Jane Talbot Part 25

I dare not hope that it will ever be in my power to appease that resentment which you feel for me. I cannot expect that you are so far raised above the rest of men, that any action will be recommended to you by its tendency to oblige me; yet I cannot conceal from you that your reconcilement with your father will give me peculiar satisfaction.

I ventured on a former occasion to make you an offer, on condition of your going to Europe, which I now beg leave to repeat. By accepting the enclosed bill, and embarking for a foreign land without any further intercourse, personally or by letter, with my daughter, and after reconciliation with your father, you will confer a very great favour on one who, notwithstanding appearances, has acted in a manner that becomes

Your true friend,

M. FIELDER.

Letter XLII

_To Mrs. Fielder_

Baltimore, December 5.

Madam:--

I pretend not to be raised above any of the infirmities of human nature; but I am too sensible of the errors of my past conduct, and the defects which will ever cleave to my character, to be either surprised or indignant at the disapprobation of a virtuous mind. So far from harbouring resentment against you, it is with reluctance I decline the acceptance of your bill. I cannot consider it in any other light than as an alms which my situation is far from making necessary, and by receiving which I should defraud those whose poverty may plead a superior t.i.tle.

I hasten to give you pleasure by informing you of my intention to leave America immediately. My destiny is far from being certain; but at present I both desire and expect never to revisit my native land.

I design not to solicit another interview with Mrs. Talbot. You dissuade me from making any reply to her letter, from the fear, no doubt, that my influence will be exerted to change her resolution. Dismiss, I entreat you, madam, every apprehension of that kind. Your daughter has deliberately made her election. If no advantage be taken of her tenderness and pity, she will be happy in her new scheme. Shall I, who pretend to love her, subject her to new trials and mortifications? Am I able to reward her, by my affection, for the loss of every other comfort? What can I say in favour of my own attachment to her, which may not be urged in favour of her attachment to her mother? The happiness of the one or the other must be sacrificed; and shall I not rather offer than demand the sacrifice? and how poor and selfish should I be if I did not strive to lessen the difficulties of her choice, and persuade her that in gratifying her mother she inflicts no lasting misery on me!

I regard in its true light what you can say with respect to a reconcilement with my father, and am always ready to comply with your wishes in the only way that a conviction of my own rect.i.tude will permit.

I have patiently endured revilings and blows, but I shall not needlessly expose myself to new insults. Though willing to accept apology and grant an oblivion of the past, I will never avow a penitence which I do not feel, or confess that I deserved the treatment I received.

Truly can I affirm that your daughter's happiness is of all earthly things most dear to me. I fervently thank Heaven that I leave her exempt from all the hardships of poverty, and in the bosom of one who will guard her safety with a zeal equal to my own. All that I fear is, that your efforts to console her will fail. I know the heart which, if you thought me worthy of the honour, I should account it my supreme felicity to call mine. Let it be a precious deposit in your hands.

And now, madam, permit me to conclude with a solemn blessing on your head and on hers, and with an eternal farewell to you both.

H. COLDEN.

Letter XLIII

_To James Montford_

Philadelphia, December 7.

I hope you will approve of my design to accompany Stephen. The influence of variety and novelty will no doubt be useful. Why should I allow my present feelings, which a.s.sure me that I have lost what is indispensable not only to my peace but my life, to supplant the invariable lesson of experience, which teaches that time and absence will dull the edge of every calamity? And have I not found myself peculiarly susceptible of this healing influence?

Time and change of scene will, no doubt, relieve me; but, in the mean time, I have not a name for that wretchedness into which I am sunk. The light of day, the company of mankind, is at this moment insupportable. Of all places in the world, _this_ is the most hateful to my soul. I should not have entered the city, I should not abide in it a moment, were it not for a thought that occurred just before I left Baltimore.

You know the mysterious and inexplicable calumny which has heightened Mrs. Fielder's antipathy against me.

Of late, I have been continually ruminating on it, and especially since Mrs. Talbot's last letter. Methinks it is impossible for me to leave the country till I have cleared her character of this horrid aspersion. Can there be any harmony between mother and child, must not suspicion and mistrust perpetually rankle in their bosoms, while this imposture is believed?

Yet how to detect the fraud--Some clue must be discernible; perseverance must light on it at last. The agent in this sordid iniquity must be human; must be influenced by the ordinary motives; must be capable of remorse or of error; must have moments of repentance or of negligence.

My mind was particularly full of this subject in a midnight ramble which I took just before I left Baltimore. Something--I know not what-- recalled to my mind a conversation which I had with the poor washwoman at Wilmington. Miss Jessup, whom you well know by my report, pa.s.sed through Wilmington just as I left the sick woman's house, and stopped a moment just to give me a "How d'ye" and to drop some railleries founded on my visits to Miss Secker, a single and solitary lady. On reaching Philadelphia, she amused herself with perplexing Jane by jesting exaggerations on the same subject, in a way that seemed to argue somewhat of malignity; yet I thought nothing of it at the time.

On my next visit to the sick woman, it occurred to me, for want of other topics of conversation, to introduce Miss Jessup. Did she know any thing, I asked, of that lady?

Oh, yes, was the answer. A great deal. She lived a long time in the family. She remembered her well, and was a sufferer by many of her freaks.

