Jane Talbot Part 24

I join my daughter in a.s.suring you that the alliance, for which a mutual aversion was entertained, cannot take place; and that all her engagements with your son are dissolved. I join her likewise in entreating you to forget his disobedience and restore him to your protection and favour.

M. FIELDER.

Letter x.x.xIX

_To Mrs. Talbot_

November 28.

IT becomes me to submit without a murmur to a resolution dictated by a disinterested regard to my happiness.

That you may find in that persuasion, in your mother's tenderness and grat.i.tude, in the affluence and honour which this determination has secured to you, abundant consolation for every evil that may befall yourself or pursue me, are my only wishes.

Far was I from designing to conceal from you entirely my father's aversion to our views. I frequently apprized you of the inferences to be naturally drawn from his known character; but I trusted to his generosity, to the steadiness of my own deportment, to your own merits, when he should become personally acquainted with you, to his good sense, when reflecting on an evil in his power to lessen though not wholly to remove, for a change in his opinions, or, at least, in his conduct.

There was sufficient resemblance in the characters of both our parents to make me rely on the influence of time and reflection in our favour.

Your mother could not cease to love you. I could not by any accident be wholly bereaved of my father's affection. No conduct of theirs had robbed them of my esteem. Why then did I persist in thwarting their wishes? Why encourage you in your opposition? Because I imagined that, in thwarting their present views, which were founded in error, I consulted their lasting happiness, and made myself a t.i.tle to their future grat.i.tude by challenging their present rebukes.

I told you not of my father's pa.s.sionate violences, disgraceful to himself and productive of unspeakable anguish to me. Why should I revive the scene? why be the historian of my father's dishonour? why needlessly add to my own and to your affliction?

My concealments arose not from the fear that the disclosure would estrange you from me. I supposed you willing to grant me the same independence of a parent's control which you claimed for yourself. I saw no difference between forbearing to consult a parent, in a case where we know that his answer will condemn us, and slighting his express forbidding.

I say thus much to account for, and, if possible, excuse, that concealment with which you reproach me. Tender and reluctant, indeed, are these reproaches; but,--as I deem it a sacred duty to reveal to you the utmost of my follies, what but injustice to you would be the tacit admission of injurious but groundless charges?

My actual faults are of too deep a dye to allow me to sport with your good opinion, or permit me to be worse thought of by you than I deserve.

You exhort me to seek reconcilement with my father. What mean you? I have not been the injurer. Not an angry word, accusing look, or revengeful thought, has come from me. I have exercised the privilege of a rational and moral being. I have loved, not according to another's estimate of merit, but my own. Of what then am I to repent? Where lies my transgression? If his treatment of me be occasioned by antipathy for you, must I adopt his antipathy and thus creep again into favour? Impossible!

If it arise from my refusing to give up an alliance which his heart abhors, your letter to him, which you tell me you mean to write, and which will inform him that every view of that kind is at an end, will remove the evil.

Fear not for me, my friend. Whatever be my lot, be a.s.sured that I never can taste pure misery while the thought abides with me that you are not happy.

And what now remains but to leave with you the blessing of a grateful and devoted heart, and to submit, with what humility I can, to the destiny which you have prescribed?

I should not deserve your love, if I did not now relinquish it with an anguish next to despair; neither should I have merit in my own eyes, if I did not end this letter with acquitting you, the author of my loss, of all shadow of blame.

Farewell----_forever_.

H. COLDEN.

Letter XL

_To James Montford_

November 28.

I TOLD you of your brother Stephen's talk with me about accompanying him on his northwest voyage. I mentioned to you what were my objections to the scheme. It was a desperate adventure; a sort of forlorn hope; to be pursued in case my wishes in relation to Jane should be crossed. I had not then any, or much, apprehension of change in her resolutions. So many proofs of a fervent and invincible attachment to me had she lately given, that I could not imagine any motive strong enough to change her purpose.

Yet now, my friend, have I arranged matters with your brother, and expect to bid an everlasting farewell to my native sh.o.r.e some day within the ensuing fortnight.

