Pamela

“ I know, dear father and mother, I must give you both grief and pleasure; and so I will only say, Pray for your Pamela; who will ever be
Your most dutiful DAUGHTER.
I have been scared out of my senses; for just now, as I was folding up this letter in my late lady’s dressing-room, in comes my young master! Good sirs! how was I frightened! I went to hide the letter in my bosom; and he, seeing me tremble, said, smiling, To whom have you been writing, Pamela?—I said, in my confusion, Pray your honour forgive me!—Only to my father and mother. ”

“ She ought to be interested in persons. Warrisden rose abruptly from his chair. He was completely baffled. Pamela was like the sleeping princess in the fairy tale, she lay girt about with an impassable thicket of thorns. She was in a worse case, indeed, for the princess in the story might have slept on till the end of time, a thing of beauty. But was it possible for Pamela, so to sleep to the end of life, he asked himself. Let her go on in her indifference, and she might dwindle and grow narrow, her soul would be starved and all the good of her be lost. ”

“ Your behaviour, sir, to me, has been just of a piece with these words: Nay, I will say it, though you were to be ever so angry.—I angry, Pamela? No, no, said he, I have overcome all that; and as you are to go away, I look upon you now as Mrs. Jervis’s guest while you both stay, and not as my servant; and so you may say what you will. But I’ll tell you, Pamela, why you need not take this matter in such high disdain!—You have a very pretty romantic turn for virtue, and all that.—And I don’t suppose but you’ll hold it still: and nobody will be able to prevail upon you. ”

“ What a happy creature, my dear mother, is your Pamela!—O may my thankful heart, and the good use I may be enabled to make of the blessings before me, be a means to continue this delightful prospect to a long date, for the sake of the dear good gentleman, who thus becomes the happy instrument, in the hand of Providence, to bless all he smiles upon! ”

“ Flattery and admiration, Pamela, are the two principal engines by which our sex make their first approaches to yours; and if you listen to us, we are sure, either by the sap or the mine, to succeed, and blow you up when ever we please, if we do but take care to suit ourselves to your particular foibles; or, to carry on the metaphor, point our batteries to your weak side—for the strongest fortresses, my dear, are weaker in one place than another."—"A fine thing, Sir," said I, "to be so learned a gentleman!"—"I wish, however," thought I, "you had always come honestly by your knowledge." ”

“ Milliners, unlike Oracles and Sybils, have each their personal human span with its joys and fears, pleasures, pains and triumphs. Pamela’s romance ran like a cherry-coloured thread through the warp and woof of those other existences, so far above her, in which her profession had involved her. To show the whole pattern, light and dark, sparkling and deep-hued, flowered, dotted, arabesqued, of this brocade of earthly life, the poor Modiste must assume as important a place as that of her clientele. ”

“ I hope I shall not be the subject of their ballads and elegies; but that my memory, for the sake of my dear father and mother, may quickly slide into oblivion.
I was once rising, so indulgent was I to this sad way of thinking, to throw myself in: But, again, my bruises made me slow; and I thought, What art thou about to do, wretched Pamela? How knowest thou, though the prospect be all dark to thy short-sighted eye, what God may do for thee, even when all human means fail? ”

“ Rise, my dear Pamela, said my master; rise, dear life of my life; and expose not so much worthiness to the ungrateful scorn of so violent a spirit. And so he led me to my closet again, and there I sat and wept.
Her woman came up, just as he had led me to my closet, and was returning to her lady; and she very humbly said, Excuse my intrusion, good sir!—I hope I may come to my lady. Yes, Mrs. Worden, said he, you may come in; and pray take your lady down stairs with you, for fear I should too much forget what belongs either to my sister or myself! ”

“ The sound of hoofs and wheels, and of the clanging bell had brought landlord and landlady to the doorway. Pamela emerged slowly from her leafy retreat. She had a mind to keep the Mad Brat under observation as long as she could.
’Twas a mere child! Pamela knew that she could scarce have reached her twentieth year; and Pamela had once herself been mighty near flinging away everything a woman should hold dear, for a man’s smile. She had been saved, on the very edge of the precipice, by a sort of miracle. ”