It was always disagreeable to me to listen to the slanderous prate of servants; I am careful, whenever it intrudes itself, to discourage and rebuke it; but just at this time I felt some resentment against this lady, and hardly supposed it possible for any slanderer to exaggerate her contemptible qualities. I suffered her therefore to run on in a tedious and minute detail of the capricious, peevish, and captious deportment of Miss Jessup.

After the rhetoric of half an hour, all was wound up, in a kind of satirical apology, with, "No wonder; for the girl was over head and ears in love, and her man would have nothing to say to her. A hundred times has she begged and prayed him to be kind, but he slighted all her advances; and always, after they had been shut up together, she wreaked her disappointment and ill-humour upon us."

"Pray," said I, "who was this ungrateful person?"

"His name was Talbot. Miss Jessup would not give him up, but teased him with letters and prayers till the man at last got married,--ten to one, for no other reason than to get rid of her."

This intelligence was new. Much as I had heard of Miss Jessup, a story like this had never reached my ears. I quickly ascertained that the Talbot spoken of was the late husband of my friend.

Some incident interrupted the conversation here. The image of Miss Jessup was displaced to give room to more important reveries, and I thought no more of her till this night's ramble. I now likewise recollected that the only person suspected of having entered the apartment where lay Mrs. Talbot's unfinished letter was no other than Miss Jessup herself, who was always gadding at unseasonable hours. How was this suspicion removed? By Miss Jessup herself, who, on being charged with the theft, a.s.serted that she was elsewhere engaged at the time.

It was, indeed, exceedingly improbable that Miss Jessup had any agency in this affair,--a volatile, giddy, thoughtless character, who betrayed her purposes on all occasions, from a natural incapacity to keep a secret.

And yet had not this person succeeded in keeping her attachment to Mr.

Talbot from the knowledge, and even the suspicion, of his wife? Their intercourse had been very frequent since her marriage, and all her sentiments appeared to be expressed with a rash and fearless confidence.

Yet, if Hannah Secker's story deserved credit, she had exerted a wonderful degree of circ.u.mspection, and had placed on her lips a guard that had never once slept.

I determined to stop at Wilmington next day, on my journey to you, and glean what further information Hannah could give. I ran to her lodgings as soon as I alighted at the inn.

I inquired how long and in what years she lived with Miss Jessup; what reason she had for suspecting her mistress of an attachment to Talbot; what proofs Talbot gave of aversion to her wishes.

On each of these heads her story was tediously minute and circ.u.mstantial. She lived with Miss Jessup and her mother before Talbot's marriage with my friend, after the marriage, and during his absence on the voyage which occasioned his death.

The proofs of Miss Jessup's pa.s.sion were continually occurring in her own family, where she suffered the ill-humour occasioned by her disappointment to display itself without control. Hannah's curiosity was not chastened by much reflection, and some things were overheard which verified the old maxim that "walls have ears." In short, it appears that this poor lady doted on Talbot; that she reversed the usual methods of proceeding, and submitted to his mercy; that she met with nothing but scorn and neglect; that even after his marriage with Jane she sought his society, pestered him with invitations and letters, and directed her walks in such a way as to make their meeting in the street occur as if by accident.

While Talbot was absent, she visited his wife very frequently, but the subjects of their conversation and the degree of intimacy between the two ladies were better known to me than to Hannah.

You may think it strange that my friend never suspected or discovered the state of Miss Jessup's feelings. But, in truth, Jane is the least suspicious or inquisitive of mortals. Her neighbour was regarded with no particular affection; her conversation is usually a vein of impertinence or levity; her visits were always unsought, and eluded as often as decorum would permit; her talk was seldom listened to, and she and all belonging to her were dismissed from recollection as soon as politeness gave leave.

Miss Jessup's deficiencies in personal and mental graces, and Talbot's undisguised contempt for her, precluded every sentiment like jealousy.

Jane's life since the commencement of her acquaintance with Miss Jessup was lonely and secluded. Her friends were not of her neighbour's cast, and those tattlers who knew any thing of Miss Jessup's follies were quite unknown to her. No wonder, then, that the troublesome impertinence of this poor woman had never betrayed her to so inattentive an observer as Jane.

After many vague and fruitless inquiries, I asked Hannah if Miss Jessup was much addicted to the pen.

Very much. Was always scribbling. Was never by herself three minutes but the pen was taken up; would write on any pieces of paper that offered; was frequently rebuked by her mother for wasting so much time in this way; the cause of a great many quarrels between them; the old lady spent the whole day knitting; supplied herself in this way with all the stockings she herself used; knit nothing but worsted, which she wore all the year round; all the surplus beyond what she needed for her own use she sold at a good price to a Market Street shopkeeper; Hannah used to be charged with the commission; always executed it grumblingly; the old lady had stipulated with a Mr. H---- to take, at a certain price, all she made; Hannah was despatched with the stockings, but was charged to go beforehand to twenty other dealers and try to get more; used to go directly to Mr.

H----, and call on her friends by the way, persuading the old lady that her detention was occasioned by the number and perseverance of her applications to the dealers in hose, till at last she fell under suspicion, was once followed by the old lady, detected in her fraud, and dismissed from the house with ignominy. The quondam mistress endeavoured to injure Hannah's character by reporting that her agent had actually got a higher price for the stockings than she thought proper to account for to her employer; had gained, by this artifice, not less than three farthings a pair on twenty-three pairs; all a base lie as ever was told----

"You say that Miss Jessup was a great scribbler. Did she write well; fast; neatly?"