She flies a thought, that I can less dwell upon—a cruel thought—but she has a poor opinion of the purity she compliments me with, if she thinks that I am not, by God's grace, above temptation from this sex. Although I never saw a man, whose person I could like, before this man; yet his faulty character allowed me but little merit from the indifference I pretended to on his account. But, now I see him in nearer lights, I like him less than ever. Unpolite, cruel, insolent!—Unwise! A trifler with his own happiness; the destroyer of mine!—His last treatment—my fate too visibly in his power—master of his own wishes, [shame to say it,] if he knew what to wish for.—Indeed I never liked him so little as now. Upon my word, I think I could hate him, (if I do not already hate him) sooner than any man I ever thought tolerably of—a good reason why: because I have been more disappointed in my expectations of him; although they never were so high, as to have made him my choice in preference to the single life, had that been permitted me. Still, if the giving him up for ever will make my path to reconciliation easy, and if they will signify as much to me, they shall see that I never will be his: for I have the vanity to think my soul his soul's superior.
You will say I rave: forbidden to write to my aunt, and taught to despair of reconciliation, you, my dear, must be troubled with my passionate resentments. What a wretch was I to give him a meeting, since by that I put it out of my power to meet my assembled friends!—All would now, if I had met them, been over; and who can tell when my present distresses will?—Rid of both men, I had been now perhaps at my aunt Hervey's or at my uncle Antony's; wishing for my cousin Morden's arrival, who might have accommodated all.
I intended, indeed, to have stood it: And, if I had, how know I by whose name I might now have been called? For how should I have resisted a condescending, a kneeling father, had he been able to have kept his temper with me?
Yet my aunt say he would have relented, if I had not. Perhaps he would have been moved by my humility, before he could have shown such undue condescension. Such temper as he would have received me with might have been improved upon in my favour. And that he had designed ultimately to relent, how it clears my friends (at least to themselves) and condemns me! O why were my aunt's hints (I remember them now) so very dark?—Yet I intended to have returned after the interview; and then perhaps she would have explained herself.—O this artful, this designing Lovelace—yet I must repeat, that most ought I to blame myself for meeting him.
But far, far, be banished from me fruitless recrimination! Far banished, because fruitless! Let me wrap myself about in the mantle of my own integrity, and take comfort in my unfaulty intention! Since it is now too late to look back, let me collect all my fortitude, and endeavour to stand those shafts of angry Providence, which it will not permit me to shun! That, whatever the trials may be which I am destined to undergo, I may not behave unworthily in them, and may come out amended by them.
Join with me in this prayer, my beloved friend; for your own honour's sake, as well as for love's sake, join with me in it; lest a deviation on my side should, with the censorious, cast a shade upon a friendship which has no levity in it; and the basis of which is improvement, as well in the greater as lesser duties.
CL. HARLOWE. [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]
LETTER LIV
MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE SATURDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 22.
O my best, my only friend! Now indeed is my heart broken! It has received a blow it never will recover. Think not of corresponding with a wretch who now seems absolutely devoted. How can it be otherwise, if a parent's curses have the weight I always attributed to them, and have heard so many instances in confirmation of that weight!—Yes, my dear Miss Howe, superadded to all my afflictions, I have the consequences of a father's curse to struggle with! How shall I support this reflection!—My past and my present situation so much authorizing my apprehensions!