Jane Talbot Part 13

Admitting me, in this respect, to be mistaken, your mother's resentment will ever give you disquiet. True; but will your union with me console you nothing? in pressing the hoped-for fruit of that union to your breast, in that tenderness which you will hourly receive from me, will there be nothing to compensate you for sorrows in which there is no remorse, and which, indeed, will owe their poignancy to the generosity of your spirit?

You cannot unite yourself to me but with some view to my happiness.

Will your contributing to that happiness be nothing?

Yet I cannot separate my felicity from yours. I can enjoy nothing at the cost of your peace. In whatever way you decide, may the fruit be content!

I ask you not for proofs of love, for the sacrifice of others to me. My happiness demands it not. It only requires you to seek your own good.

Nothing but ceaseless repinings can follow your compliance with your mother's wishes; but there is something in your power to do. You can hide these repinings from her, by living at a distance from her. She may know you only through the medium of your letters, and these may exhibit the brightest side of things. She wants nothing but your divorce from me, and that may take place without living under her roof.

You need not stay here. The world is wide, and she will eagerly consent to the breaking of your shackles by change of residence. Much and the best part of your country you have never seen. Variety of objects will amuse you, and new faces and new minds erase the deep impressions of the past.

Colden and his merits may sink into forgetfulness, or be thought of with no other emotion than regret that a being so worthless was ever beloved.

But I wander from the true point. I meant not to introduce myself into this letter,--self!--that vile debaser whom I detest as my worst enemy, and who a.s.sumes a thousand shapes and practises a thousand wiles to entice me from the right path.

Ah, Jane, could thy sagacity discover no other cause of thy mother's error than Talbot's fraud? Could thy heart so readily impute to him so black a treachery? Such a prompt and undoubting conclusion it grieves me to find thee capable of.

How much more likely that Talbot was himself deceived! For it was not by him that thy unfinished letter was purloined. At that moment he was probably some thousands of miles distant. It was five weeks before his return from his Hamburg voyage, when that mysterious incident happened.

Be of good cheer, my sweet girl. I doubt not all will be well. We shall find the means of detecting and defeating this conspiracy, and of re-establishing thee in thy mother's good opinion. At present, I own, I do not see the means; but, to say truth, my mind is clouded by anxieties, enfeebled by watching and fatigue.

You know why I came hither. I found my friend in a very bad way, and have no hope but that his pangs, which must end within a few days, may, for his sake, terminate very soon. He will not part with me, and I have seldom left his chamber since I came.

Your letter has disturbed me much, and I seize this interval, when the sick man has gained a respite from his pain, to tell you my thoughts upon it. I fear I have not reasoned very clearly. Some peevishness, I doubt not, has crept into my style. I rely upon your wonted goodness to excuse it.

I have much to say upon this affecting subject, but must take a future opportunity.

I also have received a letter from Mrs. Fielder, of which I will say no more, since I send you enclosed _that_, and my answer. I wish it had come at a time when my mind was more at ease, as an immediate reply seemed to be necessary. Adieu.

HENRY GOLDEN.

Letter XXIII

_To Mrs. Fielder_

Baltimore, November 2.

MADAM:--

It would indeed be needless to apologize for your behaviour to me. I not only acquit you of any enmity to me, but beg leave to return you my warmest thanks for the generous offers which you have made me in this letter.

I should be grossly wanting in that love for Mrs. Talbot which you believe me to possess, if I did not partake in that grat.i.tude and reverence which she feels for one who has performed for her every parental duty. The esteem of the good is only of less value in my eyes than the approbation of my own conscience. There is no price which I would not pay for your good opinion, consistent with a just regard to that of others and to my own.

I cannot be pleased with the information which you give me. For the sake of my friend, I am grieved that you are determined to make her marriage with me the forfeiture of that provision which your bounty has. .h.i.therto supplied her.

Forgive me if I say that, in exacting this forfeiture, you will not be consistent with yourself. On her marriage with me, she will stand in much more need of your bounty than at present, and her merits, however slender you may deem them, will then be, at least, _not less_ than they now are.

