Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 7
Page 77
LETTER LXXVIII
MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.[IN ANSWER TO LETTER LXV. OF THIS VOLUME.]MONDAY, AUG. 7.
And so you have actually delivered to the fair implacable extracts ofletters written in the confidence of friendship! Take care--take care,Belford--I do indeed love you better than I love any man in the world:but this is a very delicate point. The matter is grown very serious tome. My heart is bent upon having her. And have her I will, though Imarry her in the agonies of death.
She is very earnest, you say, that I will not offer to molest her. That,let me tell her, will absolutely depend upon herself, and the answer shereturns, whether by pen and ink, or the contemptuous one of silence,which she bestowed upon my last four to her: and I will write it in suchhumble, and in such reasonable terms, that, if she be not a true Harlowe,she shall forgive me. But as to the executorship which she is forconferring upon thee--thou shalt not be her executor: let me perish ifthou shalt.--Nor shall she die. Nobody shall be any thing, nobody shalldare to be any thing, to her, but I--thy happiness is already too great,to be admitted daily to her presence; to look upon her, to talk to her,to hear her talk, while I am forbid to come within view of her window--What a reprobation is this, of the man who was once more dear to her thanall the men in the world!--And now to be able to look down upon me, whileher exalted head is hid from me among the stars, sometimes with scorn, atother times with pity; I cannot bear it.
This I tell thee, that if I have not success in my effort by letter, Iwill overcome the creeping folly that has found its way to my heart, or Iwill tear it out in her presence, and throw it at her's, that she may seehow much more tender than her own that organ is, which she, and you, andevery one else, have taken the liberty to call callous.
Give notice of the people who live back and edge, and on either hand, ofthe cursed mother, to remove their best effects, if I am rejected: forthe first vengeance I shall take will be to set fire to that den ofserpents. Nor will there be any fear of taking them when they are in anyact that has the relish of salvation in it, as Shakspeare says--so thatmy revenge, if they perish in the flames I shall light up, will becomplete as to them.