“ Nay, now, Pamela, said she, thou carriest thy notions a great way. Well, dear Mrs. Jervis, said I, very seriously, for I could not help it, I am more full of fears than ever. I have only to beg of you, as one of the best friends I have in the world, to say nothing of my asking to stay. To say my master likes me, when I know what end he aims at, is abomination to my ears; and I shan’t think myself safe till I am at my poor father’s and mother’s. ”

“ The Honour of Pamela’s Sex demands Pamela at your Hands, to shew the World an Heroine, almost beyond Example, in an unusual Scene of Life, whom no Temptations, or Sufferings, could subdue. It is a fine, and glorious Original, for the Fair to copy out and imitate. Our own Sex, too, require it of you, to free us, in some measure, from the Imputation of being incapable of the Impressions of Virtue and Honour ”

“ O how this dear excellent man indulges me in every thing! Every hour he makes me happier, by his sweet condescension, than the former. He pities my weakness of mind, allows for all my little foibles, endeavours to dissipate my fears; his words are so pure, his ideas so chaste, and his whole behaviour so sweetly decent, that never, surely, was so happy a creature as your Pamela! ”

“ Pamela had come back. Indeed, at the end of all her perplexities and conjectures, to the belief born of her new love, that somehow the world would right itself, that somehow in a short while she would hear whispered upon the wind, answered by the ripples of the sea, and confirmed by the one voice she longed to hear, the sentinel's cry, "All's well." ”

“ Sir, I could not have taken those liberties, if you had not given me the cause: and the cause, sir, you know, is before the effect.
True, Pamela, said he; you chop logic very prettily. What the deuse do we men go to school for? If our wits were equal to women’s, we might spare much time and pains in our education: for nature teaches your sex, what, in a long course of labour and study, ours can hardly attain to.—But, indeed, every lady is not a Pamela. ”

“ Will you venture, said she, to accompany me to him?—Dare you follow a lion in his retreats?—I’ll attend your ladyship, said I, wherever you command. Well, wench, said she; Pamela, I mean; thou art very good in the main!—I should have loved thee as well as my mother did—if—but ’tis all over now! Indeed you should not have married my brother! But come, I must love him! Let’s find him out! And yet will he use me worse than a dog!—I should not, added she, have so much exasperated him: for, whenever I have, I have always had the worst of it. He knows I love him! ”

“ Miss Goodwin is highly delighted now with my sweet little Pamela, and says, she shall be her sister indeed! "For, Madam," said she, "Miss is a beauty!—And we see no French beauties like Master Davers and Miss."—"Beauty! my dear," said I; "what is beauty, if she be not a good girl? Beauty is but a specious, and, as it may happen, a dangerous recommendation, a mere skin-deep perfection; and if, as she grows up, she is not as good as Miss Goodwin, she shall be none of my girl." ”

“ If, sir, said I, the most lowly behaviour, and humble deportment, and in every thing shewing a dutiful regard to good Lady Davers, will have any weight with her ladyship, assure yourself of all in my power to mollify her. No, Pamela, returned he; don’t imagine, when you are my wife, I will suffer you to do any thing unworthy of that character. I know the duty of a husband, and will protect your gentleness to the utmost, as much as if you were a princess by descent. ”

“ I asked what she would have done for Pamela and Mrs. Jervis.
"'Make Mrs. Jervis, my dear son, as happy as you can: she is a gentlewoman born, you know; let her always be treated as such; but for your own sake, don't make her independent; for then you'll want a faithful manager. Yet if you marry, and your lady should not value her as she deserves, allow her a competency for the rest of her life, and let her live as she pleases.
"'As for Pamela, I hope you will be her protector!—She is a good girl: I love her next to you and your dear sister. She is just arriving at a trying time of life. ”

“ Pamela was getting very warm indeed!
Just at that moment she saw someone in front of her. It was past the turn into the cliff road, and she was making straight for the steep drop into Bell Bay. Clouds and the persistent fog together were making an evening much too dull for the date, now days were lengthening out so much. For a moment or two Pamela was uncertain, then she realized who they were. Two figures--one tall, with the unmistakable walk of a flat-footed person who turns her toes in; the other small, very dapper and neatly made, walking with short steps.
The Floweret, and Hughie. ”

