Pamela

by Samuel Richardson

  ‘Worden,’ repeated my lady, ‘You see the creature is in his bed.’ ‘I do, madam,’ answered she.

  My master came to me, and uncovering my head, (for I had hid my face under the pillow) said, ‘Ay, look, Worden, and bear witness: here is my Pamela! My dear angel,’ speaking to me, ‘my lovely creature, fear not: look up, and see how frantically this woman of quality behaves.’

  At that instant I turned my face, and saw my furious lady: who, unable to bear this, was coming to me. ‘Wicked, abandoned wretch! vile brother! to brave me thus! I’ll tear the creature out of bed before your face, and, when I leave this house, will expose you both as you deserve.’

  He took her in his arms, as if she had been nothing; and carrying her out of the room, she cried out, ‘Worden, Worden! help me, Worden! the wretch is going to fling me down stairs.’ Her woman ran to him, and said, ‘Good sir, for Heaven’s sake, offer no violence to my lady! her ladyship has been ill all night.’

  He set her down in her own chamber, and she could not speak for passion. ‘Take care of your lady,’ said he to Mrs Worden; ‘and when she has rendered herself more worthy of my attention, I’ll see her: ’till then, at her peril, let her not come near my apartment.’

  He then returned to me; and with words sweetly soothing, pacified my fears: and gave me leave to retire to write in my closet, and to stay there till my lady was more calm; and retiring, permitted me, at my desire, to fasten the door after him.

  At breakfast-time my master tapped at the chamber-door; and answering to my question, ‘Who is there?’ I opened it with pleasure. I had written on a good deal; but I put it by when I ran to the chamber-door. I would have locked it again, when he was in; but he said, ‘Am not I here? Don’t be afraid.’ He asked, If I chose to come down to breakfast? ‘O no, dear sir,’ said I; ‘be pleased to excuse me.’ ‘I cannot bear,’ said he, ‘that the mistress of my house should breakfast in her closet, as if she durst not come down, and I at home!’ ‘O sir,’ replied I, ‘pray pass that over for my sake, and don’t let me by my presence enrage your sister.’ ‘Then, my dear,’ said he, ‘I will breakfast with you here.’ ‘I beseech you, dear sir,’ answered I, ‘to breakfast with your sister.’ ‘That,’ replied he, ‘will too much gratify her pride, and look like a slight to you.’ ‘Your goodness is too great for me to want such a proof of it. Pray oblige her ladyship: she is your guest. Surely, sir, you need not stand upon punctilio with your happy wife.’

  ‘She is a strange woman,’ said he: ‘I pity her. She threw herself into a violent fit of the cholic.’ ‘I hope, sir,’ said I, ‘when you carried her ladyship out, you did not hurt her.’ ‘No,’ replied he, ‘I love her too well. I set her down in her own apartment; and she but now being a little easier, desires to see me, and that I will breakfast with her, or refuses to touch any thing. But, if my Pamela pleases, I will make your presence a condition.’

  ‘O no, no, dear sir,’ said I, ‘pray don’t. I will not scruple on my knees, to beg her ladyship’s favour to me, now I am in your presence, if you permit me to do it. And, dear sir, if my deepest humility will gratify her, allow me to shew it.’

  ‘You shall do nothing,’ returned he, ‘unbecoming the character of my wife, to please the proud woman. But I will, however, permit you to breakfast by yourself this once, as I have not seen her since I have used her in what she calls so barbarous a manner.’ He saluted me, and withdrew, and I again locked the door after him.

  Mrs Jewkes soon after tapped at the door. When I knew who it was, I opened it. ‘It is a sad thing,’ said she, ‘that you should be so much afraid in your own house.’ She brought me some chocolate and toast; and I asked her about my lady’s behaviour. She said, her ladyship would not suffer any body to attend but her woman, because she would not be heard in what she had to say; but she believed, she said, her master was very angry with the young lord, as Mrs Jewkes called her kinsman; for, as she passed by the door, she heard him say, in a high tone, ‘I hope, sir, you did not forget yourself’; or words to that effect.

  About one o’clock, my master came up again; and he said, ‘Will you come down to dinner, Pamela, when I send for you?’ ‘Whatever you command, sir, I must do: but my lady won’t desire to see me.’ ‘No matter, whether she will or no; I will not suffer her to prescribe to my wife in your own house. I will, by my tenderness to you, mortify her pride; and it cannot be done so well as to her face.’

