Pamela by Samuel Richardson (classic romance novels .TXT) 📕

My dear lady, said I, you for ever oblige me!—I shall now believe myself quite happy. This was all I wanted to make me so!—And I hope I shall always, through my life, shew your ladyship, that I have the most grateful and respectful sense of your goodness.

But, child, said she, I shall not give you my company when you make your appearance. Let your own merit make all your Bedfordshire neighbours your friends, as it has done here, by your Lincolnshire ones; and you’ll have no need of my countenance, nor any body’s else.

Now, said her nephew, ‘tis my turn: I wish you joy with all my soul, madam; and, by what I have seen, and by what I have heard, ‘fore Gad, I think you have met with no more than you deserve; and so all the company says, where we have been: And pray forgive all my nonsense to you.

Sir, said I, I shall always, I hope, respect as I ought, so near a relation of my good Lord and Lady Davers; and I thank you for your kind compliment.

Gad, Beck, said he, I believe you’ve some forgiveness too to ask; for we were all to blame, to make madam, here, fly the pit, as she did. Little did we think we made her quit her own house.

Thou always, said my lady, sayest too much, or too little.

Mrs. Worden said, I have been treated with so much goodness and condescension since you went, that I have been beforehand, sir, in asking pardon myself.

So my lady sat down with me half an hour, and told me, that her brother had carried her a fine airing, and had quite charmed her with his kind treatment of her; and had much confirmed her in the good opinion she had begun to entertain of my discreet and obliging behaviour: But, continued she, when he would make me visit, without intending to stay, my old neighbours, (for, said she, Lady Jones being nearest, we visited her first; and she scraped all the rest of the company together,) they were all so full of your praises, that I was quite borne down; and, truly, it was Saul among the prophets!

You may believe how much I was delighted with this; and I spared not my due acknowledgments.

When her ladyship took leave, to go to bed, she said, Goodnight to you, heartily, and to your good man. I kissed you when I came in, out of form; but I now kiss you out of more than form, I’ll assure you.

Join with me, my dear parents, in my joy for this happy turn; the contrary of which I so much dreaded, and was the only difficulty I had to labour with. This poor Miss Sally Godfrey, I wonder what’s become of her, poor soul! I wish he would, of his own head, mention her again.— Not that I am very uneasy, neither.—You’ll say, I must be a little saucy, if I was.

My dear master gave me an account, when we went up, of the pains he had taken with his beloved sister, as he himself styled her; and of all the kind things the good families had said in my behalf; and that he observed she was not so much displeased with hearing them, as she was at first; when she would not permit any body to speak of me as his wife: And that my health, as his spouse, being put; when it came to her, she drank it; but said, Come, brother, here’s your Pamela to you: But I shall not know how to stand this affair, when the Countess–-, and the young ladies, come to visit me. One of these young ladies was the person she was so fond of promoting a match for, with her brother.—Lady Betty, I know, she said, will rally me smartly upon it; and you know, brother, she wants neither wit nor satire. He said, I hope, Lady Betty, whenever she marries, will meet with a better husband than I should have made her; for, in my conscience, I think I should hardly have made a tolerable one to any but Pamela.

He told me that they rallied him on the stateliness of his temper; and said, They saw he would make an exceeding good husband where he was; but it must be owing to my meekness, more than to his complaisance; for, said Miss Darnford, I could see well enough, when your ladyship detained her, though he had but hinted his desire of finding her at our house, he was so out of humour at her supposed noncompliance, that mine and my sister’s pity for her was much more engaged, than our envy.

Ay, said my lady, he is too lordly a creature, by much; and can’t bear disappointment, nor ever could.

Said he, Well, Lady Davers, you should not, of all persons, find fault with me; for I bore a great deal from you, before I was at all angry.

Yes, replied she: but when I had gone a little too far, as I own I did, you made me pay for it severely enough! You know you did, sauce-box. And the poor thing too, added she, that I took with me for my advocate, so low had he brought me! he treated her in such a manner as made my heart ache for her: But part was art, I know, to make me think the better of her.