“ For once, Pamela, it was not so: the violence of her spirit making him appear in a light too little advantageous either to his quality or merit. But now he improves upon me every time I see him.
"You know not, my dear, what a disgrace a haughty and passionate woman brings upon her husband, and upon herself too, in the eyes of her own sex, as well as ours. Nay, even those ladies, who would be as glad of dominion as she, if they might be permitted to exercise it, despise others who do, and the man most who suffers it. ”

“ Pamela lacked nothing which forethought could devise. Fruit there was in abundance, and cooling drinks suspended from the carriage window in Dare’s canvas water-bag. The dry air of the Karroo induces thirst. Pamela, who had come away entirely unprovided, was grateful to him for his thought for her.
“You are a wonderful person; you’ve forgotten nothing,” she said. ”

“ No; let us have Pamela as Pamela wrote it; in her own Words, without Amputation, or Addition. Produce her to us in her neat Country Apparel, such as she appear’d in, on her intended Departure to her Parents; for such best becomes her Innocence, and beautiful Simplicity. Such a Dress will best edify and entertain. The flowing Robes of Oratory may indeed amuse and amaze, but will never strike the Mind with solid Attention. ”

“ Nobody noticed this but Pam, and she, sitting at her window in the evening looking straight across the sea-wall, the rocks, and the tide rippling out over the golden sand, decided that the Little Pilgrim was in love with Major Fraser. "Why don't people settle things comfortably and be done with it," thought Pamela vexedly. "They are both nice, and they could live at Fuchsia Cottage." ”

“ He said, I will lay down one rule for you, my Pamela, to observe in your dress; and I will tell you every thing I like or dislike, as it occurs to me: and I would have you do the same, on your part; that nothing may be upon either of our minds that may occasion the least reservedness. ”

“ You do well, sir, said I, to even your wit to such a poor maiden as me: but, permit me to say, that if you was not rich and great, and I poor and little, you would not insult me thus.—Let me ask you, sir, if you think this becomes your fine clothes, and a master’s station: Why so serious, my pretty Pamela? said he: Why so grave? And would kiss me; but my heart was full, and I said, Let me alone; I will tell you, if you was a king, and insulted me as you have done, that you have forgotten to act like a gentleman ”

“ She loved Pamela more than her other girls; she was making more and more of a companion of her; she would hate giving her up to the best of husbands. But to please her own husband, to get for him, something that would lift from him some of the weight under which he was drooping, she would have pushed her daughter into a marriage with less prospects of happiness in it than this held out. ”

“ I care not what you think!—After the meanness you have been guilty of, I can only look upon you with pity: For, indeed, you have fallen very low with me.
’Tis plain I have, said she. But I’ll begone.—And so, brother, let me call you for this once! God bless you! And Pamela, said her ladyship, God bless you! and kissed me, and wept.
I durst say no more: And my lady turning from him, he said, Your sex is the d—l! how strangely can you discompose, calm, and turn, as you please, us poor weathercocks of men! Your last kind blessing to my Pamela I cannot stand! Kiss but each other again. ”

“ Where is my Pamela?—Why, father, said one of them, we beg your pardon; but she is gone home to you: How long have you been come from home?—O! but last night, said he; I have travelled all night: Is the ’squire at home, or is he not?—Yes, but he is not stirring though, said the groom, as yet. Thank God for that! said he; thank God for that! Then I hope I may be permitted to speak to him anon. They asked him to go in, and he stepped into the stable, and sat down on the stairs there, wiping his eyes, and sighing so sadly, that it grieved the servants to hear him. ”

“ Pamela was the least bit disappointed. There was perfect understanding between her and Miss Anne--who possessed a genius for understanding everybody, and everybody's worries. She knew that it was rather lonely to be a middle person in a family--cut off above and below. Pamela vaguely wondered where she was gone to; a natural conclusion being that some one must be ill in one of the farms.
Wheeling the bicycle on up the clean even road she left all trace of houses behind and came to the woods at the back of the valley. ”