Mr. B’s Testimony Corresponding to Letters XIV-XV
I was away from the Bedfordshire estate for two weeks—I had business to conduct in Kent and London—but I was still annoyed with Pamela when I returned from visiting my daughter.
Cross-Examination
Mr. Hatch, exclaimed, “Your daughter!?” and started flipping through his notes.
Mr. B waited patiently. Mr. Shorter said, “Miss Goodwin, Judge. She has been Mr. B’s ward since birth. The mother lives in Jamaica.”
“I take it the child was born out of wedlock.”
“Yes,” Mr. B snapped, straightening from his easy slump.
Judge Hardcastle turned to him, affronted. “Is there any reason not to mention her?”
“There’s no need to make her illegitimate status generally known. I met my daughter’s mother when I was in college. We had an affair. She was sorry for it and left, placing our daughter in my care. My daughter has the potential to grow up untainted by her parents’ mistakes.”
The judge still looked piqued. “Your daughter is not on trial, Mr. B. Your worries are unwarranted.”
Mr. B glowered. Behind him, Lonquist murmured, “Illegitimacy is not a disgrace here,” and some of the tension left Mr. B’s face and body.
Leaning nearly out of his seat, Mr. Hatch said, “How old was she at the time? How often did you visit her?”
“Mr. B’s paternal duties are not relevant to this hearing,” the judge said.
“They were relevant to Pamela,” Mr. B said. “Sally, my daughter, was six when I began courting Pamela. She stayed at a boarding-house run by a trustworthy governess.”
“Abandonment,” muttered Gary, but Mr. Hatch beamed almost kindly on Mr. B.
The judge rapped lightly with his gavel. “Let’s focus on the courtship. If you would continue, sir—” and Mr. B did.
Letters XIV-XV (continued)
I spoke to Mrs. Jervis, my housekeeper about sending Pamela back to her parents.
“She’s an artful minx,” I complained, and Mrs. Jervis looked understandably doubtful. Pamela is shrewd enough to manipulate events as they arise, but she’s never possessed the kind of calculation that pre-arranges events to her benefit.
Mrs. Jervis said, “Your honor frightened her in the summer-house.”
Of course Pamela told her.
I stomped off to find Pamela scribbling in my mother’s dressing room. She folded the letter and tucked it in her bodice. She didn’t say anything or curtsy, only watched me, remote and guarded.
“You’ve been spreading rumors about me,” I said—true rumors but rumors nonetheless.
“I talk to hardly anyone.”
“You little equivocator,” I said. “What do you mean by hardly?” Mrs. Jervis was a great deal of very.
“Why should you care what I tell Mrs. Jervis—if you intend no harm?”
Pamela could be a barrister.
She continued: “I told her about the summer-house because my heart was broken, but I told no one else.”
“You wrote a letter, Pamela,” I said.
“Did you take it?”
“I should let you expose me?”
“It isn’t exposure if I write the truth.”
At that point, I realized I was exchanging extremely heated words with my mother’s companion in the middle of my mother’s dressing room.
“Insolence,” I said. “Should I let a servant question me?”
Pamela retreated. It’s what she does when she panics. She becomes instantaneously demure.
“I don’t wish to lose my employment.”
“How can you work for me unless you willingly follow my commands?”
“Should I follow your commands at the expense of my principles?”
I rolled my eyes. “If that’s what you fear, I might as well give you real cause,” I said and took her on my knee. She stilled, eyes slewing towards me.
“Be easy,” I said. “Let the worst happen. You will have the merit, I the blame, and then you can write a very interesting letter.”
Her lips curved into a half-smile. She stared hard at the parquet floor.
“Nobody blamed Lucretia,” I pointed out and fondled her neck.
She lifted her chin to frown at me, and I tongued her lips.
“Should I kill myself like Lucretia did?”
Trust Pamela to start a literary argument in the middle of a seduction.
“We could create as pretty a romance,” I said and cupped one breast.
She bolted, and this time, I wasn’t in a state to do more than grab the tail of her dress. She got away.
I sat there awhile, Pamela’s willingness—when she got caught up in argument—to be caressed. After which, I reminded myself that Pamela was fairly young and given to hyperbole and could be imagining herself as Lucretia at that moment. English women supposedly know better than to commit suicide in the house of their employers, but Pamela is absurdly literal.
