Volume VII Part 22 (1/2)
The bearer promises to make so much dispatch as to attend you this very afternoon. May he return with good tidings to
Your ever affectionate ANNA HOWE.
LETTER XXV
MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE THURSDAY AFTERNOON.
You pain me, Miss Howe, by the ardour of your n.o.ble friends.h.i.+p. I will be brief, because I am not well; yet a good deal better than I was; and because I am preparing an answer to your's of the 13th. But, before hand, I must tell you, my dear, I will not have that man--don't be angry with me. But indeed I won't. So let him be asked no questions about me, I beseech you.
I do not despond, my dear. I hope I may say, I will not despond. Is not my condition greatly mended? I thank Heaven it is!
I am no prisoner now in a vile house. I am not now in the power of that man's devices. I am not now obliged to hide myself in corners for fear of him. One of his intimate companions is become my warm friend, and engages to keep him from me, and that by his own consent. I am among honest people. I have all my clothes and effects restored to me. The wretch himself bears testimony to my honour.
Indeed I am very weak and ill: but I have an excellent physician, Dr. H.
and as worthy an apothecary, Mr. G.o.ddard.--Their treatment of me, my dear, is perfectly paternal!--My mind too, I can find, begins to strengthen: and methinks, at times, I find myself superior to my calamities.
I shall have sinkings sometimes. I must expect such. And my father's maledict----But you will chide me for introducing that, now I am enumerating my comforts.
But I charge you, my dear, that you do not suffer my calamities to sit too heavily upon your own mind. If you do, that will be to new-point some of those arrows that have been blunted and lost their sharpness.
If you would contribute to my happiness, give way, my dear, to your own; and to the cheerful prospects before you!
You will think very meanly of your Clarissa, if you do not believe, that the greatest pleasure she can receive in this life is in your prosperity and welfare. Think not of me, my only friend, but as we were in times past: and suppose me gone a great, great way off!--A long journey!----How often are the dearest of friends, at their country's call, thus parted-- with a certainty for years--with a probability for ever.
Love me still, however. But let it be with a weaning love. I am not what I was, when we were inseparable lovers, as I may say.--Our views must now be different--Resolve, my dear, to make a worthy man happy, because a worthy man make you so.--And so, my dearest love, for the present adieu!
--adieu, my dearest love!--but I shall soon write again, I hope!
LETTER XXVI
MR. BELFORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.
[IN ANSWER TO LETTER XXIII. OF THIS VOLUME.]
THURDAY, JULY 20.
I read that part of your conclusion to poor Belton, where you inquire after him, and mention how merrily you and the reset pa.s.s your time at M. Hall. He fetched a deep sigh: You are all very happy! were his words.
--I am sorry they were his words; for, poor fellow, he is going very fast. Change of air, he hopes, will mend him, joined to the cheerful company I have left him in. But nothing, I dare say, will.
A consuming malady, and a consuming mistress, to an indulgent keeper, are dreadful things to struggle with both together: violence must be used to get rid of the latter; and yet he has not spirit enough left him to exert himself. His house is Thomasine's house; not his. He has not been within his doors for a fortnight past. Vagabonding about from inn to inn; entering each for a bait only; and staying two or three days without power to remove; and hardly knowing which to go to next. His malady is within him; and he cannot run away from it.
Her boys (once he thought them his) are st.u.r.dy enough to shoulder him in his own house as they pa.s.s by him. Siding with the mother, they in a manner expel him; and, in his absence, riot away on the remnant of his broken fortunes. As to their mother, (who was once so tender, so submissive, so studious to oblige, that we all p.r.o.nounced him happy, and his course of life the eligible,) she is now so termagant, so insolent, that he cannot contend with her, without doing infinite prejudice to his health. A broken-spirited defensive, hardly a defensive, therefore, reduced to: and this to a heart, for so many years waging offensive war, (not valuing whom the opponent,) what a reduction! now comparing himself to the superannuated lion in the fable, kicked in the jaws, and laid sprawling, by the spurning heel of an ign.o.ble a.s.s!
I have undertaken his cause. He has given me leave, yet not without reluctance, to put him into possession of his own house; and to place in it for him his unhappy sister, whom he has. .h.i.therto slighted, because unhappy. It is hard, he told me, (and wept, poor fellow, when he said it,) that he cannot be permitted to die quietly in his own house!--The fruits of blessed keeping these!----
Though but lately apprized of her infidelity, it now comes out to have been of so long continuance, that he has no room to believe the boys to be his: yet how fond did he use to be of them!
To what, Lovelace, shall we attribute the tenderness which a reputed father frequently shows to the children of another man?--What is that, I pray thee, which we call nature, and natural affection? And what has man to boast of as to sagacity and penetration, when he is as easily brought to cover and rear, and even to love, and often to prefer, the product of another's guilt with his wife or mistress, as a hen or a goose the eggs, and even young, of others of their kind?