increased, instead of diminished, the number of the miserable!

Lead me, where my own thoughts themselves may lose me;
Where I may dose out what I've left of life,
Forget myself, and that day's guile!----
Cruel remembrance!----how shall I appease thee?

[Death only can be dreadful to the bad;*
To innocence 'tis like a bugbear dress'd
To frighten children. Pull but off the mask,
And he'll appear a friend.]

* Transcriber's note: Portions set off in square brackets [ ] are written at angles to the majority of the text, as if squeezed into margins.

----Oh! you have done an act
That blots the face and blush of modesty;
Takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And makes a blister there!

Then down I laid my head,
Down on cold earth, and for a while was dead;
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled!
Ah! sottish soul! said I,
When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
Fool! to resume her broken chain,
And row the galley here again!
Fool! to that body to return,
Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to mourn!

[I could a tale unfold----
Would harrow up thy soul----]

O my Miss Howe! if thou hast friendship, help me,
And speak the words of peace to my divided soul,
That wars within me,
And raises ev'ry sense to my confusion.
I'm tott'ring on the brink
Of peace; an thou art all the hold I've left!
Assist me----in the pangs of my affliction!

When honour's lost, 'tis a relief to die:
Death's but a sure retreat from infamy.

[By swift misfortunes
How I am pursu'd!
Which on each other
Are, like waves, renew'd!]

The farewell, youth,
And all the joys that dwell
With youth and life!
And life itself, farewell!

For life can never be sincerely blest.
Heav'n punishes the bad, and proves the best.

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After all, Belford, I have just skimmed over these transcriptions of Dorcas: and I see there are method and good sense in some of them, wild as others of them are; and that her memory, which serves her so well for these poetical flights, is far from being impaired. And this gives me hope, that she will soon recover her charming intellects--though I shall be the sufferer by their restoration, I make no doubt.

But, in the letter she wrote to me, there are yet greater extravagancies; and though I said it was too affecting to give thee a copy of it, yet, after I have let thee see the loose papers enclosed, I think I may throw in a transcript of that. Dorcas therefore shall here transcribe it. I cannot. The reading of it affected me ten times more than the severest reproaches of a regular mind could do.

I never intended to write another line to you. I would not see you, if I could help it--O that I never had!

But tell me, of a truth, is Miss Howe really and truly ill?--Very ill?- And is not her illness poison? And don't you know who gave it to her?

What you, or Mrs. Sinclair, or somebody (I cannot tell who) have done to my poor head, you best know: but I shall never be what I was. My head is gone. I have wept away all my brain, I believe; for I can weep no more. Indeed I have had my full share; so it is no matter.

But, good now, Lovelace, don't set Mrs. Sinclair upon me again.--I never did her any harm. She so affrights me, when I see her!--Ever since--when was it? I cannot tell. You can, I suppose. She may be a good woman, as far as I know. She was the wife of a man of honour--very likely--though forced to let lodgings for a livelihood. Poor gentlewoman! Let her know I pity her: but don't let her come near me again--pray don't!

Yet she may be a very good woman--

What would I say!--I forget what I was going to say.

O Lovelace, you are Satan himself; or he helps you out in every thing;
and that's as bad!

But have you really and truly sold yourself to him? And for how long? What duration is your reign to have?

Poor man! The contract will be out: and then what will be your fate!

O Lovelace! if you could be sorry for yourself, I would be sorry too--but when all my doors are fast, and nothing but the key-hole open, and the key of late put into that, to be where you are, in a manner without opening any of them--O wretched, wretched Clarissa Harlowe!

For I never will be Lovelace--let my uncle take it as he pleases.

Well, but now I remember what I was going to say--it is for your good-- not mine--for nothing can do me good now!--O thou villanous man! thou hated Lovelace!

But Mrs. Sinclair may be a good woman--if you love me--but that you don't --but don't let her bluster up with her worse than mannish airs to me again! O she is a frightful woman! If she be a woman! She needed not to put on that fearful mask to scare me out of my poor wits. But don't tell her what I say--I have no hatred to her--it is only fright, and foolish fear, that's all.--She may not be a bad woman--but neither are all men, any more than all women alike--God forbid they should be like you!