I call it an everlasting farewell, for I have, at present, neither expectation nor desire of returning. A three years' wandering among boisterous seas and through various climates, added to that inward care, that spiritless, dejected heart, which I shall ever bear about me, would surely never let me return, even if I had the wish: but I have not the wish. If I live at all, it must be in a scene far different and distant from that in which I have been hitherto reluctantly detained.

And why have I embraced this scheme? There can be but one cause.

Having just returned from following Thomson's remains to the grave, I received a letter from Jane. Her mother had just arrived. She came, it seems, in consequence of her daughter's apparent compliance with her wishes. The letter retracting my friend's precipitate promise had miscarried or had lingered by the way. What I little suspected, my father had acquainted Mrs. Fielder with his conduct towards me; and this, together with her mother's importunities, had prevailed on Jane once more to renounce me.

There never occurred an event in my life which did not, someway, bear testimony to the usefulness and value of sincerity. Had I fully disclosed all that pa.s.sed between my father and me, should I not easily have diverted Jane from these extremities? Alone, at a distance from me, and with her mother's eloquence at hand to confirm every wayward sentiment and fortify her in every hostile resolution, she is easily driven into paths, and perhaps kept steadily in them, from which proper explanations and pathetic arguments, had they been early and seasonably employed by me, would have led her easily away.

I begin to think it is vain to strive against maternal influence. What but momentary victory can I hope to attain? What but poverty, dependence, ignominy, will she share with me? And if her strenuous spirit set naught by these, (and I know she is capable of rising above them,) how will she support her mother's indignation and grief?

I have now, indeed, no hope of even momentary victory. There are but two persons in the world who command her affections. Either, when present, (the other absent or silent,) has absolute dominion over her. Her mother, no doubt, is apprized of this, and has now pursued the only effectual method of securing submission.

I have already written an answer; I hope such a one as, when the present tumults of pa.s.sion have subsided, when the eye sedately scrutinizes, and the heart beats in an even tenor, may be read without shame or remorse.

I shall also write to her mother. In doing this I must keep down the swelling bitterness. It may occupy my solitude, torment my feelings; but why should it infect my pen?

I have sometimes given myself credit for impartiality in judging of others. Indeed, I am inclined to think myself no blind or perverse judge even of my own actions. Hence, indeed, the greater part of my unhappiness.

If my conduct had always conformed, instead of being adverse, to my principles, I should have moved on tranquilly and self-satisfied, at least; but, in truth, the being that goes by my name was never more thoroughly contemned by another than by myself.--But this is falling into the old strain,-irksome, tiresome, and useless to you as to me. Yet I cannot write just now in any other; therefore I will stop.

Adieu, my friend. There will be time enough to hear from you ere my departure. Let me hear, then, from you.

Letter XLI

_To Henry Colden_

Philadelphia, December 3.

Sir:--

My daughter informs me that the letter she has just despatched to you contains her resolution of never seeing you more. I likewise discover that she has requested and expects a reply from you, in which, she doubts not, you will confirm her resolution.

You, no doubt, regard me as your worst enemy. No request from me can hope to be complied with; yet I cannot forbear suggesting the propriety of your refraining from making any answer to my daughter's letter.

In my treatment of you, I shall not pretend any direct concern for your happiness. I am governed, whether erroneously or not, merely by views to the true interest of Mrs. Talbot, which, in my opinion, forbids her to unite herself to you. But if that union be calculated to bereave her of happiness, it cannot certainly be conducive to yours. If you consider the matter rightly, therefore, instead of accounting me an enemy, you will rank me among your benefactors.

You have shown yourself, in some instances, not dest.i.tute of generosity. It is but justice to acknowledge that your late letter to me avows sentiments such as I by no means expected, and makes me disposed to trust your candour to acquit my intention, at least, of some of the consequences of your father's resentment.

I was far from designing to subject you to violence or ignominy, and meant nothing by my application to him but your genuine and lasting happiness.