Indeed, sister, said he, there was very little of that; for, at that time, I cared not what you thought, nor had complaisance enough to have given a shilling for your good or bad opinion of her or me. And, I own, I was displeased to be broken in upon, after your provocations, by either of you and she must learn that lesson, never to come near me, when I am in those humours; which shall be as little as possible: For, after a while, if let alone, I always come to myself, and am sorry for the violence of a temper, so like my dear sister’s here: And, for this reason think it is no matter how few witnesses I have of its intemperance, while it lasts; especially since every witness, whether they merit it or not, as you see in my Pamela’s case, must be a sufferer by it, if, unsent for, they come in my way.

He repeated the same lesson to me again, and enforced it and owned, that he was angry with me in earnest, just then; though more with himself, afterwards, for being so: But when, Pamela, said he, you wanted to transfer all my displeasure upon yourself, it was so much braving me with your merit, as if I must soon end my anger, if placed there; or it was making it so light to you, that I was truly displeased: for, continued he, I cannot bear that you should wish, on any occasion whatever, to have me angry with you, or not to value my displeasure as the heaviest misfortune that could befall you.

But, sir, said I, you know, that what I did was to try to reconcile my lady; and, as she herself observed, it was paying her a high regard. It was so, replied he; but never think of making a compliment to her, or any body living, at my expense. Besides, she had behaved herself so intolerably, that I began to think you had stooped too much, and more than I ought to permit my wife to do; and acts of meanness are what I can’t endure in any body, but especially where I love: and as she had been guilty of a very signal one, I had much rather have renounced her at that time, than have been reconciled to her.

Sir, said I, I hope I shall always comport myself so, as not wilfully to disoblige you for the future; and the rather do I hope this, as I am sure I shall want only to know your pleasure to obey it. But this instance shews me, that I may much offend, without designing it in the least.

Now, Pamela, replied he, don’t be too serious: I hope I shan’t be a very tyrannical husband to you: Yet do I not pretend to be perfect, or to be always governed by reason in my first transports; and I expect, from your affection, that you will bear with me when you find me wrong. I have no ungrateful spirit, and can, when cool, enter as impartially into myself as most men; and then I am always kind and acknowledging, in proportion as I have been out of the way.

But to convince you, my dear, continued he, of your fault, (I mean, with regard to the impetuosity of my temper; for there was no fault in your intention, that I acknowledge,) I’ll observe only, that you met, when you came to me, while I was so out of humour, a reception you did not expect, and a harsh word or two that you did not deserve. Now, had you not broken in upon me while my anger lasted, but staid till I had come to you, or sent to desire your company, you’d have seen none of this; but that affectionate behaviour, which I doubt not you’ll always merit, and I shall always take pleasure in expressing: and in this temper shall you always find a proper influence over me: But you must not suppose, whenever I am out of humour, that, in opposing yourself to my passion, you oppose a proper butt to it; but when you are so good, like the slender reed, to bend to the hurricane, rather than, like the sturdy oak, to resist it, you will always stand firm in my kind opinion, while a contrary conduct would uproot you, with all your excellencies, from my soul.

Sir, said I, I will endeavour to conform myself, in all things, to your will. I make no doubt but you will: and I’ll endeavour to make my will as conformable to reason as I can. And let me tell you, that this belief of you is one of the inducements I have had to marry at all: for nobody was more averse to this state than myself; and, now we are upon this subject, I’ll tell you why I was so averse.

We people of fortune, or such as are born to large expectations, of both sexes, are generally educated wrong. You have occasionally touched upon this, Pamela, several times in your journal, so justly, that I need say the less to you. We are usually so headstrong, so violent in our wills, that we very little bear control.

Humoured by our nurses, through the faults of our parents, we practise first upon them; and shew the gratitude of our dispositions, in an insolence that ought rather to be checked and restrained, than encouraged.

Next, we are to be indulged in every thing at school; and our masters and mistresses are rewarded with further grateful instances of our boisterous behaviour.

But, in our wise parents’ eyes, all looks well, all is forgiven and excused; and for no other reason, but because we are theirs.

Our next progression is, we exercise our spirits, when brought home, to the torment and regret of our parents themselves, and torture their hearts by our undutiful and perverse behaviour to them, which, however ungrateful in us, is but the natural consequence of their culpable indulgence to us, from infancy upwards.

And then, next, after we have, perhaps, half broken their hearts, a wife