  ‘Dearest sir, pray indulge me, and let me dine here by myself. Your tenderness to me will make my lady but more inveterate.’ ‘I have told her,’ said he, ‘that we are married. She is out of all patience about it, and yet pretends not to believe it. Then I told her she should have it her own way, and that, perhaps I am not. And what, I asked her, had she to do with it either way? She has scolded and prayed, blessed and cursed me, by turns, twenty times in these few hours. And I have sometimes soothed her, sometimes stormed at her. At last I left her, and took a turn in the garden for an hour, to compose myself, because you should not see how the foolish woman had ruffled me; and just now, to avoid her, I came into the house, seeing her coming to me in the garden.’

  Just as he had said so, ‘Oh! my lady! my lady!’ cried I, for I heard her voice in the chamber, saying, ‘Brother, brother, one word with you’; stopping in sight of the closet where I was. He stepped out, and she went to the window that looks towards the garden, and said, ‘Mean fool that I am, to follow you up and down the house in this manner, though I am shunned and avoided by you! You a brother! You a barbarian ! Is it possible we could be born of one mother?’

  ‘Why, madam,’ said he, ‘do you charge me with a behaviour you compel me by your violence to shew you? Is it not surprising that you should take the liberty with me, that the mother you have named, never gave you an example for, to any of her relations? Was it not sufficient, that I was insolently taken to task by you in your letters, but I must be insulted in my own house? My retirements invaded? And the person, justly more dear to me than every other, must be singled out for an object of your passionate excesses?’

  ‘Ay,’ said she, ‘that one person is the thing! But though I came up with a resolution to be temperate, and to expostulate with you on your avoiding me so brutally, yet cannot I have patience to look upon the bed in which I was born, as the guilty scene of your wickedness with such a–’

  ‘Hush!’ said he, ‘I charge you, call not the dear creature by any name unworthy of her. You know not, as I told you, her excellence; and I desire you will not repeat the freedoms you have taken below.’

  She stamped with her foot, and said, ‘God give me patience! So much contempt to a sister; and so much tenderness to a vile–’

  He put his hand before her mouth. ‘Be silent,’ said he, ‘once more, I charge you. You know not the merit of the dear creature you abuse so freely! I ought not, neither will I bear it.’

  She sat down and fanned herself, and burst into tears, intermingled with such sobs of passion, as concerned me to hear; and I trembled as I sat.

  He walked about the room in great emotion, and at last said, ‘Let me ask you, Lady Davers, why am I to be thus insolently called to account by you? Am I not independent? Am I not of age? Am I not at liberty to please myself? Would to Heaven that instead of a woman, and my sister, any man breathing had dared, whatever were his relation, to give himself the airs you have done! Why did you not send on this errand your lord, who could write me such a letter as no gentleman should write, nor any gentleman tamely receive? He should have seen the difference.’

  ‘We all know,’ said she, ‘that since your Italian duel, you have commenced a bravo;320 and all your airs breathe as strongly of the manslayer, as of the libertine.’

  ‘This,’ said he, ‘I will bear; for I have no reason to be ashamed of the cause of that duel, since it was to save an innocent friend, and because your reflection is levelled at myself only. But suffer not your tongue to take too great a liberty with my Pamela.’

  In a violent burst of passion, �
�If I bear this,’ said she, ‘I may bear any thing! O the little strumpet.’

  He interrupted her then, and said wrathfully, ‘Begone, rageful woman! Leave my house this instant! I renounce you, and all relation to you; and never more let me see your face, or call me brother.’

  And he took her by the hand to lead her out.

  She laid hold of the curtains of the window, and said, ‘I will not go! You shall not force me from you thus ignominiously in the sight and hearing of the wench! Nor give her a triumph in your barbarous treatment of me.’

  Not considering any thing, I ran out of the closet, and threw myself at my master’s feet, as he held her hand, in order to lead her out. ‘Dearest sir,’ said I, ‘let me beg that no act of unkindness pass between a brother and sister, so justly dear to each other. Dear, dear madam,’ on my knees, clasping her, ‘I beg your ladyship to receive me to your grace and favour, and you shall find me incapable of any triumph but in your ladyship’s goodness to me.’

