Week 6 (continued)
Pamela refused my proposal. I suppose you aren’t surprised. I no longer knew what to expect. I will say her answer to my proposal was the most straightforward she had been with me in weeks:
“I will not trifle with you nor act like a person doubtful of her own mind,” she wrote. She assured me she had not encouraged Williams. She disdained my offers of money, proclaiming her “honest parents” would never agree to any proposal that involved the “prostitution of their poor daughter.” I wondered if her parents would be similarly high-handed if approached directly.
Remembering her father, I thought perhaps they would be.
She ended by pointing out that if she did become my paramour for a year, at the end of it, she would hardly merit marriage with a gentleman. This was true. A young woman who hopes to achieve a respectable life cannot afford any liaisons, no matter how brief.
There is, as I stated previously, a great deal of the barrister about Pamela.
One passage gave me pause. “There is no man breathing I wish to marry,” Pamela wrote, “except one and that is the gentleman who, above all others, seeks my everlasting dishonor.”
She wanted me. Her refusal was pointless. God would hardly hold her accountable for merely trying to better herself. A liaison with me would seriously damage her future, but she had no great future anyway. Her parents would hardly complain because their daughter put their comfort above her misguided morality. I stomped around my study, head throbbing.
“It’s your own fault for being so tender,” Mrs. Jewkes said, and I was beginning to think she was right. Pamela needed a fait accompli. The issue needed to be resolved.
“I’ll bed her tomorrow,” I said and instructed Mrs. Jewkes to keep Pamela from escaping.
“She got as far as the garden pond last time.”
“See it doesn’t happen again,” I snapped, and she bustled out. I heard her and Pamela yelling at each other in Pamela’s bedroom. Pamela wanted the keys to the room; Mrs. Jewkes wouldn’t give them up.
I went to bed and didn’t sleep.
Cross-Examination
Cries from the CLF team interrupted Mr. B’s testimony.
“He admits he decided to rape her,” Gary said.
Mr. B said, “Rape is your parlance, not mine.”
“So no one in the eighteenth century was raped?”
“Of course they were. That wasn’t the issue. Pamela was more concerned with her virginity than her rights.”
Leslie Quinn said mildly, “I doubt she saw a difference. Holding out for a decent marriage was more or less her purpose in life. Rape would have ruined her forever.”
“I did repent the decision,” Mr. B said. “I’m no Lovelace. He was a cad. From Clarissa,” he snapped at Judge Hardcastle, who was looking puzzled.
The judge looked hurt. “There’s no need to snarl,” he said.
Lonquist drew the judge’s attention away from Mr. B. “Clarissa is a novel, also by Richardson, about a young woman pursued by a deceitful gentleman named Lovelace. She is eventually seduced—”
“Raped!” Gary said.
“Ravished by Lovelace. She dies, and Lovelace is killed in a duel.”
“Another Lucretia!”
“But not another Pamela.” Mr. B faced the judge, shoulders braced. “I’m being asked to justify an action I long ago regretted. Pamela was my servant, she was female, she had no prospects, and little protection. I was the god of my estates. Didn’t Eros kidnap and seduce Psyche?”
Lonquist said gently, “Psyche accepted her seduction.”
“I was convinced Pamela would as well. Let us grant I was wrong. But I honestly believed I was right.”
The judge looked at the taut, unhappy faces. Only Leslie Quinn and the nondescript clerk seemed unruffled.
He sighed. “I find I am suddenly fed up with history. We’ll end early today. Yes, yes, the transcripts will be couriered to you all this evening. Mr. B’s testimony will resume tomorrow morning, nine a.m. Good day.”
Chapter 3: Day Three
Committee for Literary Fairness v. Mr. B
Committee for Literary Fairness v. Mr. B
Mr. B found he was tapping his feet and leaned forward, pressing his arms against his knees.
Of course, the CLF had brought up the attempted rape. It was not the biggest problem he and Pamela had ever faced, but he understood how it appeared to the outside world.