Cross-Examination
“Who the hell is Lucretia?” Gary said.
Judge Hardcastle didn’t know either but glared at Gary anyway.
Leslie Quinn said, “I thought you academics were chock full of scholarly knowledge.”
“I focus on modern problems,” Gary said.
Lonquist said, “Academics aren’t supposed to know facts, Leslie. They’re supposed to know how to use the right language to discuss intangibles: liminal, hegemonic, Marxist.”
Mr. B said abruptly, “Lucretia was a woman from Roman legend—she was raped by a king’s son when he threatened to destroy her reputation unless she slept with him. She complied, then denounced the son and killed herself.”
“Good heavens,” the judge said.
At the CLF table, Dr. Matchel pursed her lips while Mr. Hatch scribbled a note.
“And did the Romans excuse the rape?” Gary said and looked triumphant when Mr. B said No. “Well, then,” Gary continued, “Pamela is Lucretia.”
Mr. B shook his head. “Pamela is not given to pointless martyrdom.”
The judge harrumphed. “I don’t care for martyr complexes myself,” he said. “Please continue, Mr. B.”
Mr. B’s Testimony Corresponding to Letter XVI
I told Mrs. Jervis to check on Pamela but to ignore any hysterics, and for both of them to see me the next day in my private library on the ground floor. They came there together after dinner, the mid-day meal. Pamela hung back by the door until I frowned at her. Mrs. Jervis stood before the desk, her honest face puzzled. She wasn’t used to so much drama.
“What has Pamela been telling you?” I asked Mrs. Jervis.
“Only that you pulled her on your knee and kissed her,” she said uneasily.
“Only!” Pamela said, stepping further into the room. “Your honor did more than that. You talked of Lucretia’s hard fate.”
In retrospect, referencing Juliet might have been wiser.
Maybe not.
Cross-Examination
Mr. B said, “Juliet is from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.”
Judge Hardcastle said, “Thank you, Mr. B.” He wasn’t sure Mr. B wasn’t being snide, but at least the man was well-informed.
Letter XVI (continued)
The meeting between me, Pamela, and Mrs. Jervis was floundering. The gentlemanly thing to do was to smooth the matter over.
I said, “I should never have allowed myself to joke with a servant. What can I say? I was bewitched. I had no intention of carrying the jest further.”
A good piece of diplomacy, I think you’ll grant, placing no blame and bringing the matter to a close. Except Pamela hasn’t a diplomatic bone in her body.
She said, “It was not an appropriate jest between a master and servant.”
I gave Mrs. Jervis a see-what-I-put-up-with look, and she sighed.
“She is truly unnerved.”
I groaned. So much for diplomacy. “Pamela should return home,” I said.
That didn’t please her. Home was distress and poverty—why should she wish to return there? But I couldn’t have a servant spreading rumors, no matter how true, about my conduct.
Whatever Pamela’s little hypocrisies, she has poise. She took a deep breath, then, "I am happy to return home," she said, "and I thank you for the opportunities and favors you have heaped upon me."
It is never clear how consciously Pamela practices her sense of irony.
“What is the parents’ situation?” I asked Mrs. Jervis when Pamela left the room.
“The father is educated. He tried to open a country-school at one time, but it failed. Now, he labors for the Mumfords. Her mother spins though her eyesight is failing.”
“Pamela will be a burden to them.”
She sighed again. “She could do needlework.”
“She’s an odd girl,” I said, and Mrs. Jervis went away.
I knew that sending Pamela home was a death sentence. She would fade into one of those tired women who sit on their stoops, plaiting wool. She could hardly have arguments about Lucretia with the local sheep herder.
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| Waistcoat with butterflies. It is really quite lovely, but my Mr. B has more austere tastes. |
But she couldn’t stay. I was aware of her, sensitive to her every movement. I found myself waiting in rooms for her voice on the stairs or in the hall—unrepentantly impatient to glimpse her, exchange barbs with her.
I told Mrs. Jervis that Pamela could stay until she finished embroidering my waistcoat. It was a fairly hideous garment of entwined butterflies and roses, but there was nothing else of mine Pamela was working on.
“You care for her, sir,” Mrs. Jervis said, and I shrugged in agreement.
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| The Complete Ensemble (Different Waistcoat) |
“People usually are until they want something,” I said. She clucked her tongue. But she didn’t disagree. Mrs. Jervis is a realist.
