Pamela - Samuel Richardson (read aloud txt) 📗

conduct, would make it very wrong in us to mistrust it in this, or to offer to direct you in your choice. Rut, alas! my child, what can we do for you?—To partake our hard lot, and involve yourself into as hard a life, would not help us, but add to your afflictions. But it will be time enough to talk of these things, when we have the pleasure you now put us in hope of, of seeing you with us; which God grant. Amen, amen, say ‘Your most indulgent parents. Amen!’

‘Our humblest service and thanks to the worthy Mr. Williams. Again we say, God bless him for ever!

‘O what a deal we have to say to you! God give us a happy meeting! We understand the ‘squire is setting out for London. He is a fine gentleman, and has wit at will. I wish he was as good. But I hope he will now reform.’

 

O what inexpressible comfort, my dear father, has your letter given me!— You ask, What can you do for me?—What is it you cannot do for your child!—You can give her the advice she has so much wanted, and still wants, and will always want: You can confirm her in the paths of virtue, into which you first initiated her; and you can pray for her, with hearts so sincere and pure, that are not to be met with in palaces!—Oh! how I long to throw myself at your feet, and receive from your own lips the blessings of such good parents! But, alas! how are my prospects again overclouded, to what they were when I closed my last parcel!—More trials, more dangers, I fear, must your poor Pamela be engaged in: But through the Divine goodness, and your prayers, I hope, at last, to get well out of all my difficulties; and the rather, as they are not the effect of my own vanity or presumption!

But I will proceed with my hopeless story. I saw Mr. Williams was a little nettled at my impatience; and so I wrote to assure him I would be as easy as I could, and wholly directed by him; especially as my father, whose respects I mentioned, had assured me my master was setting out for London, which he must have somehow from his own family or he would not have written me word of it.

 

Saturday, Sunday.

Mr. Williams has been here both these days, as usual; but is very indifferently received still by Mrs. Jewkes; and, to avoid suspicion, I left them together, and went up to my closet, most of the time he was here. He and she, I found by her, had a quarrel: and she seems quite out of humour with him: but I thought it best not to say any thing: and he said, he would very little trouble the house till he had an answer to his letter from Mr. B–-. And she returned, The less, the better. Poor man! he has got but little by his openness, making Mrs. Jewkes his confidant, as she bragged, and would have had me to do likewise.

I am more and more satisfied there is mischief brewing; and shall begin to hide my papers, and be circumspect. She seems mighty impatient for an answer to her letter to my master.

 

Monday, Tuesday, the 25th and 26th days of my heavy restraint.

Still more and more strange things to write! A messenger is returned, and now all is out! O wretched, wretched Pamela! What, at last, will become of me!—Such strange turns and trials sure never poor creature, of my years, experienced. He brought two letters, one to Mrs. Jewkes, and one to me: but, as the greatest wits may be sometimes mistaken, they being folded and sealed alike, that for me was directed to Mrs. Jewkes; and that for her was directed to me. But both are stark naught, abominably bad! She brought me up that directed for me, and said, Here’s a letter for you: Long-looked-for is come at last. I will ask the messenger a few questions, and then I will read mine. So she went down, and I broke it open in my closet, and found it directed To MRS. PAMELA ANDREWS. But when I opened it, it began, Mrs. Jewkes. I was quite confounded; but, thought I, this may be a lucky mistake; I may discover something: And so I read on these horrid contents:

 

‘MRS. JEWKES,

‘What you write me, has given me no small disturbance. This wretched fool’s play-thing, no doubt, is ready to leap at any thing that offers, rather than express the least sense of gratitude for all the benefits she has received from my family, and which I was determined more and more to heap upon her. I reserve her for my future resentment; and I charge you double your diligence in watching her, to prevent her escape. I send this by an honest Swiss, who attended me in my travels; a man I can trust; and so let him be your assistant: for the artful creature is enough to corrupt a nation by her seeming innocence and simplicity; and she may have got a party, perhaps, among my servants with you, as she has here. Even John Arnold, whom I confided in, and favoured more than any, has proved an execrable villain; and shall meet his reward for it.

