12. CHAPTER XII.
Containing much clearer matters; but which flowed from the same
fountain with those in the preceding chapter
The reader will be pleased, I believe, to return with me to
Sophia. She passed the night, after we saw her last, in no very
agreeable manner. Sleep befriended her but little, and dreams less. In
the morning, when Mrs. Honour, her maid, attended her at the usual
hour, she was found already up and drest.
Persons who live two or three miles' distance in the country are
considered as next-door neighbours, and transactions at the one
house fly with incredible celerity to the other. Mrs. Honour,
therefore, had heard the whole story of Molly's shame; which she,
being of a very communicative temper, had no sooner entered the
apartment of her mistress, than she began to relate in the following
manner:-
"La, ma'am, what doth your la'ship think? the girl that your la'ship
saw at church on Sunday, whom you thought so handsome; though you
would not have thought her so handsome neither, if you had seen her
nearer, but to be sure she hath been carried before the justice for
being big with child. She seemed to me to look like a confident
slut: and to be sure she hath laid the child to young Mr. Jones. And
all the parish says Mr. Allworthy is so angry with young Mr. Jones,
that he won't see him. To be sure, one can't help pitying the poor
young man, and yet he doth not deserve much pity neither, for
demeaning himself with such kind of trumpery. Yet he is so pretty a
gentleman, I should be sorry to have him turned out of doors. I
dares to swear the wench was as willing as he; for she was always a
forward kind of body. And when wenches are so coming, young men are
not so much to be blamed neither; for to be sure they do no more
than what is natural. Indeed it is beneath them to meddle with such
dirty draggle-tails; and whatever happens to them, it is good enough
for them. And yet, to be sure, the vile baggages are most in fault.
I wishes, with all my heart, they were well to be whipped at the
cart's tail; for it is pity they should be the ruin of a pretty
young gentleman; and nobody can deny but that Mr. Jones is one of
the most handsomest young men that ever-"
She was running on thus, when Sophia, with a more peevish voice than
she had ever spoken to her in before, cried, "Prithee, why dost thou
trouble me with all this stuff? What concern have I in what Mr.
Jones doth? I suppose you are all alike. And you seem to me to be
angry it was not your own case."
"I, ma'am!" answered Mrs. Honour, "I am sorry your ladyship should
have such an opinion of me. I am sure nobody can say any such thing of
me. All the young fellows in the world may go to the divil for me.
Because I said he was a handsome man? Everybody says it as well as
I. To be sure, I never thought as it was any harm to say a young man
was handsome; but to be sure I shall never think him so any more
now; for handsome is that handsome does. A beggar wench!--"
"Stop thy torrent of impertinence," cries Sophia, "and see whether
my father wants me at breakfast."
Mrs. Honour then flung out of the room, muttering much to herself,
of which "Marry come up, I assure you," was all that could be
plainly distinguished.
Whether Mrs. Honour really deserved that suspicion, of which her
mistress gave her a hint, is a matter which we cannot indulge our
reader's curiosity by resolving. We will, however, make him amends
in disclosing what passed in the mind of Sophia.
The reader will be pleased to recollect, that a secret affection for
Mr. Jones had insensibly stolen into the bosom of this young lady.
That it had there grown to a pretty great height before she herself
had discovered it. When she first began to perceive its symptoms,
the sensations were so sweet and pleasing, that she had not resolution
sufficient to check or repel them; and thus she went on cherishing a
passion of which she never once considered the consequences.
This incident relating to Molly first opened her eyes. She now first
perceived the weakness of which she had been guilty; and though it
caused the utmost perturbation in her mind, yet it had the effect of
other nauseous physic, and for the time expelled her distemper. Its
operation indeed was most wonderfully quick; and in the short
interval, while her maid was absent, so entirely removed all symptoms,
that when Mrs. Honour returned with a summons from her father, she was
become perfectly easy, and had brought herself to a thorough
indifference for Mr. Jones.
The diseases of the mind do in almost every particular imitate those
of the body. For which reason, hope, that learned faculty, for whom we
have so profound a respect, will pardon us the violent hands we have
been necessitated to lay on several words and phrases, which of
right belong to them, and without which our descriptions must have
been often unintelligible.
Now there is no one circumstance in which the distempers of the mind
bear a more exact analogy to those which are called bodily, than
that aptness which both have to a relapse. This is plain in the
violent diseases of ambition and avarice. I have known ambition,
when cured at court by frequent disappointments (which are the only
physic for it), to break out again in a contest for foreman of the
grand jury at an assizes; and have heard of a man who had so far
conquered avarice, as to give away many a sixpence, that comforted
himself, at last, on his deathbed, by making a crafty and advantageous
bargain concerning his ensuing funeral, with an undertaker who had
married his only child.
In the affair of love, which, out of strict conformity with the
Stoic philosophy, we shall here treat as a disease, this proneness
to relapse is no less conspicuous. Thus it happened to poor Sophia;
upon whom, the very next time she saw young Jones, all the former
symptoms returned, and from that time cold and hot fits alternately
seized her heart.
The situation of this young lady was now very different from what it
had ever been before. That passion which had formerly been so
exquisitely delicious, became now a scorpion in her bosom. She
resisted it therefore with her utmost force, and summoned every
argument her reason (which was surprisingly strong for her age)
could suggest, to subdue and expel it. In this she so far succeeded,
that she began to hope from time and absence a perfect cure. She
resolved therefore to avoid Tom Jones as much as possible; for which
purpose she began to conceive a design of visiting her aunt, to
which she made no doubt of obtaining her father's consent.
But Fortune, who had other designs in her head, put an immediate
stop to any such proceeding, by introducing an accident, which will be
related in the next chapter.