LETTER LVIII.
To Mrs. Montford.
Philadelphia, October 12
Dear Madam,
How shall I thank you for the kind and delicate
manner in which you have complied with
my request. You will not be surprized, nor, I
hope, offended, that I am emboldened to address
you once more.
I see that I need not practice towards you a
reserve, at all times foreign to my nature, and
now more painful than at any other time, as my
soul is torn with emotions, which I am at liberty
to disclose to no other human creature. Will
you be my friend? Will you permit me to claim
your sympathy and consolation? As I told you
before, I am thoroughly acquainted with
your merits, and one of the felicities which I
promised myself from a nearer alliance with
Mr. Colden, was that of numbering myself among
your friends.
You have deprived me of some hope, by the
information you give; but you have at least put
an end to a suspense more painful than the most
dreadful certainty could be.
You say that you know all our concerns. In
pity to my weakness, will you give me some particulars
of my friend. I am extremely anxious
to know many things in your power to communicate.
Perhaps you know the contents of my last
letter to him, and of his answer. I know you
condemn me. You think me inconsiderate and
cruel in writing such aletter, and my heart does
not deny the charge. Yet my motives were not
utterly ungenerous. I could not bear to reduce
the man I loved to poverty. I could not
bear that he should incur the violence and curses
of his father. I fondly thought myself the only
obstacle to reconcilement, and was willing,
whatever it cost me, to remove that obstacle.
What will become of me, if my fears should
now be realized, if the means which I used, with
no other view than to reconcile him to his family,
should have driven him away from them and
from his country forever? I thank my God that
I was capable of abandoning him on no selfish
or personal account. The maledictions of my
own mother; the scorn of the world; the loss
of friends, reputation, and fortune, weighed nothing
with me. Great as these evils were, I
could have cheerfully sustained them for his
sake. What I did, was in oblivion of self; was
from a duteous regard to his genuine and lasting
happiness. Alas! I have, perhaps, mistaken
the means, and cruel will, I fear, be the penalty
of my error.
Tell me, my dear friend, was not Colden reconciled
to his father before he went? When
does he mean to return? What said he, what
thought he of my conduct? Did he call me ungrateful
and capricious? Did he vow never to see
or think of me more?
I have regarded the promise that I made to
the elder Colden, and to my mother, as sacred.
The decease of the latter has, in my own opinion,
absolved me from any obligation except
that of promoting my own happiness, and that
of him whom I love. I shall not now reduce
him to indigence, and that consequence being
precluded, I cannot doubt of his father's acquiescence.
Ah! dear Madam! I should not have been so
long patient, had I not, as it now appears, been
lulled into a fatal mistake. I could not taste repose
till I was, as I thought, certainly informed
that he continued to reside in his father's house.
This proof of reconciliation, and the silence
which, though so near him, he maintained towards
me, both before and subsequently to my
mother's death, contributed to persuade me that
his condition was not unhappy, and especially,
that either his resentment or his prudence had
made him dismiss me from his thoughts.
I have lately, to my utter astonishment, discovered
that Colden, immediately after his last
letter to me, went upon some distant voyage,
whence, though a twelve month has since passed,
he has not yet returned. Hence the boldness
of this address to you, whom I know only by
rumour.
You will, I doubt not, easily imagine to
yourself my feelings, and will be good enough
to answer my enquiries, if you have any compassion
for your