Alas! you have killed my head among you--I don't say who did it!--God forgive you all!--But had it not been better to have put me out of all your ways at once? You might safely have done it! For nobody would require me at your hands--no, not a soul--except, indeed, Miss Howe would have said, when she should see you, What, Lovelace, have you done with Clarissa Harlowe?--And then you could have given any slight, gay answer-- sent her beyond sea; or, she has run away from me, as she did from her parents. And this would have been easily credited; for you know, Lovelace, she that could run away from them, might very well run away from you.

But this is nothing to what I wanted to say. Now I have it.

I have lost it again--This foolish wench comes teasing me--for what purpose should I eat? For what end should I wish to live?--I tell thee, Dorcas, I will neither eat nor drink. I cannot be worse than I am.

I will do as you'd have me--good Dorcas, look not upon me so fiercely-- but thou canst not look so bad as I have seen somebody look.

Mr. Lovelace, now that I remember what I took pen in hand to say, let me hurry off my thoughts, lest I lose them again--here I am sensible--and yet I am hardly sensible neither--but I know my head is not as it should be, for all that--therefore let me propose one thing to you: it is for your good--not mine; and this is it:

I must needs be both a trouble and an expense to you. And here my uncle Harlowe, when he knows how I am, will never wish any man to have me: no, not even you, who have been the occasion of it--barbarous and ungrateful! --A less complicated villany cost a Tarquin--but I forget what I would say again--

Then this is it--I never shall be myself again: I have been a very wicked creature--a vain, proud, poor creature, full of secret pride--which I carried off under an humble guise, and deceived every body--my sister says so--and now I am punished--so let me be carried out of this house, and out of your sight; and let me be put into that Bedlam privately, which once I saw: but it was a sad sight to me then! Little as I thought what I should come to myself!--That is all I would say: this is all I have to wish for--then I shall be out of all your ways; and I shall be taken care of; and bread and water without your tormentings, will be dainties: and my straw-bed the easiest I have lain in--for--I cannot tell how long!

My clothes will sell for what will keep me there, perhaps as long as I shall live. But, Lovelace, dear Lovelace, I will call you; for you have cost me enough, I'm sure!--don't let me be made a show of, for my family's sake; nay, for your own sake, don't do that--for when I know all I have suffered, which yet I do not, and no matter if I never do--I may be apt to rave against you by name, and tell of all your baseness to a poor humbled creature, that once was as proud as any body--but of what I can't tell--except of my own folly and vanity--but let that pass--since I am punished enough for it--

So, suppose, instead of Bedlam, it were a private mad-house, where nobody comes!--That will be better a great deal.

But, another thing, Lovelace: don't let them use me cruelly when I am there--you have used me cruelly enough, you know!--Don't let them use me cruelly; for I will be very tractable; and do as any body would have me to do--except what you would have me do--for that I never will.--Another thing, Lovelace: don't let this good woman, I was going to say vile woman; but don't tell her that--because she won't let you send me to this happy refuge, perhaps, if she were to know it--

Another thing, Lovelace: and let me have pen, and ink, and paper, allowed me--it will be all my amusement--but they need not send to any body I shall write to, what I write, because it will but trouble them: and somebody may do you a mischief, may be--I wish not that any body do any body a mischief upon my account.

You tell me, that Lady Betty Lawrance, and your cousin Montague, were here to take leave of me; but that I was asleep, and could not be waked. So you told me at first I was married, you know, and that you were my husband--Ah! Lovelace! look to what you say.--But let not them, (for they will sport with my misery,) let not that Lady Betty, let not that Miss Montague, whatever the real ones may do; nor Mrs. Sinclair neither, nor any of her lodgers, nor her nieces, come to see me in my place--real ones, I say; for, Lovelace, I shall find out all your villanies in time-- indeed I shall--so put me there as soon as you can--it is for your good-- then all will pass for ravings that I can say, as, I doubt no many poor creatures' exclamations do pass, though there may be too much truth in them for all that--and you know I began to be mad at Hampstead--so you said.--Ah! villanous man! what have you not to answer for!

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