Читать книгу Pamela, Volume II - Сэмюэл Ричардсон - Страница 16

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 had been slain over and over, as I may say: but to me, who was always taught to distinguish between the person and the action, I could not hold my resentment against the poor passive machine of mischief one day together, though her actions were so odious to me.

I should indeed except that time of my grand trial when she appeared so much a wretch to me, that I saw her not (even after two days that she was kept from me) without great flutter and emotion of heart: and I had represented to your brother before, how hard a condition it was for me to forgive so much unwomanly wickedness.

But, my dear ladies, when I considered the latter in one particular light, I could the more easily forgive her; and having forgiven her, bear her in my sight, and act by her (as a consequence of that forgiveness) as if she had not so horridly offended. Else how would it have been forgiveness? especially as she was ashamed of her crime, and there was no fear of her repeating it.

Thus then I thought on the occasion: "Poor wretched agent, for purposes little less than infernal! I will forgive thee, since thy master and my master will have it so. And indeed thou art beneath the resentment even of such a poor girl as I. I will pity thee, base and abject as thou art. And she who is the object of my pity is surely beneath my anger."

Such were then my thoughts, my proud thoughts, so far was I from being guilty of intentional meanness in forgiving, at Mr. B.'s interposition, the poor, low, creeping, abject self-mortified, and master-mortified, Mrs. Jewkes.

And do you think, ladies, when you revolve in your thoughts, who I was, and what I was, and what I had been designed for; when you revolve the amazing turn in my favour, and the prospects before me (so much above my hopes, that I left them entirely to Providence to direct for me, as it pleased, without daring to look forward to what those prospects seemed naturally to tend); when I could see my haughty persecutor become my repentant protector; the lofty spirit that used to make me tremble, and to which I never could look up without awe, except in those animating cases, where his guilty attempts, and the concern I had to preserve my innocence, gave a courage more than natural to my otherwise dastardly heart: when this impetuous spirit could stoop to request one whom he had sunk beneath even her usual low character of his servant, who was his prisoner, under sentence of a ruin worse than death, as he had intended it, and had seized her for that very purpose, could stoop to acknowledge the vileness of that purpose; could say, at one time, that my forgiveness of Mrs. Jewkes should stand me in greater stead than I was aware of: could tell her, before me, that she must for the future shew me all the respect due to one he must love; at another, acknowledged before her, that he had been stark naught, and that I was very forgiving; again, to Mrs. Jewkes, putting himself on a level with her, as to guilt, "We are both in generous hands: and, indeed, if Pamela did not pardon you, I should think she but half forgave me, because you acted by my instructions:" another time to the same, "We have been both sinners, and must be both included in one act of grace:"—when I was thus lifted up to the state of a sovereign forgiver, and my lordly master became a petitioner for himself, and the guilty creature, whom he put under my feet; what a triumph was here for the poor Pamela? and could I have been guilty of so mean a pride, as to trample upon the poor abject creature, when I found her thus lowly, thus mortified, and wholly in my power?

Then, my dear ladies, while I was enjoying the soul-charming fruits of that innocence which the Divine Grace had enabled me to preserve, in spite of so many plots and contrivances on my master's side, and such wicked instigations and assistances on hers, and all my prospects were improving upon me beyond my wishes; when all was unclouded sunshine, and I possessed my mind in peace, and had only to be thankful to Providence, which had been so gracious to my unworthiness; when I saw my persecutor become my protector, my active enemy no longer my enemy, but creeping with slow, doubtful feet, and speaking to me with awful hesitating doubt of my acceptance; a stamp of an insolent foot now turned into curtseying half-bent knees; threatening hands into supplicating folds; and the eye unpitying to innocence, running over with the sense of her own guilt; a faltering accent on her late menacing tongue, and uplifted handkerchief, "I see she will be my lady: and then I know how it will go with me!"—Was not this, my ladies, a triumph of triumphs to the late miserable, now exalted, Pamela!—could I do less than pardon her? And having declared that I did so, was I not to shew the sincerity of my declaration?

Would it not have shewn my master, that the low-born Pamela was incapable of a generous action, had she refused the only request her humble condition had given her the opportunity of granting, at that time, with innocence? Would he not have thought the humble cottager as capable of insolence, and vengeance too, in her turn, as the better born? and that she wanted but the power, to shew the like unrelenting temper, by which she had so grievously suffered? And might not this have given him room to think me (and to have resumed and prosecuted his purposes accordingly) fitter for an arrogant kept mistress, than an humble and obliged wife!

"I see" (might he not have said?), "the girl has strong passions and resentments; and she that has, will be sometimes governed by them. I will improve upon the hint she herself has now given me, by her inexorable temper: I will gratify her revenge, till I turn it upon herself: I will indulge her pride, till I make it administer to her fall; for a wife I cannot think of in the low-born cottager, especially when she has lurking in her all the pride and arrogance" (you know, my ladies, his haughty way of speaking of our sex) "of the better descended. And by a little perseverance, and watching her unguarded hours, and applying temptations to her passions, I shall first discover them, and then make my advantage of them."

Might not this have been the language, and this the resolution, of such a dear wicked intriguer?—For, my lady, you can hardly conceive the struggles he apparently had to bring down his high spirit to so humble a level. And though, I hope, all would have been, even in this worst case, ineffectual, through Divine Grace, yet how do I know what lurking vileness might have appeared by degrees in this frail heart, to encourage his designs, and to augment my trials and my dangers? And perhaps downright violence might have been used, if he could not, on one hand, have subdued his passions, nor, on the other, have overcome his pride—a pride, that every one, reflecting upon the disparity of birth and condition between us, would have dignified with the name of decency; a pride that was become such an essential part of the dear gentleman's character, in this instance of a wife, that although he knew he could not keep it up, if he made me happy, yet it was no small motive of his choosing me, in one respect, because he expected from me more humility, more submission, than he thought would be paid him by a lady equally born and educated; and of this I will send you an instance, in a transcription from that part of my journal you have not seen, of his lessons to me, on my incurring his displeasure by interposing between yourself and him in your misunderstanding at the Hall: for, Madam, I intend to send, at times, any thing I think worthy of your ladyship's attention, out of those papers you were so kind as to excuse me from sending you in a lump, and many of which must needs have appeared very impertinent to such judges.

Thus (could your ladyship have thought it?) have I ventured upon a strange paradox, that even this strongest instance of his debasing himself, is not the weakest of his pride: and he ventured once at Sir Simon Darnford's to say, in your hearing, as you may remember, that, in his conscience, he thought he should hardly have made a tolerable husband to any body but Pamela: and why? For the reasons you will see in the inclosed papers, which give an account of the noblest and earliest curtain-lecture that ever girl had: one of which is, that he expects to be borne with (complied with, he meant) even when in the wrong: another, that a wife should never so much as expostulate with him, though he was in the wrong, till, by complying with all he insisted upon, she should have shewn him, she designed rather to convince him, for his own sake, than for contradiction's sake; and then, another time, perhaps he might take better resolutions.

I hope, from what I have said, it will appear to your lady-ship, and to Lady Betty too, that I am justified, or at least excused, in pardoning Mrs. Jewkes.

But your dear brother has just sent me word, that supper waits for me: and the post being ready to go off, I defer till the next opportunity which I have to say as to these good effects: and am, in the mean time, your ladyship's most obliged and faithful servant,

P.B.