  ‘Creature,’ said she, ‘art thou to beg for me! Is it to thee I am to owe the favour, that I am not cast headlong from a brother’s presence! Begone to thy corner, wench! Begone, I say, lest I trample thee under my foot, and thy paramour kill me for it.’

  ‘Rise, my. Pamela,’ said my master; ‘rise, dear life of my life, and expose not your worthiness to the ungrateful scorn of so violent a spirit.’

  And, saying this, he led me back to my closet; and there I sat and wept.

  Her woman came up just as my master was returning to her lady; and very humbly said, ‘Excuse my intrusion, good sir! I hope I may come to my lady?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Worden,’ answered he, ‘you come in, and pray take your lady down stairs with you, lest I should forget what belongs either to my sister or to myself.’

  Seeing her ladyship so outrageous with her brother, I began to think what a happy escape I had had the day before; hardly as I had then thought myself treated by her.

  Her woman begged her ladyship to walk down; and she said, ‘Worden, seest thou that bed? That is the bed in which I was born; and yet that was the bed, thou sawest, as. well as I, the wicked Pamela in, this morning, and this brother of mine just risen from her!’

  ‘True,’ said he; ‘you both saw it; and it is my pride, that you could see it. It is my bridal-bed, and it is intolerable, that the happiness I knew before you came hither, should be interrupted by so violent a woman.’

  ‘swear to me but, thou bold wretch,’ said she, ‘swear to me that Pamela Andrews is really and truly thy lawful wife, without deceit, without double-meaning; and I know what I have to say.’

  ‘I will humour you for once,’ said he; and then swore a solemn oath, that I was.

  ‘I cannot yet believe you,’ said she, ‘because in this particular, I had rather have called you knave than fool.’

  ‘Provoke me not too much,’ said he; ‘for if I should as much forget myself as you have done, you would have no more of a brother in me, than I have of a sister in you.’

  ‘Who married you?’ said she; ‘tell me that: was it not a broken attorney in a parson’s habit? Tell me truly! Tell me in the wench’s hearing. When she is undeceived, she will know how to behave herself.’

  Thank God! thought I, it is not so.

  ‘No,’ said he, ‘and I will tell you, that I bless God, for enabling me to abhor that project, before it was brought to bear; and Mr Williams married us.’

  ‘Nay then,’ said she. ‘But answer me another question or two: Who gave her away?’

  ‘Mr Peters,’ said he.

  ‘Where was the ceremony performed? ’

  ‘In my own little chapel, which was put in order on purpose.’

  ‘Now,’ said she, ‘I begin to fear there is something in it: but who was present?’

  ‘What a fool do I look like,’ said he, ‘to suffer myself to be thus interrogated by an insolent sister! But, if you must know, Mrs Jewkes was present.’

  ‘O the procuress!’ said she: ‘but nobody else? ’

  ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘my whole heart and soul! ’

  ‘Wretch!’ said she; ‘and what would thy father and mother have said, had they lived to this day? ’

  ‘Their consents,’ replied he, ‘I should have thought it my duty to ask, but not your’s, madam.’

  ‘Suppose,’ said she, ‘I had married my father’s groom! what would you have said to that? ’

  ‘I could not have behaved worse,’ replied he, ‘than you have done.’

  ‘And would you not have thought,’ said she, ‘I had deserved the worst behaviour?’

  ‘Does your pride, Lady Davers, let you see no difference in the case you put?’

  ‘None at all,’ said she. ‘Where can the difference be between a beggar’s son married by a lady, or a beggar’s daughter made a gentleman’s wife?’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you,’ replied he; ‘the difference is, a man ennobles the woman he takes, be she who she will; and adopts her into his own rank, be it what it will: but a woman, though ever so nobly born, debases herself by a mean marriage, and descends from her own rank, to that of him she stoops to marry. When the royal family of Stuart allied itself into the low family of Hyde, (comparatively low, I mean) did any body scruple to call the lady Royal Highness, and Duchess of York?321 And did any body think her daughters, the late Queen Mary and Queen Anne, less royal for the inequality between the father and mother? When the broken-fortuned peer goes into the city to marry a rich tradesman’s daughter, be he duke or earl, does not his consort immediately become ennobled by his choice? And who scruples to call her duchess or countess?

