LETTER XXXVII.
To the Same.
November 26.
What shall I say to thee, my friend. How
shall I communicate a resolution fatal, as thy
tenderness will deem it, to thy peace; yet a
resolution suggested by an heart which has, at
length, permitted all selfish regards to be swallowed
up by a disinterested consideration of thy
good.
Why did you conceal from me your father's
treatment of you, and the consequences which
your fidelity to me has incurred from his rage?
I will never be the cause of plunging you into
poverty so hopeless. Did you think I would;
and could you imagine it possible to conceal from
me forever his aversion to me.
How much misery would your forbearance
have laid up in store for my future life. When
fate had put it out of my power to absolve you
from his curses, some accident would have
made me acquainted with the full extent of the
sufferings and contumelies with which, for my
sake, he had loaded you.
But, thanks to Heaven, I am apprized in time
of the truth. Instead of the bearer of a letter
from my mother, whose signal at the door put
an end to my last letter, it was my mother herself.
Dear and welcome as those features and that
voice once were, now would I rather have encountered
the eyes of a basalisk and the notes
of the ill-boding raven.
She hastened with all this expedition to thank
me; to urge me to execute; to assist me in
performing the promises of my first letter. The
second, in which these promises were recalled,
never reached her hand. She left New-York,
as it now appeared, before its arrival. The interval
had been spent on the road, where she
had been detained by untoward and dangerous accidents.
Think, my friend, of the embarrassments attending
this unlooked for and inauspicious meeting.
Joy at my supposed compliance with her
wishes, wishes that imaged to themselves my
happiness, and only mine, enabled her to support
the hardships of this journey. Fatigue and
exposure, likely to be fatal to one of so delicate,
so infirm a constitution, so lately and imperfectly
recovered from a dangerous malady, could
not deter her.
Fondly, rapturously did she fold to her bosom,
the long lost and late recovered child. Tears
of joy she shed over me, and thanked me for
the tranquil and serene close which my return
to virtue, as she called my acquiescene, had
secured to her life. That life would at all events
be short, but my compliances, if they could not
much protract it, would at least render its approaching
end peaceful.
All attempts to reason with my mother were
fruitless. She fell into alarming agonies when
she discovered the full import of that coldness
and dejection which my demeanor betrayed.
Fatigued and indisposed as she was, she made
preparation to depart: she refused to pass one
night under the same roof; her own roof; and
determined to be gone, on her return home,
the very next morning.
Will not your heart comprehend the greatness
of this trial, and pity and excuse a momentary
wavering; a yielding irresolution? Yet it
was but momentary. An hour's solitude and
deep reflection fortified my heart against the
grief and supplication even of my mother.
Next day she was more calm. She condescended
to reason, to expostulate. She carefully
shunned the mention of atrocious charges.
She dwelt only on the proofs which your past
life and your own confessions had afforded of
unsteady courage and unwarrantable principles
your treatment of the Woodbury girl; your
correspondence with Thomson; your ignoble
floth; your dependance upon others; your helplessness.
From these accusations, I defended you in
silence. My heart was your secret advocate.
I did not verbally repell any of these charges.
That of inglorious dependance for subsistence
upon others, I admitted; but I could not forbear
urging that this dependance was on a father. A
father who was rich; who had no other child
than yourself; whose own treatment of you,
had planted and reared in you this indisposition
to labor; to whose property, your title, ultimately,
could not be denied.
And has he then, she exclaimed, deceived
you in that particular? Has he concealed from
you his father's resolutions? That his engagement
with you, has already drawn down his father's
anger, and even his curses. On his persisting
to maintain an inviolable faith to you,
he was ignominioufly banished from his father's
roof. All kindred and succour were disclaimed,
and on you depends the continuance of that decree,
and whether that protection and subsistence
which he has hitherto enjoyed, and of
which his character stands in so much need,
shall be lost to him forever.
You did not tell me this, my friend. In claiming
your love, far was I from imagining that I
tore you from your father's house, and plunged
you into that indigence which your character
and education so totally unfit you for sustaining
or escaping from.
My mother removed all doubt which could
not but attend such unwelcome tidings, by shewing
me her own letter to your father, and his
answer to it.
Well do I recollect your behaviour on the
evening when my mother's letter was received
by your father. At that time, your deep dejection
was inexplicable. And did you not—my
heart bleeds to think how much my love has cost
you—Did you not talk of a fall on the ice when
I pointed to a bruize on your forehead. That
bruize, and every token of dismay, your endeavors
at eluding or diverting my attention from
your sorrow and solemnity, are now explained.
Good Heaven! And was I indeed the cause of
that violence, that contumely; the rage, and
even curses of a father? And why concealed
you these maledictions and this violence from me?
Was it not because you well knew that I would
never consent to subject you to such a penalty?
Hasten then, I beseech you, to your father;
lay this letter before him; let it inform him of
my solemn and irrevocable resolution to sever
myself from you forever.
But this I will, myself, do. I will acquaint
him with my resignation to his will and that of
my mother, and beseech him to restore you to
his favor.
Farewell, my friend. By that name, at least,
I may continue to call you. Yet no. I must
never see you nor hear from you again; unless
it be in answer to this letter.
Let your pity stifle the emotions of indignation
or grief, and return me such an answer as
may tend to reconcile me to the vow, which,
whether difficult or easy, must not be broken.
