Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
happiness! I will now defy the saucy, busy censurers of the world; and
bid them know your excellence, and my happiness, before they, with
unhallowed lips, presume to judge of my actions, and your merit!—And
let me tell you, my Pamela, that I can add my hopes of a still more
pleasing amusement, and what your bashful modesty would not permit you
to hint; and which I will no otherwise touch upon, lest it should seem,
to your nicety, to detract from the present purity of my good
intentions, than to say, I hope to have superadded to all these, such
an employment, as will give me a view of perpetuating my happy
prospects, and my family at the same time; of which I am almost the
only male.
I blushed, I believe; yet could not be displeased at the decent and
charming manner with which he insinuated this distant hope: And oh!
judge for me, how my heart was affected with all these things!
He was pleased to add another charming reflection, which shewed me the
noble sincerity of his kind professions. I do own to you, my Pamela,
said he, that I love you with a purer flame than ever I knew in my
whole life; a flame to which I was a stranger; and which commenced for
you in the garden; though you, unkindly, by your unseasonable doubts,
nipped the opening bud, while it was too tender to bear the cold blasts
of slight or negligence. And I know more sincere joy and satisfaction
in this sweet hour’s conversation with you, than all the guilty tumults
of my former passion ever did, or (had even my attempts succeeded) ever
could have afforded me.
O, sir, said I, expect not words from your poor servant, equal to these
most generous professions. Both the means, and the will, I now see, are
given to you, to lay me under an everlasting obligation. How happy
shall I be, if, though I cannot be worthy of all this goodness and
condescension, I can prove myself not entirely unworthy of it! But I
can only answer for a grateful heart; and if ever I give you cause,
wilfully, (and you will generously allow for involuntary
imperfections,) to be disgusted with me, may I be an outcast from your
house and favour, and as much repudiated, as if the law had divorced me
from you!
But sir, continued I, though I was so unseasonable as I was in the
garden, you would, I flatter myself, had you then heard me, have
pardoned my imprudence, and owned I had some cause to fear, and to wish
to be with my poor father and mother: and this I the rather say, that
you should not think me capable of returning insolence for your
goodness; or appearing foolishly ungrateful to you, when you was so
kind to me.
Indeed, Pamela, said he, you gave me great uneasiness; for I love you
too well not to be jealous of the least appearance of your indifference
to me, or preference to any other person, not excepting your parents
themselves. This made me resolve not to hear you; for I had not got
over my reluctance to marriage; and a little weight, you know, turns
the scale, when it hangs in an equal balance. But yet, you see, that
though I could part with you, while my anger held, yet the regard I had
then newly professed for your virtue, made me resolve not to offer to
violate it; and you have seen likewise, that the painful struggle I
underwent when I began to reflect, and to read your moving journal,
between my desire to recall you, and my doubt whether you would return,
(though yet I resolved not to force you to it,) had like to have cost
me a severe illness: but your kind and cheerful return has dispelled
all my fears, and given me hope, that I am not indifferent to you; and
you see how your presence has chased away my illness.
I bless God for it, said I; but since you are so good as to encourage
me, and will not despise my weakness, I will acknowledge, that I
suffered more than I could have imagined, till I experienced it, in
being banished your presence in so much anger; and the more still was I
affected, when you answered the wicked Mrs. Jewkes so generously in my
favour, at my leaving your house. For this, sir, awakened all my
reverence for you; and you saw I could not forbear, not knowing what I
did, to break boldly in upon you, and acknowledge your goodness on my
knees. ’Tis true, my dear Pamela, said he, we have sufficiently
tortured one another; and the only comfort that can result from it,
will be, reflecting upon the matter coolly and with pleasure, when all
these storms are overblown, (as I hope they now are,) and we sit
together secured in each other’s good opinion, recounting the uncommon
gradations by which we have ascended to the summit of that felicity,
which I hope we shall shortly arrive at.
Meantime, said the good gentleman, let me hear what my dear girl would
have said in her justification, could I have trusted myself with her,
as to her fears, and the reason of her wishing herself from me, at a
time that I had begun to shew my fondness for her, in a manner that I
thought would have been agreeable to her and virtue.
I pulled out of my pocket the gipsy letter; but I said, before I shewed
it to him, I have this letter, sir, to shew you, as what, I believe,
you will allow must have given me the greatest disturbance: but, first,
as I know not who is the writer, and it seems to be in a disguised
hand, I would beg it as a favour, that, if you guess who it is, which I
cannot, it may not turn to their prejudice, because it was written,
very probably, with no other view, than to serve me.
