Volume VI Part 23 (2/2)

And what sayest thou now to my dream?

Who says that, sleeping and waking, I have not fine helps from somebody, some spirit rather, as thou'lt be apt to say? But no wonder that a Beelzebub has his devilkins to attend his call.

I can have no manner of doubt of succeeding in mother H.'s part of the scheme; for will the lady (who resolves to throw herself into the first house she can enter, or to bespeak the protection of the first person she meets, and who thinks there can be no danger out of this house, equal to what she apprehends from me in it) scruple to accept of the chariot of a dowager, accidentally offered? and the lady's protection engaged by her faithful Dorcas, so highly bribed to promote her escape?--And then Mrs.

H. has the air and appearance of a venerable matron, and is not such a forbidding devil as Mrs. Sinclair.

The pretty simpleton knows nothing in the world; nor that people who have money never want a.s.sistants in their views, be they what they will. How else could the princes of the earth be so implicitly served as they are, change they hands every so often, and be their purposes ever so wicked.

If I can but get her to go on with me till Wednesday next week, we shall be settled together pretty quietly by that time. And indeed if she has any grat.i.tude, and has in her the least of her s.e.x's foibles, she must think I deserve her favour, by the pains she has cost me. For dearly do they all love that men should take pains about them and for them.

And here, for the present, I will lay down my pen, and congratulate myself upon my happy invention (since her obstinacy puts me once more upon exercising it.)--But with this resolution, I think, that, if the present contrivance fail me, I will exert all the faculties of my mind, all my talents, to procure for myself a regal right to her favour and that in defiance of all my antipathies to the married state; and of the suggestions of the great devil out of the house, and of his secret agents in it.--Since, if now she is not to be prevailed upon, or drawn in, it will be in vain to attempt her further.

LETTER XXVII

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

TUESDAY NIGHT, JUNE 20.

No admittance yet to my charmer! she is very ill--in a violent fever, Dorcas thinks. Yet will have no advice.

Dorcas tells her how much I am concerned at it.

But again let me ask, Does this lady do right to make herself ill, when she is not ill? For my own part, libertine as people think me, when I had occasion to be sick, I took a dose of ipecacuanha, that I might not be guilty of a falsehood; and most heartily sick was I; as she, who then pitied me, full well knew. But here to pretend to be very ill, only to get an opportunity to run away, in order to avoid forgiving a man who has offended her, how unchristian!--If good folks allow themselves in these breaches of a known duty, and in these presumptuous contrivances to deceive, who, Belford, shall blame us?

I have a strange notion that the matronly lady will be certainly at the grocer's shop at the hour of nine tomorrow morning: for Dorcas heard me tell Mrs. Sinclair, that I should go out at eight precisely; and then she is to try for a coach: and if the dowager's chariot should happen to be there, how lucky will it be for my charmer! how strangely will my dream be made out!

I have just received a letter from Captain Tomlinson. Is it not wonderful? for that was part of my dream.

I shall always have a prodigious regard to dreams henceforward. I know not but I may write a book upon that subject; for my own experience will furnish out a great part of it. 'Glanville of Witches,' 'Baxter's History of Spirits and Apparitions,' and the 'Royal Pedant's Demonology,'

will be nothing at all to Lovelace's Reveries.

The letter is just what I dreamed it to be. I am only concerned that uncle John's anniversary did not happen three or four days sooner; for should any new misfortune befal my charmer, she may not be able to support her spirits so long as till Thursday in the next week. Yet it will give me the more time for new expedients, should my present contrivance fail; which I cannot however suppose.

TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.

MONDAY, JUNE 19.

Dear Sir,

I can now return your joy, for the joy you have given me, as well as my dear friend Mr. Harlowe, in the news of his beloved niece's happy recovery; for he is determined to comply with her wishes and your's, and to give her to you with his own hand.

As the ceremony has been necessarily delayed by reason of her illness, and as Mr. Harlowe's birth-day is on Thursday the 29th of this instant June, when he enters into the seventy-fourth year of his age; and as time may be wanted to complete the dear lady's recovery; he is very desirous that the marriage shall be solemnized upon it; that he may afterwards have double joy on that day to the end of his life.

For this purpose he intends to set out privately, so as to be at Kentish-town on Wednesday se'nnight in the evening.

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