If there were any methods by which I might be prevented from sharing in gifts bestowed upon my wife, I would eagerly concur in them.

I fully believe that your motive in giving me this timely warning was a generous one. Yet, in justice to myself and your daughter, I must observe that the warning was superfluous, since Jane never concealed from me the true state of her affairs, and since I never imagined you would honour with your gifts a marriage contracted against your will.

Well do I know the influence of early indulgences. Your daughter is a strong example of that influence; nor will her union with me, if by that union she forfeit your favour, be any thing more than a choice among evils all of which are heavy.

My own education and experience sufficiently testify the importance of riches, and I should be the last to despise or depreciate their value.

Still, much as habit has endeared to me the goods of fortune, I am far from setting them above all other goods.

You offer me madam, a large alms. Valuable to me as that sum is, and eagerly as I would accept it in any other circ.u.mstances, yet at present I must, however reluctantly, decline it. A voyage to Europe and such a sum, if your daughter's happiness were not in question, would be the utmost bound of my wishes.

Shall I be able to compensate her? you ask.

No, indeed, madam; I am far from deeming myself qualified to compensate her for the loss of property, reputation, and friends. I aspire to nothing but to console her under that loss, and to husband as frugally as I can those few meagre remnants of happiness which shall be left to us.

I have seen your late letter to her. I should be less than man if I were not greatly grieved at the contents; yet, madam, I am not cast down below the hope of convincing you that the charge made against your daughter is false. You could not do otherwise than believe it. It is for us to show you by what means you, and probably Talbot himself, have been deceived.

To suffer your charge to pa.s.s for a moment uncontradicted would be unjust not more to ourselves than to you. The mere denial will not and ought not to change your opinion. It may even tend to raise higher the acrimony of your aversion to me. It must ever be irksome to a generous spirit to deny, without the power of disproving; but a tacit admission of the charge would be unworthy of those who know themselves innocent.

Beseeching your favourable thoughts, and grateful for the good which, but for the interference of higher duties, your heart would prompt you to give and mine would not scruple to accept, I am, &c.

HENRY COLDEN.

Letter XXIV

_To Henry Colden_

Philadelphia, Nov. 2.

Ah, my friend, how mortifying are those proofs of thy excellence? How deep is that debas.e.m.e.nt into which I am sunk, when I compare myself with thee!

It cannot be want of love that makes thee so easily give me up. My feeble and jealous heart is ever p.r.o.ne to suspect; yet I ought at length to be above these ungenerous surmises.

My own demerits, my fickleness, my precipitation, are so great, and so unlike thy inflexible spirit, that I am ever ready to impute to thee that contempt for me which I know I so richly deserve. I am astonished that so poor a thing as I am, thus continually betraying her weakness, should retain thy affection; yet at any proof of coldness or indifference in thee do I grow impatient, melancholy; a strange mixture of upbraiding for myself, and resentment for thee, occupies my feelings.

I have read thy letter. I shuddered when I painted to myself thy unhappiness on receiving tidings of my resolution to join my mother. I felt that thy reluctance to part with me would form the strongest obstacle to going; and yet, being convinced that I must go, I wanted thee to counterfeit indifference, to feign compliance.

And such a wayward heart is mine that, now these a.s.surances of thy compliance have come to hand, I am not satisfied! The poor contriver wished to find in thee an affectation of indifference. Her humanity would be satisfied with that appearance; but her pride demanded that it should be no more than a veil, behind which the inconsolable, the bleeding heart should be distinctly seen.

You are too much in earnest in your equanimity. You study my exclusive happiness with too unimpa.s.sioned a soul. You are pleased when I am pleased; but not, it seems, the more so from any relation which my pleasure bears to you: no matter what it is that pleases me, so I am but pleased, you are content.

I don't like this oblivion of self. I want to be essential to your happiness. I want to act with a view to your interests and wishes,--these wishes requiring my love and my company for your own sake.

But I have got into a maze again,--puzzling myself with intricate distinctions. I can't be satisfied with telling you that I am not well, but I must be inspecting with these careful eyes into causes, and labouring to tell you of what nature my malady is.