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.BELFORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.MONDAY NIGHT, JULY 17.On my return to Rowland's, I found that the apothecary was just gone up.Mrs.Rowland being above with him, I made the less scruple to go up too, as it was probable, that to ask for leave would be to ask to be denied; hoping also, that the letters had with me would be a good excuse.She was sitting on the side of the broken couch, extremely weak and low; and, I observed, cared not to speak to the man: and no wonder; for I never saw a more shocking fellow, of a profession tolerably genteel, nor heard a more illiterate one prate--physician in ordinary to this house, and others like it, I suppose! He put me in mind of Otway's apothecary in his Caius Marius; as borrowed from the immortal Shakspeare:Meagre and very rueful were his looks: Sharp misery had worn him to the bones.------------ Famine in his cheeks: Need and oppression staring in his eyes: Contempt and beggary hanging on his back: The world no friend of his, nor the world's law.As I am in black, he took me, at my entrance, I believe, to be a doctor; and slunk behind me with his hat upon his two thumbs, and looked as if he expected the oracle to open, and give him orders.The lady looked displeased, as well at me as at Rowland, who followed me, and at the apothecary.It was not, she said, the least of her present misfortunes, that she could not be left to her own sex; and to her option to see whom she pleased.I besought her excuse; and winking for the apothecary to withdraw, [which he did,] told her, that I had been at her new lodgings, to order every thing to be got ready for reception, presuming she would choose to go thither: that I had a chair at the door: that Mr.Smith and his wife [I named their names, that she should not have room for the least fear of Sinclair's] had been full of apprehensions for her safety: that I had brought two letters, which were left there fore her; the one by the post, the other that very morning.This took her attention.She held out her charming hand for them; took them, and, pressing them to her lips--From the only friend I have in the world! said she; kissing them again; and looking at the seals, as if to see whether they had been opened.I can't read them, said she, my eyes are too dim; and put them into her bosom.I besought her to think of quitting that wretched hole.Whither could she go, she asked, to be safe and uninterrupted for the short remainder of her life; and to avoid being again visited by the creatures who had insulted her before?I gave her the solemnest assurances that she should not be invaded in her new lodgings by any body; and said that I would particularly engage my honour, that the person who had most offended her should not come near her, without her own consent.Your honour, Sir! Are you not that man's friend!I am not a friend, Madam, to his vile actions to the most excellent of women.Do you flatter me, Sir? then you are a MAN.--But Oh, Sir, your friend, holding her face forward with great earnestness, your barbarous friend, what has he not to answer for!There she stopt: her heart full; and putting her hand over her eyes and forehead, the tears tricked through her fingers: resenting thy barbarity, it seemed, as Caesar did the stab from his distinguished Brutus!Though she was so very much disordered, I thought I would not lose this opportunity to assert your innocence of this villanous arrest.There is no defending the unhappy man in any of his vile actions by you, Madam; but of this last outrage, by all that's good and sacred, he is innocent.O wretches; what a sex is your's!--Have you all one dialect? good and sacred!--If, Sir, you can find an oath, or a vow, or an adjuration, that my ears have not been twenty times a day wounded with, then speak it, and I may again believe a MAN.I was excessively touched at these words, knowing thy baseness, and the reason she had for them.But say you, Sir, for I would not, methinks, have the wretch capable of this sordid baseness!--Say you, that he is innocent of this last wickedness? can you truly say that he is?By the great God of Heaven!----Nay, Sir, if you swear, I must doubt you!--If you yourself think your WORD insufficient, what reliance can I have on your OATH!--O that this my experience had not cost me so dear! but were I to love a thousand years, I would always suspect the veracity of a swearer.Excuse me, Sir; but is it likely, that he who makes so free with his GOD, will scruple any thing that may serve his turn with his fellow creature?This was a most affecting reprimand!Madam, said I, I have a regard, a regard a gentleman ought to have, to my word; and whenever I forfeit it to you----Nay, Sir, don't be angry with me.It is grievous to me to question a gentleman's veracity.But your friend calls himself a gentleman--you know not what I have suffered by a gentleman!----And then again she wept.I would give you, Madam, demonstration, if your grief and your weakness would permit it, that he has no hand in this barbarous baseness: and that he resents it as it ought to be resented.Well, well, Sir, [with quickness,] he will have his account to make up somewhere else; not to me.I should not be sorry to find him able to acquit his intention on this occasion.Let him know, Sir, only one thing, that when you heard me in the bitterness of my spirit, most vehemently exclaim against the undeserved usage I have met with from him, that even then, in that passionate moment, I was able to say [and never did I see such an earnest and affecting exultation of hands and eyes,] 'Give him, good God! repentance and amendment; that I may be the last poor creature, who shall be ruined by him!--and, in thine own good time, receive to thy mercy the poor wretch who had none on me!--'By my soul, I could not speak.--She had not her Bible before her for nothing.I was forced to turn my head away, and to take out my handkerchief.What an angel is this!--Even the gaoler, and his wife and maid, wept.Again I wish thou hadst been there, that thou mightest have sunk down at her feet, and begun that moment to reap the effect of her generous wishes for thee; undeserving, as thou art, of any thing but perdition.I represented to her that she would be less free where she was from visits she liked not, than at her own lodgings.I told her, that it would probably bring her, in particular, one visiter, who, otherwise I would engage, [but I durst not swear again, after the severe reprimand she had just given me,] should not come near her, without her consent.And I expressed my surprize, that she should be unwilling to quit such a place as this; when it was more than probable that some of her friends, when it was known how bad she was, would visit her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]