LETTER XXXIX.
To Mrs. Talbot.
It becomes me to submit without a murmur to a resolution
dictated by a disinterested regard to my happiness.
That you may find in that persuasion; in your mother's
tenderness and gratitude; in the affluence and honor, which
this determination has secured to you, abundant consolation
for every evil that may befall yourself or pursue me, are
my only wishes.
Far was I from designing to conceal from you entirely
my father's aversion to our views. I frequently apprized
you of the inferences to be naturally drawn from his known
character, but I trusted to his generosity, to the steadiness
of my own deportment—to your own merits, when he should
become personally acquainted with you; to his good sense,
when reflecting on an evil in his power to lessen, though not
wholly to remove—for a change in his opinions; or, at
least, in his conduct.
There was sufficient resemblance in the characters of
both our parents to make me rely on the influence of time
and reflection in our favor. Your mother could not cease
to love you. I could not by any accident be wholly bereaved
of my father's affection. No conduct of theirs had
robbed them of my esteem. Why then did I persist in
thwarting their wishes? Why encourage you in your opposition?
because I imagined that, in thwarting their present
views, which were founded in error, I consulted their lasting
happiness, and made myself a title to their future gratitude,
by challenging their present rebukes.
I told you not of my father's passionate violences, disgraceful
to himself and productive of unspeakable anguish
to me. Why should I revive the scene? why be the historian
of my father's dishonor? why needlessly add to my own
and to your affliction?
My concealments arose not from the fear that the disclosure
would estrange you from me. I supposed you willing
to grant me the same independence of a parent's control
which you claimed for yourself. I saw no difference
between forbearing to consult a parent, in a case where we
know that his answer will condemn us, and slighting his express
forbidding.
I say thus much to account for, and, if possible, excuse
that concealment with which you reproach me. Tender
and reluctant, indeed, are these reproaches, but as I deem
it a sacred duty to reveal to you the utmost of my follies,
what but in justice to you would be the tacit admission of injurious
but groundless charges.
My actual faults are of too deep a dye to allow me to
sport with your good opinion, or permit me to be worse
thought of by you than I deserve.
You exhort me to seek reconcilement with my father.
What mean you? I have not been the injurer. Not an angry
word, accusing look, or vengeful thought has come from
me. I have exercised the privilege of a rational and moral
being. I have loved, not according to another's estimate of
merit, but my own. Of what then am I to repent? where
lies my transgression! if his treatment of me be occasioned
by antipathy for you, must I adopt his antipathy, and thus
creep again into favor? Impossible! if it arise from my refusing
to give up an alliance which his heart abhors, your
letter to him, which you tell me you mean to write, and
which will inform him that every view of that kind is at an
end, will remove the evil.
Fear not for me, my friend. Whatever be my lot, be
assured that I never can taste pure misery while the thought
abides with me that you are not happy.
And what now remains but to leave with you the blessing
of a grateful and devoted heart, and to submit with what humility
I can, to the destiny which you have prescribed.
I should not deserve your love, if I did not now relinquish
it with an anguish next to despair; neither should I
have merit in my own eyes, if I did not end this letter with
acquitting you, the author of my loss, of all shadow of
blame.
Farewell—forever.
H. Colden.
