Читать книгу Pamela, Volume II - Сэмюэл Ричардсон - Страница 8

My good dear Lady,

You have done me great honour in the letter your ladyship has been pleased to send me; and it is a high pleasure to me, now all is so happily over, that my poor papers in the least diverted you, and such honourable and worthy persons as your ladyship mentions. I could wish I might be favoured with such remarks on my conduct, so nakedly set forth (without any imagination that they would ever appear in such an assembly), as may be of use to me in my future life, and thus make me more worthy than it is otherwise possible I can be, of the honour to which I am raised. Do, dearest lady, favour me so far. I am prepared to receive blame, and to benefit by it, and cannot expect praise so much from my actions as from my intentions; for indeed, these were always just and honourable: but why, even for these do I talk of praise, since, being prompted by impulses I could not resist, it can be no merit in me to have been governed by them?

As to the papers following those in your hands, when I say, that they must needs appear impertinent to such judges, after what you know, I dare say, your ladyship will not insist upon them: yet I will not scruple briefly to mention what they contain.

All my dangers and trials were happily at an end: so that they only contain the conversations that passed between your ladyship's generous brother and me; his kind assurances of honourable love to me; my acknowledgments of unworthiness to him; Mrs. Jewkes's respectful change of behaviour towards me; Mr. B.'s reconciliation to Mr. Williams; his introducing me to the good families in the neighbourhood, and avowing before them his honourable intentions. A visit from my honest father, who (not knowing what to conclude from my letter to him before I returned to your honoured brother, desiring my papers from him) came in great anxiety of heart to know the worst, doubting I had at last been caught by a stratagem, ending in my ruin. His joyful surprise to find how happy I was likely to be. All the hopes given me, answered by the private celebration of our nuptials—an honour so much above all that my utmost ambition could make me aspire to, and which I never can deserve! Your ladyship's arrival, and anger, not knowing I was actually married, but supposing me a vile wicked creature; in which case I should have deserved the worst of usage. Mr. B.'s angry lessons to me, for daring to interfere; though I thought in the tenderest and most dutiful manner, between your ladyship and himself. The most acceptable goodness and favour of your ladyship afterwards to me, of which, as becomes me, I shall ever retain the most grateful sense. My return to this sweet mansion in a manner so different from my quitting it, where I had been so happy for four years, in paying my duty to the best of mistresses, your ladyship's excellent mother, to whose goodness, in taking me from my poor honest parents, and giving me what education I have, I owe, under God, my happiness. The joy of good Mrs. Jervis, Mr. Longman, and all the servants, on this occasion. Mr. B.'s acquainting me with Miss Godfrey's affair, and presenting to me the pretty Miss Goodwin, at the dairy-house. Our appearance at church; the favour of the gentry in the neighbourhood, who, knowing your ladyship had not disdained to look upon me, and to be favourable to me, came the more readily into a neighbourly intimacy with me, and still so much the more readily, as the continued kindness of my dear benefactor, and his condescending deportment to me before them (as if I had been worthy of the honour done me), did credit to his own generous act.

These, my lady, down to my good parents setting out to this place, in order to be settled, by my honoured benefactor's bounty, in the Kentish farm, are the most material contents of my remaining papers: and though they might be the most agreeable to those for whom only they were written, yet, as they were principally matters of course, after what your ladyship has with you; as the joy of my fond heart can be better judged of by your ladyship than described by me; and as you are acquainted with all the particulars that can be worthy of any other person's notice but my dear parents: I am sure your ladyship will dispense with your commands; and I make it my humble request that you will.

For, Madam, you must needs think, that when my doubts were dispelled; when confident all my trials were over; when I had a prospect of being so abundantly rewarded for what I suffered: when every hour rose upon me with new delight, and fraught with fresh instances of generous kindness from such a dear gentleman, my master, my benefactor, the son of my honoured lady: your ladyship must needs think, I say, that I must be too much affected, my heart too much opened; and especially as it then (relieved from its past anxieties and fears, which had kept down and damped the latent flame) first discovered impressions of which before I hardly thought it susceptible.—So that it is scarce possible, that my joy and my prudence, if I were to be tried by such judges of delicacy and decorum as Lord and Lady Davers, the honoured countess, and Lady Betty, could be so intimately, so laudably coupled, as were to be wished: although the continued sense of my unworthiness, and the disgrace the dear gentleman would bring upon himself by his generous goodness to me, always went hand in hand with my joy and my prudence; and what these considerations took from the former, being added to the latter, kept me steadier and more equal to myself, than otherwise it was possible such a young creature as I could have been.

Wherefore my good lady, I hope I stand excused, and shall not bring upon myself the censure of being disobedient to your commands.

Besides, Madam, since you inform me that my good Lord Davers will attend you hither, I should never dare to look his lordship in the face, if all the emotions of my heart, on such affecting occasions, stood confessed to his lordship; and if I am ashamed they should to your ladyship, to the countess, and Lady Betty, whose goodness must induce you all three to think favourably, in such circumstances, of one who is of your own sex, how would it concern me, for the same to appear before such gentlemen as my lord and his nephew?—Indeed I could not look up to either of them in the sense of this.—And give me leave to hope, that some of the scenes, in the letters your ladyship had, were not read to gentlemen; your ladyship must needs know which I mean, and will think of my two grand trials of all. For though I was the innocent subject of wicked attempts, and so cannot, I hope, suffer in any one's opinion for what I could not help; yet, for your dear brother's sake, as well as for the decency of the matter, one would not, when having the honour to appear before my lord and his nephew, he looked upon, methinks, with that levity of eye and thought, which, perhaps, hard-hearted gentlemen may pass upon one, by reason of those very scenes, which would move pity and concern in a good lady's breast, for a poor creature so attempted.

So, my dear lady, be pleased to tell me, if the gentlemen have heard all—I hope not—and also to point out to me such parts of my conduct as deserve blame: indeed, I will try to make a good use of your censure, and am sure I shall be thankful for it; for it will make me hope to be more and more worthy of the honour I have, of being exalted into such a distinguished family, and the right the best of gentlemen has given me to style myself your ladyship's most humble, and most obliged servant,

P.B.