Clarissa, Volume 5 | Page 5

I am to be
favoured with her company for an hour, before she retires to rest.
All that obsequious love can suggest, in order to engage her tenderest
sentiments for me against tomorrow's sickness, will I aim at when we
meet. But at parting will complain of a disorder in my stomach.
***
We have met. All was love and unexceptionable respect on my part.
Ease and complaisance on her's. She was concerned for my disorder.
So sudden!--Just as we parted! But it was nothing. I should be quite
well by the morning.

Faith, Jack, I think I am sick already. Is it possible for such a giddy
fellow as me to persuade myself to be ill! I am a better mimic at this
rate than I wish to be. But every nerve and fibre of me is always ready
to contribute its aid, whether by health or by ailment, to carry a
resolved-on roguery into execution.
Dorcas has transcribed for me the whole letter of Miss Howe, dated
Sunday, May 14,* of which before I had only extracts. She found no
other letter added to that parcel: but this, and that which I copied
myself in character last Sunday whilst she was at church, relating to the
smuggling scheme,** are enough for me.
* See Vol. IV. Letter XXIX. ** Ibid. Letter XLII.
***
Dorcas tells me, that her lady has been removing her papers from the
mahogany chest into a wainscot box, which held her linen, and which
she put into her dark closet. We have no key of that at present. No
doubt but all her letters, previous to those I have come at, are in that
box. Dorcas is uneasy upon it: yet hopes that her lady does not suspect
her; for she is sure that she laid in every thing as she found it.

LETTER II
MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. COCOA-TREE,
SATURDAY, MAY 27.
This ipecacuanha is a most disagreeable medicine. That these cursed
physical folks can find out nothing to do us good, but what would
poison the devil! In the other world, were they only to take physic, it
would be punishable enough of itself for a mis-spent life. A doctor at
one elbow, and an apothecary at the other, and the poor soul labouring
under their prescribed operations, he need no worse tormentors.
But now this was to take down my countenance. It has done it: for, with
violent reachings, having taken enough to make me sick, and not
enough water to carry it off, I presently looked as if I had kept my bed a
fortnight. Ill jesting, as I thought in the midst of the exercise, with edge
tools, and worse with physical ones.
Two hours it held me. I had forbid Dorcas to let her lady know any
thing of the matter; out of tenderness to her; being willing, when she
knew my prohibition, to let her see that I expected her to be concerned
for me.--

Well, but Dorcas was nevertheless a woman, and she can whisper to
her lady the secret she is enjoined to keep!
Come hither, toad, [sick as the devil at the instant]; let me see what a
mixture of grief and surprize may be beat up together in thy
puden-face.
That won't do. That dropt jaw, and mouth distended into the long oval,
is more upon the horrible than the grievous.
Nor that pinking and winking with thy odious eyes, as my charmer
once called them.
A little better that; yet not quite right: but keep your mouth closer. You
have a muscle or two which you have no command of, between your
cheek-bone and your lips, that should carry one corner of your mouth
up towards your crow's-foot, and that down to meet it.
There! Begone! Be in a plaguy hurry running up stair and down, to
fetch from the dining-room what you carry up on purpose to fetch, till
motion extraordinary put you out of breath, and give you the sigh
natural.
What's the matter, Dorcas?
Nothing, Madam.
My beloved wonders she has not seen me this morning, no doubt; but is
too shy to say she wonders. Repeated What's the matter, however, as
Dorcas runs up and down stairs by her door, bring on, O Madam! my
master! my poor master!
What! How! When!--and all the monosyllables of surprize.
[Within parentheses let me tell thee, that I have often thought, that the
little words in the republic of letters, like the little folks in a nation, are
the most significant. The trisyllables, and the rumblers of syllables
more than three, are but the good-for-little magnates.]
I must not tell you, Madam--My master ordered me not to tell you--but
he is in a worse way than he thinks for!--But he