Pamela, Volume II. Сэмюэл РичардсонЧитать онлайн книгу.
my constant compliance with every thing he proposed, laid me sometimes under a restraint: and he would have me have a will of my own, since it was impossible, that it could be such as he should not take a delight in conforming to it.
I will not trouble your ladyship with any further particulars relating to this happy fortnight, which was made up all of white and unclouded days, to the very last; and your ladyship will judge better than I can describe, of the parting between my dear parents, and their honoured benefactor and me.
We set out, attended with the good wishes of crowds of persons of all degrees; for your dear brother left behind him noble instances of his bounty; it being the first time, as he bid Mr. Longman say, that he had been down among them since that estate had been in his hands.
But permit me to observe, that I could not forbear often, very often, in this happy period, to thank God in private, for the blessed terms upon which I was there, to what I should have been, had I gracelessly accepted of those which formerly were tendered to me; for your ladyship will remember, that the Kentish estate was to be part of the purchase of my infamy.
We returned through London, by the like easy journeys, but tarried not to see any thing of that vast metropolis, any more than we did in going through it before; your beloved brother only stopping at his banker's, and desiring him to look out for a handsome house, which he proposes to take for his winter residence. He chooses it to be about the new buildings called Hanover Square; and he left Mr. Longman there to see one, which his banker believed would be fit for him.
And thus, my dear lady, I have answered your first commands, by the help of the letters which passed between my dear parents and me; and conclude this with the assurance that I am, with high respect, your ladyship's most obliged and faithful servant,
P.B.
LETTER XIV
MY DEAREST LADY,
I now set myself to obey your ladyship's second command, which is, to give an account in what manner your dear brother broke to me the affair of the unfortunate Miss Godfrey, with my behaviour upon it; and this I cannot do better, than by transcribing scribing the relation I gave at that time, in letters to my dear parents, which your ladyship has not seen, in these very words.
[See Vol. I, p. 431, beginning "My dear Mr. B.," down to p. 441.]
Thus far, my dear lady, the relation I gave to my parents, at the time of my being first acquainted with this melancholy affair.
It is a great pleasure to me, that I can already flatter myself, from the hints you kindly gave me, that I behaved as you wished I should behave. Indeed, Madam, I could not help it, for I pitied most sincerely the unhappy lady; and though I could not but rejoice, that I had had the grace to escape the dangerous attempts of the dear intriguer, yet never did the story of any unfortunate lady make such an impression upon me as hers did: she loved him, and believed, no doubt, he loved her too well to take ungenerous advantages of her soft passion for him: and so, by degrees, put herself into his power; and too seldom, alas I have the noblest-minded of the seducing sex the mercy or the goodness to spare the poor creatures that do!
Then 'tis another misfortune of people in love; they always think highly of the beloved object, and lowly of themselves, such a dismal mortifier is love!
I say not this, Madam, to excuse the poor lady's fall; nothing can do that; because virtue is, and ought to be, preferable to all considerations, and to life itself. But, methinks, I love this dear lady so well for the sake of her edifying penitence, that I would fain extenuate her crime, if I could; and the rather, as in all probability, it was a first love on both sides; and so he could not appear to her as a practised deceiver.
Your ladyship will see, by what I have transcribed, how I behaved myself to the dear Miss Goodwin; and I am so fond of the little charmer, as well for the sake of her unhappy mother, though personally unknown to me, as for the relation she bears to the dear gentleman whom I am bound to love and honour, that I must beg your ladyship's interest to procure her to be given up to my care, when it shall be thought proper. I am sure I shall act by her as tenderly as if I was her own mother. And glad I am, that the poor unfaulty baby is so justly beloved by Mr. B.
But I will here conclude this letter, with assuring your ladyship, and
I am your obliged and humble servant,
P.B.
LETTER XV
MY GOOD LADY,
I now come to your ladyship's remarks on my conduct to Mrs. Jewkes: which you are pleased to think too kind and forgiving considering the poor woman's baseness.
Your ladyship says, that I ought not to have borne her in my sight, after the impudent assistance she gave to his lewd attempts; much less to have left her in her place, and rewarded her. Alas! my dear lady, what could I do? a poor prisoner as I was made, for weeks together, in breach of all the laws of civil society; without a soul who durst be my friend; and every day expecting to be ruined and undone, by one of the haughtiest and most determined spirits in the world!—and when it pleased God to turn his heart, and incline him to abandon his wicked attempts, and to profess honourable love to me, his poor servant, can it be thought I was to insist upon conditions with such a gentleman, who had me in his power; and who, if I had provoked him, might have resumed all his wicked purposes against me?
Indeed, I was too much overjoyed, after all my dangers past (which were so great, that I could not go to rest, nor rise, but with such apprehensions, that I wished for death rather than life), to think of refusing any terms that I could yield to, and keep my honour.
And though such noble ladies, as your ladyship and Lady Betty, who are born to independency, and are hereditarily, as I may say, on a foot with the highest-descended gentleman in the land, might have exerted a spirit, and would have a right to choose your own servants, and to distribute rewards and punishments to the deserving and undeserving, at your own good pleasure; yet what had I, a poor girl, who owed even my title to common notice, to the bounty of my late good lady, and had only a kind of imputed sightliness of person, though enough to make me the subject of vile attempts; who, from a situation of terror and apprehension, was lifted up to an hope, beyond my highest ambition, and was bid to pardon the bad woman, as an instance, that I could forgive his own hard usage of me; who had experienced so often the violence and impetuosity of his temper, which even his beloved mother never ventured to oppose till it began to subside, and then, indeed, he was all goodness and acknowledgment; of which I could give your ladyship more than one instance.
What, I say, had I to do, to take upon me lady-airs, and to resent? But, my dear ladies (let me, in this instance, bespeak the attention of you both), I should be inexcusable, if I did not tell you all the truth; and that is, that I not only forgave the poor wretch, in regard to his commands, but from my own inclination also. If I am wrong in saying this, I must submit it to your ladyships; and, as I pretend not to perfection, am ready to take the blame I deserve in your ladyships' judgments: but indeed, were it to be again, I verily think, I could not help forgiving her.—And were I not able to say this, I should be thought to have made a mean court to my master's passions, and to have done a wrong thing with my eyes open: which I humbly conceive, no one should do.
When full power was given me over this poor creature (seemingly at least, though it might possibly have been resumed, and I might have been re-committed to hers, had I given him reason to think I made an arrogant use of it), you cannot imagine what a triumph I had in my mind over the mortified guilt, which (from the highest degree of insolence and imperiousness, that before had hardened her masculine features) appeared in her countenance, when she found the tables likely to be soon turned upon her.
This change of behaviour, which at first discovered itself in a sullen awe, and afterwards in a kind of silent respect, shewed me, what an influence power had over her: and that when she could treat her late prisoner, when taken into favour, so obsequiously, it was the less wonder the bad woman could think it her duty to obey commands so unjust, when her obedience to them was required from her master.
To be sure, if a look could have killed her, after some of her bad treatment, she