Clarissa, Volume 6 - The History Of A Young Lady

Clarissa, Volume 6 − The History Of A Young Lady 42
[The whole of this black transaction is given by the injured lady to Miss Howe, in her subsequent letters,
dated Thursday, July 6. See Letters LXVII. LXVIII. LXIX.]
LETTER XIII
MR. BELFORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ. WATFORD, WEDN. JAN. 14.
O thou savage−hearted monster! What work hast thou made in one guilty hour, for a whole age of repentance!
I am inexpressibly concerned at the fate of this matchless lady! She could not have fallen into the hands of any
other man breathing, and suffered as she has done with thee.
I had written a great part of another long letter to try to soften thy flinty heart in her favour; for I thought it but
too likely that thou shouldst succeed in getting her back again to the accursed woman's. But I find it would
have been too late, had I finished it, and sent it away. Yet cannot I forbear writing, to urge thee to make the
only amends thou now canst make her, by a proper use of the license thou hast obtained.
Poor, poor lady! It is a pain to me that I ever saw her. Such an adorer of virtue to be sacrificed to the vilest of
her sex; and thou their implement in the devil's hand, for a purpose so base, so ungenerous, so
inhumane!−−Pride thyself, O cruellest of men! in this reflection; and that thy triumph over a woman, who for
thy sake was abandoned of every friend she had in the world, was effected; not by advantages taken of her
weakness and credulity; but by the blackest artifice; after a long course of studied deceits had been tried to no
purpose.
I can tell thee, it is well either for thee or for me, that I am not the brother of the lady. Had I been her brother,
her violation must have been followed by the blood of one of us.
Excuse me, Lovelace; and let not the lady fare the worse for my concern for her. And yet I have but one other
motive to ask thy excuse; and that is, because I owe to thy own communicative pen the knowledge I have of
thy barbarous villany, since thou mightest, if thou wouldst, have passed it upon me for a common seduction.
CLARISSA LIVES, thou sayest. That she does is my wonder: and these words show that thou thyself (though
thou couldst, nevertheless, proceed) hardly expectedst she would have survived the outrage. What must have
been the poor lady's distress (watchful as she had been over her honour) when dreadful certainty took place of
cruel apprehension!−−And yet a man may guess what must have been, by that which thou paintest, when she
suspected herself tricked, deserted, and betrayed, by the pretended ladies.
That thou couldst behold her phrensy on this occasion, and her half−speechless, half−fainting prostration at
thy feet, and yet retain thy evil purposes, will hardly be thought credible, even by those who know thee, if
they have seen her.
Poor, poor lady! With such noble qualities as would have adorned the most exalted married life, to fall into
the hands of the only man in the world, who could have treated her as thou hast treated her!−−And to let loose
the old dragon, as thou properly callest her, upon the before−affrighted innocent, what a barbarity was that!
What a poor piece of barbarity! in order to obtain by terror, what thou dispairedst to gain by love, though
supported by stratagems the most insidious!
O LOVELACE! LOVELACE! had I doubted it before, I should now be convinced, that there must be a
WORLD AFTER THIS, to do justice to injured merit, and to punish barbarous perfidy! Could the divine
SOCRATES, and the divine CLARISSA, otherwise have suffered?
But let me, if possible, for one moment, try to forget this villanous outrage on the most excellent of women.