‘As to that college novice, Williams, I need not bid you take care he sees not this painted bauble: for I have ordered Mr. Shorter, my attorney, to throw him instantly into gaol, on an action of debt, for money he has had of me, which I had intended never to carry to account against him; for I know all his rascally practices, besides what you write me of his perfidious intrigue with that girl, and his acknowledged contrivances for her escape; when he knew not, for certain, that I designed her any mischief; and when, if he had been guided by a sense of piety, or compassion for injured innocence, as he pretends, he would have expostulated with me, as his function, and my friendship for him, might have allowed him. But to enter into a vile intrigue with the amiable gewgaw, to favour her escape in so base a manner, (to say nothing of his disgraceful practices against me, in Sir Simon Darnford’s family, of which Sir Simon himself has informed me), is a conduct that, instead of preferring the ungrateful wretch, as I had intended, shall pull down upon him utter ruin.

‘Monsieur Colbrand, my trusty Swiss, will obey you without reserve, if my other servants refuse.

‘As for her denying that she encouraged his declaration, I believe it not. It is certain the speaking picture, with all that pretended innocence and bashfulness, would have run away with him. Yes, she would run away with a fellow that she had been acquainted with (and that not intimately, if you were as careful as you ought to be) but a few days; at a time when she had the strongest assurances of my honour to her.

‘Well, I think, I now hate her perfectly: and though I will do nothing to her myself, yet I can bear, for the sake of my revenge, and my injured honour and slighted love, to see any thing, even what she most fears, be done to her; and then she may be turned loose to her evil destiny, and echo to the woods and groves her piteous lamentations for the loss of her fantastical innocence, which the romantic ideot makes such a work about. I shall go to London, with my sister Davers; and the moment I can disengage myself, which, perhaps, may be in three weeks from this time, I will be with you, and decide her fate, and put an end to your trouble. Mean time be doubly careful; for this innocent, as I have warned you, is full of contrivances. I am ‘Your friend.’

 

I had but just read this dreadful letter through, when Mrs. Jewkes came up in a great fright, guessing at the mistake, and that I had her letter, and she found me with it open in my hand, just sinking away. What business, said she, had you to read my letter? and snatched it from me. You see, said she, looking upon it, it says Mrs. Jewkes, at top: You ought, in manners, to have read no further. O add not, said I, to my afflictions! I shall be soon out of all your ways! This is too much! too much! I never can support this—and threw myself upon the couch, in my closet, and wept most bitterly. She read it in the next room, and came in again afterwards. Why, this, said she, is a sad letter indeed: I am sorry for it: But I feared you would carry your niceties too far!— Leave me, leave me, Mrs. Jewkes, said I, for a while: I cannot speak nor talk.—Poor heart! said she; Well, I’ll come up again presently, and hope to find you better. But here, take your own letter; I wish you well; but this is a sad mistake! And so she put down by me that which was intended for me: But I have no spirit to read it at present. O man! man! hard-hearted, cruel man! what mischiefs art thou not capable of, unrelenting persecutor as thou art!

I sat ruminating, when I had a little come to myself, upon the terms of this wicked letter; and had no inclination to look into my own. The bad names, fool’s play-thing, artful creature, painted bauble, gewgaw, speaking picture, are hard words for your poor Pamela! and I began to think whether I was not indeed a very naughty body, and had not done vile things: But when I thought of his having discovered poor John, and of Sir Simon’s base officiousness, in telling him of Mr. Williams, with what he had resolved against him in revenge for his goodness to me, I was quite dispirited; and yet still more about that fearful Colbrand, and what he could see done to me: for then I was ready to gasp for breath, and my heart quite failed me. Then how dreadful are the words, that he will decide my fate in three weeks! Gracious Heaven, said I, strike me dead, before that time, with a thunderbolt, or provide some way for my escaping these threatened mischiefs! God forgive me, if I sinned!

At last, I took up the letter directed for Mrs. Jewkes, but designed for me; and I find that little better than the other. These are the hard terms it contains:

 

‘Well have you done, perverse, forward, artful, yet foolish Pamela, to convince me, before it was too late, how ill I had done to place my affections on so unworthy an object: I had vowed honour and love to your unworthiness, believing you a mirror of bashful modesty and unspotted innocence; and that no perfidious designs lurked in so fair a bosom. But now I have found you out, you specious hypocrite! and I see, that though you could not repose the least confidence in one you had known for years, and who, under my good mother’s misplaced favour for you, had grown up in a manner with you; when my passion, in spite of my pride, and the difference of our condition, made me stoop to a meanness that now I despise myself for; yet you could enter into an intrigue with a man you never knew till within these few days past, and resolve to run away with a stranger, whom your fair face, and insinuating arts, had bewitched to break through all the ties of honour and gratitude to me, even at a time when the happiness of his future life depended upon my