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, we 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.