He knew, without Mr. Shorter’s advice, that he needed to tread carefully. Pleading age and inexperience would not impress the judge—or bring Pamela back to him. Pleading incompetence would offend even his supporters.
Mr. Shorter came in, carrying a bagel and cup of coffee. He received a small stipend in courthouse dollars for his work as a “legal aid,” which he spent on modern “delicacies.” Mr. B would bet Mr. Shorter was already wondering who else he could represent from the novel in this so-called “real life.”
“There’s a letter about us in a non-fictional newspaper,” Mr. Shorter said.
 |
| Mr. B is referring to broadsheets, |
| like this one from the late 1700s, |
| which printed news about murder & divorce. |
Mr. B already knew that. Before Mr. Shorter arrived, he’d heard the librarian, Lonquist, and the historian, Leslie Quinn, gleefully discussing it. Apparently, it castigated the CLF as “citizens of low repute who deign to disrupt the holy sacrament of marriage.”
Mr. B said, “I don’t like scandal sheets.”
“If the newspapers are on our side—”
“Neither does Pamela.”
Mr. Shorter shrugged.
A dark-haired young woman wearing a press pass entered the courtroom and sat behind Leslie Quinn. Mr. B glanced at her disinterestedly.
“Hi,” he heard her say to the historian, “I’m Deborah. I just learned about the Pamela hearings. Oh, there’s Mr. B. Is she here?”
“The CLF stuck her in Herland.”
“Wow—why?”
“Isn’t it the ultimate feminist training ground?” Lonquist the librarian said. “Perhaps, Pamela will want to stay there.”
Mr. B crossed his arms and glared at the table top.
“Oh, no,” Deborah said blithely. “She and Mr. B are soul mates.”
“The young lady reviews romance novels,” Mr. Shorter told Mr. B. “Stories about love—not stories about knights.”
“I don’t live in a love novel,” Mr. B said, but he hoped Deborah was right about him and Pamela.
* * *
The CLF team had read the editorial in the City Gazette and was righteously appalled.“The media has been co-opted by reactionaries,” Gary cried.
Judge Hardcastle ignored him. He also turned down Dr. Matchel’s request for a media blackout. He had no problems with the First Amendment. Media commentary was irritating but rarely intrusive. If it did become intrusive it was only because other people wouldn’t shut up about it.
He wanted to deal with the rape or seduction or whatever it was. He turned to Mr. B and Mr. Shorter. “I can’t ignore this part of the novel—unless rape was an established custom in eighteenth-century literature?”
Both men hesitated.
“Not as an acceptable action,” Mr. B said, and Mr. Shorter concurred.
“Then we need to address the event. Mr. B—?”
Mr. B’s Testimony Corresponding to Pamela’s Abduction
Week 6 (continued)
I went to church the next morning with a prayer message sent to me by Pamela through Mrs. Jewkes: “The prayers of this congregation are earnestly desired for a gentleman of great worth and honor who labors to ruin a poor, distressed, worthless maiden,” it read.
Typical Pamela and clever, but I was tired of the game. “Tell her the reckoning is not far off,” I said and left the house. As I got into the carriage, I saw Pamela’s solemn face at an upstairs window. Our eyes met. She tilted her head and raised her chin the way she would before passing judgment. I jerked my chin back at her and got into the carriage.
Church was exasperating. Parson Peters came up after the sermon to plead with me for Williams’s release: Williams didn’t realize he owed me money; he thought the sum I gave him was in anticipation of his living, et cetera, et cetera.
“It was a bit much putting the fella in gaol,” Sir Simon chimed in.
“I’ll resolve the matter,” I said and left them.
Dealing with Williams was good cover for what I had planned. I sent the carriage home with a letter to Mrs. Jewkes telling her to tell Pamela I’d gone to Stamford town where Williams was imprisoned to confront my erstwhile cleric. I then walked home, cutting across the pasture, so I could enter through the rear.
I ran into Colbrand in the stable yard and used him to send a second message to Mrs. Jewkes, after which I rested on the terraced garden watching the sky mellow and getting my breath back.
The stage was set. By that same time the next day, Pamela’s fate would be decided. Finally.