  ‘And let me ask you, madam, has not your marriage with Lord Davers, though the family you sprung from is as ancient, and (title excepted) as honourable as that you are ingrafted into, made you a lady and a peeress of Great-Britain, who otherwise would have been stiled but a spinster?

  ‘Now, Lady Davers, do you not see a difference between my marrying my mother’s deserving waiting-maid, with such graces of mind and person as would adorn any rank; and your marrying a sordid groom, whose constant train of education, conversation, and opportunities, could possibly give him no other merit, than that which must proceed from the vilest, lowest taste, in his sordid dignifier?’

  ‘What palliations, wretch!’ said she, ‘dost thou seek to find for thy meanness!’

  ‘Again, let me observe to you, Lady Davers, that when a duke lifts a private person into his own rank, he is still her head, by virtue of being her husband: but, when a lady descends to marry a groom, is not that groom her head? Does not that difference strike you? and what lady of quality ought to respect another, who has set a groom above her? If she did, would she not thereby put that groom upon a par with herself? Call this palliation, or what you will; but if you see not the difference, you are a very unfit judge for yourself, much more unfit to be censurer of me. ’

  ‘I would have you,’ said she, ‘publish your fine reasons to the world. If any young gentleman should be influenced by them, to cast himself away on the servant-wenches in his family, you will have his folly to keep yours in countenance.’

  ‘If any young gentleman,’ replied my master, ‘stays till he finds such a woman as my Pamela, enriched with the beauties of person and mind, so well accomplished, and so fitted to adorn the degree to which she is raised, he will be as easily acquitted as I shall be to all the world that sees her, except there be many more Lady Davers’s than I apprehend there can be.’

  ‘And so,’ returned she, ‘you say, you are actually and really married, honestly, or rather foolishly, married to this wench?’

  ‘I am indeed,’ said he, ‘if you presume to call her so! And why should I not, if I please? Who is there that has aright to censure me? Whom have I hurt by it? Have I not an estate, free and independent? Am I likely to be beholden to you or to any of my relations? And why, when I have a sufficiency in my own power, should I scruple to make a woman happy, who has, besides beauty, virtue, and prudence, more generos
ity than any lady I ever conversed with? Yes, Lady Davers, she has all these naturally: they are horn with her; and a few years education, with her genius, has done more for her, than a whole long life has done for others.’

  ‘No more, no more, I beseech you,’ said she; ‘thou surfeitest me, honest man! with thy weak folly. Thou art worse than an idolater; thou hast made a graven image, and thou fallest down and worshippest the works of thine own hands; and, Jeroboam like, thou wouldst have every body bow down before thy calf!’322

  ‘Whenever your passion, Lady Davers, suffers you to descend to witticism, it is about to subside. But, let me tell you, though I myself worship this sweet creature, I want nobody else to do it; and should be glad you had not intruded upon me, to interrupt me in the course of our mutual happiness.’

  ‘Well said, well said, my kind, my well-mannered brother! I shall, after this, very little interrupt your happiness, I assure you. I thought you a gentleman once, and prided myself in my brother, but I will say now, in the words of the burial-service, Ashes to ashes and dirt to dirt!’

  ‘Ay,’ said he, ‘Lady Davers, and there we must all end at last; you with your pride, and I with my plentiful fortune, must so end; and then where will be your distinction? Let me tell you, that except you and I both mend our lives, though you may have in some things less to answer for than I, this amiable creature, whom your vanity and folly teaches you so much to despise, will be infinitely more exalted above us, by that Power who is no regarder of persons, than the proudest monarch in the world can imagine himself above the meanest creature in it.’

  ‘Egregious preacher!’ said she: ‘my brother already turned puritan! I congratulate this change! Well,’ (and came towards me and I trembled to see her coming; but her brother followed to observe her, and I stood up at her approach, and she said) ’ Give me thy hand, Mrs Pamela, Mrs Andrews, Mrs – What shall I call thee! Thou hast done wonders in a little time! thou hast not only made a rake a husband; but thou hast made a rake a preacher! But take care,’ added she, after all, in ironical anger, and tapped me on the neck, ‘take care, that thy vanity begins not where his ends; and that thou callest not thyself my sister.’