LETTER XXXVII.
To the Same.
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 a 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 acquiescence, 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 sloth; your dependence upon others; your
helplessness.
From these accusations, I defended you in silence. My
heart was your secret advocate. I did not verbally repel
any of these charges. That of inglorious dependence for
subsistence upon others, I admitted; but I could not forbear
urging that this dependence 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 ignominiously
banished from his father's roof. All kindred and
succor 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 behavior 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 bruise on your forehead. That bruise, 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.
