LETTER XIV.
To Mrs. Fielder.
Philadelphia, October 24.
Impossible! Are you not my mother?
more to me than any mother. Did I not receive
your protection and instruction in my infancy and
my childhood? When left an orphan by my own
mother, your bosom was open to receive me.
There was the helpless babe cherished, and there
was it taught all that virtue, which it has since endeavoured
to preserve unimpaired in every trial.
You must not cast me off. You must not
hate me. You must not call me ungrateful and
a wretch. Not to have merited these names is
all that enables me to endure your displeasure.
As long as that belief consoles me, my heart will
not break.
Yet that, even that, will not much avail me.
The distress that I now feel, that I have felt ever
since the receipt of your letter cannot be
increased.
You forbid me to write to you, but I cannot
forbear as long as there is hope of extorting from
you the cause of your aversion to my friend. I
solicit not this disclosure with a view or even in
the hope of repelling your objections. I want,
I had almost said, I want to share your antipathies.
I want only to be justified in obeying
you. When known, they will, perhaps, be found
sufficient. I conjure you, once more, tell me
your objections to this marriage.
As well as I can, I have examined myself.
Passion may influence me, but I am unconscious
of its influence. I think I act with no exclusive
regard to my own pleasure, but as it flows
from and is dependant on the happiness of
others.
If I am mistaken in my notions of duty, God
forbid that I should shut my ears against good
counsel. Instead of loathing or shunning it, I
am anxious to hear it. I know my own shortsighted
folly: my slight experience. I know
how apt I am to go astray. How often my
own heart deceives me, and hence I always am
in search of better knowledge: hence I listen
to admonition, not only with docility but gratitude.
My inclination ought perhaps to be absolutely
neuter, but if I know myself, it is with
reluctance that I withhold my assent from the
expostulator. I am delighted to receive conviction
from the arguments of those that love
me.
In this case, I am prepared to hear and
weigh, and be convinced by any thing you think
proper to urge.
I ask not pardon for my faults, nor compassion
on my frailty. That I love Colden I will
not deny, but I love his worth; his merits real
or imaginary enrapture my soul. Ideal his
virtues may be, but to me they are real, and
the moment they cease to be so, that the illusion
disappears, I cease to love him, or, at least,
I will do all in my power to do. I will forbear
all intercourse or correspondence with him—
for his, as well as my own sake.
Tell me then, my mother, what you know
of him. What heinous offence has he committed,
that makes him unworthy of my regard.
You have raised, without knowing it, perhaps,
or designing to effect it in this way, a bar to
this detested alliance. While you declare, that
Colden has been guilty of base actions, it is impossible
to grant him my esteem as fully as an
husband should claim. Till I know what the
actions are which you impute to him, I never
will bind myself to him by indissoluble bands.
I have told him this and he joins with me to
intreat you to communicate your charges to
me. He believes that you are misled by some
misapprehension; some slander. He is conscious
that many of his actions have been, in some
respects, ambiguous, capable of being mistaken
by careless or distant or prejudiced observers.
He believes that you have been betrayed into
some fatal error in relation to one action of his
life.
If this be so, he wishes only to be told his
fault, and will spare no time and no pains to remove
your mistake, if you should appear to be
mistaken.
How easily, my good mamma, may the most
discerning and impartial be misled! The ignorant
and envious have no choice between truth
and error. Their tales must want something
to compleat it, or must possess more than
the truth demands. Something you have heard
of my friend injurious to his good name, and
you condemn him unheard.
Yet this displeases me not. I am not anxious
for his justification, but only to know so much
as will authorize me to conform to your wishes.
You warn me against this marriage for my
own sake. You think it will be disastrous to
me.—The reasons of this apprehension would,
you think, appear just in my eyes should they
be disclosed, yet you will not disclose them.
Without disclosure I cannot,—as a rational creature,
I cannot change my resolution. If then I
marry and the evil come that is threatened,
whom have I to blame? at whose door must
my misfortunes be laid if not at her's, who had
it in her power to prevent the evil and would
not?
Your treatment of me can proceed only from
your love, and yet all the fruits of the direst
enmity may grow out of it. By untimely concealments
may my peace be forfeited forever.
Judge then between your obligations to me,
and those of secrecy into which you seem to
have entered with another.
My happiness, my future conduct are in
your hand. Mould them; govern them as you
think proper. I have pointed out the means,
and once more conjure you, by the love which
you once bore; which you still bear to me, to
use them.