He took it, and read it. And it being signed Somebody, he said, Yes,
this is indeed from Somebody; and, disguised as the hand is, I know the
writer: Don’t you see, by the setness of some of these letters, and a
little secretary cut here and there, especially in that c, and that r,
that it is the hand of a person bred in the law-way? Why, Pamela, said
he, ’tis old Longman’s hand: an officious rascal as he is!—But I have
done with him. O sir, said I, it would be too insolent in me to offer
(so much am I myself overwhelmed with your goodness,) to defend any
body that you are angry with: Yet, sir, so far as they have incurred
your displeasure for my sake, and for no other want of duty or respect,
I could wish—But I dare not say more.
But, said he, as to the letter and the information it contains: Let me
know, Pamela, when you received this? On the Friday, sir, said I, that
you were gone to the wedding at Stamford.—How could it be conveyed to
you, said he, unknown to Mrs. Jewkes, when I gave her such a strict
charge to attend you, and you had promised me, that you would not throw
yourself in the way of such intelligence? For, said he, when I went to
Stamford, I knew, from a private intimation given me, that there would
be an attempt made to see you, or give you a letter, by somebody, if
not to get you away; but was not certain from what quarter, whether
from my sister Davers, Mrs. Jervis, Mr. Longman, or John Arnold, or
your father; and as I was then but struggling with myself, whether to
give way to my honourable inclinations, or to free you, and let you go
to your father, that I might avoid the danger I found myself in of the
former; (for I had absolutely resolved never to wound again even your
ears with any proposals of a contrary nature;) that was the reason I
desired you to permit Mrs. Jewkes to be so much on her guard till I
came back, when I thought I should have decided this disputed point
within myself, between my pride and my inclinations.
This, good sir, said I, accounts well to me for your conduct in that
case, and for what you said to me and Mrs. Jewkes on that occasion: And
I see more and more how much I may depend upon your honour and goodness
to me.—But I will tell you all the truth. And then I recounted to him
the whole affair of the gipsy, and how the letter was put among the
loose grass, etc. And he said, The man who thinks a thousand dragons
sufficient to watch a woman, when her inclination takes a contrary
bent, will find all too little; and she will engage the stones in the
street, or the grass in the field, to act for her, and help on her
correspondence. If the mind, said he, be not engaged, I see there is
hardly any confinement sufficient for the body; and you have told me a
very pretty story; and, as you never gave me any reason to question
your veracity, even in your severest trials, I make no doubt of the
truth of what you have now mentioned: and I will, in my turn, give you
such a proof of mine, that you shall find it carry a conviction with
it.
You must know, then, my Pamela, that I had actually formed such a
project, so well informed was this old rascally Somebody! and the time
was fixed for the very person described in this letter to be here; and
I had thought he should have read some part of the ceremony (as little
as was possible, to deceive you) in my chamber; and so I hoped to have
you mine upon terms that then would have been much more agreeable to me
than real matrimony. And I did not in haste intend you the
mortification of being undeceived; so that we might have lived for
years, perhaps, very lovingly together; and I had, at the same time,
been at liberty to confirm or abrogate it as I pleased.
O sir, said I, I am out of breath with the thoughts of my danger! But
what good angel prevented the execution of this deep-laid design?
Why, your good angel, Pamela, said he; for when I began to consider,
that it would have made you miserable, and me not happy; that if you
should have a dear little one, it would be out of my own power to
legitimate it, if I should wish it to inherit my estate; and that, as I
am almost the last of my family, and most of what I possess must
descend to a strange line, and disagreeable and unworthy persons;
notwithstanding that I might, in this case, have issue of my own body;
when I further considered your untainted virtue, what dangers and
trials you had undergone by my means, and what a world of troubles I
had involved you in, only because you were beautiful and virtuous,
which had excited all my passion for you; and reflected also upon your
tried prudence and truth! I, though I doubted not effecting this my
last plot, resolved to overcome myself; and, however I might suffer in
struggling with my affection for you, to part with you, rather than to
betray you under so black a veil. Besides, said he, I remember how much
I had exclaimed against and censured an action of this kind, that had
been attributed to one of the first men of the law, and of the kingdom,
as he afterwards became; and that it was but treading in a path that
another had marked out for me; and, as I was assured, with no great
satisfaction to himself, when he came to reflect; my foolish pride was
a little piqued with this, because I loved to be, if I went out of the
way, my own original, as I may call it. On all these considerations it
was, that I rejected this project, and sent word to the person, that I
had better considered of the matter, and would not have him come, till
he heard further from me: And, in this suspense I suppose, some of your
confederates, Pamela, (for we have been a couple of plotters, though
your virtue and merit have procured you faithful friends and partisans,
which my money and promises could hardly do,) one way or other got
knowledge of it, and gave you this notice; but, perhaps, it would have
come too late, had not your white angel got the better of my black one,
and inspired me with resolutions to abandon the project, just as it was
to have been put into execution. But yet I own, that, from these
appearances, you were but too well justified in your fears, on this odd
way of coming at this intelligence; and I have only one thing to blame
you for, that though I was resolved not to hear you in your own
defence, yet, as you have so ready a talent at your pen, you might have