3. CHAPTER III.
Which all who have no heart will think to contain much ado about
nothing
The reader will perhaps imagine the sensations which now arose in
Jones to have been so sweet and delicious, that they would rather tend
to produce a chearful serenity in the mind, than any of those
dangerous effects which we have mentioned; but in fact, sensations
of this kind, however delicious, are, at their first recognition, of a
very tumultuous nature, and have very little of the opiate in them.
They were, moreover, in the present case, embittered with certain
circumstances, which being mixed with sweeter ingredients, tended
altogether to compose a draught that might be termed bitter-sweet;
than which, as nothing can be more disagreeable to the palate, so
nothing, in the metaphorical sense, can be so injurious to the mind.
For first, though he had sufficient foundation to flatter himself in
what he had observed in Sophia, he was not yet free from doubt of
misconstruing compassion, or at best, esteem, into a warmer regard. He
was far from a sanguine assurance that Sophia had any such affection
towards him, as might promise his inclinations that harvest, which, if
they were encouraged and nursed, they would finally grow up to
require. Besides, if he could hope to find no bar to his happiness
from the daughter, he thought himself certain of meeting an
effectual bar in the father; who, though he was a country squire in
his diversions, was perfectly a man of the world in whatever
regarded his fortune; had the most violent affection for his only
daughter, and had often signified, in his cups, the pleasure he
proposed in seeing her married to one of the richest men in the
county. Jones was not so vain and senseless a coxcomb as to expect,
from any regard which Western had professed for him, that he would
ever be induced to lay aside these views of advancing his daughter. He
well knew that fortune is generally the principal, if not the sole,
consideration, which operates on the best of parents in these matters:
for friendship makes us warmly espouse the interest of others; but
it is very cold to the gratification of their passions. Indeed, to
feel the happiness which may result from this, it is necessary we
should possess the passion ourselves. As he had therefore no hopes
of obtaining her father's consent; so he thought to endeavour to
succeed without it, and by such means to frustrate the great point
of Mr. Western's life, was to make a very ill use of his
hospitality, and a very ungrateful return to the many little favours
received (however roughly) at his hands. If he saw such a
consequence with horror and disdain, how much more was he shocked with
what regarded Mr. Allworthy; to whom, as he had more than filial
obligations, so had he for him more than filial piety! He knew the
nature of that good man to be so averse to any baseness or
treachery, that the least attempt of such a kind would make the
sight of the guilty person for ever odious to his eyes, and his name a
detestable sound in his ears. The appearance of such unsurmountable
difficulties was sufficient to have inspired him with despair, however
ardent his wishes had been; but even these were controuled by
compassion for another woman. The idea of lovely Molly now intruded
itself before him. He had sworn eternal constancy in her arms, and she
had as often vowed never to out-live his deserting her. He now saw her
in all the most shocking postures of death; nay, he considered all the
miseries of prostitution to which she would be liable, and of which he
would be doubly the occasion; first by seducing, and then by deserting
her; for he well knew the hatred which all her neighbours, and even
her own sisters, bore her, and how ready they would all be to tear her
to pieces. Indeed, he had exposed her to more envy than shame, or
rather to the latter by means of the former: for many women abused her
for being a whore, while they envied her her lover and her finery, and
would have been themselves glad to have purchased these at the same
rate. The ruin, therefore, of the poor girl must, he foresaw,
unavoidably attend his deserting her; and this thought stung him to
the soul. Poverty and distress seemed to him to give none a right of
aggravating those misfortunes. The meanness of her condition did not
represent her misery as of little consequence in his eyes, nor did
it appear to justify, or even to palliate, his guilt, in bringing that
misery upon her. But why do I mention justification? His own heart
would not suffer him to destroy a human creature who, he thought,
loved him, and had to that love sacrificed her innocence. His own good
heart pleaded her cause; not as a cold venal advocate, but as one
interested in the event, and which must itself deeply share in all the
agonies its owner brought on another.
When this powerful advocate had sufficiently raised the pity of
Jones, by painting poor Molly in all the circumstances of
wretchedness; it artfully called in the assistance of another passion,
and represented the girl in all the amiable colours of youth,
health, and beauty; as one greatly the object of desire, and much more
so, at least to a good mind, from being, at the same time, the
object of compassion.
Amidst these thoughts, poor Jones passed a long sleepless night, and
in the morning the result of the whole was to abide by Molly, and to
think no more of Sophia.
In this virtuous resolution he continued all the next day till the
evening, cherishing the idea of Molly, and driving Sophia from his
thoughts; but in the fatal evening, a very trifling accident set all
his passions again on float, and worked so total a change in his mind,
that we think it decent to communicate it in a fresh chapter.